Laughing, my father said, “Well, it has been a while since I spent a decent amount of time with either of you. I tell you what: I’ll grab some pizzas and meet you guys at your place. We’ll hang out for a bit and just chat.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “See you soon.”
Alpha Prime then muttered a quick goodbye, and I hung up the phone. Turning my attention back to Electra, I saw her still watching the computer monitor. Walking towards her, I soon realized – as I suspected – that she was watching the footage of the previous day’s altercation in the lab.
She shot me a glance and then paused the video before turning towards me.
“How do you feel about pizza for dinner?” I asked. “At my place.”
“Fine by me,” she replied.
“Also, Alpha Prime’s joining us – if that’s okay.”
“Again, I’m fine with it,” she declared. “Are we leaving now?”
“Unless you can think of a reason to stay,” I remarked, then glanced at the monitor. A moment later, Electra followed my gaze.
“I never got a chance to see it,” she explained. “So I was curious.”
“Did you want to finish it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. Like you said, there’s nothing there. I mean, the part I saw was interesting, but I didn’t get the impression anything on there would help us find Mouse.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to see it all?”
“Yeah,” she assured me. “But if I change my mind, we can always come back.”
“Hmmm,” I droned, thinking. “Hang on for a sec.”
I then did a quick survey of the area around us, but only had to go as far as the next worktable to find what I was looking for: a memory stick.
“What are you doing?” Electra asked as I came back to the keyboard.
“Making a copy,” I responded. “You relying on my word that there’s nothing on the video bothers me – makes me feel like I’m being too cocky. Now I want to go back and look at it again to make sure.”
It took me a second to locate an appropriate port to insert the memory stick into (surprisingly, it was located on the side of the monitor), but after that, the system seemed to understand what I was trying to do. It asked a question about downloading the current file to the inserted medium, and a few moments later the video file – or rather, a copy of it – had found a new home on the memory stick.
“You know, you could have just watched it again right here,” Electra noted as I removed the memory stick and put it in my back pocket.
“Yeah, but I might want to look at it more than once,” I explained. “And I prefer being able to do it at my leisure. Also, once we leave, I’m pretty sure everything in here will power down again. Since I’m not sure how this machine even turned on, I’m not banking on that happening every time I come back here.”
“Okay,” she intoned after mulling over my comments for a second. “I can get on board with that. So, if you have everything, can we go now?”
Giving her a nod, I teleported us.
Chapter 35
We popped up in the living room of the embassy. Electra immediately flopped down on the couch.
“Ahh, it feels good to finally relax,” she announced, kicking off her shoes. “I feel like I’ve been on my feet all day.”
“I know what you mean,” I said as I sat down next to her.
“Puh-leeze,” she droned. “You can just turn off pain receptors and nerve endings if things start to hurt or get uncomfortable. The rest of us have to suffer through.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize.”
“Oh, you sympathize?” she mocked. “That’s so sweet.”
I came to my feet. “You know what? I’m just going to sit somewhere else.”
I moved to step away, but she grabbed my hand.
“Come on – you know I’m just teasing,” she insisted, at the same time tugging on my hand until I sat back down. “Now, how long before Alpha Prime shows up with the food?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. However long it takes him to grab some pizzas and drive over here.”
“So he’s driving?”
“I suppose. I mean, we left his SUV at the marina, so I assumed he’d go back and get it. And speaking of driving, in case you forgot, your car’s still parked out front.”
“I actually thought about that after you teleported me home this morning. And that reminds me: I should probably call my dad and let him know where I am.”
“And be sure to tell him I’ll have you home before curfew,” I demanded as Electra stood up and took her phone out of her pocket.
“We’ll see,” she remarked with a coy smile as she stepped away to make her call.
Left on my own for the first time all day, I spent a few moments reflecting on everything that had happened. Needless to say, I still had trouble with the notion of Mouse attacking his League teammates (not to mention possibly wanting to take over the world). It just didn’t make sense. And sadly, my second sojourn to the lab had been less than fruitful. (Well, there was the video, but the more I thought about it, the less I felt it would pay dividends in any significant way.)
I was still mentally reviewing the day’s events when Electra came back a few minutes later.
“Everything good?” I asked.
She nodded. “Of course. I told him we were in the middle of an assignment, and he understood.”
“Wow,” I murmured. “He’s a lot more reasonable than I would have guessed.”
“Well, if you’d stop prejudging him, you’d see that my dad is pretty great,” Electra declared. “Anyway, my phone’s almost dead. Do you have a charger I can borrow?”
“Uhhh,” I droned. “Not really.”
She stared at me for a second. “Seriously? You’re not going to let me borrow a charger?”
“It’s not that,” I assured her. “I’m just not sure that I have one.”
“Don’t have one?” Electra
