 
### Attack Doll 1: Violet Lost

by Douglas A. Taylor

Copyright 2011 by Douglas A. Taylor

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

Okay, so Shelley and I were standing there in the middle of the street, all powered up for battle, you know? When along comes the biggest, baddest-looking monster I've seen in, well, six months anyway. He looks pretty scary, but that's okay. I've dealt with guys like him before. I'm a Prime, one of seven Primes, and it's our job to deal with guys like him. In fact, that's pretty much all I do, besides hanging out at HQ waiting for the would-be alien invaders at Enclave to send out their next big, scary-looking monster.

Honestly, I don't know where Enclave comes up with these guys. All right, I get that they're fighting a proxy war. There's something in the rules they have to follow that says that they can't invade Earth themselves, not until their proxies have conquered it for them, and those proxies have to be Earth stock, one hundred percent. Yeah, I get that.

What I don't get is why anyone would want to join up with Enclave. Sure, they're big and bad, and they've been kicking our butts for most of the last fifteen years. But come on, have you ever seen what they do to a guy? You wind up with scales and horns and fangs so big you can't even close your mouth right. I mean, who needs that? Am I right?

Take this guy. Shelley and I were standing there waiting for trouble because Wizzit had detected a disturbance and we were the only two Primes at home. So along comes this guy, and right away I can tell he's the one, because he's like nine feet tall and looks sort of like Godzilla, if Godzilla were yellow with red spots, had normal-sized arms instead of those dinky T-Rex-type ones, and breath worse than my Aunt Min's worm farm after a rainy night. (Okay, I made up the part about the breath. The force shields we wear do let through enough air and stuff so that we can smell things -- except when we have to seal 'em up tight -- but I wasn't close enough to get a whiff of Big Ugly's mouth vapors.)

So anyway, here's this Godzilla-guy who used to be a regular human, except Enclave turned him into this thing -- at his request, mind you, because that's the only way they're allowed to do it. Shelley and I run up in front of him and strike a pose, but we don't attack. We can't attack; we're not allowed to, because Wizzit says we aren't supposed to go around attacking people that are obviously bad guys, like Godzilla here, not until they prove they're bad guys by doing something, well, bad-guy-ish. Attacking people generally qualifies, as do property destruction and general mayhem.

So why do we have to do what Wizzit says? It's simple -- he's the one who provides the hardware, so he makes the rules. Well, okay, he doesn't make the rules so much as he tells us what the rules are. And he enforces them. Ask Shelley about it sometime; that's how she got to be Prime Red.

Like I said, we're in a proxy war, with Enclave on one side and Wizzit on the other, and for some reason there are these rules they have to follow. Enclave wants to conquer Earth -- I guess because we're in a strategic location for something -- and Wizzit . . . well, nobody's sure what Wizzit wants. He says he just wants to help us fight off Enclave, and I guess most of us actually believe that. He does give us the tech, after all, and some damn good advice about how to fight the bad guy du jour. He's especially good at finding weaknesses and remote-tuning our force shields and weapons to exploit them. Personally, I think he's helping us because he thinks it's fun. Or maybe he just likes sticking it to Enclave. But he's an alien, so who knows?

So anyway, Shelley and I are standing there, ready to fight, but we can't actually do anything until Mr. Lizard decides to start it. Except that he doesn't. He just stands there. And so do we. I keep expecting him to say something like "Thurrender, humanth!" (Yeah, most of these guys lisp. It's the fangs.) But nothing happens. Absolutely nothing.

After about ninety seconds of this, I'm starting to feel a little silly. A crowd is starting to gather, even though they know they're not supposed to. Now, I realize no one is going to recognize me, because the force shields blur our features, but even so, I know I look like an idiot in front of all these people.

Doesn't even faze Shelley. She's been at this a lot longer than I have, sure, but there's more to it than that. Nothing bothers her, not that she ever shows. It makes her seem kind of heartless sometimes, like when Robin died, but mostly it makes her a great leader.

Before the crowd got too big, I heard her amplified voice boom out, "Move back, all of you! This is one of the Enclave's monsters. It is unpredictable and very dangerous!" And just like that, people started backing away. Something about the way she gives an order, even with her voice altered by the force shield, makes you want to do what she says. Like I said, a great leader.

While I was watching and waiting for the attack, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and the combination of that and the movement of my eyes caused the force shield to thicken slightly, magnifying my view. It was a girl in street clothes, unaltered as far as I could tell, and not wearing a speck of Enclave hardware.

"Hey, Red," I said, "there's a civilian up by the monster. Beside the building."

Her reply was instantaneous. "I see her, Indigo. But she's not a civvie."

Yeah, that's right. She just called me Indigo. It's not my real name; that's Trevor -- Trevor Chiao. But there are seven of us Primes, seven colors of the rainbow, and I'm currently stuck with Indigo. It could be worse; I could be Yellow. How'd you like to be called that in the middle of a battle?

"The heck she isn't! She isn't enhanced, and she's not packing anything from Enclave. Got to be civvie."

"Negatory on that, good buddy." That was Wizzit chiming in over the radio built into the force shield generator on my belt. I guess he used to eavesdrop on a lot of Earth radio back before the war with Enclave started, and he's got a weird sense of the way people really talk. "Red's right. No way she's a civvie."

"Look at her close, Indigo." Shelley again. Her voice was quieter this time, and less clipped. She wasn't ordering, just explaining. "Psychology's all wrong. Is she acting like a civilian? Does she look scared or worried or even curious? No. And now look, she's walking beside it like she's its partner."

"She's a minder." That's our Wizzit, master of the obvious. Of course she was a minder; if she wasn't a civilian, there was no way she could be anything but a minder.

"Yeah, that makes sense," I muttered with a sigh. "You're right. Thanks for pointing it out."

Yes, you did just hear me say, "Thank you for proving me wrong." One of Shelley's rules, not Wizzit's. Courtesy everywhere, all the time. Even on the battlefield when there's time for it. If you're wrong, you admit it and you move on, and no hard feelings. Works surprisingly well.

"No prob," Shelley said casually. "Look alive now. She's prepping it to attack."

Now, that much was obvious even to me, but I didn't say anything. Some day it wouldn't be obvious, or I wouldn't be paying attention, and I'd need that warning. I saw the girl point at us and say something to the monster, and it charged us. The battle was on.

Shelley and I ran up to meet it. That much we could do, even though it hadn't actually attacked us yet. It took a swipe at Shelley with one of those human-shaped arms; sparks showered out from where it struck her force shield. "That's it," came Wizzit's voice. "It's definitely hostile; go ahead and take it down."

"Got it." Shelley spun away from the contact while I hit its other side with a jumping side kick, striking it square on the shoulder. Off balance, it staggered toward her. She rolled out of its way, then swept out with her legs and knocked its feet out from under it. Knowing Shelley, I was expecting that; as its back hit the pavement, I jumped forward and dropped an axe kick straight down onto its chest. And boom! Just like that, the thing vaporized.

I think even Wizzit was surprised. Normally we have to beat on these things for a while and weaken them to the point where Wizzit can tune our weapons to disable or destroy their Enclave enhancements. When that stuff goes, there's usually a lot of sparks and sometimes an explosion and not much left of the original human. They usually don't just turn into gas and disappear at the first serious kick to the chest.

After staring for a while at the spot where it had been, I asked, "It's dead, right, Wizzit?" You know, just to make sure.

"Yes. Dead. It didn't teleport out." He sounded puzzled. "It must be some sort of experimental enhancement they were trying out, but it didn't look all that odd when I \--"

All of a sudden, Shelley jumped up and started running. "Indigo!" her voice cracked out, interrupting Wizzit. "The minder!"

Without thinking, I sprang to my feet and took off after her. Normally, minders teleport out right away after the monster has been killed, which is why we hadn't moved to secure this one at once. I figured she had already left. She was still around, though. I could see her running away down an alley, with Shelley catching up to her like she was standing still.

I poured on the speed and got there just as Shelley passed her and planted herself right in the girl's path. Force shields come in handy for things like that; not only do they protect us from getting hurt, they also jazz up our reflexes, increase our strength, boost our speed, and lots of other things besides.

The girl stopped short as soon as she saw Shelley standing in front of her. She slowly raised her hands up like she was trying to protect herself, or maybe she was surrendering. Who knows? She must have heard me skid to a stop behind her, because after staring at Shelley for a few seconds, she slowly turned around to face me. My eyes went wide as I got my first good look at her. She was Asian and very pretty. And she looked absolutely terrified of us.

Chapter 2

Now, this might sound strange coming from a guy with a last name like Chiao (it's pronounced "chow", by the way), but I don't know that many Asians. My parents grew up in Beijing, but they emigrated to the States not long after they got married. I was born in a small town in Ohio called Centerton-burg-ville-city. (Ha-ha. No, of course that's not the real name.) My dad is the chair of the East Asian Languages Department at C-b-v-c College (actually, he's pretty much the whole department) and my mom teaches piano, both for the college and for kids who live in the town.

Besides them, my sisters and brothers, my Aunt Min, and Grandmaster Park, the old Korean guy who runs the local Tae Kwon Do studio, everybody I knew growing up was either white or black -- most of them farm kids or the children of college professors. The girls I dated or lusted after in high school were all Betty-and-Veronica types: blondes, brunettes, and one glorious redhead. I had never seen a really pretty Asian girl before, not live and up close (sisters don't count!) and I have to admit that I was staring.

"Indigo, ask her what her name is." That was Shelley's voice coming through the radio link. It was a Prime-to-Prime communication, meaning that the sound wouldn't have made its way outside either of our force shields. The girl would have heard nothing. When I didn't answer right away, her voice cracked out, "Indigo!"

"Uh, sorry. I'm on it."

When I was growing up, my dad insisted that us kids speak Mandarin at home, even though he and my mom both spoke excellent English. I guess he didn't want us to lose the mother tongue. My Aunt Min, who's not really my aunt, but more like a family friend, speaks Cantonese, the southern Chinese dialect, and not much else. And of course, whenever Grandmaster Park came over for dinner, which was often, we always spoke Korean as a courtesy because my dad considers him to be an honorable gentleman. So, I'm fairly fluent in those three languages. Beyond that, I speak a smattering of Japanese, just because it's one of the languages my dad teaches, and a fair amount of German. (Yeah, German. What can I say? I had to take a foreign language in high school, and the only other choices were Spanish or French. Romance languages, ugh!)

Looking at the girl again, I came to a decision. Enclave recruited from all over the world so, statistically speaking, this girl probably came from mainland China. I figured I'd try Mandarin first, then maybe Korean. After that, we'd see.

"Ni jiao shen me ming zi?" I said to her.

She glanced behind her at Shelley, then back at me. She was so scared now, she was starting to shake. "Uh, n-nee how?" she stammered. She was starting to look panicked, which probably wasn't good. "S-sorry, I don't speak Chinese."

"Indigo asked you what your name is." Shelley's voice, even altered, came out as gruff but not hostile, just what this girl needed to steady her a bit. She added, "I'd advise you to answer. Don't worry, we both speak English."

The girl gave Shelley a grateful smile before answering me. "My name is Lily. Lily Lee. What are you going to do to me?"

Good question. I had no idea. I don't think we had ever captured either a minder or a monster before.

"Tell her that we're not going to hurt her, we're just going to take her to our headquarters for questioning." That was Shelley, Prime-to-Prime.

"No. Nope. No way. Veto here, big time," Wizzit broke in. "No way I'm 'porting her into headquarters."

"Well, of course not! I'm not stupid. You're going to send the three of us somewhere that's not headquarters, but where we can control her movements and interrogate her in peace and quiet."

There was silence for about two seconds, then Wizzit came back with, "Uh, yes. Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Tell her that, Indigo."

The girl had been staring anxiously at me during this entire exchange, which of course she hadn't heard. I rubbed my chin as if I had been pondering the matter, and then I said in my best policeman voice, "We're going to have to take you back to headquarters, miss. If you cooperate with us, you won't be harmed, but we do need to ask you a few questions."

She dropped her gaze and nodded. "Okay, whatever you want. Just, please, don't hurt me." She sort of cringed when she said it, like she thought I was going to swat her down there and then.

Shelley stepped forward. "Here, you can teleport with me," she said, sounding almost sympathetic. "Give me your hand."

As she reached out, I saw a flash of something red down near the ground and felt something brush past my leg. Then I saw Lily's face go blank. Absolutely no expression, like she was a mannequin or something. It was the weirdest thing, too -- one moment she looked like she was scared out of her wits and trying not to cry, and the next, nothing.

I held up a hand. "Wait a minute, Red."

I was too late. With a speed that surprised me, Lily turned, took hold of Shelley's outstretched wrist, went down to one knee, and threw her over her shoulder straight at me. I ducked to one side, avoiding Shelley, then dove forward, trying to grab at Lily's legs. She jumped up, evading my grasp, and as I slid under her, she landed with both feet right on my head, pushed off, and ran down the length of my body.

I got myself turned around in time to see Lily leap high over Shelley's prone form, fleet as a deer. Shelley was still getting herself untangled from the throw, but she managed to take a swipe at her and grab one ankle. Without a moment's hesitation, even as she was falling, Lily twisted around and stamped her heel down hard right on Shelley's face. I winced; force shield or no, that couldn't have felt good.

Shelley managed to hang on, though. By the time I got to the two of them, Lily was on the ground, still kicking at Shelley with her free foot. Shelley, for her part, had bent Lily's captive leg almost double at the knee, with her arms twined all around it. It was one of those twisty, joint-lock-y kung fu things that she does that I've never been able to figure out. I'm more of a punch-and-kick guy, myself. Regardless, there was no way that Lily was getting away from her, not unless one of those kicks that she was aiming at Shelley's head and back managed to stun her.

I grabbed the leg that Lily was kicking with and helped Shelley to heave her over onto her stomach. In that position, lying face-down with both her legs held firmly, she was pretty much helpless, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Just then, two things happened almost simultaneously. First, Lily went limp, so suddenly that I almost let go of her in surprise. Second, I felt something hit me in the head, hard. I staggered back, releasing Lily's leg in the process. Another shot hit me, this time in the chest.

"Enclave blaster," I heard Shelley's voice rap out. "Looks like one of the extra-heavy-duty ones. You okay, Indigo?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," I said, shaking my head to try to clear it. "No damage, just rung my bell a little."

"Okay, good. We're taking fire, Wizzit. I've got the minder. Get us out of here!"

"Copy that, li'l buckaroo. Teleporting in 3 . . ."

Another blaster shot went bzzzt! It hit Shelley in the shoulder, and I heard her grunt at the impact. Lily suddenly sprang to life, twisting her body around and kicking Shelley in the face again with her free foot. The combination of hits loosened her grip, and with another well-aimed kick, our pretty Asian minder managed to pull her other leg free.

I dipped my hand into one of the many pockets of my battle vest, then leaped at her. I grabbed the front of her blouse, but she twisted away from my grasp and sprang to her feet.

". . . 2 . . ."

She ran down the alley a few steps, then skidded to a stop underneath a fire escape. Her gaze went right, left, up -- just that fast. She made a dash straight toward one of the buildings that lined the alleyway, and then, damned if she didn't start running up the wall!

Her momentum carried her six, maybe ten feet up. Just when it seemed like she had reached the top of her run, she spun in mid-air and jumped straight out, right towards the ladder attached to the fire escape. She grasped the lowest rung and flipped herself up like a gymnast.

". . . 1 . . ."

In less than the time it takes to say it, she was scaling the ladder, nimble as a monkey, heading for the top floor. I drew my blaster, thinking to disable her, but then

". . . 0 . . ."

I felt a tingle at the base of my skull that quickly spread out over my entire body, and my vision went hazy. Wizzit was teleporting us out.

Chapter 3

When my vision cleared, I saw nothing but sand and blue sky, with a few scrubby, bush-like things here and there for variety. A blazing sun beat down on us. "Really, Wizzit?" I heard Shelley mutter. "The freakin' Sahara Desert?"

"No, not the Sahara. The Mojave Desert. Good spot. Nobody for miles around. No place to hide. Good undisclosed location for questioning."

I slammed my blaster angrily back into its holster. "Damn! Just one more second and I would have had her."

"No, you wouldn't." I looked up sharply at Shelley, and she went on calmly, "Your blaster wouldn't have hurt her. No Enclave hardware, remember?"

"Oh," I said, mollified. "Right." Our blasters are specially tuned to affect only Enclave enhancements and Enclave hardware. It's a safety mechanism designed to reduce the probability of harming property or civilians. Gotta have it; it's one of Wizzit's rules. One of Shelley's too, probably. Lily Lee, if that was even her real name, had had no enhancements, no Enclave hardware. My shot wouldn't have even tickled her.

With a sigh, I reached out a hand to help Shelley up. "Take us home, Wizzit," she said, sounding as discouraged as I felt.

When my vision cleared this time, we were in HQ. I have no idea where the place is actually located; the only way anyone ever gets there is if Wizzit teleports them. The nearest window showed the same desert landscape that Shelley and I had just been part of, but that didn't mean anything. It could just as easily have shown a Kansas wheatfield or the banks of the Danube; I had seen both before. Simple computer-screen trickery, although it was pretty good. The perspective even changed as you got closer or farther from the "window".

"Keep your force shields on, kids," chirped Wizzit. "You're both hurt. Initiating healing coma in 3 . . ."

"Hang on, Wizzit. Geez, let us comfortable first!"

"Hanging on . . ." For an alien, Wizzit sure was good at conveying human feelings through voice alone. In this case, I believe it was called "petulance."

Shelley looked at me and rolled her eyes. She had turned off the blurring as soon as we had arrived, so I could see her features clearly. Brown eyes, dark blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, strong but nice-looking face that was starting to show bruises from Lily's kicks. She rolled one shoulder experimentally, the one that had gotten hit by the blaster shot, and winced. My head and chest were throbbing from my blaster hits. I would probably have been fine by morning, but Wizzit insists on keeping us in tip-top shape at all times. Even minor hits require healing, and it's no use arguing with him.

Shelley walked into the lounge, the room with the most comfortable easy chairs, and flopped down into one. When I had done likewise, she said, "All right, Wizzit. Go ahead."

"A healthy Prime is a happy Prime," Wizzit declared, sounding altogether too cheerful. "Initiating healing comas."

Wizzit calls it a coma, but it's not, not really. It's just a mode of the force shield designed to initiate rapid healing of the human body. It does make you feel kind of dopey, though, like it's siesta time after a heavy lunch, and you've just taken a double shot of cold medicine. Lying down with your eyes closed generally helps it pass faster.

"Who else is home?" Shelley asked after a couple of minutes. She sounded half-asleep, which is how I felt.

"Just the commander. He is reviewing the videos from your most recent action and will debrief soonest. Mike and Padma are due back in . . . eighty-seven minutes."

I hadn't met Padma yet. She was our latest recruit, which meant that she would be the new Prime Violet. Lucky me, I wouldn't be the low man on the totem pole any more.

If Mike was the one who was bringing her to HQ, though, then I hoped for her sake that she wasn't too pretty. From what I had been told, he could be a real bastard when it came to women; it wasn't beyond him to use his status as Prime Orange to try to get a pretty new Prime Violet into bed with him. I had heard some ugly rumors about him and Robin before she died, back when she was Prime Blue. That was when I was the new Prime Violet, though, and didn't know much, so who knew how true they were.

Shelley was snoring softly now. At least I think she was; I was probably doing a bit of snoring myself. I let my thoughts drift lazily, and most of them wound up centering on the minder that we had nearly caught.

Maybe it was an effect of the healing coma or feelings aroused by the thought of Robin in bed with Mike, but for some reason I found myself thinking how attractive Lily Lee had been. I pictured her face, with those Asian eyes of hers. In my drowsy state, they seemed extraordinarily beautiful -- exotic, but in a comforting, familiar way, like family.

And it seemed to me that she had done an awful good job of filling out the clothes she'd been wearing. Nice curves, both above and below. I idly pictured her in the standard black Enclave-issued jumpsuit that minders usually wore, only this one was skin-tight, molding itself to every curve and crevice of her body. Mmm, nice. Very nice. She was standing in front of me in her skin-tight jumpsuit with that scared, pleading look on her face, her arms around my neck, pressing herself against me . . .

And then the coma lifted. Just like that, the force shield turned off, my eyes snapped open, and I was completely alert. A glance at the clock told me I'd been out for a little over fifteen minutes.

My injuries must have been worse than Shelley's, because she was already on her feet, standing beside my easy chair and looking down at me. "That must have been quite some dream you were having," she commented coolly.

I gulped. Shelley's a big gal -- not fat, but tall and muscular, maybe six-two or six-three -- and when she stands over you, she looms. "Quite some dream indeed," she said, raising her eyebrows, "to judge by your . . . physical reaction." Remembering my daydream, I had an awful thought, and I started to look down, but then she went on, "I was referring, of course, to the silly grin you had on your face."

I looked up at her and saw that she was grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly she burst out laughing. "Come on, Trev," she said, "let's go see my dad." With that, she turned and started walking toward the commander's office.

I scrambled out of the easy chair and ran to catch up with her. "Hey, come on, Shelley, don't tell me you don't ever think about . . ."

"Of course I do," she called back. "Everybody does. You're just more fun to tease about it than most." She looked at me coyly over her shoulder. "Besides, you're kind of cute when you're asleep and . . . dreaming." Then she winked at me.

That brought me up short. Was she flirting with me? I mean, I could understand it coming from Trina -- she was a natural-born flirt -- but Shelley Windham? Prime Red? I chuckled to myself and shook my head. Of course it didn't mean anything; I knew that. Shelley was way out of my league. Still, the thought kept another silly grin on my face that whole walk down the long corridor to the commander's office.

Chapter 4

Now, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not, no way, no how. There is a zero percent probability that Shelley got to be Prime Red just because her father is Prime Commander.

How do I know this? It's simple. Prime Commander does not get to choose who gets promoted and who doesn't. Wizzit makes that decision, and it's practically impossible to suck up to him. Prime Commander's main job is to serve as a combination strategic adviser, sounding board, disciplinarian, and surrogate parent to us Primes. I mean, when you've got a bunch of healthy, active late-teens and twenty-somethings spending most of their time hanging out together at HQ, you've got to have a grown-up around to make sure things don't get out of hand, right?

And from what I've heard, Commander Windham didn't even want Shelley on the team in the first place. What responsible father would? We engage a couple of Enclave monsters per week, and any of those encounters could result in a fatality. When Wizzit selected Shelley as the very first Prime Violet, the old man just about exploded. I guess Wizzit and Shelley managed to talk him into it, though, and they've been going like gangbusters ever since.

Having said all that, let me add that Shelley and her dad work well together. They're two pages out of the same book -- both tall with lean, rangy builds and a kind of subtle charisma that makes everything they tell you seem like it's the most reasonable thing in the world. And when they disagree, it's kind of fun to watch them each trying to out-reasonable the other.

The commander was seated at his desk when we walked in, going over some sort of report. True to form, he didn't start out by telling us what he had figured out, if anything, about our encounter. Instead, he took off his reading glasses and motioned for us to sit down. Turning to Shelley, he said, "So, what happened out there?" Just as if he hadn't been going over the vids himself for the past fifteen minutes.

Shelley had Wizzit replay the encounter from her point of view, narrating as she went along. And you know, even seeing it from her perspective, I still couldn't quite figure out how she locked up Lily's leg the way she had. She finished up by saying, "It's obvious that the monster Enclave sent was merely a diversion, and that the main point of attack was the minder. That's unusual, but we've seen it before. She was extraordinarily strong and fast, especially considering her size and apparent sex. I'd estimate she was just over five feet tall, maybe five-one or five-two, and she couldn't have weighed much over a hundred pounds, if that much, yet she was able to kick me hard enough to cause some pain even through the force shield."

"Your face was starting to bruise when we got home," I put in. "She's definitely had some training, that's for sure."

She nodded. "I agree. She is obviously highly trained in some form of unarmed combat, probably something that emphasizes escape and evasion tactics, to judge by how easily she got away from us. I don't think she ever hesitated, not even for a second."

"What do you mean?" the commander asked her.

It's a funny thing about the commander. He'll ask a question like that, and you think, "He has no idea what I'm talking about." I know that's what I thought, the first few debriefings I had with him. After a while, though, I realized that he was usually right there with me, even ahead of me more often than not, and waiting for me to figure out what was obvious to him. Asking those kinds of questions is just his way of getting us to think about the problem.

Shelley replied, "Well, most people, if they were cornered like that, would stop and look around, or give at least some sign that they were unsure about what to do. She didn't do that. She just did everything one after the other -- boom, boom, boom -- as if she'd been doing it all her life."

The commander leaned back in his chair. "That's a good observation. Tell me, what do you think about the way she got up to the fire escape?"

She made a face, thinking. "Dad, I've seen martial artists who could do that, who could run up a wall the way she did. It's an impressive trick, but it mainly requires just speed, strength, and balance, and we already know she has all three. If I had to, I could probably teach myself to do the same thing in a couple of days. But I don't know of anyone who could have jumped that far out from the wall over to the fire escape." She shook her head slowly. "I guess, theoretically, everything she did could be done by an unaltered human body, but . . ." Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

After a few seconds, the commander nodded and turned to me. "Do you have anything to add, Trevor?"

"Not about her training, no, but there are two or three other things, sir," I said respectfully. "Wizzit, could you switch to my POV, starting about ten seconds before the minder started fighting us? Take it about, oh, one-quarter speed, I guess."

Wizzit complied. I still don't know how he does all that he does, but either he's got some sort of AV hookup with our belts that lets him record everything we see and hear when our force shields are activated, or . . . well, I'm not sure what else it could be. I'm not sure I want to know, either. Regardless, we got a true-to-life video-and-audio replay of what had happened, exactly as I saw and heard it.

"Hold it!" I said when we got to the part where I had seen the flash of red. "Go back about half a second and play it again, very slowly. Everybody look at the bottom right." Wizzit complied again, and when it got to the good part, he stopped it without my even asking.

There, frozen on the screen, was what looked like a scarlet hedgehog, or maybe a scarlet hedgehog skeleton. I mean, it was just a foot or two tall, bright red, and had these quill-like things sticking out all over, but it was thin. Really thin. In its hand or paw was a small, flat box with buttons on it.

We all stared at it for a few seconds, and then the commander murmured, "JB Swift."

"Uh huh," Shelley agreed. "Haven't seen him for a long time."

I waited. Both Windhams knew that I had no idea who this guy was, and from past experience I figured it was best to let them tell me when they were good and ready instead of demanding explanations right away.

The commander stared at the screen a moment longer, then he turned to me. "A number of years ago, Enclave started experimenting with speed. The idea, we think, was that if they could get their monsters fast enough to hit us before we could react, then that would give them a leg up." He pointed at the red little guy on the screen. "That was one of their successes. Mike nicknamed him JB Swift."

"JB Swift? Okay, I get the Swift part, but what's the --"

"It stands for Just Because," Shelley broke in, answering my question before I could finish it.

I snorted. "That sounds like something Mike would say."

The commander was silent for a moment before continuing. Probably wanting to make sure our "playful banter" was done. Sometimes I think he takes the grown-up part of his job a little too seriously. "The speed research didn't work out too well for them overall. There is apparently a limit to how much their reaction time could be decreased, despite their speed. And it turns out that their fastest monsters are also necessarily their smallest, skinniest ones. Really easy to beat."

"I remember that," Shelley put in with a smile. "It was the year you gave me golf clubs for Christmas. Best year ever."

The commander grinned. I turned to stare at Shelley, wondering what the heck she was talking about. It wasn't her style to break in with random comments. I opened my mouth to ask . . . and then I got it. And I started laughing. I couldn't help it. The mental image of Shelley teeing up, yelling "Fore!", and swatting one of these little guys to the moon was just too funny.

When my fit of the giggles had passed, I wiped my eyes and said, "Sorry. Um, what's that thing he's holding?"

The commander shook his head. "No idea. What do you think it is?"

I stared at it for a while. "It looks like a remote control," I began, pulling at my lower lip.

"That much seems obvious," Shelley agreed.

"As for what it's supposed to be controlling . . . I think I have an idea. It has to do with one of the other things I wanted to show you. Wizzit, can you start it moving again \-- slowly, so we can watch what he's doing -- and focus on that thing in his hand and also on Lily's face?"

"Lily?" The commander's eyebrows shot up.

"That's what she said her name was," I replied. "Lily Lee. We've got to call her something." Two ovals showed up on the screen, one showing JB Swift's hand and arm, and the other displaying Lily's downturned face. One thing was for certain: My daydream hadn't been much of an exaggeration. She was really pretty. Beautiful, even.

We watched as the little red monster inched his way forward in slow motion. He gradually moved his arm so that it was pointed back behind him. Lily was looking down, cringing away from me. Then I saw what I had been waiting for: one of JB Swift's fingers depressed a button on the remote.

"Freeze it here!" I called out. The scene froze. "Okay, now show us the whole picture at this instant, everything from my POV." The screen expanded to show all of JB Swift, all of Lily, and Shelley approaching her in the background, her arm starting to reach out. "At this point," I said, "he's pressed one of the buttons on that little gizmo thing, and Lily is still playing scared-little-me. Wizzit, take it forward from here, normal speed, and everybody watch Lily's face."

Of course, by now you've probably figured out what the video was going to show, haven't you? Within a second, Lily's face had lost all its expression and she was starting her attempted beatdown of us.

Shelley whistled softly. "Damn! He was controlling her."

"Good work, Trevor," the commander said absently, staring at the screen. "Really good work."

"Yeah, well, that JB Swift guy almost ran into me, which is why I noticed him," I said modestly. "And Lily was facing me, not Shelley, so she couldn't have seen."

"Wizzit," asked the commander, "are you absolutely sure that this minder, this Lily Lee, wasn't some kind of Enclave construct? An android or robot or something?"

"Absolutely sure. One hundred percent human female. My sensors detected nothing artificial about her." He paused for effect, then went on dramatically, "Even the boobies are real, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Trevor here. He got quite the handful, looks like."

That caught me by surprise, because I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I figured it out and yeah, that's probably how it would have looked to him. Shelley made a disgusted sound, and even the commander looked uncomfortable. He had probably seen it the same way Wizzit had, and knowing him, I figure he was planning a man-to-man with me later about keeping one's natural impulses in check and maintaining an image of propriety. As for Shelley, I wasn't sure what she had seen or whether her disgust was aimed at Wizzit or me.

Luckily, I knew that I had acted with perfect innocence, and there was even a quick, easy way to prove it. "All right, Wizzit," I said patiently, "can you fast-forward to the spot where I got the 'handful of boobies'? That was the third thing I wanted to point out."

The transition was made so quickly that I suspected Wizzit was about to show it anyway. He takes good care of us Primes, sure, but he also has this perverse, childish streak in him that shows up sometimes. In less than a second we were treated to a close-up of my hand grabbing the front of Lily's blouse shortly before she ran up the wall. She twisted away in slow motion, and we all saw my hand flatten out and cup itself around her right breast before she pulled away completely.

"Stop it right here," I said. I could feel my face turning red, and I tried not to sound embarrassed. Now that I could see it, it really did look like I was trying to grab myself a freebie there. Admittedly, it was a nice-looking breast.

"Now back it up about a second and . . . freeze." I walked up to the still shot of my hand gripping her breast and tapped a bright dot on her blouse just beneath one of my fingertips. "Here," I announced, "is where I planted the bug."

The release of tension in the room was almost palpable. The commander chuckled and shook his head. Shelley exhaled loudly and said, "Geez, Trev, you know what that looked like, don't you? I wasn't going to say anything, but . . ."

"Yeah, I know," I replied sheepishly. "It looked like I was copping a feel off one of Enclave's minders. But honest, I didn't even think about that until just now. At the time, I was just afraid that she was going to get away, and I thought maybe we could listen in on what she did afterwards."

The commander tried to pull on a straight face and very nearly succeeded. "Wizzit, can you --?"

"I have located Trevor's bug," Wizzit interrupted. "Petulance" appeared to be the mood of the day. I wasn't too worried. Right now, he was mad at me for spoiling his fun, but he never carried a grudge for more than, say, ten minutes. "It began transmitting as soon as he . . . attached it and continued for the next seventeen minutes, thirty-one seconds, at which time Enclave detected the transmission and began jamming it. Playing the recording now."

We listened for seventeen minutes, thirty-one seconds. Wizzit was really good at filtering out the background noise, but even so, there wasn't much to hear. Lily scaled the fire escape, then did something that required some exertion -- probably climbing up something. We heard light, rapid footsteps accompanied by slightly quicker, heavier breathing, so she was probably running. There was a short, sharp exhalation, like a "hup!", the footsteps stopped, and then there was a heavy crash, followed by scrabbling sounds.

I had been watching Shelley all this time. (Hey, I had to look somewhere.) She was looking off into nothing and her lips were moving silently, as if she were narrating Lily's movements to herself. She seemed puzzled by the crash, though, the tip of her tongue just coming out to touch her upper lip. When the scrabbling sounds came, she nodded and said to herself, "She jumped over to another building." Yeah, that sounded right to me.

More running, then we heard a voice say calmly, "Lily, stand down." Shelley looked over at me and seemed startled to discover I had been watching her. She mouthed the words "JB Swift" at me. I nodded -- it was evidently his voice we were hearing -- and deliberately looked away from her. After that stupid boobie-grabbing fiasco, I didn't want to creep her out any more by staring.

"Standing down." That was Lily's voice, but completely flat, devoid of any expression.

"Lily, pick up the rifle and follow me."

"Following."

More footsteps, and then there was a buzzing sound that Wizzit didn't remove, so I assume that it was an Enclave teleport. It went on for about a minute. The sound quality dropped considerably after that, and I had to strain to hear what was going on. More footsteps, more footsteps, and then came a heavy clang, loud enough that it made me jump. A bit of rustling, and then we heard JB Swift's voice again. He was farther away now, though, and I couldn't make out what he said.

Silence. And then we heard something I know I didn't expect. It was soft, but unmistakable -- the sound of a woman crying. It never got very loud, not like she was wailing with grief over something she had just discovered. No, it was more like there was something she just couldn't take any more, and she gave herself up to despair.

As soon as I recognized it for what it was, I looked around at the others to see if they heard it, too. Commander Windham was sitting impassively behind his desk, his chin resting on his laced fingers. Shelley seemed more disturbed by the sound; she was staring out into space, her lips pursed tightly together and her brows knitted together in a frown.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what I felt. Pity, I guess. I knew that somewhere out there, the pretty Enclave minder we knew as Lily Lee was crying her heart out as if her life had collapsed around her and she had no friends left anywhere in the world. Which just might have been true.

Four uncomfortable minutes later, the transmission dissolved into static.

Chapter 5

No one said anything for a while after Wizzit turned off the recording. Speaking for myself, I didn't know what to say. I stared at the floor, the wall, the ceiling, anywhere but at Shelley or the commander. Finally Wizzit piped up. "Mike is bringing in Padma in twenty minutes. I need someone to make dinner."

Wizzit does a lot of things for us. He shops for groceries (no, I don't know how, but our kitchen is always fully stocked); he gets us heat, water, and power from somewhere; and he provides us with high-speed Internet access. Heck, he even manages to keep the bathrooms clean somehow. Still, a pink cloud of gas does have its limitations; he doesn't make meals.

All of us Primes share cooking and kitchen cleanup duties. I've gotten to be a pretty fair hand at it, myself. (The cooking, I mean.) Shelley encourages a lot of variety and Wizzit encourages light, healthy meals instead of anything heavy. (We are in constant training, after all.) So, while I like burgers and fries as much as the next guy, I wind up making a lot of the traditional Chinese dishes I grew up eating at home, stuff with lots of rice and vegetables and not a lot of meat.

For me, home-made Chinese is comfort food, but it does take a lot of time to prepare. I had thought it would just be Shelley and me tonight, and she'll often go home to Montana to eat dinner with her mom and dad. Peanut butter and jelly in my room had been the extent of my plans. "I think it's my turn," I said without much enthusiasm.

"Oh, let's just throw something together," Shelley said, trying to be helpful as usual. She stood up. "I'll do it with you. Dad, will you be staying?"

"Can't," he replied, looking down at his watch. He pushed himself away from his desk, then rose and came around in front of it. "I promised your mom I'd be home early today. Francesca's got a band concert tonight. You're planning on coming home for Sunday supper, right?"

"I wouldn't miss it."

She presented her cheek to be kissed, and he obligingly gave her a peck. "That's good," he said. "I know your mother's looking forward to seeing you. And, Trevor?"

"Yes, sir?" I had been studiously looking elsewhere. Their father-and-daughter talk sometimes made me feel a little like an outsider. And a little homesick at times.

He laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "That was really good work out there today. Top-notch stuff. I want you to know that. If you hadn't spotted JB Swift, we'd still be puzzling out what happened."

I grinned, feeling a flush of pleasure. "Thank you, sir."

Chapter 6

"Hey, Trev?" Shelley said as we walked out of the commander's office.

"Yeah?"

"Try not to let it get you down, okay?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, that whole thing with Lily, and all that stuff your bug picked up, especially at the end."

I stopped and turned to face her. "Shelley, she was crying. What does that tell you? To me, it says she's unhappy where she is and wants to leave Enclave. Maybe they're torturing her. Maybe --"

"Hey, I'm not arguing with you. It could mean that. But it could mean lots of other things, too. Heck, maybe she just broke up with her boyfriend."

"Is that what you think? Seriously?"

She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. "No, of course not. To be honest, I think you're probably right. But it could be true, or it could be something else we haven't even thought of. There's just so much about Enclave that we don't know. All I'm saying is, don't jump into this head-first." She put a hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "I know you, Trevor. I know you care a lot about people. That's a good thing, and if we find out that this Lily Lee person really wants out of Enclave and if there's any way we can get her out, then I'll be right up there with you. But in the meantime, don't let it make you crazy, okay?"

I kind of grinned. "Okay."

"Good." She squeezed my shoulder, just like her old man had done. "Now, how's about you start grilling a few chicken breasts while I get some pasta cooking and throw a salad together."

Chapter 7

Padma turned out to be as pretty as I had feared. (Actually, I find most healthy, trim, athletic young women to be fairly attractive. Go figure.) She looked Indian or Pakistani, with long, straight black hair that fell down past her shoulderblades. Her skin was quite dark, which brightened up her eyes a lot and made her smile seem absolutely brilliant.

When she and Mike 'ported in, his arm was across her shoulders and she was giggling at some joke he had just told her. That's our Mike. He's a good-looking guy, with great hair and a great smile. He can be quite the charmer when he wants to be. And, to be perfectly honest, I had never seen an ugly side to him. But there was one, or so I had heard.

Regardless, he presented her to Shelley and me as Padma Reddy and we shook hands all around. Over the course of dinner, we discovered that she was from Hyderabad, in the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. She spoke excellent, if accented, English, which didn't surprise me much. Four of the current Primes were native English speakers, as was Prime Commander, and the two others besides Padma spoke it fluently.

After dinner, Shelley told me to show Padma around while she and Mike cleaned up and, I assume, she briefed him on our encounter. All through the meal, Padma had been casting admiring little glances his way, hanging on his every word and giggling at his every joke; now she seemed a bit worried at the thought that they might be separated. Or maybe she was scared of me, goodness knows why. I look harmless, or so I've been told. Or maybe she was just nervous about being in a new place.

"Wizzit," I called out as I motioned for Padma to follow me down to the girl's wing, "is Padma's room set up for her?"

"Ready-ready," he replied. "Her things are there and Prime Violet's belt is on her bed."

"Thank you." We walked down the hall and I stopped in front of her door. "Here it is," I said, quite unnecessarily.

The idea of preceding me into the room seemed to bother her. "Please go inside," she said. "I will follow."

"I can't. The door will open only for you."

That seemed to surprise her. "You mean, no one can get inside my room except me?"

"That's right. Well, I imagine Prime Red or Prime Commander could get in if it were an emergency, but except for that, no one. Not unless you let them in." I tried the door, but it refused to open. "See?"

"Yes. I see that it is locked." She pushed on the door herself, and it opened easily. She nodded to herself and stepped in. "You may come inside."

I entered and looked around. The spartan layout was almost identical to my room. "I know it looks kind of bare, but you can furnish it any way you want."

She looked into the small attached bathroom, tested the bed, and opened a few of the drawers. "No, this is fine." She glanced over at me and then stopped, her brow furrowing with concern. "Are you feeling quite all right?"

"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." I knew what she was seeing on my face. This had been Robin's room. I hadn't seen the inside of it for close to a year, and of course all her things were gone. Still, being inside it again was having an effect on me that I hadn't expected. I took a deep breath, shook myself, and pulled on a grin. "Your, uh, your Prime Violet belt is over there. Why don't you try it on?"

She picked up the slim black belt, looking at it dubiously. "This is made from leather? From cow skin?"

"No," I assured her. "It just looks that way. It's all synthetic."

"I see." She slipped it around her slender waist and hooked the two ends together, gasping as they melded into a single piece.

"It'll come off whenever you want it to," I said. "That just prevents anyone else from taking it off of you."

Wizzit's voice came from the buckle, "To activate the Prime Violet force shield, say 'Prime Violet, activate.' To deactivate it, say 'Prime Violet, deactivate.'"

She looked a question at me, and I indicated that she try it out. "Prime Violet, activate!" she said firmly. In an eyeblink, she was surrounded by a sort of light purple haze that made her features indistinct. "Prime Violet, deactivate!" The purple haze blinked out.

"You should wear the belt all the time for the next few days," I said. "It'll take about that long for your body to adjust to it. Mostly, you'll find that everything just works a little better: your vision gets sharper, your reflexes get faster, you have better balance, things like that."

"It also makes you sterile," Wizzit volunteered helpfully.

It took her a moment to process what he said, but then her eyes went wide. "What? Do you mean to say that I can never have children?" She took hold of the belt with both her hands and began trying to tear the buckle apart.

"Too late!" Wizzit told her cheerfully. "It happened when you activated the force shield."

"It's only temporary," I put in hastily, mentally cursing Wizzit. And myself, because I should have expected this. He does it to every new Prime Violet, or so I've been told. I know he did it to me. Either he's fascinated by humans' attachment to their ability to reproduce, which is what he says, or he thinks it's funny, which is probably also true. "It lasts about a month."

She looked up at me, clearly worried. "Do you mean that now I am unable to have children, but one month from today, I would be . . . what is the word . . .?"

"Um, fertile?" I guessed.

"Yes, fertile. One month from today I would be fertile again? I do not intend to be a Prime all my life. I want to have a family some day."

"The effect renews itself every time you use the force shield. Once you quit the Primes and stop using the force shield, then after about a month you should be able to . . . uh . . . to get pregnant without any problem." I was starting to become uncomfortable with the direction this whole conversation was taking. Why had Shelley given me this duty, anyway? Why hadn't she had this talk with Padma herself, or told Trina to? (I knew the answer, of course: I was available and Trina wasn't. And maybe she had planned to talk with her about this later. Didn't stop my face from turning bright red, though.)

Padma was still staring at me, obviously expecting me to explain further. I cleared my throat. "It, um, it's a side-effect of some of the things the belt does to your body. And, um, some of the Primes think that it's not such a bad thing. You can have sex without worrying about anyone getting pregnant, and that's pretty much a requirement."

If she had been worried before, now she looked positively alarmed. Somehow I had said the wrong thing. "Having sex is . . . a requirement?" she said, starting to back away from me.

"What? No! No, that's not what I meant!" Geez, could this get any more awkward? "Not getting pregnant -- that's a requirement. You can't be pregnant if you're a Prime. It would, uh, it would put you and the baby at too much risk. Having sex is . . . it's your own business. No one really cares who or how often or anything, as long as it doesn't affect what you do as a Prime."

She had backed up all the way to the wall now. She had crossed her arms in front of her and her mouth was set in a frown. "Trevor, let us be frank here," she said firmly. "Are you hitting on me?"

"Huh?" I blinked. That had come from so far out in left field, I'm not sure it was even in the ballpark.

She looked unsure of herself. "I . . . believe I am using the phrase correctly," she said. "To hit on someone means to try to get them into bed . . . to have sex with them."

"Yeah, that's what it means," I said, feeling more than a little dazed. "And no, I am not hitting on you."

She looked as if she didn't believe me. "Mike told me you would hit on me as soon as you got me alone. He said you always hit on the female Primes, and that you would not take it well if I refused you."

I shook my head slowly. "That's . . . just not true."

She looked at me hard. "Nevertheless, I am feeling quite uncomfortable being alone in this room with you. I must ask you to leave. Now, if you please."

Weirder and weirder. It was probably best just to humor her. "Uh, sure, Padma." I shrugged. "Whatever you say." As I stepped out into the hallway, I heard her close the door firmly behind me.

Chapter 8

Mike and Shelley were still talking, so I decided to go back to my room to stew for a while. I had some piano practicing to catch up on, anyway.

Yeah, you heard me right -- piano practicing. What, you thought I was just a thug who likes pounding on monsters all day long? Nah, I have all kinds of higher sensibilities. I've been playing piano since I was a little kid, and I must say I had an excellent teacher. (I did mention that my mom teaches piano, didn't I? Us kids didn't get a choice whether we learned to play or not.)

Our rooms at HQ are small enough that I can't fit a real piano in there, just an electronic keyboard. It's a nice one, with the full set of eighty-eight keys and a sustain pedal, but it does kind of limit what I can play. Bach works great, and I like Bach anyway. I've got my well-thumbed copy of Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and I'm currently working my way through The Liturgical Year, although that's plenty tough to play without organ pedals.

Mozart would work nearly as well, I guess, but he and I don't always see eye to eye, much to my mother's dismay. I love Debussy, so I have to play that regardless, but most Romantic stuff like Chopin or Brahms just won't work. You simply can't get the sensitivity of touch that you need without a real piano, and you can just forget about anything marked "una corda".

But you know what I really love playing these days? Ragtime. I got this big, thick book called American Piano Rags for my birthday, and man, I have just been tearing through it. There's just so much energy in that music; I could play it all day long, especially when I'm mad or frustrated. It makes my mom happy, too, since she's big on American composers. She'd love me to start studying Gershwin and Gottschalk seriously, but ragtime's close enough, I guess.

I had been working on "Gladiolus Rag" for about an hour when Wizzit started dimming the lights. Even though we can't directly see the outside world from HQ, he does try to keep us on a fairly regular day-and-night schedule. Lights out at eleven pm, lights on again at seven am, Greenwich time I think. This was his signal that lights-out was in about half an hour, so I decided to switch off the keyboard and turn in.

I had just lain down when the monster alarm went off. With a groan, I slipped on my combat vest and a pair of shorts and jogged out to the common room. Shelley was already there, dressed pretty much like I was and tying her hair back into a ponytail. "I left Padma in her room," she told me. "Did you see Mike?"

I shook my head, but just then, he entered the common room, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. It looked like he had gone to bed even earlier than I had. He ran a hand through his hair and asked, "Where is it this time?"

"Wizzit said that he detected something attacking St. Petersburg. Russia, not Florida. Some kind of water thing."

Mike grimaced. "And nobody here speaks Russian, right? Any chance we can pull Trina in? Her leave is almost up anyway, isn't it?"

"I've asked Wizzit to alert her. I'll call her in if I think we need her. We've gotten by before without translators."

"Fair enough." He grinned at me. "Hey, how's it going, mate? We didn't get a chance to talk much earlier. I hear you got caught groping a minder. Nice work if you can get it, eh?"

"Not what happened, Mike," Shelley put in briskly before I could say anything. "Are you ready?" When Mike and I both nodded, she said, "All right, Wizzit, take us out. Prime Red, activate!"

"Prime Orange, activate!"

"Prime Indigo, activate!"

When the haze had cleared, we found ourselves on a bridge suspended over a broad river. It was late at night, and it appeared that we had the bridge to ourselves. I looked around. Wizzit doesn't initially teleport us into the middle of a crowd; that would cause more problems than it would solve. He usually sets us down in a deserted area near where the action is.

"There!" Shelley was pointing to one bank of the river, where there stood a huge whitish building, brilliantly lit up. Not huge as in tall, but huge as in "man, that thing's, like, ten blocks long!" An Enclave beastie, surrounded by Zoinks, seemed to be trying to tear it down.

Zoinks? That's Mike's word for them; I don't know what Enclave calls them. Mindless, disposable foot-soldiers that Enclave sends out with some of their monsters. I'm not even sure they're alive in any reasonable sense of the term. They run interference for the monsters, terrorize the populace, and generally make it hard for us Primes to do our jobs. Fighting one is almost not worth the effort; fighting half a dozen is enough to make it interesting. Our friend on the riverbank looked like he had brought between twenty and thirty with him.

Shelley began running along the bridge towards the monster. "Orange, you and Indigo keep the Zoinks off me. I'll take on the monster. Wizzit?"

"That is St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum they're attacking. Already done some damage. Museum's closed now, which is lucky for us. Sensors detect one human nearby, but not in danger. They're clearly hostile; go ahead and take them down."

"Got it."

Mike and I started running at full speed after Shelley, and soon we were in the midst of the Zoinks. I took the ones on the right and Mike took the ones on the left, while Shelley bulled her way in through the middle. I found myself actually looking forward to a good scrap.

Mike's a decent fighter, I guess. More of a bang-some-heads-together type of brawler than anything else. He knocked around the world for a few years before joining the Primes, and he learned to take pretty good care of himself. He might even have picked up a black belt of some sort along the way.

What's interesting about Mike, though, is that his reflexes are incredibly fast. Like, spooky fast. You know how you'll be walking along with a handful of potato chips and one of them will slip out of your hand and you'll catch it before it hits the ground, and then you'll think, "Hey, I'm pretty good!"? That's Mike on a bad day. A really bad day. A hungover-after-a-two-day-bender-and-sick-with-the-flu bad day.

Which makes him pretty cool to have as a partner. You never have to worry about him hitting you accidentally or getting in your way, and that's important. There's a certain art to fighting multiple opponents at once. This isn't the white-ninja-versus-black-ninja stuff you see in bad kung fu movies. The Zoinks don't attack you one at a time; they swarm you, and sometimes you just find yourself swinging at anything that moves. When that happens, you don't want a partner who's going to hamper you.

So, I got all punchy and kicky with the Zoinks. Mainly kicky; Grandmaster Park trained me well, and I loves me my Tae Kwon Do kicks. He also taught me to channel my anger into my martial art, and I had a fair amount of that left over from my awkward conversation with Padma, so I was knocking down Zoinks left and right. They don't die or anything once you hit them -- they're nearly as hard to get rid of as the monsters -- but if you hit them hard enough, it takes them a while to come back for more.

My primary job, as you heard, was to keep the Zoinks off of Shelley's back, because she was taking on the monster single-handed. Not the best of situations, but she looked like she was holding her own for the moment, at least. The bad guy had what looked like a long, long tail that trailed off the embankment and into the river itself, except that I quickly realized that it wasn't really a tail at all. It was a hose drawing up water, which the monster was able to shoot out in short, explosive bursts from nozzles in its chest.

I know it sounds kind of goofy, but Enclave sometimes does goofy stuff like that. And when you consider that a cup of water weighs half a pound, and if you saw how fast these half-pound bursts came out, you'd agree that they could do some pretty serious damage. I looked up in time to see Shelley take a hit directly in the chest, and it knocked her off her feet and back three or four yards.

While I was watching to make sure she was okay, I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I spun and threw a punch -- which missed Mike's nose by less than an inch as he jerked his head back. "Careful now, mate," he said cheerfully. "You almost hit me with that one."

It occurred to me to tell him what a stupid idea it was to grab your partner's shoulder from behind in the middle of a fight, but I decided to let it pass. Indigo does not get to lecture Orange on tactics or anything else. And Mike was the one guy I knew who could get away with it ten times out of ten.

"Red's having some trouble," I said instead. "Should we call in Green?"

"Nah, not yet." He called out to Shelley, "Red, I'm going to pop out for some gear. You want anything?"

I could see her shake her head. "Stay here. I need you to help Indigo with the Zoinks."

"Zoinks are all well in hand. Indigo's being quite the badass today."

Shelley took her eyes off the Enclave beastie (I was really hoping at this point that Mike didn't dub it "the Hose-monster") long enough to survey the field. All the Zoinks were on the ground. A few were starting to get up; these, I ran over to and kicked into submission.

"All right," she said, dodging another water missile. "Get my sword."

"Good as done. Indigo, you want anything?"

"Nah, I'm good," I said as I popped a Zoink in the face.

"As you please. Wizzit, the weapons room, please." With that, Mike vanished in a puff of orange haze. Ten seconds later, he reappeared a short distance away, carrying Shelley's broadsword and his own favorite weapon, which was basically a club with a double-handed grip on one end.

Now, at this point you're probably wondering why Wizzit wouldn't simply teleport our weapons out on request, rather than having us fetch them ourselves. The answer is simple: Wizzit can't teleport anyone or anything except Primes. There's a transponder of some sort that's part of our belts. (And I remember Shelley saying once that Prime Commander carries a pager-type thingie that lets Wizzit pop him in and out of HQ.)

Mike tossed Shelley her broadsword, and the two of them went at it hammer and tongs on, um . . . I'll call him "Hose-guy". He seemed to be one of those Enclave constructs that's built like a tank -- slow, but tough and strong. And those water-blasts looked like they were pretty devastating, close-up.

I was kept pretty busy playing whack-a-mole with the Zoinks; as soon I knocked one down, another one or two would struggle to their feet and rush to the attack. I did have a short breather at one point, and I took the opportunity to draw my blaster and take a few shots at the thing's hose-tail. Didn't do much good; I'm not such a great shot, and the shots that did hit home just sent up sparks.

It did give Shelley an idea, though. With a shout at Mike to keep the monster busy, she set herself and started whaling away at the thing's tail with her broadsword. Its reaction was immediate. With a roar, it knocked Mike to one side, turned towards her, and fired all its nozzles simultaneously. The blasts struck her square and sent her tumbling backwards off the riverbank. I heard a splash as she hit the water.

"Red!" I shouted. "Red, are you okay?"

"I will be," I heard her say grimly. "Wizzit, tell Green to teleport out here as soon as possible and to make sure to bring the triple-blaster."

"Green will be available for teleport in ten minutes," Wizzit said after a delay.

"The hell!" Mike exploded. "Tell Green to get . . . Green's butt in gear!"

Shelley added, more diplomatically, "Wizzit, tell Green we're under duress here. See if Green can get here sooner."

Another delay. "Green will be available for teleport in two minutes," Wizzit finally said.

Another thing you might be wondering right about now is why our talk sounds so stilted at times. The Red-this, Green-that stuff is, I hope, pretty obvious. The Primes are known all over the world, but Wizzit, Prime Commander, and all of us Primes agree that it would be a good idea if no one knows who we actually are. Thus, no names are ever used when we're powered up, just colors, even in Prime-to-Prime communications. Absolute, iron-clad rule. No exceptions.

Commander Windham decided to take that one step further, though. Early on, he declared that the Primes should attempt to obscure as much about themselves as possible, including things like who's a boy and who's a girl. As far as the public was concerned, we should simply be faceless, anonymous, generic human beings. The blurring of the force shields makes that relatively easy, and the voice altering helps as well.

There are limitations, of course. It's hard for a force shield to disguise Trina's rather generous bustline, much less hide the fact that Shelley is six inches taller than me. Still, we obscure as much as we can, and that extends to the ways we refer to each other. We avoid using language that could be used to infer the sex of any Prime. In particular, no third-person singular personal pronouns are to be used -- no "he", "she", "him", or "her" -- if at all possible. It takes some getting used to, but if you don't mind sounding a bit odd, it works out all right.

(As a side note, let me add that all of this obscuring makes the popular press accounts of our battles sometimes hilarious to read. A few of the London dailies have dubbed Shelley "Eric the Red", because she's tall and wields a broadsword. And after one particularly tough battle where Nicolai got badly hurt and Toby had to carry him out of a collapsing building, there was some speculation in the American press about the "obvious tenderness and affection" that Blue showed for the "graceful and undoubtedly lovely" Prime Yellow, and a couple of the more romantically-minded columnists predicted wedding bells for the couple. Nicolai and Toby -- both of whom are guys, in case that's not clear -- didn't think it was funny, but the rest of us got quite a hoot out of it.)

Regardless, back to the battle. Mike pulled out his blaster and began taking pot-shots at Hose-guy to cover Shelley while she pulled herself out of the drink, and after a couple seconds, I did the same. She was limping a little, and I suspected she was more injured than she wanted to let on. Nevertheless, as soon as I saw she was clear, I holstered my blaster and resumed my one-man war against the Zoinks.

It's funny how your mind sometimes wanders when you're involved in a battle. As I pounded on one Zoink after another, I found myself thinking about the human that Wizzit had detected in the vicinity. He or she hadn't shown him- or herself, hadn't even poked a nose out to satisfy curiosity, and I started to wonder whether they were hurt or just had the uncommon good sense to run away.

I had just come to the conclusion that there were a few sensible people left in the world who could resist the urge to watch a Prime battle when I happened to look over and saw a dark figure running straight toward our monster.

"Orange!" I shouted. "Behind you!"

Mike turned, and in a split second had swung his club to meet his new attacker. It bounced off the dark form as if it were a whiffle bat. Now, Mike's a fairly strong guy, and when he hits something, it generally falls down. In this case, though, there weren't even any sparks. Either our new assailant was uncommonly powerful, or . . .

"Orange," I shouted again. "Don't use your club on her! It won't work. She's an unaltered human!"

"The hell she is! Nobody can move this fast!"

Shelley used her sword to bat aside a barrage of water missiles and charged Hose-guy. As she ran, she shouted, "Indigo might be right. Wizzit, confirm."

"Yipperoo," came Wizzit's voice. "Unaltered, one hundred percent human female. This is the same minder you met earlier today."

He was right. In the light from the museum, I could see that it was Lily. Her face held that same blank expression I had seen earlier, after JB Swift had used his remote control on her, and she was attacking Mike with that same deadly ferocity.

"Damn!" he said as he blocked a shoulder-high kick. "How did you guys ever manage to subdue her, anyway?" She was almost a blur of punches and kicks now, and I could tell Mike was fending them off purely by his almost supernaturally-fast reflexes. He blocked one punch high and stepped in to try a palm-strike to the throat -- a potentially deadly hit, if it connected. It didn't. Instead, Lily grabbed his wrist, pivoted, and threw him over her shoulder, much as she had done to Shelley.

He twisted like a cat and landed on his feet. Lily, as soon as she had completed her throw, had turned and was now running towards Shelley. Mike caught up with her and grabbed hold of her hair from behind, pulling her down. He didn't hold on long, though, because Lily somersaulted backwards, then straightened her body, propelling herself feet-first at his chest.

I spotted a flash of greenish light off my left shoulder, and then I heard Trina's altered voice say, "I am here. Where is target?"

Right away, I could tell she was mad, because Trina tends to drop her articles when she's angry or excited. (And if you didn't grow up the son of a linguist, articles are the words "a", "an", and "the" in English. In Russian, they don't exist.) Shelley laid into Hose-guy a few times with her broadsword and said, "Keep this monster busy while I chop off his tail."

Trina, besides being our resident Russian speaker, is hands-down the best marksman of the Primes. I think she actually prefers the long-range stuff to getting down and dirty with Zoinks or monsters. Doesn't make much sense to me, but I guess it takes all kinds. Her preferred special weapon is a blaster that she had Wizzit modify to deliver a shot roughly three times as strong as our regular blasters. I tried it out once. The tripling of the power makes it inaccurate as hell, but somehow Trina manages to score bullseye after bullseye with the thing on our target range.

She put that ability to good use now, peppering Hose-guy with triple-strength blasts to cover Shelley, who started pounding on the hose-tail with her broadsword again. Between shots, Trina asked me, "So, who is girl beating up Orange?"

"Some minder that Red and I encountered earlier. She's pretty tough." As I spoke, I saw that Hose-guy had finally figured out who was shooting at him. He swiveled in Trina's direction and set himself. "Heads up, Green," I called. "He's gonna shoot at you."

Trina tucked and rolled as Hose-guy sent a barrage of water-shots through the spot where she had been. "If Orange would just duck, I could shoot her," she commented.

I knocked two Zoink heads together and kicked a third Zoink in the chest. "Your blaster wouldn't work. She's immune."

Trina barked a short laugh. "No one is immune to -- ah!"

Stupid me, I had drawn her attention away from the monster, and Hose-guy had managed to hit her with one of his water missiles. As she fell back, I saw the monster set himself again. "Hold on, Green," I shouted. I grabbed one of the Zoinks I had downed and hugged it to me as I dove in front of where Trina lay. I felt a series of thumps as the water missiles struck the body of the Zoink. "Are you okay?" I asked anxiously.

I saw her get up to her hands and knees and shake her head. "Ow! That hurt a lot," she commented. She slowly got to her feet. "Damn that thing, anyway!" With that, she fired a series of shots that first staggered the monster, then knocked it off its feet. "You had better not talk to me any more, Indigo," she said with a laugh. "I find you much too distracting."

Grinning, I tried to keep an eye on Shelley, Trina, and Mike as I continued to keep the Zoinks in check. I was actually starting to get bored by now. Mike was clearly in the most trouble at this point; probably half of Lily's kicks were striking home now. I think this was the first time he had had to fight an opponent who was as fast as he was and whom his weapons wouldn't affect. His lack of formal discipline was showing.

I cast about for some way I could help him. My blaster wouldn't work, nor any other long-range weapon I could think of. I guess I could have thrown a Zoink at Lily, but I could just as easily have hit Mike with it as her. Suddenly, I had an idea. "Orange, I'm going to try something. Get ready to hit her hard."

I heard him grunt as he blocked what looked like a reverse whip-kick. "At this point, mate, I'm up for anything," he gasped.

"Okay, here goes: Lily, stand down!"

She hesitated. It was only for a second, but that was all Mike needed. He jumped up and planted a beautiful roundhouse kick right against the side of her head. The impact staggered her. "You are not . . . authorized," she said faintly, and then she collapsed, unconscious.

Mike stood over her, panting. "Damn! It worked," he muttered. "Thanks, Indigo, I owe you one."

I heard the hissing rush of water, and I turned to see that Shelley had finally chopped a hole in Hose-guy's tail. "That should end those blasted water missiles," she said, dodging back from the spray that came out from the jagged tear in the tail. "Orange and Green, come help me finish him off. Indigo, stay with the minder. I mean to take her with us this time."

"But the Zoinks . . ." I started to protest.

"The Zoinks will keep," she said with an edge to her tone that told me she was hurting pretty badly. "Move it, Indigo. Now!"

You just don't argue with Shelley when she uses that tone of voice. I threw down the Zoink I had been pummeling and sprinted over to where Lily lay. I could hear Shelley calling out orders to Mike and Trina as I looked down at the minder. Mike must have kicked her really hard; I could see a bruise already forming on her temple. Her face had relaxed, losing that awful blank look; despite the bruise, she looked as if she might be merely asleep. Peacefully, innocently, beautifully asleep.

I shook myself. No sense in getting maudlin. Pulling two sets of disposable cuffs from my battle vest, I rolled her onto her stomach. I started to bind her wrists behind her, but she groaned as I pulled her arms back, as if she were in pain. Looking down, I could see that her forearm had a huge lump on one side. It was pretty obviously broken. That must have happened sometime during her fight with Mike. Funny, but it hadn't seemed to slow her down at the time.

I decided just to tie her ankles together. She was wearing the standard-issue black Enclave jumpsuit now, I noticed. Not skin-tight, but snug enough to show she had a pretty nice shape to her. Again, my daydream had not been much of an exaggeration.

I rolled her onto her back and bound her wrists in front of her as gently as I could, forearms parallel as if she were shaking hands with herself. Then I settled back to watch the other three Primes for a while. They were really putting it to Hose-guy now; it shouldn't take long for Wizzit to announce that their weapons were tuned to his Enclave frequency. Then Shelley would call out for one last, coordinated hit, and it would be bye-bye, Hose-guy.

I felt Lily move and looked down at her. Her eyes were open, but just barely, and they were rolling under the lids. I probably appeared to her as if I were part of some weird dream. "Oh, it hurts!" she moaned, her head tossing from side to side. "Why does it hurt so much?"

"Your arm is broken," I said quietly. "Lie still."

Her eyes opened wider, and she seemed to focus on me for the first time. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I am Prime Indigo," I said, and for some reason I added, "I want to help you. I . . . want to be your friend."

"My friend?" She grimaced as if her arm were hurting her. Her eyes squeezed shut, and a tear spilled out from either side. "I have wanted a friend for so long," she murmured, and then she passed out again.

I heard Shelley call for the final strike, and seconds later I saw a shower of sparks and then an explosion. Hose-guy was definitely history. At almost the same instant, I felt something strike my shoulder. It felt small and light, but there was enough velocity to it that it sent me sprawling backwards. I picked myself up in time to see a small, red, spiky figure jump onto Lily's stomach and shout, "I've got her. Get us out of here -- now!"

I sprang toward them, but I just wasn't fast enough. Lily and JB Swift disappeared in a flurry of gray mist just as my fingers closed about her ankle. "Damn it!" I shouted.

"What happened, Indigo?" Shelley came limping over to me. "Where's the minder?"

"JB Swift knocked me down and 'ported out with her." I slammed my fist against the ground in frustration.

"All right, take it easy. I think we're done here." She looked around and spotted Trina. "Do you want to go back to where you were, Green?" she asked.

"No. Is no point. I will go back to HQ with you."

Shelley nodded wearily. "Okay. Wizzit, bring us home."

Chapter 9

Padma came hurrying into the common room as we materialized. "I was watching your battle on my television screen. Wizzit was showing me." She gave a small cry and hurried to Mike's side. "You are hurt!"

"It's nothing," Mike said with his easy smile. "I've had worse. Wizzit will fix me up right as rain. Won't you, Wizzit?"

Wizzit's voice piped up, "I will initiate healing comas on Red, Orange, and Green in ten minutes. That should give you enough time to get ready for a long night's sleep."

Padma looked puzzled. "Only Red, Orange, and Green? Why not Trev-, er, I mean Indigo?"

"It's simple, love," Mike said. "Trevor's not hurt." He jerked his chin toward Green. "Trina, this is Padma Reddy. Padma, this is Katarina Balakleets; we all call her Trina. Go ahead and un-blur yourself, Trina, and meet our newest Prime Violet."

It was only then that I realized that Trina was still obscured by green haze. "I . . . will un-blur in a few minutes." She sounded flustered. I could make a guess as to why, because the same thing had happened to me once.

Mike evidently had the same idea as I did. "Wizzit," he said, his grin growing broader, "I'll give you a hundred dollars if you turn off Trina's force shield right now."

Padma gasped. I chuckled. "Cool it, loverboy," I said. "Give the lady a chance to grab herself a robe."

Trina was heading for the hallway to the girl's wing as quickly as she could. "I will return in a moment," she said.

Padma was staring at Trina's retreating form, completely bewildered. "I do not understand . . ."

"We had to call in Trina in a hurry," I explained. "We . . . probably caught her at an inconvenient time."

Padma's face still showed her puzzlement. Mike laughed. "Trevor's being too diplomatic, love. The thing is, underneath that little bit of green mist, Trina's not got a stitch of clothing on."

Padma's eyes got wide, and she covered her mouth to suppress a giggle. "Oh my! I did not realize. That would be embarrassing!"

"It happens to everybody sooner or later." That was Shelley, coming out from the kitchen with a sandwich and a glass of orange juice. She had undone her ponytail, and her dark blonde hair cascaded in a tangle across her shoulders. "Better eat up, Mike. You took quite a beating out there."

"In a minute. I want to wait until Trina gets back."

Trina reappeared only seconds later, unblurred and wearing a soft, dark robe. Her pale-blonde hair was still pinned into a bun, although a number of strands had managed to escape, and her face was very prettily made up. "I was at a party," she said. "The dress I was wearing was not suitable for fighting in, so I had to get rid of it." She sighed. "It was a pity, too. Such a nice dress."

She turned to Mike and gave him a playful frown. "You," she said, poking him in the chest, "have bad manners." Then she turned her back to Mike and gave me a brilliant smile. "But you, Trevor, are a gentleman, and so you shall receive a gentleman's reward." With that, she opened the front of her robe wide.

Now, Trina's got a pretty spectacular figure, and she was giving me a pretty spectacular view of it. No, she wasn't completely naked. More PG than R-rated, in fact, since all the, ah, relevant parts were clothed in gauzy wisps of lingerie. Still, it was quite an eyeful, and I mouthed a silent "Wow!" of appreciation.

She abruptly closed her robe. "You are a nice boy," she said, patting my cheek. "Maybe you can come to a party with me sometime." Then she winked at me. "And who knows? Maybe I will be persuaded to get rid of my dress then, too."

I gulped. Have I mentioned that Trina likes to flirt?

Chapter 10

Based on the adventures I've just related, you might get the impression we run a pretty slipshod organization, letting ourselves get down to only two active Primes at a time when Enclave was attacking Earth. And I suppose we'd have to plead guilty to that. Let me explain, though.

Consider that there are only seven of us Primes at a time. Wizzit says that theoretically there could be an infinite number of Primes, but the power requirements rise very quickly as you add more and more. Seven is the sweet spot. Gives us the strongest team for the least cost.

Consider also that we're pretty isolated at HQ, both physically and socially. There's the seven of us, Prime Commander, and Wizzit, and that's it. Nobody else. And HQ is fully self-contained, with no doors to the outside. You've got to keep busy, or you can get cabin fever real fast. And you've got to go out of your way to be friends with everybody; otherwise, personal feuds can quickly get out of hand.

To compensate for all this, Prime Commander is pretty generous and flexible with our leave time. He tries to give us one week off out of every seven, with the understanding that we will be called in if there's an emergency, as Trina was. I don't know about the others, but I try to schedule my off-time around college breaks. Not only does it give me more time to see my parents, it also lets me hang out with my friends from high school when they're home from university.

As the schedules happened to work out, both Nicolai and Trina were off this past week. And then we got word that Toby's grandmother had died, so the commander had given him leave to go to her funeral. Of course, Mike had to go out to bring Padma in, so . . . that's why it was just Shelley and me. Make sense?

Regardless, I woke up the next morning to find that Toby and Nicolai had arrived sometime during the night, so now we were back up to our full strength. I grabbed some breakfast and sat down opposite Toby at the kitchen table.

"How's the happy couple?" I asked. "Have a good honeymoon?" Yeah, they're never going to live down that "wedding bells" column.

Nicolai grunted. Toby looked at me over the top of the paper in his hand. "I have a note here from Mike telling me to ask you about your night out with . . . Lily, is it? He says you thought she was a 'fun date, wink wink.'"

O-kay. I grinned. "All right, I guess that makes us even." I told them a little bit about Lily, including my planting the bug, and then we exchanged small talk for a while. Toby told us about seeing his relatives at the funeral in Manchester, and Nicolai talked about his holiday in Gdansk.

The rest of the crew joined us after a few minutes, Padma last of all. After all the introductions were made, she yawned and stretched and exclaimed, "Oh, I'm sorry I am so sleepy today morning! I was having the most strange dreams all yesterday night."

Toby glanced at her, and then at Mike. Padma was sitting close enough to Mike that their thighs must have been touching, and she had given him an especially bright-eyed smile when she came in. Toby raised an eyebrow, but Mike shook his head slightly and mouthed, "Not yet." Toby is quite the fan of Mike's womanizing ways.

"Bet?" That was Nicolai, speaking to Shelley.

Shelley glanced at Padma, considering, then nodded. "Sure. One dinner shift."

"Done." Nicolai smiled. "I believe," he said to Padma, "that I can guess what you were dreaming about."

Padma gave him a shy smile. "Oh, they were most unusual dreams. I do not think you could guess it."

"Neither does Shelley," he replied. "You wore the Prime Violet belt all last night, did you not?"

"Yes, I was told I had to."

He paused dramatically. "Then you were dreaming about the number seventeen!"

Padma's jaw dropped. She half-rose from her seat; I thought she might have been about to run away. "How -- how did you know? What does the number seventeen have to do with . . .?" Then she stopped, and a look of pure delight crossed her face. "Oh, I see! Seventeen is the seventh prime, and so am I! And the belt -- it makes us dream of this? How very clever!"

I think all of us burst out laughing at the look of dismay that crossed Nicolai's face. I know he had been looking forward to explaining all that to her, and here she had figured it out on her own. He's kind of a math geek, and he has long been fascinated by the relationship the seven of us have with prime numbers. Yes, that's actually the reason we call ourselves Primes. It has something to do with base frequencies of power, harmonics, and divisibility, but that's as far as I go. Nicolai understands it, God love him, but I sure don't.

Nicolai's dismay didn't last long. Within two minutes, our pretty new Prime Violet had left her cozy perch at Mike's side and was sitting beside Nicolai, excitedly peppering him with questions about why we used primes instead of composites, why we called ourselves colors instead of our respective numbers, and anything else she could think of, and she was hanging on every word of his answers.

He had a decidedly dazed grin on his face by the time Prime Commander called us all into his office. I pulled Mike aside as the rest of them left the kitchen. "A word, if you don't mind."

"Sure, what's up?" he asked me.

"What was the idea with Padma yesterday, telling her that I hit on all the girl Primes? You know I don't work that way."

He shrugged and gave me his easy grin. "Just eliminating the competition. She's a nice-looking girl, after all. I know you'd do the same to me, given the chance."

"Not cool, Mike," I said. "Very not cool. You know we have to be able to trust each other. Now, she won't stay in the same room with me for more than five minutes. She's probably afraid I'll try to rape her at the first opportunity." I stuck a finger in his chest. "This is a problem. You made it, you fix it."

His face hardened. "Or else what . . . Indigo?"

"I'm not Indigo right now," I said calmly. "I'm just Trevor, and you're just Mike. I'm telling you that the team's got a problem and you're the one who has to make it right."

He stared hard at me for a moment longer, but then he shrugged and gave me a grin. "All right, mate. No worries. I'll take care of it. Good as done."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I was wrong, you were right. Thanks for pointing it out." And with that, just like Shelley's rule says, we moved on. No hard feelings.

Chapter 11

By the time Mike and I rejoined the others, they were already going over the vid of Shelley and me versus Mr. Lizard. Shelley was narrating. When it got to the you-know-what part, I could tell she was trying not to laugh. "I know what this looks like," she said, "but Trevor insists he was just planting a bug on the the minder."

Nicolai snorted, and Toby threw me a grin and a sly thumbs-up. And I didn't miss the look of disgust that Padma sent my way.

"His technique needs a little work," was Trina's dry comment.

Mike laughed. "I suppose you'd be all set to give him lessons?"

Trina appeared to consider the idea. "That might be fun. Trevor, let us set up a training session for tonight. My room." She gave me one of her patented winks. "Dress appropriately."

I grinned among the general laughter. Yeah, I am never going to live that "groping the minder" thing down. And, you know, I had been so intent on what I was doing at the time that I hadn't even noticed what "it" felt like. At this point, I really wished I had. As it was, I was doing the time without having enjoyed the crime.

The chuckles all stopped once Wizzit played the sound clip. There's something about hearing someone sobbing their heart out that sucks all the humor out of a room. When the clip was done, the commander cleared his throat. "I have a few more questions for Trevor, but they can wait if anyone else wants to ask anything."

Padma timidly raised her hand. "This is probably stupid of me, and perhaps it is my poor English, but what is a minder?"

We all looked at Prime Commander. He usually answers these types of questions. "First of all, there's nothing wrong with your English, Padma," he said with a smile. "The monsters that Enclave sends out are often not very smart. We're not sure whether this is due to the type of recruits they get or some effect of the alteration process. And sometimes they are so altered that their speech is not understandable. So, Enclave frequently send out someone with the monster, someone who is rather less altered, who can direct the monster and make their demands known. We call these people minders." He shrugged. "I suppose it's a better term than babysitter or nanny."

"But this minder, she was not just a babysitter, as you say. She actually took part in the battle, did she not? And she did not direct the monster much."

Commander Windham nodded. "'Minder' is kind of a loose term. Sometimes a minder will fight us, sometimes not. Sometimes the minder is the major threat and the monster is just a distraction, like yesterday, but usually it's the other way around. And it appears that sometimes a minder can have her own minder."

Padma nodded, looking thoughtful.

"Trevor, what was it that she said to you right after you asked her her name in Chinese?"

I frowned at Trina's question, trying to recall the conversation. Wizzit started playing it, unbidden. After the first few seconds, I told him to stop. "What she was trying to say," I explained, "was 'ni hao', which means hello in Mandarin. It's probably the first phrase anyone would learn."

"So, her saying that doesn't mean she knows Chinese?"

I shook my head. "Not any more than my saying 'nyet' means I speak Russian."

"You don't think she knows any Chinese at all?" Commander Windham asked me. There was an odd emphasis to his question, as if he thought it was a significant point.

"No, sir, probably not. Maybe a word here and there, but nothing else." As I said that, I had a feeling that I had missed something somewhere, but couldn't quite place it.

The commander scratched his nose, which is something he does when he's puzzled. "Wizzit," he said, "jump over to last night's encounter, the one in St. Petersburg, and play that part we were talking about earlier." To the rest of us, he said, "We'll go over the whole encounter in detail later, but right now I want to replay one particular portion that I can't quite figure out. You'll see this same minder, this Lily Lee, in this video as well."

A scene came up on our viewer. I recognized it immediately. It was from my point of view. Shelley had just called Trina and Mike over to help her finish off Hose-guy. "At this point," Commander Windham was saying, "Lily has been subdued by Mike. Trevor has gone over to secure her while the others are battling the main monster."

Wizzit played the vid. We watched as I rolled her over, started to secure her wrists, then tied her ankles. I saw a couple of the others wince at the sight of her broken forearm. Most of us have had broken bones before. Wizzit's healing comas take care of them right quick, but they're still not pleasant. I rolled Lily over again, tied her wrists, watched the others, and then looked down at her one more time.

As soon as she started to speak, I realized what had been nagging at me. "Wizzit, stop the vid." I shook my head in dismay and looked at the commander. "Sorry, sir," I said. "I missed that completely."

"What language was she speaking?"

"Cantonese." Our entire conversation had been in Cantonese, and I hadn't even noticed. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

"Wait a minute," Mike broke in. "Are you telling us you were talking with her in a completely different language, and you didn't even realize it? Is that even possible?"

"Of course it's possible!" Everyone turned to look at Padma, who shrank down in her chair as if she wished she hadn't spoken. After a moment, she seemed to gather up her courage and went on, "In my neighborhood we spoke four or five different languages or dialects, and my friends and I would switch among them all the time without thinking about it." Beside her, Nicolai was nodding. He had grown up in a section of Poland that had a lot of German speakers and was fluent in both languages. I knew that because he was helping me improve my German.

The commander held up a hand. "I speak only English, so I'll take your word for all that. Can you translate it for us, Trevor?"

I shrugged. "Sure. There wasn't much to it, and I don't think she said anything important."

"That's what Wizzit thinks, too, but of course he can't tell me what it was she said."

That's a funny thing about Wizzit. We Primes had seven or eight different languages among us -- more, actually, now that Padma had joined us -- and Wizzit speaks them all fluently. Heck, he speaks better Japanese than I do. The thing is, he can't translate. He and I could have a conversation in, say, Korean, and he could report to the commander that we had the conversation, and he could even repeat the words verbatim, but for some reason he'd be unable to tell the commander, in English, what it was we said. It's weird.

So, I translated. When I was done, the commander looked thoughtful. Toby asked, "Why in the world did you say you wanted to be her friend?"

To be honest, I didn't know. I had been completely sincere about it at the time. There was something about her that . . . well, I guess I just thought she might need a friend. And I couldn't get that sound clip out of my mind. Of course, I couldn't tell the group any of that. Nobody wants to befriend Enclave minders, do they?

Shelley came to my rescue then. "You didn't see it, Toby," she said, "but Mike was having all kinds of trouble trying to subdue her. Even tied up as she was, and with a broken arm, she might have given Trevor fits trying to keep her quiet. So, would it have better to tell her he was trying to help her, or to say 'I'm your enemy and I have captured you, bwa-ha-ha!'?"

That set Toby to laughing. "Fair enough," he said. "That's pretty good thinking, Trev."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks."

Shelley caught my eye. She was giving me a look that said, "You and I both know I just saved your bacon." I kind of nodded to her, then turned to the commander. "Is there anything else, sir?"

He was still staring thoughtfully at the top of his desk. "No, I suppose not. I had been wondering why she professed ignorance of Chinese in the first encounter, but seemed to speak it quite well in the second. But if you spoke to her in Mandarin the first time, and she spoke Cantonese the second time, I guess that would explain it."

I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. This was something I hadn't considered. "No, sir, it wouldn't." He looked up at me, and I went on, "Mandarin and Cantonese are two different styles or dialects of the Chinese language. Some people speak only one or the other, but a lot of people speak both. When I spoke to her in Mandarin, then she should have at least recognized it, and then I'd think she would have replied in Cantonese, hoping that I would understand her." After a moment, I added, "And even if she replied in English, she certainly wouldn't have said 'I don't speak Chinese.' She would have said, 'I don't speak Mandarin.' It just doesn't make sense."

Chapter 12

We puzzled over that for a while without coming up with any real answers, and then he dismissed us all except for Toby, Nicolai, and Padma. I figured he would go over the St. Petersburg encounter briefly with the two more experienced Primes. After that, he would go over it again in more detail with Padma, pointing out to her all the little rules we have to follow. I know he did the same thing with me when I was new.

Shelley touched my arm as we left. "Trevor, how's about a training session in the gym?" Her words and tone were friendly, but she had a no-nonsense look in her eyes that told me I'd better not think of arguing.

"Uh, sure thing, Shelley," I said. "Give me five minutes to change."

She nodded. "I'll see you there."

She was waiting for me by one of the big bags. After we had spent a few minutes warming up and stretching, she said, "Let's do some kicks. Go ahead and start. I'll hold."

I set myself and started kicking the bag. Sidekicks to start off with. Bread and butter stuff, good for strengthening the legs and hips. Shelley watched me intently as I worked; a couple of times I thought she was going to say something, but then she always pulled back. Finally, I asked her, "So when's the lecture? The suspense is killing me."

She didn't smile. "No lecture, Trev. As far as I know, you haven't done anything wrong. Have you?"

"Not that I know of." Another sidekick, harder now that I was warming up. "So why did you want to talk with me?"

Now, someone else might have tried to blow me off with something like, "What makes you think I wanted to talk with you?" Not Shelley. Simple, honest, and direct. That's one reason I respect her as much as I do. "I'm not sure," she said after a bit. "I guess I mainly wanted to keep the lines of communication open."

"They're open." Bam, bam, bam! Three sidekicks in a row: low, middle, and high.

"Nice," she commented. Then, "Look, I know we just talked about this yesterday, but . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"You want to be sure I'm not making myself crazy about Lily?"

"Yeah, something like that. I can see you're giving her a lot of thought, and now you're telling her you want to help her and be her friend."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, but . . . Trev, don't stop talking to me about her, okay? I want to know what's going on in your head, even if you don't think I'll approve." Suddenly she gave me a wry smile. "Especially if you don't think I'll approve."

I dropped my stance and looked at her. Honesty, I decided, deserved honesty. "I'm really not sure what's going on. If I did, I'd tell you."

"Fair enough." Shelley nodded. "She's a beautiful girl, isn't she?"

"What, do you think I want to get into her pants?"

She gave a short laugh. "No, that would be Mike; you're not that crude. It's just that it's easier to form an attachment for someone who's pretty than someone who's ugly. Everybody knows that."

"So . . . you think I'm falling in love with her?"

"Are you?"

I snorted. "No. That would be stupid. She's dangerous as hell."

"Well, that settles it, doesn't it?"

"I guess it does." I resumed my stance and started kicking again, the other leg this time. "I mean, the whole thing is crazy. It's like she's two different people."

"Three people, you mean?" she said with a smile.

I thought about it, and then I chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. Three people. There's the one who calls herself Lily Lee; there's that weird, kick-ass, kung fu zombie chick; and there's the girl I spoke to in Cantonese. They're all different."

"Then which one is the one we heard crying?"

"I don't know." I stepped forward and drove my foot hard into the bag. "Definitely not kung fu zombie chick. She seems more like a robot than anything else. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the Cantonese girl. She seemed the most, um . . ."

"The most vulnerable?"

"Yeah." I looked up at her in surprise. "Yeah, that's exactly the word I was looking for. She seemed the most vulnerable."

"That's the way it seemed to me, too." Letting go of the bag, Shelley sauntered around and laid an arm across my shoulders. "Then she's the one who's just breaking your heart, isn't she? Because you, Trevor, have a serious thing for damsels in distress."

It was as if I had been having an itch that I couldn't quite place and Shelley walked up and scratched it for me. As soon as she said it, I knew that was exactly what was going on with me, and the strength of my reaction surprised me. My eyes got moist, and for a second I had trouble talking. "Damn it, Shelley," I muttered as I wiped my eyes, "don't do that to me!"

"Do what?"

"Open up my head and peek inside like that. It's embarrassing."

She laughed and squeezed my shoulder. "Don't worry. I promise to do it only when no one else is around."

Chapter 13

We didn't see Lily again for another month. At the time, I assumed it was because her broken arm was healing. Part of me actually felt a little disappointed every time we went out to face a monster and she didn't show up. Of course, the sane part of me didn't relish the idea of another encounter with Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick.

Padma began to settle into her new life as Prime Violet. It turned out that math was an interest of hers, and she had planned to study it at university, which is how she caught onto Nicolai's little trick as quickly as she had. She was so keen on it, in fact, that Prime Commander told Nicolai to begin training her on our tech as soon as possible. It requires a lot of math to work with, and not the algebra or calculus I learned in high school, either. It uses something Nicolai calls "number theory". I know Nicolai didn't mind the assignment, and I never heard Padma complain, either.

In fact, if anyone had misgivings about the two of them spending so much time together, it was Shelley. I know she has this thing against Primes dating each other; she says it's too likely to cause problems with the team, so she wants us to keep the boy-girl stuff to a minimum.

I understood where she was coming from, and I mostly agreed with it, but you know, the sight of Padma following Nicolai around like a little puppy dog was just too cute. And besides, Nicolai's a good guy. Heck, I'd even trust him on a date with my little sister Angela. (Of course, Angie's a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.)

I'm sure that the whole thing with Nicolai was one reason I wound up training Padma in hand-to-hand. Shelley and I are the two best pure fighters on the team (he said with all due modesty). Of course, Shelley's pretty damn good at everything, having done this for the past fifteen years, while I'm just the resident muscle-head and nice guy. Ordinarily it would have been a toss-up as to which of us would train her, and Shelley most likely would have got the nod, since I've been on the team for only three years.

Padma was already training with Trina on our blasters, though, and I'd bet a penny that Shelley decided I should work with Padma just so she would get to know more guys on the team. So that's how I found myself facing her in an otherwise empty gym the morning after Shelley and I had our little heart-to-heart.

Padma was dressed in loose trousers and a white jacket tied shut with a black belt. For modesty's sake, she was wearing some sort of shirt underneath the jacket. This was undoubtedly the uniform of her studio or dojang (Grandmaster Park always used the former term, so that's what I use) and she seemed quite proud of it. Me? I was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt.

She spoke up before I had a chance to say anything. "It seems I owe you an apology for my behavior the other day. Mike came to me and told me he had, er, misled me about your . . . your character."

Oh, yeah, the hit-on-all-the-girl-Primes thing. Mike had come through for me after all. Padma's manner was stiff and formal, and I figured she still didn't trust me. I nodded gravely in return and said, "That's all right. Let's forget it and start fresh. Tell me, what training have you had?"

She held out a card. "I am a second Dan -- that is to say, a second-degree black belt -- in Tae Kwon Do. This is my Kukkiwon registration." She thought for a moment, then added, "Kukkiwon is an international body that certifies Tae Kwon Do black belts."

Another TKD-er, eh? I glanced at the card, then handed it back to her. It seemed genuine enough. "We're fairly informal when we train here," I explained. "You can see what I'm wearing; Shelley and Trina wear pretty much the same thing, with a sports bra underneath. You won't need your full uniform."

"I would prefer to wear it," she replied. She looked me up and down, obviously unimpressed. "And I would also like to know whether you are qualified to teach me. What has your training been?"

Ah, so that was it. She thought she was hot stuff and wanted to prove it to everybody, starting with me. I grinned and folded my arms across my chest. "Sorry, my Kukkiwon card is in my room. I can go get it if you like, or you can just take my word that I am certified as a fourth Dan." Then I added, "I can give you formal Tae Kwon Do training if you like, complete with uniforms. In that case, you will bow and address me as Mr. Chiao."

She looked down, biting her lip, and for a moment I thought she was going to throw a tantrum. Then she started to laugh, a beautiful, self-deprecating little laugh that raised my spirits immensely. I really like people who can laugh at themselves. She looked up at me then, the laughter still in her face, and she said, "Mr. Chiao, please accept my apology. If you think we should train informally, then I am sure you are right. I will go change."

She bowed and I bowed in return. As she left, I called out after her, "And when you get back, you can call me Trevor."

That broke the ice between us, and we actually got to be pretty friendly after that. Not as friendly as she and Nicolai were, but friendly enough. She did ask to see my credentials, by the way. Yes, I am a fourth Dan, and yes, I am Kukkiwon-certified. (And yes, the card was in my room at HQ and not sitting on my dresser back home in Ohio, lucky for me.)

That was also my introduction to her competitive streak, which was roughly a mile wide. I'm not a terribly competitive guy myself, but I know that some people are, and like Shelley says, anything that motivates you to excel can be a good thing.

Padma was pretty good, but not nearly as good as she thought she was. I think even Trina could have beaten her two falls out of three, and it frustrated Padma to find out how far she had to go. The good side of that was that she worked really hard and improved a lot in just a few weeks. The bad side of it was that she felt she had something to prove to me, and it showed in our free-fighting practices. In fact, that was what caused me to give her her first major injury.

Chapter 14

First, though, let me tell you about Sydney. Sydney, Australia, that is. As I've mentioned before, Enclave recruits from all over the world; they also attack sites all over the world. I'm sure there must be a pattern of some sort to the places they attack, but I've never figured out what it is.

All I know is, when they send out a monster, we have to go put it down, no matter where or when. According to Wizzit, Enclave sending a monster to Earth is sort of like them poking a hole in a dam. If we don't manage to plug the hole pretty quickly, then it just gets bigger, which means that more monsters can get through, which makes the hole bigger still, which means still more monsters, and . . . well, maybe you get the idea. If there's even one monster we can't get rid of, Enclave could wind up overrunning the entire planet in a matter of weeks.

So, when the monster alarm went off in my room around half-past midnight one night, I groaned, but I got out of bed. Monsters have to be put down. In less than five minutes I was dressed and jogging down the hallway to the common room.

"This is a big one, folks," came Wizzit's voice from my belt. "Better bring your weapons with you."

Nicolai was already in the weapons room by the time I got there. "Good morning, Trevor," he said cheerfully. "I have Shelley's sword and Mike's club. I am going to use an axe today, I think. You had better get something for yourself. Do you want to carry Toby's hammer?"

"Sure." I grabbed Toby's weapon. It's a weird-looking thing, with this huge hammer head on it -- bigger than my head -- and a haft that's about four feet long. Looks like something that Tom might try to squash Jerry with, but I guess Toby likes it. I saw Nicolai pick up some sort of war axe that looked almost as cartoonish. "Hey, Nicolai," I said, looking around, "can you hand me that baton?"

"This old thing?" He held up a stick about a foot long. He tossed it over to me. "Come on, Trev, why don't you get yourself a real weapon?"

I caught the baton. "I just prefer the smaller stuff, that's all. Doesn't get in my way. Speaking of which . . ."

"Not ready yet," he said tersely. "We should go. The others will be waiting for us."

Toby and Mike were in the common room already, and Trina and Shelley joined us in a few moments. I know it's the stereotype that women always take longer to get ready, but I've noticed it's also true, especially with our middle-of-the-night affairs. I figure that in our case it's because they have to tie back their hair and put on at least one more article of clothing up top than us guys do.

Nicolai and I handed the others their weapons. Trina, of course, had her triple-blaster with her already. She never goes on a mission without it. "Where are you sending us?" Shelley asked Wizzit.

"You're going to bright, sunny Sydney," came Wizzit's voice. "It's late morning there. Enclave sent out a twin set of monsters; not sure what they do yet." Then he added with malicious glee, "If you have any trouble understanding the locals, I'm sure Mike could translate for you."

"For the hundredth time, Wizzit, I am not Australian," Mike retorted. "New Zealand is a whole different country, thousands of miles away."

"Uh huh, if you say so." He adopted an accent that was even thicker than Mike's. "Down Under is Down Under."

"That's enough, Wizzit," Shelley interjected calmly. "Are there any Zoinks for us to worry about?"

"A couple of dozen. No other alters nearby, though."

"Got it. Let's go, team."

We activated our force shields and soon found ourselves standing on the top level of a parking garage. Not completely deserted, so we scared a few locals when we 'ported in, but Wizzit does the best he can. I expect that the downtown of a major city doesn't have too many deserted alleyways during the late morning of a working day.

We ran down some steps and out into the street -- Pitt Street, to judge by the signs. The monsters weren't hard to find; they were admiring a building that proclaimed itself "Commonwealth Bank of Australia". Actually, they weren't admiring the building as much as the wrecked doorway of the building. Standing between them, surrounded by Zoinks, was my favorite, jumpsuit-clad minder.

"That's Lily Lee," Shelley told us all, Prime-to-Prime. "If she starts attacking, don't any of you try to take her on yourselves. Remember, our weapons don't work on her because she's not an alter. Leave her to me or Indigo."

Me or Indigo? Hmm, I guess I suddenly got promoted to Deputy Zombie Chick Catcher, which was fine with me. Lucky for us, Lily didn't seem to be in Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick mode. As soon as she spotted us, she shouted, "Get them! Now!"

The Zoinks charged. The two big baddies turned around and saw us, and right away they started jumping. Yeah, jumping. Up and down, like little kids. The first one would jump up, and as he was landing, the second would jump up. It looked kind of dorky . . . right up until the shock waves started hitting us.

The ground began shaking beneath my feet, and in seconds I was on my backside. Not very dignified, but at least I had the satisfaction of seeing all five of my teammates fall on their butts, too. Trina got a shot off, at least, but it went wide, splattering harmlessly off a nearby building.

The Zoinks were on us now; somehow, they weren't bothered by the shaking of the ground. Shelley was the first one of us to get to her feet, and right away she started swinging her broadsword, trying to clear an area around herself.

A couple of Zoinks grabbed my arms and hauled me upright, while a third Zoink planted a jumping sidekick right on my chest. Mike and Trina seemed to be in the same position I was; Toby was struggling to his feet with three Zoinks hanging off his back, while Nicolai appeared to be at the bottom of a dogpile.

Shelley was making her way over to Trina, swinging her sword the whole way, but she was having a lot of trouble because of the continuing ground vibrations. That left me to rescue Nicolai, because he seemed to be in the most trouble. My jumping-kicking Zoink buddy was preparing to go at me again, so I bided my time and twisted myself around at the last second, pulling the Zoink holding my right arm directly into his path. The jolt knocked me off-balance, but it sent the two of them to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.

I struggled upright and punched my remaining Zoink in the face three or four times with my baton, which temporarily took the fight out of him. "Hang on, Yellow," I called out. "Help is coming."

Mike, I saw, had managed to free himself and was holding his two-handed club like a baseball bat. Or maybe a cricket bat, who knows? A pair of Zoinks charged him, and whap! whap! he send them sailing back, tail over teakettle. Toby had shaken off his Zoinks and was standing in a wide-legged stance, trying to keep from falling over again as he searched for his hammer.

Not trusting my balance over the shaking ground, I scrambled and rolled over to the pile of Zoinks and started pulling bodies off. The ones that resisted, I pounded into submission with my baton. Eventually I dug my way down to Nicolai.

"Thanks, Indigo," he said as I gave him a hand up. "They caught me by surprise." He staggered a step and put a hand to his head.

"No problem, Yellow. Careful with your balance here; it's tricky." I steadied him as he bent to pick up his axe.

Shelley had freed Trina by now and seemed to be giving her instructions. Trina nodded. Shelley formed a stirrup with her hands. Trina stepped into it, and Shelley launched her high into the air.

I'd seen them do this before; often it's a way to get Trina some more height so she can pull off a tricky blaster shot. In this case, I assumed it was to get her off the shaking ground so she could take steadier aim.

She arced up high in a lazy backward somersault, and as she came back around, she snapped off two quick blasts. The first struck one of the jumping monsters as it was landing, and it staggered back. The other shot hit the second monster in the air and sent it flying backward into the rubble of the bank's doorway.

The ground vibrations stopped almost immediately. I heard a roar and saw Toby rise up to his full height. He's a big guy, taller even than Shelley, and when he starts swinging that huge hammer of his, suddenly it doesn't look so cartoonish any more. He looks like Thor, the freakin' God of Thunder.

He ran forward and began hammering on the monster that was still on its feet. It started pounding back at him, and the sparks flew -- literally. Shelley ran forward to take on the other monster, which was just getting to its feet. "Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo," she snapped out, "there are civilians in the building that need your help getting out."

Mike, Nicolai, Trina, and I ran to the ruined doorway and began pulling the rubble away from it. Shelley was right; I could see a number of people trapped inside, including a few who were lying on the floor and appeared to be injured. Within minutes, we had the way clear for them.

"I don't trust this wall," Mike called out. "Let's get them out as quick as we can."

The four of us rushed inside, calling out for the civilians to leave by way of the entrance we had cleared. Most of them were eager to get away, and a few were injured and had to be carried out. By the time we had cleared these, the ground had started shaking again. Glancing out the windows, I saw that Shelley and Toby had been swarmed by Zoinks, which allowed the Happy Bouncing Twins to start their seesaw jumping act again.

"Is there anyone else in here?" I heard Mike shout.

"Just these two," Nicolai replied. He was pointing at a couple, a man and a woman, both large, both cowering under a table and mewling hysterically.

Mike hesitated only a second before saying, "Yellow and Green, get them out of here right away. Indigo, go help Red and Blue. I'll make a search of the rest of the building." He ducked aside as a chunk of the ceiling fell and nearly hit him. "Damn, I hope this thing holds together long enough!"

Now, I may have given the impression up to this point that, except for her sharpshooting skills, Trina is fairly useless in a battle. That's not really the case. True, she wouldn't be my first choice as a fighting partner, but see, her martial arts training is in aikido, which is about holds and throws, not punches and kicks. Remember how Shelley tied up Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick's leg so she couldn't move? Odds are that Trina could have done it just as well.

So, as a Zoink basher, sure, Trina isn't all that great. But if you have a couple of uncooperative fat people that you have to move somewhere in a hurry, who would you call? Not me, that's for sure. I'd wind up pounding them into unconsciousness and then dragging them out by the hair. I didn't see what happened, of course, but I'd bet a penny that Trina grabbed the whimpering guy in a very persuasive come-along hold and hustled him out the door while Nicolai was still trying to muscle his girlfriend off the floor.

As for me, I was running out to help Shelley and Toby. I took a slight detour to knock one of the twins off-balance, trying to disrupt their mini-earthquakes, and then made a beeline for Blue. He was trying to knock the Zoinks off himself with his hammer. Unfortunately, it's not effective as a super-short-range weapon; it works best if your enemy is a couple of feet away.

Just like with Nicolai, I waded in and started pounding on Zoink bodies. A few minutes later (and after ducking one wild hammer-swing from Toby) I pulled the last Zoink off his back. "This was fun," I told him cheerfully, "but I expect Red would like some help about now."

"I'm not sure Red needs it," he replied after a moment.

I looked around and saw that he was right. Shelley had stopped fighting. In fact, she wasn't moving at all. I would have been alarmed, given the way she was being swarmed, but I had seen her do this before. Sure enough, after a second of concentrating her power, she let loose a shock wave that blasted every last Zoink off of her.

According to Nicolai, all of us Primes are supposed to be equally powerful. What one of us can do, any of the rest of us can theoretically do. The fact is, though, that I have seen Shelley perform some stunts as Prime Red that I doubt I could ever match, and this shock wave is one of them. As often as I have tried to duplicate it, I have never even come close.

(Nicolai also says that most things become easier as your associated prime number gets lower, and because Shelley represents the number two, the only even prime, some of the more amazing things have become as natural to her as breathing. Somehow that doesn't make me feel better.)

I dashed off to help Shelley as soon as her shock wave subsided, without waiting for Toby to tell me to go. The shock wave is a pretty cool trick, but it completely drains your force shield, all except for the blurring and the voice alteration. Until it recharged itself, Shelley was almost completely helpless.

"It's all right, Red," I called out to her. "I've got you covered."

"Thanks, Indigo." She sounded winded, which is pretty unusual for her. Those Zoinks must have been pushing her awfully hard. She retreated until her back was against a wall. "Wizzit, how long until we can blast these guys to Kingdom Come?"

"It won't be soon," he replied promptly. "They're plenty plenty tough. How many of you can I count on for the final shot?"

I clobbered a Zoink that was coming too close, while Shelley took in the battle scene. "Indigo, where's Orange?" she asked me abruptly.

Two more Zoinks approached. I swept their legs out from under them and dropped an axe kick on the first one's chest. "Inside the bank building, looking for civilians," I said. The second Zoink was struggling to get up, so I bashed his chest a few times with my baton. Then I grabbed the two of them by their wrists and hauled them away.

"Wizzit, we should have Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue." She glanced at my baton. "Indigo, too, if necessary."

"Roger that. I'm working on it. Keep them busy."

Shelley shook herself. "You'd better go join the fight, Indigo," she told me. "Don't worry about me."

I looked around. Right now, it appeared that Trina's triple blaster was the only thing keeping the Wonder Twins from sending out their ground-shaking vibrations. Toby and Nicolai were on either side of her, keeping the Zoinks at bay. "Are you sure, Red?" I asked. "You're not fully charged yet."

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Go. Try hitting the monster on the right."

"Will do." I took off running, calling out for Trina not to blast me accidentally. For a short time I did my best to keep my monster off-balance; sometimes that's as much as you can do without using a special weapon, and it was difficult to get as close as I would need to be in order to use my baton. I decided that maybe Nicolai had a point; I could have used his axe about then.

That was when Lily (remember her?) started to use strategy. A crowd had started to gather at the outskirts of our battle, including a television crew, and she ordered the Zoinks to begin attacking them. Not good. Very not good.

Shelley yelled for me and the others to go after them while she took on Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee all by herself. Bless her heart, that's exactly what she did, even though she still wasn't quite charged up yet, which meant that she was essentially just a non-powered human. Despite her best efforts, and they were pretty impressive, she wasn't quite able to keep the twin monsters completely occupied. They managed to get in a few of their ground-shaking bounces.

All of a sudden, Shelley started shouting for everyone to get away from the bank building. I heard an ominous grinding sound, and then the whole front of the building collapsed. I did have the satisfaction of seeing Lily nearly get caught in it; she was coughing and waving away building dust as a handful of Zoinks pulled her away.

All of a sudden I had an awful thought. "Red," I shouted, "Orange was still in there!"

"D'you mean me?" came a voice directly behind me. I practically jumped out of my force shield, and I whirled to see Mike's face grinning at me. Well, I assumed he was grinning, since his features were obscured by swirling orange mist.

"Damn it, Orange, don't do that to me!" I yelped.

"Sorry, Indigo," he said, not sounding the least bit sorry. "Wizzit 'ported me out about two seconds ago."

Well, the battle continued for quite a while after that. Whenever we had one of the twin monsters on the ropes, Lily would order the Zoinks to start attacking bystanders. Most of them smartened up after a while and fled the area, but that darned television crew seemed to think it was their special destiny to stay in harm's way.

The fight went on for long enough that I know Wizzit was getting worried that Enclave would soon be able to send more of its monsters through. Eventually, though, he announced that if all six of us hit one of the monsters at the same time, then our combined energy (as he had tuned it) would overload its Enclave enhancements. You can bet that we all rushed to do that, and six seconds later, it was bye-bye baddie. Five seconds after that, we destroyed his pal as well.

Lily and the Zoinks 'ported out even before the second monster had finished exploding, and afterwards we all just sort of collapsed. The television crew ran up to us then and started peppering us with questions. I didn't envy Shelley at that moment, as the spokesman for our group. I knew she wasn't in the mood to chat, but blowing off the press is generally not a good idea.

She used her sword to push herself to her feet and walked painfully over to the perky young female reporter, telling her that she would agree to a two-minute interview. I'm not sure how much of the exhaustion in Shelley's voice was just acting, but the reporter suddenly looked a lot less perky and a whole lot more subdued.

Shelley patiently told her that yes, it had been a tough battle; no, she wouldn't grant the reporter an exclusive look at her real face; no, there was no romance of any kind between Blue and Yellow; and no, she had no objection to being called Eric the Red. She paused when the reporter asked about the missing Prime Violet. "That's a very perceptive question," she said, and it came out sounding like a sincere compliment. Shelley's good like that.

"It has not been a secret that we haven't had a Prime Violet on the team for several months," she went on. "The Primes have a tough job, and our membership undergoes occasional changes. We are looking at several promising candidates, though, and we hope to have a new Prime Violet ready for action very soon. I can't tell you any more than that."

After the questions were done, I heard Shelley ask that the cameras and mikes be turned off, and she spent several minutes talking quietly with the crew. I knew what she was doing; she had done it to me often enough. She was undoubtedly dressing them down, pointing out how their refusal to leave the scene of the battle had put both them and us in unnecessary danger, or something along those lines. The thing is, when Shelley chews you out like that, she does it in such a quiet, reasonable way that when she's done, all you can think is, "Damn, she's absolutely right."

When she was done, the reporter looked decidedly abashed; I thought she might be about ready to cry. But then Shelley administered the coup de grace -- she gave the woman's shoulder a friendly squeeze to show there were no hard feelings and thanked her for the interview, and then she finished off with a laugh and some quip or other. Probably something like "Sydney's a beautiful city; let's all hope we don't have to come back anytime soon." After that, she told Wizzit to bring us home. The reporter watched us go, eyes shining with admiration for "Eric the Red". Shelley had won us another fan.

Chapter 15

Padma had slept blissfully through the whole affair because she wasn't yet cleared for monster duty. She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that morning for our training session, while I was tired and grouchy. Wizzit had fixed up all my aches and bruises after we got back, but a healing coma doesn't replace lost sleep.

"Trevor," she asked with an engaging smile after we had warmed up, "do you think we could try free-fighting today morning? I really think I could beat you today."

I shrugged and mumbled, "Sure." To be honest, I didn't feel like going through the whole training regimen with her, so free-fighting sounded like a good idea.

I could tell as soon as we began, though, that it was going to be a rough session. Padma was really on her game, and she knew it. She kept pushing me back the whole time, trying to pin me against one of the walls. I just circled around, staying in the center of the room as much as I could, and conserved my energy by simply blocking her attacks without trying much of anything myself.

We did this little dance for a while, and I saw her getting more and more frustrated by my evasion tactics. I really didn't care; I was dog-tired. Then her face got this determined look on it, and she started attacking me harder, going for close-in hand attacks instead of the more long-range foot stuff. I backed away from her, but every time I tried to circle around, she moved to cut me off and tried harder to push me back. No matter what I did, she simply refused to back off. Good technique, but it was more than a little annoying.

After several minutes of this, I had had enough. My back was literally against the wall, and -- I'll admit it -- I broke one of the cardinal rules of free-fighting. I lost my temper. Padma saw an opening and tried to close with me, and I retaliated with a hard backwheel kick.

A backwheel kick, in case you don't recognize the name, is one where you spin your body around and your leg kicks straight out in a full circle, heel first. It's a powerful attack, because of the force from spinning around and the way you're basically using your whole leg as a club. In free-fighting, you can use it to clear the area around you and give yourself some breathing room; even a yellow belt knows you should always dodge a backwheel, because trying to block it is a good way to get your arm broken. Well, guess what? Padma tried to block it.

I felt the bone snap even as I tried to pull back on my kick. She immediately fell to the ground with a cry of pain, clutching at her arm. I dropped to her side, swearing under my breath as I did so.

I was mad at myself, naturally, not at her. Sure, a backwheel kick is a legitimate move, and trying to block it with her forearm had been a bone-headed stunt on Padma's part, but the whole free-fight was my responsibility. I was the higher-ranked, more experienced belt, and I was the one who had lost my temper and kicked harder than I should have.

"It's going to be all right, Padma," I said, trying to calm her down. I guessed she had never really been injured before, because her crying sounded a little hysterical. "Let me see your arm."

I went through the whole diagnostic bit, having her try to twist her wrist around and wiggle her fingers. There was definitely a break, although it was nowhere near as bad as Lily's had been. It wouldn't even need setting. I've had a bit of experience setting broken bones, but it's not something I look forward to doing.

"All right," I said soothingly, "let's go back to your room and we'll take care of it. That's where your belt is, right?" She nodded. "Can you walk?"

"Y-yes," she said weakly, "I think so."

She made a brave effort at it, but she was so rubber-legged that I eventually just scooped her up in my arms. "Take it easy," I said. "Everything's going to be okay."

Totally inappropriate, I know, but when she laid her head against my shoulder, closed her eyes, and whispered, "Thank you, Trevor," my heart started thumping just a little harder in my chest. Nothing like holding a helpless female in your arms to get that ol' masculine protective instinct going, eh?

Ordinarily, nothing gets Wizzit's attention faster than an injured Prime. Unfortunately, Padma wasn't wearing her Prime Violet belt, so he couldn't actually tell she was hurt at this point. "Wizzit," I called out as I strode through the hallway, "Padma's arm is broken. I'm taking her to her room to get her belt on. She'll be ready for a healing coma soon after that."

"You've broken my new Prime Violet already?" came his dismayed voice from the ceiling.

"Just a training accident," I replied calmly. "Nothing too bad."

Trina was in the common room sipping at a cup of tea and studying a sketchpad in her lap. Most of the others were probably trying to catch up on their sleep, but Trina doesn't seem to need as much as the rest of us. As soon as she saw me carrying Pamda, she hurriedly set the cup down and ran down the hall ahead of us. "Padma," I said when we reached her room, "I can't open your door. You'll have touch it yourself, or you can just say 'door open.'"

"Door open," she murmured without opening her eyes.

Didn't work. "Say it a little louder," I encouraged her.

"Door open!"

That did the trick. I carried her inside and laid her on her bed. "Now, tell me where your Prime Violet belt is."

"In the top left drawer of the dresser, with my underwear."

Trina almost laughed out loud at the desperate look I gave her, but she retrieved the belt, and the two of us sat Padma up and fastened it around her waist. Then I laid her back down and smoothed her hair away from her face. "You have to touch the buckle to seal it," I told her, "and then say 'Prime Violet activate' to start up your force shield."

Padma sealed the buckle, but her "Prime Violet activate" was less than a whisper. She was starting to tremble all over, and I thought she might be going into shock. Didn't matter; all that mattered was getting her to say the words so that Wizzit could initiate the healing coma. "Say it again, Padma. Louder."

Barely above a whisper: "Prime Violet activate."

Still didn't work. I could have tried to have her tap out the coded pattern on the buckle that lets us activate the force shield silently, but I didn't think she would be up to learning it at this point. "Padma, Wizzit can't hear you. Say it again, louder."

"Prime Violet activate!"

That worked. In less than a second, her hand took on the faintly slippery feel that told me that there was now a force shield between my skin and hers. "Just rest now," I told her quietly. "Wizzit's going to induce a healing coma. You've seen him do this to us before. It's going to make you feel very sleepy, and when you wake up, your arm will be fine. Trina and I are here in the room with you. Do you want us to leave?"

Her hand tightened around mine. "No, stay, please! Both of you."

Hmm. I hadn't thought Padma would want me to stay; in fact, I had hoped to go back to bed. I had asked her mainly out of courtesy, to give her the impression that she was the one who had sent us away.

I looked up at Trina and mouthed, "Sorry." She shrugged. She had brought her sketchpad with her, and now she settled herself in her chair, pulled out a pencil from somewhere in her hair, and began to draw.

Fine. At least she had something to keep herself occupied. I was stuck here with nothing to do. Granted, I was stuck in a room with two very attractive young women, but one of them was half out of her mind in a healing coma, and the other was soon in her own world of light and shadow and lines on paper.

I looked around the room. Padma had given it a distinctly feminine touch, which was nice, although it was a little too cutesy for my taste. She seemed to have a penchant for Hello Kitty -- slippers, a few figurines, even a Hello Kitty screensaver on her computer screen. I saw a small statuette of an elephant-headed man on her dresser, which I vaguely recognized as Ganesha, the Hindu God of Luck or something like that.

Having nothing better to do, I watched Padma for a while, but looking at even a pretty girl who's half-asleep can get boring after a while, so I eventually turned my attention to Trina. I like to watch her when she's sketching, anyway.

Trina can be a lot of fun to talk to when she's playing the role of the beautiful blonde bombshell, but everyone knows it's just an act. In fact, the play-acting is part of what makes it fun, because there's no pressure to follow up. As far as I know, she has never gone out with any of the guy Primes, and outside of HQ her love life probably isn't much more exciting than mine. There's just no chance to meet anyone.

When she's drawing, though, she displays a whole different side to herself. She gets completely absorbed in what she's doing, so you can stare at her all day long and she'll never notice. The widening of the eyes when she suddenly gets an idea for how to approach a subject, the tiny frown when she's about to start erasing a mistake, the little satisfied nod when she's finally gotten it right -- all very cool to see. Completely un-self-conscious. Watching her sketch, I often get the impression that this is the real Trina.

I didn't get to look at her for long, though. She sketched for a few minutes without looking up, which told me she was doing it from some memory or other, but then she noticed me watching her. She frowned and pointed down at Padma with a sharp gesture. Almost silently she said, "Don't look at me. Look down at her!"

I hadn't realized I was the subject of her sketch. So, I looked down at Padma for what seemed like a long time, trying to stay awake. After a while I saw a smile creep over her face, and I wondered what pleasant thoughts were drifting through her head. She must have seen me through her half-closed eyelids, because her smile opened up a little more, displaying her white teeth, and she murmured, "You are cute, Trevor. Do you know that?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trina put a hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle. Without turning my head, I looked over at her and grinned. Padma was babbling. That's what we called it, anyway, and we all did it sometimes during healing comas. It doesn't mean much; half the time, the person doesn't even remember saying anything. But that didn't mean I couldn't play along with her.

"You're cute, too," I assured her, giving her hand a little squeeze.

"And you are so strong!" she went on in that same dreamy voice. "When you held me in your arms, I felt so safe and secure." She stretched and took a long, slow, lazy breath, which had the effect of thrusting her chest towards me. "Do you want to know a secret?"

"Uh, sure." The room suddenly seemed a whole lot warmer than it had been. I glanced over at Trina again, but she was scribbling furiously on her pad, obviously caught up with some idea or other. No help there.

"If you had carried me to your room and laid me down on your bed instead," Padma whispered, closing her eyes, "I would not have objected." She moved her hand so that it was lying across her chest, which of course meant that my hand was doing pretty much the same thing. I couldn't feel much of anything because of the force shield, but her intent was clear.

"Uh, Padma," I began, "maybe you shouldn't . . ." but then her eyes suddenly opened and her force shield turned itself off; her healing coma had ended.

Padma's eyes grew wide as she realized the position we were in, and I guess my eyes got a little wider as well, once I realized that the cool slickness of the force shield had been replaced by the feel of warm flesh beneath my fingers. For a moment I thought she was going to start screaming bloody murder, but she didn't. Instead, she let go of my hand -- she practically flung it away, in fact -- and she said hurriedly, "Trevor, I -- I am so sorry! I didn't mean that . . ."

"D-don't worry about it," I stammered. For some reason, the tips of my fingers felt like they were burning. "Everybody says weird stuff during healing comas now and then. We call it babbling. Forget it. It doesn't mean anything."

Padma was sitting up now. "But . . . but I told you that I wanted you to . . . a-and then I put your hand on my . . . oh, dear!" Words seemed to fail her. Her face was so naturally dark that it was hard to tell, but I think she was blushing. I know I would have been.

"I don't think Trevor minded all that much," came Trina's amused comment, "to judge by the look on his face." She made one last mark on her sketchpad, gave her little satisfied nod, and said, "Done!"

"Forget it," I told Padma again, feeling more sure of myself now. "Like I said, everybody does it at one time or another, and when it happens, everybody else does their best to ignore it." I gave what I hoped was a reassuring grin. "When I was in my first healing coma, I remember very clearly telling Trina that I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. Afterwards, nobody else ever admitted hearing it, and it was never mentioned again."

Padma glanced over at Trina, and after a moment, so did I. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Trevor," Trina said with a smile. "That never happened." She followed that with a broad wink.

I think the wink reassured Padma as much as anything I said. I could see her relax visibly. She must have noticed the sketchpad in Trina's hand about then, because she asked, "Were you drawing us?"

Trina shrugged. "I was using the two of you as models," she admitted. "It was a very pretty scene, the way Trevor was holding your hand and looking down at you so concerned." She glanced casually at her sketch, then did a double-take. She frowned at it and murmured, "Oh my!"

"Let me take a look," I said, reaching out a hand. "I think I've earned it."

Trina stared at her sketch a moment longer, then looked at me. "I don't think that would be a good idea," she said. She seemed troubled by what she was seeing on the paper.

I grinned at her. "Why not? It's not . . . dirty, is it?" I asked, waggling my eyebrows meaningfully at her.

"Dirty?" For a moment she seemed confused by my colloquialism, but then her expression cleared. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, there's no nudity involved. It's just that . . ." She took another look at her sketch, then very deliberately flipped the cover over it and hugged it to her chest. "It isn't what I started out to draw, and I'm afraid seeing it might upset you."

"Upset me? Come on, Trina, you know me better than that. It takes a lot to upset me." I took hold of one corner of the pad and started tugging playfully at it.

She pulled it away. "Trevor, please don't. I really don't want you to see it."

The tone of her voice was so serious that I let go of the pad. "Oh. Uh, sure, no problem."

"I'm sorry," she said, slowly lowering the pad to her lap. She gave me an apologetic smile. "It's, um, it's not very good."

"Okay . . ."

"May I see it?" Padma asked uncertainly.

Trina hesitated, but then she nodded. "All right."

Padma slipped off her bed and went to lean over Trina's shoulder. She drew back in surprise as Trina flipped the cover over. "But that is not --"

"Shh!" Trina interrupted her, with a pointed glance at me. She spoke a few words in what sounded like French. After a few seconds, Padma replied in the same language, and then the two of them began nattering away, casting occasional glances my way.

I knew that Trina spoke French, but I hadn't realized that Padma did as well. Anyone who speaks multiple languages will tell you that it's impolite to switch languages to purposely exclude someone from a conversation, but at least they didn't point at me and giggle. Indeed, Trina seemed to be explaining something quite serious to Padma. I heard my name once or twice, but I couldn't make out anything else.

Annoyed, I got to my feet, but before I could smile and nod my way to a graceful exit, Trina stopped me with a hand on my arm. "I'm sorry, Trevor," she said, getting up herself. "That was unforgivably rude of me." She looked as though she might say more, but then she squeezed my arm, gave me a tight-lipped smile, and left the room, her sketchpad once more clutched tightly to her chest.

I turned to Padma, but she was on her feet and was very obviously ushering me out of her room. I took the hint, stopping at last minute to say, "I guess we'll get together tomorrow afternoon for some more training, then?"

She merely nodded without speaking and closed the door behind me.

Chapter 16

I don't know about Trina, but I know Padma avoided speaking to me for the rest of the day and the following morning. She stayed in her room most of that time, in fact, and she was much more subdued that afternoon when she reported for our training session. In fact, she looked decidedly glum as she trudged into the gym, eyes downcast, and stopped in front of me.

"Trevor," she said without looking up, "I would like your honest opinion."

"Sure," I said with a shrug. "About what?"

"Should I quit?"

"Quit the Primes?" I was so flummoxed that for a moment I could do nothing but stare at her. "Of course not! Why on earth would you want to quit?"

"It is not that I want to. It is just that . . ." She finally looked up at me, looking so miserable that I thought she might be about two seconds away from crying. "Trevor, I am just no good at this!"

I blinked in surprise. "What do you mean? You're doing fine!"

"Am I?" she cried bitterly. "I am so bad, I can't even beat you on your worst day at free-fighting. I make stupid mistakes, like trying to block your kick with my arm, and when my arm breaks, I fall down and starting crying like a little baby, and you have to pick me up and carry me to my room!" This was when the tears started to flow.

I put my arms around her and held her close. "Oh, come on, Padma," I said, "it's not that bad."

"Nicolai tells me that I am doing quite well with creating weapons," she went on, her voice muffled by my chest, "but I think he is saying that just because he likes me. Everything is so very hard to understand, and I feel so stupid all the time." She pulled back to look me in the face. "Do you know what he has me doing? Making gloves and boots! As if anyone would use gloves as a weapon. I think he is just trying to keep me busy so I don't feel bad."

I narrowed my eyes. "Wait a minute. Gloves? Like, regular-sized gloves with pouches across the knuckles and along the backs of the fingers, and the electronics all over everything?"

"Why . . . yes. That is exactly what I am making. And boots to match."

"Padma, I could kiss you!" I exclaimed. "Do you know how long I've been after Nicolai to make that stuff for me? He always said it was too hard to fit everything into something so small. He wanted to make me a pair of boxing gloves. Tell me, are they ready now?"

"Yes, I think so," she said doubtfully. "I gave them to Nicolai to finish up last night. The electronics were hard to fit in, but in the end, all I had to do was to reduce the power a little, and then everything just . . . what is the phrase? . . . fell into the place?"

"Fell into place," I corrected her.

"Yes. Fell into place. Nicolai told me I was very clever to think of that, but I wasn't. It was just obvious. I thought he said that just to be kind. I thought this was a novice's problem he had set me, and I had taken weeks to solve it."

"This was no novice's problem." I grinned at her. "Let's go see Nicolai, shall we? Training is postponed. I am really eager to see what those gloves you've made are like."

The monster alarm began to sound as we were trotting towards Nicolai's workshop. I groaned. "Looks like I'll have to try them out some other time. I have to go back to my room to get my battle vest and my belt."

"I'll go get the gloves," Padma volunteered. "I won't be allowed to go to the battle anyway. I will meet you in the common room."

When I got to the common room, I saw Padma excitedly talking to Shelley, and for some reason she was wearing her Prime Violet belt. She waved me over. "Trevor!" she said, "Shelley says that I can go with the team today, if you are willing to be my . . ." She struggled for the right word for a moment, but then she grinned. ". . . my minder. Would you? Please?"

I chuckled. "Well, that depends. Do you have the boots and gloves?"

"They are right here." She handed me the gloves, but then her grin dimmed abruptly. "Only, I am afraid the boots will be too small for you. Nicolai gave me the gloves, but I had to make the boots myself, so I sized them to my feet."

I pulled the gloves on. They fit perfectly, and Nicolai had even remembered to fill the pouches with steel shot before he sewed them shut. "Never mind about the boots. You can wear them yourself if you like. These are what I really wanted."

"Are those sap gloves?" Shelley asked curiously.

"Yup." With the steel shot to cushion my fingers and knuckles, I could punch even a concrete wall without injuring my hands, or even feeling any pain. "Padma outfitted them with our tech, too, so they should be nearly as effective as our other weapons against monsters and Zoinks."

"And Wizzit's cool with them?"

"I asked him about them before I talked to Nicolai. He said yeah, because they're more for protection than for attack."

"Neat idea." She nodded approvingly. "Let me know how they work out. I may want a pair myself."

"So I can go?" Padma asked eagerly.

"Sure," I replied. "The more, the merrier."

"Oh, thank you, Trevor!" And she flung her arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek.

She was all set to power up right then and there and 'port out with me to fight whatever Enclave was ready to dish out to us. I had to explain to her that it was customary for us to activate in sequence, Red down to Violet, and then teleport out as a team. Between that and telling her to put her new boot-weapons on, I was so busy that I totally missed Wizzit's explanation of whom we were fighting and where.

We arrived in an empty field outside of some small town or other. With Shelley in the lead, we ran to what looked like the town's marketplace. To judge by the faces of the people running past us in panic, we were somewhere in rural Asia. If that were true, then the darkish skies would mean early evening rather than early morning.

The monster that Enclave had sent down was one of the fangier ones I had seen. Huge jaws, teeth as long as my fingers, pointy ears, blue-gray fur all over, and a big bushy tail that was probably also an offensive weapon of some sort. "Aw, geez!" Mike exclaimed, "not one of the wolf types. I hate those things!"

He had nailed it; this thing looked exactly like the Big Bad Wolf from someone's demented telling of "Little Red Riding Hood", standing on its hind legs. Or maybe it was from "The Three Little Pigs", except that I hoped it didn't have any sort of "blow the house down" super breath.

I grabbed Nicolai's arm. "Hey, Yellow," I asked, "did Wizzit say anything about Zoinks?"

"No, just this thing," he replied. "And he said that Lily might be here; he and I have been working on a way to isolate her physical readings, and we think we have a positive this time."

"Thank, I'll be on the lookout for her. Say, where are we, anyway?"

He turned to look at me. "You really weren't listening, were you? What's the matter, too busy kissing Violet?"

I held up a hand. "Take it easy, Yellow. There's nothing going on with me and Violet. I'm just Violet's babysitter for this mission, and Violet got excited."

Nicolai grunted. "Whatever. We're in eastern Vietnam, somewhere near the Chinese border. You don't know any Vietnamese, do you?"

"Only about three words," I started to say, but he was gone to help Toby and Mike. Shelley shouted for me and Padma to come help her and Trina move the locals away to safety. I motioned for Padma to follow me and ran to help, shouting out, "Please leave the area!" in as many languages as I could.

I heard Nicolai yell, "Look out!" I turned and saw Big Bad Wolf flying through the air straight toward me, his jaws gaping.

"Don't let him bite anyone!" Mike shouted. "A lot of these wolf-guys are biters, and it's a full moon out tonight!"

Was he serious? I stepped forward to meet Big Bad with a straight right to the jaw. That staggered him, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. How much had Padma had to reduce the power to the gloves, anyway? I buried my left in his gut, which doubled him over slightly, and then I clasped my hands together and brought them up hard to connect with his chin. Err, snout. Whatever. That, at least, had more of the effect I had been hoping for; sparks flew and he went reeling back.

I heard the sound of running feet off to my left. I turned in time to see Padma leap up and deliver a jumping sidekick straight to the side of Big Bad's head. "Good work, Violet," I said. "Now back away."

"But why, Tr-- I mean, Indigo?" She hit Big Bad with a roundhouse-turning sidekick combination. "He is not so tough."

She set herself for a whip kick, but BBW caught her leg with both paws as she delivered it. He raised it up to his gaping jaws, ready to crunch down onto her knee. I dashed forward, skidded on my butt under Padma's captive leg, and started punching the wolf's exposed belly as hard and as fast as I could.

I heard the sizzling sound of a blaster hitting the monster. It wasn't a powerful enough hit to be Trina's triple blaster, so one of the other Primes must have taken a potshot at him. He started howling, and the distraction was enough to let me pull Padma free.

"That's why," I heard Shelley's voice say calmly. I looked over to see her holstering her blaster. "Indigo is babysitting you for a reason, Violet. Do as you're told. Indigo knows what's going on better than you do."

"Y-yes, Red," Padma stammered, stumbling away. "I am sorry."

A different, though well-meaning, team leader might have stepped in at this point and tried to straighten things out by issuing orders to us both. Not our Shelley, and I was grateful for that. Minding Padma was my job, my responsibility; all Shelley had done was reinforce that.

Shelley lunged forward and was now taking on Big Bad herself. After a moment, I stepped in to help her. "Do more of those hit-and-run attacks," I instructed Padma. "Especially the kicks. That'll let you bring your special boots into play."

"Yes, Indigo," Padma replied meekly. "I will." A few seconds later, she did just that, hitting BBW in the head with another jumping sidekick that knocked him off his feet. I'll say this for Padma -- she gets a lot of height with those jumping kicks. The wolf was slow in getting up, so I pulled out my blaster and snapped off a few quick shots to the head while he was still down.

He howled some more, then leaped away from us into a crowd of civilians. I turned to go after him, but then I heard Padma scream, "Trevor, look out!"

I felt something strike the back of my neck. Not just a foot or a hand, but the weight of an entire body. If I hadn't been shielded, it might have broken my neck. As it was, I fell sprawling to the ground, my blaster flying from my hand.

I tried to turn the fall into a roll, but whatever had hit me was holding on and wouldn't let me turn. I felt something strike the back of my head hard enough to drive my forehead into the packed earth, and I saw stars.

"Get off him!" I heard Padma shriek. Then, "I have your blaster!" and I heard her fire off a bunch of shots. I assumed that she missed, because I didn't hear any of them hit. My assailant drew back for a moment, though, and I managed to get a leg under me and roll over, dislodging him.

No, not him. Her. Lily Lee, or rather, Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick, to judge by the lack of expression on her face. And by the way she launched herself at me like a rabid wolverine. I backed away, fending off her attacks. At least I was having more success with that than Mike had had.

"I -- I do not understand," Padma said, "I shot her four times and it merely surprised her."

"Blasters don't affect her, remember?" I said. Zombie Chick flexed her knees and launched herself at me. Luckily, I had expected something like that and met her with a sidekick directly to the midsection. She folded neatly in half with an "Oof!" and dropped heavily to the ground.

She didn't stay there for long, though. Recovering with a speed that surprised me, she sprang to her feet and leapt straight at Padma. Violet's sidekick wasn't quite as fast or as high as mine; it merely glanced off Zombie Chick's legs just above the knees as she sailed over top, her hands reaching out for Padma's throat.

The two of them collided and rolled over several times, ending up with Lily on top. My blaster had flown out of Padma's hands off who knew where. Lily appeared to be trying to throttle Padma, while Padma was clawing at any part of Zombie Chick's face that she could reach. Zombie Chick was clearly the better fighter, but Padma was shielded, so I wasn't sure which of them was getting it worse. Regardless, I made a mental note not to try stealing a kiss from either one of them without asking permission first.

"Lily, stand down!" I ordered. Nothing. Zombie Chick didn't even blink. I figured as much; Enclave is too smart for such an easy trick to work more than once. The two women continued to wrestle; Padma was driving spear-hand attacks directly against Zombie Chick's kidneys. Lily, for her part, had grabbed handfuls of Padma's hair and was trying to bash her head against the ground. For Padma's sake, I figured I had to separate the two of them.

I ran forward, thinking to grab Lily, but darned if one of the locals didn't beat me to it. He was a youngish guy, tall and heavily built. He stepped forward out of nowhere and, grinning like a fool, put both arms around Zombie Chick's waist and heaved her up.

I honestly don't know what the guy was thinking. Maybe "Me get pretty wife!" Truth be told, he didn't look all that smart. I think he learned a hard lesson in short order, though.

Lily started throwing elbows behind her, left and right, bashing his head on both sides. Her legs weren't idle, either; she caught him with several painful-looking kicks on his thighs before she finally managed to get a heel smash right between his legs.

He turned pale and sort of crumpled to the ground. I cringed in sympathy. I've been kicked in the groin before, and let me tell you, it's not funny, despite what the movies might tell you.

Lily pulled herself free and looked around -- not like she was confused, but like she was trying to figure out the best spot to launch another attack. Most of the locals had scattered by now, and the other five Primes were attacking Big Bad. Lily evidently decided that her work was done, because she took off running down a side street.

I started chasing after her, calling for Padma to follow me. We ran down several twisty little streets lined with houses; Lily evidently knew exactly where she was headed and was dodging around from one street to another so fast that our greater speed was not much of an advantage. Suddenly, as we rounded a corner, I felt a weird tingling all over my body that set off all kinds of alarm bells in my head.

"Violet, stop!" I shouted at Padma as I skidded to a halt myself.

"But I almost have her," Padma called back. "Just a few more feet."

"No! Stop running! Now!"

"Okay, Indigo, if y--" Her reply was cut off in mid-sentence. I saw her form outlined in light for a brief second, and then she vanished.

I swore at myself under my breath. Of course, Lily had been leading us into something like this. Why else would she run? I should have seen it coming. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Now Padma had been captured by Enclave, and I would have to be the one to get her out.

I opened a comm link to the rest of the Primes. "This is Indigo," I said. "Violet has been caught in a teleport trap. I'm going after her." Then I closed the link before Shelley could order me to stay where I was. After all, babysitting Padma was my job, my responsibility. I had to be the one to go. I took a deep breath, muttered a command to my force shield, and ran forward.

Chapter 17

Teleport traps are nasty things. Basically, a teleport trap is a web of energy set up between two poles. When you run into the web, a device is triggered that teleports you to a preset location.

The good thing about teleport traps is that they're easy to avoid if you know what you're doing. They radiate energies that interact with our force shields to produce that tingling sensation I had noticed, so you get plenty of advance warning. It's similar to the feeling you get when Wizzit teleports you someplace, but it's different enough that once you have felt them both, you won't ever confuse the two.

The bad thing about them is that they're invisible and can be set up pretty much anywhere in a hurry, like across a narrow street in a little town somewhere in eastern Vietnam. And they can send you anywhere, like directly into the sun. We think that's what happened to Bheka Nkosi, our first Prime Red, and the first Prime ever to die in battle.

Luckily, Enclave isn't much into random assassination. If they had set up a trap like this, it was because they figured we had a naive new Prime Violet who would run into it because she didn't know any better. And they probably wouldn't want to kill her; they would most likely want to capture her, which in some ways might be worse, both for her and for us. I'd bet that some of those Enclave scientists would just love to have their own Prime to experiment on.

These thoughts were running through my head as I went barreling into the teleport trap. When the haze cleared away, I found myself in a large, dimly-lit room -- it reminded me of my high school's gymnasium -- that was simply packed with Zoinks. Up ahead, I could see Lily walking passively beside a pair of baddies who were hauling a limp Violet between them. She appeared to be unconscious; she had probably been beaten into submission by the Zoinks the second she appeared.

I was all set to go thump me some bad guys, grab Padma, and teleport out again lickety-split. She looked completely helpless, and who knew what those goons were going to do to her? Something awful, I was sure. But then the rational part of my brain stepped in and said "Hold on there, pardner! Let's think this through." And I did; Shelley had taught me too well not to.

First of all, the odds were against me. Now, it's not like I've got a problem with long odds -- I'll happily take on twenty or thirty Zoinks any day of the week -- but there were easily two hundred of them in here, plus Lily and whoever it was that was carrying Padma. Pretty lousy chance of me getting to her, wouldn't you say?

And even if I grabbed her, I wasn't exactly sure how we were going to get out again. If we were in an Enclave facility, then chances were that I would not be able to communicate with my fellow Primes outside or with Wizzit, and he certainly would not be able to teleport me out of here. Until I could find some sort of usable teleport machinery on my own, I was stuck.

A quick shout-out to Wizzit confirmed that he was not answering my calls. So, while it might feel good to go save Padma right this second, my best bet, whether I liked it or not (and I didn't) was to hide, bide my time, and try to figure out some sort of a rescue plan.

Luckily for me, the first part -- hiding -- looked like it was going to be a whole lot easier than I had any right to expect. For one thing, no one had figured that a second Prime would be stupid enough to teleport through. Now that their trap had been sprung on Violet, they appeared to be closing up shop. No one was even looking my way. I guess it's lucky I ran in when I did. Too, Zoinks are not very observant critters, nor are they smart. Unless they had been specifically ordered to be on the lookout for another visitor, chances were that none of them would even notice me.

And I had a third factor in my favor as well: I was very hard to see right now. Remember that command I muttered to my force shield right before I entered the trap? The command was "Camouflage mode on." It's sort of a standard procedure of mine whenever I run headlong into some sort of unknown trouble. And yes, I learned it from Shelley.

Camouflage mode is a lot like having your own invisibility cloak. Instead of hiding me behind an indigo-colored haze, my force shield displays whatever is on the other side of me, so that I become essentially see-through. It's not perfect. In a brightly-lit room with a fast-shifting background, I would be pretty easy to see. Still, as long as I stuck to the shadows and didn't move too quickly, no one was likely to spot me.

I dodged around the nearest Zoinks and tried to follow the group carrying Padma as quickly as I could. It was harder than you might think; try running through a crowded room sometime without touching anyone and you'll see what I mean. By the time I reached the doorway they had used, they were out of sight.

What I saw when I exited was a hallway that went on for a short distance left and right before curving out of sight in both directions. I couldn't see which way Padma's group had gone, and the acoustics were bad enough that I couldn't hear them, either. The Zoinks coming through behind me were all heading to the left, so I went right. Surely they wouldn't keep their important new prisoner with the common rabble, would they?

Well, yes, they would. The right-hand side of the hall turned into a dead end after less than fifty feet. I made my way back, but by then there was a stream of Zoinks coming through the door, and I had to wait for them to get out of my way. I'm surprised that none of them noticed the wisps of smoke curling from out my ears by the time the last one came through. As the last Zoink was going down the hallway, I set out to find Padma, wherever she was in this Enclave facility.

I have to say, it was one of the most confusing places I had ever been in. There was no such thing as a straight passage or a right angle anywhere. Hallways crossed other hallways at irregular intervals; even the lighting didn't make any sense -- reds and yellows, greens and blues, all used with no pattern I could discern.

I decided to follow my hallway as far as I could; I had no compelling reason to change, and at least this way I could maintain the one point of reference I had, which was the large room where I had teleported into. The hallway arced more-or-less continuously around to the left, and at first I wondered whether I might be making a large circle. After about an hour, though, the intersections with other hallways started coming with greater frequency -- so quickly, in fact, that soon there wasn't enough space between the intersections for rooms of any kinds, just floor-to-ceiling pillars that kept getting thinner and thinner. Eventually, even those stopped, and I found myself in a large, brightly-lit circular room.

Well, maybe "room" isn't the right term, because that implies that there were walls and doorways, and there weren't, just these pillars that gradually thinned out into open space. I decided not to go too far into the "room", at least not right away, because there was a lot of activity there. Not too many Zoinks, but a lot of human-looking guards, a few monsters, and these stationary tubes of grayish-green gas that might have been Wizzit's sicklier-looking cousins. Or they might just have been gas \-- who knows? Regardless, I saw no Padma, and no Lily, for that matter.

Like I said, I tried to keep to the outskirts of this area for fear of getting spotted or run into. I eventually drifted over to a section that didn't have too many people walking around in it and tried to observe what was going on in the hopes of getting a line on where Padma was. As I watched, I gradually began to figure out how the place was laid out.

There appeared to be a number of hallways that left this room, about half of them circling out to the left and half to the right. The left-arcing hallways and the right-arcing hallways crossed and re-crossed each other many times as they spiraled around the central area and eventually moved out of sight. It made for kind of an interesting pattern, I guess -- one which I'm sure would interest someone like Nicolai much more than it did me -- but as far as I was concerned, it had one definite advantage: It would be very hard to get lost in. If you didn't know where you were, then you could just pick any hallway and follow it, and eventually you would wind up either at a dead end or in this central area.

Once I figured that out, I decided it was time to go exploring. There was one hallway in particular, I noticed, that seemed to have more traffic than the others. I didn't want to go down there because I didn't want to get bumped into and caught, but at the same time, it seemed like a logical place to look for Padma. Finally, I compromised and picked a hallway that spiraled the opposite way, reasoning that I would cross it a number of times and get plenty of chances for investigation.

The hallways each seemed to have their own color of lighting. The path I picked was illuminated by an orangish light, while the one I was interested in had purple. That made it easy to remember -- violet light to find Violet.

It wasn't long before I made my first discovery. The first few rooms, being very small, appeared to be not much more than storage closets, and in the third or fourth one of these, I found Padma's clothes. Tan shorts, Hello Kitty tee-shirt, underwear, and special boots -- all folded and neatly stacked. No socks, but I was pretty sure she had been barefoot underneath the boots.

I started getting worried when I saw the clothes. I didn't think there was anything sexual about it; I didn't think, for example, that they would try to rape her. The Enclave monsters I've encountered just don't seem to think that way. No, taking away her clothes was probably more a way to control her. She would be less likely to try to escape if she knew she would have to roam these halls naked.

The thing was, if they had made her remove her clothes -- or if they had forcibly removed them from her -- then that must mean that she was not shielded. I didn't think that Enclave could turn off our force shields remotely the way Wizzit could, and the clothes didn't appear to be charred the way they would have been if Enclave had overloaded her shield to make it fail. So, somehow they had persuaded her to de-power her shield and probably remove her belt as well. I would need to find it before Padma and I left here.

I tried to remember what Wizzit had told us about our Prime belts. Now that Padma had been wearing hers for a while, it ought not respond to anybody but her, and if they altered her into one of their monsters (even though they supposedly couldn't do that against her will) her DNA would be sufficiently changed that the belt ought to stop responding to her. Any attempts to break into the mechanism to study it ought to make it burn itself into a molten pile of useless slag. Ought, ought, and ought, and none of them, as far as I knew, had ever been tested.

I gathered up the pile of clothes and tucked it under my arm. If I found Padma, I would prefer to be able to give her back her belt, along with a stern lecture on how she should never let herself be talked into taking it off again. Still, even giving her clothes to her would undoubtedly restore a measure of her self-confidence, and I was sure I would need her help in getting out of here.

I continued cautiously along my orange hallway, peeking into every room whose door I could open. My initial success was not repeated; I went on for more than an hour without finding anything else of interest.

Well, okay, maybe I shouldn't say I didn't find anything of interest. I poked around any number of storerooms containing all kinds of fascinating-looking equipment; none of what I saw, though, was Padma. Realizing that I might never again have this kind of unfettered access to an Enclave base, I tried to examine as much as I could and to at least look over everything. I hoped my belt-cam would record some useful information even though I was not connected to Wizzit right now. And it certainly wasn't a boring search. I was nearly caught several times, and I spent a tense fifteen minutes hanging from an overhead beam in an unfinished room while a tech of some sort ate his lunch beneath me.

My next breakthrough came as I was approaching the red intersection for the eighth or ninth time. I heard footsteps approaching from ahead of me, so I carefully tried a door which proved to be unlocked. The room inside was dark, so I slipped inside and closed the door as quietly as I could.

Almost immediately, I could tell I was not alone; I heard the quiet sound of someone breathing, slowly and regularly. I froze, letting my eyes and my force shield adjust to the dim light. There was a sharp inhalation -- not of surprise, but more like a sudden yawn, the way you'll do sometimes when you're asleep. Then I heard a soft creaking, as if someone were shifting about on a piece of furniture.

Gradually, I was able to make out that fully one-half of the room was closed off by heavy metal bars, sort of like an old-fashioned jail cell. Inside the cell, against one of the side walls, was a portable bed or cot with someone lying on it. The figure was covered up by a sheet or blanket, and from what I could make out, she was lying on her stomach. That's right, she. I couldn't make out much of her figure, and her face was turned away from me, but I could definitely see a lot of long black hair.

"Violet," I whispered. No response. "Violet!" Then, louder, "Violet! Wake up!"

The figure stirred, then settled herself again. Not wanting to raise my voice further, I reached between the bars, grabbed some hair, and started pulling. That finally provoked a response. The figure raised her head and asked muzzily, "What is it? Is it time to get up already?"

I had been wrong. This wasn't Padma. The sleepy questions had been asked in Cantonese; I had somehow wandered into Lily's room. Or cell, from the look of things.

She was pulling herself into a sitting position, looking around. "Who woke me up? Who is here?"

I decided to let her know I was in the room with her; otherwise she might start calling for help, and I couldn't risk that. "My name is Prime Indigo," I said in Cantonese. "Do you remember me?"

She peered through the darkness in the direction my voice had come from. "Prime Indigo? Yes! Yes, I remember. Where are you? I can't see you."

"I have made myself invisible," I said. "I am in great danger; I can't let anyone know that I am here."

"You said you wanted to be my friend," she said eagerly. "Have you come to help me? Are you going to take me away from here?"

She sounded so hopeful that I really wanted to tell her yes. Unfortunately, I have found that in these situations, it doesn't help to lie. "I do want to be your friend, and I will help you if I can," I told her regretfully, "but that is not why I am here. Enclave has captured another friend of mine, and I came here hoping to free her."

"Enclave?" she repeated, sounding puzzled, as well she might. I had used the English word, not being entirely certain what its Cantonese translation would be.

"That's our word for the people who are holding you here," I explained. "Have you seen another prisoner? A girl with long, black hair and dark skin?"

She shook her head. "I never see anyone. I never talk to anyone. I am in this cage all the time." She sighed, and I felt the weight of the entire world in that sigh. "Whenever they put me in here, I am always very tired. Usually I fall asleep at once. If I don't, then I cry until I sleep. They come back when I wake up, and then I go away again."

I looked at her, unsure of what to do next. I knew that finding Padma was of the utmost importance, but I couldn't find it in me just to leave this girl here. I wanted to know more about her. "Where do you go?" I asked gently.

"Not to a place. I . . . go away in my mind. I think they take me somewhere. I sometimes have strange dreams of fighting, but I honestly do not know what happens." She shook her head sadly. "I am sorry I can't help you, friend Prime Indigo. I don't know anything about your friend."

"That's all right," I assured her. "I would like to help you if I can. Tell me, is this cage always locked?"

"Yes, always," she said. "I try it every day. Some days I come back to myself while the sound of its closing is still ringing in the room, and I rush over to try to open it. It never works." She shrugged in despair.

I examined the cage. The bars were thick; I didn't think I could bend them even with my Prime-enhanced strength. I couldn't see any way to force the door, and I have never learned to pick locks. "I cannot get you out of this cage. I am sorry."

"I understand. I know you must leave soon to find your friend, but can you please do one thing for me?"

"If I can. What is it?"

She looked down. "Can you . . . hold my hand?" she asked shyly. "Please, just for a little while? I don't remember the last time I touched anyone."

For a moment, I didn't know what to say. I mean, here I had essentially just bailed on her, but she didn't get mad or even complain. No, she just asked me to sit with her and hold her hand. My heart went out to her; how could I refuse? "Of course," I said with a little catch in my voice. I reached between the bars and took hold of her hand. She clutched it eagerly in both of hers. "What is your name, pretty one?" I asked her.

I heard her inhale sharply. "Do you really think I am pretty?"

I thought for a moment, and then I chuckled. "No, I lied. You are not pretty. You are beautiful."

She looked down demurely. "You are very kind, Prime Indigo. My name is Li Lin-fa."

I nodded. That actually made sense. Her family name was Li (or Lee) and I was pretty sure that Lin-fa meant something like lotus or water-lily in Cantonese. "Lily Lee" would be a reasonable Americanization of her name. "And where do you come from, Li Lin-fa?"

"I was born in a village near Shanghai," she said, looking up at me. "My father was the best fisherman in the world, but he drowned during a storm when I was fifteen. Younger Brother did his best to provide for us, but he had much bad luck; he and Mother and I often went hungry. One day, some men came to the village and offered to pay a whole year's earnings for me. Younger Brother agreed at once. I . . . thought they wanted me to become a prostitute for them. They put me in the back of their van. There was a funny smell, and I fell asleep, although it was only late morning. When I woke up, I was here in this cage. I have never left."

"What year was that?" She named a year in the Chinese zodiac. I know how the zodiac works, but I'm a little rusty. It took me a while to remember what year we were in and to calculate the difference. After a few moments, I said, "I think you have been here for six years."

She bowed her head. "So long. I did not realize it had been that long. My family probably thinks I am dead." She brought my hand up to her cheek; it was wet with tears.

I was feeling really bad for her right about then, and I would have given my right arm for a way to get her out of that cage and away to somewhere safe. Suddenly, I had an idea. "Li Lin-fa, are there bars on the walls?"

"On the walls? No, there is just . . . I believe it is cement. But the bars are securely set into the cement; you cannot pull them out."

"I don't think I will need to." My sap gloves. I hadn't had a chance to work with them much, but from what I had read, I could theoretically punch a cement wall without hurting myself. If I had enough time, maybe I could use my Prime-enhanced strength to punch a large enough hole that --

"Hsst!" she said suddenly. "Someone is coming. You must hide!"

She must have had exceptional hearing, because I was only now starting to hear footsteps. She let go my hand and I stepped back into what I hoped would be a dark corner. "I will remember you, Li Lin-fa," I told her. "I will do whatever I can to get you out of here."

"I will never forget you, Prime Indigo."

The door opened, the lights snapped on, and JB Swift stepped into the room. He didn't dawdle; he just pointed his remote at Li Lin-fa and pressed a button. Li Lin-fa straightened, and the expression on her face changed subtly. In the space of a single breath, she had become Lily Lee. "Come with me," JB Swift said tersely.

"Coming," came the near-mechanical reply. Lily pulled the plastic cap off the end of one of the metal tubes comprising her cot, reached inside, and extracted a key. This, she used to unlock the door to her cage. Once outside, she tucked the key into a pocket of her jumpsuit. I expected her to tell JB Swift about me at this point, but she didn't. Either her Lily Lee persona didn't share that kind of information with Li Lin-fa, or else she was so passive in this state that she wouldn't even report an intruder unless she were directly asked.

JB Swift walked briskly out of the room, and Lily followed him. Not having a better plan, I did the same. He led us down a series of hallways of varying colors, heading away from the central hub as far as I could tell. Finally he stepped into a largish room. A normal person might have held the door open for Lily, but JB Swift simply bulled his way in and let the door close on its own, right in Lily's face. I suppose I should have been grateful for this rudeness on his part, because otherwise I could not have gotten in undetected. As it was, Lily caught the door and pushed it open to let herself in, and I was able to slip in behind her.

JB Swift was standing in front of a low table \-- well, probably not low for him, but low for me -- on which lay one of the two things I most wanted to see: a black belt with a nondescript metal buckle. Padma's Prime Violet belt. He pointed to it. "Put it on," he told Lily.

Lily stepped forward and fastened it on. It was a good fit; even though she was shorter than Padma, Lily's waist appeared to be about the same size. She was able to set the buckle, but it didn't fuse into a single piece the way it did when Padma put it on; I thought that was a good sign.

JB Swift picked up several sheets of paper. "Repeat after me," he said, reading from one of the sheets. "Belt on."

"Belt on," Lily echoed passively.

"Belt activate."

"Belt activate."

"Belt turn on."

"Belt turn on."

They continued in that vein for quite some time, systematically trying out pretty much every possible way to say, "Start up, you stupid belt!" (I think he actually had her say that at one point.) "Prime Violet activate" was on the list, but then, so was "Purple Prime go", so it didn't appear as if they had any particular insight as to how the belt worked. After a while, they gave up. JB Swift told Lily to remove the belt and place it back on the table, and the two of them left together, with JB muttering something about the stupid bureaucracy of this place.

Thirty seconds later, I had the belt rolled up around the rest of Padma's clothes and was making my way out of the room. I had decided not to try to follow them. For one thing, I was worried that they might hear me open and shut the door to the room. For another, while I really wanted to help Li Lin-fa, I had to find Padma.

I had a hunch that they might be keeping her near where her belt was. Forty minutes later, I discovered I was right. Two right-curving hallways down and three left-curving hallways across, I spotted a door that had a guard stationed on either side of it. I hadn't seen any guards by any of the other rooms I had passed, so I figured this must be where Padma was.

The two guards appeared to be the same ones I had seen escorting Padma out of the large room. They were alters, but still recognizably human; I hoped that meant they weren't too tough. They looked bored, so I assumed that no one was expected to come by any time soon. I decided to try to take them out and chance being discovered.

It wasn't all that hard. Being mostly invisible, I just sucker-punched the first one with my specially-powered sap gloves. He went down in a shower of sparks. The second one was a little harder; I had to hit him twice before he went down. I dragged the pair of them into a different room and tied their hands and feet using some disposable cuffs from my battle vest. Then I stepped into the room in question just as easy as you please.

I seemed to be developing a knack for coming upon sleeping young women. Padma was lying curled up on her side on some kind of padded table, sort of like what you'd see in a doctor's examining room. She was facing away from me, but even so, I could tell it was Padma and not Li Lin-fa. She had not a stitch on, and, uh, let's just say I could tell her skin was Indian-dark all over. Nope, no tan lines on her anywhere.

"Violet," I whispered. She didn't move. I walked over to her, wincing at the bruises I saw on her face and arms. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing slowly and deeply. The poor kid, I thought; she must have been through a lot in the hours I had spent searching for her. The braid she usually wore when training was undone, and her long, dark hair spilled across her face and upper back. Her underneath arm was pulled up tight against her breasts; the other arm dangled out of sight over the far edge of the table. "Violet!" I said again and touched her bare shoulder.

In a burst of motion, she whipped her arm back. She was gripping a short metal bar of some sort, and this she slammed hammer-style against the side of my head. Had I not been shielded, I'm sure she would have cracked open my skull. As it was, I stumbled backward and tripped over a standing lamp. She had been shamming, and now she exploded into action. She attacked me again almost before I hit the floor, swinging the metal bar with deadly intent.

"Hey, calm down!" I cried, trying to fend off her attack. It wasn't easy; I was dizzy from that blow to the head, and my eyes seemed to be crossing. She struck me a glancing blow across the temple. "It's me; it's Indigo."

She spun and landed a backwheel kick against the side of my head. "Liar!" she shrieked. "You have killed Indigo, and now I will kill you!"

"No, wait, it's really me!" I reached up, and despite my double vision, I somehow managed to catch her next swing. I pulled her off-balance, and she tumbled down onto the floor beside me. "No fooling, Violet," I said in a low voice as she struggled to get her weapon free of my grasp, biting at my hands and kicking. "It's really me. You know, fourth Dan, Kukkiwon, and all that? I'm not dead."

She froze, and a second later my arms were full of a very frightened, very naked nineteen-year-old girl. "Oh, Trevor, I am so sorry!" she sobbed. "They said they would kill you unless I gave them my belt, and after I gave it to them, they said they had killed you anyway! I didn't know what to do!"

"It's all right," I assured her, clasping her to my chest and stroking her hair. "I'm here now. We'll figure out what to do." When her sobs had subsided, I took hold of her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. (It was a bit of a struggle, I might add, not to let my glance drop down, say, a foot or so, but I managed it.) "Okay, first lesson: Don't trust Enclave," I told her sternly. "Ever. Don't trust anything they say, and never, ever take off your belt for them. They would have told you anything to get it off you. I was never their prisoner."

"But they knew your name was Trevor!" she protested. "How could they know that unless . . .?" Suddenly she slumped, and a look of horror crossed her face. "Unless I told them. I must have called out your name when you were about to be attacked by Lily Lee. Oh, I am so stupid!"

I grimaced. "Well, let's not argue about that right now. We have to get out of here before anyone gets back."

"But they took my clothes and . . ."

I shoved the bundle I had been carrying into her hands. "Here. I got lucky and found both your clothes and your belt. Get yourself dressed and powered up, and then let's see if we can find a way out of here."

She accepted the bundle with a grateful smile. "Yes, Indigo," she said meekly. "Thank you!"

I have to say, I admired the fact that she didn't get shy all of a sudden and tell me to turn around while she got her clothes on. I mean, I turned around anyway, but she couldn't have known that because she couldn't see me.

"How did you make yourself invisible?" she asked, and then immediately answered her own question, "Oh, camouflage mode. Right. Mike showed me how to do that." There was a pause, and then I heard her say, "Prime Violet, activate."

I turned back around to see her dressed and waiting expectantly. When nothing happened, she repeated, "Prime Violet, activate!" Then she said, with a note of panic in her voice, "Indigo, it's not working!"

"All right, just stay calm," I said as soothingly as I could. I had no idea why she was unable to power up, but panicking never solves anything. "Um, trying tapping the command. Mike showed you how to do that, didn't he?" I know I had had to practice the tapping codes every day for my first six months as a Prime, and I still went over them once a week even after three years.

For a moment she looked blank, but then she nodded in recognition. "Yes, he did. I . . . think I remember how it goes." I watched her carefully tap the code on her belt buckle, and a moment later she was surrounded by a violet haze. "It worked," she said, and the relief in her voice was painfully obvious. I was about to tell her to tap the sequence for camouflage mode, but I saw she was already doing it. In seconds, she disappeared from view.

"Good," I said. "Now let's get out of here."

In less than a minute we were walking hand-in-hand down an orange hallway. Yeah, I know. Hand in hand -- sounds romantic, doesn't it? The truth is, I was being purely practical. I couldn't see her, and she couldn't see me, and if we didn't maintain some kind of physical contact, chances were that either we'd be tripping all over each other or we'd get separated.

"How are we going to get home?" Padma wanted to know. "I don't remember the tapping code to teleport."

"That's because there isn't one," I replied. "Wizzit is the one who controls that, and we can't contact him from in here. We'll have to find an Enclave teleportation device. But before we do that, we're going to have to find a safe place to hide for a while and heal up."

"Why? I'm not that badly hurt."

"Maybe not, but I am." In truth, I was having an increasingly hard time staying upright. My double vision was not getting any better, my head was splitting, and I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. "I think I'm going to have to initiate a healing coma."

"What, here?"

"Well, not out in the hallway. I'm looking for a certain specific room, one with a cage built into it." I was trying to find Li Lin-fa's room, in fact; I figured that inside a cage would be about the safest place to hide if you're invisible. I saw an intersection with a red hallway coming up; I hoped it was the right one, because I wasn't sure how much farther I would be able to go on. Concussions can be nasty things, and I was pretty sure I had one, thanks to Padma's backwheel kick to the head.

I almost missed the door. I was having trouble concentrating and had thought it would be on the right. It had been on the right when I first entered it, but I was going the other way now. I guess Padma figured out what I was searching for, because she pulled me across the hall, opened the door there, and asked, "Is this what you wanted?"

It was. I stumbled inside and into the cage, which, thankfully, Lily hadn't closed behind her. "I'm going to lie down under the cot," I explained. I could tell I was having trouble forming my words clearly; my mouth felt like it was full of cotton. "Don't close the cage door. If Lily Lee comes in, don't worry; she's probably harmless. If she finds you and starts speaking Chinese, tell her Prime Indigo is here."

I wasn't sure how much Padma was able to understand my slurred speech, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I was fading fast; I figured I was going to pass out soon. She helped me slide beneath Li Lin-fa's bed, which was the most out-of-the-way place I could think of. I didn't bother to try initiating the coma verbally; between Padma's troubles and my mushmouth, I figured it probably wouldn't work. Luckily, I didn't have to think too hard about tapping the correct sequence; my fingers had it pretty well drummed into them over the years. I had a little trouble getting the sap gloves off to do it, though.

There's a reason that we let Wizzit initiate our healing comas at HQ instead of doing them ourselves. For one thing, he can judge just how deep the coma needs to be. For another, he can monitor the state of our health and terminate the coma as soon as the healing is completed. I could do neither, and so I blindly set it for forty-five minutes at maximum depth. It was probably overkill, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

My eyes snapped open after forty-five minutes of complete oblivion. I could tell immediately that I had set it for too long, because I had that funny taste in my mouth that you get if you take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day. My head felt much better, though. I looked around cautiously; I could see no one in the room with me, although there was an odd distortion in one corner of the cage that might have been Padma.

"Violet," I whispered softly.

"I'm here, Indigo." I had been right; her voice was coming from the shimmer in the corner. "Are you all right? I was worried about you. What was wrong?"

"You kicked me in the head pretty hard," I explained, and before she could start apologizing I added hastily, "It was a good plan you had. I'm pretty impressed with how well you carried it out. You just kicked the wrong guy, that's all. I'm all right now." I rolled out from under the bed. "Did anyone come by?"

"No. No one. It has been a little boring." Then she gave a soft laugh. "I am not complaining, though."

"Are you feeling all right? I didn't get a chance to ask you that earlier."

"I'm a little sore, but I'm basically okay."

"All right. Our next step is to try to find some sort of teleportation device."

"How are we going to get out of this cage?"

"What do you mean?" I looked around. The cage door was shut tight. "Oh, no. How did that happen? You didn't close it, did you?"

"Yes, you told me to. You said, 'Go close the cage door.'"

I groaned. "No, I said, 'Don't close the cage door.'"

"That is not what I heard! I thought you wanted to lock us in to be safe. I thought you had a way to get out." She gave a little moan of dismay. "I am so sorry, Indigo! I am messing everything up. Now I have trapped us. Oh, I am so \--"

"Stop right there!" I cut in.

She stopped, more out of surprise than anything else, I think. It was hard to tell, though, since I couldn't see her face and judge her reaction. "What is it?" she asked, fear in her voice. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing. I just don't want to hear you call yourself stupid again, do you understand?"

"Yes, Indigo," she said meekly.

I moved over to where the shimmer was and cautiously reached out a hand. "Where are you?"

"Right here."

I felt her arm brush mine. I took hold of it and hauled her to her feet. "It wasn't your fault, okay?" I said. "It was mine. I made a mistake. I knew I wasn't speaking clearly. I should probably have said something that was harder to misunderstand, like 'Keep the door open.'" I could feel her trembling, so I pulled her close. "We're going to be okay," I told her earnestly. "We're going to make it out of here. Believe that. We've just got to figure out how, that's all."

She put her arms around me and held on tight. "When we get back, I am going to quit the Primes," Padma declared firmly.

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am! As soon as we get back home, I am going to quit. I am no good to anyone, Indigo. I keep making stupid mistakes, I have put your life in danger, and I --"

Now, I suppose if I had been some sort of super-cool, secret-agent-type guy (or even Prime Orange) I would have given her the biggest kiss of her life right about now just to stop this little tirade. I mean, she's a pretty girl, I'm holding her in my arms -- what could be more natural, right?

Unfortunately, I'm not quite that smooth with women (and I couldn't see where her lips were), so, well, I pinched her instead. She jumped back. "Ouch! What was that for?"

"To shut you up!" I hissed. "Listen, Violet, do you think you're the only one who ever makes mistakes? We've all screwed up at one time or another, every one of us. Sometimes the mistakes are really big ones. Sometimes people even --"

My words died in my throat. I hadn't meant to go quite this far. But as long as I had started it, I figured I had to finish. I swallowed and went on more calmly, "Sometime people even die because of our mistakes. But that doesn't mean we should quit. What we do is important, Violet, and we are the best in the world at it. If you quit, then all that would happen is that Wizzit would have to find someone to replace you who is not as good as you are."

"The best in the world!" she repeated contemptuously. "How could I be the best? That's impossible!"

"Did you ask to be in the Primes?" I demanded. "Did you enter a contest? Did you fill out some sort of membership application?"

"N-no," she replied, sounding puzzled. "I . . . I was just picked. Prime Commander came to my house and asked me to join, just out of the blue sky, and of course I couldn't . . ."

"You couldn't say no, right?"

She let out her breath. "No. Of course I couldn't. Who could?"

"Lots of people," I said tersely. "And there are lots of others who would love to be Prime Violet right now, but who would be lousy at it. Wizzit . . . chooses us somehow. I don't know how he does it, but each person that he picks is just what the team needs at the time. Violet, trust me -- we need you. Please don't quit."

She gave a little shuddering sigh and buried her face in my shoulder, clutching me tightly. I think she was crying, but like I said, I'm not all that smooth with women. I stroked her hair and let her hold onto me and tried to think of something to say that didn't sound dumb. After a few minutes, she asked in a quiet voice, "So, what should we do now?"

I thought for a moment. "Well, first of all," I told her, "I think you ought to initiate a healing coma of your own. Just a light one, maybe ten minutes long, to get rid of your bruises. I realize you may be feeling only a little sore right now, but I don't want your muscles getting all stiff if we have to wait around for a while."

"Yes, Indigo," she said.

Something in the resigned tone of her voice caught my attention. "Um, are you sure you're okay, Violet?"

"Yes, Indigo." She sighed and laid her head against my shoulder. "You are right; I should not quit. It was foolish of me to say that. But I want you to know that I am sorry for all of my mistakes and for causing you so much trouble. I promise I will make it up to you. From now until we get back home, I will do whatever you say." Then she added meaningfully, "Anything you say."

Okay, time out. Quick poll here: Guys, how many of you would dearly love to be in my position right about now? Threat of death aside, I mean. You're alone with a pretty girl (even though she's currently more-or-less invisible), it's not likely that you're going to be interrupted any time soon, and she has just told you she'll do anything you want her to do, with the emphasis on anything. Let's have a show of hands, shall we? Let's see -- one, two, three, . . . . Okay, and how many of you would have, ahem, taken advantage of the situation? Uh huh . . . that's about what I thought.

Well, guess what? I didn't. Yup, Padma was sending me signals that even I couldn't possibly ignore, and I decided to ignore them anyway.

It wasn't that I didn't think she was attractive. Of course I found her attractive; I had ever since she had joined the Primes. Hey, I'm a healthy, normal guy. I might possibly have even daydreamed at some point about walking into my room at HQ and finding her (and/or Trina and/or Shelley) lying on my bed waiting for me. And I sure don't mind walking behind her when we're on our way to the gym and she has on those blue short-shorts that she sometimes wears for training, the ones that are just a little too small. So maybe I was an idiot for throwing away what might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

But look at it this way: I figure I have at least seven or eight years left as a Prime, and Padma probably has ten or more. If I took advantage of her now (and it would have been taking advantage, she presently being scared out of her mind and feeling guilty as hell) then we'd both have to live with it -- and each other -- for that long. Awkward City, population two. Nuh-uh, not a good idea.

So, I gave her another hug and said, "Anything, huh? Well, right now, anything means getting yourself comfortable under that bunk and initiating a light, ten-minute healing coma. Got it?"

She took a long breath, then let it out. I couldn't tell whether she was disappointed or relieved, and I'm not sure I wanted to know. "Yes, Indigo," she said meekly. She pulled away, and I heard the sounds of her moving herself under the bed. "What is --?" she murmured, then she said, "Oh. Indigo, here are your gloves."

My sap gloves, which I had taken off to initiate my healing coma, came skidding out from under the bed, propelled by Padma's unseen hands. I bent down to pick them up. "Thanks."

"May I ask you a question?"

"Sure, if it's a quick one."

"Did you ever make a mistake that caused someone to die?"

This was exactly what I had not wanted to get into. "Yeah. Once."

"Was it . . . Robin?"

I stiffened. "Where did you hear that name?" I demanded. Then I forced myself to relax. "Never mind. Shelley's history lessons, right?" Shelley made sure that every new Prime had at least heard the name and some of the history of each of their predecessors. Not just the three who died, but the ones who retired, as well.

"Yes," she replied, sounding a little nervous. "And Trina mentioned her to me once. Do you remember that sketch she made during my healing coma? It was of you and Robin, not you and me. It was quite a romantic-looking scene and the two of you looked quite happy, but Trina said not to mention it to you because the affair had ended badly."

"Badly?" I laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"Also, you were babbling earlier. You mentioned Robin's name several times. I know I am not supposed to talk about what you said during your healing coma, but you seemed quite upset."

I sighed and sat down on the floor beside the bed. "Yeah, they tell me I still babble about Robin sometimes, especially when things aren't going well."

"Is . . . is it anything you would want to talk about?"

"No," I said firmly. "Maybe some day, but not here and now. I will tell you this, though. When she died, I almost quit the Primes myself. That little pep talk I gave you? It was the same one Shelley gave me, almost word for word. And guess what? It worked; I'm still here." I reached under the bed and gave her shoulder a squeeze. At least, I hoped it was her shoulder and not something that would get me slapped. "Start up your healing coma," I said. "I'm going to try to figure a way out of here."

"Yes, Indigo."

I stayed where I was, my hand on her shoulder, until I felt her relax and heard her breathing slow and deepen. Then I began to search the cage. The first thing I did, obviously, was to take all the plastic caps off the ends of the tubes comprising the cot and check inside. Nothing but some dust and a few bugs. No spare key. Then I checked all through the sheets, blanket, and pillow. Still nothing, except I noticed that the pillowcase smelled faintly of shampoo.

That got me to wondering about Li Lin-fa. Had she really spent all her time in this cage over the past six years? How had she taken care of herself -- eating and drinking, not to mention personal grooming? Had her Lily Lee persona done all that? If so, then why would Enclave ever want to return her to this cage and revert her back to Li Lin-fa? Besides the cot, there was very little inside this cage, just a toilet. Presumably, Lily Lee would take care of any other personal matters before she entered the cage. It appeared, then, that they really did trot out Li Lin-fa just to sleep. I wondered why that would be.

I concluded my search without finding anything. Nothing was hidden here, at least as far as I could tell. I decided to run through our options. As I saw it, we had two: we could try to get out now somehow, or we could wait for Lily to return. Sitting around passively waiting for her didn't appeal to me; she would come or not regardless of what we did. So, how to get out without her help? Bending the bars or punching through the wall were the only possibilities that I could see. I didn't especially want to disturb Padma while she was healing, so I decided to try the bars first.

They looked intimidating -- solid steel, probably an inch in diameter. To be honest, I was pretty sure I couldn't bend them. Our force shields increase our strength, speed, and endurance, sure, but only to the theoretical limits of our individual bodies. When I'm shielded, I'm not Superman. I'm just Prime Indigo.

After a few minutes of straining, I heard Padma ask sleepily, "Indigo, why do we call him Wizzit? Is that his real name?"

I let go the bars with a smile. It's funny, the things your mind comes up with when you're in a healing coma. She would probably feel embarrassed, remembering this later, but at the moment I found it quite charming.

"I don't think anyone knows his real name, or even whether he has anything we would recognize as a name. Calling him Wizzit started off literally as a joke," I explained. "I guess when he founded the Primes, he didn't really understand the idea of Earth humor, so Prime Commander started telling him jokes and then trying to explain why they were funny. There was one in particular that he really liked, something about a parrot who kept yelling, 'Who is it? Who is it?', and he started repeating it to everyone, just in case they hadn't heard it. Eventually 'Who is it?' got shortened to just Wizzit, and so that's what everybody started calling him."

I didn't hear any immediate reply, other than the quiet sound of her breathing. A few minutes later, she said, more alertly, "Indigo?"

"I'm here, Violet. How are you feeling?"

"Better. I'm not sore any more. What have you found out?"

"Well, there aren't any keys hidden anywhere in here."

She laughed, and I heard the sound of her rolling out from under the cot. "Did you really think you would find one?"

"Well, you never know," I replied with a grin. "Come over here and help me; I'm trying to bend the bars." I stretched out my arm and guided her over to me.

"Have you had any luck?"

"Not much. They're pretty thick."

The two of us pulled and strained for a while, trying every way we could think of to get leverage, before we finally gave up. "I think we made a little progress," I said as we sat down on the bed.

"Sure. We made them a little more shiny." Despite the lightness of her tone, I could tell that she was worried. "Do you have another plan?"

"I have two more," I said confidently. "First, I thought I would try punching through the wall using my sap gloves."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"Then we wait for someone to come by." She gave a disgusted snort, and I added, "If you have a better plan, let me know."

"I wasn't criticizing you. There is no need to be defensive," she protested.

"I'm not," I replied calmly. "Seriously, let me know if you come up with any ideas. You're marvelous company and all, but I don't want to stay cooped up here with you forever."

"I . . . will try to come up with something," she replied. "Um, do you have a rubber band?"

I blinked in surprise. "A what?" I asked stupidly.

"A rubber band," she repeated patiently. "We may have to fight our way out of this place, and I can't have my hair flying around in my face. I need something to tie off my braid, and they took the ribbon I was using."

"Oh. Um, let me check." I patted the pockets of my battle vest. I finally gave her one of my disposable handcuffs; they're basically just serrated strips of heavy-duty plastic, like an oversize garbage bag tie. As thick as her hair was, it should hold the end of her braid quite nicely.

Then I set about the business of punching through the wall. I decided to start work on an out-of-the-way spot, one that might not be noticed if someone came in before I was finished. I eventually settled on the section of the wall near the toilet, away from the cage door. My first few punches didn't do much, nor did I expect them to; I was mainly interested in trying out the gloves. Fortunately, the walls seemed to be just painted cinderblock, and I had heard of guys punching through individual cinderblocks before.

I had started to get comfortable with the gloves and was just thinking about trying my first big punch when Padma hissed, "Indigo! Someone is coming!"

"Get under the bed!" I ordered her. "Don't do or say anything unless I tell you to."

"Yes, Indigo," she replied, although I could tell she wasn't happy about it.

A few seconds later, the door opened and JB Swift entered, followed closely by Lily. She must have had standing instructions, because she immediately drew out her key and unlocked the cage door. Then she went in the cage, put the key in its hiding place, and slammed the door. JB Swift snickered and said, "Sweet dreams." A moment later, he was gone.

I waited silently, watching Lily. Gradually, the blank look left her face. She glanced around the small room, and with a resigned sigh, she lay down on the bed.

"Li Lin-fa?" I whispered, hoping I had interpreted her actions correctly.

She sat up at once. "Prime Indigo!" she cried. "My friend, you have come back! Where are you?"

"I am over here," I replied in Cantonese. I stepped over and laid a hand on her arm. "But please speak softly. I am still in danger."

"Oh! Please forgive me!" she said, immediately dropping her voice to a near-whisper. "I am just so excited that you are here!" She stood up and clutched my arm with both of her hands. "Did you find the friend you were looking for?"

"I did. She is here, but she is hiding. She has made herself invisible as I have." I switched to English and said, "Violet, come out and meet a new friend of mine."

"Are you certain?" Padma's voice came dubiously. She had switched to Prime-to-Prime communication. "I recognize her. She is Lily Lee; she is the one who tricked me into coming to this place."

"She is and she isn't. She seems to be at least two different people. This is the one who speaks Cantonese. She calls herself Li Lin-fa. She seems harmless."

"Are you sure?"

"No, not completely," I admitted, "but reasonably sure."

Padma sighed. "Very well. How do I say hello to her?"

"Nei hou. But let me first tell her that you don't speak Cantonese."

To Li Lin-fa, I explained, "My friend is shy, but I have persuaded her to come out to meet you. She does not speak the language, though. Do you speak English?"

"Just a little."

"Very well. I will translate." Switching back to English, I said, "Come over here, Violet." Back to Cantonese. "My friend's name is Prime Violet."

"Prime Violet," Li Lin-fa repeated. Then, to my surprise, she said in passable English, "Hello, Prime Violet. Happy birthday."

"Happy birthday?" That was Padma, Prime-to-Prime. "What does that mean? It's not my birthday."

"Um, it's probably the only English she knows," I replied the same way.

"Oh, I see." Then she said aloud, "Nei hou, Li Lin-fa."

Li Lin-fa performed an odd pantomime, reaching out as if she were shaking someone's hand. Then I realized that must be exactly what she was doing, shaking hands with invisible Padma. "Prime Violet -- she is your sister?" she asked hesitantly.

It was an understandable question, given the way that Chinese put the family name first. "No," I said. "She is just a friend. We are not, er, that is, we are just friends. Nothing more." I wasn't sure why I added in that last part, but it seemed to make Li Lin-fa happy. I went on, "She and I need to talk in English for a while to decide what we are going to do."

"I understand," she said. Still clutching my hand, she sat down on the cot.

"Violet," I said, "we need to talk about Lily."

"Lily? I thought you said her name was \--"

"It is, but if we use that name, she will recognize it and know we're talking about her."

"Oh. I see. Yes, we do need to talk about her. Do you realize that she is -- um, what is the term? -- crushing on you?"

"She has a crush on me?" The thought hadn't occurred to me, although, now that she had mentioned it, it seemed a likely possibility. Li Lin-fa had not let go of my hand since I had announced my presence, and she had seemed especially pleased to hear that Padma and I were nothing more than friends. "Well, she tells me I'm the only person she has spoken to for the past six years, and I have tried to be kind to her," I explained. "I guess that could lead her to form an attachment."

"You mean, she has never seen your face because you are invisible, and as far as she knows, you are the last man on earth? Yes, I suppose that would explain it."

It took me a moment to realize that Padma was teasing me. "Ha ha, very funny," I said. Actually, I was secretly encouraged to hear her show some personality. She had seemed pretty down on herself up to now. "She said she was kidnapped from her village when she was fifteen," I explained, "and now all she does is sleep in this cage. The rest of the time, I presume she's Lily. JB Swift appears to turn her from one to the other with that remote control he carries."

"I see. You believe she is harmless right now, but the moment JB Swift shows up with his remote control, she will become our deadliest enemy?"

"Err, yeah. Something like that."

"And yet, you want to take her with us, correct?"

I had been thinking about that very problem, in fact, and had come to a definite conclusion about Li Lin-fa. It was going to be hard to say, though. I sighed. "No. We can't. It would be far too dangerous. We don't even know where to find a teleport device here. We could spend hours searching, and it's going to be hard enough for just the two of us not to get caught. We're going to have to leave her here."

"Oh." There was silence for several seconds. "I . . . I agree. I am just surprised that you . . . I mean, she is so very . . . a-and you seem so . . . never mind. When should we leave? Now?"

"I want to talk with her for a few minutes first."

"You want to say goodbye?"

"Well, yes, and I'm going to tell her why we're leaving her here. But I also want to tell her what has been happening to her, why she doesn't remember most of the last six years. I think she deserves that much. And I also want to show her where her key is hidden."

"Do you want her to try to escape? That would be madness! She would have no chance!"

"I know that, but I don't think she will try to escape. I mean, look at her." Li Lin-fa was lying down on the cot now, her eyes half-closed, still holding tightly to my hand. "I honestly don't think she has the energy to try to get away. Whatever they have Lily doing must be exhausting, and they make her pay the price for it."

"But then, why tell her where the key is?"

"She'll see us get it out anyway, and . . . maybe it will give her a bit of hope, knowing that she could walk out of this cage, even if she couldn't go very far."

There was more silence. I wished I could see Padma's face and get an idea of what she was thinking. "All right," she finally said. "I will exit the cage . . . and I will turn my back so the two of you can speak privately."

"Thanks, Violet." I saw the cap float off the end of the metal tube as she retrieved the key from its hiding place. There was a click as the cage door was unlocked, and then the key floated back into the tube.

Li Lin-fa had fallen asleep. I sat down beside her and shook her gently awake. "Li Lin-fa, I must leave now with Prime Violet," I told her. "I would like to take you with me, but I cannot. We are in great danger here, and I want you to remain where it is safe."

She bowed her head. "I understand," she replied. "I will miss you terribly, friend Prime Indigo."

"I will miss you, too. Before I go, I want to tell you some things that I think you ought to know. Things about yourself and what they are doing to you here." I explained to her a little about Enclave and how they seemed to have turned her into a living robot. "Do you remember any of what happens when you go away?" I asked her when I was done.

She looked thoughtful. "Small bits, I think. I remember fighting someone, as if I were in a dream . . . and few other things."

"Do you remember your broken arm?"

"Only waking up beside you. I went away again soon after that, and when I came back, my arm was healed. This Enclave, they are bad people?"

"Yes, very bad. They destroy things and kill people without reason. They killed a friend of mine."

"Have I -- has Li-li-li killed anyone?"

"No, Lily Lee has not killed anyone. Not yet."

"Then you should kill me now."

"What?" I half-rose from the cot in surprise. "Of course I am not going to kill you!"

"But you should," she insisted. "Strangle me, or tear a piece of metal off of this bed and bash my brains in. I would not fight you." She closed her eyes and went on in a quiet voice, "I do not want to kill anyone. I do not want to be responsible for anyone's death. I would prefer to die before that happens."

I laid a hand on her shoulder, and she shivered at the contact. "Even if I wanted to kill you," I said gently, "I would not be allowed. We are not permitted to kill in cold blood."

"Then I suppose that one day I will become a murderer." She laid her hand atop mine. "Is there anything else you wished to say to me?"

"I have something to show you." I pulled the cap off the metal tubing, extracted the key, and held it out to her. "This is the key to your cage."

She took it and looked at it closely. "Is that where it always is?"

"Yes, I think so." I took the key from her and replaced it in the tubing. "But I must warn you -- even if you got out of this cage, you most likely could not escape from this place."

She nodded. "I understand."

"Li Lin-fa, I promise not to forget you. I will return for you some day, if I possibly can."

She picked up my hand and caressed her own cheek with it. "May I ask one thing from you, friend Prime Indigo?"

"What is it, pretty one?"

She smiled at the compliment. "You will think I am silly, or unduly forward." She hesitated. "No, I should not ask."

"Li Lin-fa, there is no harm in asking. I may simply tell you no."

She dropped our joined hands in her lap and looked down at them. "I had never kissed a man before they . . . before I came here. Now it does not appear likely that I will ever get free. Would you . . . kiss me once before you leave, so that I will know what it is like?"

Man, oh man, if they ever offered classes in heart-breaking, Li Lin-fa would be the teacher. She was playing me like a violin, and she probably didn't even realize it. I looked around. Padma was nowhere to be seen, which didn't tell me anything. Trusting to her discretion, I said, "It would be my very great pleasure." I tilted her chin up and gave her the softest, tenderest kiss I could manage.

"Thank you, Prime Indigo," she said when it was over. Tears sparkled in her eyes. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Li Lin-fa." A thought occurred to me. "Do you want me to find your family and tell them that you are alive?"

"No. It is better that they think I am dead."

"As you wish." I stepped out of the cage and closed it firmly behind me. "Let's go, Violet," I said in English.

"I'm right here, Indigo."

At the door, I turned for one last look at Li Lin-fa. She was lying on the cot, eyes closed; she appeared to be already asleep.

Chapter 18

"So, what did she offer you?" Padma asked me Prime-to-Prime, once we were outside in the hallway.

"What do you mean?" I said. "She didn't offer me anything."

"She asked you something, and you jumped up and said no. I could tell that much, even without understanding Cantonese. She asked you to leave me behind and take her with you instead, didn't she?"

I clenched my teeth, trying to keep a rein on my temper. Courtesy, I reminded myself. Courtesy, everywhere and always. Aloud, I said mildly, "You don't know what you're talking about, Violet."

"I know she was trying to seduce you," Padma retorted, undeterred. "Did she offer to sleep with you if you took her with you?"

"No. She asked me to kill her." Padma gasped. I went on, "She said she didn't want to be responsible for Lily Lee murdering anyone. She wanted me to strangle her, right then and there, just so that couldn't happen. I told her no. The only other thing she asked me to do was to give her a kiss before I left, which I did."

"Oh." There was a long silence. "Sorry, Indigo. I will shut up now."

"That would be a good idea."

I decided to take Padma to the large open space where all the spiraling hallways came together. I explained, Prime-to-Prime, what I knew about the pattern of halls and lights as we went. She was uncharacteristically quiet while I talked; I assumed she was feeling bad about what she had said about Li Lin-fa.

We had to slow down as we approached the center; there seemed to be more activity than previously. In fact, the hallway we were using became impassible (at least for us invisible folks who wanted to remain undiscovered) while we were still some distance from the center. We had to switch tracks several times before we finally caught sight of the main chamber.

"This is their central control area?" Padma asked me.

"Yeah, as near as I can tell. Do you see anything around here that looks like a teleporter?"

"I don't know. What do they look like?"

I stared at her. Or rather, I would have stared at her if I could have seen her. As it was, I just kind of stared at the space where I knew she was. "How should I know? I'm not the tech person. Hasn't Nicolai had you, I don't know, dust ours once a week or something?"

"No. I have never seen it. Do you mean to tell me you don't know what a teleporter looks like either?"

I slapped my free hand over my face and shook my head in despair. "No," I said. "I have no idea."

"Then how are we going to get out of here?" she demanded.

"I don't know!" I snapped. "I guess we'll have to figure out what one looks like, won't we?" I looked around the chamber as I considered the problem. An odd assortment of beings populated the open space. The tubes of grayish-green gas were there, surrounded by monsters of varying kinds. I caught sight of our favorite skinny red hedgehog; he seemed to be addressing some of the gas tubes. "Let's find out what JB Swift is doing," I suggested, pulling Padma with me.

"I'm telling you there's another Prime here!" he was saying. "There must be. Someone knocked out the guards you had posted at the girl's door, and I doubt she was capable of it. She wasn't much of a fighter."

Padma hissed softly at this; I squeezed her hand in warning. One of the tubes pulsed in an irregular pattern, and JB Swift said, "Yes, I saw the belt. I had my attack doll put it on, and we tried every English phrase we could think of to activate it. Unsuccessfully, I might add. It may have been damaged in the fight, or perhaps it simply doesn't respond to voice activation in English." More pulses. "Well, how should I know? You let me use it for only a little while. We left it there in the room, as you ordered. It's not my problem if you lost it."

Still more pulses, and these went on for quite some time. It looked like JB Swift was getting a dressing-down; I could see that he was starting to get mad. "I will not!" he shouted at last. "No. Absolutely not. She is spent, I tell you. I couldn't possibly send her out again, not for at least twenty-four --"

A rapid series of pulses cut him off. That went on for a few seconds, and then JB Swift cut off the pulses. "No, of course I'm not developing feelings for her. Do I look human to you? It's just that I have invested the last six years in developing the attack doll, and I will not throw that away just because you --"

More light pulses. JB Swift said patiently, "Yes, I know you think we need to keep the other Primes distracted so they can't organize a rescue attempt, but if there's one already --" Pulses again. JB sighed. "All right, if you think you need to buy more time, I may have something that will distract them. May have. Which Prime was she? What was her number?" There were some more pulses, and then a grin spread itself across JB Swift's ugly red face. "That's perfect," he exclaimed. "I hadn't wanted to send this one out because it's highly vulnerable to number seventeen's attacks, but without her, the others should find him a tough nut to crack. How many drones can you spare?"

Whatever the gas-tubes pulsed must have pleased him, because he bowed and said, "That should be more than enough, your Excellencies. I will make preparations at once." More pulses. "Look, I can do only one thing at a time. Someone else will have to oversee the search for her." With that, he was gone. I mean, he literally disappeared, and I was reminded how JB Swift had earned his name.

Padma began pulling on my hand. "We should follow him," she said.

"Did you see which way he went?"

"No, but if we can find him, then perhaps we can teleport out when he sends out his monster."

I considered what she had said. "Violet," I said, "remember when I told you to let me know if you came up with a better plan than mine?"

"Yes . . ." she replied hesitantly.

"I'm glad I said that. Piggybacking on JB Swift's monster is the best idea I've heard all day." I chuckled and gave her hand a little squeeze. "Come on, let's go."

I reasoned that he would make his headquarters somewhere near Lily's room, so Padma and I hustled back to the red/orange intersection we had just left. Sure enough, we soon caught sight of a huge monster striding along the red corridor ahead of us, and we heard JB Swift's voice saying from in front of him, "Just go out there and tear them apart. I know what I told you about the purple one, but she won't be there. You'll be fine." There was a rumble like the sound of a cement mixer with indigestion, and then he went on, "Of course I'm sure. We have her trapped here. You just go attack those other Primes with everything you've got; they won't know what hit them! That's a good monster!"

Padma giggled. "He is talking to him as if he were a dog."

I chuckled. "Well, no one ever said that Enclave monsters were smart."

We followed them along the red hallway for a while. Cement-mixer didn't move very fast, but geez, he was big! The hallways in this place were pretty broad -- probably to accommodate all the monster traffic -- but this guy filled most of one all by himself. After a time, JB Swift and monster turned left into a corridor whose color I couldn't quite place. It was an odd cross between blue and purple. Then, after a moment's thought, I mentally kicked myself. It was Indigo, duh! Boy, I can be stupid sometimes!

JB and Cement-mixer trundled down Indigo Highway for a long time, like close to an hour. Finally they stopped in front of a set of double doors that looked to open nearly as wide as the hallway. (A good thing, too, if Cement-mixer was planning to go through them.)

The room turned out to be fully as high-school-gymnasium large as the one I had teleported into. I was pretty sure it was not the same room -- I would have remembered exiting into a me-colored hallway -- but it could have been its clone. JB Swift directed Cement-mixer over to the center of a large circle inscribed in the floor, speaking encouragingly to him all the while. "Now don't worry about a thing. You're bigger than they are, you're stronger than they are, and you're fas-- well, anyway, you're stronger than they are. And just forget about the purple Prime; she can't hurt you."

"I'm not purple!" Padma hissed softly. "I'm Violet!"

I chuckled quietly. "Yeah, well, I never thought I'd see an Enclave monster with self-esteem issues!"

That set her to giggling so much that I was afraid we would be discovered, Prime-to-Prime communication notwithstanding. The Zoinks (I decided I liked that better than "drones") were starting to arrive anyway, so I hustled us over to an out-of-the-way corner to wait where we could see everything but (hopefully) no one would trip over us. "Indigo," Padma asked after we had been watching the Zoinks slowly drift in for a while, "may I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What would you have done if Lily had asked to come with us?"

"I would have said no," I replied without hesitation. "I already told you why."

"But she is so beautiful!" Padma said. She sounded troubled. "Much prettier than I. And . . . forgive me, but you seemed quite attracted to her. I thought for certain that you would want to take her with us."

"Maybe I did. But like I said then, it wouldn't have worked out. It would have put all three of us in a whole lot of danger."

"But what if she had begged you? What if she had offered to --"

"I would have said no," I repeated firmly. Hang it, why did girls always want to discuss these things?

"But what if --"

"Look, Violet," I said, exasperated, "leaving aside the facts that you hold your own quite well in the pretty department and that looks aren't everything anyway, she's not the gal who brung me. I would have said no."

"Who . . . brung you? I don't understand. What does 'brung' mean?"

I laughed softly. "It means 'brought'. Colloquial simple past tense of 'bring'." Yup, son-of-a-linguist strikes again. "When I was growing up, there was an old guy across the street from us who used to tell me, 'When you're at a party, always dance with the gal who brung you.'"

"Um . . ."

"Which means," I went on, "that you need to remain faithful to your friends, even if you happen to meet someone who may be new and beautiful and exciting."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "I see. You were just being loyal."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, I . . . suppose not."

Poor Padma. I could tell her vanity was really taking a beating here. "Let me put it this way," I said. "You asked me about Robin earlier, and I didn't really answer you then. Now I will. She is my deep, dark secret, and you have discovered it." I took a deep breath; this was going to be hard. "Robin's death was my fault. I screwed up. She died because I let her down. I've been haunted by that ever since, and I swear I will never, ever let it happen again." I was glad we were invisible at the moment, because I didn't want her to see me blinking back tears. Talking about Robin still got to me, even after all this time, and I hadn't even told Padma everything. I hadn't told anyone everything, although I think Shelley suspected a lot of it.

I cleared the tightness from my throat and went on, "You are the reason I'm here right now, Violet. The only reason. I'm not here for Lily or Li Lin-fa or anyone else; I'm here for you, period. I jumped through that teleport trap because I was your minder and it was my responsibility to find you and bring you home safely. As far as I'm concerned, nothing else matters at the moment. You are the most important person in the world to me right now, and your safety and well-being are all I care about. And that's why I told Li Lin-fa no."

Padma made a soft sound, something between an "Oh!" and an "Aww!". It's that sound you hear girls make a lot when they see a really cute kitty or bunny or something. She shifted position, and then I felt her hand cuff my ear.

"Ow! Hey, what was that for?"

"Sorry!" Her hand caught hold of my hair, and she started to pull me toward her. "Come here, you idiot!" she hissed when I resisted. "That was the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I am going to kiss you for it."

It was pretty awkward, as kisses go. I had never kissed anyone who was invisible before, and I'd bet Padma hadn't either. It actually went a whole lot more smoothly once I closed my eyes and just kind of felt where my lips should go. And, of course, we had to break it off when we heard JB Swift's amplified voice boom out, "Prepare for teleport in five minutes!"

"Oops! We had better go," I said.

The Zoinks had clustered themselves around Cement-Mixer, and they all appeared to be standing within the circle inscribed on the floor. I took that to mean that Padma and I ought to be within the circle as well, if we wanted to leave with the others.

It was hard not to bump into anyone; the only place that was comparatively free of Zoinks was directly in front of JB Swift's control panel. I squatted down there and indicated that Padma do the same to reduce the likelihood that we might be discovered. "Stay as still as you can," I whispered to her. He was behind some sort of plastic enclosure that looked like it hadn't been cleaned for while, but one could never tell.

"Prepare for teleport in four minutes!"

JB Swift was studying something on his control panel. He glanced up at us, then down again, and then he frowned and glanced back up. I said a very bad word.

"What is it?" Padma demanded. "What's wrong?"

"I think he's seen us. Stay still!" I commanded, gripping her hand tightly.

JB Swift leaned over to a microphone. "Bill, I'm picking up an odd shimmer in front of you, right at the very top of the circle. It's probably nothing, but have a drone check it out." (Bill? I thought. Bill the Cement-mixer? Well, why not?)

Cement-mixer grumbled something. JB Swift replied testily, "Well, how should I know what it is? Just check it out. And no, I can't stop the countdown at this point, not without authorization which they won't give me."

He returned to his controls and then announced, "Prepare for teleport in three minutes!"

Bill the Cement-mixer grumbled something at one of the Zoinks. It began duck-walking walking slowly toward us, sweeping its arms from side to side so as not to miss anything.

I uttered a different very bad word. "Violet, listen to me," I said, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. "I'm going to try to draw their attention away from here. I want you to stay there. Do not try to help me, do you understand? Don't help. Just stay put."

"But Indigo --"

"No buts. Stay where you are. That's an order. If you're not inside this circle when their countdown reaches zero, then everything I have done here will have been for nothing, and I'm going to be very angry with you. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes, Indigo." She sounded scared, but at least she wasn't crying, although it sounded like she would be in about two seconds.

"Keep hold of yourself," I warned her. "Don't lose your head. Everything's going to be fine." I looked up. The Zoink was getting closer. "Don't worry about me. I'm not planning to get left behind. Now, as soon as you teleport, start attacking the monster. Shout out to Wizzit that it's highly vulnerable to your attacks. Tell him to start tuning your weapons to take him out."

"My -- my weapons?"

"Your boots! Come on, think! Those boots you made!"

"Oh! Yes, I understand."

"Good." I stood up; the Zoink was nearly within arm's reach of us now. Reaching down to my belt buckle, I quickly tapped the code to turn off camouflage mode.

The Zoink started at my sudden appearance right in front of it, and it fell backwards onto its butt. It might have been funny if things had not been so grim. With a yell, I kicked it in the face and without waiting for the other Zoinks to react, I charged forward, swinging sap-gloved fists and yelling like a madman. Behind me, I heard JB Swift announce that there were two minutes left to teleport.

Two minutes? I grinned. It was like a game. All I had to do was stay inside this circle for two minutes. Who couldn't hold off twenty or thirty Zoinks for two minutes? This was going to be a piece of cake.

Well, as it turned out, I couldn't hold off twenty or thirty Zoinks for two minutes. Although, to be fair, it wasn't really the Zoinks; it was Bill. He waddled forward and swatted at me with a car-tire-sized hand. I had scouted that and had picked up a Zoink as a shield, but the force of his blow was enough to send both of us sailing across the large room, tail over teakettle.

"Indigo!" Padma cried, Prime-to-Prime. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I panted. "Stay where you are." I risked a glance over to where I knew she was. Too many Zoinks near her. I jumped to my feet and began circling around to the back of the circle as if I were looking for the best way to get back in. Just as I had hoped, the Zoinks came back toward me. I leapfrogged the first few and began laying into the rest with punches and kicks. Worked pretty well, I must say, at least for a while. I pushed forward steadily, punching out Zoink after Zoink with my specially-powered sap gloves. At some point, I must have crossed over into the circle, because Cement-mixer came over for another go at me.

I ducked under his first swat, which toppled Zoinks all around me. I didn't bother trying to attack him; based on what I had heard, he was resistant to all of us except Padma. It didn't make sense to me, but I knew it would to Wizzit, and that was another reason Padma had to make it out of here.

I gathered my legs beneath me as JB Swift announced that there was one minute left. I leaped up, thinking to dive over the knot of Zoinks in front of me. I had misjudged Bill's speed, though. He whacked me a good one, sending me flying out of the circle again, directly over Padma's head. I landed hard on the floor, striking my head and right shoulder.

"Indigo!" Padma screamed. "Help!"

Damn! The Zoinks were swarming after me like bees after their queen, which of course brought them right over top of Padma. I shook the stars from my vision and charged forward. I saw several Zoinks fly backwards amid showers of sparks; she was obviously making good use of her special boots. I picked up the nearest Zoink and flung it behind me, wincing at a sudden pain in my shoulder.

"Violet, you're outside the circle!" I shouted.

"I know! I'm trying to get in!"

"Ten seconds to teleport," came JB's voice. "Nine . . ."

Zoinks were starting to pile on top of me now. I flung two Zoinks off of me, but three more jumped on, and then a few more after that. I felt my knees begin to buckle. Desperately, I pushed forward to try to help Padma.

". . . eight . . ."

I staggered forward a step or two, but I couldn't make it any farther. Padma screamed for my help again, and I saw her go down under her own pile of Zoinks. And that was when it happened.

". . . seven . . ."

The first time I saw Shelley create one of her shock waves, I was just dumbfounded. I went up to her afterwards and asked her how she did it. She shrugged and smiled and said, "You just draw in the power from your force shield and then blow it out again as hard as you can." It didn't make much sense to me at the time, but now, all of a sudden, it did.

". . . six . . . five . . ."

My anger at the Zoinks and fear for Padma seemed to overwhelm me. I froze for a couple of seconds, and it felt like I was sucking in power from the shield around me. When I couldn't pull in any more, I yelled and threw it back out again as hard as I could.

". . . four . . ."

Zoinks flew everywhere. Even most of the ones that were on top of Padma were blown back by the shock wave. I dove over to her and pulled the rest of them off.

". . . three . . ."

I could feel the tingle of the teleporter charging up now. I hauled Padma to her feet. "We've got to get in the circle! Now!" I shouted at her.

". . . two . . ."

She seemed dazed and tried to go off in the wrong direction. I turned her around and started pushing her forward, but there were too many Zoink bodies on the ground, still semi-active and grabbing at our feet, trying to trip us up.

". . . one . . ."

I decided this was no time to be polite. I grabbed Padma's belt with one hand and the back of her tee-shirt with the other, picked up all hundred or so pounds of her, and flung her bodily forward. She landed inside the circle just as JB Swift said, "Zero!" There was a flash of light, and Bill, Padma, and a dozen or so Zoinks vanished.

Chapter 19

After the light from the teleporter died away, I just stood there trying to recover my breath, hands resting on my knees. Knowing that Padma had gotten away had lifted a huge weight from my shoulders, but I still felt exhausted. My force shield was gone, all except the indigo light surrounding me, and it would be a while before it came back. If it ever came back; I wasn't sure whether it could recharge itself when I was out of contact with HQ. I hastily tapped out the code for camouflage mode, but nothing happened.

"It looks like you missed the last train home, Blue Prime," JB Swift's voice came over his microphone.

"Indigo, actually," I panted. "Blue is my older brother. He's a lot bigger than me. You should let me go; he's the one you really want."

"Trying to play 'Three Billy Goats Gruff', eh?" JB Swift chuckled. He actually had a big voice for such a little guy, and quite a pleasant-sounding laugh. "Too bad I'm not a troll living under a bridge; you will never see your big brother Blue again. There's no way out for you now."

"Don't be too sure." I looked around. The Zoinks nearest me were starting to stir. If I wanted to escape this room I would have to do it soon. I made a sudden dash for the door.

Something clipped me behind the knee, and I fell back with a cry. I turned in time to see JB Swift speeding away from me. He skidded to a stop, and I could see a length of pipe in his hand. He waggled a finger at me. "Ah ah ahh! Can't have you escaping that way."

"How about this way, then?" I dived behind a Zoink and tried to crawl on hands and knees for the door. He dashed forward and damn near broke my arm, hitting me with that pipe again. I couldn't believe how fast he was. "I'm sorry to have to disable you," he was saying, "but I simply cannot allow you to leave."

"Then it looks like you and I have a problem." I pushed myself to my feet. My knee hurt, but I had survived worse. This time I kept my eyes on him as I began walking toward the door. I saw him twitch, and then, before I could jump up as I had planned, my knee exploded with pain, and I sprawled full-length onto the floor again.

Damn! I slapped the floor in frustration. There was no way to dodge his attacks; he was just too fast. How had Shelley ever managed to beat him? Thinking back, I remembered that Prime Commander had said said something about his reflexes, how they didn't keep up with his speed. Could I use that against him somehow?

I struggled part-way to my feet again, but then I sank back down with a groan, pretending that my knee had given out. (Believe me, it wasn't hard!) I pushed myself up with my left arm, the arm that was away from him, keeping my right arm close to my body as if it were hurting something awful. (That wasn't hard either.) Watching him closely, I started to pull myself forward toward the door. I waited until I saw him start to twitch, and then I simply swung my right arm down in a hard backfist.

He had zoomed forward again, pipe swinging for my left arm, as I had hoped. This time, though, the back of my right fist was suddenly in his way and he ran smack into it at top speed. It hurt, even with the sap glove. Hurt him a lot worse, though. He dropped the pipe and wobbled around a bit, rubber-legged. I could practically see the little birdies chirping around his head. Gave me plenty of time to grab him by the scruff of the neck. I crawled forward and slammed him as hard as I could against the wall. He sagged to the floor and fell on his face, unconscious, or at least not moving. Yeah, I could see why Enclave gave up on their speed experiments.

I pushed myself painfully upright. JB Swift had really done something to that knee; it really didn't want to support my weight any more. Around me, most of the Zoinks had gotten to their feet and were heading my way. I wasn't sure what they would do without someone to direct them, and I didn't want to find out. I hobbled for the door as quickly as I could.

As it turned out, "as quickly as I could" wasn't quite quickly enough. A few Zoinks grabbed me on my way out. I pounded them, but somehow, pounding Zoinks isn't the same without a force shield. They slowed me down, which gave the other ones time to catch up, and soon I was in the middle of a full-scale Zoink melee, with no special powers and a bad knee.

After I got hit in the head a few dozen times, it occurred to me that I didn't really need to beat these guys into submission. (Which was a good thing, 'cause ain't no way that was happening!) All I had to do was stay out of their way. That by itself would be challenging but doable.

I fought my way free of them and headed to the back of the room. Sure enough, they followed after me like I was the Pied Piper. I led them into a corner, and once they were almost on me, I darted to one side, circled around them, and made for the door. (Yeah, right, I "darted". I don't know whether you've ever been repeatedly smashed in the knee by a pipe-wielding super-speedster, but let me tell you, darting anywhere isn't exactly an option afterwards. Let's just say I hobbled with all possible speed.)

This time I made it out, though, and I shut the door tight behind me. I wasn't sure whether Zoinks were smart enough to open doors, but I figured it would at least slow them up a bit.

But where to go now? Li Lin-fa's cell? Maybe, if I could wake her up and get her to unlock the cell door and let me hide under her cot. Then I might be able to stay out of sight until my force shield recharged itself. After that, I could turn myself invisible again and initiate another healing coma. Then I'd be as good as new. Yeah, that would be worth a shot. At this point, Li Lin-fa was the closest thing I had to an ally in this place.

Of course, if JB Swift's gassy bosses forced him to activate Lily again before I finished recharging, then I would be spotted right away. Worse, I would be trapped inside her cell.

I stopped for a moment. The word "trapped" tickled something in the back of my mind. What was it? Something about a trap. Something important . . .

Well, whatever it was, it was being shy. Try as I might, I couldn't bring it forward. Eventually, I shrugged and began making my way down Indigo highway. And as luck would have it, I ran smack into a patrol of Zoinks almost right away. As soon as I spotted them, I ducked into a nearby room. They must have been unusually perceptive for Zoinks, though, because they followed me right in.

Now, you may have noticed that I don't normally go in for using weapons. I mean, I understand their necessity when we're about to make one of Enclave's monsters go bye-bye, but for general fighting, I don't like to use 'em much. I figure my hands and feet do enough for me that weapons are usually not necessary, and I don't want to learn to rely on them.

But with a bum knee and a right arm and shoulder that had been bothering me ever since I landed on them wrong? I decided that maybe it was time to break out a little artillery. Or at least start swinging some chairs, which is what I did. The room I had gone into seemed to be a break room of some sort, and there were all kinds of kitchen-type chairs sitting around. I grabbed one and started whaling away on the Zoinks as they came through the door.

Three of them went down right away, and they stayed down, too. The fourth one decided he was going to be a problem. He was a smart Zoink. A genius Zoink, in fact, because he actually picked up a chair of his own and started attacking me with it.

We played dueling chairs for a little bit. I may not use weapons much, but I have trained with them quite a lot, even found weapons like chairs. Mr. Genius Zoink got in a lucky shot to my head, but then I got mad. Bam! bam! bam! and it was nighty-night, genius Zoink.

That hit to the head had me worried, though, because I remembered the concussion that Padma had given me. I put the chair down and sat down on it to take stock of myself. Blurred vision? No. Nausea? No. Dizziness? No. Headache? Well yeah, duh! I had just gotten whalloped in the head. But okay, probably no concussion.

And then I realized that not only had that smack in the head not given me a concussion, but it had knocked loose the idea that had been rattling around in the back of my head. A trap! Of course! How could I have been so stupid? There had been a way out all along, and I had been so preoccupied with finding Padma that I completely missed it.

Feeling suddenly energized, I shot up from the chair, and then out the door and down the corridor I went, searching anxiously for one particular intersection. I vaguely remembered that the storage room I had in mind was near a red-green crossing, and it was fairly large, so it must have been pretty far out from the hub.

I found a red hallway and turned down it. If I've described this place well enough, you'll realize that there were actually two red hallways -- one that spiraled clockwise, and another that spiraled counter-clockwise -- and I had no idea which one I was looking for. Better to make a choice than to dither, though. I was starting out from my own indigo hallway, so I reasoned that the next one would be blue, and then green after that. Two intersections and I would be home free. If I remembered correctly and if I had chosen the correct red hallway.

I was just coming in sight of the blue hallway when an alarm began to sound. JB Swift must have woken up and tried to warn everybody. There were no sounds of tramping feet coming my way so far, though, so I kept going, limping along as fast as I could. Past blue, and I had nearly made it to green when I saw a monster coming around the bend straight toward me.

I stopped. There were no nearby doorways to duck into, nowhere to hide. It looked like I would have to fight my way past this guy. He wasn't exactly Bill the Cement-mixer, but he could have passed for his slightly smaller brother. With a groan of despair, I set myself. Better to attack than to defend, I decided as I began running toward him to try a jumping sidekick.

It almost worked. He seemed to be off in his own little world and didn't spot me until I was in the air heading for him. But then he looked up and swung a hand the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, slapping my whole body up against the wall. Not a good feeling, let me tell you; I think he broke a couple of ribs. I scrabbled back from him along the floor while he watched me with what seemed like puzzled amazement. Then he appeared to hear the alarm ringing and put two and two together. He pointed a bratwurst-sized finger at me and growled something that might have been, "Stop right there!"

Leaning heavily against the wall, I pushed myself to my feet. "Like hell I will!" I snarled. "Try to catch me, Chuckles!"

He spread his arms wide and lumbered toward me, which is kind of what I had hoped he would do. I waited and watched him closely, and when I felt I had judged his motion correctly, I dove between him and the wall. Made it! I almost wished I hadn't, because I landed on those cracked ribs of mine, and I cried out with the pain of it.

Chuckles had turned himself around by the time I got back to my feet. We had kind of a funny footrace then, the type you see in bad horror movies. He was trundling toward me, his arms outstretched, and I was backing away from him, on my feet but barely able to walk. I kept glancing behind me, hoping to see a green glow, and I let out a whoop of excitement when I finally saw it.

I limped double-time around the green corner to where the door I was looking for should be. Had to be, if I entertained any hopes at all of escaping. And guess what? Glory be, it was there. Surrounded by Zoinks.

They didn't see me at first. I wanted to stand there and say every single very bad word I knew in every language I spoke, but there wasn't time. Even Zoinks would eventually notice me standing there swearing. I charged into them, knocking most of them off-balance, and then I quickly tried the doorknob. Locked. Of course.

I slapped my hands against the door in frustration. It rattled loosely, and it sounded like it was made of wood. That inspired me, and I started pounding in earnest then, hitting it as hard as I could near the knob with my sap gloves. The door jamb started to splinter, and for a moment I thought I might actually make it inside. Before I could completely batter the door down, though, the Zoinks grabbed me, and they held me fast until Chuckles came around the corner.

He looked mad. Now, Enclave monsters always look mad -- I guess it's supposed to frighten us humans -- but this one looked especially pissed. Maybe he didn't like being called Chuckles or something. All I know is, he walked over to me, raised a huge hand, and swatted me against the wall, Zoinks and all. The Zoinks tumbled to the ground and scooted away from him, which left me standing by myself. Barely. Chuckles raised his other hand and slammed me the other way, right against the door jamb. That really hurt, probably because the doorknob drove itself directly into my hip. Then he did the same thing over again, first to one side and then the other, while I bounced off the walls like a rag doll. And then he did it again.

My right shoulder seemed to be on fire in at least two different places, and I couldn't move my right arm at all. When Chuckles raised his hand to swat me for the seventh time, I really started to wonder whether I was going to survive this. I mean, there was literally nothing I could do to defend myself at this point.

Slam! Up against the wall. Slam! Up against the door. Except that this time I didn't stop at the door; somehow I crashed right through it and into some machinery. It took me a moment to realize my good luck. This was the one place in the entire Enclave compound that I wanted to be, and Chuckles had sent me in here.

I stumbled around, looking for what I thought I had seen here earlier. Two poles, taller than I was, standing close together. A teleport trap. There, over in the back, just like I remembered. My ticket out of here.

I reached for the poles and struggled to pull them free left-handed. I heard a crash behind me; I turned and saw that Chuckles had smashed apart what remained of the door and was trying to come through. I say trying, because it was clear at first glance that he was simply too big to fit through. Didn't stop him from making the effort, though, which was funny, because if he had stepped back to let the Zoinks through, it would have been all over for me.

I did my best to ignore him and concentrate on pulling out the poles. My hand kept slipping, and my whole right side was in agony, but I finally managed to wrench them free. It hurt something awful when I did that, though; I looked down and saw that a large splinter from the door -- something about the size of two of my fingers -- had embedded itself in my stomach and was sticking out about six inches. Not sure when that happened, and I didn't want to know how much of the splinter was actually inside me. There wasn't a lot of blood, not yet, but I figured there would be if I pulled it out, so in it stayed. I set the two poles upright a couple of feet apart and started looking for an on switch. And hoping that the darned thing had its own power source.

Behind me, Chuckles had decided to do a little remodeling. I could hear him yelling in rage and smashing at the wall, probably trying to enlarge the doorway so he could get through. There wasn't anything I could do about it, though, so I shut it out as best I could. I saw a red button with the universal "power" symbol on it and pushed it. Sure enough, there was a hum and a few lights came on, along with a display screen of some sort. The screen had four numbers on it -- coordinates, I assumed. They were all set to zero, which was probably not anywhere I wanted to go. I tried to remember the coordinates for my parents' house. Wizzit had taught them to me once, just because I had asked, but I could remember learning only three numbers, not four. I quickly typed in the ones that I knew on the keypad. Should I leave the fourth number at zero? I had no idea.

There was a sudden brightening in the gloom of the storeroom. Chuckles had torn away a good portion of the wall next to the doorway; he would be through in a matter of seconds. I decided just to type something random in the fourth position. I didn't really need to get to my house, after all. I just had to get away from here to somewhere safe so that Wizzit could bring me home. I pressed what I thought was the Start button and felt the tingling start up. I took a deep breath and stepped through the trap just as Chuckles burst through the enlarged doorway.

In retrospect, I should probably have left the fourth number set to zero, because I think it was an elevation indicator. I started falling as soon as I stepped through, and below me was something that looked like it might have been Ohio. As seen from ten thousand feet up.

"Wizzit!" I yelled at my belt buckle. "Wizzit, it's Indigo. Bring me home. Now!" Please! I added mentally. There was only silence. I was having trouble breathing this high up, and it was cold -- bitterly cold. Of course, the air rushing up past me didn't help much. Nor did the fact that I was wearing just shorts, my battle vest, and a sweaty tee-shirt. To make things worse, the splinter had gotten dislodged and blood was pouring out my side. "Wizzit!" I yelled again. I was starting to feel light-headed. Could he even hear me? Would my belt radio work without a functioning force shield?

The wind spun me around so that I was facing up. That was kind of a blessing, because I really didn't want to watch the ground rushing up toward me. Instead, my eyes focused on the large red shape about ten feet above me. Chuckles. He had followed me through the teleport trap. I remember thinking how funny he looked as he windmilled his arms, just like he was trying to fly. And behind him trailed a stream of Zoinks that had followed him through.

I don't think I have ever been so cold. The wind seemed to suck every bit of heat from my body within seconds, and I could practically feel the hypothermia rapidly turning my brain into mush. I pressed my hands to my side, trying to stop the flow of blood. After what seemed like an eternity, I heard Wizzit's voice say, "Bringing you home, Indigo," and I started to feel the tingling at the base of my skull that indicated that he was about to teleport me back to HQ.

Chapter 20

I collapsed to the floor as soon as I materialized. The relative warmth of HQ came as a blessed relief. Many hands picked me up and helped me over onto something soft and yielding amid a confused babble of voices.

"Wizzit, initiate a healing coma for him, now!"

"Can't do that, not until his force shield is recharged. Seven minutes and counting."

"Someone get him a blanket; his skin's like ice!"

"He's bleeding from the stomach. Where's Toby?"

"Careful now, there's something wrong with his arm."

Someone brought a heated blanket from somewhere and laid it over top of me. I have no idea where they got it from or how they got it warm -- maybe Wizzit nuked it en route \-- but I didn't care. I was shivering uncontrollably, and its warmth was like a drug. I clutched the blanket to me and nearly wept at how good it felt.

Toby took charge; he's the one of us with the most medical training. I think he used to be an EMT or something. He checked me all over, then called for gauze to staunch the bleeding from my side. "Can you hear me, Trevor?" he asked after a minute.

"Yeah," I said. I wasn't shivering quite so hard now. "Yeah, I can hear you."

"You have a dislocated shoulder and a broken collarbone," he told me soberly. "I will have to set them before Wizzit starts the healing coma. It's going to hurt a lot."

I nodded. "Do it."

I didn't scream when he started yanking things back into place, but it was a near thing. After that I heard Wizzit announce that my force shield was fully recharged and that he was initiating a healing coma. And then, merciful oblivion.

Chapter 21

My eyes snapped open. I was lying on one of the comfortable chairs in the lounge. Shelley was resting her hip on the armrest beside me. Behind her, I could see the others standing around looking anxiously at me. "You're finally awake," she said, smiling. "Wizzit had you in the healing coma for nearly two hours; we were starting to get worried."

I struggled to sit up. "And all of you were waiting here for me all that time?" I asked, prepared to be humbled by their attention.

She shook her head with a tiny frown. "No, of course not. We were with the Commander, debriefing Padma." She leaned forward, and I felt her cool hand caress my cheek. "Sorry to burst your bubble. Wizzit called us back here when he was ready to bring you around. He thought you might like to wake up surrounded by friends." She stood and extended a hand. "Here, let me help you up."

You know, I really like healing comas. I mean, it's great to know that no matter how badly you get hurt during a fight, Wizzit can fix you up again real fast.

That said, I would have liked to have a period of convalescence after this particular mission. Nothing terribly lengthy, just a day or so of lying in bed, being waited on hand and foot by somebody nice to look at. Shelley, for instance. Or Padma, who would be ever so grateful for everything that I had done for her. Or Trina. Mmm, yeah, I could see Trina hovering over me in one of those low-cut, skimpy little nurse's uniforms with the white stockings. Now that might be worth getting hurt for.

Alas, I felt perfectly fine, and everyone knew that I felt perfectly fine, so there was no point in trying to milk it. I sighed and let Shelley pull me up to my feet. "So how did the fight with Bill the monster go?" I asked.

"Oh, it was great!" Padma said excitedly. "I did just what you said. As soon as I landed, I told Wizzit to tune my boots to attack the monster."

"It was an incredible stroke of luck," Nicolai broke in. "I don't know how you discovered it, Trevor, but his base frequency just happened to lie in Seventeen's zero residue class, which meant that setting her weapons to overload his power base was child's play."

Padma smiled indulgently at him, as if she knew that she was the only one in the room who understood what he had just said. "After a few seconds, Wizzit started laughing like I had told him a good joke," she continued. "He said to hit Bill with a jumping sidekick, and when I did, he simply vaporized. I was so surprised that it worked. The whole thing took less than five minutes, and the others were all laughing and cheering for me!"

Shelley pointedly cleared her throat, and Padma looked down, seeming a little embarrassed. "Of course, we didn't forget about you. They were all quite concerned when I told them you didn't make it out with me. And when Wizzit finally pulled you in, and you had been so badly beaten and were half-frozen and bleeding all over -- we were all very worried."

"Yeah, you were busted up pretty bad," Mike put in. He stepped forward and handed me a blaster. "You, uh, dropped this when we were fighting that wolf-thing. So, what happened, mate? Tried to steal a kiss from the Dragon Lady?"

I laughed. "Actually . . . yeah. It was something like that."

"That's our Trevor," Trina sighed. "Always the ladies' man." She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I'm glad you're safe."

"We all are," Shelley added warmly.

"Oh, and Wizzit told me why I had trouble activating when we were there," Padma said suddenly.

"Well, yeah!" came Wizzit's voice from somewhere above me. "Voice activation works only when I can hear you and process the request for you. Duh! Otherwise, ya gotta tap in the command yourself."

Shelley rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "You can tell us all about what happened in the kitchen." She gave me a side hug. "Dad's cooking. I imagine you're pretty hungry after such a long healing coma."

She was right. I hadn't noticed it until now, but suddenly it felt like there was a Bill-sized hole in my stomach. In fact, I was so hungry I'd even eat Prime Commander's cooking. "That sounds good. I'll join you guys there in a little bit. I'd like to get cleaned up first."

I picked up a few more hugs and handshakes as the others filed out. Soon there was just me and Padma in the room. She came over and rested her hands on my shoulders.

"I, um," she began uncertainly, "I don't know how to thank you for . . . well, for everything. You saved my life out there, many times over." She hadn't spent all her time debriefing, I decided. She must have found time to shower and wash her hair, because it was still faintly damp, and she smelled wonderful. I, on the other hand, probably reeked of blood and stale sweat. She went on, "But . . . about what I said to you . . . you know, when we were in the cage . . ."

"It's already forgotten."

"Good." She sighed with relief. "I was quite frightened and I felt . . . obliged to you at the time. I suppose I still do, but, um . . ." She laughed nervously. "You're cute, Trevor, and kissing you was quite pleasant, but to be honest, I am not looking for a boyfriend right now."

I grinned. "That's okay; I'm not looking for a girlfriend, either. But I like flirting with you, and the occasional kiss between friends is pretty nice, too, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, yes, I would most definitely agree," she said. She laid a hand on my chest as I tried to move closer to her. "Um, no offense, but you're a bit of a mess right now. I don't want to get your blood all over my clothes." She wrinkled her nose. "And . . . you do need a shower."

I laughed. "Go on and join the others, then. I'll be out in a few minutes." She left, and I went to my room.

Once I was clean and had changed out of my bloody, torn clothes, I sat down at my desk and pulled out a sheet of paper from one drawer. I had had Wizzit print this out for me after the battle in Russia. It was a full-color image capture of Lily as I had seen her then, lying on the ground bound up in my handcuffs. Not the most flattering image, but I had wanted a picture of her as the Cantonese speaker, the woman who wept in a cage. The woman I now knew as Li Lin-fa.

"I will rescue you some day," I whispered to her in Cantonese. "I will free you from that cage and I will bring you back with me. I swear it, Li Lin-fa." I studied her picture for a moment longer, then I slid the paper back in the desk drawer and went out to the kitchen to join my friends.

###

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.

Don't miss the next exciting book in the Attack Doll series:

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?

