"Why don't we let the others go? Clearly Missus Martini isn't close to being done yet."

"It's not in the rules," John said.

They argued quietly about this, but I stopped paying too much attention, because a set of questions had caught my eye.

Who is Esteban Cantu and what is his position within the United States Government?

Well, I knew the answer to this one. Cantu was part of the C.I.A., the head of their Antiterrorism Unit, to be exact, and he'd been involved in some ways in both Operation Confusion and Operation Assassination. He was also, absolutely, not a friend to Centaurion Division or anyone who protected the A-Cs in any way.

What is Esteban Cantu's affiliation, to the best of your knowledge?

Evil, bad, pick a negative adjective, probably affiliated with whoever wrote this test. He'd been in league with John Cooper, when Cooper had run Operation Confusion. And he'd been in league with Madeline Cartwright and Antony Marling, the head of Titan Security, when they'd been putting Operation Assassination into action. He was also chummy with Senator Armstrong and what was left of the politicians and lobbyists I called the Cabal of Evil.

But I didn't write any of this down. I read on.

What are your thoughts on Paraguay? Do you feel the situation there is under control?

No, I did not think Paraguay was under control. Marling had confirmed there were more supersoldiers than the ones we'd captured at the end of Operation Assassination, and I was sure some were in Paraguay, just as I was sure some were in Paris or the general surrounding area. But like so many other Weapons of Mass and Scary Destruction, whenever our teams descended on the confirmed locations, the WMDs had been moved to a new secret lair.

Why does Charles Reynolds oppose integration of Alpha Centaurion personnel and the U.S. Military?

Huh? We had Chuckie questions now? Cantu was always trying for the Wedge of Separation between me and Chuckie, because Chuckie was the person who did the most to block Centaurion from becoming the War Division. And he opposed this integration because the A-Cs were actually pacifistic at their cores, and they were also here for reasons other than running the military-industrial complex.

Is Charles Reynolds' biggest weakness: a) his intelligence, b) his willingness to be insubordinate, c) his affection for aliens, d) his inability to see the big picture?

There was no "none of the above" choice, unfortunately. In reality, and Jeff would be the first to confirm this, Chuckie's biggest weakness was probably me. He'd been in love with me for half of our lives, though I was pretty sure he was over that. But I was also his best friend, and we loved each other as best friends do. I knew he'd die to protect me, or Jamie. And probably Jeff, too, because I loved Jeff and he was my husband, and my safety and happiness mattered to Chuckie, just as his mattered to me.

I looked at the last question.

Are you prepared to answer these questions or are you prepared to die?

Uh-oh.

CHAPTER 11.

"EVERYBODY DOWN!"

I followed my own order and flipped myself out of the desk and onto the floor while grabbing for my purse and wishing I'd brought my Glock and just dealt with a few extra minutes at the security checkpoints. I flung the strap over my neck-no reason to lose my purse, I was sure I was going to need its contents soon enough.

The rest of the team were all experienced by now, and all of them, even Amy, were on the floor. Kyle was using his body to shield her.

I looked to the front of the room. John was still sitting at his desk, gaping at me in shock and confusion.

Sandra, however, was already moving. Straight for me.

My brain worked at its own version of hyperspeed. Jeff hadn't picked up anything dangerous from her, and he'd definitely monitored. But she'd done every low-key thing she could to get me in a room with her alone. Her clothes didn't fit her right, and Susan, whom John had been expecting, wasn't around. I had a feeling she hadn't gone home sick but that she'd gone home dead.

And I knew androids-really good, really believable-as-human androids-existed. Androids so good they'd fooled Jeff based on their emotional output.

I didn't have a lot of options, but there was a really good way to tell a human from an A-C and an A-C from an android. I jumped to my feet, grabbed the desk, and swung it at Sandra with all my strength.

The desk shattered. Sandra jerked a little and kept on coming. It so figured.

"Android attacking! Len, Kyle, get Amy and John out of here!" That was all the time I had before Sandra was on me.

She grabbed me with one hand and held me at arm's length. I tried to break free, but her grip was far too strong. The other hand she held out, fingers slightly splayed and pointed at Buchanan, who was running toward us, while Len grabbed John and Kyle picked Amy up as they ran for the door near the teacher's desk.

"Malcolm, down!"

He ducked just as bullets sprayed out of Sandra's fingers. Antony Marling had told us, right before he'd killed himself, that the supersoldiers we'd found in D.C. were our friends compared to what else was out there. If we had weaponized androids running around freely, he'd undersold what was coming.

The bullets missed everyone, but not for Sandra's lack of trying. She spun us around, still firing out of her fingers.

Sandra wasn't that big, as people or androids went. I hit her with a strong front ball kick to her side. She seemed to feel it, but only a little. Bummer. I grabbed another desk and hit her with it. She staggered a bit while the desk fell apart, but that was all.

She was still shooting bullets, and we were still spinning. Getting dizzy and sick was going to be in my near future if I didn't do something. These rooms were insulated, so no help was coming from Jeff, Christopher or Chuckie until Amy and the boys found them, and by then one or more of us could be hurt or dead.

Buchanan, using desks as shields, was getting closer. Sandra stopped spinning and focused her firepower at him. The desks didn't last long, but as near as I could tell, Buchanan wasn't hit yet. I couldn't spot White anywhere. I was sure he hadn't run out the door with the others, but I hadn't seen him while we were spinning like a really badly made dreidel.

Of course, as someone tackled Sandra from behind and both of us went down, maybe I hadn't seen him because he'd been using hyperspeed to stay behind us.

Because Sandra was distracted by White, I was able to get out of her grasp. As I scrambled away, she flipped around and slammed White into the ground, while she landed on top of him. He was strong, because he was an A-C and a big man, but he wasn't enhanced. Buchanan had made it over and was trying to help White. And while he was a big, strong guy, he was a human. Even if Len and Kyle came back to help, I didn't think the four of them were going to be able to stop Sandra.

After all, the only person who'd been able to stop the androids who'd been passing as Leslie Manning and Bryce Taylor had been Jeff. And he'd been high on adrenaline in order to do it.

I was still experiencing control issues with my powers, and I hadn't been able to work with Christopher at all while in exile in Florida. However, the one thing I knew for sure by now was that if I wanted to kick butt in a really serious way, rage was my friend.

It didn't take much to get really angry. I just had to focus on the fact that I hadn't had sex with my husband for a month and that if this heinous robot won I might never have sex with him again. Presto, pissed.

I grabbed a broken desk and pulled a solid piece of metal off, as Sandra landed a good hit to Buchanan's sternum. He went flying and slammed against a wall. She kicked White right in the gut with both feet and he flew into a different wall. Both men were down and they looked out.

Not a problem. Just made me angrier that she'd hurt my friends.

Sandra looked a little mussed up, but she got to her feet easily. "You will complete your test," she said. Her voice sounded a little slurry, which meant the men had managed to do some small damage at least. We circled each other, like fighters in the ring. I wished Tito were here-he was a really good coach for me when it came to Mixed Martial Arts fighting outside of the octagon.

"I don't think so. I'm planning to flunk this exam."

She feinted and I swung my metal bar at her. I hit her head. The bar bent. Her hair and the skin on her face were kind of messed up, but other than that, not a lot of damage done. I tossed the bar away as I jumped back to avoid her reaching for me.

"You can't win. I'm so much better than you." I waited for her to shoot projectiles of some kind at me, but she didn't. So either she was out of ammo or I was supposed to be taken alive. Either option was better for me.

"Blah, blah, blah. I've heard that one before. So, you killed Susan?"

She shrugged as she moved her neck in a weird, totally nonhuman way. "It was expedient." Her voice wasn't slurring any more, and what I'd done to her head didn't look nearly as impressive now, either. Too bad, the damage wasn't much. Yet.

"John in on this plan?"

"Hardly. He, like the others, will be dead soon."

"How's that? I'm not letting you out of here alive. I mean, alive for you, which, I guess, means I'm yanking your battery."

She shrugged. "I am only one part of the operation." She smiled nastily. "I won't have to listen to you much longer, though. And you'll never see your husband and friends alive again."

This was probably supposed to scare me and maybe make me offer to come quietly as long as they left the others alone. But I knew how "they" worked. I had no clear idea who was behind this, though Esteban Cantu was up there on my Perennial Top Three Suspects List. But the League of Evil Masterminds all rolled the same way-lie to get you to do what they wanted, then kill you and anyone else they felt like. Well, not this time.

All Sandra's threat did was move me from really pissed off up to enraged. Excellent.

"So, who's pulling the puppet strings on this one, Pinocchia?"

She gave me a nasty look. She had to be one of Marling's creations-the man had been a loon of the highest order, but he'd done amazingly good work, and he was particularly good at creating androids so unlikable you'd never suspect them of being more than human. "The last person you'd ever manage to suspect."

Sandra hadn't attacked yet. We were still circling each other and she was likely stronger, even if I was at my most enraged state. So what was she waiting for? Me to attack? Reinforcements? The signal that my husband and friends were dead or captured?

"So, who's that? If you're going to take me dead or alive, might as well tell me who's giving the directions for you to do so."

She smirked. "Why not? My instructions were given to me by Charles Reynolds."

True, this was the last person I'd ever suspect of these machinations. And also true, the fact that the smartest guy around had been stymied at every turn lent a certain credence to the idea that he was in charge and therefore ensuring nothing concrete was found. And maybe if I'd only known Chuckie for the past few years I'd have believed it.

But I'd known him for more than half of my life, and I still knew him better than anyone alive. And among the many things he wasn't was the kind of person who would do these evil, underhanded things. I also knew how much our enemies hated him. It didn't take a lot of mental effort to figure that Sandra had been told to tell me Chuckie was in charge in the hopes of slamming the Wedge of Separation between us so strongly that it would never come out.

That was the goal, I was sure. Only that wasn't the outcome. The outcome was that I was now seeing red I was so furious.

I lunged at her. Either she really hadn't expected it or I was moving so fast she couldn't tell, but she wasn't able to block me. I slammed into her, and we slammed into the wall behind her.

And broke through.

CHAPTER 12.

I WAS TOO MAD TO STOP, and besides, we hit another wall almost immediately because we were going so fast. We broke through that one, too.

Clearly my mutation wasn't over, because I hadn't been able to do this before. I knew A-Cs were strong enough to break through walls-Jeff, Christopher, and Michael Gower had had to do just that the last time we'd been here, after all. But I was breaking through the super walls on this level, and they had more than drywall and the fluffy pink insulating materials in them.

The positive was that I was breaking through using Sandra as my ramming mechanism. Not only was this ensuring that I wasn't getting hurt, but it was obviously affecting her.

I sped up.

We slammed through, by my count, over a dozen walls before we hit something I couldn't get through. Right, we were underground. I stopped running, and Sandra managed to fight back. Not as much as she'd done before, but still, I didn't enjoy getting punched anywhere.

"Who's really in charge?" I growled at her as I slammed her against the wall again.

"Charles . . . Reynolds . . ." The words were slurred and coming out slowly. "He . . . is . . . your enemy."

Goody, my rage spiked again. I slammed us into the wall that didn't want to give a few more times. This was fun, but I wasn't sure if it was going to short her out or not.

I heard voices. I wasn't sure where we were or who might be coming, but if it wasn't our team, what the NASA folks would see was me beating up someone they'd assume worked here. No time for that. I was fully revved and running on waves of fury. Time to go up.

I ensured I had a really good grip on not only her clothes but her body, and then I ran us around the room twice to build up speed, then up the wall. Happily, my plan worked and we slammed through the ceiling and kept on going.

My memory shared that we'd gone down about five floors, so after we slammed through four more ceilings, I turned so we were once again playing nicely with gravity, gave it a shot, and headed us toward a wall. Breached it as if it were tissue paper, and lo and behold, we were outside.

I didn't know this area very well, but the landmark I knew best was the lighthouse. I could see it, and I headed us for it. We were moving so fast I was certain no human could see us. I wasn't sure if any A-C who wasn't enhanced could see us, either.

We reached the lighthouse and I actually managed to stop us by the water's edge. I didn't want to go into the lighthouse, not yet anyway.

"We're right by the alligator preserve. I guarantee that you can't beat a full contingent of 'gators, even if you were at full power, which I know you're not. Now, you tell me the truth or I toss you in and watch to see if my friends Gigantagator and Alliflash show up to reminisce."

"I don't have to tell you anything." Her voice sounded funny-metallic and recorded, not real like it had before. Her eyes looked funny, too-they were glazed and looked like glass marbles with irises painted on them.

My brain none-too-gently reminded me that every recent superbeing cluster that had formed in either Paris or Paraguay had self-destructed before any of the good guys could manage to capture or disarm them. That Sandra had a self-destruct protocol installed seemed likely.

I spun her around and checked her back. Circuitry was definitely exposed. High school science shared that the body of water was big enough and the voltage probably small enough that no 'gators would be harmed. Worked for me.

I picked her up, chose a good spot in the swamp to aim for, and threw her in, hard.

Water splashed up and I saw a little smoke escape as Sandra went under. I waited. No explosion.

She didn't bob to the surface, which made some sense. She had metal and wires and such and so probably not the same amount of air humans did, ergo, she was going to sink versus float.

I saw what looked like a lot of floating logs converging on the area where I'd tossed her, which was still reasonably close to the shore. Time to get to higher ground.

I zipped to the lighthouse and up the stairs, doing my best to slow down along the way. Either my technique worked or I was out of hyperjuice, because by the time I reached the top, I was both going at a human walk and utterly exhausted.

Dug my phone out of my purse while watching the 'gators. They were still in the area and not following something moving, so I could hope Sandra was really shorted out and at the bottom of the preserve's swamp as opposed to walking away underwater while laughing at me.

Jeff answered on the first ring. "Where are you? Are you okay? What the hell happened?"

"At the top of the lighthouse, enjoying the view and having Operation Drug Addict flashbacks. I'm really tired, but otherwise I'm fine. Sandra was an android and I tossed her in the swamp. I'm hoping that means she can't self-destruct, and I'm also hoping someone can come and fish her out before the 'gators eat her and get sick."

"Only my girl. We'll be right there, baby."

"She seemed to believe the rest of you were going to be dead or captured."

"Might have been if Reynolds hadn't been antsy. He insisted on the three of us snooping around, so we weren't where the attack squad thought we'd be."

"Interesting. Is everyone else okay, Richard and Malcolm in particular?"