party, but we haven’t been able to reach you and, like I said, there were all those totally lame rumors about you being dead.”
“I’ve just been really busy with work.” A lie. “I miss you guys though.” The truth.
“Target acquired.”
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Alpha team, move in. Extreme caution.”
“Are you okay, Caitlyn? You look kind of weird.”
“Copy that.”
“Can’t you hear that?” Caitlyn asked, then realized instantly, of course Stacy couldn’t hear it. She wasn’t really hearing it either…it was like the mop-up team was talking in her head. That chip. That damn chip must be able to pick up their frequencies. And then broadcast it—uck!—into her brain.
Caitlyn felt a moment of panic. Sure, she was faster and stronger than regular people now, but she didn’t have any training. Except in giving highlights and manicures. Unless the guys on the prowl needed haircuts, she was in deep shit.
She was simultaneously shocked and unsurprised. She’d been blowing off psychoboy for weeks and now it was time to dance. Those assfaces at O.S.F. had sent a whole team after her!
Talk about not taking no for an answer! She knew the unemployment rate was high for the state, but this was ridiculous.
She could hear them coming, moving quickly and quietly—but not quietly enough, ha!—and wondered if it was better to just give up than risk getting some teeth knocked out. After suffering through junior high with braces, she wasn’t about to risk the integrity of her mouth, thank you very—
Targets: 45° 72° 33°
Armed: .33 Beretta, full clip, none in the chamber
Armed: Mini UZI SMG, full clip, safety on
Armed: Semi-automatic Jericho pistol, full load, holstered. SAFETY IS OFF.
REPEAT, SAFETY IS OFF.
“What the hell?” she said out loud. This had happened to her so infrequently, she had succeeded in forgetting about it. Tough to do at the moment, since there were things in her left eye again. Not really in her eye…more like reading a page from a book…except the page was being projected inside her head. It was like those Terminator movies, when the audience could see through Arnold’s eyes, kind of weird and cool at the same time, but how was she supposed to—
Targets: closing in. Engage. Engage. Engage.
“All right, all right. Don’t nag.” She kicked Stacy’s feet out from under her, ignoring the woman’s surprised squawk, and turned. She crossed the fourteen feet six inches between herself and Goon #1 in two point two seconds—
You can stop doing that now, computer chip. I’m on it.
Alas, stuck in her brain where it was, the thing wouldn’t shut up.
It was good for one thing anyway. They weren’t here to take her hard. Just take her.
She grinned—for the first time in days.
Too bad for them.
Later, Stacy was never quite sure what had happened on that side street. Her brainy, funky pal—God, Caitlyn had always been the coolest—had started talking to herself, then knocked her down. And before she could get up—heck, before she could roll over—Caitlyn was on the bad guys. She Sydney-Bristowed all over their asses and wasn’t even out of breath when she finished!
And the funny thing—the extremely weird-but-cool thing—was that the bad guys were moving in slow motion compared to Caitlyn. It was like being an extra on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which kind of sucked, now that she thought about it, because she never pictured herself as the extra type, more like the supporting actress. Not the star, but important to the star, like Willow on Buffy or Elaine on Seinfeld.
Anyway, one of them flew almost all the way down the street and ended up flat on his back, right next to her. She got up in a hurry when she saw blood trickling out of his ear, and by then the other ones were down too.
And they looked bad. Like Colin Farrell in that too-cool S.W.A.T. movie. They were all scruffy and muscular and dressed in dark clothing and heavily armed—she counted three holsters on one of them. Empty holsters. Eh?
She turned and saw Jimmy walking toward her, her arms full of guns. “Sorry about that,” she said, not sounding even a tiny bit sorry. “I wanted you down in case they got to their guns. I’ll buy you a new skirt, okay?”
“Okay,” she said automatically. “Um, this guy’s bleeding. Out his ear.”
Caitlyn peered down at him, then blinked and—weird!—it almost looked like she was reading something. Except there wasn’t anything to read. “It’s okay,” she said after a few moments. “He’s got a concussion, but nothing’s broken. He’ll be out for a while, that’s all. Serves them right anyway,” she added defiantly. Almost—weird!—tearfully. Jimmy never cried. Not even that time when she got a Bon her trig final. Boy, that had been a tough day. “Besides, no means no, right? I mean, I don’t have to work for anyone.”
“Okay, Jimmy.”
Caitlyn threw the guns down in a temper. They clattered to the street like ugly maracas. “I mean, jeez! I didn’t ask them to fix me, did I?”
Stacy shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”
“So they saved my life—big deal! What, now I’m a—an—an indentured servant for the rest of my life?”
“Doesn’t seem like a great idea.”
“Damn right! Shit! Shit on toast!”
“Yuck,” Stacy said, which (whew!) made Caitlyn laugh. And thank God, because for a moment—a teensy moment, but still—she had been almost…what? Scared? Of Caitlyn? Not too stupid, because Jimmy was just about the nicest, coolest, sweetest—
Her friend stopped laughing and looked at her in a new way. And new, Stacy was starting to think, was bad. Very, very bad. “Look, Stace, you get home, okay?”
“Okay.” Impulsively, she added, “You come with me, okay? Stay over for a while. We can stay up late and watch Ocean’s Eleven—the George Clooney one, not the icky old one—and I’ll call in sick tomorrow and we can hang out. It looks like you—like you could use a break. What do you say, Jimmy?”
“I say, don’t call me Jimmy. It sounds like the best deal I’ve heard all damned month actually. But I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I have to go see somebody first,” she replied, sounding pissed all over again as she nudged the closest S.W.A.T. guy with the toe of her boot. “You go on. I’ll get rid of the guns.”
“Are you sure…?”
“Just go.”
“Well…okay.
