Mouse and I exchanged a glance, but didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” my father continued, “once I viewed the footage I thought it was Jim and… Well, I guess I sort of panicked.”
“No kidding,” Mouse joked, nodding his head towards the double doors. After calming my father down, we had pulled them from the walls and put them back in place as best we could, but they no longer fit together quite perfectly. They’d need some work before they were fully functional again, but in the meantime the lab was made secure by a solid metal barrier wall that extended down from the ceiling behind the now-damaged doors.
“Anyway,” Alpha Prime went on, ignoring Mouse’s comment, “I made an emergency request for Jim’s location to the League’s computer system and was told that he was here. I came as fast as I could and the rest is history. Now, can someone tell me what’s going on?”
Chapter 45
I let Mouse explain the current situation to my father in succinct fashion. When it was over, we had a quick Q&A with Alpha Prime to confirm that my double hadn’t made contact with him. (From everything we could discern, he hadn’t.) Then, after making us promise to keep him apprised, my father left.
Once he was gone, Mouse turned to me, asking, “Thoughts?”
“Yeah – lots of them,” I said. “For starters, Alpha Prime mentioned making a request to track me down.”
“That’s through your cell phone,” Mouse said. “However, it’s only for emergencies. You’re not supposed to use it to see if some super teen is out partying when he should be studying, or to see if a League member you’re dating is two-timing you, or anything like that.”
“Well, as luck would have it, I’m not asking about it for any of those reasons. I’m asking because I could still use an alibi, and if my phone were being tracked, maybe that opens the door.”
Mouse shook his head. “That doesn’t do anything for you. You could have left the phone at the party, teleported to put the kibosh on Incendia, then come back and retrieved your phone with no one the wiser.”
“Okay, let’s move on to Alpha Prime’s mansion. Why go there?”
Mouse shrugged. “Don’t know. But I have a theory about how your double got gutshot.”
“Yeah – whatever ‘malfunction’ caused Paramount’s old buddies to get injured in their cells happened at my father’s place. But if my doppelganger’s the cause, it doesn’t make sense. I mean, why would he turn laser-fire on himself?”
“I’m not sure he did,” Mouse said. “Or rather, I don’t think that was his intent. You saw his face. Was that the look of a guy who expected to get shot?”
“No. He looked more like a guy who just got shoved into the water on an alligator farm.”
“Right,” Mouse said with a nod. “I think maybe he tried to disarm the system and somehow it backfired on him.”
“So, you think he’s in a hospital somewhere right now, getting treated?”
“Don’t know,” Mouse admitted, his brow wrinkled in thought. “But it’s worth checking out. I’ll ask BT to look into it.”
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Go home. Get some rest. From what I’ve seen, you’ve been running around all morning. Have you even had breakfast yet?”
I had to admit that food had not been a high priority, but also stated that it wasn’t an issue because I’d altered my systems so that I wouldn’t get hungry. Mouse, of course, didn’t care about any of that. He ordered me out of his lab, saying he didn’t want to see or hear from me again until I’d had something to eat. Reluctantly, I teleported home.
Chapter 46
I popped up in the kitchen. No one was there, but when I reached out telepathically, I could sense that everyone was awake. Mom was in her office typing, my grandparents were in the breakfast area, and Myshtal was in her room.
I switched my bodily systems back to normal and suddenly realized I was famished. I went to the refrigerator and rooted around for a moment before pulling out some cheese and cold cuts. A minute later, after getting my hands on a loaf of bread, I’d whipped together a sandwich, which I promptly began devouring while heading to the breakfast area.
My grandparents were seated at the table when I entered the room; Gramps was reading the paper while Indigo nestled next to him, her head resting on his shoulder. She sat up when I came in, and my grandfather folded the newspaper and set it aside.
“Anything good in there?” I asked, nodding towards the newspaper before finishing off my sandwich.
“A couple of articles about our party the other night,” Indigo said, “which is great for your grandfather, since he likes seeing his name in the paper.”
Gramps grunted in fake annoyance at her teasing, then turned to me and muttered, “Got your note.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what he was talking about, then I remembered the piece of paper I had hurriedly scribbled on when I’d left earlier.
“Good,” I replied. “Hope you didn’t worry.”
“We always worry about you, Sxibbo,” Indigo chimed in. “It’s the privilege of being grandparents.”
“You can worry if you want,” Gramps admonished. “I’m not going to fret over a kid who can outrun a bullet.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” my grandmother said with a smile. “He worries about you more than anyone.”
My grandfather merely grunted in response, causing us to laugh.
“So,” Indigo continued, “how’s your day been?”
She asked the question innocuously, but I could tell that she – along with my grandfather – were eager to hear my response. Unlike the day before, no one had bombarded me with questions upon my arrival. (Apparently a decision had been made to give me a little space in that regard.) Grateful for the short reprieve, I reached out telepathically to my grandparents and my mother and brought them up to speed. The only person I didn’t mentally share with was Myshtal, whom I sensed
