Wade watched his monitors as the agents encircled the house. He was impressed with their thoroughness; they were leaving nothing to chance. The agencies had finally overcome their paranoia and were working together on a three-tiered containment and penetration maneuver. Within a few seconds, the full force of the FBI and NSA would be inside the house and he was fresh out of ideas and stalling tactics. He had to give his mother the bad news.
“Mom?”
“What is it, boy?” Wade’s mother asked. “I’m trying to decide which green dress I need to pack.”
“I gave the Fed’s grandma’s house.”
“You gave my momma’s house to the Feds?” There was a promise of dire consequences in her voice.
“I didn’t have a choice, mom.” He went on quickly, “It was either that one or this one.”
She thought about it for a few moments, “Good move, son.” She said. “Now, lace bodice or V-neck?”
“Aw, mom!”
The body burst out of a window on the fifth floor. Trailing bits of glass and metal, it tumbled through the surreal illumination of the exterior emergency lighting, impossible to identify. When it hit the roof of the car, all the vehicle’s windows shattered outward spraying safety glass for dozens of feet in every direction.
Anne Possible grabbed the FBI agent by the lapel and screamed, “Tell me that wasn’t my daughter! Tell me!” When he didn’t respond, she tore herself from his grasp and ran to the car but she couldn’t force herself to look. “James!” She cried “JAMES!” When he reached her, she buried her face in his chest and let him hold her up. “Please,” she whispered. “Please tell me it’s not Kimmie.”
James steeled his nerves and looked at the body.
The gun went off like a grenade. The barrel of the gun had been slightly warped by the heat of Shego’s plasma blast and the bullet jammed in the barrel. 2600 ft-lbs of trapped pressure blew the gun apart.
Pieces of shrapnel tore through Ron’s hands and into his face. They peppered Shego’s chest and arms. Dr. Director could feel the hot fragments burning into her neck and back as she lunged for Kim. The agent holding the gun lost both hands and most of his chest. Fragments buried themselves in the walls, doors and even shattered the windows of the small recovery room.
Kim opened her eyes when the Chief grabbed her and stared uncomprehending, into the eyes of a ghost. “YOU’RE DEAD!” she screamed.
The Director back-handed Kim across the face, “Stop saying that!” she yelled shrilly. “I’m… Not… Dead…” each word was punctuated with a slap.
“Oh, yes you are.” Shego growled and caught the director’s hand before she could strike Kim again. The pale woman twisted the wrist downward, pulling the one eyed woman off balance and then drove a knee into her solar plexus. Shego released the wrist to grab a handful of brown hair with her left hand, her right hand connected with a plasma enhanced uppercut to the chest that lifted the brown haired woman off the floor and she followed with a powerful roundhouse kick to the one-eyed woman’s chest that sent her flying through the window. Glass sprayed everywhere.
“KP!” Ron’s screamed, “KP! Are you alright?”
“Ron!?” She got up and stumbled over the agents out to the hallway. “Ron?”
“KP!” He shouted again.
“I’m OK, Ron…” Her throat closed up as she caught sight of his bloody face. “Oh, my god! Ron?”
“I can’t see…”
“Tactical-one, this is Red-one, the house is empty, there’s no one here.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Tactical shouted. “You had visual on the little bastard five minutes ago and now there’s no one in the house at all?”
“No one sir, the place is filled with electronics equipment. Servers, routers, holographic projectors… real cutting edge stuff sir, but no actual live people.”
“I want this kid brought in. I want his family brought in. I want his damn dog brought…”
“I don’t have a dog.” Wade interrupted.
“Ops…?” the tactical commander asked his operations officer quietly, “why is there a wanted criminal broadcasting over my secure communications net?”
Wade’s face stared out at him from several video screens. “Two things, commander,” The teenaged boy said smugly, “first, I’m not a wanted criminal; I am a concerned citizen providing a valuable service to the law enforcement agencies of the United States. Second, I can hand you the head of the person responsible for doubling Dr. Director with a clone.” The boy stopped for a sip of soda, “Now which is more important, finding the man who doubled one of your agency heads or finding some harmless teenager.” Wade smirked. “I can tell you which one will be easier.”
“Who do you work for kid?”
“I work for Kim.”
“Uh, Boss?”
“What is it, Alpha?”
“We’ve got company.”
Gemini looked at the security monitors and gasped. There were hundreds of agents; FBI, CIA, NSA, even MI-5 and MI-6 were represented.
“What do we do?”
“Get rid of the evidence.”
“But, she’s your sister…”
“I can make a new one. Destroy the evidence.”
Shego sat quietly in the FBI van, working on the lock to her cuffs. She hadn’t protested when they’d asked her to submit to ‘short term’ confinement, they were probably scared to death of her and she had just killed someone. That bothered her a lot but she hadn’t seen any other course of action. Logically, she knew the woman had been trying to kill Kim and was willing to kill anyone who got in her way, but that didn’t make it any easier for the thief to deal with deliberately taking a life. She had allowed the agents to cuff her and confine her in this van because she wanted time alone to think and between the homicide and what Kim had said to her afterward, she had a lot to think about. Besides, she thought as she popped the cuffs open, whatever their intent, her captivity would be ‘short term.’ The door slid open and an older agent climbed in and sat down across from her, his suit was disheveled and he was unarmed. He motioned for the door to be closed.
She held up the open cuffs and said “No gun? Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Well, Miss Shego, frankly I’m too tired to be scared right now.”
“It’s just ‘Shego.’ Who are you and why are you here?” she asked dropping the cuffs on the floor.
He fumbled through his pockets, extracting a battered pack of cigarettes. “I’m Special Agent Thomas, Tactical Commander for Midwest Operations. I’m here because there was a crazy woman with the full resources of Global Justice at her disposal trying to kill a girl for no reason we could understand and a teenaged computer prodigy running every intelligence agency in the US around in circles, and somehow,” He paused thoughtfully, “somehow you knew exactly what was going on, managed to communicate with the boy, penetrated our defenses and disabled eight rogue agents before we even knew who the hell you were.” He pulled a crumpled cigarette out of the battered pack and conducted another brief search through his pockets. He locked eyes with the pale woman, “Do you have a light?” he asked.
Shego smiled.
“There was some damage to the corneas, but your retinas and lenses seem to be intact. You will recover your sight and we don’t believe you will lose more than ten percent of your vision but we can’t be sure.”
“But I won’t be blind?”
“No, you won’t be blind,” the doctor replied turning to Ron’s parents. “The patches will need to be in place for a few days and we’ll reassess his condition when they come off.”
“Oh, Ron!” Kim sobbed. “I’m so glad! I don’t know what I’d do…”
“Kim, would you mind leaving us alone for a little bit.” Mrs. Stoppable sounded stiff and formal and she stared at a point somewhere beyond Kim.
“C’mon Kimmie-cub, let’s let Ronald and his parents talk.”
“But…” Kim looked at Ron’s parents, neither would meet her gaze. Mrs. Stoppable’s mouth was a thin line. “OK dad.” She conceded.
Rabbi Katz followed them into the corridor, “Kim, I know you are carrying a large amount of guilt around inside you,” He held up a hand to forestall her comments, “I only ask that you remember this; Ronald took the actions he did for his own reasons. His choices are his, just as your choices are yours. Mr. and Mrs. Stoppable will come to understand this in time. I hope you will also.”
“Thank you.” The older agent said, taking a deep drag. “That stuff gonna poison me?” he asked pointing at her hands.
“Not any more than the cigarette.”
“Hmm, good point.” He looked down at the smoldering tip and back up at Shego, “Where was I?”
“You didn’t know who I was.”
“Right.” He coughed. “Now, I got a psychopath bent on world domination caught red-handed in a secret laboratory with clones of the head of Global Justice and possibly the original Betty Director herself, the boys are scratching their heads over that one, and I’ve got a lead to another mad scientist with a history of cloning and a recent association with a certain plasma throwing thief.” He looked at her searchingly but she maintained an absolutely deadpan expression. “Furthermore, it turns out that the same thief is implicated in a recent robbery at a Go City museum. Coincidentally, the stolen item seems to have turned up here, at this hospital for use in a very delicate operation involving the very same young lady that the crazy woman was trying to kill.” He took another long drag from his cigarette, “I’m sure you have a fascinatingly wholesome explanation for your part in these events, and I’d love to hear it sometime but I like to figure these kinds of things out for myself, it’s that whole ‘detective’ thing.”
The pale thief was staring at her hands idly twisting her fingers. “Am I boring you?” He asked sharply.
“What do you think?” she replied trying to be sarcastic, trying to keep the remorse out of her voice.
They sat in silence for a few minutes while he studied her. “I’ve seen this kind of reaction before, you know.” He said, not unkindly.
“What?”
“Listlessness, regret, self flagellation… All signs of a basically decent person dealing with the harsh reality of taking a human life.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” She snarled, but in his eyes she found the same pain.
“I know you didn’t kill her.”
Shego looked up in surprise and hope. “I thought…”
He shook his head, “The woman survived, they’re patching her up right now.”
He watched the pale woman relax. “You present a very thorny problem for me to solve, Miss Shego.”
“I told you, it’s just ‘Shego.’
“And I’ll continue to use whatever honorific I choose.” He said firmly. “I think I’ve figured out what to do with you.”
“And what would that be?”
“Nothing.”
“Humph!” she snorted. “I think you can do better than that.”
“What did he say after that?” Kim asked eagerly.
“He just stared at me for, like, five minutes and then, he offered me a job”
“A job!” She gasped.
“Yeah, a be-damned job with the almighty NSA!” Shego smiled ruefully, “and here I was kinda hopin’ for some cash…”
Kim was flabbergasted “And you just said ‘OK’?”
“No way, Kitten.” Shego laughed. “I’m not going to hand over control of my life to a government spook without a little incentive, if you know what I mean.” She glanced at the Mobile Data-base given to her by Special Agent Thomas, “But if the money’s right, it might be nice to walk on the right side of the law every once in a while, you know?” Shego grinned, “How’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my…” Kim started to say but stopped when she saw the teasing expression on Shego’s face. “He’s doing pretty good. The shrapnel managed to miss all of the tendons in his hands and they are sure he won’t be blind, in fact, they’re pretty sure he’ll have normal vision.” Despite the good news there was a tone of sadness in her voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“His parents are really angry…” Kim paused to take a deep breath, “They blame me.” She looked down at her hands, “and…”
Shego took the younger woman’s hand in hers, “It’s hard, Kitten. They just found out that their little boy is mortal, give ‘em time.”
Kim enjoyed the pale woman’s caress for a few moments; “Shego?” she said timidly, “have you thought about… what I said?”
The former thief held Kim at arms length for a minute looking into her eyes. “Every moment, Kitten.”
“Well?”
“Are you sure?” Shego asked, “Are you sure this isn’t some over reaction to me…” her voice trailed off.
“Saving my life?” Kim laughed, “You can say it, you know. You did save my life.”
“Yeah,” The pale woman said uncomfortably, “That.”
“Shego, I don’t know if we have a future together or not, but I think you’re incredible, and I’d like to at least go out a few times to see if we have a chance.”
“We’ll meet for lunch…”
“Lunch isn’t a date, I want to see you all dressed up and…” Kim paused blushing.
Shego smiled, “How about next Friday?”
“Great! I’ll pick you up at nine!”
“I don’t think so, I’ve seen you drive!”