Touched by an Alien

going to take days. Days that what Martini called my female intuition said we didn’t have.
    “Not as if your boys have done all that well,” Dad retorted.
    “Better than you have,” Christopher said. “We’ve managed to stop the majority of all forming superbeings while keeping your populace from total panic.”
    “By not allowing them to know what’s really going on.” Dad sounded huffy again.
    “Oh, Dad, please. As if you’re not the one who gave me all those ‘herd mentality’ lectures growing up. You know the herd would panic and stampede if they knew what was really going on.”
    “It’s not as though Mort would recommend sharing this with the civilian public,” Mom added.
    “No, but I know he’d protect his niece with his life.”
    “Stop worrying. I’ll take my hairspray with me.” Crickets. Tough room.
    Reader cleared his throat. “My parents have no idea what I do. They think I threw away a successful career to shack up with some black guy I barely knew who comes from an odd family. It’s a lot easier that way.” He winked.
    Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I give up. We’ll stop acting as though we don’t function in this kind of environment all the time. What do you need from us, Kitty?”
    “Mostly for the two of you to stay here in the hollow mountain with the critters and leave me alone. About everything.” I hoped they’d catch that this included my sex life and relationship with Martini, whatever that might be now.
    Mom nodded. “Fine. Anything else?”
    “Well, I would like all the information your two covert operations have on this.”
    “I had no idea we had ETs around, let alone on the planet,” Mom said. “My knowledge is all Yates-based.”
    “Share it, he’s got half the mind.”
    “This is considered highly confidential and requires a higher level of security than most people in this room are likely to have.”
    White cleared his throat. “I promise you, we have that clearance. Possibly higher.”
    “You didn’t know about them, but they didn’t seem shocked by you, Mom.”
    “Good point. I expect this to be treated as all classified information is, then.” All heads in the room nodded. “The Al Dejahl terrorist organization is a worldwide group. Unlike most of the terrorist groups out there, they aren’t religiously or racially based. They have as many members who claim no religion as they have who identify with all the popular religions. Their stated goal is overall chaos. However, it’s clear that they expect to make a lot of money from that chaos.”
    “How is someone like Yates their head dude?”
    “He’s got the money, the means, and the drive. He comes up with wide-scale, intricate plans as easily as he does commando mission ideas, suicide bombers and the like, and small, targeted attacks. He recruits well, from all accounts, he’s able to quickly identify what each potential recruit wants, what drives them, and exploit it.”
    “He personally recruits?” This seemed awfully hands-on for a guy with Yates’ level of public profile.
    “Not as much any more. He’s taught his recruitment personnel how to imitate his techniques. But when he was first forming Al Dejahl, yes, he did the recruiting himself.” Mom shrugged. “He has no scruples. He’s got lots of attractive women available to offer the men, money and influence to offer to the few women who join, and the promise of world domination for all of them.”
    “How many do they number?”
    Mom sighed. “We don’t have an accurate count. They were in the tens of thousands, but we’ve made some real inroads in the last few years, and we honestly have them on the run. My team cleared out several terrorist cells recently, so we feel we have most of the foot soldiers in custody or in the ground.”
    “Well, that explains why Yates wants you dead.” Nice to know my mother was efficient. Not so nice to know she was marked for death, but apparently that was running in the family, too.
    “Yes, undoubtedly. If we can stop Yates, we have a chance of stamping out Al Dejahl for good. Due to the way they work, if we can get rid of the leader and his closest generals, the remainder of the organization should crumble.”
    “Kind of like the Nazis.”
    “Only the Al Dejahl organization wants to wipe all religion off the map, not just Jews,” Reader offered. “They’re open-minded that way.”
    “Wonderful. Dad, what about your need-to-know info that none of us knew but now