 
Attack Doll 2: Junior Prime

by Douglas A. Taylor

Copyright 2013 by Douglas A. Taylor

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1

"What the hell is that thing?"

Mike was backing away from the furry beastie that had sprung out of nowhere at us. It looked like a big cat of some sort, except that it was the size of a horse and had a saddle on its back. In the saddle was a figure that might have been a caricature of a Mongol warrior, complete with scraggly beard, furry hat, and (unfortunately for us) a deadly-looking recurved bow.

"I'd say it is monster Wizzit sent us to find," came Trina's comment. I couldn't see her face, which was obscured by the green mist of her force shield. She sounded cool enough as she circled around to the thing's right, but anyone who knew her could tell she was keyed up; being Russian, she tends to drop her articles -- her a's, an's, and the's -- when she gets excited. She had already pulled out her triple-blaster, but was not pointing it at the figure. Wizzit had not yet determined that it was hostile, so we weren't yet allowed to be hostile in return.

I began circling around the other way, which brought me over to the tooth-ish end of the cat rather than the tail-ish end, and Padma followed me. I'm not Padma's babysitter during battles any more -- Shelley officially made her a "grown-up" Prime a couple of weeks ago -- but she still tends to stick close by me during our missions. That annoys Nicolai to no end, I'm sure; he'd much rather Padma stay close to him. Isn't much I can do about it, though. Padma's a big girl and can make her own decisions, and she and I do work well together. Besides, I like her. Not quite the same way Nicolai likes her, but she's a nice kid.

"Which one is the real threat, Indigo?" she asked me. "The rider or the . . . whatever that thing is?"

"No idea," I replied, wondering the same thing myself. "Probably both." The cat looked normal enough, except for the size. It had large tan spots ringed with black, but it was a bit heavier-built than your standard leopard, even taking its enlarged size into account. Maybe it was some sort of local animal that Enclave had mutated; it sure didn't appear to be an altered human being like we normally see.

The rider, on the other hand, was typical Enclave. Oversize head, ginormous fangs (yeah, they always make with the fangs), and the snarly voice that you could barely understand. He was currently yelling something about how he would destroy us all.

Even with the fangs, though, he looked a bit less out of place than we did, seeing as we were presently in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, standing in front of a largish, square building bearing the words "The National Museum of Mongolian History". In fact, he bore a fair resemblance to the guy pictured on the front of the museum.

"Keep a sharp lookout, everyone," Mike was saying via Prime-to-Prime communication, which meant than no one who wasn't sporting a force shield could hear him. "I don't like the look of that bow. And can we get the crowd here to move away? Wizzit, what languages do they speak around here?"

"Mongolian, duh!" came Wizzit's voice. I guess he decided that he was going to be snippy today.

"Not helpful, Wizzit," Mike replied after a moment. I could hear suppressed exasperation in his voice, and I imagined that he was wishing that Shelley was here right now. She never lost her temper with Wizzit's occasional childishness. "I meant, what languages do they speak here that we know? Mongolia's just north of China, isn't it? Indigo, if you would --"

"Green would be more help," Wizzit broke in. "They speak more Russian here than Mandarin, in case the Cyrillic script on the museum sign didn't give you a clue. Also, English would work -- again, the sign has the museum's name on it in English. They speak some Japanese here, some Korean, even some German. In the west of the country, they speak --"

"That'll do, Wizzit," Mike said patiently. "You heard him, everyone. Green, warn everyone away in Russian, if you please. Blue, in English. Everyone else, just be careful, and let's surround this thing. Wizzit, let us know as soon as you've determined it's hostile."

"Don't I always?" Wizzit sniffed, as Trina and Toby went into the standard everybody-move-back speech in their respective languages.

I don't know about Trina's Russian, but Toby can do a pretty good public school British accent when he wants to, even if he is from Manchester. It sounds very official even through the voice alteration, which disguises our varied accents to some extent. If Shelley's not around, Mike will often have Toby make our announcements in English for just that reason. Well, that and the fact that he's, like, six-four. People tend to pay attention to him.

Big Kitty was starting to dance around and make threatening noises at the locals who were getting too close to it, so it wasn't difficult to persuade them to move out of the area. That was definitely a good thing. A Prime getting hurt would be bad enough, but a local getting injured was always much, much worse. We Primes don't have much of a public relations problem, and that's partly because we go to such great lengths to ensure that the only one who gets hurt during these encounters is the Enclave bad guy du jour.

The six of us had just about completely encircled the thing when the rider went into action. Sometimes Enclave monsters are like these slow-moving tanks, but not this guy. One second he was scanning the horizon like he was posing for a picture, and then next he had some sort of arrow nocked on his bow and was launching it straight at me.

I might have been able to dodge the thing if it hadn't been so unexpected. The force shields we use during battle jazz up our reflexes to their theoretical limits. I couldn't quite twist away in time, though, and the bolt managed to get through my force shield and pierce my right leg.

"Indigo!" I heard Padma scream. At least she had learned one lesson in the last several weeks, I thought as I went down to one knee with a cry of pain. She called out my color, not my real name like she did that time in Vietnam. That had turned out to be a serious blunder. It was good to see that she wasn't repeating it.

"Wizzit, we can attack this thing now, right?" Mike snapped. When Wizzit replied in the affirmative, he said quickly, "All right, Green, start taking shots at the rider. Keep him busy; I do not want anyone else stuck with an arrow. Yellow and Violet, let's us take this thing on. Blue, help us with the monster, but keep an eye on Green and run interference as needed. You all right, Indigo?"

"I'm not dead or dying, if that's what you wanted to know," I replied through gritted teeth. Damn, that thing hurt a lot!

"Yup, that pretty much covers it," he said. He was holding his club in front of him, ready to attack as soon as Nicolai, Padma, and Toby were ready. "Wizzit, send Indigo back to headquarters and initiate a healing coma right away."

"Hey, I don't have to go just yet!" I retorted promptly. Man, I hated to leave right in the middle of a battle. "Okay, maybe I can't fight, but I could use my blaster and help Green keep that thing off-balance."

"It is a clean wound," Padma added, looking up from where she had been examining my thigh. "The arrow appears to have gone straight through the muscle and out the other side."

Mike shook his head. "Nothing doing."

"No offense, Indigo, but you are worst marksman on team," Trina said as she snapped off a shot that nearly knocked the rider's bow from his hand. "You'd probably hit one of us before you hit monster."

"Green's right. Sorry, but you're no good to us injured," Mike said. "Wizzit, take him out of here. Heal him up quick sharp, and let me know as soon as he's ready to go again."

"I will do that thing," came Wizzit's cheerful reply.

"Damn!" I muttered.

I started to feel the tingling at the base of my skull that told me that Wizzit was about to teleport me back to HQ. He told me, "I have notified Prime Commander that you are returning. He will meet you in the lounge." Then my vision went all hazy. When it cleared again, I was in the lounge at HQ.

I have no idea where the place is. As far as I am aware, none of us Primes knows the location of our headquarters. Well, Shelley might, and Prime Commander probably does, but certainly no one else. The only way we ever get to it is when Wizzit teleports us there. It could be in an office building in Manhattan or Hong Kong, or it could be buried deep under a glacier somewhere in Greenland. I just don't know.

If I had to choose, I would go for the Greenland glacier. The idea of being so remote from everything seems pretty cool, somehow. In fact, sometimes at night I like to lie in bed and imagine what remote spot we might be in -- inside a mountain in Tibet, maybe, or on a windswept plain in Antarctica, or deep in the Mariana Trench.

Well, okay, we're probably not in the Mariana Trench. Wizzit manages to provide us with food, heat, light, power, and high-speed Internet, and I think even he would have trouble doing all that at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But hey, we could be there.

There are no doors to the place, but there are "windows", which are really computer-generated moving images of some fairly nice scenery. If you look close, you can tell the images aren't the real thing, but they're pretty good; the perspective even appears to shift as you move about the room.

I suppose all the secrecy surrounding its location is part and parcel of Wizzit's (and humanity's) war against Enclave. Or, to put it more accurately, our defense against Enclave. They started attacking us over fifteen years ago because Earth is in a strategic location for something or other. At least that what Wizzit told Prime Commander when he first approached him about forming the Primes.

(I'm using the word "approached" in the figurative sense here. I've seen Wizzit up close. He is basically a long tube of pink gas. Seems pretty immobile if you ask me; I doubt he does much literal "approaching". Come to think of it, I'm not sure how he gets around. Hmm. Maybe he teleports himself wherever he wants to go, kind of like he does with us. And as for how he does that, well, your guess is as good as mine.)

Regardless, Commander Windham was just entering the lounge as I materialized. I whipped off my battle vest, then skinned off my tee-shirt and wrapped it around my bleeding leg; it wouldn't do to get blood all over the carpet. He stepped forward to take my arm, but I waved him off. "I'll be all right, sir. I just need to sit down in one of the easy chairs." So saying, I hopped over to the nearest one and flopped down into it. "Okay, Wizzit," I called out, "do your worst."

"Initiating healing coma, maximum depth."

Wizzit calls them healing comas, so that's what the rest of us call them as well. Most of the time, though, they're not comas in the medical sense; they just make you feel kind of sleepy while the force shield enters this special mode that makes your body heal itself really fast. This time was different; in an effort to get me healed as quickly as possible, Wizzit knocked me out but good. I have no memory of anything that happened from the time he said that until my eyes snapped open and I saw Toby looking down at me. A glance at the clock told me I had been out for about ten minutes.

"Battle's over, huh?" I asked him, disappointed.

"Yeah. There wasn't much to it. Trina was near the kitty-cat's back end, so she decided to shoot it in, let's say, a sensitive area. It threw the rider and ran off howling. Wizzit said to let it go; he said it was just a local mountain leopard and that the growth ray they used on it would wear off soon. So, the rest of us ran up and started pounding on the monster. He vaporized after only a few minutes." He chuckled. "It wasn't one of Enclave's better efforts. Feel up to a debrief with the Commander?"

"Sure." He needn't have asked; we both knew that my leg was healed up perfectly. The only side effects were a bit of grogginess from the extra-deep healing coma and a feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach; healing comas tend to make one hungry. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen and joined the others in the Commander's office.

We watched a replay of the entire battle. Mike narrated, having been the team leader for this particular outing. Toby was right; there wasn't much to it. Everyone winced when I got hit, and we all laughed when Trina singed the kitty's butt. At the end, the Commander asked for comments. There were none, so he dismissed us and that was that.

I touched Trina's arm as we got into the hallway. "I, uh, didn't realize I was the worst shot on the team," I said.

She shrugged. "Well, you are. You're the best fighter, except for maybe Shelley, but you're the worst shooter."

"So, how do I get better?"

She gave me an isn't it obvious? look. "You practice," she said. I must have made an exasperated sound, because she added, "Seriously, Trevor, that's what you need to do. I have shown you the basics -- how to aim, how to shoot. You just need to do it more. Try taking a hundred shots a day at the target range. It doesn't take all that long, and of course we don't need to worry about ammunition. You'll be surprised at how quickly you improve."

"A hundred shots a day? Really?"

"Yes. I've seen you take two hundred kicks at the large bag. This is no different. Personally, I take twenty-five hundred shots a week."

"Wow, I didn't realize." I let out my breath. "Okay, I'll try that. Thanks."

I started to move away, but she caught my arm. "Um, Trevor, perhaps you can help me with something." She hesitated, and I waited for her to go on. "I . . . would like to learn to break a board with my hand. Do you think you could you teach me to do that?"

I looked at her in surprise. I wouldn't say that Trina's bad at the hand-to-hand stuff, but it's not exactly her specialty. We expect her to be able to snipe at Enclave's monsters from fifty yards away, not pound on them close-up, and her ability to shoot that triple blaster of hers has saved our butts time and again.

Too, her martial arts training is in aikido, which emphasizes holds and throws, not punches and kicks. It's not so good for beating up monsters, but there's nobody better at persuading an uncooperative civilian to leave the scene of a battle. Well, except for maybe Shelley. At any rate, her wanting to learn to break a board seemed completely out of character.

"I made a stupid bet with Mike," she said in response to my look. "He was . . . 'on my case' about how well I fight." Yeah, I really could hear the invisible quote marks she put around the unfamiliar American idiom. I nodded to encourage her to go on (and, incidentally, to indicate that she had indeed used the phrase properly). She made a face and went on, "He got me so mad that when he bet me dinner that I couldn't break a board with my hand, I took him up on it without thinking. So now I'm stuck."

I grinned. I could see Mike doing just that -- goading Trina into a dinner date. He fancies himself a ladies' man, and while I wouldn't come right out and say that Trina is the prettiest of our three lady Primes -- Padma would certainly be a contender for that title, and Shelley's not bad-looking either \-- she is far and away the, uh, the curviest. Yup, Trina had a pretty nice figure to her.

"You've come to the right guy," I told her. "Sure, I can teach you. When do you have to do it?"

"A month from yesterday."

"Good. I'm on vacation starting tomorrow when Shelley gets back, but I can start training you next week. I'll try to remember to bring some boards from home."

"It's not that hard, is it?" she asked uncertainly. "I mean, you just . . ." She made her hand flat and stiff and chopped it straight downward. "Like that?"

"Um, you could try it that way," I said, wincing at the thought, "but you'd be just as likely to break your hand with the board as the other way around." It took a second for what I had said to sink in, kind of like the way it takes me a while to get the puns Nicolai makes in German. She smiled after a moment, and I went on, "Don't worry, though. It's just a matter of learning the right technique. I broke my first board at my black belt test when I was ten. It hurt, but I didn't break my hand or anything, and the swelling went down after an hour or so."

She nodded, wincing and rubbing her right hand with her left. She looked a little worried, and I thought I knew what was going through her mind. Trina's an artist, you see, and the thought of breaking her drawing hand would not be appealing.

"Hey, I'm a piano player, remember?" I said, wiggling my fingers. "I break maybe ten or fifteen boards a year for demonstrations, and believe me, my mom wouldn't let me do anything that would damage these babies. If you do it the way I tell you to, you should be fine."

She nodded again, looking relieved. "Thanks, Trevor."

Shelley arrived the following evening. She had taken two weeks off, which was a little unusual. Normally we each get one week off out of every seven. Since Shelley almost never takes time off except for the occasional afternoon and evening with her folks, though, no one complained. I think we all figured that she had earned it.

And you know, I think it was good for her to get away. I worry about Shelley at times. She has been doing the Prime thing for over fifteen years now -- she was the original Prime Violet, in fact -- and I think it occasionally gets her down. But today she seemed happier and more enthusiastic about, well, everything than I had seen her for a long time. Wherever it was she went, it's my opinion that she should go there more often.

Regardless, I was all packed, and after I had chatted with her and the others for ten or fifteen minutes, Wizzit teleported me to an empty field just outside my home town. I slung my pack over my shoulder and began walking towards my parents' house.

Chapter 2

"Hey, Trevor, wait up!"

I turned and slowed down to let my sister Angela catch up to me. "Come on, Pokey Joe!" I told her with a grin. "I don't want to be late for practice."

"We're not going to be late! And besides, Grandmaster Park won't care if we are. He won't even show up until later."

"Well, I'll care. It's been a long time since I've been to the studio." She had caught up to me by now. I turned and began walking alongside of her. "And if you're a good girl," I went on, "I'll even let you run the practice."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Trevor, I've been running practices for years. The thrill has kind of worn off by now. And besides, you might not get a say in it. Master Wilson has been doing the Monday night practices for the past couple of weeks. He'll probably be there tonight."

I nodded. That would actually be a good thing, I thought.

I mean, it's pretty neat to walk into Grandmaster Park's Tae Kwon Do studio and be the highest-ranking belt there. Everyone has to stop what they're doing, and whoever the current leader is comes over to welcome you and shake your hand. Master Wilson outranked me, though; he was a fifth Dan, whereas I was only a fourth. If he were there, then there would be no special greeting, and I'd actually have to stop at the doorway and ask his permission to enter the studio.

So why wouldn't that bother me? Simple. I didn't want the responsibility of leading the practice, which is why I was more than willing to let Angie do it. No, I'm not lazy; I just had been away from regular Tae Kwon Do training for the past three years, ever since I became a Prime. I go to every session I can when I'm home, but even so, I always worry that I might be getting a bit rusty. Not at the fighting, naturally, because I do that all the time, but at leading a practice. The people I deal with on a regular basis are all expert fighters, not the yellow or green belts that I'd be seeing today. So no, it wouldn't bother me one bit to be second- or even third-in-command tonight.

I was still eager to get there, though. When I had gotten home, my dad told me that Grandmaster Park wanted to talk with me. I figured that could mean only one thing -- that he thought I was ready to take my fifth Dan test.

That would be plenty cool. If I passed (and I had little doubt that I would) then I wouldn't be Mister Chiao at the studio any more, I would be Master Chiao. I'd get to wear whatever uniform I liked, even all black if I wanted, and when I entered, everyone would have to turn to face me instead of simply facing front. Lots of neat little perks like that.

So I was pretty eager get to practice, even though I knew Grandmaster Park wouldn't be there for a while. He usually lets the lower-ranked belts lead the first part of practice, the routine part, and generally shows up for the second half.

I could see the studio up ahead now. The lights were on, which meant that one of the black belts with a key had gotten there ahead of us. I speeded up, ignoring Angie's protests.

All of a sudden I heard a weird noise, sort of like a whooshing sound. Now, my parents live in Ohio, where the weather can change every five minutes if it feels like it, so having a wind spring up suddenly wouldn't be unusual, except this sound was like no wind I had ever heard. I turned, and behind me I saw a creature that was eight feet tall at least, slender to the point of emaciation, and armored all over, from head to foot. Surrounding it was a crowd of things that only vaguely resembled people, like someone's bad clay sculpture of a human form. Enclave calls them drones, but I knew them as Zoinks.

Angie turned to look at me. "Trevor, what are those things?"

I stepped forward so that I was between her and the Zoinks. "Get out of here, Angie," I said, assuming a riding-horse stance. I jerked my head in the direction of the studio. "Run on inside; you'll probably be safe in there. Safer, anyway."

Her eyes suddenly grew wide. "I know what they are! They're those things the Primes fight . . . what are they called . . .?"

"Angie, get out of here!" I said grimly. "I mean it!"

"No way, big brother!" She assumed a back stance and grinned at me. "If you're going to stay here and fight them, then so am I! This is going to be fun!" My sister has a weird idea of fun.

"I'm not going to fight them just for the fun of it," I told her. "I'm just going to cover your butt. As soon as I see you're safe inside the studio, I'm going to turn tail and run myself. Now scoot!"

Fortunately for me, Angie never got the chance to "scoot." The Zoinks shambled around to cut off our retreat. The tall figure raised a skeletal hand and pointed straight at me. "Treeeeevor," it said in a voice that belonged in some spooky ghost story. "Treeeeevor, I have cooooome for yoooooou!"

Plenty creepy, let me tell you! I clenched my fists and stood my ground, though. I would have liked to launch a full-scale attack on this thing, just to stop it from pointing at me in the weird way, but I didn't. I guess the don't-attack-unless-Wizzit-says-it's-okay response had been drummed into me too well. This guy hadn't proved he was hostile yet; so far, his only real fault was that he gave me the willies.

Angela, bless her heart, was less spooked by this thing than I was. That's my baby sister, afraid of nothing. "His name isn't Trevor, you stupid monster!" she shouted. "It's Messerschmidt. Jehoshaphat Aloysius Messerschmidt. You've got the wrong guy!"

You know, I hate to say that something as stupid as that worked, but it did. Mr. Creepy-pants drew back his long, bony arm, stared at us for a second, and then vanished, taking the Zoinks with him. Puzzled, I turned to Angela. "That was . . . random."

"Yeah, tell me about it!" She blew a stray lock of hair away from her face. "Why would a monster like that come after you, anyway? He even knew your name."

"No idea," I said with a shrug. That was a lie. Actually, I had a sinking feeling that I knew the answer: somehow, Enclave had discovered my secret identity. But now was not the time to deal with it. "Come on," I said. "We'd better get inside."

"Sure thing," she agreed, adding, "You're welcome, by the way."

I followed Angela to the studio, hoping she wouldn't start asking me all kinds of uncomfortable questions about the monster. She didn't, which surprised me. She has always been the inquisitive type. Whenever I come home on break, she always peppers me with questions about the Tae Kwon Do demonstration team I'm supposedly on. She really keeps me on my toes; I always have to bone up on the latest doings in the international TKD community before I visit.

That's my cover story, by the way. I'm not supposed to tell people that I'm a Prime. I mean, that's just common sense, isn't it? There are plenty of governments that would love to get their hands on the alien tech that Wizzit provides us with. Plenty of individuals, too, I guess.

So I tell people instead that I travel around the world with a team attending Tae Kwon Do competitions. The parents don't like it -- they think I should be in college instead of bumming around the world (and they would be right, if it were all true) -- but as long as I check in regularly and seem healthy and happy when I visit, they don't say much. Sure, I'd like to tell them what I really do. Everyone wants their folks to be proud of them, but hey, what can you do?

In fact, what to tell your family is a tricky business for most of us Primes. Well, okay, not for Toby or Mike. They're both older, in their mid-twenties, and never kept in close touch with their respective families, anyway. Knowing what I know about Mike's past, his family is probably thrilled that he's (supposedly) a roadie with a rock band and not bleeding his guts out in a gutter somewhere.

And I suppose that Shelley's kind of a special case. Her dad is Prime Commander, and she's been doing this stuff since she was thirteen (Yeah, I know. Youngest Prime ever!) so of course her mom knows, too. Their family even invites the lot of us out to their ranch in Montana for barbecues and such during the summer. I've met her sister Francesca, who is Angie's age. Nice kid. Don't know whether she has a clue about us, though.

As for the rest of us, I think Nicolai and Padma have it the best. As our main tech guy, Nicolai does a lot of work with math, in an area he calls number theory. He's even published a few papers and gives occasional guest lectures, so it's not hard for him to convince people that he's doing research for some hush-hush scientific organization. Padma's story is similar, that she's doing math research before she goes to university, and her family buys it so far.

And then there's poor Trina. I get the impression that her parents strongly disapprove of her "chosen lifestyle". She's supposedly scratching out a living as an artist and model in some Russian city whose name I can't spell, and I guess her parents are worried sick because they're convinced that she's on drugs or starving to death and sleeping around with whoever's willing to give her bed and board. I feel bad for her, especially around the holidays; from what I hear, Christmases at the Balakleets household tend to be a bit strained.

Regardless, as Angie and I approached the studio, I could look through the windows and see the black belt who seemed to be running things. It was a skinny kid with glasses, about twelve -- Jason, I think I remembered his name was. I didn't know him all that well -- he had joined after I had entered the Primes -- but he seemed like a nice enough kid. And he was a full-fledged black belt, too. Grandmaster Park doesn't believe in "junior" black belts. He's old school; as far as he is concerned, if you're a black belt, then you're a black belt, and that's that.

Angela opened the door and stood there waiting while Jason called everyone to attention and solemnly came to greet her, and then I stood in the doorway while she called everyone to attention and greeted me. It's a little joke that we do whenever I come home to visit. I think it's funny, at least, and the others seem to think it's cute as long as we don't do it every time.

Angie told Jason to continue running the practice while she and I warmed up. I caught a few glances and whispers of the "who's that guy?" variety from some of the lower-ranked belts, and I grinned. It's fun to be the Mysterious, Important Stranger sometimes.

Master Wilson never showed, but Grandmaster Park did, about ninety minutes into the practice. He had Angie and me do a free-fighting demo, which was impressive because she's as good as I was when I was her age. (Of course, I had to be a little careful there, because I fight dirty when I'm fighting Zoinks, which would not go over well at the studio.) He gave his little talk like he always did, we meditated for a while, and then practice was over.

"Come with me," he told me. I followed him into his office. He sat down at his desk and indicated that I should sit down. A few students were still hanging around out in the main room, so he switched to Korean, which I understood nearly as well as English. "Trevor," he said, "I want to talk with you about your training."

"Er, my training, sir?"

"Yes. Your parents worry that you spend all your time doing Tae Kwon Do instead of going to college."

I didn't say anything. What was there to say? I already knew they disapproved of what I had told them I was doing with my time, and I couldn't really blame them.

Grandmaster Park folded his hands. "Trevor, I know you want to be high-ranking; I know you want to be a Tae Kwon Do master. On the one hand, I am pleased that you are devoting your life to your art. I can tell that you have been training very hard. On the other hand, your parents have been my good friends for many years, and I know they are unhappy. So, I have decided that I will not raise you to fifth Dan until you have quit this team that you are on and have enrolled in a college somewhere."

He raised a finger before I could say anything. "Do not be angry with your parents," he admonished me. "I have not spoken with them on this matter, and I do not wish you to, either. This is my decision, not theirs. If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with me." Then he crossed his arms and waited for me to erupt.

I didn't. There wouldn't be any point in getting mad. As far as he knew, he was doing the right thing, and I knew I couldn't persuade him otherwise, not without telling him stuff that I couldn't tell him. So, I got to my feet, bowed respectfully, and left the room without saying a word.

Angela was waiting for me outside the grandmaster's office. "Wow, that was harsh," she commented sympathetically as I grabbed my gym bag and began putting my shoes and socks on. I looked at her with surprise. She talks like such a typical Midwestern teenage girl that it's easy to forget that my sister can speak Korean (and Mandarin and Cantonese) as well as I can. It comes from having Chinese-born parents, I suppose, and a father who happens to be both an expert in Asian languages and an avid teacher.

I shrugged. "He means well, and he does have a point. I know Mom and Dad aren't thrilled with what I'm doing, and I don't think there's anything I can do to change their minds."

"You could . . . quit your team and go to college?" She kind of grinned and ducked her head when she said that, the way girls do when they know they're saying something you won't like to hear.

Even Angie was ganging up on me, huh? That stung, but I hid my feelings behind a serene smile. "Come on, little sis, let's go home. It's getting late."

We hadn't gone more than fifty yards from the studio when I began to hear that same whooshing sound we had heard before. Enclave wasn't giving up on me, it appeared. My Prime Indigo belt was in my room at home, but even if I were wearing it, I couldn't activate my force shield, not with Angie watching. It looked as though I would have to face down whatever monster they sent without any special powers.

I started to say a very bad word, but then I stopped myself. Gotta set a good example for the younger sib, after all. Except that Angie said the exact same very bad word when she realized what was happening.

I didn't have time to be shocked at hearing such foulness issue from my baby sister's lips, because the Zoinks showed up right about then. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and they surrounded us before we had any chance to escape. And then I noticed two figures that stood out from the rest.

I knew one of the figures a whole lot better than I would have liked. He was a little guy, and I mean really little -- like, just a couple of feet tall. He had once been as human as me, but now, after Enclave had genetically altered him, he resembled nothing so much as a skeletally-thin scarlet hedgehog. I didn't know his real name, but Mike had nicknamed him JB Swift.

The second figure, whom I wished I knew a whole lot better than I did, towered over JB Swift, although she was only five-one, maybe five-two tops. She was . . . a puzzle.

As far as I have been able to determine, she had been born Li Lin-fa about twenty-one years ago in a little fishing village in eastern China. About six years ago, she had been sold to Enclave to repay some family debts, and JB Swift had somehow managed to impose two entirely new personalities on her: Lily Lee, who acted as a minder, a sort-of babysitter to Enclave monsters too stupid to do their jobs properly; and Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick (that's what I call her, anyway), who acted as JB Swift's personal enforcer and who could probably best any of us Primes except Shelley or me in a straight-up, one-on-one fight. Somehow, JB Swift was able to switch her from one personality to another using a remote control he carried.

Right now, she seemed to be simply watching everything passively, her face completely devoid of expression, which told me that she was currently in CKFZC mode. I muttered a different very bad word under my breath. Angie looked at me in surprise. "Do you know these guys?" she asked, so softly that only I could have heard her.

I ignored her question, putting my energy instead into struggling against the Zoinks who were grabbing at my arms. It was mostly for show; I was not about to escalate this into a real fight. Even unpowered, I could have handled, well, most of the Zoinks here on my own, but I had Angie to think of. I absolutely could not put her in any kind of danger.

Sure, she's a third-degree black belt and all, and she can handle herself pretty well, but I didn't know how good she'd be in a real knock-down, drag-out. When you free-fight against a fellow student, you have to pull your punches a lot, and you're always careful not to actually hurt anybody. Zoinks don't care about scoring points and pulling punches, though; the only way I had discovered to win against a Zoink was to pound it until it couldn't get up again, and I was not about to see Angie get beaten up just because she hadn't learned that yet. And if Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick decided to enter the fight, we were just toast.

So, I let the Zoinks man-handle (or Zoink-handle) me while I struggled futilely against them. Beside me, Angie wasn't being a whole lot more effective. Once we were secured, JB Swift stepped forward. I half-expected him to say something trite like, "Well, well, well, who do we have here?" but he didn't. He just looked me over, glanced at Angie, and then signaled for the Zoinks to bring us along.

"H-hey, let us go!" I protested, just to make it look good. "Who are you, anyway? What do you want with us?"

He turned to look at me again, and I heard his deep, pleasant-sounding chuckle. For such a little guy, he certainly had a big voice. "I think you know who I am," he said, sounding pleased with himself, "just as I know who you are: the indigo Prime!"

My heart sank. He knew! Still, I felt I had to play dumb for Angie's sake. "You're nuts! I'm not Prime . . . whatever-you-said. And even if I were, why are you grabbing her, too? If you've got a beef with me, fine, let's settle it, but leave my sister out of this!"

JB Swift burst out laughing. "Your sister? How stupid do you think I am? She's no more your sister than I am!"

"Uh, yeah, I kind of am," Angie put in, sounding more annoyed than scared. "His sister, I mean. Not a big thrill for me, but there's not much I can do about it."

JB Swift laughed even harder. "Well, maybe you are his sister at that," he conceded, "but if he is the indigo Prime, then that almost certainly makes you . . . the purple Prime!"

Chapter 3

I don't know who was more surprised to hear him say that -- me or Angela. Angie, of course, had no clue as to what any of this was about. I, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was talking about, but what he said made no sense.

Okay, in case you're new here: A couple of months ago, Padma was captured by Enclave, and I jumped through a teleport trap to go try to save her. I went to a lot of trouble to rescue her from their clutches and get her safely home, almost getting myself killed in the process. Given that, they would naturally conclude that Primes Indigo and Violet were joined at the hips. Er, hip. Or something like that. At any rate, they would assume that any girl hanging around Prime Indigo would most likely be Prime Violet. That much I understood.

And, as I thought about it, yeah, I guess Padma and Angela superficially resembled each other. They were both athletic teenage girls, both about average height (for girls), and they probably weighed within twenty pounds of each other. Cover them with an obscuring violet force shield, and maybe you couldn't tell them apart.

But the thing was, after Enclave had captured Padma, they had quickly conned her into powering down the force shield that blurred her features, and then they had stripped every stitch of clothing off her. Enclave knew what Prime Violet looked like! They had been able to see every square inch of her Indian-dark skin, and she looked nothing like my very Chinese younger sister.

So now I was the one who burst out laughing, and it was only partly for show. "You really are nuts, little red hedgehog dude," I said when I could speak. "There's no way my sister could be a Prime."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Angie cut in indignantly. "I could too be a Prime. I'm good enough!"

"Angie, you're a high school senior. You're taking five AP classes, you're in marching band and chorus, and you're on, what, the tennis team or something? With all that and Tae Kwon Do, you don't have time to be a Prime."

"Well, okay, maybe not," she agreed reluctantly. "But I could be one if I wanted to."

JB Swift obviously didn't care about our sibling back-and-forth, and he didn't seem too happy at the way I had laughed at him. He curtly motioned for the Zoinks to drag Angie and me forward. Lily followed us passively. I wondered whether we were going to be yanked and shoved all the way to Enclave headquarters, but he stopped after about fifty yards. "All right," he said to the empty air. "Pull us in." And just like that, we were teleported to an Enclave base.

As I mentioned, I had been through an Enclave teleport trap before, and of course Wizzit teleports us to places all the time, so I knew what to expect. I also knew it could be disorienting for the inexperienced, though, so I carefully watched Angela and tried to stumble around about as much as she did when we arrived, just to keep up appearances.

When I had jumped through the teleport trap to save Padma, I had materialized in a large room, about the size of my high school's gymnasium. The room we were in now, though, was a bit smaller, roughly as big as, oh, my parents' basement. JB Swift rushed over to a wall display as soon as we arrived. "Bring up the pictures we took of the purple Prime," he snapped into a microphone.

There was a pause. Presumably, the person (or monster or alien or whatever) on the other end was giving him some sort of reply. After a moment, he spoke again: "Then get me the authorization!" Another pause. "Because I believe I have brought her in with the indigo Prime, and I want to confirm."

He waited for a reply, growing more impatient with every passing second. He turned away from the display, paced for a bit, and then he muttered, half to himself, "Idiots! This will take forever." He raised his voice slightly. "Lily, front and center." Lily pushed her way through the Zoinks to stand meekly in front of the scarlet hedgehog. He said, "Lily, self-report."

Lily clasped her hands behind her back and said in a monotone, "I am uninjured. I am not ill. I do not need to perform any bodily eliminations. I have been awake for twenty-one hours, forty-two minutes. I last ate ten hours, thirty-four minutes ago. I last drank one hour, thirteen minutes ago. Overall status: I am hungry and very tired. I should eat and sleep soon to maintain optimum functionality."

Angie turned to look at me, a horrified expression on her face. "Is she a robot?" she mouthed at me.

I shrugged. Wizzit had always insisted that she was one hundred percent human female. From my own experience, Li Lin-fa was lovely and sweet-natured and felt as warm and soft as any woman, and she kissed like no robot I had ever met. Even Lily Lee, for all the trouble she was causing us as a minder, behaved as if she were a real person. Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick seemed to have no emotions or personality whatsoever.

JB Swift's face softened, losing some of its impatience. "These idiots have been making me work you too hard," he said, with what sounded suspiciously like fatherly concern. "After I have dealt with these two, we'll get you a quick bite to eat, and then I'll put you to bed." Lily, her face as impassive as a stone wall, might not even have heard him.

His answer came a few minutes later, although it looked like it wasn't the answer he wanted. He listened, rolled his eyes, and then, with a great show of self-restraint, he said patiently into the microphone, "Then can you please have someone who does have clearance take a look at this girl we've brought in and see whether she's the purple Prime? . . . . Fine, I'll wait!"

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, an oddly human gesture for someone who looked like a two-foot scarlet hedgehog. "Rough day at the office, huh?" I said, feeling an odd sort of sympathy for him.

"You don't know the half of it," he replied wearily. "Damn the bureaucracy of this place!" A few more minutes passed, and then he looked up at the screen suddenly. "You're sure? It's definitely not her? . . . . Yes, I understand." Turning to Angie, he said, "I guess you're not the purple Prime after all." He waved resignedly at the Zoinks. "Take them into the other room."

"Hey, wait!" I said. "Why don't you just let her go, since she's not the one you're looking for?"

"Because I don't want to!" he snapped, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.

The "other room" turned out to be maybe twice as big as the one we had been in. It had about twenty or thirty guys in it, sitting or standing around in small groups. They turned to look at us as we were shoved inside, and I swear, every single one of them waved at me and said, "Hi, Trevor!"

Chapter 4

I looked at Angie; she seemed at confused as I was. "Excuse me," I said to the group at large. "Do I know any of you?"

One of the guys came over to us. He looked like he was maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, shaven-headed with a goatee. "My name's Trevor Baxter," he said. He pointed to the person closest to us, a muscular black guy. "That's Trevor Smith. Next to him is Trevor Miller and then there's Trevor . . . Johnson, is it?" The teenage kid he indicated nodded vigorously. "Maybe you get the idea."

"Yeah, I think so," I said, feeling a little dazed. "I'm Trevor Chiao."

"You mean, everybody here is named Trevor?" Angela asked incredulously.

Baxter's eyes narrowed as he caught sight of my sister. (Yeah, I'm going to call this guy Baxter. I don't normally go around calling people by their last names, but I'm the only Trevor in this story, and you'll just have to deal with it.) He turned to me, putting his back towards Angie. "Uh, how well do you know this gal?" he asked me quietly.

"Pretty well," I replied with a touch of surprise. "Why?"

"You didn't just meet her on the way in here?"

I shook my head, puzzled. "No, I --" And then I stopped, because I suddenly understood what he was getting at. He was confusing her with Lily Lee. Now, I could easily tell that Lily and Angie looked nothing alike, aside from the long, black hair, tan skin, high cheekbones, and Asian eyes, but I had seen them both before. If he had merely caught a glimpse of some Chinese chick hanging around with JB Swift, I could see why he would be suspicious of her. Or heck, maybe he thought that Enclave recruited lots of young, pretty female Asian bodyguards.

I looked around the room. Most of the guys there, in fact, were giving Angela suspicious looks, and I could see she was starting to get nervous. "She's all right," I tried to assure the room at large. "Believe me, she's definitely not one of the bad guys. I'd stake my life on it."

A lot of the guys seemed to relax after I said that. Baxter thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, if you say so. Not that we have any particular reason to trust you, either, but I suppose we have to start somewhere." He turned to Angie with an engaging smile. "Sorry, darlin', but you can't be too careful. To answer your question, yes, everybody here is named Trevor. Everybody but you, that is," he added with a grin, "unless your name happens to be Trevor, too."

That made her laugh. "No, I'm Angela. Angie."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Angie," he said, reaching out to shake her hand.

I said, "So, how long have you guys been stuck here?"

He turned away from Angie with a show of reluctance. "I guess I've been here the longest -- about four or five hours." He grimaced. "They've been bringing guys in pretty regularly since then, and every damn one of them has been named Trevor. We've been trying to figure out why. I get the impression these jokers think that one of us is a Prime. You know, those guys that go around fighting all these monsters that keep popping up all over the place?"

I grinned. "Yeah, they said something like that to me, too. And the little red guy even thought that Angie was a Prime. Crazy, huh?"

Things were starting to make a bit more sense now, and all of a sudden I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Enclave knew that Prime Indigo's first name was Trevor, thanks to Padma's yelling it out that one time in Vietnam, and we knew they knew that, because that was how they had conned Padma into powering down her force shield. But they obviously didn't know that I was Prime Indigo. They were just rounding up every guy named Trevor that they could find.

But there was still something that didn't make sense. Trevor was not that uncommon a name. Even if they limited themselves to youngish guys about my height who were in fairly good shape -- and from what I could see of this group, that was exactly what they had done -- I would think there ought to be more than twenty or thirty of us in the world. I was missing something somewhere.

"Interesting outfit you got on there," Baxter commented. "Do you do martial arts?"

I looked down at myself. I was still in my studio uniform: loose white pants and a white jacket with black cross-hatches, tied shut, of course, with my black belt. "Yeah," I admitted, "I do Tae Kwon Do." Then, since not everyone is familiar with it, I added, "It's sometimes called Korean karate."

He nodded. "I know what it is. Fact is, I do Tae Kwon Do myself. What rank are you?"

"Uh, fourth Dan."

That sent his eyebrows arching upward. "Really! That's interesting; I'm a fourth Dan, too." We stared at each other in surprise. "I wonder," Baxter said slowly, "how many of the other guys here are fourth-degree Tae Kwon Do black belts."

I barely heard him. I was thinking back to the last time I had been in an Enclave base, trying to rescue Padma. She had attacked me when I first came upon her; Enclave had told her I was dead, and she thought I was an impostor. To calm her down and prove who I was, I had told her . . . what, exactly? "Fourth Dan, Kukkiwon, and all that." Something along those lines.

Had the room where I found Padma been bugged? It was certainly possible. If so, then I myself had told Enclave that Prime Indigo was a fourth-degree black belt certified by Kukkiwon, the Tae Kwon Do international governing body. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And what else had I told them? Nothing, I hoped. I couldn't remember for sure.

"So, is every single one of you guys a black belt?" Angie's voice pulled me from my reverie. Looking up, I saw that she had somehow managed to win over every guy in the room. Someone had pulled a stool over for her, and she was sitting on it in the middle of a crowd of Trevors, every one of whom was paying her rapt attention.

She had always had a talent for making friends, even back in high school when I was a senior and she was a freshman. Miles more popular than I ever was. The truth is, it always made me a little jealous.

"Well, I'm a fourth-degree black belt!" one of them boasted. That was followed by a chorus of "me, too"'s. Every single one of them was, it appeared.

Well, all except for one guy in the back. He was taller and slenderer than most of the others, while still remaining close to the Trevor parameters, with dark wavy hair and dark eyes. He looked a bit like the hero of one of those vampire movies that girls are always swooning over. He smiled shyly and said, "I passed my fifth Dan test just last week."

"Your girlfriend is pretty cute," Baxter said to me as Vampire Trevor -- excuse me, Master Vampire Trevor -- received congratulations all around. "You probably want to keep an eye on her; one of these guys might take it into his head to steal her away from you. And that guy might just be me."

"No worries there," I replied with a chuckle. "She's actually my sister, not my girlfriend." Raising my voice, I added for the benefit of the group at large, "And she's underage. Only seventeen. Sorry, guys."

I heard a few groans, but not many. Angie stuck her tongue out at me, and then, with a flip of her hair, she turned back to her circle of admirers, clearly enjoying herself. Hmph. So much for fulfilling my big-brotherly duties.

After half an hour or so had passed, the door opened, and JB Swift entered with what looked like a couple dozen Zoinks at his back. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you," he announced as all talking gradually ceased and all eyes turned toward him. The level of tension in the room increased ten-fold.

"Be careful with this guy," Baxter muttered to me. "He doesn't look like much, but man, can he move! He can run across this room and back before you can blink."

Yeah, that was one of the things I remembered about JB Swift. He was one of Enclave's successful experiments with speed. Put a metal pipe in his hands, and he could bang up your knees something awful before you ever knew what hit you. It was possible to beat him -- I had done it once, in fact -- but it was hard. You had to know exactly what you were doing, you had to time it just right, and you needed a bit of luck, too.

"According to our research, one of you gentlemen here must be the indigo Prime," JB Swift was saying, "but it's not obvious which one. To be frank, we were hoping that he would be carrying a certain device that gives him his powers, but such was not the case. The people who employ me have decided that it's too much trouble to try to guess, so we will simply kill one of you every fifteen minutes until the indigo Prime gives himself up to us."

There was a long, uneasy silence. I saw a lot of hands clench themselves into fists. Finally, someone asked, "Uh, dude, what if the first guy you kill is this Prime guy? Where does that leave the rest of us?"

JB Swift's smile was deadly. "In a whole world of trouble, I would assume," he said. He made a beckoning motion, and the crowd of Zoinks behind him began pouring into the room. Lily, I noted with relief, was nowhere in sight. "But I agree, that would be most inconvenient. So, just to make sure that doesn't happen, I have decided to start with . . . her." And he pointed a finger directly at my sister Angela.

Now, up to this point, I had hoped to bluff my way out of this mess by pretending to be just some dumb guy who had accidentally been caught up in their sweep. I couldn't let them hurt Angela, though, no matter what. And hey, there really wasn't much point in hiding the fact that I'm an expert martial artist, and a pretty damn kickass one, if I do say so myself. That's no secret. So I launched myself at the gaggle of Zoinks.

And so did every other guy in the room.

Chapter 5

To this day, I'm not entirely sure what JB Swift was thinking. I mean, here he's got himself a room full of young, husky guys, all of whom have trained in martial arts for years -- not a group of folks you want to piss off, right? And let's face it, no one likes to be kidnapped and held in a room for hours. He had to know we were spoiling for a fight.

So what does he do? He sends in his goons to attack the prettiest, most popular gal in the room. Well, okay, I'll grant that Angela was the only gal in the room, but you get what I mean. In the short time she had been there, she had made herself a lot of friends and would-be protectors. That's just the way she is.

And protect her they would. Everybody is different, of course, but most of the advanced martial artists I've met, myself included, kind of buy into the idea of some sort of code of honor -- using one's skills to defend the weak and helpless, stuff like that. Now, Angie would kill me if I ever implied she was weak or helpless, but . . . seriously, what did JB Swift think was going to happen?

Regardless, our initial rush was not a complete success; we did a lot of tripping over each other. The Zoinks were still all bunched up at this point, though, so we did manage to knock most of them down. Unfortunately, one of them managed to get past us, and it made straight for Angie.

She slipped down off her stool and then kicked it at the Zoink to buy herself some time. By the time it had untangled itself, she was in a fighting stance and looked ready to kick some Zoink butt. Satisfied that she was safe enough for the moment, I turned my attention to the drone in front of me. It was a poor specimen of a Zoink, hardly worth my trouble at all, and I quickly disposed of it. It was a good thing, too, because when I next glanced around at Angie, I saw that her Zoink had her pinned up against a wall.

I don't think I have ever moved so fast, force shield or no. In a flash, I was across the room and aiming a jumping backwheel kick to the side of the thing's head. Not something I've ever done to a person -- you can crack someone's skull open that way, and I've never been in that desperate a fight against a human -- but this was just a Zoink, and I'm not even sure whether those things are really alive. My heel connected hard, and the thing dropped like a stone.

"Th-thanks, big brother," Angie gasped out. She looked more than a little shaken. "It . . . just wouldn't back off."

"This isn't a free-fighting match," I warned her. "Don't pull your punches; you've got to hit these things as hard as you can, like you're trying to break a board or a brick." And by way of demonstration, I picked up her stool and began bashing a Zoink that was coming too close. The wood splintered and broke after only half a dozen hits or so, so I grabbed one of the stool's legs and started pounding on the face of the next Zoink that came along.

Looking around, I saw there was a fairly even mix of Zoinks and Trevors. A few of the guys seemed to be having some trouble, but most of them were handling themselves just fine. A well-trained human ought to be more than a match for a single Zoink; we seemed to be slowly gaining the upper hand. I moved to help some of the guys who seemed like they needed it the most.

That was when I began hearing howls of pain from all around me. Zoinks don't talk, so they had to be coming from the other Trevors. And then I figured out what was happening . . . at pretty much the same time that something hard blasted my left knee. JB Swift had gotten hold of one of those damn pipes of his and was dashing around knee-capping everybody he could get to.

Throwing down the Zoink I was beating on at the time, I limped over to a wall and put my back against it, trying to spot the flash of his speeding form. It wasn't easy. I finally located him by following the yells. He stopped for an instant, looked around, and spotted Angie. She was side-kicking a Zoink in the chest, and I heard her ki-up, the particular yell she makes when she's fighting especially hard. The Zoink fell backward from the force of the impact. Good for her, I thought.

JB Swift's face took on an evil-looking grin. Suddenly I realized he was going to go for her next, and I had a feeling he wasn't just going to settle for her knees. I placed my foot against an overturned chair, and when I saw him jerk into motion, I shoved it as hard as I could right into his path, hoping I had timed it right.

See, one of the reasons that Enclave gave up on trying to give their monsters super-speed is that their reflexes just can't keep up. JB Swift might have been able to dash across the length of the room in the blink of an eye, but his reaction time was only a bit faster than mine. Put something in his way, like, say, an overturned chair, and he won't have time to adjust; he'll just splat into it face-first. Which is exactly what happened.

I'll say this for the little bastard -- he was plenty tough. I think everyone in the room felt the flying splinters and heard the kapow! of the impact. It would probably have killed an ordinary human. As it was, it knocked JB Swift cold, although I didn't see any blood amid the wreckage of the chair, and I'm pretty sure I saw him breathing.

With JB Swift disposed of, most of the Zoink resistance faltered almost right away; Zoinks don't do well without a leader. Time to get out of here, I thought. The little scarlet hedgehog would eventually recover, and Zoinks never really gave up. They just took longer and longer to get up after a beating. Even as a Prime, with my force shield at full strength, I have only rarely been able to pound a Zoink so thoroughly that it didn't eventually come back for more.

"Guys!" I shouted. "Into the other room!" I hauled a Zoink off of Master Vampire Trevor. He looked more than a little worse for wear -- Vampire Trevor, I mean, not the Zoink. I gave him a hand up and a shove toward the door, and then I began methodically attacking any Zoink that seemed to have the upper hand on anyone, all the time shouting for everyone to move to the other room.

In short order, all of us had piled into the room we had originally been teleported into, me coming through last of all, dragging a chair and pushing Angie ahead of me. I slammed the door behind me and jammed the chair under the handle to make sure it stayed closed.

I turned to face the others, and Baxter said, "Okay, smart guy, we're in the other room. Why did you want us in here?"

I was a little surprised by his question, because the answer seemed so obvious to me. "Uh, for one thing," I began, "we've now got a door between us and them."

"Which they'll break down before too long."

"Well, yeah, but this is also where they brought us in, so there's probably a . . . whatchamacallit . . . a teleporting thingie in here. I was hoping we could use it to escape."

"Oh." Baxter appeared to consider the idea. "I hadn't thought of that."

One of the other Trevors -- I think it was Smith -- put in, "Is it part of this desk here?" and he pointed at what I was pretty sure was the teleporter console.

I walked over to take a closer look. Yup, definitely the teleporter console. After my last adventure at an Enclave base, I had asked Wizzit for a crash course on how to use an Enclave teleporter. (That last time, I had had to rely on JB Swift to get Padma out, and my attempt to teleport myself had nearly ended in disaster.) He showed me how to work a couple of basic models and had me memorize a few sets of coordinates I could use in an emergency.

So yeah, I felt pretty sure I could operate this thing if I had to. Still, I was kind of hoping to get out of here with my secret identity more-or-less intact, so I just shrugged and said, "That's as good a guess as any, I suppose. Do you think the big green button means 'Go'?"

"Uh, yeah, that sounds right." He studied the controls, obviously trying to figure out how everything worked. The coordinates, I noted, were set to something close to my parents' house, so I figured they were still pointing to the place where Angela and I had been grabbed. Smith looked up, his mouth set in a firm line. "I'll stay behind," he said grimly.

I blinked. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Somebody's got to push the button, right? That'll be me. You guys figure out where you're supposed to stand, and I'll push the button and send you on your way." He folded his arms across his chest, as if daring anyone to contradict him.

The guy had guts, I'll give him that. I took a deep breath and looked at the other Trevors. A few of them stepped forward and said, "No, I'll stay," but no one seemed interested in pressing the issue.

I nodded and shook Smith's hand gravely. "All right. You're a brave man. But . . . maybe there'll be some sort of delay between the time you push the button and the time it sends us out. In case there is, I want you to haul your butt over to us as soon as you push it. Got that?"

Actually, I was nearly certain there would be plenty of time for him to join us. According to Wizzit, Enclave teleporters always had a built-in delay as some sort of safety feature. Yeah, I know -- monsters worried about safety? Go figure.

He grinned and gave me a mock salute. "Sure thing, Cap'n," he said. "I'm not itching to get stuck here."

I winced inwardly at the "Cap'n" bit. I didn't want to be the leader of this group, didn't want anyone walking away from this adventure thinking, "Say, that Chiao guy sure knew an awful lot about Enclave and Zoinks and teleporters. I wonder . . ." There wasn't anything I could do about it, though. Someone had to lead, and no one else knew what to do.

I turned back to the others, ready to give some more orders, but Baxter was ahead of me there. "I think I was about . . . here when they brought me in," he said, positioning himself. "Everybody look around and see if you can spot any sort of marks that might tell us where we're supposed to stand."

He meant well, I know. No one said anything for a moment, until Angie piped up, "You mean, something like this big circle on the floor?"

Baxter looked down and took in the large black circle inlaid into the white tile floor that everyone -- and I mean everyone \-- was pointing at. "Uh, yeah," he said, turning slightly reddish, "something like that." And then he chuckled and mock-slapped his forehead with his palm. "Duh!"

I grinned. I really like people who can laugh at themselves. Baxter started to say something else, but his words were drowned out by the sudden blaring of an alarm. I think we all knew what it meant: JB Swift had woken up and was yelling for help. I didn't know whom he could call on that wasn't locked up in the other room with him, but I wasn't eager to find out. And I sure hoped Lily slept right through it.

"Quick! Everybody get into the circle!" Smith shouted. No one argued. In less than a minute, the rest of us were huddled together inside the black ring. I wouldn't exactly call it a tight fit, but it was a good thing we were all friendly. Smith scrunched his eyes shut and slammed his hand down on the green button, shouting, "Here we go!"

I'm not sure what everyone else expected, but they were probably disappointed, because at first nothing happened. Then, after a second or two, a smooth female voice said, "Beginning teleport in sixty seconds . . . fifty-nine . . . fifty-eight . . ."

Smith slowly opened his eyes and looked down at his hand, as if he couldn't believe he hadn't been left behind. "Get your butt over here, Trevor!" I yelled, and my shout was quickly picked up by the others. He lost no time in joining us, and we waited in anxious silence while the voice counted down the seconds. "Thirty-five . . . thirty-four . . . thirty-three . . ."

The door to the other room began to shudder. JB Swift was having the Zoinks try to break it down. A couple of the Trevors glanced at each other and stepped out of the circle to go brace the door.

"Intruuuuuders!" My head snapped around at the voice behind me. To my relief, it wasn't Lily. Instead, it was Mr. Creepy-pants, the tall, thin monster that had first tried to kidnap me and Angela. He still weirded me out, but my blood was up now, and I was more mad than scared.

"Everybody stay inside the circle!" I commanded as the female voice announced that twenty seconds were left. "We'll all be fine if we're inside the circle when the countdown reaches zero. You guys over by the door -- get back over here when it reaches ten."

They were definitely having to work to hold the door closed now. I could see it jerking open maybe a quarter-inch every time the Zoinks shoved. One of them nodded silently and dug his tennis shoes into the floor, his back propped against the door.

"Nooo!" the monster was saying in its ghostly tones. So far, it hadn't made any threatening moves except to wave its sword vaguely at us. "Stooooop! You must stay heeeere!"

"Shut up, Casper!" Baxter snarled, eliciting a few nervous laughs from our group.

There was a splintering sound, and the door suddenly burst open, scattering the two Trevors who had been holding it closed. "Somebody grab them!" I shouted. "Nobody gets left behind here!" Many hands reached out and pulled the two of them into the circle as JB Swift and his Zoinks flooded into the room. The disembodied voice droned on, "Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . ."

"Everybody link arms!" I yelled. "Squeeze into the middle of the circle; it'll be harder for them to pull you out that way. Don't let anybody fall down!"

I don't know how much of what I said could be heard, but I do know that everyone pressed tightly together. I heard more than a few grunts and curses as Zoinks tried to pull one or another of us outside the circle, but none of their efforts were successful. At last, I heard the female voice say calmly, "Two . . . one . . . teleporting now . . ."

There was a soundless flash of light, and then we were gone.

Chapter 6

"Sooo . . . where the heck are we?"

That was Baxter, looking around us. The street we were on was dark, illuminated by just a few lights.

"Offhand, I'd say we're in Ohio," I said casually, "about a quarter of a mile away from my parents' house." Some of the Trevors turned to look at me in surprise, so I shrugged and said, "The last time they sent somebody out, it was to get Angie and me. They probably never reset the teleporter after that."

"Look, there's the studio," Angie exclaimed, pointing. "We really are home!"

"Great!" said someone disgustedly from the middle of the crowd. "I live in Alaska. How am I going to get home?"

"We got bigger problems than that!" Smith said. "Looks like we brought a bunch of those creeps with us!"

He was right. In my experience, if you're holding someone's hand (or presumably some other body part) when you teleport, then that person teleports along with you. By chance or by design, almost all the Zoinks we had been battling had been in contact with each other (and us) when the teleport happened and had come along for the ride.

And so had Mr. Creepy-pants.

He began waving his sword feebly at us and moaning, "You must come baaaaack with me. Baaaaack to the baaaaase!"

Baxter rolled his eyes. "Will somebody please shut that guy up!"

Nobody moved to do so, which I thought was a good thing. It looked to me as if the monster wasn't about to attack anyone at the moment, and if it wouldn't, then the Zoinks wouldn't. Personally, I wouldn't go picking a fight like that if I didn't have to.

I would have said something to that effect, but I suddenly caught sight of Angela slipping off through the trees. "Angie!" I hissed, "what are you doing?"

She turned towards me, and for some reason she looked guilty as hell. Then she composed herself and gave me a sheepish grin. "I, uh, drank a lot of water at practice today," she said, dancing from one foot to the other, "and I, uh, I really have to . . . um . . . you know . . ."

I glanced around; fortunately, no one was looking our way. The other Trevors were all eying the Zoinks, who seemed to be milling around aimlessly. "Fine, go take care of your personal business," I told her, chuckling. "I'll make sure nobody follows you."

"Thanks, Trev," she said gratefully, and dashed off into the woods.

I had a tense five minutes waiting for her to come back. I didn't think any of the Zoinks had wandered off, but I still breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her walk in from the darkness of the trees. "Feel better?" I asked her.

"Yeah, a whole lot better!" She gave me a sunny smile that, oddly, seemed a bit smug, as if she knew something that I didn't. "Like a huge amount of pressure has been \--"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I protested. "Waaay too much information!"

"Hey, guys!" one of the other Trevors interrupted, "it's the Primes! Over there!"

I looked, and there they were, running out from among the trees -- all seven of them. I blinked and looked again. Yup, there were seven Primes: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

I stared at the glowing figures, wondering what the heck was going on. I mean, I guess it was obvious what was going on -- Wizzit had pulled in reserve troops from somewhere. But why? More specifically, why now? It's not unusual for us to go into battle with only five or six of us. Had someone tipped him off that it would be a good idea to send out seven Primes to this particular battle?

Sending out a fake Prime Indigo would not be that hard. It's dead easy for Wizzit to change the color of someone's force shield; after all, every single one of us had started out as Prime Violet. I figured that Nicolai would be the one pretending to be me, since he is about my size, and as I looked, yeah, I recognized his karate stance.

But if Nicolai was playing the part of Prime Indigo, then who was Prime Yellow? Whoever he was, he had to be tall, close to Shelley and Toby's height, although he was disguising it by standing behind Trina and adopting a low, wide-legged kung fu stance -- not some fake Karate Kid, flapping-bird pose, but something real, from one of the hard styles, I'd guess. Something that indicated that he had actually studied kung fu.

And then I figured out who it had to be, the one person besides us Primes that Wizzit typically teleports: Prime Commander. I knew he and Shelley had studied kung fu together for years before she entered the Primes, and he was maybe a half-inch taller than she was. It couldn't really be anyone else. I shook my head and chuckled. The old man was probably getting quite the hoot out of dressing up like a Prime for once.

Baxter interrupted my thoughts. "Why are you laughing?" he demanded.

"Hm? Oh, I just think it's funny who showed up."

"Well, yeah, the Primes showed up. I mean, it's cool to see them in person and all, but I don't see that it's all that funny. Come on, give. What are you laughing at?"

"At who showed up," I insisted. "The seven Primes who showed up."

There was a pause as he silently counted the rainbow of figures in front of us. And then he started laughing, too. "You idiot!" he shouted at Mr. Creepy-pants. "You were wrong all the time. None of us guys is the indigo Prime. That's him right over there! Man, you guys are dumb!"

After a moment, the rest of the Trevors figured out what he was talking about and started yelling at the monster as well. Most of them were making fun of it like Baxter was, but some seemed pretty mad about the whole thing, and I was starting to worry that we might soon have a riot on our hands.

At last, Shelley spoke up. Addressing the monster, she said, in that quiet, reasonable, persuasive tone of hers, "So far, we have not seen you actually attack anyone, and you do not, in fact, seem inclined to cause any injury. If you leave now, we will let you go unharmed. Otherwise, we will destroy you. Your choice."

Mr. Creepy-pants took the hint. With an eerie moan, a final wave of his sword, and a flash of light, he disappeared, taking all the Zoinks with him.

Beside me, Angela heaved a sigh of relief. "Boy, I'm sure glad that's over!" she said.

"You and me both!" I said.

"Sure, that's fine for you two," one of the other Trevors spoke up irritably. "You're, like, a block away from home. But what are the rest of us going to do?"

"We might be able to help with that." That was Shelley's voice. She and the other Primes were walking toward us. (All except Yellow, I noticed. He had vanished.) She strode up to the speaker. "Where do you live, citizen?"

He seemed startled at being addressed directly by Prime Red. "Uh, i-in Alaska. Fairbanks."

"The address, please?"

He licked his lips. "You, uh, you can just drop me off at the corner of First Avenue and Cushman," He gave a nervous laugh. "It's just a couple of blocks from the river."

"Cushman and First. Got it." Shelley nodded to herself and grasped his wrist. In a flash of light, they were gone.

The other Primes were mingling with the Trevors now, getting addresses and teleporting out with them. Baxter was the last to leave. He stuck out his hand. "Hey, Chiao, it was nice to meet you."

We shook hands. "Same here, Baxter. Let's not do this again real soon, okay?"

He grinned. "You got it, buddy." He hesitated. "You know, before the Primes showed up, I was kind of thinking you might be that indigo guy that they were looking for."

"Me?" I gave him my best you've-got-to-be-kidding face. "I'll take that as a compliment. Take care of yourself."

"You, too."

Prime Green -- Trina -- stepped forward. "Come with me," she told Baxter. "I will take you home."

He looked down at her and smiled. As a general rule, we try to avoid giving out any clues about race, nationality, or sex when we're shielded, but no force shield is going to be able to hide Trina's shape. "Sure thing, darlin'," he said. He winked at her. "I'll bet you're pretty cute under all that green haze, aren't you?"

I pricked up my ears to hear her reply, knowing how Trina loves to flirt. "Beneath this force shield, I am very cute," she said, a hint of mischief making its way through the voice alteration. "I am also quite unclothed." She took a firm hold of his wrist. "Where would you like to go? Or should I just take you home with me?"

His eyes widened, and he looked her up and down, obviously imagining what the green, swirling mist must be hiding. "D-Dallas," he stammered when he could find his tongue, and then he named a street address.

Trina then turned to Angela and me. "The two of you will be fine here?" We both indicated that we would, so she nodded and disappeared with Baxter.

And then it was just Angela and me. "Come on, little sis," I said, sounding as tired as I felt, I'm sure. "We'd better get on home. Mom and Dad will be getting worried."

"Okay," she replied meekly.

She was quiet for the rest of the walk home. Knowing her, I had expected non-stop chatter, with her excitedly reliving the events of the evening, but she didn't say a word, not until we got to our driveway. Then she gave me a thoughtful look and said, "Trevor, can I ask you a question?"

I shrugged. "Sure. What is it?"

She started to say something, then stopped. I studied her, concerned. Angie is never at a loss for words. Finally, she stammered, "Is -- is your knee okay? You're limping."

Ah, yes, the knee that JB Swift had bashed with his pipe. It was pretty sore, and I bet it would be black-and-blue by morning, except that I was planning on a healing coma later tonight. "It'll be fine. Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

She opened her mouth, shut it again, and then blurted out, "How long have you been a Prime? Ever since you left high school?"

Startled, I looked into her dark eyes. She seemed nervous, as well she might, considering what she was asking me.

I thought about denying it all. That would have been the right thing, I suppose. The correct thing. But I found that I couldn't do it. Angela and I had always been close, closer than I ever was to my older sister Joy, or to Jerome and Nick, my two younger brothers. We had always gotten along, had always understood each other. Avoid the topic? Sure, I would happily do that, but I just couldn't flat-out lie to Angie.

I took a deep breath. "Yeah, pretty much," I said. "I graduated in June, and by mid-July, I was the new Prime Violet."

She let out the breath she had been holding. "So there was never any Tae Kwon Do demonstration team?"

"No. That's just what I tell people."

She gave a shaky laugh. "Well, that's a relief, at least. Here I had been worrying that my big brother was frittering his life away, and now I find out that you're saving the world instead."

"Angie, you know you can't tell Mom and Dad, right? Or . . . anyone?"

She snorted. "Of course! I'm not stupid. I know you have to keep it a secret. Although . . . you know, if you told Grandmaster Park, I bet he'd promote you to fifth Dan right away."

"Angie . . ." I warned her.

"Forget it," she said hastily. "It was just a thought."

"Good." I sighed with relief. "So, how did you figure it out, anyway? I'd have thought that seeing all seven Primes show up at the end would fool you like it did the others."

"Figuring it out was pretty easy," she declared confidently. "I think everyone there had you pegged as the guy they were looking for. For one thing, you were the only one who wasn't scared out of his wits. It was like you had been through all this before and knew exactly what to do. Oh, and having the fake Prime show up? That was my idea."

I stared at her in disbelief. "It was . . . what?"

"It was my idea," she repeated patiently. "Well, sort of. See, I figured the Primes would show up eventually, because they always show up whenever a monster is around, right? And everyone knows that they never teleport right into the scene of a battle. So I went off into the woods hoping to catch them before anyone else saw them. I managed to spot the red guy -- I bet he's really cute, by the way -- and I told him everything that had happened and that the monsters all thought you were the indigo Prime, so --"

"Prime Indigo," I corrected her.

"What?"

"I'm called Prime Indigo," I said again. "And the 'red guy' is Prime Red. That's how we refer to ourselves."

"Oh. Well, anyway, 'Prime Red' told me to go back and pretend like nothing had happened, and I did, so . . . here we are!" She spread her arms, obviously proud of herself.

For a moment I just stared at her, not really sure what to say. She sighed. "I think the words you're looking for, Trevor, are 'Thanks, little sis, for saving my secret identity.'"

That made me laugh. She was right. "Thanks, little sis, for saving my secret identity," I said, and I meant it.

"No prob." Then she suddenly looked worried. "You're not going to erase my memory or anything, are you? Because that would really suck!"

"No, I'm not going to erase your memory," I assured her. "I wouldn't know how to do that. I'm just going to have to rely on your discretion."

"No worries there, big brother." She danced an excited little jig. "My own brother is Prime Indigo. Geez, this is so great!"

Chapter 7

My week at home passed quickly. They always do. I didn't mention Grandmaster Park's ultimatum to my parents, and they didn't nag me (much) about going to college. I hoped that wasn't a sign that they were giving up on me. I mean, I still hope to thrill the heck out of them someday by announcing that I'm going to settle down and go to school somewhere. Of course, that can't happen until I'm done with the Primes for good, and that won't be for years yet.

I played "Gladiolus Rag" for my mom, and she had to admit that I had been keeping up well with my piano practicing. And she checked my hands for any obvious signs of scarring; despite what I had told Trina, she does worry that martial arts will permanently damage my fingers.

Have I mentioned that my mother is a piano teacher? No? Well, she is, and she has insisted on teaching all of us kids to play. She still gives me lessons whenever I come home to visit, in fact, which I think is pretty cool of her. She presented me with a copy of Gershwin's "Three Preludes", with instructions to learn as much of the middle prelude as I could by the time I came back for another visit.

I also spent a few afternoons with my dad, running errands, brushing up on the various non-English languages he's taught me, and just generally hanging out. And I spent one back-breaking day helping my Aunt Min with her worm farm.

In all, it was a fun visit, except that Angela pestered me with questions about the Primes every time we were alone. Was Prime Green the only girl? Were any of the guy Primes really cute, and in particular, was Prime Red dating anyone?

I had to suppress a laugh at the last question. A few years ago, Shelley had been dubbed "Eric the Red" by a few of the London dailies because she's tall and her favored weapon is a broadsword. From there, the name had spread world-wide, and based on what I read on the Internet, the mysterious "Eric" has developed quite the female fanbase. I swear, if Shelley ever gets unmasked in public, there are millions of teenage girls and young women all across the globe who are going to spontaneously die of broken hearts.

Regardless, my week's vacation ended at last. As I was puttering around my room, packing up my stuff, I kept noticing Angie hanging around. Nothing too obvious, but somehow I was never out of her sight for very long. Finally, I sighed and demanded, "What is it?"

"What do you mean?" she asked innocently, coming in and sitting down on my bed. "Am I bothering you?"

"No," I replied, "but don't you have anywhere you have to be? Some band thing? I thought you guys were taking a trip to Cleveland tomorrow. Don't you have to pack?"

"Nope," she replied smugly. "I'm all set. In fact, I thought I might walk you down to the bus station."

Ah, so that was it. See, when I leave, I normally just go out to some deserted field or other just outside of town, and Wizzit teleports me home from there. Obviously, I can't tell people that's what I do, so my story is that I walk to the local bus station, catch a ride down to Columbus, and fly out to meet my team.

"You, uh, want to see me off, is that it?" I said cautiously.

"Well, yeah. I think that would be pretty neat." She suddenly looked concerned. "It won't get you into any trouble if I do, will it?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so, not any more trouble than I'm already in. I'm going to have to tell them about you eventually, you know, and they probably won't be too happy about it." Wizzit, in fact, was the one I was worried about; when you came right down to it, it didn't really matter what anybody else thought. "I'll tell you what: Give me about five minutes alone, and I'll see. And I mean really alone -- no listening at the door or anything."

"Well . . . okay." Angela looked dubious. "Promise you won't leave without saying goodbye?"

"I can't really promise that. If they decide to yank me, then they'll yank me. But I promise that I'm not planning to sneak out of here."

"You mean, they'd just teleport you back, just like that?" she exclaimed.

"Not so loud!" I hissed. "Of course they'd teleport me back. How else do you think I would leave?"

"I . . . didn't know," she said softly. "Okay, I'll give you five minutes, and I promise, no eavesdropping."

After she had closed the door firmly behind her, I went to the farthest corner of my room and faced the wall. "Wizzit, are you there?" I said quietly.

"And where else would I be?" Wizzit's voice emanating from my belt buckle was so loud that I jumped. "Relax, she's too far away to hear me, your mother is in her studio, and your father is outside in the garden. So, can you trust her not to tell anyone you're a Prime?"

For a second, I was nonplussed. How had he known? "Y-you mean Angie?"

"No, I mean the Queen of Norway! Of course I mean Angie, assuming that's the name of the alien life form you call your sister."

I was about to make an irritated retort when I realized that, to Wizzit, we were all alien life forms. "Yeah, I trust her," I replied. "She promised me she wouldn't tell anyone, and I believe her."

"But she wants to watch you teleport out?"

"You've been listening in on what we were saying?"

"Of course. I always listen in when you've got your belt on. I just don't always pay attention."

Interesting, I thought, filing that bit of information away for future reference. I had thought that was the case, but I had never been quite sure. "Then, yeah, she wants to watch me teleport out."

"Okay, here's the plan: She follows you out to the usual place. When I say 'Now!', you grab her wrist. I'll teleport the pair of you out over the Pacific Ocean. You let go of her, and then I'll teleport you back to HQ. Problem solved."

"Wizzit, I am not going to drop my sister into the middle of the Pacific Ocean," I said, annoyed.

"The Sahara Desert, then? The Nansen Ice Sheet? The Australian Outback?"

"No, no, and no. Not funny, Wizzit!"

He sniffed. "Well, I thought it was. Fine, then. If it will keep her quiet, then she can watch me teleport you out."

"I don't think she's demanding it as some sort of bribe," I told him. "I think she's just curious."

"I see. Very well, she can still watch you teleport." He paused. "Do you think she will need bribing at some point?"

I thought it over. "I doubt it. What did you have in mind?"

"Would she like, say, to become a Junior Prime?" he suggested, sounding just a little too casual about it.

"A what?"

"A Junior Prime. Like the pins they give out to your fledglings when they visit the place where they put out fires."

He wanted to bribe her with a made-over Junior Firefighter badge? I couldn't help laughing. "That might work if she were six years old." Then, because he might not know, I added, "She's actually seventeen. Much more mature. If you offered her a bribe, she'd probably ask for, I don't know, a date with Prime Red or something."

There was a pause. "She wants to go out with Shelley? Does she . . . like women, then?"

"No! She just . . ." I fumbled for how to best explain this to Wizzit. "She believes that Prime Red is an attractive male."

"I see. So, if need be, we could bribe her with a date with Mike?"

Mike, the self-proclaimed lady-killer? Good Lord, I hoped it never came to that! To Wizzit, I said mildly, "I suppose that might work, if it became necessary."

I heard a rapping at my door. "Trevor?" Angie said. "It's been five minutes."

"Don't offer her anything," I said softly. Then, "All right, Angie, you can come in."

She opened the door slightly and peeked in, obviously expecting to see more than just me packing my suitcase. "Nothing, huh?" she said, disappointed, as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

"No, I talked with them, and I got you permission to watch me leave."

"Hi, Angie," came the voice from my belt.

She jumped back about three feet, which was too bad, because the door was only two feet behind her. "Ouch!" she said, rubbing the back of her head. "Is that . . .?"

"I'm the one who will teleport your brother back to headquarters. You can call me Wizzit. Tell me, Angie, would you like to see the Pacific Ocean up close?"

"No, she doesn't want to see the Pacific Ocean up close!" I interjected before she could reply. "Or the Sahara Desert, or the Nansen Ice Sheet, or the Australian Outback!"

"Actually," Angela started to say, "the Outback might be . . ." She trailed off as I shook my head furiously at her. I didn't really think Wizzit would abandon her out there, but there was no point in taking chances. "On the other hand, never mind. No, thank you, er, Wizzit."

"Would you like to become a Junior Prime, instead?" Boy, he just wasn't giving up! His voice sounded overly bright, as if he were trying to get a young child excited about eating Brussels sprouts.

"Uh . . . sure?" My sister was looking all kinds of questions at me, but all I could do was to shrug helplessly. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"I'll show you in a minute. Trevor, would you please retrieve the Junior Prime badge for me?" This request was accompanied by the familiar everything-going-hazy sensation, and suddenly I was standing in Prime Commander's office. "It's there on the corner of the desk."

Completely confused, I picked up the badge, which read "Official Junior Prime -- Pink". It definitely wasn't some cheap bit of plastic with a chintzy decal stuck on it. It was made of something metallic, yet flexible, with the words etched into it in golden letters somehow, and to judge by the heft of the thing, it had some of our tech was embedded in it as well. What in the world . . .? I had never seen anything like this before.

Wizzit instantly teleported me back to my room. "Give her the badge, Trevor," he said. I complied. "Now, Angie, hold up the badge in your right hand and repeat after me: I, Angela Chiao, do hereby solemnly promise to keep all the secrets of the Primes, and in particular, I promise never to reveal the identity of any Prime to anyone not authorized to receive such information. I also promise to assist any Prime when requested, without question, hesitation, or expectation of remuneration." After Angie had finished repeating the oath, he added helpfully, "Remuneration means payment. It means you shouldn't expect to get paid for helping us."

"Yes, I know what it means," she murmured, studying the badge in her hand. I think she was trying to figure out just how she felt about this whole thing. I could empathize. On the one hand, I had just teleported out to HQ and back, right in front of her eyes. On the other, Wizzit had just had me give her a Junior Prime badge and made her swear some silly oath of secrecy. "So . . . that's it?"

"That's it," Wizzit chirped. "Congratulations! You are the world's only official Junior Prime. Now you need to try out your badge."

"Try out my . . ."

"Say 'Junior Prime Pink, activate!'"

Angela's expression told me how lame she thought all this was, but she shrugged gamely and muttered, "Junior Prime Pink, activate!" An instant later, she was surrounded by swirling pink mist.

I think she must have been more surprised than I was, because she shrieked and I didn't. On the other hand, my heart stopped and I dropped dead right then and there. Well, not really, but it sure felt like it.

I heard the sounds of my father climbing the stairs and his voice saying in Mandarin, "Daughter, are you all right?" Even though he and my mother both speak excellent English, he prefers that we speak the mother tongue at home whenever possible.

"I-I am fine, Father," she called out in the same language. Geez, this thing even had the voice alteration! "Trevor!" she hissed in English. "How do I turn this off?"

"Junior Prime Pink, deactivate?" I guessed.

She repeated my words, and the pink haze faded away just as my father opened the door. "Son, are you -- oh, there you are, daughter. You are sure you're okay? I thought I heard you scream, and your voice sounded a bit odd just now."

"Yes, I am quite well," she said shakily. "I . . . tripped and . . . fell. But I am fine."

"Oh. All right then." He turned to me. "I just wanted to make sure you were going to stop and say goodbye before you left. Are you sure we can't persuade you to stay for dinner?"

I grinned. "I am afraid not, Father. I have to catch my flight. But Younger Sister said she would walk to the bus station with me."

"Oh. Well, that's good." He smiled. "I will tell your mother that you are going to leave soon."

"Thank you." After he had left, I said to Angie, "Sorry about that. He likes to surprise people."

"Dad? No he doesn't."

"No, I meant Wizzit. He has a weird sense of humor."

"I have an extraordinary sense of humor," came Wizzit's voice from my belt. "Some people just don't appreciate it."

Angie suddenly smiled. "Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for the badge, Wizzit. It's actually pretty cool."

"You're very welcome." I could tell that Wizzit was warming up to her. That's my baby sister for you; she could make friends with a rattlesnake. "Let me warn you: The badge makes you look and sound like a Prime, and it gives me your location in case I ever need to teleport you anywhere, but that's it. It doesn't give you any of our special powers. If you ever violate the Junior Prime oath, it will immediately stop working. Oh, and now that you have activated it, it will respond only to your voice."

"Got it. Thanks." She slipped the badge into the back pocket of her jeans. "Ready to go, Trev?"

"Just about." I stuffed a few more things into my suitcase and zipped it shut. Ten minutes and a couple of parental hugs later, we were walking down the street together.

"What's that for?" she asked me, indicating the bag I was carrying in my other hand.

"A friend of mine wants to learn to break boards," I explained. "I picked up some from the studio last night."

"You mean, he's never had to do that before?" she asked, incredulous. "I thought all you Primes were supposed to be good fighters."

"Well, first of all, I never said it was a Prime," I told her, "and second, board-breaking is kind of a Tae Kwon Do thing. Not all martial arts make you do that in order to advance."

"Oh," she said, then lapsed into a thoughtful silence. We turned off the street down a gravel road; it would eventually lead us to a farm owned by the family of one of my high school buddies. Angela asked, "So, what kinds of special powers don't I have?"

"You mean, from your Junior Prime badge?" I shrugged. "All kinds. You can't fly, you can't walk through walls, you can't leap over tall buildings in a single bound, you can't --"

"You mean, you can do all that stuff?" she asked, her eyes wide.

I grinned at her. "No, and neither can you. That's what you asked, isn't it?"

"Ha ha, very funny." She stuck her tongue out at me. "You know what I mean. What kinds of powers do you have that I don't?"

"Oh, so that's what you were asking!" I said in mock surprise. "Do you want to take this one, Wizzit?" There was no reply. "Wizzit?"

"Maybe he's on a bathroom break."

"Nah, he doesn't take bathroom breaks. He probably just doesn't want to answer your question, and if he's going to take a pass, then I guess I'll have to, too."

"You mean, you won't tell me anything? That's not fair!"

I shrugged. "Sorry, little sis. I have to follow the rules."

She frowned, but a moment later she brightened again. "Could you tell me like this?" she asked, speaking in Mandarin.

Wizzit's voice, also speaking Mandarin, came from my belt. "The lovely young lotus flower will kindly refrain from attempting to circumvent the wishes of those who intend to keep their secrets."

Angela looked down, her cheeks reddening slightly. "Busted," she muttered, embarrassed. "Sorry, Wizzit." And then she added something I didn't understand. Wizzit gave her an equally unintelligible reply. She frowned and said, in English, "I see."

"What language were you speaking just now?" I asked her, curious.

"Thai," she replied. "Dad started teaching me this past summer."

"He never taught me Thai!"

"Maybe you never asked. Besides, he taught you Japanese."

"Well, yeah, some, but --"

"And 'some' is all the Thai I know. Trevor, how many languages does Wizzit speak? That was what I asked him, and he said, 'All of them.'"

I considered her question. "I know he speaks every language I do, plus French, Russian, Polish, and a few Indian dialects."

"Indian as in native American, or as in from India?"

"Indian as in --"

Wizzit's voice interrupted me. "The lovely young lotus flower is cleverly attempting to discern the nationalities of some of your compatriots."

"No, I wasn't!" she protested. "I was just . . ." Angela's voice trailed off. Then she abruptly switched tacks. Giving me her sunniest smile, she said, "Never mind. I won't ask you any more questions, Trev, since you're obviously not allowed to answer them."

"Good," I said, relieved.

We walked in silence until we came to a small island of trees just on the edge of a corn field. "That misty stuff obviously make you stronger," she said thoughtfully when we stopped, "because I've seen the way that Prime Indigo manhandles those, er, those blobby things. I don't think you could do that in real life."

"Enclave calls the blobby things drones," I informed her. "We call them Zoinks. And the 'misty stuff' is my force shield. I can tell her all that, right, Wizzit? I didn't think that was any special secret."

There was no reply. Angie shrugged. "Your force shield, then. You look like you're faster, too, but not nearly as fast as that little red guy, because otherwise you would never have been hit by that arrow that time you were in Mongolia. That looked like it hurt a lot, by the way."

"It did," I agreed. "But how did you know about that? It wasn't covered on the news, was it?"

"No, I saw it on the Prime Channel," she said, sounding surprised at my ignorance. "You know, on the Internet? Someone puts up videos of all your battles. I thought you knew."

"Uh uh. Wizzit, do you know anything about this?"

"Naturally." Wizzit sounded pleased with himself. "Who do you think posts them?"

"You post vids of our battles?"

"Of course. The more people that see the good we do, the more support we get, and the easier it is to do our jobs."

I couldn't argue with that, although I had never thought of myself as an Internet video star. I hoped it wouldn't make me self-conscious. "So, Sherlock," I said to Angela, "what else have you deduced?"

"Nothing much," she said, nonchalantly. "I notice that Wizzit didn't give me one of those blasters you guys carry, which, you know, would be, like, really cool to have." She paused, obviously hoping Wizzit would pipe up with an offer. When he didn't, she went on, "And you weren't even limping from that arrow when you showed up here. How's your knee, by the way? Still sore?"

"It's fine," I said tersely. "Okay, so you figured out that we heal up fast. Think you're pretty clever, don't you?"

"Actually, I do," she replied smugly.

"Wizzit, do you still want me to drop her into the middle of the Pacific Ocean? 'Cause I think I'm ready to do it now."

"Why on earth would I ask you to do something so terrible to such a clever, lovely young lotus flower?" Wizzit did a good job of sounding shocked. He added, "Besides, I can do that myself, now that she's carrying the Junior Prime Badge."

Angela's eyes went wide with alarm. "Relax," I assured her. "If he were serious, he'd have done it by now . . . I think."

Chapter 8

"So, Wizzit gave your little sister the Junior Prime badge, did he?" Shelley said to me the next morning at breakfast.

At least, I was pretty sure it was morning and breakfast. I mean, Shelley was having cereal and orange juice. At HQ, Wizzit keeps us on Greenwich Mean Time, which means that when I come back from Ohio, it usually takes me a couple of hours to figure out what time it is. Although, oddly enough, I never get jet-lagged from all the timezone shifting. Of course, our Prime belts do all kinds of funny things to enhance our metabolisms and such, so something like the lack of jet-lag seems barely worth noticing.

"Yeah," I replied. "He wanted to keep her quiet about my being a Prime, and, I suppose, to keep an eye on her. So, where did that thing come from, anyway? I've never heard of a Junior Prime badge before."

"Wasn't it Bill Harding who made it?" Mike said.

Shelley nodded. "He was our original tech guy, Trevor. Really good at what he did, too."

"I remember hearing the name," I said. "He was Prime Red before you, wasn't he? The one that Wizzit fired because he --"

"Yes," Shelley cut in curtly, "he was." Okay, it sounded to me like that was a bit of a sore point with her. "But that's water under the bridge now," she went on. "He and Wizzit have settled their differences, and everything's cool with them. I'm not sure Bill really wanted to be Prime Red anyway. I think he was terrific at it, but he preferred puttering around in the lab, kind of like Nicolai does."

"Speaking of Nicolai," Trina broke in, "have he and Padma left yet?"

"Left for what?" I asked. "I haven't had a chance to talk with them since I got back. Are they going somewhere?"

"Nicolai and Padma," Mike said, a jaunty grin on his face, "have decided to shack up together for a few days in the lovely city of Cambridge."

"It's a math conference," Shelley explained, giving Mike a dirty look. "Nicolai is presenting a paper there, and he invited Padma to --"

"Actually," came Nicolai's voice from the doorway, "Padma and I are co-presenting a paper there." He was dressed in a real suit for once, with a jacket and tie and everything, instead of our usual quasi-uniform of shorts and a tee-shirt. He laid a sheaf of papers in front of me proudly. The top page read "Some Insights Into The Pi Function And Their Implications For Large-Number Factorization, by Nicolai Duda and Padmavathy Balasubramanium."

I frowned at the paper, trying to make out all the big, fancy words. I mean, I'm no dummy, and I studied calculus in high school, but Nicolai and Padma leave me in the dust when it comes to math. "What's the pi function? I thought pi was a number."

Padma, who had come in behind Nicolai, came to my rescue. "The pi function is a common way to count prime numbers. We have to reference it quite a lot when we build our weapons, but it is very mysterious, very hard for mathematicians to . . . I believe the phrase is, 'to get a handle on.' Nicolai has had some really brilliant insights into --"

"It's just a refinement of some of the work of Riemann and von Mangoldt," he said modestly, "and Padma helped me with it quite a bit."

"I really just played dumb," she told the rest of us, "and kept asking him over and over to explain himself in simpler terms."

"But your questions were very helpful," Nicolai insisted. "It made me think about what I wanted to say. And you handled subcases fourteen and fifteen on your own as well."

"The two easiest ones, yes. You could have done them yourself. Honestly, I don't know why you insisted on putting my name down as a co-author." She gave him a smile that the darkness of her skin made seem absolutely brilliant. "Except to get me an Erdos number."

I grinned. I didn't know what an Erdos number was, but I had a pretty good idea why Nicolai wanted to give her some of the credit, and it had little to do with how much she had actually contributed. Not that I thought Padma didn't deserve credit -- I would have no way to judge that -- but it's pretty obvious to everyone that Nicolai has had a raging crush on her since, oh, about a day after she arrived. Obvious to everyone except Padma, that is.

Partly to change the subject, I said, "It lists you here as Padmavathy Bala--" I squinted at the unfamiliar name. "Balasubramanium. I thought you told us your last name was Reddy."

She smiled shyly. She, too, was dressed in business attire, I noticed, with a white silk-looking blouse and a tailored maroon jacket and skirt that flattered her figure admirably. Man, oh man, I thought, if Nicolai was letting her make this presentation looking like that in front of a bunch of scruffy-looking, middle-aged math professors, then she was going be the hit of the conference.

"Reddy is the name of my caste," she explained. "I give it out because it's fairly easy for people outside of India to pronounce and remember, unlike my family name, which is indeed Balasubramanium. However, since this is my first professional publication, I did want them to get the name right." She looked over at Nicolai. "We had better be leaving within the hour, don't you think? That will give us plenty of time to go over our presentation before the lectures start. I checked us into the hotel yesterday night, and I put out the 'Do not disturb' signs, so Wizzit should be able to teleport us directly into our rooms." With a pointed glance at Mike, she added, "Separate rooms."

Mike grinned good-naturedly. "Whatever you want us to believe, sweetheart." He lifted his glass of orange juice. "Go get 'em, Nicolai." I raised my glass as well, and the others followed suit in wishing him and Padma well.

Unlike Mike, I didn't seriously believe that the two of them would get up to much in the way of hanky-panky; if they did, it would have to be up to Padma to initiate it, because Nicolai was too much of a gentleman, and that definitely wouldn't happen because Padma wasn't looking for a boyfriend right now. I knew that because she had told me so several times, usually right after she had given me an impulsive kiss on the lips. And after a few not-quite-so-impulsive kisses on the lips as well.

Once they had left, I turned to Shelley. "So, about this Junior Prime badge . . .?"

"Hm? Oh, that's right, I was telling you about it, wasn't I?" She leaned back in her chair. "Well, as I recall, it was originally supposed to be a Christmas present for Francesca when she was . . . about six, I'd guess. Bill did a nice job, too -- put in all the visual and audio stuff and a locater circuit in case she ever got lost, and a couple of other things besides. Dad vetoed the idea when he found out about it, unfortunately. He said it would look suspicious if she had something that realistic and none of her friends did. So it's been sitting in his desk drawer ever since. Until last week, that is."

I did some quick thinking. The badge had been sitting on top of his desk when I had grabbed it, not inside a drawer. "Did he happen to use it last week?"

Shelley grinned. "You noticed him out there, did you? Yeah, after I reported what your sister told me, he remembered that we had it. Wizzit changed the color temporarily, and he was our guest Prime Yellow. I guess it made his day; he couldn't stop talking about how much fun it was."

Toby snorted. "It made his week, I'd say. I've never seen the old man so tickled."

I got up to refill my glass and to make some toast. Trina asked softly, "Did you remember to bring the boards from home, Trevor?"

"They're in my room. You won't need them for a while yet, though. We'll just use pads to begin with."

Toby looked up from the grapefruit he was peeling. "I take it you've heard about Trina's little bet with Mike, then?"

"She told me about it before I left." I glanced over at Mike. "Sorry, mate, but this is one bet you're going to lose."

Mike shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Tell you what, I'll give you a hundred dollars not to teach her."

"A hundred dollars?" I whistled. "Isn't that a lot to spend just to win a bet over who pays for dinner?"

"Over who pays for --?" Mike chuckled. "Trina, dear, I take it you didn't tell Trevor all the stipulations of our little bet?"

Trina's eyes remained studiously on her cup of tea while a slow blush crept up her features. I have rarely seen her blush, but it's a sight to behold. Her complexion is so clear and fair that you can actually watch it spreading across her cheeks; it really looks quite fetching on her. "There is . . . one other part," she said at last. "The winner gets to choose what the loser will wear to the dinner."

Ah, now that sounded more like a bet that Mike would pay a hundred dollars to win. He grinned. "And she has to show it off to everyone before we leave." He leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. "I've been looking through some of the fancier swimsuit catalogs. You've no idea the things they're doing with dental floss these days."

Toby grinned, and, I must admit, I was probably smiling at my own rather pleasant mental picture. Then I shook myself. "So, Trina, what are you going to make Mike wear if you win?"

Trina smiled. "I haven't decided yet. Padma thought he would look good in some sort of skimpy bathing suit, and Shelley suggested a thong. Do you have any ideas?"

"Well, I was going to say a clown costume, but --"

I was cut off by the sound of Shelley choking on her orange juice. We all looked at her with concern, but she waved us off. "Sorry," she sputtered when she could stop laughing long enough to speak. "You caught me by surprise there. A clown suit . . . that's perfect, Trev."

"Now, Trina," Mike said anxiously as Trina's eyes suddenly began to sparkle, "you wouldn't really make me . . ."

"A clown costume," she murmured thoughtfully, "with a funny wig and a big red nose and . . ."

"Trina, love, listen . . . you don't want to . . ."

Trina drained her cup of tea and stood up. "Trevor," she said briskly, "would you be able to start training me right now?"

Chapter 9

I didn't get a chance to start training Trina that morning, as it turned out, because the monster alarm sounded as I was heading for my room. I ducked inside, grabbed my stuff, and then ran for the weapons room.

"You're going to Africa today, kids!" Wizzit's voice said happily over the intercom. "Specifically, Malawi."

I tried to remember whether I had ever heard of Malawi as I started grabbing weapons. For once, Nicolai wasn't there ahead of me. (Obviously, since he was in Cambridge with Padma.) Let's see, Trina would already have her triple blaster, of course; looking around, I snagged Shelley's broadsword, Mike's club, and Toby's hammer before picking up a small baton for myself. There, that ought to do it.

I should probably mention at this point that the weapons that Nicolai and Padma build for us have some rather peculiar properties. They're very lightweight, for one thing, and, to be honest, they aren't even real weapons, not in the sense that I could hurt you with any one of them. Even if, say, Toby smashed his hammer down smack on top of your head, it wouldn't give you so much as a headache. Same with the other ones. One of Wizzit's strictest rules, made to eliminate the possibility of collateral damage.

Which isn't to say that they aren't of any use. On the contrary, they are highly effective against the kind of beasties we fight -- much more effective than normal guns or knives or even bombs would be. They are specifically designed to disrupt the energies that Enclave uses to power their monsters and other critters. I'm not entirely sure how they work, but I have seen Toby flatten as many as five Zoinks with a single swing of his cartoonishly-large hammer.

"Malawi?" Mike was saying as I came into the common room. "Never heard of the place."

"I have," Toby said, adding, "Thanks, Trev," as I tossed his hammer to him. "Used to be a British colony. It's not very large. There's a big lake all along one side of the country, and they have a moderately-famous international music festival there."

"Music festival is taking place right now," Wizzit added. "That's where the monster is, along the lakeshore. Ready to go?"

I handed Shelley and Mike their respective weapons. She nodded. "Ready, Wizzit. Let's do this. Prime Red, activate!"

"Prime Orange, activate!"

"Prime Green, activate!"

"Prime Blue, activate!"

"Prime Indigo, activate!"

In a flash, the five of us were standing along a sandy beach. What was probably the lake lay before us, with a few fishing boats scattered here and there across the strikingly blue water; there were brown-and-green hills on the sides and in the background. It was a very pretty landscape.

"I don't see the monster," Shelley said, all business as usual. "And . . . I don't hear anything."

She was right. I couldn't hear anything, either, now that she mentioned it. It wasn't that there weren't any unusual noises; there weren't any noises at all. I couldn't hear the waves lapping along the beach or the birds or anything. It was kind of creepy.

"This monster uses some sort of sonic attack," Wizzit explained, "so I have temporarily disabled the sound input to your force shields. Except for Prime-to-Prime communications, you're going to be completely deaf for a while."

"So where is the monster?" Trina asked.

Wizzit snickered. "Just follow the screams."

"Ha ha, very funny," Mike said irritably. "Just tell us where . . . oh!"

I think we all saw it at the same time \-- the crowds of terrified people rushing towards us. "Let's go," Shelley said grimly as she began running towards the source of the disturbance.

The monster was pretty easy to spot. A stage had been erected along the beach, presumably for the music festival, and our guy had it all to himself. As we approached, I heard Mike mutter, "Man, what a wally!"

I had to agree. The monster of the day seemed to be a grotesque parody of someone's idea of a reggae singer -- huge dreadlocks, mirror shades, and an electric guitar that he was strumming wildly. "That clobber is just ridiculous," Toby commented. "I've been to the Lake of Stars festival; most of the guys dress nothing like that."

Well, regardless of how silly he looked, I could see that every time Reggae Monster played a chord, the head of the guitar emitted shimmering waves of energy that sent up great gouts of sand wherever they struck. Most of the people who were running away had their hands pressed to their ears, so I presumed that it was also sending out an ear-splitting racket, but of course I couldn't hear it.

Trina drew her triple blaster and sent a few shots the monster's way. The blasts sent him staggering to the back of the stage. Up to this point, he had been more-or-less ignoring what was going on around him, but I guess Trina's attack got his attention. He opened his mouth wide in a roar. (Or maybe he was singing. Who knows? I sure couldn't hear him.) Then he began sweeping the head of the guitar back and forth in our general direction, his fingers moving like lightning on the strings.

Waves of energy from the guitar struck us like a tsunami. The baton I was carrying flew from my hand; I simply couldn't hold onto it any more. Ahead of me, I saw Shelley's sword do the same, and I actually had to duck to avoid Toby's hammer as it came flying past me.

Shelley's voice rapped out, "Green! Can you keep him off-balance while the rest of us retrieve our weapons?"

"No! I lost my blaster as well!"

"Let me try!" Mike drew out his own blaster. Now, Mike's pretty fast. You've heard of cat-like reflexes? Our buddy Mike has to slow down to about half speed to have mere cat-like reflexes. Even so, he was able to snap off only one, maybe two shots at the monster before his blaster went sailing away like the rest of our weapons. "Damn! I just couldn't hold onto it!"

"Nobody else move!" Shelley snapped. "Let's not lose any more weapons than we have already. Green and Orange, go round up the ones we've lost so far. I don't want them to go into the lake."

Trina and Mike took off running. I could see our weapons still tumbling down the beach, propelled by the monster's energy waves; my baton, being the lightest, was almost to the water. As I watched, Trina grabbed her beloved triple blaster and hugged it to her chest, then she snatched up Mike's blaster. Mike was already ahead of her and closing in on his club, Toby's hammer, and Shelley's sword.

"Blue! Indigo! Over here. I want to try something." Shelley's voice called me back to the situation at hand. Toby and I struggled forward towards her. Reggae Monster was still shredding away on his guitar, and making forward progress against those energy waves was like wading through quicksand.

"Stand in front of me to make sort of a windbreak," she ordered when we finally reached her. "I want to see whether you two can block those energy blasts while I get out my blaster."

Toby and I linked arms and stood shoulder to shoulder (well, okay, shoulder to mid-chest, because Toby's a lot taller than I am) in front of Shelley. It wasn't easy to maintain my position; I could feel Reggae Monster sending wave after wave of his sound blasts at my back. Man! I thought. How long can he keep this up?

"Steady . . ." Shelley was saying. She drew her blaster which, miraculously, did not fly out of her hand, and took careful in the space between my arm and Toby's side. She squeezed the trigger.

A second later, something that felt like white-hot rain spattered across my back. Instantly, I let go of Toby's arm and flung myself to the side, scrambling to get out of the way of whatever Reggae Monster had just sent our way. Beside me, Toby did exactly the same thing. "Damn! What was that?"

"Sorry," Shelley muttered. "That was my blaster shot." She had quickly holstered her weapon, I noted, so as not to have it blown out of her hand. "Looks like our regular blasters don't have enough power to penetrate the monster's sound wave, and the energy from my shot got washed back right onto the two of you."

"Sort of like peeing into the wind, then?" Mike asked cheerfully from somewhere down the beach.

Shelley replied dryly, "I wouldn't know anything about that. Never tried it myself."

"Yeah, thanks for the mental image, Orange!" came Toby's voice. "Now I'm going to have to take a shower after we're done here."

"My pleasure. Anything I can do to help."

"Would my blaster do better?" Trina asked. She and Mike had collected the last of the weapons, it appeared, and were holding them tightly in their arms as they made their way back to us.

"I don't know. It might," Shelley replied.

Toby said, "What about Indigo's sap gloves?"

"Even better. Do you have them with you, Indigo?"

I patted the pockets of my battle vest. "Yup, got 'em right here."

"Good. Let's try it out. Blue, we'll stand in front of Indigo. Orange, shield Green and we'll try the triple blaster as well."

Shelley, Toby, and I shifted around so that they were sheltering me from Reggae Monster's blasts of music, while I donned my sap gloves.

Sap gloves, in case you have never heard of them, are special gloves that have sand or steel shot in pouches sewn across the knuckles and other striking surfaces. They aren't exactly offensive weapons like brass knuckles, so Wizzit gave me the okay to use them in battle, but when I'm wearing them, I can punch a cinder block and not hurt my hands. And, thanks to some fancy tech work by Padma, this particular pair is also fairly effective against Enclave monsters.

"I am ready to shoot," Trina said as I was tugging my gloves into place.

"We're staying back out of his range," Mike said. "I don't want to have to go chasing all our weapons all over again."

"Fair enough," Shelley replied. "Take a few shots, Green, and then we'll turn Indigo loose."

"Here goes."

I saw Trina snap off a few blasts. It was no good. I could see the pulses speed towards the monster, but they seemed to lose steam and vanish just before they reached him.

"Move closer," Shelley commanded. "Do you need us any more, Indigo?"

"Nope. Gloves are on tight. I'll go take on Bob Marley over there while you and Blue help Green."

That, however, was easier said than done. I staggered back a step when Shelley and Toby began running towards Trina and Mike, and I took the full force of Reggae Monster's ongoing blast. I marveled at how long he was keeping that up. Most monsters would have started fading by now.

Regardless, I pushed forward, feeling like I was trying to run through maple syrup. It got harder the closer I got, until eventually I was having to work just to stay in place. I could see Reggae Monster's fingers working like mad on his guitar, creating a shimmering wave of energy that held me back like a brick wall.

"How are you doing, Indigo?" I heard Shelley call out.

"Not great. I can't push forward any more."

"Well, stay put for now. Green's going to try another shot."

Looking around, I saw that Shelley, Toby, and Trina had managed to advance to nearly the spot where Shelley had tried her blaster. Mike stayed back, sheltering the other weapons. Trina steadied herself, aimed, and snapped off a shot. I saw it sizzle past me, burning off energy. The bolt struck the monster right across the bridge of his broad, flat nose. His sunglasses flew off his head, revealing huge bloodshot eyes.

I don't think Trina's shot really did him any damage, but it sure made him mad. He jumped up, spun about, and pointed the head of his guitar straight at the three of them. His fingers finally stopped that crazy shred pattern they were making, and he gave one hard strum. A blast of energy shot out and struck Shelley a glancing blow on the shoulder. She collapsed onto the sand with a cry.

The wall of force in front of me was finally gone, thank goodness. I snarled and began running toward Reggae Monster. He let loose another blast which caught Trina square on the chest, sending her sprawling backwards. Then he aimed his guitar at me and fired, but I was already rolling across the sand. His shot went high, and I didn't give him a chance to take another. I hit the guitar neck with a rolling side kick, then turned my momentum into a punch to the monster's knee.

I sprang to my feet after that, determined not to let him do any more blasting. I grabbed the neck and punched the body of the guitar as hard as I could with my other hand, which sent sparks flying everywhere. After that, I delivered a turning side kick to the monster's chest. He fell backward, but he didn't let go of the guitar, which dragged me down as well.

Somehow, I managed to pin the guitar beneath my body, and I kept it pinned despite Reggae Monster's increasingly frantic efforts to yank it free. We traded punches for a while. To be honest, I'm not sure who was getting the worst of it, but I don't think it was him. Then I heard a sound that warmed my heart -- the whistling sound of Toby's hammer as he smacked it down on the side of Reggae Monster's head.

Reggae Monster's grip on his instrument slackened, and I lost no time in getting it (and myself) out of his reach. I probably looked ridiculous, skittering along the sand lying on top of his guitar, but I didn't really care at that point. Once I was away, I rolled to my feet and picked it up. Spotting a rock poking up out of the sand, I propped the instrument neck up on it and began punching the body as hard as I could. I did not want the monster using that thing against us again.

Now, I have broken three-quarter-inch pine boards with a single, bare-fisted punch before. In fact, I had to do it as part of my fourth-Dan test. I don't do it that often because it stings like hell and bruises your knuckles something awful (and my mom would kill me if she knew I was messing up my fingers that way), but my point is that I can do it if I have to. Still, despite that and the fact I didn't have to hold back because of the protection of the sap gloves and that the gloves were mucho effective against Enclave tech, it still took me, oh, seven or eight punches before the damn thing began to splinter, and another five or so before I broke it completely. Pretty stubborn of it, I thought.

Up to this point, I had been pretty much ignoring the monster, figuring that the other four Primes could handle it. As I finally punched through the guitar body, though, I felt the pressure wave from an explosion behind me, and I heard Toby mutter, "Wow. I sure didn't expect that."

I turned around to see Toby and Shelley staring at what was left of the monster (which wasn't much), their weapons poised to strike. Shelley slowly turned to face me. "Indigo, did you do that? 'Cause we sure didn't."

"You mean, destroy the monster?" I slowly shook my head. "I don't think so. I was just trying to smash up that stupid guitar of his."

"Stupid guitar was his power source," Wizzit's voice told us. "Destroying it was what made him blow up. Otherwise, you could have beat on him all day and not done a whole lot of damage."

Shelley snorted. "Thanks for telling us that now, Wizzit."

"I completed my analysis about thirty seconds before guitar went boom-boom," Wizzit replied. "Indigo was already destroying it; telling you then would not have speeded things up. Are you ready to go home now?"

Shelley looked around. "I guess so. Orange and Green weren't able to retrieve Indigo's weapon, though."

"Locating . . ." I saw a small explosion of water shoot up out of the lake. "Weapon is eliminated."

"So where are Orange and Green?" I asked as I felt the familiar tingling at the base of my skull that meant we were about to teleport.

Shelley didn't reply until the haziness had faded and we were back at HQ. "The monster's blast knocked Green cold," she said. "Orange went back with Green." She called out, "Hey, Mike! How is Trina doing?"

Mike emerged from the lounge. "She'll be fine. Wizzit says a bruised chest and some cracked ribs, and she whacked her head pretty good on the sand when she landed."

Wizzit chirped, "She will be good as new in . . . eight minutes, fourteen seconds. I will initiate healing comas on Red and Indigo in two minutes. Get ready, kids."

Shelley and I glanced at each other. I knew I had taken a pounding from Reggae Monster's fists, and Shelley had gotten that blast on the shoulder. I grinned. "Oh, well, I could use a nap about now, anyway."

Chapter 10

I met Trina in the gym after lunch with a couple of my boards. She seemed pretty dejected. "Hey, what's wrong?" I asked her. "You're not still hurting from getting pasted by that stupid monster, are you?" I knew it was a dumb question; if she were still injured, she would still be in a healing coma.

"Only my pride," she said. "There are times, Trevor, when I wish I were a better fighter."

I frowned. "What's that got to do with what happened out there? You got blasted by a high-powered energy shot. It could have happened to any one of us. Shelley got hit, too, come to think of it."

"Yes, I know that. But no one went up to her after her healing coma and asked her whether she was okay."

"Did someone come up to you?"

"Mike did. And Toby, and Shelley."

"Well . . . they were probably just concerned. You don't get hit that often."

"I know, but that doesn't mean I'm fragile." She sighed. "Sometimes I wish I were more . . . well, more like you in some ways. More kick ass."

The way she pronounced "kickass" so carefully brought an involuntary snicker out of me. It sounded as though she were a little kid trying out a swear word for the first time and watching the grownups around her to gauge its effect. As a general rule, I try not to laugh when our non-native English speakers test-drive a new slang phrase -- after all, my trying to speak Russian would be much more hilarious than Trina speaking English -- but there was something so . . . so cute about the way she said it that I couldn't help myself.

Trina stamped her foot. "Don't laugh at me, Trevor! I'm serious."

I slapped a hand over my mouth, covering up my grin, and held up a finger, telling her to wait a sec. I turned my back, took a few deep breaths, and generally got my face back under control. When I turned back around, poker-faced, she was looking hard at me, her arms crossed.

"Sorry about that," I said, and I hoped it sounded as though I meant it, because I did. "I'd be happy to work with you to make you more --" I stopped because I suddenly realized that I wouldn't be able to say "kickass" without giggling. "-- er, to make you tougher if you want. And to be honest, I wouldn't mind picking up a bit of your aikido. I'd kind of like to be able to immobilize someone without punching them in the face twenty times to do it."

That coaxed a smile out of her. "It's sweet of you to say that, anyway. Let's just start with breaking boards, shall we?"

So we did. I won't go into all the details of how to break a board with a knife-hand chop (partly due to space considerations, partly because you might not be interested, and partly because anyone who wants to learn should really find themselves a qualified teacher) but the basic principle is fairly simple. It's mainly a matter of using the correct striking surface. If you strike a board the way Trina thought you should, chopping straight down with a stiff hand, you're likely to hit it with the big knuckle of your pinky, and then it's all too easy to break something that's not the board.

On the other hand (so to speak), if you hold your right hand up with the palm facing you, fingertips pointing upward, then you'll notice a cushion of fat down on the lower left part of your palm (about seven or eight o'clock if your hand were a clock face). Everybody has it, even really skinny people. Simply put, that protective cushion is the part of your hand that should make contact with the board.

So that's what I showed Trina. I broke a board or two to demonstrate that it really could be done, and then I showed her my hand afterwards to give her an idea of what kind of damage to expect. It doesn't hurt my hand that much any more, not like doing it with a punch does, but I wouldn't want to have to break a dozen boards a day that way, either. And then I had her practice her technique by striking some of our punching pads.

We worked together for a couple of hours that day, almost right up to dinnertime. Most of it was about her board-breaking technique, but we wound up doing some sparring as well. I don't train with Trina all that much, although I started thinking that maybe I should, since our styles are so radically different. It was a refreshing change from working with Padma, and I made a mental note to ask her to the gym more often.

Chapter 11

Trina, Mike, Toby, and I were just sitting down to dinner that night when Shelley came into the kitchen. "Sorry, I'm going to have to bail on you guys," she announced. "I've got a dinner date in London. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

At first none of us spoke. I think we were all stunned; Shelley never goes out on dates. After a moment, Mike frowned, picking up the carving knife and fork. "Are you sure you want to miss out on this fine New Zealand lamb?" He turned in his seat to look at her. "If you're eating in London, you're probably just going to get piss-warm beer and boiled -- whoa!"

I silently echoed his sentiments. Whoa, indeed! This must have been some dinner date, because Shelley had curled her dark blonde hair and done up her face, and she was wearing a little black dress that made her legs look a mile long. She was, in a word, stunning.

"You look . . . really hot," Toby said with frank admiration.

"Thanks," she replied. "Let's hope my date thinks so, too."

Surprisingly, Mike was the first of us guys to get his mind back on business. "Uh, you know we'll be a bit short-handed with you gone, right?" he said.

"I've already cleared it with Wizzit," Shelley told him. "We dealt with a monster just this morning; it's not likely they'll have another one ready again so soon. And if they do, I promise I'll be out there within five minutes."

"Five minutes?" Toby repeated. "This bloke must not think much of you if he's willing to let you ditch him with just five minutes' notice. Especially with you looking . . . well, like that."

Shelley smiled at the compliment. "Let's just say that he's very understanding about my job."

"Is he anyone we know?" Trina asked her eyes sparkling.

"Possibly." Shelley winked. "I'll tell him you said hi. Wizzit, I'm ready to go now." And then she vanished as Wizzit teleported her out.

After an exit like that, it was a little hard for the rest of us to settle down for just another dinner together. Fortunately, Mike had made us a roast leg of lamb, and that helped considerably. To hear him talk, you would think that Mike was, at heart, a beer-and-Marmite kind of guy, or whatever it is that they have with their beer in New Zealand. He does up a pretty nice leg of lamb, though. I would probably have stuffed myself on it, except that I learned a long time ago that it's never a good idea to overeat when you're on duty.

Toby and Trina cleaned up the kitchen while I got out a deck of cards; it looked like another long evening of nothing in particular to do. We all sat down, and I was just starting to explain the rules of a card game I know called Horse when the monster alarm began to sound.

"What the hell?" Mike said, looking up. "How can they send out another monster again so soon?"

"Doesn't matter," Wizzit said tersely. "This one is near your stomping grounds, Trevor. Cleveland Browns Stadium in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio. You will probably even get to be on American national TV; they're right in the middle of an afternoon football game."

I groaned. This had all the earmarks of a real mess, I could tell. We were going to have to deal with the monster, whatever Zoinks had come along, a stadium of terrified fans, two teams of professional football players getting all macho on us, and probably a sportscasting team trying to get all journalistic as well. Not my idea of a fun night.

"Hmm, this is interesting," Wizzit went on as I ran to get my battle vest from my room. "It appears that we have two lovely young lotus flowers there as well."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I heard Mike yell as he ducked into his room, which is just down the hall from mine.

I muttered a very bad word as I picked up my vest and began running towards the weapons room. I had a pretty good idea who at least one of the lotus flowers he was talking about was. There was a dim recollection bouncing around in my head of Angie telling me that her high school marching band had been invited to play for halftime at the Browns game that afternoon.

Wizzit said, "It means that Lily Lee is there; she appears to be acting as the monster's minder." Okay, I hadn't expected that. Lily's Chinese name, Li Lin-fa, was probably better translated as "Lotus Lee", but Wizzit doesn't do translations. I decided that he was calling her a lotus flower just to be poetic. "And it seems that Trevor's younger sister is there as well. She is trying unsuccessfully to help with crowd control, but has not attempted to activate her Junior Prime Pink badge." He paused. "She is wearing a strangely stylized suit of clothes and appears to be holding an oddly-coiled metal weapon of some sort."

"That's her marching band uniform," I called out as I skidded around a corner. "And she's probably holding her trumpet. A musical instrument, not a weapon."

Toby was right behind me as I entered the weapons room. The lowest-ranked Prime is normally supposed to gather up the weapons for the higher-ranked, which is why I was getting them today, but there's no rule that says someone else can't help. He picked up his hammer and Mike's club. I grabbed Shelley's sword, figuring that Wizzit had already notified her.

"How many Zoinks are there, Wizzit?" I asked, trying to gauge what kind of weapon I would need to bring along. I usually get Zoink-bashing duty if there are a lot of them, and I don't like to use weapons against Zoinks as a general rule. There's just no challenge to it. And I had my sap gloves if I really needed to use something.

"More than twenty, less than thirty."

Hmm. If Padma were with me, we could handle twenty or thirty Zoinks between us without breaking a sweat, but it might be a bit much by myself and unarmed. And, short-handed as we were, I doubted Shelley would assign anyone else to help me. Since my baton had been destroyed, I decided to grab an Escrima stick. It was a bit over two feet long and a little under an inch in diameter. I hadn't practiced with this particular weapon much, but hey, a stick's a stick, right? Pounding on Zoinks doesn't require a whole lot of finesse.

"Better grab another weapon, too." Wizzit's voice was coming from my belt, so I realized he was speaking specifically to me.

"Uh, okay." Wizzit doesn't normally make weapons recommendations, other than stuff like "It's a big 'un today, so grab something big to hit it with!" I waved Toby on and looked around the room. "What should I bring?"

"Whatever toys your sister likes to play with."

"Wizzit, no! I am not going to get Angie involved in a monster battle!"

"She's already there. Do you think she'll be content to sit on the sidelines and watch?"

He had me there. Of course Angie would want to be in the thick of things. Her Junior Prime badge wouldn't give her any special powers besides anonymity, though, so she'd get her butt kicked if she tried to get into the fight. Having one of our weapons might at least give her a fighting chance. "Would it work for her?" I asked. I grabbed another Escrima stick, stuck them both in my belt, and hustled out the door. "They don't work for us when we're not wearing our belts."

"I don't know," he replied cheerfully. "They draw their power from your force shields. I guess we'll have to find out whether that was built into her badge."

"Gee, thanks a lot!" I growled. I mean, how could Wizzit have such keen insights into people's characters and still be so annoying?

Chapter 12

For once, Wizzit didn't teleport us to an uncrowded, out-of-the-way place that was near the scene of the battle. To be honest, I'm not certain there was such a place, and even if there were, this was a game against the hated Steelers, which meant that the stadium was so jammed with people that it would have been difficult to get where we needed to be.

So he plopped us down between the inserts instead, right on the fifty-yard line. And immediately, I had to jump to one side to avoid a couple of linemen who were red-dogging a Zoink. The two of them dragged it for several more yards before a member of the other team speared it right in the back. I winced, imagining what the impact must feel like. The poor Zoink (and yes, I do realize that I'm using the words "poor" and "Zoink" in the same sentence) did a four-fifty in the air, landed flat on its back, and didn't get up, while the football players all high-fived each other.

Interesting technique, I thought. I would have to try it myself the next time I was three-on-one against a Zoink. (Which, in case you can't read my sarcasm, never happens.)

It's not that I dislike football or football players. Hey, I grew up in Ohio, not too terribly far from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. I went to a whole lot of games when I was in the marching band in high school, and I cheered my team on as loudly as anyone. I root for the Buckeyes, and I'll happily sit and watch the Superbowl with Shelley and Prime Commander while the other (non-American) members of the team are playing cards or watching soccer or something.

It's just that I have a hard time seeing professional football players as real athletes. Yeah, I know they work hard and are big and strong and stuff, but see, I tend to think of a professional athlete as someone who is generally much more fit and (injuries aside) healthier than your average person. Tennis players, gymnasts, soccer players, swimmers, and basketball players? Sure. Martial artists? You betcha. But some defensive lineman weighing three or four hundred pounds who gets paid to be a glorified roadblock? Eh, let's just say I'm not entirely convinced and leave it at that. Still, help was help, and if these lumbering behemoths wanted to have some fun by taking out Zoinks, more power to 'em, says I.

Regardless, I began looking around, trying to assess the current situation, as I'm sure the other Primes were doing as well. Things were kind of a madhouse. Some of the football players appeared to be using the Zoinks as tackling dummies, while others had scattered to the sidelines. A glance at the scoreboard told me that they had stopped the game clock with just a couple seconds left before halftime, which explained why the members of Angie's marching band were milling anxiously around at one end of the field.

Speaking of lumbering behemoths, the monster Enclave had sent was one of their classic types: built like a semi with fully half the mobility. I saw a couple of Browns players crash into it and bounce off; I'm not sure the monster even felt them. Lily Lee was beside it, shouting orders. Her technique as a minder, as I had seen it evolve over the past several months, was to keep us Primes busy chasing down Zoinks while her monster committed whatever mayhem it was sent to commit. This particular locale, however, was seriously hampering her efforts. The Zoinks were unable to get to the people in the stands, and of the people on the field, the "professional athletes" all had pads and helmets on and either were aggressively seeking out Zoinks to tackle or were standing in a defensive formation in front of their coaches and various officials.

Which left the marching band. Lily had lost no time in sending the majority of her Zoinks their way. A few of the kids, including Angie, were out in front doing their best to protect the others. Angela had removed her uniform jacket and was dressed in just a tee-shirt and her band pants; I could see her long black hair streaming around her face as she nailed a Zoink with a jumping back whip kick.

She appeared to be handling herself okay, so I dashed down the field over to another kid and pulled a couple of Zoinks off of him. He was well over six feet and built big. I guess he had gone out only because he was so big, though, because he didn't seem to have any idea how to defend himself. I didn't have time to give him any pointers, so I whacked his remaining Zoink across the back with Shelley's broadsword and told him politely, "Thank you for all your help. You'd better go help the others get out of here safely." Courtesy, everywhere and always \-- one of Shelley's rules. He stammered something that might have been a thank-you and scrambled away.

Angie was still kicking Zoink butt, so after I bashed the three Zoinks I had just acquired into submission, I ran towards another knot of people and Zoinks. As I dashed past my sister, I said in a low voice, "If you see Junior Prime Pink, tell her I've got a weapon she can use." Yeah, I know I broke protocol by using the words "her" and "she" but I figured I wasn't giving anything away. I mean, honestly, what guy would choose to be called Junior Prime Pink?

I didn't wait for her reply. The small group of kids I was headed for were struggling with a pair of Zoinks over a bass drum. I poured on the speed and managed to get to them before the drum was damaged. Once I had separated Zoinks from drum, the band kids began hustling their precious instrument away. I took a moment from punching a Zoink to wave goodbye to them. A little bit showboat-y, I know, but I knew them from around town. I had gone to high school with a couple of them, in fact, even if they didn't realize it was me.

Suddenly I heard Toby's cultured tones coming from over the loudspeaker. "Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic. We are attempting to contain the monster; please help us by exiting the stadium in as calm and orderly a manner as possible."

Hmm. Wizzit must have patched Toby into the PA system somehow, and Shelley must not have arrived yet; otherwise she would have been the one making the announcement. And, speak of the devil, there was a flash of light, and suddenly Shelley was standing beside me. "Sorry I'm late, guys. What's the situation?" she said, adding, "Thanks, Indigo," as I handed her her broadsword.

"Glad you could make it, Red," came Mike's voice. "Hope you got a goodbye kiss before you left."

"Monster is difficult to control," Trina said. "We are trying to keep it in center of field, but we are hampered by presence of so many American football players. I can't get clear shot."

"Yeah, they're getting in our way," Toby complained. "I can't swing my hammer for fear of hitting one of the players."

"Send 'em down my way," I called out. "I've got a hundred fifty teenage kids to protect over here, and a couple dozen Zoinks attacking them. There's one competent civilian helping me, but she has no weapons or protection of any type. I could use some bodies with pads and helmets."

"I'll ask some of them to help you out." Shelley swatted a pair of Zoinks to the ground with her sword, then began running upfield toward the others. "Indigo, that helper you mentioned -- she looks sort of like that Chinese girl we met earlier . . ."

"That's who it is, Red. Kind of an odd coincidence, huh?"

"Is it a coincidence?"

"As far as I know, it is."

Suddenly I heard a cry of "Big-- . . . Prime Indigo, help!"

Looking around, I saw that Angie had gotten herself swarmed by Zoinks. "Hang on!" I yelled. "Help is on the way!"

I sprinted over to her, pulling my Escrima sticks from my belt. By the time I reached her, she had collapsed under the pile of Zoinks. It's times like this that I'm glad that Wizzit makes us follow such strict rules regarding our weapons, because I just started whaling away on everybody I could as hard as I could, and I was glad not to have to worry about hitting my sister accidentally.

"Some uniforms coming your way, Indigo," Shelley said. "Get them in place and get over here soonest. We could use your help. This monster is plenty tough."

"Will do." I spent a couple minutes hauling Zoinks off of Angie and then helped her to her feet. "Are you okay?" I asked her.

"Yeah, I think so," she said a little shakily.

"You're not hurt or anything?"

"No." She sounded stronger now. "No, I'm fine."

"Good." I leaned in a little closer to her. "Do you have your Junior Prime badge with you?" I asked confidentially.

"Yeah. Why?"

I hesitated. I didn't want to get Angela any more involved with this than she already was, but Wizzit had made a special point of mentioning her to me, so I felt kind of obligated to extend an invitation. "I, er, brought along an extra weapon," I explained.

"Yeah, I heard you say that earlier, but I wasn't sure what you meant."

"Well, Wizzit thinks it might work for you as Junior Prime Pink. Might work. He says you may as well help us out as long as you're already here. But you still won't have any special powers, so don't do it if you don't feel up to it. It can be dangerous work." There, I had fulfilled my duty to Wizzit while still warning Angie off as much as I could without actually telling her not to help.

"Are you kidding?" she said excitedly. "Of course I feel up to it. That would be great! But, um, is it okay with the rest of your team? They won't be mad or anything if I suddenly show up, will they?"

I shrugged. "Wizzit was the one who told me to bring a weapon for you, and his is the only vote that counts."

"Oh, okay. So how do I, you know, actually go about joining you guys out there?"

"Whenever you're ready, Indigo," I heard Mike say impatiently. "Take your time; don't worry about us."

"Just duck out of sight somewhere and activate," I said hurriedly to Angela. "Wizzit will teleport you from there. Oh, and you probably don't want to fight in your band pants and shoes, so find some place to stash them. Sorry, gotta go!"

I left her standing there and dashed off to join the others, pausing only long enough to encourage the Steeler defensive line to start knocking down Zoinks, and to keep knocking them down as long as they kept getting up.

As I ran toward the monster, I could see why they thought they needed all the Primes for this guy. Did I say he was built like a truck? Well, let's just say that there are trucks and there are trucks, and this guy was a truck. Big and strong and not entirely stupid. At present, he was wading over towards the stands, with Red, Orange, and Blue all literally hanging off him. Trina was standing just a little ways off, shooting at him almost continuously.

Suddenly, I saw Mike vault off Mr. Big's shoulder, turn a somersault in midair, and land on his feet some distance away. "I've got a idea I want to try, Indigo," he said. "Grab yourself a Zoink and follow my lead."

"Will do." There were still a few Zoinks around that hadn't gone to menace the teenagers, so I grabbed me one. It wasn't too happy about being grabbed, so I hit it about four or five times, and then four or five more for good measure. Then I began dragging it back towards Mr. Big, just as Mike was doing with his Zoink.

The monster had nearly reached the stands by now, and I didn't see any way we were going to stop him. Shelley and Toby were each hanging off one of his shoulders, unable to use their weapons to advantage, but he was so big and strong that they would have had a hard time pounding on him regardless.

"We've got to get this guy off his feet," Mike shouted at me. He dashed around in front of the monster, and with superb timing, slung his Zoink down right underneath one of Mr. Big's descending feet.

The monster wobbled, thrown off-balance by the sudden change in footing. He staggered backwards, windmilling his arms and throwing Toby and Shelley to the ground. For a moment, it appeared that he would be able to right himself; he took a step with his other foot, trying to regain his balance. Imitating Mike, I grabbed my Zoink by the ankles and tried to insert it between foot and ground.

Things didn't work out exactly as I had planned. My timing wasn't quite as good as Mike's, so instead of disrupting his footing, I wound up using the Zoink to knock the guy's foot out from under him. "Well, gee, that would be just as good, wouldn't it?" I hear you say. Yeah, that's what I thought, until I realized that Mr. Big was going to fall right on top of me.

I rolled aside as quickly as I could, and I very nearly got free, except that my ankle got pinned by the monster's weight. It wasn't too horribly bad -- I didn't think anything was broken, and my knee wasn't wrenched out of place or anything -- but hey, I was trapped with a huge, ugly, angry monster on top of me. Things could have been better.

I quickly drew my blaster. Worst shooter on the team or not, I couldn't miss at this range.

"Indigo, are you all right?" Shelley's voice rapped out.

"Yeah, I don't think I'm damaged." I jammed the muzzle of the blaster against Mr. Big's hairy belly and held down the trigger. The monster's howls of anger nearly deafened me. "I would like to have my foot back, though. I think it might be going to sleep."

Suddenly I heard my sister's voice saying, "Hi, guys! How can I help?"

"What the hell?" Mike yelled. "Who's that?"

"I think it is Junior Prime Pink," Trina said.

"Well, someone get 'Junior Prime Pink' out of here. This is no place for an amateur. What's Pink doing here, anyway?"

"Wizzit told me to invite Pink," I said. Mr. Big was rolling around, trying to get rid of the irritating sting my blaster was giving him. "He said to bring along an extra weapon, that it might work for Pink. That's why I brought along two Escrima sticks -- one for me and one for Pink."

"Um, Indigo, you do realize that you're supposed to use Escrima sticks in pairs, don't you?" said Shelley. "It's sort of traditional."

"Sorry, I've never studied Escrima."

"Let's set up a training session; I'll teach you what I know."

I heard Trina grunt with pain. "Damn these Zoinks," she muttered. "Come over by me, Pink. Even without powers, you should be able to keep these damn Zoinks away from me while I shoot monster."

"Okay, um, Green," my sister said.

Toby suddenly appeared, towering above me. "Give me your hand, Indigo. I'll see if I can pull you free."

I held out the hand that wasn't gripping the blaster. "Hang on, I'll tell you when to pull," I said. I waited, trying to calculate just when Mr. Big would roll away from me. "Ready . . . now!"

Toby heaved, and after an agonizing instant, my foot slid out from under the monster, and Toby and I spilled backwards. I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could; it felt as if one leg were, like, six inches longer than the other. "Thanks, Blue," I said. "Pink, I'm coming to help you."

"Thanks, big brother! I could use some help."

"No names, Pink," Shelley commanded. "Nothing personally identifiable. Just colors. That's our rule."

"Oh, sorry! I didn't realize."

I limped around the monster. Trina had positioned herself near the beastie's head and appeared to be trying to shoot it directly in the face, while Angela was battling two Zoinks behind her. I drew the two sticks from my belt and ran forward. To the first Zoink, I gave the gift of a jumping sidekick to the head; the second, I hit with an Escrima stick as I landed. The first Zoink fell to the ground; the second merely staggered backward.

"Here you go, Pink," I said, handing her one of my sticks.

"Give Pink your blaster, too, Indigo," I heard Shelley say as she took a swing at Mr. Big's shoulder.

"Oh, come on, Red! I'm not that bad a shot!"

"I'm concerned with Pink right now, not your marksmanship." Shelley's sword connected with a shower of sparks. Mr. Big sat up and began swinging a pair of huge fists. "Would you prefer that Pink use a long-range weapon or a short-range one?"

"Ah . . . you make a very good point, Red. Sorry, you're right. Definitely a long-range weapon. Wizzit, can Pink use a blaster?"

Wizzit piped up. "If Pink can use a weapon, then Pink can use a blaster."

"Then you're not sure?"

"Correct-a-mundo!"

I handed Angela my blaster. "Here, try to shoot the Zoink over there," I said, pointing to the drone that was still on its feet. She aimed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened, not even a single spark. "It's not working, Wizzit!" I called out.

"Hmm. Interesting." There was a pause. "Okay, try it now."

Angie squeezed the trigger again with the same lack of result. "Still nothing!"

"Really? That should have worked. Let's see . . ." The Zoink moved closer to us in the interval of silence which followed, so I stepped forward and kicked it to the ground.

"Leave Pink, Indigo!" Shelley ordered me. "The monster is getting to its feet."

"Hang on a sec, I think I've got it working this time," Wizzit said happily. "I will need to change your base frequency, though, Pink."

"Okay . . . what does that mean, exactly?" Angie asked him.

"It means you have to reset your shield. You're going to have to deactivate and then reactivate for my changes to take effect."

"I've got to reboot myself?" she cried. "I can't do that! They told us we'd be on national TV! Everybody will see me!"

"Sorry, can't do it any other way."

Trina took one final shot at Mr. Big, who had indeed gotten back to his feet and was lumbering toward the stands again, and then she rounded on Angela and me. "Pink, get down on your knees. All the way down, with your face against your legs, and cover your head with your hands," she commanded in an un-Trina-like fashion. Trina almost never gives orders.

"On my knees? But --"

"Just do it!" Angela immediately dropped to her knees, assuming the position Trina had described. "Indigo, you and I will cover her while she resets. Got it?"

"Uh, yeah. Got it."

Trina and I crouched protectively over Angela, blocking off as much of her as we could with our bodies and outstretched arms. "Now, Pink," Trina told her.

"Hang on a sec," Wizzit interrupted. "Give me a moment to make sure no cameras are on her . . . okay, now!"

Her voice muffled against her legs, Angie yelled out, "Junior-Prime-Pink-Deactivate-Junior-Prime-Pink-Activate!", just that fast. I caught a flash of white from her tee-shirt, but not much more, as the pink haze surrounding her winked out for a split second, then quickly reestablished itself.

The feeling of something hard striking me on the back brought me back to the fight. I turned in time to see a Zoink raising its joined fists for another whack at me. Angrily, I shoved it back with my foot; it reeled back slightly, but didn't go down.

"Pink, shoot Zoink!" Trina commanded.

Angie raised her blaster -- sorry, my blaster \-- and fired, and this time a bolt of energy shot out, knocking the Zoink onto its back. "Wow, this is great!" she said, sounding amazed.

"Wonderful." I heard Shelley say curtly. "Green, take charge of Pink. Indigo, we could really use your help about now."

"On my way, Red!"

Mr. Big had reached the sections of the wall separating the stands from the field now, and he batted them aside as if they were cardboard. Most of the players and other personnel had already left the area, and the fans had begun clearing out.

I did see one guy in a Dawg Pound mask, though, dancing around near the bottom row of seats. As Mr. Big approached, he ran over to where a beer vendor had left his tray and heaved a couple plastic cups of beer straight at the monster's face. The guy must have had one heck of an arm, I decided, because both cups hit Mr. Big square on the forehead, sending foaming liquid streaming down into his eyes.

Emboldened by his success, Dawg Face began throwing the rest of the cups at the monster, and soon Mr. Big was covered with beer and he was roaring and clawing at his eyes, where most of the cups had landed.

"Hey, thanks, you crazy nut!" I yelled across to him. "Go Dawgs!" The fan responded with a "Woo-woo-woo!" and a triple fist pump, and then began bounding back up the steps to safety.

With Mr. Big temporarily blinded, I decided it was safe to get a bit closer to him. A whole lot closer, in fact. I vaulted off one of the nearby benches and landed on his back. Shelley and Toby were in front of him, whaling away on his belly with sword and hammer, respectively, which distracted him sufficiently for me to climb up to his shoulders, using the hair on his back to pull myself up.

"Careful, Indigo," Shelley warned me. "This guy could swat you like a bug."

Now, what I felt like saying was something like, "He'll have to catch me first!" but I knew better. The Law of Dramatic Irony would require me to suffer some sort of life-threatening injury within thirty seconds of my having said that. So I contented myself with a mild, "I'll do my best to stay out of his way, Red," and I left it at that.

Of course, even with the Law of Dramatic Irony now firmly on my side, I couldn't afford to slack off. Mr. Big could feel me up on his shoulders, I was sure, and he was wriggling around so much that I had a hard time staying put. So I did the only thing I could think of: I gripped of one end of my remaining Escrima stick with each hand and, planting a knee against the back of his neck, I slipped the stick over his head.

I had been aiming to get some sort of choke hold on him, but it didn't quite work out that way. His head was so big and his neck so short that I wound up getting a . . . well, I guess you'd have to call it a nose-hold. That is, my stick lodged itself across his upper lip, just below his heroically aquiline nose. And, as always happens when our weapons make contact with an Enclave monster, sparks were flying; I'm sure it stung something awful.

I gave the stick a yank up and back, and his head came back, too, with him howling all the while. I mean, I know it's a sensitive part of the body and all but . . . pulling a monster around by its nose? Somehow it seemed a little too much like something the Three Stooges would do, not a seasoned martial artist like myself. Not nearly kickass enough. More Jackie Chan than Bruce Lee.

Regardless, I set myself, both knees against his broad shoulders now, and pulled back with all my strength. He howled again and staggered back, trying relieve the pressure on his aching, sparking nose. I kept pulling and he kept backing up until I heard Mike say, "Good work, Indigo. Stop him right here!"

"I'm not sure I can," I yelled back. In fact, Mr. Big had begun writhing around so much that my knees were slipping. Within seconds, I had lost my position and found myself hanging onto my Escrima stick for dear life. Worse, the stick slipped down off his upper lip and into his open mouth. He tried biting down on it, but quickly discovered that was a bad idea, as the sparks from my stick stung his lips and tongue. The shock of it made him jerk his head back once more, and that caused him to overbalance. Arms windmilling, he slowly toppled backward and fell to the ground with a crash.

Right on top of me. Again. Man, I was starting to hate this monster!

I hit the ground hard, and I must have blacked out for a second, because the first thing I heard was several voices yelling "-digo!"

"Indigo, are you okay?" That was my sister Angie's voice.

"Indigo, respond! Are you all right? Are you conscious?" Definitely Shelley.

"I . . . I'm okay . . . I think," I said, trying to put as much heartiness into my voice as I could. No sense in getting Angie worried about me. "I'm pretty sure I can still feel everything, and nothing seems to hurt like it's broken. Um, can somebody get this guy off me please?"

"Doin' our best, mate." That was Mike, of course. He grunted, and I heard a thwack! as he struck Mr. Big with his two-handed club.

"Actually, Indigo, can you hold that position for about two more minutes?" Wizzit piped up. "You seem to be keeping the monster on his back at present; your stick in his mouth is acting as a bridle. It will take me approximately two more minutes to tune your six weapons to destroy the monster."

"Sure, I can -- wait a minute," I said. "Six weapons? Look, Wizzit, I don't want An- . . . err, Pink anywhere near this thing. You know Pink's got no protection."

"Have it your way." Alien clouds of gas can't really shrug, I suppose, but Wizzit sure made it sound like that's what he was doing. "If he is kept immobile, I can tune five weapons to destroy him, but it will take an additional . . . twelve minutes. Can you hold him for that long?"

I considered the question. Mr. Big weighed a ton, and every ounce of that weight seemed to be pressing down on my chest and legs. The force shield kept him from squashing me flat, but I was already starting to have trouble breathing. On the other hand, if Angela were seriously hurt -- or if she were killed -- what would I say to my parents?

"Indigo, I'll be careful, honest!" Angie definitely sounded worried. "Please let me help you!"

Shelley said quietly, "Indigo, I will personally make sure that Pink is not injured."

That settled it. If Shelley guaranteed that something wouldn't happen, then it sure as hell was not going to happen. "All right," I gasped. "Six weapons. I'll hold him down as long as I can."

"So . . . what do we do while we're waiting?" Angela asked uncertainly.

"We can help Indigo keep this beastie on his back," Mike said grimly with another thwack! of his club. "He may be down, but he's not out."

I heard the sound of a collision, and Trina grunted with pain. "No, you keep Zoinks off of me, is what you do, Pink!" she said. She fired her triple blaster, and I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground with a thud. "Damn pesky Zoinks!"

"S-sorry, Green." Angie fired her own blaster. "Got one!" she called out.

"Try using your stick, Pink." That was from Toby, who was also pounding on Mr. Big. "It's more powerful than the blaster."

"Has anyone seen Lily Lee lately?" Shelley asked suddenly.

I said, "I . . . saw her around mid-field . . . when I ran up to help you guys. Haven't . . . seen her since." Mr. Big felt like he was squeezing the life out of me. I was having to take quick, shallow breaths just to keep the air moving.

"Stay with us, Indigo," Shelley said, a note of urgency in her voice. "It won't be long now."

"Doing my best, Red," I gasped. I tightened my grip on the Escrima stick and tried to ignore the sparks that were showing up in my field of vision.

"Lily Lee?" asked Angie. "She's that Chinese girl we met, right, Indigo? Isn't that her, running toward us over there?"

"Damn!" Shelley exclaimed. "Pink, get out of her way!"

There was the sound of bodies hitting each other, and I heard Angie cry out. Mr. Big was covering me up so that I couldn't see anything, though. "What's happening?" I shouted. "Is Pink okay?"

"I think so," Shelley said grimly. She didn't say anything after that, although I heard the sounds of her fighting someone.

"Pink is just dazed, I think," Trina said. "Lily Lee knocked her down, but she is starting to get up now."

"Whew! What was that?" I heard Angie say confusedly. Then, in a more alert voice, "Red, let me help you!"

"Stay back!" Shelley said sharply. I still couldn't see anything, but it sounded like Lily was giving Shelley all she could handle. "She's very dangerous."

"Don't use your weapons," Trina warned Angie. "They won't work on that one. Only fists and feet work."

"Do you need our help, Red?" Mike asked.

"No," Shelley said curtly. "I'll handle Lily. You three help Indigo. Pink, do whatever Green tells you to do. Wizzit, let me know when you're ready."

"Green, what should I do?" Angela asked frantically. "I want to help."

"Shoot at monster," Trina told her. "Keep Zoinks off of me."

"Okay, but . . ." Her voice trailed off, and a few seconds later I heard her ki-up. She must have been fighting especially hard.

"Behind you, Pink!" Shelley called out.

"Got it!" And she did another ki-up.

"Pink, you've got to back off," Shelley rapped out. "You're getting too close!"

"Sorry, Red, I--" Her words were suddenly cut off by another ki-up, followed by another, louder yell, almost a scream.

"What happened?" I cried out, imagining all sorts of terrible things happening to my sister. No one said anything at first; all I could hear was the sound of flesh hitting flesh. I heard a female voice cry out, and then the sounds of fighting stopped. "What happened?" I yelled again.

"Wizzit, get us out of here!" Shelley snarled. "Now! I don't want to lose her again!"

For once, Wizzit didn't have a snappy comeback. "Teleporting now," he said meekly.

"What happened?" I nearly screamed. "Is Pink all right?"

"Pink's fine, mate," Mike said. He began laughing, the sort of relieved sound you make when something bad didn't just happen. "It's, um, Lily who's got the problem."

"Pink knocked out a Zoink," Toby said slowly, "and then picked it up and heaved it at Lily Lee."

"Knocked her off-balance," Trina picked up the story. "Right into Red's foot. Probably broke her jaw."

"That was . . . a good thing, right?" my sister asked uncertainly. "I mean, I just . . . acted without thinking. Was that okay?"

Mike burst out laughing again. "Pink, you have no idea."

"It was very good thing," Trina assured her.

After that, destroying Mr. Big came as something of an anticlimax. Shelley reappeared after a few seconds, muttering something about the Nansen Ice Sheet. A few seconds later, Wizzit announced that it was time, and we all came together for the final strike.

The sports reporters descended on us even before the sparks had stopped flying and all the Zoinks had teleported out, every one of them wanting an exclusive interview with a Prime. It's times like this that I don't envy Shelley in her role as our spokesman. After a tough battle, the last thing I'd want to do is answer questions from a bunch of people who were intent on finding out more about me and my background than I wanted to let on.

Still, this Q&A session was more entertaining than most. A lot of the questions were couched in sports terms, naturally enough, and Shelley handled them all with good humor. She praised the Browns and Steelers players for their help in keeping the Zoinks out of our hair; she allowed as how she might possibly consider trying out for the NFL some day; and, in answer to one sharp-eyed reporter's question, she explained that Pink was a first-time walk-on who might be hoping to get an actual spot with the Primes.

Then, after Shelley declared that she had answered all the questions she intended to, we all teleported back to HQ.

(Note to self: Never get stuck underneath a monster when it vaporizes. It stings like the dickens.)

Chapter 13

After a battle, Wizzit's first priority is normally to put any injured Primes into healing comas as soon as possible. He's sometimes a pain about it, but I can certainly understand his thinking. After all, he's got only seven of us Primes, and we're frankly hard to replace. I mean, Padma's been with us for six months now, and she's only just coming up to speed. And two or three of us usually come back injured from any given battle. If he couldn't heal us up quick, protecting Earth from Enclave would be pretty near impossible.

Didn't happen this time, though. The first words Wizzit said when we materialized in HQ were not, "Prepare for healing comas, kids!" Nope. Instead, they were, "Do not unblur yourselves! Repeat, do not unblur yourselves! All except you, Indigo."

Now, it may be that you, sitting comfortably in your chair reading this, can easily figure out what was going on. As for me, I wasn't feeling so hot after being squished twice by Mr. Big, so I probably wasn't all that swift on the uptake. At the moment, the only thing I could think was, "Dang! I must be in really hot water!" So, even though my conscience was clear, I was more than a little worried when I unblurred. Standing in front of me were the impassive, glowing figures of my teammates . . . and my sister Angela, who was looking around wide-eyed at everything, wearing just a tee-shirt and panties.

As soon as she realized her, uh, situation, Angie shrieked and tried to cover herself up. An instant later, she vanished as Wizzit evidently teleported her back to wherever it was that she had left the rest of her clothes.

"Pretty girl," Mike commented. "Mean set of legs. Is she dating anyone, Trev?"

I chuckled. "Back home, we have a term for girls like her, Orange. It's called 'jail-bait'. She's only seventeen, which means she's too young for you."

Mike shrugged. "Age of consent in New Zealand is only sixteen."

Frowning, I folded my arms across my chest. "Fine. We have another term for girls like her, and it's called 'she's my sister, so hands off'. Try anything with her, and if she doesn't kick your butt all the way to New Zealand, I will."

Mike laughed his easy laugh. "No worries, mate. Hands off it is."

"She is an awfully nice-looking bird, though," Toby chimed in regretfully.

Trina had been looking around the lounge. "Wizzit, where is Red?" she suddenly asked.

I glanced around. Shelley was indeed nowhere to be seen. I guess I had been too preoccupied to notice it before.

"Red is overseeing the transfer of our prisoner to a more . . . secure location," Wizzit said. "It seems that Lily Lee's body temperature was dropping a little too rapidly on the Nansen Ice Sheet."

"I didn't know we had a secure location," Mike muttered.

"We do now. After our first unsuccessful attempts to capture Miss Lee, Prime Commander offered to build a stronghouse in a remote area of his ranch, specifically designed to contain Miss Lee or any other unaltered humans we might capture. Steel-reinforced concrete walls. It has no windows or doors; only way in or out is by teleportation."

There was a flash of light, and suddenly Shelley was standing among us. "Don't unblur yet, Red," Wizzit warned her. "Bringing in Junior Prime Pink . . . now!"

Another flash of light, and Angie was standing beside me. Her shoes and socks were in the crook of one arm as she drew up the suspenders of her band pants. I saw the blaster and Escrima stick poking out of one pocket. She looked up, startled, at my four teammates, and then she caught sight of me and seemed to relax a bit.

"Hi, Trevor," she said nervously. "It's okay for me to call you Trevor now, isn't it?"

"Sure thing, Angie," I said warmly, and I slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a side hug. I realized by now that Wizzit had had me unblur because the sight of a friendly face would make her feel more at ease. Besides, this was my baby sister, after all; I was happy to see that she was unharmed -- no obvious bruises or injuries, at least. "We use colors only when our shields are activated, but then we use only colors. No names ever, not even stuff like 'he' or 'she'."

Angela nodded gravely as she bent to put her socks and shoes on. "Yeah, I had kind of figured that out."

"So," I went on expansively, "I guess I had better make some introductions, hadn't I? You've already met Wizzit. Guys, this is my sister, Angela Chiao. Angie, this is, uh, . . ." I stopped, suddenly realizing how stupid this was going to sound. Still, as long as I had started . . . "This is Red, Orange, Green, and Blue."

Angela rolled her eyes. "Gee, thanks, big brother. Like I couldn't have figured that out on my own." She raised an hand dramatically to her forehead. "Oh, how will I ever keep all these names straight? It's too much!"

Toby snickered, and that broke the ice; we all started laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Shelley stepped forward and stuck out her hand. "Sorry, Angela," she said. "I know you know your brother Trevor is Prime Indigo, but the rest of us will have to continue to keep our identities secret from you, at least for the time being. Not that our names or faces would mean anything to you, naturally, but . . . just in case."

Angela shook her hand. "Sure, I understand." Then she froze, and her eyes suddenly went wide. "Ohmigod! I just realized that you're a girl!" she exclaimed. She turned to look at me, covering her mouth with her hand in surprise. "Trevor, Red is a girl! I can't believe that . . . and you let me think . . . a-and Red is a girl!"

"I'm a woman, actually," Shelley corrected her quietly, imperturbable as ever. "It has been a long time since I thought of myself as a girl." She paused, looking from Angela to me and back again. "So how did you figure it out?"

"I -- I suppose I should have realized it before," Angie stammered. "I just didn't think about it at the time. When we were out there fighting the monster, I could hear . . . well, it must have been your real voices, not the fake ones that everyone always hears, and as I was shaking your hand, it suddenly occurred to me that . . ." She whirled and pointed an accusing finger at me. "And you! You told me that Red was this really cute guy, you snake!"

I smiled and raised my hands in a show of innocence. "I told you no such thing. You're the one who said it, not me."

Shelley had been nodding to herself this whole time, and really, Angie's explanation made a whole lot of sense. The voice alteration provided by our shields does not extend to Prime-to-Prime communications; otherwise, it could get really hard for us to identify each other by voice.

Shelley stepped forward and placed a friendly arm around Angie's shoulders. "Misdirection is our friend," she said kindly. "We're a very small group, supported by no government organization of any kind. We have to rely on a good deal of secrecy. I have never intentionally lied about who I am, but I certainly don't mind being widely known as Eric the Red. If there were ever a worldwide search for Prime Red, I'd rather it would be a man-hunt instead of a woman-hunt."

Angie was nodding thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." She turned to Toby. "So . . . you're from England, right?"

"Got it in one," Toby agreed amiably.

Now she turned to Trina. "And you're from . . . Russia?"

I thought that was pretty perceptive of her, myself, because aside from dropping her articles, Trina's accent is not that strong at all. Not as strong as, say, Padma's. Trina simply nodded and said, "Da." She must have been, I guess you'd call it over-Russianizing her speech to make some sort of point, because she ordinarily never mixes Russian and English.

Angie looked like she was feeling pretty sure of herself by now. "And Orange," she said, looking at Mike with a grin, "you've got to be from Australia!"

I waited for him to growl or snort or make some other sign of disgust, because he hates to be mistaken for an Ozzie. He must have really liked Angie's looks, though, because he said cheerily, "Actually, love, I'm from New Zealand. But it's only a couple of thousand miles away; you're not too far off."

"Oh, okay. Sorry." She turned back to look at me. "So, big brother, why am I here, anyway?"

I glanced at Shelley. "Uh . . . Red?"

"I imagine that Wizzit wanted to make sure you were all right," Shelley said. "That was a pretty tough battle. Wizzit, can you induce a healing coma in her if necessary?"

"Negatory on that," Wizzit chirped. "Wasn't built into the badge. Not enough power."

Shelley looked at Angie. "So, are you okay?"

"I'm a little banged up, but I'll be all right." Angela rotated her shoulders up and back experimentally, and then she winced. "I think I must have wrenched my back when I threw the Zoink at that girl."

"Completing my scan . . ." Wizzit said. "Sensors show minor bruising up and down the body, along the arms, and on one side of the head. No sign of concussion. Small muscle tears along the lower and middle back. If I could induce a healing coma, you would be fine within five minutes. As it is, your body should repair itself within one or two days with no lingering issues. In the interim, you should be able to control any pain with commonly-available analgesics. Apply cold, then heat, then \--"

"Yeah, yeah," Angie interrupted. "I know how to treat sore muscles."

"Your injuries should be easily explained by your very public fight with the Zoinks before you activated," Wizzit went on. "That's when most of them occurred, anyway. Speaking of which, you should prepare yourself to be interviewed by the press when you arrive home."

"The press?" she asked uneasily. "Why?"

By way of answer, Wizzit turned on the video display that we have running along one wall of the lounge. A perky young female sports anchor was speaking to the camera. "And I'm receiving word that we now know the identity of the heroic young woman who was involved in what became a very wild Browns-Steelers game this afternoon." The anchor was replaced by a long-distance shot of the marching band being menaced by Zoinks. Suddenly, one of the tiny figures came dashing out towards a knot of Zoinks and kids.

The camera quickly zoomed in on Angela's determined face as she hurriedly stripped off her band jacket, threw it aside, and smashed a Zoink in the face with a jumping sidekick. "She has been identified as a member of a local high school marching band that had been invited to play at this afternoon's game, and seems to have no connection with the Primes, who also showed up for the game."

Another clip, this time of Angie hitting a Zoink in the head with a jumping backwheel. The Zoink went down, but unfortunately, so did she. "Great!" muttered Angie. "They had to show the one time I fell down." I could sympathize. A jumping backwheel can be a pretty flashy and devastating move, but in the excitement of a real fight it's easy to lose your balance and fall on your butt. Not something you'd want broadcast on national TV.

The clip continued, showing the Zoinks swarming her, and then me rescuing her, while the voiceover continued, "We are currently withholding the girl's name because she is believed to be a minor, but we are attempting to contact her family and hope to be first on the scene with a live interview." The scene then switched to a video of Dawg Face throwing cups of beer, and Wizzit turned the picture off.

"So they'll be contacting my family?" Angela's eyes suddenly got wider. "Trevor!" she exclaimed. "I just realized . . . Mom and Dad must be worried sick! They came up to watch the game, and I was supposed to go back home with them! What am I going to do?"

"Um . . ." I said helpfully.

"It's all right, don't panic," Shelley stepped in smoothly. "The fight hasn't been over all that long, maybe ten minutes at most. There has been a lot of confusion. They probably haven't left the area, and maybe they aren't even all that worried about you yet. Is there any way you can contact them to let them know you're all right and to find out where they are?"

"Well, I guess I could text my mom . . . except that my phone is in my trumpet case, which I hope Julie put on the instrument truck for me," Angie finished in dismay.

"What is your mother's cellphone number?" Wizzit asked. Then, before she could reply, he said, "Never mind. I retrieved it from Trevor's phone." He paused. "I have just sent her a message saying, 'Angie, using a friend's phone. Where are you guys?'"

We waited for a tense minute, and then Wizzit said, "She replied, 'Dock 20 parking lot, east corner. Where are you?' I am replying, 'Stay put, be there in a sec.'" Another pause. "I have located a secluded area nearby that will shortly be completely unobserved for about . . . ten seconds. Prepare to teleport as soon as that area is clear, in approximately thirty seconds."

Angie heaved a sigh of relief. "Thanks a bunch, Wizzit!" She glanced around at the others, then looked up uncertainly at me. "Big brother," she asked quickly in Korean, "would it be safe for me to speak to you in this language? Could any of the others understand us?"

I thought for a moment. "This one would be just as safe," I said, switching to Mandarin, which I knew that she and I were both more comfortable in. "Wizzit will hear and understand regardless, but no one else. And Wizzit will not tell them. What did you want to say to me, Younger Sister, that you do not want the others to hear? I will not keep secrets from my teammates."

"Did Red really mean it when she said I was trying out for a spot with the Primes?"

I shook my head. "Probably not, I am afraid," I told her as gently as I could. Poor kid, she looked so hopeful that I didn't have the heart to tell her that Wizzit made those decisions, not Shelley. Wizzit, who was undoubtedly listening in and understanding every word we were saying. "Red had to tell the reporters something to explain your presence, and that, I think, was merely a convenient lie."

Angie's face fell. "That is what I feared. I would so much like to be a Prime. It was so exciting helping you today!"

"It is not all fun and games," I warned her. "We have to train very hard, we get hurt a lot, and you know how Mother and Father disapprove of the fact that I do not go to college."

She nodded glumly. "I understand."

"Teleporting in five seconds," Wizzit announced.

"Thanks, Wizzit!" Angie said in English. "And the rest of you guys -- thanks! It was great meeting you all!"

"My blaster, little sis?" I said, holding out my hand.

"Oh, sorry! Here you go." She deposited both blaster and Escrima stick in my hand.

"Remember, don't tell anybody about what you've seen," Shelley warned her. "Nothing about the Primes. Especially on TV."

"I won't. 'Bye." And then she vanished from our view.

Chapter 14

As the light-flash from Angela's teleportation faded, everyone else unblurred themselves. Shelley was still wearing her little black dress, I noticed, but she must have lost her pumps somewhere along the way because she was currently barefoot. She turned to me. "So, what did she say to you that she didn't want us to hear? She was looking pretty down while you were talking to her."

I took a breath to launch into a detailed translation of our brief conversation (hey, I had warned Angie that I wasn't going to keep any secrets, and I meant it) when Wizzit cut in, "It was nothing of any importance."

Shelley and I looked at each other in surprise. "O-kay . . ." she said, "I guess that means that he doesn't want you to tell us."

Wizzit didn't jump in right away to correct her, so after a couple of seconds I shrugged and said, "I guess not. But, like he said, it wasn't anything important. No team secrets or anything."

Shelley started to say, "Then let's --" when the monster alarm began sounding.

"What the hell is going on?" Mike exclaimed. "What is it with all these monsters showing up?"

"Interesting," Wizzit commented. "This sighting is in a remote area of the United States, in the Mojave desert. Nobody around for miles. And it's just one single, small monster -- no Zoinks, no minder."

"That's . . . odd," said Toby.

"Identity confirmed," Wizzit announced. "It's JB Swift."

"And he's by himself?" Mike asked incredulously.

"That's what I said."

"I'll go out to meet him," Shelley said grimly.

Mike put in, "I'll go with you."

"We'll all go," said Trina.

"Nope, nothing doing," Wizzit told her. "Just Red and Orange will go. Green, Blue, and Indigo can expect healing comas all around, starting in ninety seconds."

Trina sighed in frustration and flopped herself down resignedly in one of the easy chairs. There's just no arguing with Wizzit when he tells you he's going to start a healing coma. Toby and I selected chairs on either side of her.

"Here, Mike," Shelley said, handing him her broadsword. "I don't think I'll be needing this. Why don't you go get . . . " She smiled. ". . . the golf clubs."

Mike chuckled nastily. I guess he must have been around the last time Enclave had been sending out pint-sized speedsters like JB Swift, back when golf clubs had been the weapons of choice. "Good as done."

Chapter 15

When you're in a healing coma, your mind tends to wander, kind of like it does when you're dozing and just on the edge of the dream-state. Sometimes, too, people talk when they're in a healing coma. We call it babbling. Everyone does it at some point or other while healing, and since all babbling has an approximately equal potential for embarrassment, courtesy and self-preservation pretty much demand that you ignore everyone else's babbling as much as humanly possible. After all, if you make fun of what someone says during a healing coma, odds are that you're going to be next.

Trina was babbling softly at the moment. I couldn't understand anything of what she was saying because she was speaking in . . . French, I think. Her tone of voice, though, kind of made me wish that I was the guy she was talking to. Toby was quiet; he babbles probably the least of any of us.

As for me, I don't think I was saying anything. My thoughts were drifting to Lily Lee, wondering how she was doing, whether she was frightened as she lay there (I presume) all tied up in our new stronghouse, whether her weird, robotic, Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick persona even felt any emotions at all.

JB Swift must have been present at the game, I realized. Lily Lee had transformed at some point during the fight from pain-in-the-butt minder to deadly fighting machine, and I had seen her do that only once before, when JB Swift had pointed some sort of remote control device at her and pressed a button. We had nearly captured her then, but JB Swift had stepped in to save her. I wondered idly why he had been unable to intervene this time.

I also found myself wondering which of her several personas she was displaying at the moment. Mike had knocked her unconscious once, and she had woken up as sweet, gentle Li Lin-fa. I sure wouldn't mind seeing that side of her again. I had once promised Li Lin-fa that I would rescue her from Enclave if I possibly could. I hadn't been the one who had captured her this time, but still . . .

My eyes snapped open as the healing coma lifted and my force shield turned itself off. Toby was nowhere to be seen. Trina was just sitting up, taking deep breaths and pressing her palms to her eyes; I imagine that her coma ended at about the same time mine did.

"I think I must have been babbling the entire time," she said apologetically as she caught sight of me. "I hope I didn't disturb you."

I shrugged. "I couldn't understand any of it, so I just tuned it out. Sounded like you were speaking French."

"I probably was. I was thinking about an old boyfriend from Paris."

"Ah."

She flashed me her flirtatious smile. "Don't worry. He is long gone." She hooked her arm through mine and winked at me. "And he was not nearly as cute as you are."

I winked back at her. "And none of my old girlfriends can compare to you, Trina. You're the prettiest girl I know."

"Flatterer! Don't let Padma hear you say that, or she'll break your nose the next time you practice together."

"She'd have to actually hit me to do that!"

Laughing, we went into the kitchen together. I grabbed a glass of orange juice while she made herself a cup of tea. Toby was already there, spreading something on a piece of toast. I wrinkled my nose. "Don't tell me Mike's finally got you hooked on Marmite," I said in disgust.

"Just thought I'd try it."

"Don't! He got me to eat some once on a bet. It's awful stuff."

"Mike seems to like it." He stared for a moment at the dark-brown spread. "Well, here goes." He took a large bite, chewed for a while, then shrugged. "You know, it's not half bad," he said with his mouth full, then took another bite.

Trina's expression showed just what she thought of the Marmite that Mike insisted be kept stocked in our kitchen. "Wizzit," she said to the empty air, "where are Red and Orange?"

"They are with the prisoner in the stronghouse."

"Will they need any help with her?"

"Or a translator?" I asked hopefully.

"No and no. The subject is passive and uncommunicative at the moment. They are merely observing her."

"So when do we find out what happened with JB Swift?" Toby asked.

"You will debrief with the Commander tomorrow. Red and Orange will debrief then as well. In the meantime, lights-out is in forty-five minutes, kids. Good night!"

Chapter 16

The five of us Primes trooped into Prime Commander's office the next morning. Shelley and Mike looked as though they hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.

We had already done a debrief yesterday on the Malawi incident, so Shelley right away had Wizzit start playing the vid of what happened in Cleveland, using Mike's POV, since she came late on the scene. Mike narrated what he, Toby, and Trina had done against Mr. Big. It looked pretty brutal; watching it, I was a little surprised that Wizzit had let Mike go out with Shelley to meet JB Swift instead of coma-tizing him right away.

Eventually, Mike turned the story over to me for a bit. My narration, as you could probably guess, was pretty brief -- just the goings-on over by the band kids. To tell you the truth, I've never really gotten the hang of saying, "Now I'm doing this, and now I'm doing this, and now I'm doing this." Shelley's a pro at it, pointing out all the little things she noticed and explaining just why she did what she did, and Mike's gotten to be pretty good. Whenever I'm the narrator, though, I always feel like I'm showing home movies from my last vacation; I'm always afraid that everyone will start nodding off while I'm rambling on about exactly why I punched a Zoink in the nose.

Regardless, I finished my section and was about to turn things over to Shelley when Prime Commander stopped me. "Let me get this straight: You brought along an extra weapon, and you offered it to your younger sister Angela to use as Junior Prime Pink?"

"Yes, sir," I said, a trifle uneasily. "Because Wizzit told me to. That is, he told me to bring an extra weapon for Angie, and I assumed he wanted me to offer it to her because, well, because bringing it for her and not offering it to her would just be dumb."

Prime Commander chuckled. "Yes, that makes sense." He leaned forward with a smile. "I'm not accusing you of anything, Trevor; I'm just trying to understand the situation. We've never had a Junior Prime before, and I'm trying to figure out how I feel about it."

"Yes, sir." I took a deep breath. "I have to say, I'm not wild about the idea of putting my sister on the front lines against Enclave, without a shield and especially with no way to induce a healing coma afterwards," I said. "I mean, it's one thing if I nearly get myself killed out there, because once I get back to HQ, I'll bounce right back again. But if Angie breaks an arm or a leg or, Heaven forbid, her back or her neck, she could be in a cast for weeks, or in a wheelchair for the rest of her life."

"It would not be impossible to induce a healing coma in a civilian," Wizzit piped up. "Just . . . difficult. And time-consuming and complicated. But it could be done. Probably."

"Nevertheless, your concern is noted, Trevor," Commander Windham replied soberly. "And very well stated. All right, let's move on."

Shelley picked up the story and told it to the end. I have to admit that I looked pretty silly hanging from Mr. Big's mouth. I was especially interested, though, in Shelley's fight with Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick. Pretty good moves from both of them, I must say; it looked as though Shelley were holding her own against her just fine. And when Angela grabbed the Zoink and heaved it, the way Shelley took advantage was sheer poetry, as if the two of them had been practicing together for years.

"Your sister looked mighty good out there, Trev," Mike commented when Shelley was done. "Especially with no shield."

"She did well," Trina agreed. "And not a bad shot." She winked at me. "Maybe we should give her your blaster permanently, Trevor."

"That's not a bad idea," Shelley mused. "Not that we should take Trevor's blaster away from him," she went on quickly as I started to object, "but that she should have a blaster of her own. I agree with Trevor -- if we ever need her help again, I'd like to minimize any risk of her getting hurt." She turned to Trina. "Would you be willing to act as her minder?"

Trina nodded. "Of course. I need someone to keep the Zoinks away from me. But she will need another weapon besides just a blaster."

Commander Windham asked, "Trevor, what kinds of weapons does she know how to use?"

"She sure seemed to know what to do with that stick," Toby said.

"See, Grandmaster Park isn't real big on weapons," I said, trying to think back to my training at the studio. "He does the shinai -- that is, the bamboo sword -- and sometimes some nunchuck training, but that's about it. Mainly he does fists and feet."

"Sap gloves?" Mike suggested. "Boots, like Padma's?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. I can ask her what she'd like."

Prime Commander shook his head. "No, don't say anything to her, not just yet. I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves. After all, we may wind up never using Junior Prime Pink again. For now, let's just set aside an extra blaster for her use and maybe that stick she was using, or something similar. We can keep them in a corner of the weapons room somewhere. We'll make more plans later if things start to develop. Shelley, do you agree?"

"That's just what I was going to suggest, Dad. Wizzit, any comment?"

No response. Shelley shrugged. "Silence means consent. Any other questions before we move on to our encounter with JB Swift?"

"Wizzit," Commander Windham said, "would there be any point in my asking why Junior Prime Pink had to deactivate and then reactivate before she could use the blaster?"

"Simple question, simple answer," Wizzit replied promptly, "although Nicolai or Padma would find it more interesting than you would. It was a one-time change. I had to reset her badge because all her frequencies were based on the number 437."

"That would be . . . nineteen times twenty-three," Shelley said to herself. "Product of two distinct primes -- very weak, but also very low-power." She looked up as the rest of us turned to stare at her. "What? I used to be, like, the junior deputy assistant tech guy around here back when I was Prime Indigo, before Nicolai came along. I know a little bit about how this stuff works."

Figures. Like I've said before, Shelley's pretty damn good at everything around here. Wizzit went on, "The badge does not draw power from our grid the way your belts do. It works strictly off a locally-stored power supply, which made it too weak for me to adjust her frequencies down to a prime number. I changed it to 361 instead."

"That would be . . ." Shelley began.

"Nineteen squared," Mike announced, looking up with a grin from the calculator on Prime Commander's desk.

Shelley shot him a dirty look, then said thoughtfully, "A prime power would draw a little more energy than the product of two distinct primes, but much less than a simple prime would. And that change was what made her badge strong enough to power a blaster?"

"Yupperooney. Clever, huh?"

Shelley smiled indulgently. "Yes, Wizzit. Very clever. I'll be sure to tell Nicolai what you did."

"Wizzit, did you say that my sister's badge runs off a locally-stored power supply?" I asked. "Is that like a battery?"

Have you ever had someone verbally roll their eyes at you? Wizzit managed it with a one-word answer. "Yes."

"Does she need to charge it regularly or anything?"

"Charging occurs from exposure to light or motion. Carrying it around in her pocket or purse should be sufficient. If she doesn't carry it around with her, she should leave it lying in the sun or a brightly-lighted place."

"Got it. Thanks."

Shelley looked around at each of us. "Are there any other questions? No? Then Wizzit, would you kindly play the vid of our encounter with JB Swift?"

Chapter 17

I guess Wizzit decided he was going to be artistic today, because we were treated to a long, slow pan up Orange's figure. He was leaning against his golf club as if it were a cane, a sand dune behind him, and I have to say he looked pretty stylish. Another pan, showing Shelley this time, posing with her club against her shoulder. A tumbleweed blew by in the background, and I swear I could hear the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" playing softly somewhere.

"Come on, is this a vid or a spaghetti western?" Toby muttered.

The scene shifted abruptly to a more normal view from one of our belt-cams. At first all I could see was sun and sand and some scrubby bush-thingies. Suddenly, there was a flash of red, and JB Swift was standing in front of them. I'm always surprised at how fast that little guy can move.

"You have her," he said without preamble.

"Yes."

"What would it take to get her back? Alive, of course."

"The immediate and permanent cessation of all Enclave activities on Earth," Shelley said coolly.

"Actually, the entire solar system," Mike added.

JB Swift didn't even blink. "Done," he said.

Shelley laughed. "Just like that? And we're supposed to believe you? I didn't think you had the power to make guarantees like that."

"Believe it. I hold Enclave in the palm of my hand."

Shelley looked at him for a long time. "No, you don't," she said at last, her voice surprisingly gentle. "You don't even have the authority to halt a teleport countdown once it's started."

JB Swift seemed to deflate. "Ah, I see you've been talking to . . . Indigo, I believe he said his name is?"

"Indigo is on my team," Shelley said noncommittally.

"You have teams? Just how many of you Primes are there?"

"At the moment we are holding Miss Lee in a secure location," Shelley said, ignoring his question. "We are concerned about her well-being because, beginning from the very moment we captured her, she has not stopped struggling or trying to escape. She has already torn off her restraints, at the cost of some of the skin on her wrists and hands. I am told that at the moment, she is attempting to kick down the walls of her cell, bloodying her feet in the process. Let me assure you, she will not succeed, but if she keeps this up, I am afraid she will do herself serious injury."

"Miss Lee?" he repeated, sounding skeptical. "Is that what you've decided to call her? Miss Lee?"

"That is her name, is it not? When we first met her, she identified herself to us as Lily Lee." Shelley sounded impassive; I think I would have shown at least some sign of surprise. I mean, seriously, didn't the guy even know what her name was?

"Interesting," JB Swift muttered to himself. "She must have chosen that last name on her own. I wonder why she settled on that particular one."

"Perhaps because it's the family name of the Chinese girl you kidnapped six years ago?"

JB Swift's eyes narrowed. "How did you know that?" he demanded.

Ignoring his question again, Shelley said, "We certainly don't wish to see Miss Lee come to any harm, but neither can we afford to release her. Not unless we have some assurance that she will never again be used as an Enclave weapon against the people of Earth."

"You have my word," he said firmly.

"Your word," Shelley told him, "means nothing."

"Then what do you want from me?" he demanded angrily.

"You were the one who came to this place first," Shelley reminded him. "We followed you here because we thought you would have something to offer us."

A whole range of emotions flowed across JB Swift's small, red face. Anger, frustration, even a touch of sadness. "It took me six years to create the attack doll," he said bitterly. "Six years of my life, and hers. I selected the subject, I set up the facilities, I created the training regimen -- hell, I invented the entire concept of the attack doll. I made her as perfect as humanly possible; she is a work of art, and nearly complete, and yet those cretins I work for have no idea how to use her properly or even what she is capable of. They want to treat her like one of their blasted monsters -- just so much cannon fodder to send out so that you Primes can destroy her. But she is so much more than that!"

Shelley said nothing. Mike looked as though he might be about to speak, but stopped himself when Shelley silently shook her head at him.

"She will wither and die unless she is with me," JB Swift declared. "Not right away, but eventually. I am the only one who knows how to handle her, how to . . . how to care for her properly. If you don't release her to me, then you are condemning her to a slow death."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

JB Swift glared at her. I wondered whether he felt as chilled as I did at the sheer unconcern with which Shelley spoke those five words. "Then we have nothing to talk about," he grated, and he turned to walk away.

He wanted her to stop him. I knew that, and I'm sure Shelley knew it, too. Otherwise, he would have just teleported out or zipped away at superspeed. Shelley let him go for about ten steps before she spoke up.

"I had thought that you would have some consideration for her well-being," she said. "I had thought that the mental image of her beating her arms and legs into bloody stumps against the walls of her prison would prove abhorrent to you. It seems as though I was wrong."

He spun on her angrily. "You have no idea the kind of consideration I have for the attack doll!" he snarled. "You have no idea what kind of --" And then he stopped himself. His tiny hands clenched themselves into fists, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack Shelley.

Mike must have thought the same thing, because he shifted his weight and brought his golf club up as if he were about to swing. "Fancy a bit of a tee-off this morning?" he asked Shelley cheerfully.

"I remember you now," JB Swift told Mike, venom in his voice. "The last time we met, you were Blue. You killed any number of my fellows."

"I was Violet at the time, actually."

"Bah, I can never keep your colors straight!"

I found myself nodding at this little exchange. With his superb reflexes, Mike would of course be the perfect Prime to send against someone like JB Swift. I wondered whether that was why Wizzit had brought him onto the team in the first place.

JB Swift was looking at Shelley now. "Tell her, Special Order three-six-alpha-oh-five. That should put her into a more tractable state." Then he added, "Let me warn you, it will work on her only once."

"Thank you," Shelley said calmly. "Is there any way to facilitate the healing of her injuries? Or should we just have a doctor examine her?"

"Ask her yourself. She will answer any properly-phrased questions you put to her. But do not, under any circumstances, have a doctor examine her."

"She might have some difficulty talking to us." Shelley rubbed a hand across the lower portion of her face. "Broken jaw."

JB Swift growled. "Make her lie down and then tell her, 'Lily, self-heal.'"

I guess he decided that the interview was over at that point, because all of a sudden he wasn't there any more.

Chapter 18

"So, you guys teleported out to the stronghouse immediately after that, right?" I said eagerly once Wizzit had turned off the vid. "You switched on camouflage mode so she wouldn't see you and attack, and then you said, 'Lily, Special Order three-six-alpha-oh-five'?"

"Ah . . . right," Mike replied slowly, glancing at Shelley. "Er, more or less."

"Camouflage mode didn't occur to either one of us," Shelley explained. "I wish it had."

"As for the 'Lily' bit, it, um, took us a while to work that out," Mike added.

"So the two of you wandered in there in plain sight," Toby said, grinning, "and just blurted out 'Special Order three-six-alpha-oh-five', and then that she-devil turned around and started bashing your brains in, is that it?"

"No, it wasn't like that at all," Mike protested. "Shelley got a good grip on her and was able to hold her down."

"Barely," Shelley interjected.

"And I eventually figured out that you had to say her name to get her attention before giving her the order."

Shelley laughed and shook her head. "Actually, Mike, I think what you said was, 'Goddammit, Lily, Special Order three-six-alpha-oh-five!'"

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" Mike said, shrugging off the general laughter. "I don't think any of the rest of you could have done any better!"

"Except Trevor," Trina said, smiling.

Prime Commander rubbed his chin. (Actually, I think he was trying to wipe off a grin, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt here. I know he considers it his job to be the sanest, soberest member of our little group.) "Well, it certainly appears that Trevor's extended experience with Lily and JB Swift has given him a certain amount of insight," he said carefully. He turned to Shelley. "Consult with him next time you deal with her?"

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Shelley agreed. "It would have saved us a lot of bruises last night." She turned to the rest of us. "Lily calmed down immediately after that. Mike gave her the self-heal order, and she appeared to go to sleep. We watched her for a while and then came back here. Before we left, though, we installed a microsensor package in the stronghouse so that Wizzit can keep a close eye on her."

"Subject is currently lying passively on the floor of the stronghouse," Wizzit reported. "My scans indicate that her various injuries are healing at an accelerated rate. Not as fast as with a healing coma, but remarkable nonetheless. I'll let you know if there's any change."

"Yes, please do that." Prime Commander looked around at the five of us. "Unless anyone has anything else to say, I think we're done here."

Shelley touched my arm as we stepped out into the hallway. "Hey, Trev," she said quietly, "you're cool with this whole Junior Prime Pink thing, right? About Trina being Angie's minder and all that?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

"No reason. I just thought you might insist on doing the job yourself, that's all. You seem awfully protective of her."

I grinned. "Of course I am. She's my kid sister, isn't she? It's my job to be protective of her. But like my old pal Harry Callahan said once, a man's got to know his limitations. The truth is, I'd be a lousy minder for her, and I think everyone knows it."

She nodded. "Yeah, you would." She smiled and squeezed my shoulder to take any sting out of her words. "I'm just glad you realize that. Do you think she would be willing to help us out again? I mean, if it turns out we really need her?"

"Are you kidding?" I exclaimed. "She'd jump at the chance! Of course, she's pretty busy at the moment, what with marching band and tennis. That should all be over in a month or two, but then there'll be Tae Kwon Do and jazz band and show choir and Christmas concerts to prepare for, and she'll probably be in the musical in the spring and then there's prom and final exams and graduation after that and . . . well, you know how crazy high school can be."

Shelley gave me kind of a funny look. "Actually, Trev, I don't. My dad pulled me out of school after seventh grade when I joined the Primes. I was homeschooled."

"Oh." Oops -- awkward! Sometimes I forget just how much of her life Shelley has dedicated to the Primes. I grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Anyway, um, yeah, I'm sure she'd be happy to help out whenever she can, even if we don't really, really need her. But there will probably be times when she can't make it because she just doesn't have the time."

"That's what I thought. Thanks, Trev."

"You bet."

Chapter 19

I spent the next hour or so waiting for word on Lily (actually, I think we were all doing that) and taking my hundred shots out on the target range. And that was so much fun that I decided to take an additional hundred shots.

After that, I had a bit of trouble finding stuff to do. Trina was busy with some sketches, so we didn't work on her board-breaking technique; Shelley was with her dad, so I didn't get a chance to ask her about Escrima; and Mike and Toby were sparring in the gym and didn't seem to need any company. So I eventually wandered back to my room to check my e-mail and work on my Gershwin prelude.

The first message I saw was from Angie, with a subject line of "Hey sibs!! Watch me on TV!!!!" (You know, I sometimes think my parents must have gotten a special computer keyboard for Angie, one with extra exclamation-point keys, because she'd wear out a regular one.) She had sent it to me, Joy, Jerome, and Nick, and she told us all about her adventures at the Browns-Steelers game and afterwards.

I guess a camera crew met her and my parents as they were getting home from the game, and they wanted a sit-down interview with her right then and there. According to what Angie wrote, they were really nice about it and gave her time to get herself cleaned up and looking pretty, and the interview was about what you would expect for a story with a headline of "Brave High School Girl Battles Zoinks To Save Her Friends". In other words, nothing too deep or searching, a real puff piece.

She gave us the time and channel when the interview was supposed to air. What she said happened afterwards, though, got me a little worried. She wrote:

Funny thing, though. After the TV crew left, a couple of guys in uniforms came up to the house and said they wanted to talk to me alone. They made me kinda nervous, and Dad said no. So he and Mom and I talked to them for a while together.

The one guy said that they were from the Army. They saw what happened on TV and they wanted to know everything that Prime Indigo said to me. Of course, I couldn't tell them much because he didn't say much. He just wanted to thank me for the help and make sure I wasn't hurt or anything, just like I said in the TV interview.

The guy told us that all the technology that the Primes have was stolen from the Army years ago, and that they consider the Primes to be terrorists or criminals or something. He said they've been trying to arrest them for years to get their tech back, but they can never get close enough. And he gave me his card and wanted me to let them know if any of the Primes ever contacts me. (Pshyeah, right, like I'd ever get that lucky!!)

You wanna know the truth? I didn't believe him. Mom and Dad thought he was okay, but he seemed to me way too creepy to pass the smell test. And he was seriously trying to make me think my life was in danger from the Primes!! As if!! Everybody knows they only ever attack those weird monsters that show up and hurt people.

Anyway, gotta close now. 'Bye!!

Love,

Angie

"Hey, Wizzit," I called out, "can you check out the last part of Angie's e-mail to me?" Given how much he controls around HQ, I have to believe Wizzit can read our e-mail whenever he wants to and can track pretty much anything we do online. Of course, I also believe he doesn't care about 99.9% of it, so it doesn't bother me all that much.

"Interesting," Wizzit said after a moment, not sounding at all surprised or worried. Of course, the only time he ever does sound worried is when we're taking too long to destroy one of Enclave's monsters. "It's all lies, of course. Army wants my tech for itself. Do you want me to bring this to the Commander's attention?"

"Yeah, that would probably be a good thing."

"Good as done," he replied in a startlingly good impression of Mike's voice.

"So now what?" I asked after a few seconds. There was no reply, which told me that either he didn't want to discuss it further or he thought there was nothing worth discussing. Either way, I couldn't do anything more, so I shrugged and sent Angie a quick, generic reply, and then I turned on my piano keyboard.

I could tell right away that Gershwin's second prelude was going to be a tough nut to crack. Not necessarily the notes -- those looked a little tricky, but nothing like, say, a Bach fugue. No, it's that this was one of those slow, soulful pieces that requires a delicate touch, and that's really hard to get on an electronic keyboard like the one I have, without what they call "velocity sensitive keys." But I gamely plowed ahead and worked on what I could. It was a nice piece, and I could tell I'd be whistling the main theme around HQ for the next few weeks.

Chapter 20

It wasn't until after lunch that Wizzit announced that Lily seemed to have recovered and was sitting up. We all gathered in Prime Commander's office right away. Of course, everybody wanted to go take a look at her, even Prime Commander. Shelley insisted, though, that no one except her and me say anything to Lily, not even Commander Windham.

"Sorry, Dad," she said apologetically, "but the rest of us will be going in there with force shields on. You won't have any blurring or voice alteration like the rest of us. Frankly, I think we're taking a chance bringing you with us, even with the mask on."

Prime Commander nodded his understanding as he adjusted a plain white mask over his features. Then he fitted in an earplug that would let him monitor our Prime-to-Prime communications. "Hey, Trevor," he asked jovially, "is there any chance we could steal your sister's Junior Prime badge for a couple of days?"

"Nope, veto," Wizzit jumped in immediately. "Already assigned. Put it out of your head. Would not work anyway because it's set to respond only to Angie's voice."

"I was kidding, Wizzit," Prime Commander explained patiently as he adjusted the broad-brimmed hat and long, full coat that would complete his disguise. The rest of us glanced at each other. I think we were all thinking the same thing, that Wizzit had really taken a shine to my sister. "Are we ready to go?"

Wizzit teleported the six of us out to a dim, gloomy-looking, unfurnished room. Looking around, I spotted something that looked like bloodstained footprints on one of the otherwise completely white walls; I guess Shelley hadn't been kidding about Lily bloodying her feet while trying to escape.

Lily herself was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees; she looked as though she might be meditating. I bent down and peered at her, searching for any clue that Li Lin-fa might be present in her mind. Her face was beautiful, utterly calm and serene, and completely devoid of any human expression or intelligence. Nobody home.

Shelley gestured toward me as everyone else backed away from her. I cleared my throat. "Lily," I said, "self-report." That was something I remembered JB Swift had said to her once, and I figured it would be a good way to start out.

Lily opened her eyes, smoothly got to her feet facing me, clasped her hands behind her back, and said in a monotone, "I am uninjured. I am not ill. I urgently need to urinate and defecate. I have been awake for eighteen hours, twenty-eight minutes. I last ate seventeen hours, seven minutes ago. I last drank seventeen hours, six minutes ago. Overall status: I must use the toilet immediately. I am hungry and thirsty and slightly tired. I should eat and drink soon to maintain optimum functionality. I should sleep sometime in the next five hours to maintain optimum functionality."

I looked at Prime Commander. "Is there a bathroom in this place?" I asked.

He silently pointed to a recessed area in one corner. "I will accompany her," Shelley volunteered. "Lily, follow me."

"Following . . ."

Shelley led her over to the alcove while the rest of us turned away. I heard her murmur something to Lily, probably telling her to use the facilities. A few minutes and a flush later, she led her back to the center of the room. "Lily," she said, "what would you like to eat and drink?"

Lily said nothing; she simply stared straight ahead with that blank expression of hers. Shelley looked at me; I shrugged in return. I had no idea why Lily didn't respond to Shelley's question.

Except . . . I tried to remember whether I had ever heard JB Swift ask her anything. I didn't think so. Maybe she responded only to commands. "Lily," I said, "tell us what you normally eat and drink."

"I drink water," she answered immediately. "I eat a vegetable paste that is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and complex carbohydrates."

"Yuck!" Mike commented, turning on Prime-to-Prime communication. "Sounds awful."

"I agree," Shelley said, "but if that's what she's used to, that's probably what we should feed her. We don't want her getting sick to her stomach. Wizzit?"

"We have nothing like that available," Wizzit said promptly. "Ask her what else she can eat."

"Lily," Shelley commanded, "tell us what other kinds of foods you can safely eat."

"I have no known food allergies," Lily answered in her monotone. "I can safely consume any food edible by other human beings, with the following exceptions: I do not digest milk well, although I can eat cheese. I have a low tolerance for alcohol, caffeine, and spicy foods." She stopped abruptly, evidently having finished her report.

The silence which followed was broken by the soft beeping of the Commander's cellphone. He pulled the phone from his pocket and headed for the alcove, motioning for us to continue.

Lily's eyes widened briefly when he pulled out his phone. I know they did because I have since studied the vids Wizzit took of that little encounter. It was a subtle thing, though; I didn't notice it at the time, or if I did, I didn't pay it any attention. I wish to hell now that I had, because if I had, or if anyone had, and had realized the significance of it, then things might have turned out differently and a tragedy might have been averted.

As it happened, Trina merely offered, Prime-to-Prime, "So, she eats a -- a boring diet, is that correct?"

"A bland diet, yes," Shelley corrected her. "I imagine a mostly vegetarian diet would be best."

"And it sounds as though she's lactose intolerant," I added. "A lot of Chinese are. That's nothing unusual."

"But she just said she can eat cheese," Toby pointed out. "That's dairy."

I shrugged. "Yeah, but lactose is the stuff in milk that's hard to digest, and cheese has almost no lactose in it. And before you ask, yes, I'm lactose intolerant myself, and so is Pink. We don't drink milk, but we do eat cheese."

"Interesting," Trina commented. "I had never noticed that about you, Indigo."

"Sounds to me like the best thing to feed her is the stuff you make for us, Indigo," Shelley said. "Rice and vegetables, with some fish or chicken mixed in."

I grinned, although no one could see it beneath the blurring of my force shield. "I'd be happy to cook her up a nice big batch of stir-fry if you like," I said. "Should I do it now or after we're done questioning her?"

Surprisingly, Mike spoke up before Shelley had a chance to say anything. "Indigo's stuff takes too long to prepare, Red. Let me whip up a quick little snack to tide her over," he said. "Wizzit, the kitchen, if you please."

He vanished in a flash of light. "Prime Commander has also teleported out," Wizzit informed us. "It seems that Francesca's car was involved in a fender-bender in her high school parking lot and he needs to go straighten things out."

Shelley snorted softly. I couldn't tell whether it was a geez-my-sister-is-such-a-ditz snort or an I'm-very-fond-of-my-ditzy-sister snort. Regardless, she then said, as if she were thinking out loud, "The main thing I want to do is to find out what she's capable of, and what her limitations are."

Toby chuckled. "I'd think you'd know that by now, Red," he said. "She is your sister, after all." We all turned to stare at him, and he said apologetically, "Sorry, dumb joke. Um . . . I suppose we could ask her -- Lily, I mean -- but it looks like she doesn't answer direct questions."

"But couldn't we just say something like, 'Lily, answer this question' and then ask?" Trina suggested.

"It's worth trying," Shelley agreed. She turned to our captive. "Lily, answer this question: What are your capabilities?"

Lily didn't reply; she simply stared blankly ahead. "So much for that idea," Shelley said. "Indigo, do you have anything you want to try?"

"Just the obvious," I said. "Lily, tell us what your capabilities are."

Lily's eyes flicked to me. "The request for information is ambiguous. Please specify which mode you are referring to."

I blinked. "The, uh, the current mode?" I guessed.

"Current mode is operator mode. In operator mode I can understand and respond to nearly any natural-language command. I can also perform many explanatory functions. These functions begin with the words 'Tell me about . . .' I can also perform several diagnostic functions. These functions are: self-report, self-diagnose, self-prescribe, and self-recommend. I can also perform several maintenance functions. These functions are . . ."

Lily droned on for several more minutes, telling us more than I really wanted to hear about the various commands we could give her. Some of them we already knew about, like the self-heal command. There were a lot of other ones, though, including things I wouldn't have thought of, like "Lily, brush your teeth" and "Lily, change your clothes", and she listed every single one of them.

You know, it's kind of funny. I wouldn't have thought that hearing a beautiful girl explain how to get her to take her clothes off would be boring, but frankly, by the time she got around to that, I was yawning and having a hard time staying focused.

Mike teleported in just as she was winding down. He was carrying a tray, which he set down carefully on the floor at her feet. Trina looked down at what he had brought and laughed softly. "Marmite on toast," she murmured. "I should have guessed."

"Marmite on toast with cheese," Mike corrected her. "And a big glass of OJ. Protein, carbs, loads of B- and C-vitamins -- the perfect nutritious snack."

Lily had stopped speaking by now, having finally run out of commands to describe. Shelley told her to sit down and eat, which she did without comment. "Wizzit," Shelley called out, Prime-to-Prime, "you've been listening to all this, right?"

"And recording it. Fascinating stuff. Just riveting."

The trouble with Wizzit is that you can't always tell when he's being sarcastic. In this case, I had a hunch he wasn't. Shelley must have felt the same way, because she merely nodded. "Do you have anything further you'd like us to find out from her?"

Now, if you've been paying close attention to Shelley this whole time, you might be getting the impression about now that she's not all that bright. I mean, she has been essentially letting everyone else do all the thinking without offering up anything herself, right? And it wasn't like any of our suggestions had been especially brilliant or insightful, just obvious stuff to try, stuff that you would expect her to come up with herself.

But see, that's the way she works -- she and her dad both, actually. If she had been conducting this interview solo, I have no doubt that she would have gotten at least this far this fast, or even faster. Running things this way, though, she had every single one of us thinking hard about the problem and working on it, and maybe one of us really would come up with something that no one else had thought of. Even if we didn't, the next time we capture a prisoner, we'll have five Primes who have actively participated in an interrogation before, not just one.

Wizzit said, "So far she has told us only about this so-called operator mode. Ask her what other modes she has and have her describe them."

Shelley nodded. "Yes, that's a good suggestion. So, does anyone have any ideas how we should go about it?"

"Well, it's bleedin' obvious, isn't it?" Toby said. "It's got to be one of those explanatory functions she was talking about, the ones that start with 'Tell me about'. You know, 'Lily, tell me about modes' or something like that."

"That sounds right to me," Shelley agreed. "We'll ask her that once she's done eating."

So we stood around and watched Lily have her dinner. She ate quite daintily, especially for someone who had gone for most of a day without food. Mike had neglected to bring a napkin for her, but that didn't seem to bother Lily. The small amount of brownish Marmite that smeared her cheeks was wiped off with a finger, which was then carefully licked clean. It reminded me a little of watching a cat eat.

She polished off the four slices of the cheese-Marmite toast that Mike had brought her, all except for one small corner, and then drained the glass of orange juice in a single draft. After that, she settled herself back into the position she had been in when we first arrived, sitting cross-legged with her hands resting on her knees.

"Lily, stand up," Shelley said.

Lily smoothly rose to her feet. "Standing . . ."

"Wizzit," Shelley said, Prime-to-Prime, "I'd like you to give the next command."

"Roger-dodger!" Then we all heard his voice come out from Shelley's belt buckle. "Lily, tell us about modes."

Lily gave no sign that she had heard Wizzit. "Now you, Trina," Shelley said after a moment. Listening to her voice, I had no idea whether she was surprised or not by Lily's non-response. "Same command."

"Lily, tell us about modes," Trina said dubiously.

"I have four modes," Lily said at once. "They are: operator mode, commander mode, attacker mode, and companion mode. Current mode is operator mode."

"Lily, tell us about operator mode," Shelley said patiently, once it became clear that no further information was forthcoming.

"Operator mode is intended to be a mechanism for maintenance and repair of attack doll units. In operator mode, I have no autonomy and will follow nearly any command given me by anyone regardless of authorization status. From operator mode, I can switch to any of the following modes: commander mode, attacker mode, and companion mode. To find out what commands are available in operator mode, say 'Tell me about commands in operator mode.'"

"It's like listening to a computer manual," Mike exclaimed, shaking his head. "Has she been like this the entire time?"

"Pretty much, yeah," I said.

"Then I'm glad I was out playing takeaway chef. This is boring stuff."

"Yes, well, I think we've got the basic pattern figured out by now," Shelley told us all. "It's important for us to get as much of this information out of her as we can, since I imagine she'll be staying here for a while. Wizzit evidently can't give her the necessary commands, so at least one of us will have to remain here. I don't think all of us need to stay, though. Tell you what -- I'll volunteer to do the questioning; the rest of you can stay or go, whatever you want to do."

"I'll stay," I said promptly. The others made their excuses, and within two minutes it was just me, Shelley, and Lily in the room.

Chapter 21

Shelley and I spent the rest of the afternoon with Lily. I don't think I have ever said the words "Tell me about" so many times in my life as I did then. Wizzit had a few things he wanted us to investigate, but for the most part, he let Shelley and me fumble around on our own.

Listening to Shelley make her inquiries, I got the impression that she had a specific objective in mind, a certain command she was looking for that she wasn't finding. Whatever it was, though, I sure couldn't figure it out. Of course, I was busy with my own agenda, which was to find out how to bring Li Lin-fa to the surface. At first I had thought the secret might lie within Lily's "companion mode", but that turned out to be something else entirely, as I'll explain in a bit.

We checked out operator mode for a while. Shelley asked for another self-report, and Lily merely said that she was tired. The self-diagnose and self-prescribe commands seemed to be geared strictly toward medical problems, and when we tried self-recommend, Lily simply told us that she had no recommendations.

We did manage to clear up one minor mystery when we asked about switching from one mode to another. Lily wore earrings, tiny golden studs that you could barely see from far off, and that you probably wouldn't pay any attention to even up close. I know I didn't. I mean, most girls wear earrings, don't they?

Regardless, Lily's stud earrings contained infrared sensors that would translate the signals from JB Swift's remote control into physical sensations -- heat or vibrations across her earlobes or something like that. Those physical sensations would in turn cause Lily to change from, say, commander mode to attacker mode. And Wizzit had never detected the infrared sensors because they were strictly Earth technology, nothing from Enclave. He seemed especially interested to hear this and had us ask her several questions about the sensors.

Lily wouldn't say much about either attacker mode or commander mode. From what little we were able to find out, it appeared that attacker mode was what I called her Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick persona. And commander mode seemed to correspond to the other side of Lily that we knew all too well, the pain-in-the-butt minder.

Turned out that neither Shelley nor I was authorized to get Lily to switch to attacker or commander mode, nor were we allowed to find out what commands were available in either mode. Big surprise, eh? Stymied, Shelley and I shrugged at each other, and Shelley said, "Lily, tell us about companion mode."

I held my breath, because as I mentioned earlier, I had a suspicion that this was where I might find out something about Li Lin-fa.

Lily said, "Companion mode is intended to be a mechanism for providing social and sexual companionship for those operating the attack doll. In companion mode, I have limited to moderate autonomy and will follow nearly any command given me by anyone regardless of authorization status. From companion mode I can switch to any one of the following modes: operator mode. To find out what commands are available in companion mode, say 'Tell me about commands in companion mode.'"

Shelley and I looked at each other in surprise. I know that this was not what I had expected. A mechanism for providing social and sexual companionship? Did I really want to know about this? I mean, sure, part of me was pretty darned interested, but . . . was it the right thing to do? "Um . . ." I said decisively.

"We, uh . . ." Shelley began, "we need to pursue this, Trevor. For the sake of completeness, if nothing else."

"Okay," I agreed. "But, um . . ."

"Yeah, I know," Shelley said. "Wizzit, this companion mode of Lily's is likely to be a sensitive topic. Please notify me and Prime Commander if anyone asks to see this bit of footage, okay? And if anyone orders Lily to switch to companion mode, let both of us know immediately."

Wizzit snickered. "Anything you say, Red."

"Okay, here goes." Shelley took a deep breath. "Lily," she said, "tell me about commands in companion mode."

Let me tell you, there were a lot of commands in companion mode. An awful lot. It appeared to me as though JB Swift, or whoever had programmed her, had wanted to do a pretty thorough job of catering to everyone's tastes.

Surprisingly, a fair number of them were G-rated, or at least they sounded as if they would be G-rated. Want to have a date with a bubbly teenage babysitter? Check. A schoolteacher? Check. A young mother? Check. The list of personalties that Lily could assume seemed nearly endless. I could take her out to dinner every night for a solid month and never be with the same person twice.

Of course, I realize that to someone with a dirty mind, any one of those could degenerate into . . . well, whatever. But see, the particular commands I'm thinking of were specifically labeled as Platonic, which means no physical intimacy would be involved. This was obviously the "social companionship" part. Other commands were labeled Romantic; and still others, Erotic. Like I said, catering to everyone's tastes. There were even some which seemed designed to appeal to other women.

In addition to the personalities, there was a whole range of specific acts one could command her to perform. A lot of them I knew about, or had at least heard of, but some of them . . . .

Look, I was a bit of a jock in high school, okay? I've hung around my share of locker rooms, and I've had any number of bull sessions with my high school buddies, and even a few with Mike, Toby, and Nicolai. I'm not exactly naive about girls. But some of the things Lily described -- man, I had no idea what they were.

Even Shelley seemed flabbergasted by the sheer number of, er, services that Lily offered. She asked Lily to explain a couple of them, presumably because she didn't know anything about them either, and Lily described each one in graphic, anatomical detail, using that same monotone that seemed to be the hallmark of operator mode, with absolutely no hesitation or sign of embarrassment whatsoever.

I have no idea what Shelley was thinking by the time Lily was done, but I know that I was sort of a confused whirl of emotions. On the one hand, Lily's companion mode appeared to be the answer to nearly every teenage boy's secret prayer for the perfect girlfriend. She would do anything you wanted her to do, be anyone you wanted her to be, and she would never make any kind of demands of you. What healthy young male wouldn't want to play around with someone like that?

On the other hand, it wasn't like she was a real person. In companion mode, she wasn't much more than a living, breathing blow-up sex doll. Sure, she might be fun for a while, but ultimately she would turn out to be a huge disappointment. Even I -- shallow, insensitive guy that I am -- knew that much.

I think the thought that sickened me most of all was this: What if Li Lin-fa turned out to be just another one of Lily's companion-mode personalities? There were a couple of ones that fit -- "shy farm girl", for instance, or "naive immigrant who doesn't speak much English".

I mean, I had met Li Lin-fa. I had talked with her, held her hand, even kissed her once. (And if you believe Shelley, I had fallen pretty hard for her in the process.) She seemed like a real person to me -- much more real than Lily Lee or Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick. But was she real or was she just another of Lily's myriad personalities?

Like I said, I don't know what was going on in Shelley's head, but I felt like I was drowning. "Red," I started to say in a strangled voice, but she held up a finger, stopping me.

"Lily," she said after a moment's thought, "tell me about available languages in companion mode."

Lily replied promptly, "English is the only language available in companion mode."

Shelley nodded in satisfaction, as if she had expected that. It took me a moment to realize the significance of Lily's answer. Then the penny dropped: Li Lin-fa didn't speak English. She was from a small fishing village in eastern China, and in all our conversations, we had spoken only Cantonese!

I let out my breath in a relieved sigh. Li Lin-fa wasn't one of JB Swift's personality constructs, after all. She was real. Shelley must have understood what I had been going through, because she took hold of my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Lily," she said, "tell me about available languages in operator mode."

"English is the only language available in operator mode."

"Lily, tell me about available languages in commander mode."

"English is the only language available in commander mode."

"Lily, tell me about available languages in attacker mode."

"English is the only language available in attacker mode."

"Interesting," she commented, Prime-to-Prime. "It appears, Trevor, that your Cantonese-speaking friend isn't part of this whole attack-doll setup."

"Yeah. I'm not sure whether to be happy that she's not or disappointed that we don't know how to find her. I was kind of hoping to meet Li Lin-fa again."

"I understand how you feel. Anything else you want to ask her?"

"Just . . . one more thing." I hesitated, trying to decide just how I wanted to formulate my question. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure I really wanted to know the answer, but on some level I guess I needed to find out. "Lily, tell me how many times companion mode has been activated."

"Companion mode has never been activated."

Another sensation of relief swept through me. No one had used Lily -- had used Li Lin-fa -- as a "companion". No one had ever forced her to do any of the things she had described. I suddenly realized that if anyone had, then I . . . well, I'm not sure what I would have done, but it would not have been pleasant. I let out a long, grateful breath and squeezed Shelley's hand. "I think I'm done, Red."

Chapter 22

Following the revelations about companion mode, the rest of our interview with Lily just sort of fizzled out. Shelley asked a few more questions about operator mode and Wizzit had some additional things he wanted us to find out about, and then we were done.

As soon as Wizzit teleported us back to HQ, Shelley made a beeline for her father's office. The two of them remained closeted together for the better part of an hour, discussing who knew what. I mean, obviously something to do with Lily, but what specifically, I didn't know.

Having nothing better to do, I hunted up Trina, who was not doing anything in particular at the moment either. We went to the gym and worked on her knife-hand technique for a while, and then we sparred until it was almost time for dinner.

Nicolai and Padma returned from Cambridge sometime around then, surprising us with armloads of takeout from an Indian restaurant in Cambridge that Padma assured us was very good. For once, Prime Commander joined us for dinner, and all eight of us sat around the kitchen table, ate Indian food, and swapped stories until it was time for lights-out.

We were all summoned into Prime Commander's office bright and early the next morning, almost before I had finished my breakfast. Commander Windham was there waiting for us, dressed and shaved and everything, which was a bit of a surprise since it was, like, two o'clock in the morning Montana time.

Nicolai and Padma, I noticed as we all took our seats, were now a couple. I had gotten hints of this the previous night, and I noticed it even more now. Not that they were pawing at one another like a pair of hormone-crazed teenagers; it was a lot more subtle than that. They didn't even hold hands, barely made any physical contact. Still, Padma always seemed to be making sure she knew where Nicolai was, always made sure she was sitting or walking beside him if possible, and Nicolai was doing the same thing with her. It was pretty obvious once you noticed it, and it was just as obvious that they thought they were hiding it from the rest of us.

"Jealous?" a voice whispered in my ear. I turned to look at Trina beside me. She nodded, smiling, at the clandestinely happy couple.

I grinned. "Nah," I whispered back. "I'm glad they finally got together. Nicolai's a good guy, and Padma and I are just friends anyway."

"Just friends?" Trina looked surprised, and I knew she was thinking of the time she had walked in on Padma and me during one of our not-so-impulsive kisses. "Do you always 'make out' with your friends?"

I winked at her. "Just the female ones. You wanna try it sometime?"

Her smile faltered for a moment, and I felt my heart sink. Trina is such a huge flirt that I was sure she wouldn't take my offer seriously. I hadn't meant it seriously. "I, um," she began. Then she regained her smile. "Sure," she said, returning my wink, "but I will have to check my schedule. Toby and Mike have nearly filled me up, but I'll try to fit you in somewhere."

I chuckled in reply, wondering whether Trina intended the rather kinky-sounding double entendre she had just uttered or if it was just my dirty mind in action. Behind me, someone cleared their throat, and I turned around to see everyone staring at Trina and me. "If you two lovebirds are quite finished with your little tete-a-tete," Shelley said dryly, "the rest of us would like to discuss what to do about Lily Lee."

I grinned sheepishly while Trina raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. "Sure thing, Shelley," I said. "I'm all ears."

"Fine. Nicolai and Padma, I told you last night some of what we've learned about Lily, but I want Wizzit to show a vid of us questioning her anyway. I want you to get an idea just how . . . well, just how robotic she is. First, though, I want to you to see Mike's and my encounter with JB Swift from yesterday."

Wizzit brought up the desert conversation the rest of us had watched earlier, and then a scene of Shelley quizzing Lily about personal-grooming commands in operator mode. Pretty boring stuff -- Lily, brush your hair; Lily, wash your face; Lily, floss your teeth. When it was done, Padma, who had once met Li Lin-fa, said, "She speaks English with an American accent. How do you get her to speak -- what was her language, Trevor? It was some form of Chinese, wasn't it? Not Mandarin, but . . . you know, the other one."

Shelley smiled wryly. "It was Cantonese. That's a good question, Padma. We don't know to get her to speak Cantonese. Apparently, English is the only language the attack doll knows."

"The attack doll?" Nicolai repeated. "What's that?"

"That's what JB Swift calls her," Shelley said with a shrug. "You heard him. And it's how she refers to herself, as 'the attack doll' or 'an attack doll unit'."

"We think," Commander Windham put in, "that the part of her who speaks Cantonese -- the woman who calls herself Li Lin-fa -- is what you might call her base personality."

"Her real self," Shelley interjected.

"Exactly." The Commander nodded. "The story she told Trevor of growing up in a fishing village near Shanghai is probably true. This 'attack doll' construct is most likely something JB Swift put in place after Enclave got hold of her, using hypnosis or drugs -- we're not really sure."

"Wait a minute," Mike said. "I thought that Enclave couldn't do anything like that to someone against their will. It's against their rules or something. All their monsters have to agree to be mutated; they actually have to ask for it. Isn't that right, Wizzit?"

"Ya damn betcha," Wizzit piped up. "However, the rules concerning that can be somewhat fluid. For one thing, she has not been mutated. One hundred percent pure human female. For another, if she really was sold to Enclave, then it could be assumed she had already given up her right to object. After he had the bill of sale in his hand, JB Swift could to anything he liked to her."

"She told me she thought she was being sold into prostitution to pay off her family's debts," I said quietly. "I don't know much about it, but I got the impression it's not unheard of, especially in rural areas of China."

"So, how do we get in contact with this Li Lin-fa personality?" Trina asked. "How do we draw her out?"

"I don't know," Shelley admitted. "I wish I did."

"Well, at least we'll have some time to figure it out," Toby put in. "Now that we've got her safely locked up, I mean."

Shelley shook her head grimly. "We might not have as much time as we think." She looked around at each of us. "Trina, Toby, Trevor -- the three of you were there with me the whole time Lily was explaining operator mode. Does any of you remember her explaining how to tell her to go to sleep?"

To go to sleep? I thought back. "I assume it would be something like 'Lily, go to sleep'," I said.

In response, Shelley waved a hand at the video screen. She must arranged something with Wizzit beforehand, because he brought up a still image of Shelley alone with Lily. "I went to see her earlier this morning," she explained, "because I figured someone ought to make her use the bathroom on some sort of regular schedule."

Wizzit started playing the vid. On the screen, Lily was self-reporting that she had last slept thirty hours, two minutes ago. She was extremely tired, she said, and needed to sleep soon. She was showing no signs of fatigue, I noticed, but neither had she that time with JB Swift, when she reported she had been awake for nearly twenty-two hours.

"Lily, lie down," the screen-Shelley ordered. Lily complied. "Lily, go to sleep."

Lily simply lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Lily," Shelley said after a few seconds had passed, "tell me about the sleep command."

"There is no such command," Lily reported in her calm monotone.

"Lily, tell me about sleep."

"I have no information about sleep."

Wizzit turned off the vid at this point. "We went round and round like that for a while," real-life Shelley explained. "Maybe one of you could find something I missed, but as far as I was able to determine, there is simply no way to tell Lily to go to sleep. And it appears she won't fall asleep on her own."

Mike rubbed his chin. "JB Swift warned us she would wither and die if she wasn't with him," he said thoughtfully. "Can a person die from lack of sleep?"

"Not to my knowledge," Commander Windham said over his steepled fingers. "Although sleep deprivation can lead to various other problems -- loss of memory, decreased immune response, hallucinations, even insanity." He shrugged. "Lily is such a strange creature, though. It could be that her . . . her programming, if that's what we want to call it, could break down. She could become unresponsive, refuse to eat or drink . . ."

Padma suddenly spoke up. "Trevor," she said, "that time when we were in the cell with her -- with Li Lin-fa, I mean -- she kept falling asleep. Do you remember that? She couldn't seem to stay awake. Do you think that . . .?"

"Yeah, I do." I said. That exact same idea had been running through my head, in fact. I turned to the others. "Li Lin-fa told me that whenever they brought her back to her cell, she was always so tired she fell asleep right away. I wondered at the time why they would bother to bring her back at all when all she did was sleep. Maybe this is the reason."

"So the only way to get her to sleep is to turn her back into Li Lin-fa?" Trina asked.

"That's my guess. As to how we can do that . . ." I spread my hands and shrugged.

"Did JB Swift do anything to her when you saw him put her into the cell?" Shelley asked. "Did he give her any commands? Or did he use his remote?"

"He didn't give her any verbal commands, I'm sure of that," I said. Across the room, Padma was nodding thoughtfully in agreement. "He didn't even put her into the cell himself," I went on. "The two of them came into the room, and she let herself in. I don't think I saw him point the remote at her, but I was watching her at the time, so I can't be absolutely sure."

"I was hiding under her bed," Padma added, "so I couldn't see much of anything."

I closed my eyes, trying to picture the scene. "I . . . don't think she made the change right away. She didn't become Li Lin-fa until after he had left the room."

Padma snapped her fingers. "He did say something, though, just before he left. It was . . . 'have a good night' or 'sleep well' or . . . something like that. Some ordinary phrase you might say to someone who was going to bed."

"You're right," I agreed after a moment's recollection. "I had forgotten about that."

"Well, we could try saying some of those things to her," Toby suggested. "We could make a list and read it off and see if that works."

"But what if she responds only to the sound of JB Swift's voice?" Mike asked. "He said she had to be with him."

Prime Commander nodded. "Good thinking, Mike. Wizzit, could you use the voice alteration in Mike's force shield to make him sound like JB Swift?"

"Not me," said Mike. "I'm going on vacation in about an hour."

Commander Windham smiled. "Right. I had forgotten. Toby, then? Or Trevor?"

"Let me check," Wizzit replied. After a few moments, he said, "Yes, I have enough samples of his speech that I could do it with anyone."

"If no one objects," Shelley said, "I'd like Trina to be the one who reads the phrases to her. If it really doesn't make a difference whose voice Wizzit starts out with, that is."

"Why me?" Trina asked.

"Because you bear the closest resemblance to JB Swift."

"I do not!" Trina somehow managed to sound indignant and confused at the same time.

Shelley covered her face with her hands and shook her head vigorously. "Augh! Sorry! That didn't come out right." She took a breath, let it out, and dropped her hands. "I didn't mean that you look like a hedgehog," she said apologetically. "What I meant was that you're the shortest member of the team. If Wizzit turns your force shield red like JB Swift and you crouch down just on the edge of Lily's field of vision when you read the commands, then that's probably our best shot at making her think you're the real deal."

"Oh," Trina said, mollified. "Well, I can't deny that I'm shorter than everyone else."

Prime Commander chuckled. "I have to give you points for creative thinking, Shelley. Every little bit helps, I guess. Okay, if Trina's willing, then that's plan number one. If it doesn't work, what else do we try? I'd like to have at least two plans of attack."

We all stared at each other. "Could we break through her programming in some way?" Nicolai asked. "Try to reach her directly? She is a person, after all. She is not a robot, even if she acts like one."

"She did wake up as Li Lin-fa that one time I kicked her in the head," Mike said thoughtfully. "Maybe someone could --"

"No!" everyone else said in unison.

Mike raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, it was just a suggestion."

Another long pause, broken this time when Trina said, "What are you thinking, Trevor?"

"Hm?" I said, startled out of my reverie. I had been staring hard at the floor with my chin in my hand. "Oh. I was thinking about what Nicolai said. I remember I asked Li Lin-fa one time whether she could recall anything from when she was Lily, and she said she had some vague memories of fighting someone."

"So you're saying their control over her is not perfect? Do you think there might be a chance we could get through to her?" Commander Windham asked.

"Yes, sir. It's worth a shot, anyway. One of us could try talking directly to her."

"It would have to be you, Trevor," Shelley stated firmly. "You're the only one of us here who speaks Cantonese."

"And she trusts him," Padma said with a smile. "You should have seen the way she was hanging on every word he said. It was so cute, like a little puppy dog. If she will listen to anyone, it will be him."

Prime Commander placed his hands flat on his desk. "So, to sum up, we'll brainstorm a list of 'good night'-style phrases which Trina will read to her using JB Swift's voice to try to put her to sleep. And Trevor will spend some time speaking to her in Cantonese, trying to draw out the Li Lin-fa personality. Anything else?"

Shelley said, "I will draw up a schedule for people to feed Lily, and another one for bathroom duties. It's not that hard, people," she added sharply in response to the chorus of groans. "Nor is it messy. You just have to say, 'Lily, go use the bathroom,' and then 'Lily, wash your hands.' That's all. Boys and girls both can do it; it's easier than walking a dog."

"All right, I will take the first bathroom shift," Trina volunteered.

"And I'll go start on a batch of stir-fry right now," I said.

Prime Commander looked around the room, then stood up. "Good. I think we've got everything covered."

Chapter 23

Lily was sitting cross-legged when I teleported in with her meal. Following the protocol Shelley had laid out, I told her to self-report, then to use the bathroom and wash her hands, and then to eat.

I had brought in a large glass of water and a bowl of rice, chicken, and vegetables. Just because I was curious, I brought with me a fork and spoon and also a pair of chopsticks, all of which I laid beside the bowl. Lily ignored the chopsticks, picked up the fork, and began eating. Interesting, I thought. Li Lin-fa would have chosen the chopsticks without hesitation, I was sure.

She ate about two-thirds of the food and drank all the water. Then she resumed her meditative pose. I watched her for some time. We had agreed that I would start trying to communicate with her after she finished eating; right now, I was trying to figure out just what to say. Prime Commander was of the opinion that the exact words I used didn't matter so much as simply using her name as much as possible and asking her, in Cantonese, to show herself. He suggested saying whatever came into my head, but right now, nothing was coming.

"Li Lin-fa, can you hear me?" I eventually murmured in Cantonese. Lily gave no response, but then, I didn't expect her to. Not yet. "I am Prime Indigo, your friend. Do you remember me?"

I sat down beside her and took hold of her hand. It was soft and warm, and Lily offered me no resistance. "I want to help you, Li Lin-fa. My friends and I all want to help you. We have brought you here to this place where you can be safe from Enclave. But we don't know how to talk to you, and we don't know how to get you to talk to us. Can you help us? Please?"

I searched her calm, beautiful face for any reaction, but there was none. She looked so different now from the woman I had spoken to in the cage in the Enclave base. There was no animating force to her; she seemed like something carved from ice. Well -- soft, warm ice, maybe.

"I have missed you terribly, pretty one," I said softly, "and I hope you have missed me as well. I think about you every day. I want to talk to you again and have you talk to me." I smiled, although she couldn't see it under my force shield. "And I would very much like to kiss you one more time."

Lily made a small sound, something like a groan, and abruptly pulled her hand from my grasp. A few seconds later, she got to her feet, moved a couple of yards away, and sat back down again. It was the first time since we had captured her that I had seen her move without being ordered to do so. Her face had not changed expression the entire time.

I stared at her, not really sure what to do. "Wizzit?" I said, Prime-to-Prime. "Any suggestions?"

"Sensors indicate that her heart rate is elevated, and her breathing is slightly irregular. Offhand, I'd say you have upset her."

"Upset her or flustered her," came Shelley's voice. That startled me, because I didn't realize she would be listening in. "What did you say?"

"Just that we wanted to help her but we didn't know how."

"And . . .?"

I grinned, because I could hear the playful smile in her voice. Shelley knew me too well. That was all right, because I trusted her as much as anybody I could think of. And, after all, I had once promised to tell her everything that went on between Lily and me. "Okay, you caught me," I said with a chuckle. "I also told her that I missed her very much and wanted to kiss her again sometime. That was when she pulled away."

"Maybe you shouldn't threaten her like that," Wizzit said nastily.

"Behave yourself, Wizzit," Shelley said sharply.

"Maybe he's right, though," I said, feeling suddenly disheartened. "Maybe I came on too strong and frightened her."

"I seriously doubt that, not from watching your body language and hearing the tone of your voice. My guess is that, somewhere deep inside, Li Lin-fa heard you and tried to respond, and that made Lily react the way she did."

"Then what should I do now?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. I'm playing this by ear as much as you are." She hesitated. "If I had to guess, I'd say you should take it in small steps. Leave now for a while and come back later. Sound right to you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, it does. So . . . should I tell her goodbye?"

"Indigo, she's your friend, not mine," Shelley said, laughing. "You know her better than I do. What do you think?"

By way of answer, I moved over until I was sitting directly in front of Lily. "Li Lin-fa," I said earnestly, taking hold of her hand again, "I have to leave you now. I have duties elsewhere. But I promise I will come back to see you again, and my friends will come to visit you as well. We are all trying to help you." I looked into her eyes a moment longer; then I gave her hand a final squeeze, stood up, and gathered up the dishes. "I'm ready to go now, Wizzit."

Shelley found me a few minutes later as I was putting away the leftovers and washing Lily's dishes. Without a word, she crooked a finger, telling me to follow her. She led me into her room and pointed silently at her computer monitor.

She had pulled up a live feed of the stronghouse. On the screen, Lily was sitting in her meditative pose, eyes closed, her perfect face as serene and lovely as it always was. It was marred only by the glistening track of a single tear that had spilled out of one eye and slid down her cheek.

Chapter 24

We settled into something of a routine after that. I brought food in to Lily twice a day, which was all she seemed to need, and spent a few minutes afterward talking quietly to Li Lin-fa in Cantonese. Lily occasionally made sounds when I spoke to her, but they were subtle things -- little sighs or changes in breathing that I might not have noticed had I not been listening for them. There was no repeat of the first day's performance.

The others stopped by every few hours. At my suggestion (and with my careful linguistic coaching) they always introduced themselves with "Nei hou, Li Lin-fa. Ngo giu jo Prime Whatever-my-color-is" before sending her to use the bathroom.

And Shelley, concerned that Lily was spending all her time sitting on a bare floor, took it upon herself to make sure that she got at least some exercise. There was no "Lily, exercise" command that we could discover, but, oddly enough, there was a sort of "follow the leader" command, so twice a day, Shelley teleported in and introduced herself, and then she and Lily did twenty minutes of tai chi together. It was a little uncanny to watch the vids of these exercise sessions and see how perfectly Lily aped Shelley's movements.

The pleasant-dreams project, as I thought of it, turned out to be a complete failure. After some discussion, we came up with about twenty different ways of wishing someone good night. Padma and I agreed that Li Lin-fa had showed up less than two minutes after JB Swift had said his piece and left, but just to be safe, we decided it would be good to wait five minutes between each phrase.

So, wreathed in swirling red mist, Trina crouched in one corner of the stronghouse, just barely within Lily's field of vision, and for nearly two hours she doggedly read each phrase aloud. I tried watching her out of the corner of my eye, and I felt chills run down my spine. Wizzit had gotten both color and voice down perfectly; it really did give the impression that JB Swift was in the room. But in the end, it was all to no avail. Lily gave no sign that she even heard Trina; she simply sat cross-legged staring straight ahead.

Enclave was quiet for those couple of days. We did have one run-in with a monster, but that was all. It wasn't even a particularly nasty monster -- we didn't even need weapons -- although it did manage to break Nicolai's arm.

Shelley, being Shelley, turned his injury into a teaching moment; she had Toby show Padma how to set the break. Padma didn't especially want to learn -- hey, I didn't want to learn how to set fractures when I was Prime Violet, either -- but at HQ, everybody needs to know how to set broken bones. After a half-hour healing coma, Nicolai was good as new.

By the fourth day, Lily had begun telling us that she was "exhausted" and "operating far below optimum functionality". She ate less than half the food I brought for her in the morning, she stumbled once and nearly fell during Shelley's tai chi session, and Padma told us that she had nearly walked into a wall during one of her bathroom breaks.

I have to admit, I was starting to get worried. I thought about it the entire time I was making her nighttime meal, and I had just decided to approach Shelley and Prime Commander about it after Lily had eaten when the monster alarm started ringing. I hurriedly finished scooping the rice into the bowl, set it down, and began running for my room to get my battle vest.

On the way, I happened to pass by Prime Commander's office and saw that he was in. I hesitated, stopped, and then I made a decision that has since come back to haunt me, and which I will regret for the rest of my life. I knocked tentatively on his door. "Excuse me, sir?"

He looked from his computer screen. "Yes, Trevor?"

"Um, it's almost time for Lily's dinner, and I don't know how long I'll be tied up with this monster, so . . .?"

He smiled. "So you want to know whether I'd be willing to feed her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sure, I'd be happy to. Just tell me what I need to do."

I ran through the commands he needed to give Lily, quickly corrected his pronunciation of "Hello, Li Lin-fa, my name is Prime Commander," and ran off to get ready for the monster battle.

"It's Frankfurt am Main today, kids!" Wizzit declared happily. "Sorry, you're about a month too late for Oktoberfest, and that's in Munich anyway. You're going to their city woods, so enjoy the scenery! Strange monster this time. We've seen it once before, but we've never fought it."

With those cryptic remarks, he sent the six of us into a relatively large, grassy area surrounded by trees of various kinds. It was nearly dark out, but I was able to identify some oak trees that looked really old, and there were a fair number of pines around as well. The oaks were in full fall foliage; it would have been lovely scenery in full daylight.

Except for the tall, skeletally-thin, armored monster standing in the center of the field, surrounded by Zoinks. I groaned. "Not this guy again!"

It was Mr. Creepy-pants, that weird monster that had once tried to kidnap Angela and me. He was waving his sword and making that strange moaning sound of his. As I watched, he drove his blade deep into the heart of one of the ancient oaks, causing the tree to wither instantly.

"Good enough, Wizzit?" Shelley asked grimly.

"Yes, definitely hostile. Go get 'im."

Shelley dashed forward, sword held high. Mr. Creepy-pants had never struck me as a monster that was terribly swift, either physically or mentally, and he proved me right here. Shelley's broadsword was whirling through the air toward him before he had a chance to react. And then her blade passed right through him as if he weren't even there.

Surprised, Shelley overbalanced and nearly fell on her butt. Mr. Creepy-pants got himself turned around and attacked Shelley with his sword. She batted away his rather ineffectual swing and struck at him again. Again, her blade passed right through his body.

"What's going on, Wizzit?" she called out.

Trina stepped forward, triple blaster at the ready. "Let me try." She raised her weapon, aimed, fired. The blast passed right through him and struck the chest of a Zoink, which crashed backward, knocking down several of its fellows.

"Interesting," Wizzit commented. "The rest of you try hitting him."

One by one, each of the rest of us Primes took a whack at Mr. Creepy-pants: Nicolai with his war-axe, Toby with his huge hammer, me with my Escrima stick, and Padma with an axe that almost an exact copy of Nicolai's.

I had to grin at Padma's choice of weapons. Up to now, she had almost exclusively been using a special pair of boots that she had originally made to my specifications, something similar to my sap gloves. Now that she and Nicolai had finally gotten together, though, it was obvious she had chosen her new weapon to be as much like his as possible.

I suppose that if I had been more serious about Padma, all this sudden following-around of Nicolai would probably have caused me a bit of heartache, and maybe I did feel some small pang of jealousy over the whole thing. Jealousy, though, was just poison to a well-functioning team like ours; it would eat away at the heart of our little group if left unchecked.

So I smothered any hurt feelings as best I could. What we do is far too important to allow it to be destroyed over such a petty thing as who has a crush on whom, especially since I had never been more than halfway interested in her anyway. And besides, the last girl I had gotten serious about had died at the hands of Enclave over a year and a half ago. It just wasn't worth it.

Regardless, none of the rest of us had any better luck than Shelley or Trina did. Each of our weapons passed clean through Mr. Creepy-pants as if he were some sort of hologram. Actually, it occurred to me that he might be a hologram or some kind of optical illusion, and I almost said something about it. When Padma took her swing at him, though, she was a little clumsy with her unfamiliar weapon. That allowed the monster to strike her with the flat of his sword, a blow which sent her sprawling. Eh, so much for the hologram idea.

"What is going on with this guy, Wizzit?" Shelley demanded. "Why can't we hit him?"

"It's like he's a ghost!" Toby said.

"Nope, not a ghost," Wizzit replied promptly. "Creating ghosts is beyond Enclave's current level of technology."

"Then what is he?" Trina asked. "Or can't you figure it out?"

"I'm working on it!" Wizzit replied, sounding hurt at Trina's lack of faith in him. I knew that he would work twice as hard on it just because Trina had said that, and that just might have been why Trina said it in the first place.

"Well, while you're working on it," Shelley said, "let's see what happens when two of us attack him at once." She looked around and then turned to Toby, who was the closest to her at the moment. "Blue, let's go. You and I will go at this thing. The rest of you, start taking apart these Zoinks. Ready, Blue?"

"Ready."

Shelley and Toby began running at Mr. Creepy-pants. Nicolai started swinging his axe at the nearest Zoinks, and Padma followed along behind him. I turned to Trina. "Looks like it's you and me, Green. How do you want to do this?"

"I will shoot any Zoinks I can," she said. "You do what you want, but keep the Zoinks away from me."

I grinned. As if I had expected anything else from her. "Whatever you say."

I proceeded to get all badass on the Zoinks in Trina's immediate vicinity while she took on the ones that were farther away with her triple blaster. It made for a pretty balanced attack, I thought. Off to my left, I could hear Padma and Nicolai struggling to work together.

Padma and I had always made a pretty good team because we trained together so much; our newest happy couple, though, appeared to have a ways to go before they made an efficient fighting unit. Different styles, for one thing: Padma was Tae Kwon Do, and Nicolai was Oyama Karate. And it didn't help that Padma seemed to be trying to hold up her end of the fight and keep Nicolai out of harm's way at the same time. I realize that Padma might possibly be the better fighter of the two, but Nicolai is certainly no slouch. I mean, you can't be a bad fighter and be in the Primes, no matter how good your tech skills.

And I could see that Padma's mother-hen-ishness was causing her to neglect her own defense. I looked up once from pounding a Zoink into the ground to see Padma pulling a Zoink (unnecessarily) away from Nicolai while another Zoink was coming up behind her. "Watch it, Violet," I called out. "Bad guy at six o'clock!"

"Six o'clock?" she said, looking around in confusion. "What does that mean?"

"It means behind you." I drew my blaster and shot the drone in the head. It didn't fall down, not like after one of Trina's triple-blaster hits, but it slowed it down long enough for Padma to turn around and begin kicking it in the chest.

"Nice shot," Trina commented.

"Thanks," I replied, feeling a flush of pride. "I've been practicing."

"So have I." With that, she spun about and struck a Zoink across the neck with a knife-hand chop. "Ha!"

"Looks good," I said as the Zoink staggered back. I ran forward and kicked it in the head with a roundhouse. "Of course, one knife-hand attack isn't going to incapacitate a Zoink."

"No, but it feels good to hit something once in a while."

I laughed. "Sure does, Green."

"Okay, kids," Wizzit said suddenly. "Looks like Red and Blue had discovered the secret to getting to this monster. Two of you have to hit it at the same time."

"Two of us?" Trina repeated.

"Very interesting," Nicolai commented. "Let me make a guess: He is able to shift his base frequency about?"

"Well, duh!" Wizzit retorted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh, I see!" came Padma's voice. "He can adapt to any single Prime's frequency and be unaffected by that Prime's attack, but if two Primes attack together, he can't adapt to them both! How very clever!" Somehow I got the feeling that she was referring, not to the monster's ability, but to Nicolai's explanation.

"Exactly!" Nicolai told her warmly. "It's the only possible solution."

"Anyway," Shelley cut in dryly, "it looks like we're going to have to attack this thing in twos. We're already paired up, so let's go: First Blue and me, then Green and Indigo, and then Yellow and Violet. Got it?"

After hearing "Got it, Red," from everybody, Shelley indicated that she and Toby were about to strike. I was pleased to see the monster stagger back from the impact. I started my own run toward Mr. Creepy-pants when Trina stopped me.

"Try shooting him with blaster, Indigo," she suggested. "Hold trigger down for long shot. While you are doing that, I will shoot him myself."

I shrugged. "Okay, Green, if you say so." I drew my blaster, aimed, and fired. We generally use our blasters in short bursts to get stronger, more percussive blasts; the beams gradually lose power the longer they go on. Still, if the purpose of my attack was merely to make him vulnerable to Trina's blaster, maybe it didn't matter how powerful it was.

Soon my blaster was emitting a lance of energy. My aim wasn't exact, but it was close enough that I had him skewered on my blaster beam within a second or two. "Go ahead, Green," I said. Trina raised her triple blaster and fired.

The effect was, as we say in the business, satisfactory. Mr. Creepy-pants spun about from her initial blast. Trina followed it up with several more, while I struggled to hold my blaster beam on him as he flailed around. I wasn't perfect, but of the five shots that Trina snapped off at him, I'd say that three of them hit home.

"Good thinking, Green," I heard Shelley say. "Indigo, continue to hold your beam on him as best you can. Yellow and Violet, go!"

Padma and Nicolai dashed forward, axes at the ready. She hit him high, and he hit him low, and Mr. Creepy-pants hit the ground with his back shortly afterward. As he struggled to his feet, I heard Trina mutter, "There is something odd about this monster . . ."

"Keep the beam on him, Indigo," Shelley called out. "Blue and I are going in again." She and Toby ran forward and hit him with sword and hammer, slamming him back against one of the old oak trees.

"There are no sparks!" Trina said suddenly. "Wizzit, why is he not sparking when we hit him?"

"Good question!" Wizzit chirped. "Indigo, stop shooting while I analyze."

"No problem!" I was, in fact, having increasing difficulty keeping my weapon trained on the monster while continuing to avoid the Zoinks that were threatening to swarm me. I could understand now why Trina was always looking for someone to run interference for her while she used her triple blaster.

I holstered my weapon and began pounding on the nearest Zoinks. Trina joined me; she seemed to have acquired a taste for hitting Zoinks with that knife-hand chop. Of course, she kept her blaster ready in her other hand for any of them that wanted to come back for seconds.

"Okay, kids, I have puzzled it out," Wizzit said a few minutes later. "The reason he isn't sparking is \-- uh oh!" And then he did something I had never heard before. Wizzit said a very bad word.

"Wizzit, what is it?" Shelley demanded. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

"Red, prepare to teleport now!" And with a flash of light, Shelley was gone.

I stared at the spot where she had been standing. "Um, what just happened? Please tell me that Wizzit didn't just pull Red out of the battle."

"I think Wizzit just pulled Red out of the battle," Trina said. Then, more sharply, "Indigo! Behind you!"

I turned in time to avoid a Zoink that was rushing me. It tripped over my outstretched foot and went sprawling; I ran over to it and began kicking it in the face.

"Looks like you're in charge now, Yellow," Toby said. "What do you want us to do?"

"I . . . I'm not sure."

I felt my heart sink. I think everyone there knew that Nicolai was not a leader, even Nicolai himself. He had confided in me more than once that he dreaded the day that Shelley would retire and he would be promoted to Orange -- second in command. I hoped his indecision here wouldn't cost us too dearly.

"Monster is killing another tree," Trina said. "Perhaps that is his mission here, to destroy ancient forest. Yellow, I would suggest that some of us be assigned to keep Zoinks under control, and others keep monster off-balance until we figure out how to destroy it."

"Y-yes," Nicolai stammered. "Thank you, Green. That is an excellent suggestion. Can you keep the monster pinned down with your blaster?"

"Will do," she said.

"I'll work on the Zoinks," I volunteered. "Violet, wanna help?"

"Actually," Padma began, "I would prefer . . ."

"Oh hell! I'll help you, Indigo," Toby said impatiently. "Come on, let's go!"

Toby and I used to fight as a team back in the day, before Padma joined us, so taking care of business with him was like old times. He and I had developed a knack for herding the Zoinks together, making it easier to keep track of them and to keep them under control. In just a few minutes, we had cleared them away from Mr. Creepy-pants (and away from Trina) enabling the others to attack him without interference. After that, keeping them in check was child's play.

"He is not weakening!" Padma exclaimed after a few minutes. "Why is he not weakening?"

"Wizzit?" Trina called out. No answer. We hadn't heard from him since he had pulled Shelley away.

"I have it!" Nicolai cried suddenly. "I think he is able to adapt his base frequency better than we thought. A single Prime cannot touch him, but even two or three, he is able to handle. He is able to shift fast enough that the strikes do not seriously harm him."

"How many Primes do we need, then?" Trina asked. "Five? Six? Ten?"

"I don't know. If he starts sparking when we attack, then that will tell us that we have enough, that he cannot change his base frequency fast enough to handle all of us. Then we just keep hitting him until he explodes."

"Let's try all five of us, then!" Toby cried. "You ready to attack, Indigo?"

"Hang on." I had seen a couple of Zoinks that were trying to get to their feet. I ran over and whacked them repeatedly with my Escrima stick. "Okay, now I'm ready."

Toby and I charged. By the time we reached Mr. Creepy-pants, Trina was shooting a blaster beam straight through him, and Nicolai and Padma were ready with their twin axes. We came together and struck him. Mr. Creepy-pants dropped like a stone.

But there were no sparks. Within seconds, he was staggering to his feet again, moaning in his weird voice, "Give uuuuup! You cannot defeeeeeat meeee!"

"Damn that thing!" Trina exclaimed. "Wizzit, where are you?"

"Wizzit," Nicolai called out, "this is team leader, urgent priority. We need your help."

I guess Nicolai's mention of urgent priority finally got Wizzit's attention. "What is it?" he said, sounding distracted.

"We need another Prime. Can you send Red back?"

"No. Red is . . . otherwise occupied." Again, he sounded as if he were giving us only half his attention. This was odd, because I have known him to easily carry on two or three simultaneous conversations before.

"What about Orange, then?" Padma asked.

Trina snorted. "Orange is not available," she said, a note of contempt in her voice. "We all know that."

I hated to admit it, but she was right. Mike is a hellraiser. He always has been, and he probably always will be. He has learned over the years to behave himself pretty well when he's on duty, but when he goes on vacation he has plenty of pent-up steam to blow off. I mean, a lot of steam. If I had to guess, I would say that at the moment he was either blind drunk or with a girl or two or three. Or maybe both. Regardless, I think we all knew he would be in no condition to join us. (And for some reason, this always bothered Trina more than any of the rest of us.)

"What are we going to do, then?" Padma demanded. "We can't destroy this monster by ourselves!"

"Well, we could call in Junior Prime Pink," I suggested.

Nicolai sighed. "It appears we have no choice. Pink it is."

"Wizzit, can you get hold of Junior Prime Pink for me?" I said. "You can pull her cellphone number from my list of contacts."

"Sorry, what?" Wizzit said. "I wasn't paying attention." I frowned. What was going on with him? I repeated my request. "Will do," he said distractedly.

From my belt radio, I heard the sound of a phone ringing, and then someone picked up. "Hello, this is Angela Chiao. Who is this, please?"

"Hey, little sis," I said cheerfully. "How's it going?"

"Trevor!" she squealed. "Hey, big brother, when did you get in town? We weren't expecting you for a couple of weeks!"

"Actually, I'm not in town," I said. "I'm in Germany, and I'm, uh, working."

"Working?" She sounded puzzled. "Oh! You mean you're . . . working? Like . . . working?"

"Yeah. Hang on a sec." Two of the Zoinks had gotten up from the general pile and were converging on me from opposite sides. I ducked down, let them collide, and swept their legs out from under them. Then I pounded each of them a few times with my stick just to make sure they stayed down. "Sorry about that. I had something to take care of. Hey listen, we're a little short-handed out here, and we were wondering whether you'd be willing to come and help us out. You know, like you did at the football game that one time?"

"Sure, I'd love to!" She hesitated. "But . . . um . . . I'm sort of in the middle of a tennis match right now -- we're taking a water break between games -- and Coach would kill me if I just walked out, you know?"

"Oh. Sure, I understand," I said, struggling to keep the disappointment out of my voice. "Look, don't worry about it. We'll manage somehow. I'll, uh, catch you later, okay?"

"Wait! Don't hang up yet! Umm . . ." Angie abruptly switched to Mandarin, speaking more confidentially. "The girl I am playing against is not very good. She cannot return my serves at all. At the moment, I am ahead six-zero, five-zero, and I am serving the next game. Can you wait for five minutes? Or perhaps ten?"

"Sure," I assured her. "That should be fine."

"Okay, sounds like a plan," she said happily, switching back to English. "Coach won't be happy if I don't stick around to watch everyone else finish their matches, but I can deal. Should I call you back at this number when I'm done?"

"No, just go ahead and, you know, get ready. We'll pick you up."

"All right. 'Bye, Trev!"

"'Bye!" I switched to Prime-to-Prime communication. "Pink will be available in ten minutes or so."

"Any chance Pink can get here sooner?" Toby asked. "Ten minutes is a lot of time."

"Pink will get here with all possible speed," I said tartly, "but there's something else going on at the moment. Remember, Pink is not full-time like the rest of us."

"All right, let's get back to work," Nicolai said. "Let's keep the Zoinks under control and this monster off-balance until Pink can get here."

I judged that Toby had the Zoinks pretty well in hand, at least for a few minutes, so I managed to get Wizzit's attention and had him 'port me out to the weapons room and back to pick up Angela's weapons. And I made him promise to bring her out as soon as she had activated.

Toby and I were starting to get bored, and I was just wondering if there were any way we could play Bowling-for-Zoinks, when I saw a burst of pinkish light off to my right.

"Hi, guys!" I heard Angie say. "How can I help?"

"Thank you for coming, Pink," Nicolai said, relief obvious in his voice. "Indigo has weapons for you, and Green will show you what we need you to do."

I handed Angie her blaster and Escrima stick and sent her off to talk to Trina. The plan, as we had worked it out, was for her to pin down the monster with her blaster as I had done earlier, while the rest of us attacked with our assorted weapons. It was a simple plan, easy to execute, and it was designed to keep Angie out of danger.

And, for once, it came off without a hitch. Angela was able to keep her blaster beam centered nicely on target, and when we smacked Mr. Creepy-pants, the sparks started flying. There wasn't much to it after that. Bam! bam! bam! and nighty-night, Mr. Creepy-pants. (Well, okay, to be accurate, I should put nine or ten more bam!s in there, but you get the idea.)

The Zoinks had cleared out by the time the sparks stopped flying, and Wizzit teleported us out.

Chapter 25

I knew something was wrong the moment the teleportation haze faded from my vision. We were in HQ, but it was just Angie and me.

"What's the matter, big brother?" Angie asked me.

"I don't know," I said, looking around anxiously. "Nothing much, I hope. It looks like Wizzit sent the others somewhere else." I shrugged. "I guess I'm supposed to make sure you're okay, that you're not hurt or anything."

"How could I be? I didn't really do anything; I just shot that little gun at the monster."

"Believe me, little sis, you did plenty. We couldn't have done it without you. We had to have six Primes to defeat that monster, and Red and Orange weren't available."

"Why weren't they?" she asked me. "Aren't you guys on call twenty-four/seven?"

"Eh, it's a long story," I said with a shake of my head. I didn't want to get into Mike's situation, and I had no idea what was going on with Shelley. "Anyway, I think you can keep the weapons -- the blaster and the stick. You should try to have them handy in case we need you again."

Angie looked dubiously at the Escrima stick in her hand. "Okay, the blaster would be fine, but isn't this thing a little too big to be carrying around in my purse? Could you get me something a little smaller, like a yawara or a kubotan or something like that? Or maybe a pair of them -- one for each hand?"

I felt a grin spread across my face. "See, that's what I'm talking about! The other guys all want these big hammers and swords and axes and stuff, but I think the little weapons work just fine." I shook my head. "I don't think we have any on hand, but I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks." She reached over to give me a hug. "This was fun, but I've got to get back home now. Mom and Dad will be wondering where I am."

"Okay. Take care of yourself. I'll see you in a couple of weeks."

"'Bye!"

It took a couple of tries, but I finally managed to get Wizzit's attention, and he sent Angie on her way. Then I said, "Okay, Wizzit, do you want to take me where the other Primes are now?"

He didn't say anything, but I felt the familiar tingling at the base of my skull, and a moment later I was standing in the main room of the stronghouse. The others were standing together in a group over near the bathroom. Lily's bowl of food sat on the floor in the middle of the room. It looked as though she had barely touched it, and she hadn't drunk any of the water. I couldn't see any sign of Lily herself.

Trina looked up as the light from my teleportation faded. "Trevor," she asked softly, "do you know what Prime Commander would have been doing here?"

"Sure. I asked him to feed Lily."

"You sent him here?" Toby demanded. For some reason, he suddenly looked as though he wanted to punch my lights out.

I took a step back. "Uh, yeah."

"It's not his fault, Toby." That sounded like Shelley's voice, but strangled somehow, as if she were under a great strain. "He couldn't have known. None of us could."

"He could bloody well have \--"

"That's enough!" Shelley's voice had steel in it. "It's. Not. His. Fault!"

"What's not my fault?" I moved uneasily toward the others. "What happened?"

Trina and Toby stood aside as I approached, Toby still with murder in his eyes, and then Padma and Nicolai took a step back. The first thing I saw was Shelley. She was kneeling on the floor, looking up at me. She wasn't crying, not now, but her face was streaked with tears. I felt a sick wave of dread. "Oh, no!"

"She killed him, Trevor," Trina said, so softly I could barely hear her. "Lily killed Commander Windham." And then she began to cry.

Now I could see him. Prime Commander was lying on the floor. His hat was askew and the mask had been torn from his face. There was a bruise along the side of his head, which was twisted around at a strange angle that told me that his neck had been broken. "No!" I breathed in horror. "No, she couldn't have!"

"The commander had me teleport him here shortly after you left," Wizzit said, all his joviality gone for once. "He received a call on his cellphone while he was here. He went over by the bathroom to answer it, and she followed him. My camera doesn't extend into that area of the stronghouse, but my sensors recorded the sounds of a struggle. A telephone call was made from the commander's phone, and then there was a flash of light, as if someone teleported in or out. There was a second flash of light moments later."

"What we think happened," Shelley said, sounding as if she were holding her voice steady by sheer force of will, "was that she saw the cellphone and killed Dad to get it, probably in response to some part of that special order JB Swift had us give her. Then she called a number owned by Enclave. Once she made the connection, they were able to use the phone's GPS to discover her location and teleport someone out to retrieve her. That's why there were two flashes."

I closed my eyes and felt hot tears sting my eyelids. Oh, Lily, I thought miserably, what have you done?

"I'm sorry, Trev," Shelley was saying. "I know how much you wanted to help Li Lin-fa."

I shook my head. "No, I'm the one who's sorry." My voice sound so harsh to my ears that I barely recognized it. "I wanted to help her get free, and that made me trust JB Swift. I won't make that mistake again." I swallowed hard. "Li Lin-fa asked me to kill her once. She said she didn't want Lily to murder anyone, didn't want to be responsible for that. I should have taken her up on it when I had the chance. That's another mistake I won't make again." I looked up. "She's proved she's hostile, right, Wizzit? We can take her out on sight?"

There was a pause, and then Wizzit said softly, "Yes."

###

The Attack Doll Series

by

Douglas A. Taylor

Twenty-one-year-old Trevor Chiao is Prime Indigo; he is a member of the fabulous Primes, a group of seven men and women whose mission is to protect the Earth from Enclave, an alien organization bent on taking over the world.

Protected by an indigo-colored force shield that enhances his strength and speed and keeps his identity secret, he travels all over the world with his fellow Primes, battling monsters, Zoinks, and the mysterious Lily Lee, a beautiful Asian woman who refers to herself as . . . the Attack Doll.

Attack Doll 1: Violet Lost

Trevor becomes the mentor of Padma Reddy, a young woman from India who has joined the team as their new Prime Violet. When Padma is kidnapped by Enclave during her first mission as a Prime, Trevor must risk his own life to infiltrate the Enclave base and rescue . . . Violet Lost.

Attack Doll 2: Junior Prime

Trevor usually gets along pretty well with his younger sister Angela, but when the two of them are taken prisoner by Enclave and Angie discovers Trevor's secret identity, he doesn't quite know how to handle it. What's a guy to do when his kid sister wants to tag along as a . . . Junior Prime?

Don't miss the next exciting book in the Attack Doll series:

Attack Doll 3: Protocol Black

The death of Prime Commander has dealt a heavy blow to Trevor and his fellow Primes. And when the team is threatened by government forces intent on discovering their secrets, things go from bad to worse. To hold the team together, the Primes must enlist the aid of an old friend and implement . . . Protocol Black.

