Keep Trying to Find, part 6
Jun. 26th, 2009 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamcranverPart 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
“I think the main thing is to keep track of the money,” Sarah said. “It sounds really obvious, like, duh, of course you keep track of the money, but sometimes, for one reason or another, you’re at the stand alone, and then some emergency happens and you forget to take the cashbox with you. You come back five minutes later—whoops, there goes a whole day’s worth of sales!”
“Jeez,” said Jamia. “Has that ever happened to you?”
“No, but I left it alone once, and it didn’t hit me until later how lucky I was.” Sarah tapped the cash box, as if reassuring herself that it was still there. “Seriously, a lot of people go to these concerts and even more check out the merch booths even if they don’t buy a ticket. You never know what kind of creeps will show up.”
“Yeah, but there’s security and stuff, right?” That had actually been one of the selling points for her parents.
“Sure, but they can’t be everywhere at once.” Sarah peered over Jamia’s shoulder at something, or someone, behind her. “Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?”
She turned her head to look, and sure enough, there was Frank. God, that was weird. Her boyfriend. A week ago, for all she had known, he could have been jacking cars, or living in another group home, or still hanging out with Gerard and Mikey’s grandma—their human grandma. But he wasn’t, he was here, and they were dating. The thought of it was enough to make her smile as she waved to him. As he came closer, though, the look on his face made her think something was really, really wrong.
Jamia knew that look—that was Frank’s “I’m gonna get into a fist fight” look. She had no idea what or who had pissed him off so badly, but she thought she’d better find out before he got into a fight with the first person to give him the stink eye. “Hey,” she said, walking out to meet him half-way. “What’s up?”
Some of the raw anger in his face tightened into an irritated tension, and he shot a look at the crowd of people around. “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this?” he said. “It’s a Minnelli thing.”
Which meant it was an alien thing. Ah. “Hey, Sarah,” she called, turning back around, “Can I take off for a few minutes? I’ll be back soon. Frank just has to tell me something.”
“Whatever,” said Sarah with a wave. “I can hold down the fort just fine.”
They walked out to where the gravel of the fairground gave way to tall, unkempt grass. The noise of the crowd was still audible, but from a distance; if they talked quietly, there was no reason anyone would be able to hear them out here. “So?” asked Jamia. “What’s the deal?”
Frank had seemed to calm down on the walk over, but he tensed again. “The FBI’s back.”
It didn’t make any sense for a moment—the FBI? Like, the Federal Bureau of Investigation? But then it hit her, and she swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. “You mean, like ‘scary alien-hunting guys’ FBI, right?” Like the guys who’d threatened to kill them six years ago. Awesome.
“Yeah,” said Frank tightly. “And just to make things even better, Gerard decided this was a great time to tell Lindsey about it. She freaked out. And now who the hell knows who she’ll tell, and of course this had to fucking happen now, when things are actually going pretty good.”
“Is there actually a good time to get chased by the FBI?” Jamia wondered aloud. It was actually one of those things she’d hoped to go her whole life without ever having to deal with.
Frank actually laughed at that. “I guess not.” He sobered quickly, though, and said, “Okay. I can’t really blame Gerard and Mikey for the Men in Black—it’s not their fault the FBI has this hard-on for catching aliens, and I mean, who even knows how they found out? But I mean….” He actually looked sad, now, and Jamia reached out to squeeze his hand reassuringly. He squeezed back and said, “I mean, I love the people on Wolf Mountain, okay? They’ve always been super nice to me, and they didn’t have to take care of me and stuff just because I was friends with Mikey and Gerard. But I don’t want to spend my whole life being the weird human guy who doesn’t even have any super powers. I want to….” He waved his hand in the general direction of the dispersing crowd. “I want to do this, and I can’t do that if I’m stuck back in Alien Utopia.”
“So, wait,” Jamia said. “You have to leave?” She couldn’t believe how suddenly this weird-ass, wonderful interlude was ending. As awesome as working at Questlove was, the thought of going back to her normal summer routine was crushingly disappointing. And losing Frank so soon after she’d gotten him back…well, she couldn’t touch that feeling with a ten-foot pole, not yet.
Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know what the plan is.”
“Okay,” said Jamia, taking deep breaths. She could deal with this. There was a rational way to think about this, she just had to set aside the huge fucking anvil in her chest to think about it. “So, you don’t how much the FBI guys actually know, right?”
“Maybe Ray and Bob do,” said Frank. “I don’t. I kind of just walked in on the tail-end of the conversation.” He winced. “Well. It wasn’t really a conversation, more like a lot of yelling.”
“Well, find out,” said Jamia firmly, breathing a little easier. She wasn’t ready to give up on this yet. “I mean, for one thing, we’re moving around. If the FBI doesn’t connect you guys with the tour and just sticks to where you were six years ago, how would they even be able to track you? You’re using different last names, and Ray and Bob have a new RV, right?”
“Right,” Frank said, sounding a little more upbeat.
“And, okay, we haven’t really talked about this a lot, but Mikey’s psychic, right? Does that mean Gerard has some kind of crazy alien powers, too?” At Frank’s nod, she said, “Well, okay then! They’ll probably know when the FBI guys are coming, and they can do something about it. Hell, we can do something about it, convince them they’re barking up the wrong tree. We’re not little kids anymore. We can handle it.” Something else occurred to her, and she added, “And hey, wouldn’t some of the other aliens help? Can’t you call them if things get really bad?” After all, they’d raised Frank and Mikey and Gerard; surely they had to care about them enough to stop them from being kidnapped or killed by the Area 51 dudes. If they’d even let the three of them come on this trip, despite the risks, they must have known how important it was to them. To Frank. “It’ll be okay,” she said aloud, as firmly as she could to convince herself.
The lines of tension in Frank’s face had relaxed, and he was giving her a weird, crooked smile. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Hey, don’t think I was doing you any favors,” said Jamia tartly. “You’re my ticket on this ride, baby! I’m not letting you get away that easily.” She wriggled her eyebrows at him outrageously, feeling weirdly light-headed and giddy. God, she hoped she was right, too.
Frank chuckled at her, wriggling his own eyebrows in response before making a face. “Shit,” he said. “I’m gonna have to apologize to Gerard.”
“Why?” asked Jamia, thought she could probably guess.
“Oh, I pretty much said that he and Mikey abducted me without giving a shit how I felt about it. I knew it was bullshit when I said it, too, but I was really pissed at him.” He sighed. “The worst part is, he’s not even gonna be mad—he’ll just be really depressed about Lindsey dumping him, so I’ll just feel like even more of an asshole.”
“You poor thing,” said Jamia dryly.
“Well, I’m probably gonna have to apologize to Mikey, too, and he’ll be pissed enough for both of them.”
“I’d be, too. Jesus, way to kick a guy when he’s down. Lindsey dumped him over the alien thing?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said with a frown. “Bob just said she freaked and didn’t want to talk to him, so I’m drawing my own conclusions.” He shook his head. “I can’t even believe it. Like, if I had super powers, wouldn’t you think it was cool?”
“If you had super powers, I’d fear for the future of the world,” Jamia said. “But I’d still like you.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close, and she had to admit, “Also, it’d be pretty cool. Would you think it was cool if I had super powers?”
“Are you gonna hit me if I bring up girls I’ve dated before?” asked Frank.
“Um, no.”
“Well, then I’m gonna say that I have actually gone out with girls with super powers, and they were cool, but I think you’re pretty much the coolest girl ever. So if you had super powers, obviously you’d become an unstoppable force of awesome and take over the world.”
Jamia laughed. “The Jamia invasion, it’s sweeping the nation,” she said, not even caring that it didn’t really rhyme.
“You can sweep my nation any time, wink-wink nudge-nudge,” said Frank with an exaggerated leer.
It was funny, Jamia thought. She didn’t really think of herself as a “pretty” girl, not the way some of her classmates were or even the way Greta was. She’d kind of made a niche for herself as the girl who dressed in black and didn’t brush her hair and who spent all her time at underground punk shows and independent coffee shops instead of high school football games and proms. But the way Frank was looking at her, she felt like Marilyn fucking Monroe or someone. “C’mere, you,” she said, grabbing his tee-shirt and using it to pull his face closer to hers. “I’ve got some nation-sweeping to do.”
Frank didn’t seem to have any objections.
**
It was funny, in a terrible way, just how much a day could change. Yesterday, Mikey hadn’t thought things could get much worse than to be surrounded by happy couples while the girl he liked thought he was a creep and was dating someone else. Now, though, with fear hovering like a gray cloud over everything he did, with Gerard’s confused and overwhelmed depression making him ache in sympathy, and with a sullen anger at Frank lodged in his chest, Mikey would have given just about anything to rewind his life by a day.
Bob, sitting across the kitchen table from Mikey and Gerard, raised an eyebrow at their half-eaten bowls of Cheerios. “That all you’re gonna eat?” he asked. “We could go out, if you want. I think I saw a Bob Evans on the way into town.”
Mikey himself wasn’t too hungry. Bad dreams tended to kill his appetite. Still, just in case there was a possibility of snapping Gerard out of his funk, he asked, What do you think, Gee?
Without even looking up from his bowl, Gerard sent a wave of unhappiness and nausea at the mere thought of going out for breakfast, so strong that Mikey had to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths before saying to Bob, “No, thanks. We’re not hungry.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bob. He shot a look at Ray, who was pouring himself a glass of milk, and Mikey didn’t think you’d have to be a psychic to know that Bob was saying Help me out, here.
“We could go for a walk,” said Ray hopefully. “It’s actually kind of nice out right now.”
Bob nodded. “That’s a good idea. This tin can’s starting to reek—it’d be good to get some fresh air.” Leveling a heavy stare at Gerard, he said, “I think you ought to go out today. Just for a little.”
Gerard didn’t even seem to hear, so Mikey said, Don’t be a douche, man. They’re just trying to help.
Gerard’s sullen unhappiness suddenly took on a tint of guilt, and he looked up, brushing a clump of hair out of his eyes. “I. Okay. We could do that.”
Ray smiled in relief and said, “Awesome. We’ll take a look around.” Mikey could tell the exact moment that Ray remembered the fight with Frank, because his smile faded and he said, a little anxiously, “You think we should wake up Frank and Jamia, see if they want to come?” He glanced over to the inflatable mattress, where they were still curled up in a pile of blankets.
“No,” said Mikey, more sharply than he’d meant to. Whatever. It wasn’t like it was a secret that he was pissed off at Frank. Ray sighed.
“He didn’t mean it,” Gerard murmured.
I know, said Mikey, and he did know. That made it even worse, in his mind. Frank knew that Mikey and Gerard and the rest of his family on Wolf Mountain cared about him and wanted him to be happy. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to use something as a bludgeon to hit Gerard with, and hitting Gerard where he felt guilty was the fastest way to make him hurt. That was bullshit, as far as Mikey was concerned. Sooner or later, he was going to have to tell Frank about his dreams last night, but at the moment he wasn’t particularly in the mood to make nice.
Gerard echoed Ray’s sigh and said, “Let them sleep. They didn’t get in until real late last night.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bob flatly. He slid out of the booth to stand next to Ray. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go.”
Ray was right—it was nice out. The sun was bright, but in a soft way that didn’t hurt Mikey’s eyes, and it was just hot enough to banish any chills from the night without being uncomfortable. It was a great day for nice, normal people who did shit like appreciating the beauty of nature and the wonder of being alive, but it was a kind of crappy day to be a creepy alien with a broken-hearted brother and a family feud and the threat of government capture looming over his head. Mikey swallowed and tried to feel happy, or at least not overwhelmingly bad. He was trying to be supportive, here.
So, they walked. It was a cool place for a concert—the stage, despite being only minutes from downtown, looked like it was pretty much in the middle of the woods, in a flat clearing where apparently the town had a farmer’s market every other weekend. If Hansel and Gretel had had a rock band, this was where they would have played. Ray, who was obviously going to be nominated for sainthood any day now, was full of random facts about the place and the other bands who’d played there and the time he’d volunteered at a farmer’s market in high school but had wound up knocking over a stand full of tomatoes. Bob occasionally responded with a fact of his own or a joking remark about Ray, but for the most part, Ray’s efforts at getting a conversation going were pretty much wasted. Nobody felt like talking.
It would have been okay if they’d been the only four people out walking this morning. Unfortunately, as they walked past a cluster of buses, they ran into Tim, one of MSI’s techs. Tim frowned as soon as he saw them, and Mikey instinctively threw up a mental shield around himself and Gerard.
“Hey,” said Ray brightly. “How’s it going, man?”
Tim shrugged half-heartedly, saying, “Eh, not bad,” before turning to Gerard. “Dude,” he said. “What the hell happened between you and Lindsey?” Before Gerard could even begin to formulate a response, “I talked to her last night after the show, and I’ve never seen her so pissed, ever. I think she was even crying at one point.”
Whatever color had been in Gerard’s face drained at that, and Mikey felt his own shields waver. That was the problem with trying to shield someone you were close to—their pain became yours, and it was hard enough to keep a shield going when you felt as shitty as Mikey did. “Crying?” said Gerard faintly, and the shields took another hit.
“Yeah, crying,” said Tim, his expression tight and pinched with accusation.
Mikey wanted to say something that would somehow soften the impact of that, but nothing sprang immediately to mind.
“Jesus fuck,” muttered Bob, and he chewed on his beard while giving Tim a dark look.
Ray laughed the fakest laugh Mikey had ever heard and said, “You crazy kids and your tour drama. Well, gotta run, Tim! See you around!” And then—it was actually kind of startling, because Ray was good at respecting people’s personal space—he grabbed both Mikey and Gerard by their arms and speed-walked away, Bob jogging along behind.
When Tim was out of sight again, Ray dropped their arms and winced apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. Peering at Gerard worriedly, he added, “Are you okay?”
Uh, not really, Mikey wanted to say. Gerard had spent a lot of the last few months being anxious and uncomfortable, but he hadn’t been this downright miserable in a long time. It made Mikey feel like hitting something—when Gerard was upset, Mikey couldn’t get away from it, which made his total inability to make his brother feel better a pain for him as well as for Gerard.
But somehow, Gerard dredged up a smile, albeit a kind of creepy fake one, and said, “Yeah. I’m okay. Just…I kind of think I need to be alone for a while.” He jerked his head towards the woods and said, “I’m gonna go walk some.” He didn’t want Mikey to come along.
It went against the grain with Mikey to let him hurt alone like that—God knew Gerard never let Mikey sulk by himself, even when Mikey really wanted him to—but it wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help, really, so he said, Okay. Be careful.
“Don’t go too far,” said Bob. “And—here.” He dug around in his pocket to hand Gerard his cell phone. “Keep it on, in case we need you to come back.”
“Will do,” Gerard said with another sad smile. He looked around cautiously, as if to make sure he would avoid running into anyone, before trudging off away from the buses and booths into the oppressively green trees.
Ray and Bob watched in silence as he vanished into the brush, and then Bob exhaled loudly through his nose. “Shit,” he said. “I hate all this fucking drama.”
“He’ll be okay, right?” Ray said nervously. “I mean, being by himself and all that. I hate to think…well, I just wish we knew more. About where those FBI guys are, and stuff.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Bob. He cut a sidelong glance in Mikey’s direction and said, “No offense, Mikey, but I’m looking forward to hotel night and getting you kids out of my hair for a few hours.”
Mikey shrugged. “None taken.” Underneath Bob’s irritation was a sadness and fear Mikey knew way, way too well. It was a shitty way to spend a summer tour.
Plus, Bob and Ray were, like, practically married, and they hadn’t had much time to themselves at all this summer. They hadn’t even gotten enough alone time in the past twenty-four hours to work out their shit from yesterday. Six people in one RV didn’t have that much privacy. And Bob and Ray had put up with a lot. “Why don’t you guys keep walking?” Mikey suggested. “I think I’m gonna head back to the camper.” And then, because he knew it would make them happy, and because sooner or later he really would have to tell Frank about the dream, he added, “Maybe Frank and I can talk.”
“Hey, that’s an awesome idea,” said Ray, beaming. “Maybe this afternoon we can do something fun before the concert. Wii tournament or something?” He nudged Bob with his elbow, and Bob nodded, looking kind of long-suffering.
“Sounds good,” said Mikey, though he privately doubted that Gerard was going to be interested in playing video games or that Frank was going to be in the mood to hang out with them.
He left them chatting with Vikram, one of the security guys, and walked slowly back to the camper, still feeling like the bright sunlight was making fun of him. What he really needed was to sit down and talk with Bunny. Bunny was a problem-solver, and even if she didn’t always grasp the difference between cats and humans—or between cats and Amaltheans, for that matter—she usually had some kind of idea.
But Bunny wasn’t the one who greeted him at the door. Frank was.
“Hey,” said Frank, darting a look up at Mikey before looking back down at his shoes. He swung the door back a few inches, then forward again, then back again.
“Hey.” Mikey pushed past Frank into the RV, pulling the clear mental walls of his shield back up. If Frank thought he was just going to give Mikey a sad face and feel apologetic and Mikey would let him off the hook, he was going to have to think again. Mikey planned on digging out his iPod and completely ignoring Frank.
“I’m heartily sorry for my hasty words and the pain they caused.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at Frank with surprise. If someone had asked him to guess what the next words out of Frank’s mouth were going to be, an apology in the most formal, serious mode in the Amalthean language was pretty far down the list. Crap, he didn’t think he’d ever heard Frank use the formal mode. As a general rule, Frank wasn’t too interested in the more ritualized conventions of Amalthean society. “Where’s Jamia?” he asked, still digesting the apology.
“McDonald’s. We went there for breakfast. She stayed there—she said I needed to work out my bullshit by myself.” Frank’s eyes searched Mikey’s face, hopeful, and Mikey felt the knot of anger in his gut loosen.
“I accept your contrition,” he said solemnly. He was pretty sure he’d screwed up the intonation at the end—it wasn’t like he accepted a lot of formal apologies—but he didn’t think Frank would care.
A smile pulled at the corners of Frank’s mouth, but his eyes were still grave. “Seriously, man,” he said, breaking into English again. “It was shitty thing to say. You guys have been good to me, and it wasn’t like you dragged me kicking and screaming up the mountain or anything.”
Mikey shrugged. “Everybody’s freaked about the FBI thing. I get it. But if you think that means you’re getting off the hook and you don’t have to apologize to Gerard….”
Frank winced. “No. Dude, believe me, I don’t think that.” He looked around the RV, empty except for a pile of sleeping dogs under the kitchen table, and asked, “Where is he, anyway?”
“Off hiding in the woods somewhere.”
“He’s pretty down, huh?” Frank sighed, staring at the ceiling. “I am such a douche. I don’t even know what I was thinking, saying that shit to him.”
Mikey, though he still thought Frank had been a total jackass, had a pretty easy answer for that one. “You were thinking you didn’t want to leave your girlfriend behind and maybe never see her again.” It wasn’t like he didn’t get it. Hell, Alicia didn’t seem interested in even being friends with Mikey, and he still felt sick and unhappy at the thought of never seeing her again. And it had to be even worse for Frank, who’d been cut off from other humans for years. “I don’t blame you. And it’s not like….” He paused, trying to think of the right words. Homesickness poked him sharply in the chest; there was something really nice about being able to handle this kind of conversation psychically. “Okay. So remember when we were at the Smith Home, and you always made us play sports and watch TV in the lounge with the other kids so it was kind of like we had more friends than just you? I know Gerard and I weren’t so good at that. For you. So. Like, I get it, if you’re pissed, or you’re happier here, or….”
“Dude,” Frank interrupted, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Different situations. I knew the other kids at the Home. I think you did fine. It’s just, I don’t know. Since I met up with Jamia again…it’s like she knows where I’m coming from, you know? We’re running on the same wavelength. And it’s never been like that with anyone back home.”
Well. Shit. Now Mikey felt like he was the one who ought to be apologizing. “Maybe we shouldn’t have….do you think it would have been better if you hadn’t come with us?”
“Fuck no,” said Frank with a snort, so promptly that it filled Mikey with relief. “Are you shitting me? I’m the luckiest guy on the planet.” Looking more serious, he added, “Dude. I’m telling you, forget about all that shit I said last night. Being part of your family has been pretty much the best thing ever, and I’d spend the rest of my life planting Amalthean vegetables before I’d let those FBI fucks get you guys. Jamia would totally understand. She could sneak us in Earth music.”
“It’s not just my family,” Mikey pointed out. “It’s your family, too.”
Frank smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I couldn’t have asked for a better one.”
For the first time all day, Mikey felt his mood swing towards ‘happy.’ “Hey,” he said, “Maybe if we deal with this FBI shit…I don’t know, we’re done with school, and it’s not like they really need us up there. Maybe Uncle Brian will let us stay a little longer.”
“Yeah,” said Frank, his expression brightening. “And hey, who says they’re going to find us? They don’t know our new names, and the cops aren’t looking for us this time, and seriously, even if Lyn-Z tells someone, who’s going to believe you guys are actually aliens?”
And there went the happy. “Um. Frank?” Mikey tried to read whether what he was about to say would make Frank mad, but it hurt his head, and besides, it probably fell into the category of privacy violation. He was trying to get better about that. “Um. I had a dream last night.”
Frank blinked. “Yeah?”
“It was like those nightmares I used to have all the time, where they were chasing us up the mountain. Only, these were different guys. And they were chasing you and Jamia.”
“Huh.” Frank’s face seemed frozen in a vaguely concerned frown. “That…kind of sucks.”
Mikey nodded. “I know. I wanted to call Uncle Brian, but I thought…okay, you know he’s probably gonna make us go back home, and I wanted to tell you, first.”
“Fuck it,” said Frank. “Call him. If those assholes do to Jamia what they did to me, I will fucking…I don’t even know what. Something really stupid, probably.”
“They’re not going to,” Mikey said firmly. “It’s not gonna happen.”
Frank raised an eyebrow and said, “Did you dream that, too? Or is it one of your feelings?”
“Dude,” said Mikey. “It’s not gonna happen because we’re not gonna let it happen. We’re family, right? We take care of each other. Nobody messes with my family.”
Frank laughed, sounding a little startled, before tilting his head back to grin admiringly at Mikey and said, “You know, man, you’re actually kind of badass when you go all Godfather on me.”
“Thanks.”
“Speaking of taking care of each other,” said Frank, “just where in the woods is Gerard? How much you want to bet he’s blaming himself for everything ever and writing depressing lyrics?”
“No bet,” Mikey said. “He really fucking liked Lindsey, and now he feels like a total asshole.”
“Man.” Frank shook his head. “That sucks. I guess I’m gonna…go do the whole apology thing.”
“Are you gonna break out the whole formal mode?”
“Why?” asked Frank. “You think I should?”
“Eh. Probably not worth it. Gerard’s not even mad at you.” Mikey wiped some sweat from his forehead and wiped it on his pants. One thing you could say for Wolf Mountain, he thought, was that it didn’t get so fucking hot all the time. The woods were probably shady, though. And it wasn’t like Frank was going to find Gerard anytime soon without Mikey’s help. “I guess I could come with you,” he offered. “For moral support.”
“That’d be cool,” said Frank with a small, tired smile. “Man. Some vacation, huh?”
Though it was pretty much a rhetorical question, Mikey thought about it for a moment. It didn’t feel like a vacation at all, anymore. It felt like some divine finger poking itself in Mikey’s face, saying, “Here! All this—the relationships and the music and the travelling? This is what you can’t have, and fuck you for even trying.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some vacation.”
**
“Are you sure this is where the X-Files guys are?” said Nate for the thousandth time.
Victoria couldn’t really blame him. They’d been parked outside a plain brick office building for the past ten hours, only shifting their position when necessary to avoid suspicion, and honestly, nothing about it screamed “government conspiracy.” It just looked like an office building.
“Believe you me, Nate my boy,” said Gabe, reaching a hand out to scratch at Nate’s hair like he was a puppy or something. Not that bad a comparison, really. “I’ve got ways. Ways and means, baby. This is the place.”
By “ways and means,” Victoria thought he probably meant that he’d had Alex or Ryland hack some government computer in search of Agents Palmer and Viglione. At least, she hoped that was what he had done—the next most likely possibility was that he’d gotten high, come up with some shit about the most secret things being hidden in plain sight, and picked this place randomly out of a phone book.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. “Are we ever going to get to, you know, actually bounty hunt again at some point?” And before Gabe could object, he added, “No, that last dude didn’t count. He wasn’t running, he just forgot he had a court date.”
“What, you haven’t enjoyed running errands for Pete Wentz?” asked Ryland wryly. The computer was apparently doing something he disagreed with, because he frowned at it and pounded the enter key a few times.
“Dude. Dude,” said Gabe, “quit with your complaining. I mean, first off, Pete totally financed this whole deal. He’s like the Cobra godfather. And second, aliens. You gonna get a chance to tangle with the Men in Black and totally save some good E.T.’s anywhere else? I don’t think so!”
“Okay,” said Victoria, “but what are we trying to accomplish by just sitting outside their office? We don’t even know what this Cocker guy looks like, so it’s not like we can follow him or anything.” God, she hoped the FBI didn’t decide to arrest them over this. They’d been pretty lucky so far, but who the hell knew when some FBI guy was going to look out the window, notice the big purple van, and get them thrown in federal prison on some national security-related charge? They could’ve at least gone for a less conspicuous vehicle, for God’s sake.
On the other hand, Pete and Patrick and Joe and Andy had seemed to genuinely care about those kids. Victoria had more or less blocked the whole “being held at gunpoint” thing out of her memory, but she definitely remembered riding around in the Cobramobile with Pete and Patrick and a tension so thick you could choke on it, and the tearful goodbyes on the mountain. Whether the kids they’d taken in were aliens or not, whether they were even actually kids or some kind of body snatchers in disguise, Victoria didn’t like it when people fucked with her friends.
“Oh, oh….” Ryland said excitedly for a moment, before the computer rebelled again. “Motherfucker!” he said. “Goddamned government security protocols!”
“Gimme that,” Alex said, grabbing the laptop. He turned to Victoria and wiggled his eyebrows. “Be prepared to be wowed, because I’m gonna work a little magic here.”
“I’ll give you ‘magic,’” Ryland grumbled. He flicked Alex’s ear irritably, and Victoria sighed. She loved her guys, she really did, but sometimes it was like riding around in a van with her annoying younger cousins all day, every day.
“Aha!” said Alex, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Voila! I give you Jarvis Cocker of the FBI Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena.” Victoria frowned and leaned in closer to avoid the glare on the screen, and Ryland did the same on the other side. The guy on screen didn’t look much like the sinister badasses from six years ago—he kind of looked like a maudlin accountant, with big glasses and a shabby suit. Of course, appearances could be deceiving, thought Victoria. Gabe, for instance, looked like an extra in a Mr. T motivational movie, and he’d done a lot of shit Mr. T probably wouldn’t have approved of.
Ryland grabbed the laptop back and started clicking rapidly. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully. “So, Cocker works with a dude named Brian Molko, they’re both from the U.K.—what, you have to come all the way to America to hunt aliens? What the fuck ever. Um…let’s see, says they’re both out of the office on a case right now.”
“Shit,” said Nate from the front. “You don’t think the case they’re on is Wentz and Stump’s kids, do you?”
“Well, I don’t know, Nate.” Ryland never liked to be interrupted mid-search. “Why don’t you let me finish reading this, and I’ll tell you?”
“Hey, once you’re done, tell me where to drive,” said Gabe. “This place is really starting to harsh my groove.” He leaned over the dashboard, tilting his head, and Victoria could clearly imagine the frown on his face. “I think some dude’s staring out the window at us.”
“Can’t you just drive around the block?” asked Ryland irritably. “I think I’m actually—oh, wow.”
“Oh, wow, what?” Not that sitting around in the hot van while Ryland fucked around on the computer wasn’t awesome, but now Victoria couldn’t even see what he was doing. God, how she missed the straightforwardness of just chasing some guy down, or even flirting with him (or her) to distract him so that Gabe or Ryland or Alex could grab him. This government conspiracy shit made her uncomfortable on top of the boredom.
Alex grabbed the laptop back from Ryland. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “That is super fucking weird.”
“What is?” Nate turned all the way around in his seat, craning his neck for a peek at the screen.
Alex rotated the computer in his lap, pointing. “Look,” he said, pointing at a line of text on the screen. “We’ve got parents, school records, work history on this guy, right? But check this out.” He switched to a new tab. “The people this file says are his parents? They don’t exist. Okay, like, there are people with those names, but not at the times and places Agent Cocker’s parents are supposed to be living.”
“It gets better!” said Ryland, reaching over to click to another tab. “He’s supposed to have gone to Oxford, right? But the university has no records of him. And there’s no credit history or car payments or any shit like that until he and Molko started working for MI-5 in 1999.”
“So….” Victoria said, wondering just how that was going to affect their investigation, “it’s a fake name?”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “Uh, duh.” Turning eagerly to Alex and Ryland, he asked, “What’s the deal with his partner, Molko? Did they leave MI-5 at the same time?”
“It’s the same thing,” said Alex with a nod. “Technically, they both have a past, but they might as well not have existed before 1999.”
“Witness protection?” suggested Nate.
It wasn’t a bad thought, but when you were dealing with secret government agencies, the possibilities got more complicated. “Maybe they’re undercover,” said Victoria. “The FBI’s got to know that their IDs are fake, so it’s got to have something to do with their jobs.” Something occurred to her, and she added, “Maybe all the alien-hunters have protected identities. I mean, if this agency is so hush-hush, maybe they’re all operating under fake names.”
“Good thinking,” said Alex, pointing finger-guns in her direction. “Lemme just….whoa!” The laptop slid to the floor as the van suddenly accelerated. “What the fuck, Gabe?”
The tires squealed against the pavement, and they sped around a corner, sending Victoria, Alex, and Ryland sliding off their seat in the back and pushing Nate up against the window. “Sorry, Cobras,” said Gabe, not sounding too sorry. “I think we’ve been made.” He gestured towards the rearview mirror, and Victoria turned her head; behind them, a black-suited man with curly hair was standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, frowning after them.
“A little warning next time, huh?” muttered Nate, settling back into his seat and fastening his seatbelt. Gabe just laughed and ruffled his hair.
Victoria straightened her dress, which had slipped over one shoulder, and bent to pick up the laptop. It seemed okay, and she took advantage of the rare opportunity she’d been granted to click back over to the tab with the personnel files and look up their old friends Palmer and Viglione.
She didn’t even have to click away from their profiles to know that something was different. There were names, details, dates. Palmer had a couple of drunk and disorderlies on her record and Viglione had been arrested once for indecent exposure and disturbance of the peace. They had recommendations, psych reports. In short, they looked like real people in a way that Cocker and Molko didn’t.
Victoria passed the computer to Alex, knowing that he’d see just what she had. And sure enough, after a minute he frowned. “Huh,” he said. “So, I guess it’s not an alien hunter thing. So what is it?”
“Jesus,” said Ryland. “Maybe you were right, Nate. Maybe it’s witness protection.”
Gabe snorted derisively. “Can you even be in a top-secret government agency if you’re in witness protection?” he asked. “Shit, most of ‘em won’t let you in if you’ve smoked pot—why would they let you in if you’ve got killers or drug dealers gunning for you?”
“Undercover?” Nate suggested.
“Yeah, sure,” Alex said frustratedly, “but these aren’t the files your local police department would get if you entered these names, these are files on the FBI’s secure servers. Wouldn’t they have the real information on their own agents?”
An idea struck Victoria with a weird, disbelieving kind of inspiration. She closed her eyes for a long moment, thinking back to a warm summer night when she’d watched a little man knock out two armed FBI agents, apparently just by looking at them. It was crazy, really, but then, the whole thing was kind of nuts. “Hey,” she said, opening her eyes. “This might be totally stupid, but….” She hesitated. She felt kind of goofy even thinking what she was thinking, much less saying it out loud.
“What?” asked Ryland. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. “Come on, Vic. Say it.” Alex and Gabe and Nate were all looking at her, and suddenly she felt even stupider just sitting there.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ve been assuming that the FBI knows these are fake IDs, right? But what if they don’t? You remember when that alien guy, the kids’ uncle or whatever, appeared out of nowhere and knocked those agents out, and then he said they wouldn’t remember what happened?”
Gabe’s eyebrows drew together in a thick thoughtful line. “Yeah,” he said, as if he already had an idea where Victoria was going with this.
“Well, what if Molko and Cocker are the same way? What if they can just make people forget that they don’t have a past? I mean, their personnel files wouldn’t get checked all the time, so mostly they wouldn’t have any problems with a fake profile, so maybe they just--” She waved a hand, feeling irritatingly inarticulate. “Wipe out your memory every time you figure out there’s a problem?”
“So…what, they’re aliens, too?” asked Nate, looking more disgruntled than disbelieving.
Alex, though, was smiling. “What better place for a couple of aliens to work? They can make sure that nobody figures out about them, and they can use the FBI’s resources to find people from their planet. Kill two birds with one stone.”
“But I guess the question is why,” said Ryland with a frown. “I mean. Are they friend or foe?”
There was a roar and a screech as Gabe sent the Cobramobile accelerating forward again. “Either way,” he said, “Pete’s gonna want to hear this.”
**
“Hmm,” Brian said, concentrating on the music blaring out of a passing hipster’s earbuds. Rather generic-sounding, but catchy. “D’you know, I think I could make a hit pop song.”
Jarvis looked up from examining the back of a CD case. “What, do you mean writing one, or performing it?”
“Why not both?” It had taken a while, but Earth music had replaced Amalthean music as the soundtrack in Brian’s head, and if these children could produce it, what was stopping him?
“Bit old, aren’t you?” Jarvis put the CD down, scowling as if it had personally offended him. “I mean, kids these days seem to like their pop stars young and hot enough to get away with hideous hair and even worse tattoos. I don’t know if an old man like you or I could make it.”
Fuck Jarvis. It wasn’t like either of them were that old, and Brian thought he did quite well for himself in the appearances department—better than Jarvis, who made his own clothes out of scraps and thus was frequently mistaken for some kind of unstable panhandler. “Isn’t that profoundly shallow of you,” he said with a sniff.
Jarvis shrugged. “I never said I was deep.” He picked up another CD. “Whatever. Little makeover, maybe you’ll be the next big thing on American Idol. Dream big, Molko. Dream big.”
Jarvis could mock as much as he liked—Brian knew very well the man stayed up late playing Dance Dance Revolution. Jarvis was the one who actually watched American Idol. “As a matter of fact, you’re wrong,” he said archly. “I think the glam androgyny thing is coming back a bit, now, and I’ve certainly listened to enough of this pop stuff over the years to make it myself.”
“Right.” Jarvis gave him an unimpressed look over the top of his glasses. “So I’ll just tell Monáe you’ve given it all up to be a pop star, shall I? And she can pass it on to the Emperor.”
Well. If Cocker was going to be such a bastard about it, Brian could be serious. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “Besides, I think the Emperor could be quite the star himself, if he ever chose to be.”
“Mmm,” said Jarvis through a close-lipped, fake smile as he waved faux-cheerily at a passing black-clad teenager, who was looking at them with a vaguely baffled expression. “Ix-nay on the Emperor-ay.” You’re really quite sad, he sneered. He dumps you on this planet simply because you’ve gotten too close to him, ruining your career, and your crush on him is probably still visible from the homeworld.
Shut it, said Brian, mustering a smile of his own. The kid, a heavily-tattooed young gentleman with nothing going on in his head besides the chorus of a rather repetitive heavy metal song and a constant refrain of shit, it’s hot, gave them one more confused look before wandering off. Brian sighed. If only he’d taken a moment to pack some more casual clothing as well as his work suit. If only he was skilled enough at teleportation to pick his weekend clubbing outfit out of his closet at home and bring it to himself mentally. As it was, he and Jarvis did seem to be the creepy old men in suits hanging out at a musical event for young people.
Ah, well.
They’d been travelling with the tour for few days, now, but they hadn’t yet managed to approach Bryar or Toro without the interference of security. Their mental abilities had thus far managed to prove that Helena’s grandsons were there (they were, as of yet, less sure about Schechter), but not only had the boys remained completely elusive to Jarvis and Brian’s more earthly senses, they must have also developed some quite strong mental shields, since all telepathic scans for the boys themselves had failed.
At least the music was pretty good. Brian might have only said it to piss Jarvis off, but he really did think he could do a passable job singing or something, and he certainly had enough of a taste for Earth pop punk--or alternative or whatever they called the genre or genres of the bands on this tour—to enjoy himself. If only they could find the fucking false heirs….
Brian allowed himself a moment of imagining his triumphant return to the Empire, dragging Helena’s grandsons and that traitor Schechter and probably a whole new tributary planet behind him, but only a moment. He’d thought about it so much over the years that it seemed more like a pipe dream than anything actually likely to happen, and he’d learned not to get his hopes up. So he banished all thoughts of the Emperor’s grateful smile from his mind (and ignored Cocker’s mental snicker) and approached another tattooed and pierced young man, this one with a businesslike air suggesting that he actually knew what was going on. A tech, thought Brian.
“Excuse me,” he said. “My name’s Brian. I’m trying to find some friends of mine. Gerard and Mikey Minnelli? They’re travelling about with their uncle—he techs for the Used.”
A series of images popped up in the man’s head: two dark-haired boys (undoubtedly Gerard and Mikey), a blond, bearded man, an attractive and well-kept recreational vehicle. But as quickly as the images appeared, they were covered by a shell of suspicion and nervousness, and the young man said, “Sorry, man. Can’t help you.”
No use in pushing it, said Jarvis. If he knows them, he’s more likely to warn them the more you frighten him.
I know, Brian said impatiently. To the kid, he said, “Thanks anyway.”
He nodded jerkily at Brian and Jarvis and said, “Good luck,” before turning around and walking across the street to the hotel parking lot where the bands’ buses were parked. He turned his head to give them one more nervous look before vanishing into a bus.
“Fuck a duck,” said Jarvis irritably. “So close, and yet so far.” And we had better find them quick, before they have their security contact local law enforcement and we have to break our cover. You’re sure we couldn’t just grab them backstage at a concert, deal with the fallout later?
Brian shook his head. There was no way even he could mindwipe that many people at once. If one person escaped with memories intact, then whoops! So much for fourteen years of keeping a low profile! They’d probably call in the army, and any plans of the Emperor’s to expand his realm of influence would be immeasurably complicated. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find them. Just be patient.”
Jarvis snorted. “You think I’m worried about finding them? it’s just a matter of time, and if you think I’m gonna be outsmarted by a couple of kids, you’ve got another think coming.” Under Jarvis’ usual level of resigned cockiness, though, Brian could sense an anxious uncertainty. It’s what comes afterwards that worries me, Jarvis added grimly.
Don’t be silly, said Brian. We’ll go home, get promoted—maybe get ourselves nice Imperial ministry jobs, if we want them. And if your old family’s broken up, or it’s not a good fit for you anymore, you can find a new one. Hell, maybe even I’ll find one.
Jarvis didn’t look too reassured, and Brian couldn’t blame him. He could see a future in which the rebellion was stamped out, in which the Empire annexed Earth to use as a starting point for exploration and colonization in this galaxy. For the life of him, though, Brian couldn’t see a place for himself in that future. Just a vaguely sad murkiness.
But then, seeing things to come had never been something that either Brian or Jarvis had ever been any good at, and in the end, their usefulness to the Empire was more important than their own careers, so Brian picked another kid out of the crowd to scan his mind for any useful information.
Brian and Jarvis weren’t there to have a good time, he reminded himself. They had a job to do. Everything else was secondary.
Part 7
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
“I think the main thing is to keep track of the money,” Sarah said. “It sounds really obvious, like, duh, of course you keep track of the money, but sometimes, for one reason or another, you’re at the stand alone, and then some emergency happens and you forget to take the cashbox with you. You come back five minutes later—whoops, there goes a whole day’s worth of sales!”
“Jeez,” said Jamia. “Has that ever happened to you?”
“No, but I left it alone once, and it didn’t hit me until later how lucky I was.” Sarah tapped the cash box, as if reassuring herself that it was still there. “Seriously, a lot of people go to these concerts and even more check out the merch booths even if they don’t buy a ticket. You never know what kind of creeps will show up.”
“Yeah, but there’s security and stuff, right?” That had actually been one of the selling points for her parents.
“Sure, but they can’t be everywhere at once.” Sarah peered over Jamia’s shoulder at something, or someone, behind her. “Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?”
She turned her head to look, and sure enough, there was Frank. God, that was weird. Her boyfriend. A week ago, for all she had known, he could have been jacking cars, or living in another group home, or still hanging out with Gerard and Mikey’s grandma—their human grandma. But he wasn’t, he was here, and they were dating. The thought of it was enough to make her smile as she waved to him. As he came closer, though, the look on his face made her think something was really, really wrong.
Jamia knew that look—that was Frank’s “I’m gonna get into a fist fight” look. She had no idea what or who had pissed him off so badly, but she thought she’d better find out before he got into a fight with the first person to give him the stink eye. “Hey,” she said, walking out to meet him half-way. “What’s up?”
Some of the raw anger in his face tightened into an irritated tension, and he shot a look at the crowd of people around. “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this?” he said. “It’s a Minnelli thing.”
Which meant it was an alien thing. Ah. “Hey, Sarah,” she called, turning back around, “Can I take off for a few minutes? I’ll be back soon. Frank just has to tell me something.”
“Whatever,” said Sarah with a wave. “I can hold down the fort just fine.”
They walked out to where the gravel of the fairground gave way to tall, unkempt grass. The noise of the crowd was still audible, but from a distance; if they talked quietly, there was no reason anyone would be able to hear them out here. “So?” asked Jamia. “What’s the deal?”
Frank had seemed to calm down on the walk over, but he tensed again. “The FBI’s back.”
It didn’t make any sense for a moment—the FBI? Like, the Federal Bureau of Investigation? But then it hit her, and she swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. “You mean, like ‘scary alien-hunting guys’ FBI, right?” Like the guys who’d threatened to kill them six years ago. Awesome.
“Yeah,” said Frank tightly. “And just to make things even better, Gerard decided this was a great time to tell Lindsey about it. She freaked out. And now who the hell knows who she’ll tell, and of course this had to fucking happen now, when things are actually going pretty good.”
“Is there actually a good time to get chased by the FBI?” Jamia wondered aloud. It was actually one of those things she’d hoped to go her whole life without ever having to deal with.
Frank actually laughed at that. “I guess not.” He sobered quickly, though, and said, “Okay. I can’t really blame Gerard and Mikey for the Men in Black—it’s not their fault the FBI has this hard-on for catching aliens, and I mean, who even knows how they found out? But I mean….” He actually looked sad, now, and Jamia reached out to squeeze his hand reassuringly. He squeezed back and said, “I mean, I love the people on Wolf Mountain, okay? They’ve always been super nice to me, and they didn’t have to take care of me and stuff just because I was friends with Mikey and Gerard. But I don’t want to spend my whole life being the weird human guy who doesn’t even have any super powers. I want to….” He waved his hand in the general direction of the dispersing crowd. “I want to do this, and I can’t do that if I’m stuck back in Alien Utopia.”
“So, wait,” Jamia said. “You have to leave?” She couldn’t believe how suddenly this weird-ass, wonderful interlude was ending. As awesome as working at Questlove was, the thought of going back to her normal summer routine was crushingly disappointing. And losing Frank so soon after she’d gotten him back…well, she couldn’t touch that feeling with a ten-foot pole, not yet.
Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know what the plan is.”
“Okay,” said Jamia, taking deep breaths. She could deal with this. There was a rational way to think about this, she just had to set aside the huge fucking anvil in her chest to think about it. “So, you don’t how much the FBI guys actually know, right?”
“Maybe Ray and Bob do,” said Frank. “I don’t. I kind of just walked in on the tail-end of the conversation.” He winced. “Well. It wasn’t really a conversation, more like a lot of yelling.”
“Well, find out,” said Jamia firmly, breathing a little easier. She wasn’t ready to give up on this yet. “I mean, for one thing, we’re moving around. If the FBI doesn’t connect you guys with the tour and just sticks to where you were six years ago, how would they even be able to track you? You’re using different last names, and Ray and Bob have a new RV, right?”
“Right,” Frank said, sounding a little more upbeat.
“And, okay, we haven’t really talked about this a lot, but Mikey’s psychic, right? Does that mean Gerard has some kind of crazy alien powers, too?” At Frank’s nod, she said, “Well, okay then! They’ll probably know when the FBI guys are coming, and they can do something about it. Hell, we can do something about it, convince them they’re barking up the wrong tree. We’re not little kids anymore. We can handle it.” Something else occurred to her, and she added, “And hey, wouldn’t some of the other aliens help? Can’t you call them if things get really bad?” After all, they’d raised Frank and Mikey and Gerard; surely they had to care about them enough to stop them from being kidnapped or killed by the Area 51 dudes. If they’d even let the three of them come on this trip, despite the risks, they must have known how important it was to them. To Frank. “It’ll be okay,” she said aloud, as firmly as she could to convince herself.
The lines of tension in Frank’s face had relaxed, and he was giving her a weird, crooked smile. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Hey, don’t think I was doing you any favors,” said Jamia tartly. “You’re my ticket on this ride, baby! I’m not letting you get away that easily.” She wriggled her eyebrows at him outrageously, feeling weirdly light-headed and giddy. God, she hoped she was right, too.
Frank chuckled at her, wriggling his own eyebrows in response before making a face. “Shit,” he said. “I’m gonna have to apologize to Gerard.”
“Why?” asked Jamia, thought she could probably guess.
“Oh, I pretty much said that he and Mikey abducted me without giving a shit how I felt about it. I knew it was bullshit when I said it, too, but I was really pissed at him.” He sighed. “The worst part is, he’s not even gonna be mad—he’ll just be really depressed about Lindsey dumping him, so I’ll just feel like even more of an asshole.”
“You poor thing,” said Jamia dryly.
“Well, I’m probably gonna have to apologize to Mikey, too, and he’ll be pissed enough for both of them.”
“I’d be, too. Jesus, way to kick a guy when he’s down. Lindsey dumped him over the alien thing?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said with a frown. “Bob just said she freaked and didn’t want to talk to him, so I’m drawing my own conclusions.” He shook his head. “I can’t even believe it. Like, if I had super powers, wouldn’t you think it was cool?”
“If you had super powers, I’d fear for the future of the world,” Jamia said. “But I’d still like you.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close, and she had to admit, “Also, it’d be pretty cool. Would you think it was cool if I had super powers?”
“Are you gonna hit me if I bring up girls I’ve dated before?” asked Frank.
“Um, no.”
“Well, then I’m gonna say that I have actually gone out with girls with super powers, and they were cool, but I think you’re pretty much the coolest girl ever. So if you had super powers, obviously you’d become an unstoppable force of awesome and take over the world.”
Jamia laughed. “The Jamia invasion, it’s sweeping the nation,” she said, not even caring that it didn’t really rhyme.
“You can sweep my nation any time, wink-wink nudge-nudge,” said Frank with an exaggerated leer.
It was funny, Jamia thought. She didn’t really think of herself as a “pretty” girl, not the way some of her classmates were or even the way Greta was. She’d kind of made a niche for herself as the girl who dressed in black and didn’t brush her hair and who spent all her time at underground punk shows and independent coffee shops instead of high school football games and proms. But the way Frank was looking at her, she felt like Marilyn fucking Monroe or someone. “C’mere, you,” she said, grabbing his tee-shirt and using it to pull his face closer to hers. “I’ve got some nation-sweeping to do.”
Frank didn’t seem to have any objections.
**
It was funny, in a terrible way, just how much a day could change. Yesterday, Mikey hadn’t thought things could get much worse than to be surrounded by happy couples while the girl he liked thought he was a creep and was dating someone else. Now, though, with fear hovering like a gray cloud over everything he did, with Gerard’s confused and overwhelmed depression making him ache in sympathy, and with a sullen anger at Frank lodged in his chest, Mikey would have given just about anything to rewind his life by a day.
Bob, sitting across the kitchen table from Mikey and Gerard, raised an eyebrow at their half-eaten bowls of Cheerios. “That all you’re gonna eat?” he asked. “We could go out, if you want. I think I saw a Bob Evans on the way into town.”
Mikey himself wasn’t too hungry. Bad dreams tended to kill his appetite. Still, just in case there was a possibility of snapping Gerard out of his funk, he asked, What do you think, Gee?
Without even looking up from his bowl, Gerard sent a wave of unhappiness and nausea at the mere thought of going out for breakfast, so strong that Mikey had to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths before saying to Bob, “No, thanks. We’re not hungry.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bob. He shot a look at Ray, who was pouring himself a glass of milk, and Mikey didn’t think you’d have to be a psychic to know that Bob was saying Help me out, here.
“We could go for a walk,” said Ray hopefully. “It’s actually kind of nice out right now.”
Bob nodded. “That’s a good idea. This tin can’s starting to reek—it’d be good to get some fresh air.” Leveling a heavy stare at Gerard, he said, “I think you ought to go out today. Just for a little.”
Gerard didn’t even seem to hear, so Mikey said, Don’t be a douche, man. They’re just trying to help.
Gerard’s sullen unhappiness suddenly took on a tint of guilt, and he looked up, brushing a clump of hair out of his eyes. “I. Okay. We could do that.”
Ray smiled in relief and said, “Awesome. We’ll take a look around.” Mikey could tell the exact moment that Ray remembered the fight with Frank, because his smile faded and he said, a little anxiously, “You think we should wake up Frank and Jamia, see if they want to come?” He glanced over to the inflatable mattress, where they were still curled up in a pile of blankets.
“No,” said Mikey, more sharply than he’d meant to. Whatever. It wasn’t like it was a secret that he was pissed off at Frank. Ray sighed.
“He didn’t mean it,” Gerard murmured.
I know, said Mikey, and he did know. That made it even worse, in his mind. Frank knew that Mikey and Gerard and the rest of his family on Wolf Mountain cared about him and wanted him to be happy. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to use something as a bludgeon to hit Gerard with, and hitting Gerard where he felt guilty was the fastest way to make him hurt. That was bullshit, as far as Mikey was concerned. Sooner or later, he was going to have to tell Frank about his dreams last night, but at the moment he wasn’t particularly in the mood to make nice.
Gerard echoed Ray’s sigh and said, “Let them sleep. They didn’t get in until real late last night.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bob flatly. He slid out of the booth to stand next to Ray. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go.”
Ray was right—it was nice out. The sun was bright, but in a soft way that didn’t hurt Mikey’s eyes, and it was just hot enough to banish any chills from the night without being uncomfortable. It was a great day for nice, normal people who did shit like appreciating the beauty of nature and the wonder of being alive, but it was a kind of crappy day to be a creepy alien with a broken-hearted brother and a family feud and the threat of government capture looming over his head. Mikey swallowed and tried to feel happy, or at least not overwhelmingly bad. He was trying to be supportive, here.
So, they walked. It was a cool place for a concert—the stage, despite being only minutes from downtown, looked like it was pretty much in the middle of the woods, in a flat clearing where apparently the town had a farmer’s market every other weekend. If Hansel and Gretel had had a rock band, this was where they would have played. Ray, who was obviously going to be nominated for sainthood any day now, was full of random facts about the place and the other bands who’d played there and the time he’d volunteered at a farmer’s market in high school but had wound up knocking over a stand full of tomatoes. Bob occasionally responded with a fact of his own or a joking remark about Ray, but for the most part, Ray’s efforts at getting a conversation going were pretty much wasted. Nobody felt like talking.
It would have been okay if they’d been the only four people out walking this morning. Unfortunately, as they walked past a cluster of buses, they ran into Tim, one of MSI’s techs. Tim frowned as soon as he saw them, and Mikey instinctively threw up a mental shield around himself and Gerard.
“Hey,” said Ray brightly. “How’s it going, man?”
Tim shrugged half-heartedly, saying, “Eh, not bad,” before turning to Gerard. “Dude,” he said. “What the hell happened between you and Lindsey?” Before Gerard could even begin to formulate a response, “I talked to her last night after the show, and I’ve never seen her so pissed, ever. I think she was even crying at one point.”
Whatever color had been in Gerard’s face drained at that, and Mikey felt his own shields waver. That was the problem with trying to shield someone you were close to—their pain became yours, and it was hard enough to keep a shield going when you felt as shitty as Mikey did. “Crying?” said Gerard faintly, and the shields took another hit.
“Yeah, crying,” said Tim, his expression tight and pinched with accusation.
Mikey wanted to say something that would somehow soften the impact of that, but nothing sprang immediately to mind.
“Jesus fuck,” muttered Bob, and he chewed on his beard while giving Tim a dark look.
Ray laughed the fakest laugh Mikey had ever heard and said, “You crazy kids and your tour drama. Well, gotta run, Tim! See you around!” And then—it was actually kind of startling, because Ray was good at respecting people’s personal space—he grabbed both Mikey and Gerard by their arms and speed-walked away, Bob jogging along behind.
When Tim was out of sight again, Ray dropped their arms and winced apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. Peering at Gerard worriedly, he added, “Are you okay?”
Uh, not really, Mikey wanted to say. Gerard had spent a lot of the last few months being anxious and uncomfortable, but he hadn’t been this downright miserable in a long time. It made Mikey feel like hitting something—when Gerard was upset, Mikey couldn’t get away from it, which made his total inability to make his brother feel better a pain for him as well as for Gerard.
But somehow, Gerard dredged up a smile, albeit a kind of creepy fake one, and said, “Yeah. I’m okay. Just…I kind of think I need to be alone for a while.” He jerked his head towards the woods and said, “I’m gonna go walk some.” He didn’t want Mikey to come along.
It went against the grain with Mikey to let him hurt alone like that—God knew Gerard never let Mikey sulk by himself, even when Mikey really wanted him to—but it wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help, really, so he said, Okay. Be careful.
“Don’t go too far,” said Bob. “And—here.” He dug around in his pocket to hand Gerard his cell phone. “Keep it on, in case we need you to come back.”
“Will do,” Gerard said with another sad smile. He looked around cautiously, as if to make sure he would avoid running into anyone, before trudging off away from the buses and booths into the oppressively green trees.
Ray and Bob watched in silence as he vanished into the brush, and then Bob exhaled loudly through his nose. “Shit,” he said. “I hate all this fucking drama.”
“He’ll be okay, right?” Ray said nervously. “I mean, being by himself and all that. I hate to think…well, I just wish we knew more. About where those FBI guys are, and stuff.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Bob. He cut a sidelong glance in Mikey’s direction and said, “No offense, Mikey, but I’m looking forward to hotel night and getting you kids out of my hair for a few hours.”
Mikey shrugged. “None taken.” Underneath Bob’s irritation was a sadness and fear Mikey knew way, way too well. It was a shitty way to spend a summer tour.
Plus, Bob and Ray were, like, practically married, and they hadn’t had much time to themselves at all this summer. They hadn’t even gotten enough alone time in the past twenty-four hours to work out their shit from yesterday. Six people in one RV didn’t have that much privacy. And Bob and Ray had put up with a lot. “Why don’t you guys keep walking?” Mikey suggested. “I think I’m gonna head back to the camper.” And then, because he knew it would make them happy, and because sooner or later he really would have to tell Frank about the dream, he added, “Maybe Frank and I can talk.”
“Hey, that’s an awesome idea,” said Ray, beaming. “Maybe this afternoon we can do something fun before the concert. Wii tournament or something?” He nudged Bob with his elbow, and Bob nodded, looking kind of long-suffering.
“Sounds good,” said Mikey, though he privately doubted that Gerard was going to be interested in playing video games or that Frank was going to be in the mood to hang out with them.
He left them chatting with Vikram, one of the security guys, and walked slowly back to the camper, still feeling like the bright sunlight was making fun of him. What he really needed was to sit down and talk with Bunny. Bunny was a problem-solver, and even if she didn’t always grasp the difference between cats and humans—or between cats and Amaltheans, for that matter—she usually had some kind of idea.
But Bunny wasn’t the one who greeted him at the door. Frank was.
“Hey,” said Frank, darting a look up at Mikey before looking back down at his shoes. He swung the door back a few inches, then forward again, then back again.
“Hey.” Mikey pushed past Frank into the RV, pulling the clear mental walls of his shield back up. If Frank thought he was just going to give Mikey a sad face and feel apologetic and Mikey would let him off the hook, he was going to have to think again. Mikey planned on digging out his iPod and completely ignoring Frank.
“I’m heartily sorry for my hasty words and the pain they caused.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at Frank with surprise. If someone had asked him to guess what the next words out of Frank’s mouth were going to be, an apology in the most formal, serious mode in the Amalthean language was pretty far down the list. Crap, he didn’t think he’d ever heard Frank use the formal mode. As a general rule, Frank wasn’t too interested in the more ritualized conventions of Amalthean society. “Where’s Jamia?” he asked, still digesting the apology.
“McDonald’s. We went there for breakfast. She stayed there—she said I needed to work out my bullshit by myself.” Frank’s eyes searched Mikey’s face, hopeful, and Mikey felt the knot of anger in his gut loosen.
“I accept your contrition,” he said solemnly. He was pretty sure he’d screwed up the intonation at the end—it wasn’t like he accepted a lot of formal apologies—but he didn’t think Frank would care.
A smile pulled at the corners of Frank’s mouth, but his eyes were still grave. “Seriously, man,” he said, breaking into English again. “It was shitty thing to say. You guys have been good to me, and it wasn’t like you dragged me kicking and screaming up the mountain or anything.”
Mikey shrugged. “Everybody’s freaked about the FBI thing. I get it. But if you think that means you’re getting off the hook and you don’t have to apologize to Gerard….”
Frank winced. “No. Dude, believe me, I don’t think that.” He looked around the RV, empty except for a pile of sleeping dogs under the kitchen table, and asked, “Where is he, anyway?”
“Off hiding in the woods somewhere.”
“He’s pretty down, huh?” Frank sighed, staring at the ceiling. “I am such a douche. I don’t even know what I was thinking, saying that shit to him.”
Mikey, though he still thought Frank had been a total jackass, had a pretty easy answer for that one. “You were thinking you didn’t want to leave your girlfriend behind and maybe never see her again.” It wasn’t like he didn’t get it. Hell, Alicia didn’t seem interested in even being friends with Mikey, and he still felt sick and unhappy at the thought of never seeing her again. And it had to be even worse for Frank, who’d been cut off from other humans for years. “I don’t blame you. And it’s not like….” He paused, trying to think of the right words. Homesickness poked him sharply in the chest; there was something really nice about being able to handle this kind of conversation psychically. “Okay. So remember when we were at the Smith Home, and you always made us play sports and watch TV in the lounge with the other kids so it was kind of like we had more friends than just you? I know Gerard and I weren’t so good at that. For you. So. Like, I get it, if you’re pissed, or you’re happier here, or….”
“Dude,” Frank interrupted, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Different situations. I knew the other kids at the Home. I think you did fine. It’s just, I don’t know. Since I met up with Jamia again…it’s like she knows where I’m coming from, you know? We’re running on the same wavelength. And it’s never been like that with anyone back home.”
Well. Shit. Now Mikey felt like he was the one who ought to be apologizing. “Maybe we shouldn’t have….do you think it would have been better if you hadn’t come with us?”
“Fuck no,” said Frank with a snort, so promptly that it filled Mikey with relief. “Are you shitting me? I’m the luckiest guy on the planet.” Looking more serious, he added, “Dude. I’m telling you, forget about all that shit I said last night. Being part of your family has been pretty much the best thing ever, and I’d spend the rest of my life planting Amalthean vegetables before I’d let those FBI fucks get you guys. Jamia would totally understand. She could sneak us in Earth music.”
“It’s not just my family,” Mikey pointed out. “It’s your family, too.”
Frank smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I couldn’t have asked for a better one.”
For the first time all day, Mikey felt his mood swing towards ‘happy.’ “Hey,” he said, “Maybe if we deal with this FBI shit…I don’t know, we’re done with school, and it’s not like they really need us up there. Maybe Uncle Brian will let us stay a little longer.”
“Yeah,” said Frank, his expression brightening. “And hey, who says they’re going to find us? They don’t know our new names, and the cops aren’t looking for us this time, and seriously, even if Lyn-Z tells someone, who’s going to believe you guys are actually aliens?”
And there went the happy. “Um. Frank?” Mikey tried to read whether what he was about to say would make Frank mad, but it hurt his head, and besides, it probably fell into the category of privacy violation. He was trying to get better about that. “Um. I had a dream last night.”
Frank blinked. “Yeah?”
“It was like those nightmares I used to have all the time, where they were chasing us up the mountain. Only, these were different guys. And they were chasing you and Jamia.”
“Huh.” Frank’s face seemed frozen in a vaguely concerned frown. “That…kind of sucks.”
Mikey nodded. “I know. I wanted to call Uncle Brian, but I thought…okay, you know he’s probably gonna make us go back home, and I wanted to tell you, first.”
“Fuck it,” said Frank. “Call him. If those assholes do to Jamia what they did to me, I will fucking…I don’t even know what. Something really stupid, probably.”
“They’re not going to,” Mikey said firmly. “It’s not gonna happen.”
Frank raised an eyebrow and said, “Did you dream that, too? Or is it one of your feelings?”
“Dude,” said Mikey. “It’s not gonna happen because we’re not gonna let it happen. We’re family, right? We take care of each other. Nobody messes with my family.”
Frank laughed, sounding a little startled, before tilting his head back to grin admiringly at Mikey and said, “You know, man, you’re actually kind of badass when you go all Godfather on me.”
“Thanks.”
“Speaking of taking care of each other,” said Frank, “just where in the woods is Gerard? How much you want to bet he’s blaming himself for everything ever and writing depressing lyrics?”
“No bet,” Mikey said. “He really fucking liked Lindsey, and now he feels like a total asshole.”
“Man.” Frank shook his head. “That sucks. I guess I’m gonna…go do the whole apology thing.”
“Are you gonna break out the whole formal mode?”
“Why?” asked Frank. “You think I should?”
“Eh. Probably not worth it. Gerard’s not even mad at you.” Mikey wiped some sweat from his forehead and wiped it on his pants. One thing you could say for Wolf Mountain, he thought, was that it didn’t get so fucking hot all the time. The woods were probably shady, though. And it wasn’t like Frank was going to find Gerard anytime soon without Mikey’s help. “I guess I could come with you,” he offered. “For moral support.”
“That’d be cool,” said Frank with a small, tired smile. “Man. Some vacation, huh?”
Though it was pretty much a rhetorical question, Mikey thought about it for a moment. It didn’t feel like a vacation at all, anymore. It felt like some divine finger poking itself in Mikey’s face, saying, “Here! All this—the relationships and the music and the travelling? This is what you can’t have, and fuck you for even trying.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some vacation.”
**
“Are you sure this is where the X-Files guys are?” said Nate for the thousandth time.
Victoria couldn’t really blame him. They’d been parked outside a plain brick office building for the past ten hours, only shifting their position when necessary to avoid suspicion, and honestly, nothing about it screamed “government conspiracy.” It just looked like an office building.
“Believe you me, Nate my boy,” said Gabe, reaching a hand out to scratch at Nate’s hair like he was a puppy or something. Not that bad a comparison, really. “I’ve got ways. Ways and means, baby. This is the place.”
By “ways and means,” Victoria thought he probably meant that he’d had Alex or Ryland hack some government computer in search of Agents Palmer and Viglione. At least, she hoped that was what he had done—the next most likely possibility was that he’d gotten high, come up with some shit about the most secret things being hidden in plain sight, and picked this place randomly out of a phone book.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. “Are we ever going to get to, you know, actually bounty hunt again at some point?” And before Gabe could object, he added, “No, that last dude didn’t count. He wasn’t running, he just forgot he had a court date.”
“What, you haven’t enjoyed running errands for Pete Wentz?” asked Ryland wryly. The computer was apparently doing something he disagreed with, because he frowned at it and pounded the enter key a few times.
“Dude. Dude,” said Gabe, “quit with your complaining. I mean, first off, Pete totally financed this whole deal. He’s like the Cobra godfather. And second, aliens. You gonna get a chance to tangle with the Men in Black and totally save some good E.T.’s anywhere else? I don’t think so!”
“Okay,” said Victoria, “but what are we trying to accomplish by just sitting outside their office? We don’t even know what this Cocker guy looks like, so it’s not like we can follow him or anything.” God, she hoped the FBI didn’t decide to arrest them over this. They’d been pretty lucky so far, but who the hell knew when some FBI guy was going to look out the window, notice the big purple van, and get them thrown in federal prison on some national security-related charge? They could’ve at least gone for a less conspicuous vehicle, for God’s sake.
On the other hand, Pete and Patrick and Joe and Andy had seemed to genuinely care about those kids. Victoria had more or less blocked the whole “being held at gunpoint” thing out of her memory, but she definitely remembered riding around in the Cobramobile with Pete and Patrick and a tension so thick you could choke on it, and the tearful goodbyes on the mountain. Whether the kids they’d taken in were aliens or not, whether they were even actually kids or some kind of body snatchers in disguise, Victoria didn’t like it when people fucked with her friends.
“Oh, oh….” Ryland said excitedly for a moment, before the computer rebelled again. “Motherfucker!” he said. “Goddamned government security protocols!”
“Gimme that,” Alex said, grabbing the laptop. He turned to Victoria and wiggled his eyebrows. “Be prepared to be wowed, because I’m gonna work a little magic here.”
“I’ll give you ‘magic,’” Ryland grumbled. He flicked Alex’s ear irritably, and Victoria sighed. She loved her guys, she really did, but sometimes it was like riding around in a van with her annoying younger cousins all day, every day.
“Aha!” said Alex, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Voila! I give you Jarvis Cocker of the FBI Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena.” Victoria frowned and leaned in closer to avoid the glare on the screen, and Ryland did the same on the other side. The guy on screen didn’t look much like the sinister badasses from six years ago—he kind of looked like a maudlin accountant, with big glasses and a shabby suit. Of course, appearances could be deceiving, thought Victoria. Gabe, for instance, looked like an extra in a Mr. T motivational movie, and he’d done a lot of shit Mr. T probably wouldn’t have approved of.
Ryland grabbed the laptop back and started clicking rapidly. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully. “So, Cocker works with a dude named Brian Molko, they’re both from the U.K.—what, you have to come all the way to America to hunt aliens? What the fuck ever. Um…let’s see, says they’re both out of the office on a case right now.”
“Shit,” said Nate from the front. “You don’t think the case they’re on is Wentz and Stump’s kids, do you?”
“Well, I don’t know, Nate.” Ryland never liked to be interrupted mid-search. “Why don’t you let me finish reading this, and I’ll tell you?”
“Hey, once you’re done, tell me where to drive,” said Gabe. “This place is really starting to harsh my groove.” He leaned over the dashboard, tilting his head, and Victoria could clearly imagine the frown on his face. “I think some dude’s staring out the window at us.”
“Can’t you just drive around the block?” asked Ryland irritably. “I think I’m actually—oh, wow.”
“Oh, wow, what?” Not that sitting around in the hot van while Ryland fucked around on the computer wasn’t awesome, but now Victoria couldn’t even see what he was doing. God, how she missed the straightforwardness of just chasing some guy down, or even flirting with him (or her) to distract him so that Gabe or Ryland or Alex could grab him. This government conspiracy shit made her uncomfortable on top of the boredom.
Alex grabbed the laptop back from Ryland. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “That is super fucking weird.”
“What is?” Nate turned all the way around in his seat, craning his neck for a peek at the screen.
Alex rotated the computer in his lap, pointing. “Look,” he said, pointing at a line of text on the screen. “We’ve got parents, school records, work history on this guy, right? But check this out.” He switched to a new tab. “The people this file says are his parents? They don’t exist. Okay, like, there are people with those names, but not at the times and places Agent Cocker’s parents are supposed to be living.”
“It gets better!” said Ryland, reaching over to click to another tab. “He’s supposed to have gone to Oxford, right? But the university has no records of him. And there’s no credit history or car payments or any shit like that until he and Molko started working for MI-5 in 1999.”
“So….” Victoria said, wondering just how that was going to affect their investigation, “it’s a fake name?”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “Uh, duh.” Turning eagerly to Alex and Ryland, he asked, “What’s the deal with his partner, Molko? Did they leave MI-5 at the same time?”
“It’s the same thing,” said Alex with a nod. “Technically, they both have a past, but they might as well not have existed before 1999.”
“Witness protection?” suggested Nate.
It wasn’t a bad thought, but when you were dealing with secret government agencies, the possibilities got more complicated. “Maybe they’re undercover,” said Victoria. “The FBI’s got to know that their IDs are fake, so it’s got to have something to do with their jobs.” Something occurred to her, and she added, “Maybe all the alien-hunters have protected identities. I mean, if this agency is so hush-hush, maybe they’re all operating under fake names.”
“Good thinking,” said Alex, pointing finger-guns in her direction. “Lemme just….whoa!” The laptop slid to the floor as the van suddenly accelerated. “What the fuck, Gabe?”
The tires squealed against the pavement, and they sped around a corner, sending Victoria, Alex, and Ryland sliding off their seat in the back and pushing Nate up against the window. “Sorry, Cobras,” said Gabe, not sounding too sorry. “I think we’ve been made.” He gestured towards the rearview mirror, and Victoria turned her head; behind them, a black-suited man with curly hair was standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, frowning after them.
“A little warning next time, huh?” muttered Nate, settling back into his seat and fastening his seatbelt. Gabe just laughed and ruffled his hair.
Victoria straightened her dress, which had slipped over one shoulder, and bent to pick up the laptop. It seemed okay, and she took advantage of the rare opportunity she’d been granted to click back over to the tab with the personnel files and look up their old friends Palmer and Viglione.
She didn’t even have to click away from their profiles to know that something was different. There were names, details, dates. Palmer had a couple of drunk and disorderlies on her record and Viglione had been arrested once for indecent exposure and disturbance of the peace. They had recommendations, psych reports. In short, they looked like real people in a way that Cocker and Molko didn’t.
Victoria passed the computer to Alex, knowing that he’d see just what she had. And sure enough, after a minute he frowned. “Huh,” he said. “So, I guess it’s not an alien hunter thing. So what is it?”
“Jesus,” said Ryland. “Maybe you were right, Nate. Maybe it’s witness protection.”
Gabe snorted derisively. “Can you even be in a top-secret government agency if you’re in witness protection?” he asked. “Shit, most of ‘em won’t let you in if you’ve smoked pot—why would they let you in if you’ve got killers or drug dealers gunning for you?”
“Undercover?” Nate suggested.
“Yeah, sure,” Alex said frustratedly, “but these aren’t the files your local police department would get if you entered these names, these are files on the FBI’s secure servers. Wouldn’t they have the real information on their own agents?”
An idea struck Victoria with a weird, disbelieving kind of inspiration. She closed her eyes for a long moment, thinking back to a warm summer night when she’d watched a little man knock out two armed FBI agents, apparently just by looking at them. It was crazy, really, but then, the whole thing was kind of nuts. “Hey,” she said, opening her eyes. “This might be totally stupid, but….” She hesitated. She felt kind of goofy even thinking what she was thinking, much less saying it out loud.
“What?” asked Ryland. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. “Come on, Vic. Say it.” Alex and Gabe and Nate were all looking at her, and suddenly she felt even stupider just sitting there.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ve been assuming that the FBI knows these are fake IDs, right? But what if they don’t? You remember when that alien guy, the kids’ uncle or whatever, appeared out of nowhere and knocked those agents out, and then he said they wouldn’t remember what happened?”
Gabe’s eyebrows drew together in a thick thoughtful line. “Yeah,” he said, as if he already had an idea where Victoria was going with this.
“Well, what if Molko and Cocker are the same way? What if they can just make people forget that they don’t have a past? I mean, their personnel files wouldn’t get checked all the time, so mostly they wouldn’t have any problems with a fake profile, so maybe they just--” She waved a hand, feeling irritatingly inarticulate. “Wipe out your memory every time you figure out there’s a problem?”
“So…what, they’re aliens, too?” asked Nate, looking more disgruntled than disbelieving.
Alex, though, was smiling. “What better place for a couple of aliens to work? They can make sure that nobody figures out about them, and they can use the FBI’s resources to find people from their planet. Kill two birds with one stone.”
“But I guess the question is why,” said Ryland with a frown. “I mean. Are they friend or foe?”
There was a roar and a screech as Gabe sent the Cobramobile accelerating forward again. “Either way,” he said, “Pete’s gonna want to hear this.”
**
“Hmm,” Brian said, concentrating on the music blaring out of a passing hipster’s earbuds. Rather generic-sounding, but catchy. “D’you know, I think I could make a hit pop song.”
Jarvis looked up from examining the back of a CD case. “What, do you mean writing one, or performing it?”
“Why not both?” It had taken a while, but Earth music had replaced Amalthean music as the soundtrack in Brian’s head, and if these children could produce it, what was stopping him?
“Bit old, aren’t you?” Jarvis put the CD down, scowling as if it had personally offended him. “I mean, kids these days seem to like their pop stars young and hot enough to get away with hideous hair and even worse tattoos. I don’t know if an old man like you or I could make it.”
Fuck Jarvis. It wasn’t like either of them were that old, and Brian thought he did quite well for himself in the appearances department—better than Jarvis, who made his own clothes out of scraps and thus was frequently mistaken for some kind of unstable panhandler. “Isn’t that profoundly shallow of you,” he said with a sniff.
Jarvis shrugged. “I never said I was deep.” He picked up another CD. “Whatever. Little makeover, maybe you’ll be the next big thing on American Idol. Dream big, Molko. Dream big.”
Jarvis could mock as much as he liked—Brian knew very well the man stayed up late playing Dance Dance Revolution. Jarvis was the one who actually watched American Idol. “As a matter of fact, you’re wrong,” he said archly. “I think the glam androgyny thing is coming back a bit, now, and I’ve certainly listened to enough of this pop stuff over the years to make it myself.”
“Right.” Jarvis gave him an unimpressed look over the top of his glasses. “So I’ll just tell Monáe you’ve given it all up to be a pop star, shall I? And she can pass it on to the Emperor.”
Well. If Cocker was going to be such a bastard about it, Brian could be serious. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “Besides, I think the Emperor could be quite the star himself, if he ever chose to be.”
“Mmm,” said Jarvis through a close-lipped, fake smile as he waved faux-cheerily at a passing black-clad teenager, who was looking at them with a vaguely baffled expression. “Ix-nay on the Emperor-ay.” You’re really quite sad, he sneered. He dumps you on this planet simply because you’ve gotten too close to him, ruining your career, and your crush on him is probably still visible from the homeworld.
Shut it, said Brian, mustering a smile of his own. The kid, a heavily-tattooed young gentleman with nothing going on in his head besides the chorus of a rather repetitive heavy metal song and a constant refrain of shit, it’s hot, gave them one more confused look before wandering off. Brian sighed. If only he’d taken a moment to pack some more casual clothing as well as his work suit. If only he was skilled enough at teleportation to pick his weekend clubbing outfit out of his closet at home and bring it to himself mentally. As it was, he and Jarvis did seem to be the creepy old men in suits hanging out at a musical event for young people.
Ah, well.
They’d been travelling with the tour for few days, now, but they hadn’t yet managed to approach Bryar or Toro without the interference of security. Their mental abilities had thus far managed to prove that Helena’s grandsons were there (they were, as of yet, less sure about Schechter), but not only had the boys remained completely elusive to Jarvis and Brian’s more earthly senses, they must have also developed some quite strong mental shields, since all telepathic scans for the boys themselves had failed.
At least the music was pretty good. Brian might have only said it to piss Jarvis off, but he really did think he could do a passable job singing or something, and he certainly had enough of a taste for Earth pop punk--or alternative or whatever they called the genre or genres of the bands on this tour—to enjoy himself. If only they could find the fucking false heirs….
Brian allowed himself a moment of imagining his triumphant return to the Empire, dragging Helena’s grandsons and that traitor Schechter and probably a whole new tributary planet behind him, but only a moment. He’d thought about it so much over the years that it seemed more like a pipe dream than anything actually likely to happen, and he’d learned not to get his hopes up. So he banished all thoughts of the Emperor’s grateful smile from his mind (and ignored Cocker’s mental snicker) and approached another tattooed and pierced young man, this one with a businesslike air suggesting that he actually knew what was going on. A tech, thought Brian.
“Excuse me,” he said. “My name’s Brian. I’m trying to find some friends of mine. Gerard and Mikey Minnelli? They’re travelling about with their uncle—he techs for the Used.”
A series of images popped up in the man’s head: two dark-haired boys (undoubtedly Gerard and Mikey), a blond, bearded man, an attractive and well-kept recreational vehicle. But as quickly as the images appeared, they were covered by a shell of suspicion and nervousness, and the young man said, “Sorry, man. Can’t help you.”
No use in pushing it, said Jarvis. If he knows them, he’s more likely to warn them the more you frighten him.
I know, Brian said impatiently. To the kid, he said, “Thanks anyway.”
He nodded jerkily at Brian and Jarvis and said, “Good luck,” before turning around and walking across the street to the hotel parking lot where the bands’ buses were parked. He turned his head to give them one more nervous look before vanishing into a bus.
“Fuck a duck,” said Jarvis irritably. “So close, and yet so far.” And we had better find them quick, before they have their security contact local law enforcement and we have to break our cover. You’re sure we couldn’t just grab them backstage at a concert, deal with the fallout later?
Brian shook his head. There was no way even he could mindwipe that many people at once. If one person escaped with memories intact, then whoops! So much for fourteen years of keeping a low profile! They’d probably call in the army, and any plans of the Emperor’s to expand his realm of influence would be immeasurably complicated. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find them. Just be patient.”
Jarvis snorted. “You think I’m worried about finding them? it’s just a matter of time, and if you think I’m gonna be outsmarted by a couple of kids, you’ve got another think coming.” Under Jarvis’ usual level of resigned cockiness, though, Brian could sense an anxious uncertainty. It’s what comes afterwards that worries me, Jarvis added grimly.
Don’t be silly, said Brian. We’ll go home, get promoted—maybe get ourselves nice Imperial ministry jobs, if we want them. And if your old family’s broken up, or it’s not a good fit for you anymore, you can find a new one. Hell, maybe even I’ll find one.
Jarvis didn’t look too reassured, and Brian couldn’t blame him. He could see a future in which the rebellion was stamped out, in which the Empire annexed Earth to use as a starting point for exploration and colonization in this galaxy. For the life of him, though, Brian couldn’t see a place for himself in that future. Just a vaguely sad murkiness.
But then, seeing things to come had never been something that either Brian or Jarvis had ever been any good at, and in the end, their usefulness to the Empire was more important than their own careers, so Brian picked another kid out of the crowd to scan his mind for any useful information.
Brian and Jarvis weren’t there to have a good time, he reminded himself. They had a job to do. Everything else was secondary.
Part 7