"Right."

"So, what are the bad guys using these underground tunnels and supersecret rooms or whatever they really are for?"

"As near as we can tell, not a damn thing."

"So why are these tunnels and dead zones in place? The one secret lab we destroyed, okay, I get why that was there. But why this intricate tunnel system, which clearly extends beyond the D.C. area? From what I can see, it doesn't look like a vehicle could fit in there, so really amazing drug running can't be the answer."

"It's so nice that you just assume I know what you're talking about."

"You saying you don't?"

"No. Just commenting on your faith in me." Stryker was quiet for a few moments. "Obviously there's more going on. But you're wrong about the vehicle thing. I mean, a motorcycle would have no problem in these. Something larger could make it, too."

"But not a tank."

"No." Stryker cleared his throat. "But you could probably use these tunnels to transport illegal weapons."

"But why?" Christopher asked. "These had to be put in place with the help of our former Diplomatic Corps. We were fooled by them for decades. Why go to all this trouble and then not use them for anything?"

"I have a better question-do we think the tunnels are either manmade or A-C made?"

CHAPTER 83.

"WHAT ARE YOU QUESTIONING?" Franklin asked. "Who put this system in place, when, or why?"

"Colonel, all of the above. My other question, though, is how in the world could anyone on Earth put in something this intricate, this far underground, that's also cloaked from everything we can throw at it, either human or A-C? I could buy the tunnel and secret lab when that's all it seemed to be. Now? What's on the screen is too intricate even for the most devious and dedicated of A-Cs, let alone humans."

It was silent except for the beeping. Nice to know I'd stumped the room.

Franklin cleared his throat. I sensed a trend starting. "Ah, do you have a theory?"

"Oh, sadly, I think I do. Can we see those pictures of the space armada on one of the screens again, please and thank you?" The pictures appeared. "You know, these spaceships look like what literally every human on Earth who's reported a UFO describes as what they've seen."

"We can't get any reading on them from the probes," Franklin said. "But we can see them and photograph them. So they're not hidden."

"No, they're not hidden from our eyes or our cameras, apparently. For whatever reason, they don't cloak like that." I considered why. "Possibly because the last times they were here in force, we were so primitive it didn't matter if they allowed themselves to be seen. Possibly because they don't think we can hurt them even if we see them."

"Then explain that secret lab you, my father, and Reynolds found and destroyed."

"My guess? It was a coinkydink. The bad guys get them so much more frequently than the good guys do, after all. I'd bet they wanted their secret lab and discovered the tunnel and room by happy accident. They could have been drawn there, too. There are a lot of possibilities.

"You think these aliens have been here before, just like the Ancients, don't you?" Christopher asked.

"Yeah, I do." My feminine intuition shared that it thought so, too. It also thought we were screwed. Had to stop listening to the negative intuitive parts. "If they arrived before the A-Cs were sent here, Earth wouldn't know about them and neither would any of you."

"Yates was here far longer than the rest of us," White said quietly.

"Yeah, I know. And I'm betting he knew whoever's coming to visit." Chances were they'd liked him, too, because they'd have had more in common with him. "Maybe they even brought the right parasite here, to join with him." They were driving enough parasites in front of them, effectively, that this seemed extremely likely. Figured. A guy like Yates wouldn't connect with the Mephistopheles parasite by accident. Not in the world I got to live in.

Stryker cleared his throat. Apparently the trend was really catching on. "Ah, Kitty? Didn't you say you killed Yates?"

"Yep. So, I'll offer three guesses for who this group is going to be the most pissed off at, and the first two don't count."

"But all of the secret rooms are under or near important places in the U.S.," Buchanan pointed out. "How is that possible?"

"Maybe they give off some kind of power. Maybe they've got some kind of attractor in them. Heck, maybe they emit some form of mind control. I doubt that the locations are random, either way. But based on what these ships look like, I'd say they've been dropping by frequently. Give the right person the suggestion for where to put the Pentagon, and presto, the Pentagon is on top of your dead zone. Oh, let's call them what they are-hidden strongholds with God knows what inside."

"There are green circles around other places of importance outside of the United States, too," Mona said.

"Many," Khalid chimed in. "I count at least fifty in our part of the world alone."

"Including in Israel," Jakob added.

"At least as many in Europe, even more in Asia," Oren shared.

"What does it all mean?" Jeremy asked.

"We don't know. Yet." We needed to figure it out, before the invaders arrived to explain it to us.

"So all the people who say they've been abducted by aliens are telling the truth?" Franklin asked.

I looked at Stryker. He contrived to look innocent. "Oh, I'd say many, but certainly not all." Stryker opened his mouth. "Eddy, think carefully before you let your ego do the talking." He slammed his mouth shut. "Knew you were more intelligent than you seem."

"Does this mean the invasion has been in place for some time?" Armstrong asked. "As opposed to being something your enemies started on their own?"

"Captains in place!" Bellie squawked. "Paraguay and Paris! Paraguay and Paris!"

Oliver and the Middle Eastern Contingent were all trying to shush the bird. "I'm sorry," Mona said. "She was doing so well.

"The bird knows something," Omega Red said.

"Yes, Yuri, we know. Problem is, she only knows some things, not everything. And I don't think we've asked her the right questions."

"Gil felt the bird had identified Esteban Cantu as one of those captains," Franklin said.

"Gil?" Christopher asked.

"Captain Morgan. I thought you met him."

"I did. We weren't on a first name basis before I was tossed out of the Dome. So, Cantu being involved isn't a surprise. Bellie said he was a good man."

"Or she was identifying Goodman as another captain," Buchanan added.

"Or Hammy, who everyone says is a good man."

"Hammy?" Christopher asked.

"Colonel Hamlin, as in Colonel Franklin's mysteriously vanished predecessor. That's his nickname. At any rate, Bellie knows something. Good luck to anyone figuring out what it is."

"We'll work on it," Oliver said.

"You don't want in on the alien invasion theories, MJO?"

"When your thinking diverges from mine, I'll chime in."

"Nice to get the World Weekly News stamp of approval." I was about to toss off another witticism, when something caught my eye. It was a little something, and if I wasn't enhanced, I'd never have seen it at all. "Wait a minute." I stared at the space ships. "Is there any way to make the picture bigger? Just zoom in on one of the ships, doesn't matter which one."

The image got larger. "Say when," Henry said.

It took several magnifications. "When. Okay, everyone, look at the top of the space ship. It's a rounded dome, right?" The room chorused agreement. "Okay, inside that dome, does it look like there's a more sparkly cube?"

"Can't tell," Big George said. "The picture's too degraded."

Christopher went to the screen and touched it. He held his hand there a good minute. He turned back, and his face was pale. "I recognize something in that area of the ship. It's faint, but familiar enough."

"You used one when you were little, right?"

He stared at me. "My mother told you?" he asked finally. I felt White stiffen, just a bit.

"In a way." When I'd first met the Gang from A-C, Jeff had implanted something into me, which turned out to be a message from his late aunt. I'd only had an essence of a tiny bit of Terry within me, and ACE had removed that when we'd found him, but it had been enough.

I'd seen Terry give ten-year-old Jeff a glowing cube, telling him it was just for him and Christopher to use. It was part of the memory she'd programmed Jeff to implant, so my seeing the cube was intentional on Terry's part.

Since then I'd always wondered how it had worked, how she'd created it, because I'd never seen anything like it before or since. We had no idea, because the cube had been taken by a person or persons unknown sometime after the boys had used it. Jeff and I had hoped it was his parents who had found it, but they insisted they hadn't.

I now had a good idea of who had. "Clarence found the Power Cube, took it, and that's what they used to find our invading friends."

"Most likely." Christopher's face had drained of color. "If they've used it, then they know everything Jeff and I can do."

CHAPTER 84.

"MAYBE THEY DO, BUT MAYBE THEY DON'T."

Shockingly, my fabulous words of wisdom and comfort didn't seem to make Christopher feel any better.

White went to his son, put his arm around Christopher's shoulders, and brought him away from the screen. "Let's sit down for a moment, son."

While White and Christopher took time to calm down and forestall freaking out, I considered the latest fun facts.

Terry hadn't been stupid, and she'd been very aware of what was going on. Based on the cube, she might have known more than any other A-C who wasn't close to Yates. Plus, A-Cs were big on the fail-safes. I put my money on her installing something to protect her only son and nephew. Whether that had been broken or not was probably the issue. And the baddies had had over twenty years to try.

Less, though, because LaRue was the real brains of this particular operation, especially now that Yates was a deader. The trophy wife, who'd only been around for about ten years or so. Still might have been enough time.

I found myself wishing Madeline Cartwright were still alive. She'd been the brains behind the whole Titan Makes Scary Weapons stuff, and more besides, but she'd understood me and I'd understood her. We'd liked each other in that sense, once all the masks were off, even though we were enemies. I knew she'd known about this.

So, had to think like she had. But not aloud. For once. First time for everything. But Cartwright had done all her work in secret. So, to think like she did, I couldn't share.

Normally not getting to think aloud would allow my mind to wander off topic. But I was honestly too mad and afraid to allow it. I couldn't afford to wander until Jeff and Chuckie were back, and we had some handle on how to protect our world.

What would Cartwright have done with the knowledge that there were hidden rooms all over the place? If they were rooms at all? I felt certain she'd have come to the same conclusion I had-that they'd been put into place long ago and well before the A-Cs had ever arrived.

Like the rest of the Bad Guys League, Cartwright had wanted to live forever, and she wanted to be the one in charge. She wasn't into the fame portion, but she was all about the power stuff. So, what do you do, when you know someone out there is more powerful than you and also not as nice as the people you're used to dealing with?

My brain kicked, and I jerked. "Marling and Cartwright made the supersoldiers and androids to fight the invaders. It's not their only purpose, obviously, but that's their double duty. Which means they have something in them that we can set off to make them react and fight for us, not against us."

"Then let's hope James and Tim are successful," Christopher said. "Because I don't think we can fit the entire population of the planet into the Dome."

"The Dome . . ."

"What?" White asked.

"Big George, can we zoom over to New Mexico and take a look at one of the red circles?"

"Sure." The picture on the big screen changed. "You want Area Fifty-One?"

It was circled in red, but that wasn't my main focus. Yet. "No, the one over here." I went to his terminal and pointed it out. "That's the Crash Site Dome, where the Ancients crash-landed in the nineteen-fifties."

"It's off limits."

"Note the red circle. Yeah, no kidding. The Dome is an incredible power source, but it's so well hidden, and so well protected, that it's always been left alone, by our enemies on Earth and from much farther away. What I want to know is this-is there a dead zone under the Dome, or secret tunnels leading to it?"

"We haven't had time to really map the Southwest," Big George admitted. "There's been so much to do locally, and much of that state is off limits anyway."

"Then let's bet on the side of yes." ACE had been far too specific about the Dome, far too willing to let me shove as many people in there as possible. The Dome was key to whatever was going on; that's why it was ACE's entire protection focus.

"Why?" Christopher asked. He looked and sounded normal. Good. "The Dome goes down several levels. If our builders had discovered an almost impregnable secret room, I think they would have told us."

"Not if they were Yates loyalists, and, trust me, you have a lot more of them than you realize. There were even more when you were first exiled here. It would explain a lot, including how the Dome is the most hidden of all your Bases, why it's never been attacked, and why it has so much power."

"It's the half-life from the Ancients' ship."

I had to remind myself that A-Cs were really raised not to question their elders. If the older folks said something, it was taken at face value unless and until pointedly proven to be incorrect.

"We've been told it's the half-life from the Ancients' power supply. And I'm sure that's true, in its way." I was sure because 99.9% of A-Cs couldn't lie believably to anyone, and the best lies were based in truth. They got around the deficiency by leaving things out, versus making things up. "What they left out, I'm almost a hundred percent certain, was that they found some other power source when they were building the Dome."

"If so, I was never informed," White said.