Gladys sighed. “If my plan works, this is the last thing you’ll hear from me. I know you and the others are all going to question my choices, but there are worse things than dying, and I’m staring some of those things in the face right now.
“I’ll leave you with this—I agree that there’s a Mastermind. And I know Ronaldo was working for whoever that is. Remember that the Mastermind is your ultimate goal, but don’t forget that wars are won one battle at a time. And no matter how it might seem right now, kiddo, this battle isn’t actually over.”
Gladys grinned. “So, stop sniveling about my death and go do what you do best—fight for right, protect my people, and kick bad guy ass.”
CHAPTER 75
WE WERE BACK AT THE EMBASSY. It was hard to tell Gower that he’d now lost his aunt as well as his brother. It was harder to tell everyone else.
White managed it, of course, because he’d been managing horrible things like this since well before the A-Cs had been exiled to Earth. Once the news was out, White had sequestered himself and Gower, doing Pontifex stuff, which I presumed meant White was prepping Gower for how to hold it together during Michael’s funeral which was now the day after tomorrow.
Chuckie had Dier, Darryl the Airbender, Kozlow, and the guy Gladys had tossed out of the chopper in custody. They were in the containment center under the Pentagon, and, despite complaints from the F.B.I., Homeland Security, and the rest of the C.I.A., only Mom or Chuckie, and whoever they chose to bring along, were allowed access.
The prisoners were in Magneto Level cells, but so far, no one had gotten anything much out of them. Jeff and Christopher were due to go over with Mom, Chuckie, and a Polaroid camera to see what they could get. But first we had to make sense of what had happened at Guantanamo.
Uncle Mort had insisted on this because he wanted to be sure Mom had all the pertinent details and he wanted to hear anything he’d missed as well. I’d backed him up on doing this right away, because there were things I wanted to be sure we considered before I headed a commando raid into Gaultier.
Mom had agreed with both of us. Jeff had insisted that he wanted all Embassy staff, Alpha, and Airborne, other than White and Gower, in attendance as well. Jeff, Christopher, Mahin and I were all filthy, though, and the rest of the team wasn’t looking too much better. So everyone was given an hour to get bathed and changed, Mahin and Uncle Mort were assigned rooms, and everyone cleaned up.
Dad was at the Embassy staying with Jamie, who was happy to see us, but not as happy as we were to see her. We didn’t have as long a family reunion as either Jeff or I would have liked, but it was a better reunion than the Gowers were getting to have. Forced myself not to think about that while we were with Jamie, difficult though it was.
An hour later, give or take, we were all packed into the conference room like a group of well-dressed sardines, Hacker International attending via video conferencing.
Like me and all the other women, Mahin was now in the Standard Female Armani Fatigues of black slim skirt and white oxford, Fluffball on her shoulder. The clothes and Poof looked natural on her. She was actually kind of huddling next to me, which was understandable, even though no one had accused her of anything, not even via their expressions, not even Naomi or Abigail.
Pierre had provided a lovely drinks and snacks arrangement, which was great since it was well past dinnertime and many of us hadn’t eaten for hours before that. I did my best not to shovel the fruit, veggies, dip, cheese, and chocolate into my mouth, but it took effort.
Food and drinks at everyone’s place, we rolled into our recap. I covered why I’d gone with Gladys, Jeff covered why he and the others had come after us, Uncle Mort and Reader shared what they’d found at the computer center, and Chuckie finished up with what they’d done with the various prisoners, the ones we cared about and the others. We played Gladys’ farewell message for everyone.
“Mort and I had the prisoners searched, of course,” Chuckie said, probably to break the sad silence in the room after the video finished up. He slid four small disks onto the table. “The four we have in maximum lockup all had these on them. The prisoners who were in Guantanamo originally didn’t.”
“At least it wasn’t in them.” Got the usual WTF looks. Heaved a sigh. “These are small. I’m amazed our enemies aren’t installing them inside their operatives like how we all used to be tagged for the American Centaurion Herd Protection Program.”
Chuckie’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a good point. We’ve lost all the data on these, of course, but I wonder if there’s something toxic to humans or A-Cs, or both, in the metal.”
“Not that we’ve found yet,” Serene said. “But then again, they’ve been almost impossible to examine past the shell.”
“That would make sense,” Jeff said. “Because I’m with Kitty—why not at least put them under the skin if they’re harmless? We’d have a harder time finding them, not to mention there’s less risk of loss.”
“Maybe they think we’ll figure out how to destroy them, like they destroyed our chips,” Christopher said. “And theirs explode when you try to open them.”
“Good point. But they could make them with a non-explosive shell if they wanted to. Unless there’s a really good reason to have them remain outside of a body, and again, toxicity would be my guess, because it’s not like the bad guys ever seem to care about losing minions.”
“I wasn’t given one of those,” Mahin said. “I’ve never even seen one before, and I didn’t know there were things that could affect empaths until you mentioned it. If I understand everything that’s been going on correctly, I should have had one, shouldn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “You were on the front lines and I’ve been able to read you pretty clearly.”
Something was bothering me. Something small. But as with Algar or the Poofs or Jamie, small didn’t necessarily mean unimportant. Remembered that Jeff had said something about Mahin joining us and so had Gladys, and both had struck me as vital to explore. “You know, I wonder . . . why were we there and are we all here?”
Got a replay of all the WTF looks. Heaved a sigh but soldiered on. “By there I mean those of us who were at Guantanamo, and by here, I mean all of us, right here, as we are at this very moment.” Looked around. “None of you seem remotely shocked that Mahin’s got a Poof on her shoulder, or that we’re acting like she’s part of the team. She’s still feeling unsure of whether or not she fits in, but none of you seem even a little surprised.”
Tim shrugged. “We’re not. It’s what you do, why you got moved to Head of Recruitment.”
“Yeah,” Jerry said with a grin. “You find the talent, you do something that makes the talent realize you’re great and worthy of following, you recruit the talent, the talent says you’re da girl and sticks around. Sometimes the talent even marries in,” he added, with a wink for Joe and Randy. Lorraine and Claudia both chuckled.
“And she’s family,” Naomi said softly. Serene nodded.
“Right. So I have to go back to something that occurred to me when we were fighting Mahin the first time, in the desert. It seemed like her side hadn’t told her the truth—she thought they were all somewhere in the tunnel system, when they’d never even gone into it.”