"Yeah, they're bruised up but insisting they're okay. Per Christopher, we can wait to get back to my parents' before we have them go to medical."

"So, did you or Christopher pick up anything untoward going on?"

"No. Whatever that floor's insulated with, we couldn't get any reading from it."

I chose to refrain from cursing, but only because it would have required more exertion than I felt up to. "Figures." I spotted what I was pretty sure was a floater gate and shared as much with Jeff.

"Alpha Team is on the way." As he said this, I saw Tim Crawford, the Head of Airborne, aka the guy who had my old job, step through. To human eyes, he would have appeared out of nowhere. I had no idea what it looked like to alligator eyes, but I could see some of them start to take an interest.

"Oh, good. Maybe one of them can carry me down from the lighthouse. After we've set up an electric fence to keep the 'gators at bay, that is." I wanted to check on Gigantagator and Alliflash, if I could spot them in an alligator lineup, but I wanted to do this from a distance and with the really heavy animal-enclosure glass between us.

Jeff cursed quietly and in a moment I wasn't alone on the top of the tower. I hung up and dropped my phone back into my purse as he picked me up. "You really overdid it, baby."

"I could have let the evil android kill us all and take me captive, true. I officially never want to come here again. Just sayin'."

He chuckled as he hypersped us downstairs, which coincided nicely with the rest of Alpha and Airborne teams exiting the gate. Well, the male portions of those teams were in attendance, meaning Paul Gower, James Reader, and the five flyboys were in here along with Tim. Serene was too pregnant to make any situation calls, and Lorraine and Claudia were still the mothers of newborns and therefore enjoying the last part of their maternity leaves.

The rest of the team with us arrived now, accompanied by Michael Gower, who was both Gower's younger brother and an astronaut. Michael worked at NASA Base, so him being here wasn't a shock.

"Who or what the hell broke through over fifteen walls and floors of the Base?" Michael asked before anyone else could speak.

I raised my hand. "Guilty. It messed the android up a lot, though, so it was all worth it. I think."

Reader shook his head. "We can't leave you alone for a minute, girlfriend."

"This wasn't my fault!"

"It's never your fault," Gower said. He heaved a sigh. "This is going to take some Pontifex-level charm to smooth over, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I think it is. Good thing you're so good with the smooth-talking, isn't it?"

"Why are we waiting for the alligators to eat us?" Jerry Tucker, my favorite flyboy, asked.

"Kitty probably wants to catch up with old friends," Reader said as he winked at me.

"I really want to take a long nap and figure out what the hell's going on. But if we can toss a couple cases of chicken carcasses to the 'gators, I'm not against it."

"I am," Chuckie said firmly. "This is an unmitigated disaster. Thankfully, we can get some A-Cs here to do fast repairs to the building that you almost single-handedly destroyed."

"Hey, it's still standing. Besides, Sandra the Nasty Android really pissed me off."

"Why so?" he asked.

"She said you were the one in charge of all the supersoldier stuff and my enemy."

Chuckie gaped at me. So did most of the others. Reader and Gower, however, exchanged a very meaningful glance, and it wasn't romantic.

"What?" Chuckie asked finally.

"We've gotten some anonymous messages insinuating the same thing," Reader said.

Chuckie was still basically speechless. I could tell he was furious, hurt, suspicious, and the conspiracy wheels were turning.

I was about to reassure him that I, at least, didn't buy it. But Amy spoke before I could. "As if."

Everyone stared at her in shock, Chuckie in particular.

Amy rolled her eyes. "Look, Chuck and I have basically never gotten along, but there are a few things I know about him-and the number one thing is that he would never do anything to hurt Kitty.

"And maybe you all don't remember Paris, but I sure do. There is no way he's in charge of anything going on against Centaurion Division. All the bad guys wanted to kill him in even more horrible ways than they wanted to kill everyone else, and they weren't exactly shy about beating the crap out of him. He was closer to dying than any of the other guys when we were captive. I don't buy that even anyone as smart as Chuck is would want to be about three seconds from dying, no matter how much he might have expected Kitty and Richard to come save the day.

"The people who were friends and allies of my father's aren't taking direction from Chuck. They'd rather die. And no matter how sneaky all of you think he is, there's no way he's that good a liar. At least, no lie Chuck's ever tried to pass has fooled me." She looked at him. "Starting with the 'Kitty and I are just best friends' line you tried passing to me in ninth grade."

Jeff grunted and Amy rolled her eyes again. "Jeff, seriously, Kitty's missed you a lot this past month, but I have to be honest when I say I haven't missed your jealousy crap one little bit. Chuck's over her romantically, catch the obvious clues, will you?"

"You're in a mood," Christopher finally got out.

"People trying to kill me and everyone else while pinning it on a really easy, obvious, and yet so clearly innocent target pisses me off. Kitty and I aren't all that different, you know."

Everyone else was still basically stunned into silence. "What Ames said. So, um, let's fish Sandra the Android out of the swamp, assign some teams to fix the buildings, and get Malcolm and Richard to medical while we regroup and try to figure out what the hell is going on."

"Let's do what Kitty the Android Killer says," Reader said. "I want our flock out of Dodge as soon as possible." He patted Chuckie on his shoulder. "For what it's worth, Paul and I agree with Amy and Kitty-it's not you, but someone sure wants us to think it is."

"Who?" Chuckie asked.

I snorted. "Pick a target, we're spoilt for choice."

Reader sighed. "Just like always."

CHAPTER 13.

"SO, DO WE DRIVE OR TAKE A GATE?" I asked.

All of Alpha and Airborne snorted. Jeff and Chuckie looked resigned. Christopher came through, though, and hit me with Patented Glare #3. I truly felt it was his favorite. "Alpha and Airborne didn't arrive via floater gate to get to you more quickly. They used a floater because they had to-you destroyed the main hub apparatus for all of the gates at NASA Base while you were breaking down walls, floors and ceilings."

"Bummer."

Christopher switched to Glare #4 as Jeff rubbed the back of his neck, Chuckie rubbed his forehead, the flyboys grinned, and Tim, Reader, and Gower gave me a variation of the "why me?" look.

"Hey, sometimes the buildings in Metropolis get trashed while Superman's protecting the world from Darkseid and Lex Luthor. It happens. I didn't do it intentionally." Well, not with malice aforethought. "So it's a good thing we drove, right?"

"Nice spin," Chuckie said. "Do you want me to stay?" he asked Reader.

"No. Get out of here along with the rest of our demolition crew," Reader said. "We'll call you if we need you to flash the badge, but right now, anyone who was down on that floor isn't popular with NASA."

"No time to stop and feed the 'gators?"

Jeff picked me up. "You seem tired, baby," he said as he strode off quickly, the rest of our team following.

I waved to the guys who were staying behind. The flyboys waved with enthusiasm, the others not so much. Oh well. Surely they wouldn't be mad at me for too long. Not forever, hopefully.

Jeff sighed. "No one's mad at you. Not very much, anyway. It's just an expensive, awkward situation to be in."

"I thought we in Centaurion Division didn't care about money."

"We don't mind spending it. But wasting it's another story."

Now I felt bad. It wasn't like I'd given the destruction of the base a lot of thought. My destructive thoughts had been focused solely on Sandra. The destruction or at least stoppage of a dangerous android had to count for something, right? I really related to how the Justice League and X-Men must feel when they'd saved the world-again-and yet all said world wanted was to discuss the bill for damages.

Jeff sighed again. "It happens. Stop worrying about it."

"I'll do my best."

The less said about the ride back to Martini Manor the better. White and Buchanan weren't feeling great, and while White had faster healing and regeneration because he was an A-C, getting mule kicked by an android wasn't something even the toughest person just shook off.

Everyone else was in some kind of stress-related mood, to the point where I wished I'd mastered the A-C talent of napping wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Once back, happily, Tito didn't demand that I go immediately into isolation, preferring to get everyone back to the Embassy before Treatments of Doom were handed out.

We said fast but heartfelt good-byes to Alfred and Lucinda, reclaimed our small child, ensured our belongings were already back at the Embassy, and took a nauseating gate trip back home.

I'd expected to be happy to be back in D.C., and I was at first, what with getting a lovely greeting from everyone who'd been able to avoid going on Exile to Florida. None of them seemed upset that I'd sort of trashed a building. I was even happier when Tito decided I could merely go to bed really early, as opposed to going into isolation.

Christopher and Amy dashed for their rooms. White and Buchanan went with Tito, Emily, and Melanie to the medical bay. Len and Kyle went across the street to say hi to everyone at the Romanian Embassy, Olga and her granddaughter Adriana especially. And I got another set of hugs from everyone whom I hadn't seen for a month.

The Embassy was a full city block wide and long, seven floors going up, one real floor going down, with one underground parking floor, and then a bigger drop down to the Secret Lab Section that the former Diplomatic Corps had secretly had installed when Jeff and Christopher were little boys. The Embassy, like Martini Manor, was one of the A-C showcases, so it was quite opulent and had pretty much anything you could want in terms of business and home layout and amenities.

Happy Embassy Hellos done, I really wanted to go up and lie down. Only I could tell Chuckie was still upset and I wasn't an empath. "You want to hang out here a little while?" I asked him.

Chuckie shrugged. "Not sure it's a good idea."

Jeff sighed. "You need it. Come on." He led us to one of the small studies on the third floor. "Hang out here while we get our things squared away."

Chuckie looked uncertain. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure we have a lot we need to go over," Jeff said.

"Like how in the world Sandra the Android knew to attack us at NASA Base."

"And what we're going to do when those pictures hit the newsstands," Chuckie added morosely.

Jeff pulled out his phone and dialed. "Hey, Naomi. Back in D.C. Nope, all here. Yeah, finally. Look, are you and Abigail available? Great. Yes." Jeff rolled his eyes. "Thanks ever." He hung up and shook his head.

"What's going on?"

"Naomi and Abigail are going to come babysit Reynolds. Apparently they were waiting for my call and feel I should have asked them to help out in Florida."

"I don't need a sitter," Chuckie said with a laugh that didn't sound remotely real.

"Yeah, to quote Amy, you really can't lie to me, because there isn't an emotion you have I can't read. You need company while we're upstairs, and we need to go over things sooner as opposed to later."

As Jeff finished talking, the Gower girls arrived. They were younger than Michael, but, like their brothers, they were dark-skinned and beautiful to behold. They were also hybrids, which, because human genetics were strongest for external and A-C genetics strongest for internal, was why they resembled their mother, Erika, who was a beautiful dark-skinned African-American human, much more than their father, Stanley, who was also part of the Alpha Four Royal Family, though a few inheritance places farther away than the Martinis were. The Gower girls were also incredibly talented.

Abigail was the youngest, and she was like a reverse empath-she picked up thoughts but they filtered to her like emotions, so if someone was thinking angry thoughts, Abigail felt angry. There were also gases common to Earth that could cause mass hallucinations for the majority of humans that the A-C field teams were able to manipulate. The Field teams needed implants in their brains to do the manipulations. Abigail didn't.

Naomi's talents were more like her eldest brother's, dream and memory reading, but greatly expanded. Naomi could also alter dreams and memories. The girls tended to work together as a team, and they were the C.I.A.'s main test subjects for what hybrids could do now and might do in the future, so they spent a lot of time with Chuckie.

That the Gower girls hadn't conspired to take over the world, or destroy it, had much to do with ACE. ACE was a collective superconsciousness I'd managed to move into Paul Gower during Operation Drug Addict. But even before that incident, ACE had helped the Gower girls to control their powers when they were young, and now he was doing it with all the new babies, Jamie in particular.

The Gower girls took one look at Chuckie and sighed. "You were right to call us over," Naomi said as she went and sat next to Chuckie. "You need to relax, mister," she said with a grin.

He managed a smile. "Right. Let me tell you about our day so far, and then you can tell me to take it easy."

Abigail chuckled. "Let's get him calmed down, Sis. Our boy's all riled up." Of course, it took A-Cs with special talents or people who'd known Chuckie a long, long time to tell that he was upset, but for everyone in this room, it was obvious. Abigail smiled at Jeff and me. "We'll say 'great to see you' when you two get back."

Jeff and I knew when to take a hint, so we headed to our apartments, which took up half of the seventh floor and were larger than the house I'd grown up in. But I was getting used to living in them and had missed the privacy while in Florida.

Before we were through the door, I was greeted by a tide of canines. My parents had moved to D.C. right before Operation Assassination had rolled, and they were in a no-pets building. This meant that we now claimed ownership of four dogs and three cats. The pets seemed to be okay with their permanent vacation.

The dogs having proved they'd missed me and Jamie and loved us best, I trooped into our bedroom to the welcoming sounds of loud, demanding mewing mixed with equally loud purring. The cats were lounging on the deluxe cat trees I called Poof Condos, surrounded by a whole pride of Poofs. I gave up on the idea that Jeff and I could get some quality naked time in the next few minutes and focused on the fur balls.

The Poofs had been our parting gifts from the Alpha Centaurion Royal Family during our wedding, aka Operation Invasion. They were small bundles of fluffy fur, with cat ears, bright, button eyes, and tiny paws. Poofs were basically the cutest things in existence. They also had the ability to go Jeff-sized and very toothy, so they were great personal protection providers.

They were also androgynous and could mate with any other Poof. They mated when Royal Weddings were afoot. We had a lot more Poofs than our wedding or Christopher and Amy's would have warranted, but I didn't mind. Poofs for everyone and more Poofs for me was one of the mottos I lived by.

In the Poof's world, if you named it, you owned it. We had the unnamed Poofs living with us, so while I was gone, Jeff had gotten to enjoy all the Poofy wonder by himself. I was envious-I'd missed all the pets, the Poofs in particular.

For whatever reason, the Poofs hadn't come down to Florida with us. They had a lot of powers no one understood, among them the ability to go wherever and whenever they wanted. But none had wanted to visit Florida, not even the Poof that was obviously Jamie's. I'd tried to bring them along, but they'd done a runner and come back to D.C. before we'd been at Martini Manor an hour.

However, Jamie's Poof was in her arms now, snuggling and purring up a storm, while she giggled and cooed. Two Poofs alighted on my shoulders. "Harlie, Poofikins! Kitty's missed you so much!"

I got a lot of Poof purrs and rubs. The cats deigned to take an active interest beyond yowling at me for my desertion and jumped onto the bed, mewing and purring.

"I was hoping to be the first one you cuddled with in bed," Jeff said, "but clearly the animals missed you two as much as I did.

"Sorry."

"It's okay. I'll bide my time. So cuddle with the cats, baby. I know you want to, and so does Jamie."

Thusly encouraged, Jamie and I got on the bed and were soon buried under cats and Poofs. It was a lovely thing to come back to.

In the midst of our little love fest, Jeff wandered out. I heard a strange voice. "I love Jeff!"