Warm Front
Book Three of Dimension Out Of Range

02 APRIL 1997
09h17
THE DIGGERS COMPLEX

 Brian was lounging about, reading a magazine, when he saw Jason stride past,
heading towards the Bay of Tonka.
 "Wups!" Brian exclaimed, jumping up and running to catch up. He did so just as
Jason arrived at the door to the Bay and turned around, looking at Brian with a
quizzical expression.
 "Am I missing something?" Bri said, thinking he'd not been told of a mission.
 Jay smiled. "Not in the way you mean it." He turned to the door, which slid
open. Brian watched as Jason met up with Brianna and the two of them headed out
for lunch.

 "What did Bri want?" Bri' asked as Jay wheeled the truck out onto the street.
 "I think he thought we were all going out on a job," said Jason.
 "A little starved for something to do, is he?" she smiled.
 "Probably only as bored as we were," Jason responded. He turned onto an onramp
to I-85.
 "I appreciate you taking some time off YOUR 'busy schedule' to do this," she
said, smiling again and reaching over to squeeze his hand. "We needed a break
from the labs."
 "I didn't realize how true that was until I got out here," Jason answered,
powering down the front windows. "I'm glad you suggested it."
 What she had suggested was that they go out on a sort of a picnic-like trip,
to one of the towns near Atlanta, find a small uninhabited lake, and sit down
and have a nice, quiet, long lunch.
 Well, it wouldn't be exceptionally long. Jason had an appointment to keep, a
big one that he didn't intend to miss. Over the past few years, stemming from
his D-Team days, his eyesight was slowly deteriorating again. The local eye
doctor agreed, and had scheduled laser surgery.
 "Did you bring a contact lens case?" Brianna asked as they turned onto a dirt
road outside the city.
 "Actually," he said, "I thought I'd throw the lenses out."
 Bri' smiled; apparently, she'd not thought of that. "That works too, I guess."
 "So where is this place?" Jason said, flying down the road.
 "Not much further, on your right," she said. "..There!"
 Jason saw only trees and a little cart path. He shrugged, downshifted, and
swung in.
 The scene from Twister played through his mind as he blasted down the dirt
road. His truck was bouncing and careening as much as Bill Paxton's character's
had been. (Jason felt safe, however, that his wouldn't end up getting sucked
into a whirlwind any time soon.)
 "You enjoy making work for me, don't you?" Brianna said, holding onto the
recently-added handrails, which in addition to her seatbelt/harness, was just
barely keeping her inside the cab.
 "Huh?" Jason said, jumping the truck off a rise.
 "I'm gonna have to rebuild the suspension when, if, we get back out of here.
Stop."
 "Aw, I'm having fun."
 "No, I mean stop! You just passed it."
 "Oh." He ground to a standstill and backed up a few dozen feet, then turned
in.
 It was like a mythical garden crossed with something you might find in a Mark
Twain book. It was the old fishin' hole, Loch Ness, the river behind Jason's
grandparents' old house, and all the lakes on Coutts all rolled into one.
 And Bri' had found it, and decided to share it with him.
 "It's fantastic," he finally said, shutting off the truck. He stepped out onto
the grassy incline and walked down towards the pond.
 "Don't just stand there," Brianna said, smiling, looking at him from the back
of the truck, where she was opening the tailgate. "Help me with this stuff."

 They stayed there for an hour and a half, which in Jason's opinion, was about
a lifetime too short. He wanted to stay there forever, but he did realize that
his appointment at the Eye Center was important. They loaded the truck up and
headed back out to the road to Atlanta. This time, Jason took it easier on the
truck, at Brianna's insistence.

 Another three hours later, it was all done. Jason was wearing his sunglasses,
even though he was still indoors. He was thrilled to see straight again, though
he was banned from driving for 48 hours.
 He realized what irked him about Brianna's behavior on the dirt road, as they
proceeded back onto the freeway towards home. Of the two of them, Brianna was
definitely the more agressive driver. The truck rocketed back and forth across
lanes as Bri' vied for position in the Atlanta 500--I'm sorry, no; she was just
driving along, passing slower cars that were doing only 100 MPH.
 At first, Jason thought the white spots in his vision were from the rapid
acceleration, or perhaps a side-effect from the surgery. When he noticed them
start to stick to the road and other horizontal surfaces, he blinked a few
times.
 "Is it just me," he said, "or is it.."
 "Snowing?"
 "THAT'S the word I was looking for."
 "It would appear so," Brianna said, sounding equally confused.
 Sure enough, it was getting heavier and heavier. A spring snowstorm in Atlanta
was not something many people would be prepared for in the best of times. As
proof, a car skidded while slowing down for the next off-ramp, did a full spin
and a half, and hit the curb, flipping over.
 Brianna cut across six lanes and stopped just before the scene. She dialed 911
as Jason leapt out and surveyed the damage. The driver wasn't injured, just
trapped, upside-down in his BMW.
 Once everything was said and done, and fire/rescue and police had come to take
care of the situation, Bri' and Jay got back into the truck. They got about a
mile down the road and the sun had come out, and melted all the snow within
five minutes. The road was only damp in the odd spot.
 "What the heck is going on?" Bri' said, looking around.

 What was going on wasn't really obvious at first, other than the fact that the
weather was going nuts. By the time they returned home, they were witnessing a
deluge of rain and it was twenty-nine degrees C outside.
 "Guess I won't need these any more," Jason said, pocketing the sunglasses. It
was quite dark outside, the beginnings of a vicious thunderstorm coming up.
 "Just don't stare into any bright lights or anything like that," Brianna
cautioned. "And just to be safe, don't play on the computers until after
eleven."
 "Eleven?"
 "That'll be nine hours since the surgery. You should be okay then. If you keep
the lights out this evening, you might be able to cut it even shorter."
 "Thank you, Dr. Diggers," he bit out. "What can and can't I eat for supper?"
 "Oh, ha," she retorted.
 "Seriously. I'm having a munchies attack right now."
 "Wanna order Domino's?"
 "Sure."

 So, less than 29 minutes later, they were chewing on some Meat Lover's Pizza,
trying to figure out what had happened.
 "Ever seen that kind of weather here in town?" Jason asked Brianna.
 "Nope, not in a row. How about you, in your travels?"
 "Not so much," he nodded. <Nothing that could happen here,> he added silently.
 "Any ideas?"
 "I can't really think of anything. Let's see what the weather channel has to
say." He flipped on the television, forgetting about his recent surgery.
 A few minutes later, they were watching when the top story came on, about the
'perplexing weather patterns' experienced earlier. The weatherman gave a shrug
and had no real explanation for it, saying that the storms and precipitation
had just materialized from out of nowhere, and vanished just as quickly. The
heavy rains had continued, stopping just before flood status.
 "I don't get it," Jason shook his head. "It's got to be explainable somehow."
 "Let's check it out, then," Brianna said, grabbing Jason and hauling him off
towards the lab.

 Hours later, they were no further ahead than when the snow had started to fall
(and melt). They had no leads, no ideas, not even any hints on what had gone
on. Weather radar showed the storm cells just appearing, growing from nothing
into fierce weather patterns. They appeared to roam for the most part, making
it even more perplexing.
 They headed off to bed, still confused. Jason lay awake for several minutes
after Brianna had drifted off. He tried to figure out a logical answer for all
the weirdness, but couldn't. Smiling, he walked to the window, tore a pair of
strips of duct tape off the ubiquitous roll, and arranged them on the window in
the shape of an X. As an afterthought, he turned his bedside SnakeLight towards
the window and left it on.

 "Jay.. Jay, get up," someone was calling.
 Over he turned to see Gina standing in the doorway. He glanced at the clock
and decided Brianna must be on her morning run with her sister.
 "What's up?" he asked. 
 "There's someone official-looking at the front door, demanding to see you."
 "Huh?"
 "He showed up in a big navy-blue car about fifteen minutes ago and watched the
house for a bit, then came to the door."
 "Okay, okay," Jay said, climbing out of bed and pulling on the previous day's
clothes. No need for glasses or contacts, he remembered, smiling briefly. Then
he asked for Gina and Brian to accompany him to the door in case something was
'up'.
 He opened the door to see a guy who looked a teeny bit like the goon from the
X-Files; you know, the shapechanger with that little needle that he used to go
hunt down all those doctors with. Jason was taken aback and speechless for a
moment, which gave the guy opportunity to speak.
 "You can stop and help the yuppies when they wreck," he said condescendingly.
"You can put pontoons on your toy truck for when it's too wet to drive, you can
even watch the news with their idiotic overpaid map-readers saying they don't
know what's going on. But what you WILL NOT DO is investigate this phenomenon.
Continuing to do so will endanger your life and your friends' lives." He turned
to walk away.
 "What?" Jason sputtered. "Who the hell do you--"
 Before Jason could say anything more, he was turned around facing the wall of
the house, his face mashed against the siding, an arm twisted painfully up
behind his neck. "Listen to me, you puny maggot," the goon seethed. "You don't
know what you're getting yourself into. If you pursue this, YOU WILL DIE.
Understand?"
 A split second passed, then he released Jason and walked away calmly to his
car, a Crown Victoria which looked like it was government-issue.
 "What the--" Brian finally spewed.
 "I'm not scared," Jason said quietly to them as Lurch got into his car without
looking back. "They can't do anything to us without answering to a higher
authority."
 "Who's 'they'??!" Gina erupted. Brian was busy looking in the direction of a
loud rushing sound.
 Brianna and Britanny arrived just as the car disappeared around the corner.
"Hey," Brit said, "what's up?"
 Gina blurted out about the whole confrontation. As she went on, Brianna looked
more and more aggravated and finally went over to Jason with a look of anger on
her face.
 "What did you DO?!" she snapped, pointing a finger accusingly at him.
 "Nothing! ..much," he trailed off. "I put a tape X on my window as a joke last
night, to see what would happen."
 "And this guy showed up?" she queried.
 "Out of the blue," Jason answered as the group went inside. "I think he's been
watching us. He knew that we'd been at that TC, and he knew about us checking
out the newscasts."
 "He probably GUESSED that part, Jay," Cheetah said.
 "Fair enough. Still, he saw us on the road, and probably ran the truck's plate
to find out where I live. Then he probably checked out associated plates to
this address and ran everyone who lives here. We might all be in danger if we
carry on with this, but I personally think if they're trying to cover something
up, it's definitely worth working on."
 "I agree," Gina said. "I've never been bullied away from anything, and I'm not
about to start now."

 Jason looked at the clock. Two-forty-five AM. Brianna was asleep, and he was
trying to be the same way, but he had too much going through his head. He'd
evidently stumbled upon something big; why else would Lurch be threatening him?
And why did that weather radar on CNN look so familiar?
 Suddenly, it came to him, like a 55-gallon drum of water splashed in his face.
He knew how the weather had been disrupted, and he knew why he recognized the
radar image.
 <But it shouldn't be possible. Not here, not now.>
 He got out of the bed, careful not to disturb Bri', threw on a T-shirt and
shorts, and walked out into the hall. "Computer, quiet mode," he said to a
console nearby.
 "Computer on," came the whispered response.
 "Where is Brian?"
 "Brian is in Lab 6."
 <I'm not surprised.> "Computer off."
 Jason walked quietly towards the Bay of Tonka.

 Brian looked up as Jay entered the room and shut the door behind him. The
latter had to adjust his eyes as he walked into the brightly-lit laboratory.
 "Couldn't sleep?" Brian asked, turning back to the workstation.
 "Uh-huh," Jay responded. He pulled a chair up to the workbench. "Just had an
idea--evidently the same one you just had."
 "You recognized the radar disruption too?"
 "Yup." He pointed to the screen. "Center the image over Atlanta."
 Brian complied, then zoomed out a few factors, knowing what they were looking
for. The radar was the typical weather radar, showing storms in degrees of
severity represented by different shades of colors.
 Jason almost jumped. "There! Right there." He jabbed at the screen again.
 "I see it, I see it," Brian said, highlighting the area in question for a
closer look.
 "See what?" Cheetah said from behind them, causing them both to jump and fall
out of their chairs.
 "Geez! Sneak up on us, why don'cha!" Jason snapped.
 "It's your fault for stomping around and making all that noise earlier," Brit
replied.
 "Stomping arou--" Jason began, then cut himself off. "Never mind. This."
 Bri' came in looking just as sleepy as Brit, as Brian once again highlighted
the radar image in question. Bri' looked over Brit's shoulder, puzzled.
 "What is it, other than a very severe storm?" she said.
 "It doesn't match the normal pattern for such a storm," Brian said. "We've
seen this before."
 "Change to altitudes mode," Jason prompted.
 "I'm doin' it," Brian said. "Gimme some time."
 "That looks like it's way off the coast, though," Cheetah contributed. "How
would it affect us here?"
 "Trust me, if we're right, it's responsible," said Jason. "And they probably
experienced stuff like we did all over the globe." He shuddered. "And we might
be in for some real serious trouble soon."
 "This is a tropical storm right now," Brian said, "but there are three things
that are odd about it. See if you can figure them out." He let the radar image
run through a repeating five-frame cycle.
 Brianna got a look of realization on her face.
 "It's not moving with the other weather patterns," she said. "It's staying in
place."
 "Number one," Jason acknowledged.
 "It's highest point is ten feet above sea level??!" Cheetah read the display.
 "Number two," Brian contributed.
 They studied the screen a bit more. Brianna's eyes widened.
 "It's spinning opposite to all the other storms in the area."
 "Bingo," Jason answered, clapping his hands. "Ladies, you are looking at a
Zardon Weather Disruptor, or more precisely, the primary aftereffect of it."
 "A what?"
 "This was used in some battles we've been in when we were with the WDF," Brian
explained. "One of our one-time enemies wanted to manipulate severe weather to
their advantage--usually to wreck some Quick-Rise military bases we'd just
erected--and created the Weather Disruptor. From an offshore platform in
international waters, or another remote location, they'd cause a storm cell
that defied all known habits of a weather front. The storm cell worked against
the grain of all the rest of the planet's weather, and buggered up the whole
works, screwing things up quite nicely."
 "Why us, then?" Cheetah asked. "Did these Zardons find you and choose to get
revenge?"
 "I don't think it's as easy as that," Brian said, shaking his head. "There's
still the matter of the FBI--"
 "He wasn't FBI, I don't think," Jason said.
 "Whoever. Three-letter-agency agent. Better? They're involved somehow."
 "I don't think that they're responsible," Jason said.
 "Beg pardon?" Brian retorted, blinking.
 "Look at it this way," Jason explained, standing up. "Bunch of aliens arrive
on Earth with the power to totally screw up the weather and destroy everything.
But that's not their real reason for being here. They demand secrecy for
whatever they're doing, or they'll start this device up and wipe everything
out. The government knows that we were on to something here and doesn't want to
see Detroit become the new east coast, so they threaten us to scare us off the
case. That only leaves two things. A, what could the Zardons be looking for
here, and 2, what made them set off the device?"
 "And thirdly, does it involve you two or not?" Brianna finished.
 Jason spun around in his seat. "I'm telling you, I don't think they're
connected. For one thing, we came from a different dimension--the Zardons here
would likely not know about us since we technically have never left the
planet."
 "Except for when we went to Aebra," Brian added.
 Jason sighed. "I guess that counts. But still, they wouldn't care about that.
In any case, I think it's got more to do with the government than us."
 "Maybe we should go out to that area," Brianna said, pointing to the center of
the storm cell, "and find out what's going on."

 In the morning, they woke Gina up and went through the whole story again. She
agreed and prepared the Mark 1, anticipating having to go underwater. Jason
jogged to the Tonka Truck and started flipping switches.
 Brian stopped short, a look of shock and fear on his face.
 Jason realized he was being watched and turned around, a smile on his face.
"What?" he said.
 Brian intoned "Don't tell me it can swim too."
 "Of course it can swim too. Bri' and I add new abilities to the truck every
time we work on it." As Brianna climbed in and shut her door, Jason continued,
"What do you think we do every evening here in the lab?"
 "I dunno," Brian said half-sarcastically-half-bewilderedly as he got in.
"Maybe something a bit more .. intimate, ya know."
 "No way!" Brianna said, powering up the computers. "..at least, not in such a
PUBLIC place," she added, grinning at Jason and squeezing his hand.
 Jason grinned at the expression on Brian's face as he tromped on the gas pedal
and followed Gina out, heading eastward.

 "Hey Gina, we just came up with a thought," Brianna said over the radio.
 "Shoot," Gina began to say, then caught herself and said instead "Go ahead".
 "Think maybe Tyr and the Atlantians might be interested in this?"
 "Hm.. wouldn't hurt."
 "I'll contact them from here." Brianna set up another line of communication as
Brian used radar to try to locate the Zardon device.
 Brianna finished the conversation with Tyr, who confirmed they'd keep an eye
out and be ready to help if possible. Several minutes after that, they were no
further towards finding the storm, and the sea was calm.
 "Ok, what's the story here?" Bri said, pounding the keyboard in frustration.
He checked their position with the GPS (hacked to military precision, of
course), compared it to the early morning weather maps, and then with their
current position, and said, "The friggin' thing's gone."
 "They probably shut it down," Jason offered. "Remember, they can cloak those
platforms, too. Keep an eye out for anything odd." To Brianna, he explained
some more. "Their preferred location for setting these up is either a large
patch of international waters or an unpopulated desert. They have to anchor it
down solidly when they use it on the water, so I'm hoping we'll be able to see
either the platform itself, or if it's cloaked, the mounts used to secure it to
the ocean floor. That's the flaw in their cloaking system--I only hope our
sensor gear can penetrate deep enough to see that."
 "How do they create the bogus weather patterns?" she asked.
 "I don't know. This is the closest we've ever been to one. I guess you could
call it one of our perceived myths--we've heard lots of stories about 'em, even
been given coordinates and hit them from orbit with a nuke or proton torpedo,
but flying right up and knocking on the door? Never."
 "Decrease speed and travel at a thirty-five degree bank to port," Brian
announced. "We'll be circling the area where it should be, at a distance of one
half mile, ten feet above sea level. If it's there, we'll detect it."
 Silently, they waited for a few moments, while the two flying automobiles did
circles in the sky around their target area. Nothing was seen or picked up on
scopes.
 "How deep is the ocean here?" Jason asked.
 Brianna punched a couple of keys. "Just shy of four thousand meters."
 "How deep would we have to go to be able to get a sounding off the floor?"
 "..Twenty-three hundred meters."
 Brian sputtered. "You're going to go down there?!"
 "Got a better idea?"
 "Yeah, let me out with a life raft! I'll wait for you up here!"
 "Brian, it'll handle it," Brianna said in a calming tone. "Even if the armor
couldn't hold it, which it can, we've got a force field too."
 "And it's moot," Jason said, closing the air intakes and switching the truck
to Sea Mode, which was quite similar to Space Mode. Instead of thrusters,
though, the wheels turned and deployed propeller-like surfaces.
 Followed closely by the Mark One, the Tonka Truck descended into the depths.

 Jason adjusted his seat, causing it to make a noise.
 "What the hell was that?" Brian said, all panicky.
 "Oh, probably just KRUNK wheeet nothing, Bri," Jason grinned.
 "Look, you, you're not helping."
 "Neither are you; please get the scanners online." Jason checked the HUD and
saw that they were just approaching 1000 meters.
 "Stop that," Brianna told him.
 "Stop what?"
 "Playing with the wipers, you dolt."
 He had set the windshield wipers on pulse. He flicked them off again, then
turned on the highbeams and the driving lamps. "You're no fun."
 "You're too MUCH fun," she said. "Can you be serious for a moment or three?"
 "There's an actor you never hear anything about," Jason continued, "Yahoo
Serious, the guy who did that Young Einstein movie. Talk about one-hit wonders,
or rather, half-hit wonders."
 "Jay, please--shut up and drive," Brian said, trying to concentrate on the
scanner.
 "Aw." He descended a few dozen more meters, and announced they were at the
desired level.
 "Could they have found a way to mask the pilings?" Brianna said thoughtfully
after a minute had passed.
 "Doubtful," Jason answered. "Even if they could, we'd still be able to see the
five holes drilled in the floor that the cloaked posts were sticking out of."
 "Jay, they must've found a way," Brian said. "There Is Nothing Here."
 "Nothing, yeah, right," he said.
 "Nothing! Look, go one hundred and four meters ahead at nine degrees and, if
you're right, you should have a collision with a bunch of pilings."
 Jason did as instructed, slowly, and never even felt a bump.
 "Was that far enough? Did I have the right heading?" he asked Brian.
 "I'm telling you, you passed right through where they should be. The damn
thing isn't here."
 "Isn't here," Jason repeated in a disbelieving tone. He sent the truck soaring
back up topside. They emerged right where the Weather Disruptor platform should
have been, and floated there. "It isn't here?! They can't move it once they
install it!"
 "They, um, did, Jay," Brian said one more time.
 "How the hell do you move a five hundred thousand ton platform that has to be
laser-aligned by satellite?!" Jason bellowed.

 "Any idea yet?" Brian said thirty minutes later.
 "No dice," Brianna answered. "It's too bad the cloaking device doesn't have to
recharge or anything, to give us even a quick radar glimpse of the platform."
 Jason's head shot up at the same time as Brian's. 
 "What?" Brianna said.
 "Minovski's!" the human friends erupted. Jason explained. "About one in a
hundred of these platforms were designed using a Minovski particle field in
order to add a level of protection," he said. "Did you ever see Gundam?"
 "Yeah," Brianna nodded, "but doesn't a Minovski field just blind the radar
system? How would that physically cloak the platform?"
 "It doesn't, it just serves to disrupt radar," Jason continued. "But the
particles linger for days afterward. I've tracked many a foe--AND friend--over
my time by searching for the particle emissions. All we need is a jury-rigged
Minovski detector. Brian?"
 "Halfway done already," he said.
 "I should've seen that right off the bat," Jason berated himself. "The low-
level scatter on the weather map in an odd pattern--they were somehow moving
the platform around, trying to find the right location to generate the right
weather in the right place! I see it now.."
 "You're gonna see it now on screen 5 in about ten seconds, too," Brian called
out. The other two turned their attention to a HUD-displayed window.
 Momentarily, a weather radar map was displayed, overlaid with a course plot
that showed a blurry zigzag pattern nearly identical to what Jason had just
described.
 "Hot damn!" he exulted. "Plot me a course following that exact pattern. Bri',
tell Gina to follow me."
 The truck sped off along the top of the water, following the jagged course
plotted on the windshield.

 "Anyone hungry?" Brian said, reaching for the cooler that was bolted down
between his seat and the front seats.
 "Yeah, good idea," Brianna said, turning halfway around. "We've got a ways to
go yet anyway."
 "I guess yours would be the tuna, huh?" Brian said,as he held it up. It was
snatched away in a flash with a "yes thank you", and before anyone could react,
Brianna had inhaled it.
 "Jay," Bri said, holding out his peanut butter sandwich.
 "Hand me a Coke," Jason said. He held one hand behind him while he drove and
held the sandwich with the other.
 "Want me to hold something?" Bri' asked.
 "Nah, hang on a sec." Once he got the Coke, he put it down on the floor
between their seats, then picked up another item from the same spot. It was a
Club anti-theft bar.
 "What've you got that for?" Bri' said, puzzled. "A, we don't have to worry
about thefts with the truck's security system, and 2, we're moving right now."
 "Yes, but watch this." Jason stabbed at the cruise control with his semi-free
hand and then put the Club on the wheel, immobilizing it. He then leaned back
in his chair, the truck on a crude form of autopilot.
 Brian laughed. Brianna said, "You could've just set the automatic course plot,
yaknow."
 "I was going for effect, not results," Jay responded, and after finishing off
his lunch, plucked her hat off her head and put it low on his face, apparently
aiming to take a nap. "Wake me if something interesting happens."
 "Um, radar contacts at 169 degrees, five hundred feet up and 12 miles out,"
Brian called out.
 "Friendlies?"
 "I would think not, inasmuch as they're closing to intercept and have LOCKED
ON to us."
 "Okay. We'll have a few seconds to spare while they argue about whether or not
they're really seeing a truck and a car driving on the water." Jason sat up,
tilted Brianna's hat up straight on his head, and undid the Club. "Hey, Gina!"
 "I see them," she answered.
 "What do you want to do?"
 "Um, not get hit by them?"
 "Sounds like a plan to me. Follow my lead." Jason pulled the mode change lever
and dove again, just as a missile cut through the space his truck had been
occupying. They were tossed around as the water erupted in a firestorm for a
moment, then as they got deeper, were treated to a calm ride again.
 "How far down can their radar penetrate?" Brianna asked.
 "Not this far," Brian confirmed. "They've lost their lock and are.. well, hey,
listen to this." He tapped a key.
 "..I say again, Gold Base, two confirmed kills. The wreckage has disappeared
beneath the surface," one of the pilots (presumably) was saying.
 "Roger that, Gold Leader. Good job. Return to base."
 Then there was silence. They all looked at each other.
 "Gina, it's Jason again," he called out.
 "Go ahead."
 "Did you hear that radio transmission?"
 "No, I missed it. What?"
 "They think they got us with that missile. They're returning. We're in the
clear, so long as we stay this deep."
 "Jinkies! Good job!" she complimented him.
 "No sweat," he started to say, but Brian cut in.
 "It was a fluke, Gina, nothing more. Jason just has the highest fluke-luck of
any person I've ever known."
 Jason was about to intervene again, but he saw something on the long-range
radar. "Hey, lookit this."
 Ten thousand meters away, at the end of their course plot, was a radar image
that looked a lot like the one they wanted to see.
 "Gimme sonar and imaging and try to see if there's a way to sneak up on it."
 "Adjust heading to 344," Brian said after a moment of studying the screens.
"You'll be able to, um, park, on a ridge about one kilometer from the platform.
The ridge is six hundred meters higher than the ocean floor at the platform,
and a thousand meters below the surface."
 "Great," Jason said. "Our goal is to find an airlock near the base and get
inside undetected. Somebody work on that."
 A few moments later, they were parked on the ridge, overlooking the platform.
Jason gave a low whistle. "Brian, look at that. It's gotta be fourth-generation
at least."
 "I was thinking fifth. Remember they got complacent and got rid of the under-
water sensor fins to save money and weight?"
 Jason grinned as he realized what Brian was getting at. "Super! Good eye. Got
an airlock yet?"
 "Perhaps, although I can't tell if it'll work or not--this says it hasn't been
opened for quite some time. It's on the north side, about twenty-five meters up
from the bottom. It looks like it'll fit both the car and the truck with no
problem."
 "Great, let's give it a try. Anyone care to try hacking in and opening it?"
 "On it already," Brianna declared. She clattered away on her keyboard.
 Momentarily, the hull of the platform split and water rushed in, stopped by a
secondary blast door. Jason and Gina cautiously maneuvered in and then stopped
their vehicles.
 The rear doors shut and the water started to be pumped out. A couple of tense
moments passed, and then the inner hatch slid down and out of the way, and the
two vehicles rolled into a dusty storage bay.
 They got out of the truck and car and looked around. "Don't think this part
has been used for quite some time," Brian observed.
 "Remember, they only need a skeleton crew for a fifth-gen unit. The computer
does all the big work."
 "Can I have this back yet?" Brianna said, coming over and taking her hat off
of Jason's head and putting it back on her own. "So now that we're inside, what
do we do?"
 "Well, being that we're the first people in all of existence to ever sneak
aboard one of these, I think a photo is in order," Jason said. He gathered
everyone around him. "Set the camera on the fender of the truck, set the timer,
and join us, Bri."
 Brian did so, grinning, and the bunch of them said cheese, realizing how silly
they would appear, had anyone been watching them.
 "Now, let's go find out what the heck's going on here." Jason grabbed a
knapsack from the back of the truck, slung it over his shoulders, and started
to walk off.
 "Copycat," Bri muttered, looking at Jay's backpack overloaded with equipment,
and then looking at Gina's original backpack hanging from her own shoulders.
 "Not so much," Jason countered. "Well, so maybe I am copying her. So what?
It'll come in handy, I bet, when we need two COBOL bombs or any of the other
godzillion or so goodies I got in here."
 "I don't mind, Jay," Gina chose to declare. "Like you said, it's good to have
more gear with us."
 "If you're going to carry all that stuff," Brianna said as they headed towards
a staircase, "I'm not gonna bother with my armor."
 <Hoo boy, let's just tempt fate a wee bit, huh?> Jason thought to himself, but
bit his tongue and climbed the stairs.

 They forced a door to what appeared to be another abandoned compartment a few
levels upward, and were sent into a dark room. The self-closing door did just
that, pitching them into total darkness.
 "Wonderful," Cheetah grumbled.
 "Hold on," Gina and Jason stereoed. You could almost hear them grinning as
they each realized the other was going for a light in their pack.
 "Bri', could you give me a hand?" Jason said. "I can't reach."
 "Okay, stay put already and let me find you."
 "No prob--yeek! That's not my backpack!"
 Brianna laughed.
 "Get a room, you two," Britanny supplied.
 "Brit, can you help me with my pack too?" Gina said.
 "Yeah, you hold still too. Just a second."
 "And don't goose me like Bri' did to him."
 "I don't think that's a problem," Britanny deadpanned.
 "Hey, not that I mind you standing behind me and rummaging around like that,"
Jason said to Brianna, "but what the hell's the holdup back there?"
 "Relax," she countered. "It's just so DARK in here and you've got so much JUNK
in this pack that IEEEuuuuwwwww..."
 "Whatwhatwhat?"
 "I think I just found that Mars bar I lost last week."
 Cheetah made a gagging sound. Brian laughed.
 "Okay, here," Gina said. She snapped her flashlight on, revealing a mammoth
room, easily as big as the entire platform less the stairwell, and sixty feet
high. There was not a single thing in the room, if you didn't count the power
conduits running along one side wall.
 Brianna found Jason's Streamlight and shone it in that direction as well. The
party walked over to the wall and inspected the conduits.
 "Doesn't this seem like a lot of power for a platform this size, Bri?" Jason
asked Brian, indicating the six ten-inch-diameter powerlines.
 "Just a tad," he agreed. "Plus, where do they go? We came from down there, and
it was just a hangar bay. You can't tell me that these run the lights, airlock,
and pumps for that one level."
 "Exactly. Let's check further up." They couldn't force the door they came in
from, so they forced the one on the opposite side and continued up to the next
floor.
 "Welcome to the next level," Jason said in a monotonous parody of a computer
voice. "Sega!" he hoarsely whispered.
 "Get a grip," Cheetah suggested.
 The fivesome found themselves in abandoned--or rather never-before-used--crew
compartments. There was very little dust, since they were the first ones to
break the door seal since the platform's manufacture.
 They continued upward.

 Three floors higher, they found their first signs of life: a logged-in
terminal. "My, my, my, these boys never learn," Brianna grinned, cracking her
knuckles and sitting down.
 "Be careful," Gina prompted.
 "Yeah, yeah," Brianna said dismissively. Within seconds, she was in the root
directory. "Hey, can any of you scholars read this?"
 "Not me," Gina said after a second. "Jason? Brian?"
 "It's a strange dialect, but I can pick out most of the words," Bri answered.
"It would seem to be the computer plot of where they want to attack, but it's
missing some parts. They don't know where to position the platform so that they
get the desired result on the mainland."
 "What's their target?" Britanny asked.
 "Judging from this map (as crude as it is)," Brianna said, then did a double-
take, then started again. "Um.. Stillwater, Oklahoma?"
 "Why Stillwater?" Jason wondered. It was a small town, to his recollection:
Population grade B, about forty minutes out of Oklahoma City, and fairly benign
and unassuming. Definitely not a major target of any sort..
 ..unless they were to be sacrificed in case the Zardons didn't get what they
wanted..
 "Hold on a sec," Bri' said, indicating the screen. "Check this out." It was
Page 1 of Communications of the Service Diagnostics portion of the Zardons'
computer, or so the window headers said. It was relatively unfamiliar to all
there looking at it, containing dozens of bar graphs and strings of twelve-
digit numbers.
 "What does that say?" Gina asked.
 "Not much," Brian answered, translating it. "The bar graphs are transfer
efficiency, which could mean anything from air quality to cargo. But the
numbers on the bottom--they almost look like IP addresses to me. If that was
right, I'd take a stab in the dark and guess this was a major file transfer--
where are you going?"
 This last part was directed at Jason, who had suddenly straightened up and
started walking off. "Taking a stab in the dark," he declared. He walked over
to the far wall, where the thick cables they'd seen below passed through the
compartment vertically. Momentarily, he had his Leatherman tool out and was
sawing away at the insulation on one of the cables.
 "What the hell are you doing?!" Brian burst out.
 "Be careful," Brianna said with concern.
 "I don't think it's a power cable," Jason said, peeling back the plastic
coating to reveal a huge bundle of data transmission cables--phone lines.
 "Okay, what's the deal here?" Cheetah wanted to know. (Actually, everyone did,
she just voiced it first.)
 "Not sure," Jason said, coming back over to the computer. "They definitely do
not need to hook into the nets to do what they're doing topside."
 "But remember, you said this might be a front for something else, right?" Gina
reminded him.
 "What are they gonna do, spam the heck outta the Information Hypeway?" Bri'
said sarcastically, hacking around in the machine. "Maybe it'd make it BETTER."
 Just as she finished speaking, the lights switched to a dim red and the
computer winked off. A siren sounded faintly from many levels above. Jason and
Gina said in unison, "What did you DO?"
 "Nothing, I swear!" Bri' shot back, looking perplexedly at the computer
terminal. "But I did see the activity stop on the nets just before it went
poof."
 The entire compartment started to vibrate. Five sounds that sounded like Bri'
and Jay's anti-Frakes-installing railguns, only fifty million times louder,
erupted out and then disappeared just as quickly.
 "Are they moving the platform?" Gina asked.
 "No, I don't think so," Jason replied. "That was the anchors being secured to
the ocean floor. I think they're starting it up again."
 "I.. would feel a lot safer if we got back to the car," Cheetah said.
 "I agree," Brian added.
 "I think we all do," Brianna finished, getting up and joining the others in a
dash for the stairwell.
 They reached the car and truck and crowded around the latter as Jason powered
it up and had Brian call up weather radar and other displays. A map of the
States came up; just off the coast, they could see a fierce storm building,
right over their position. By some strange phenomenon, it affected weather
patterns many hundreds of miles westward as well.
 "Where's it gonna hit?" Gina asked.
 "They're right on target," Brian replied excitedly. "Things are starting to
look REEAALLL bad in Oklahoma right now!"
 They watched as the map zoomed in to a state-wide view of Oklahoma. Heavy rain
and windstorms were tightly concentrated right around Stillwater, and then, as
they watched in horror, a tornado appeared out of nowhere and tracked
mercilessly through the town.
 And then it was all gone, as quickly as it had come. Coincidentally, the
rumbling and howling within the platform had stopped, and the lights had come
back to normal power.
 "Ohmigod," Cheetah said.
 For a moment, no one else made a sound. Jason appeared to be lost in thought,
looking about.
 Suddenly he was on his feet and walking away.
 "NOW where are you going?" Bri' said.
 "Is it just me or is the ceiling of this room about five feet lower than the
upper levels?" he said, looking upward.
 All turned their heads skyward to see that indeed, the ceiling was not as
high.
 Jason walked to the far wall. "And look at this--we didn't remember seeing
those cables because they aren't here." True enough, he was standing beside a
blank wall.
 "Jeez, Sherlock, ya think?" Brian muttered.
 "If we could get up into this ceiling, we--aHA! Bri', c'mere and give me a
boost." 
 She climbed out of the truck, a silly grin on her face. "I already TOLD you,
wait 'till we get home."
 "Oh, ha. Now c'mon and help me reach this."
 "Reach what?" 
 He was standing in the corner of the room, pointing straight up. "This. Trust
me, I just need to get up to it."
 Still disbelieving, she carefully helped him up onto her shoulders, and with
their combined twelve-foot height, Jason was able to push up on a section of
ceiling in the corner, which separated from the rest in a triangular shape, and
formed an access hatch.
 "Bingo," he said. "I need a couple more inches' reach."
 Cheets came over and lifted her sister up a bit, allowing Jason to grab hold
of the edge of the ceiling and haul himself inside. His voice drifted down from
within. "Someone toss me a light."
 "Here," Brianna said, taking the light in her mouth and getting a lift from
Cheetah. She joined him in the serviceway and switched on the light, then
blinked a couple of times in shock.
 "What do you see?" Gina's voice floated up to them.
 "About ten thousand antennae connections and such," Jason answered. "It looks
like from here, all those phone lines we saw above get separated into
individual signals and sent outside. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the
old sensor fin hookups to run long-wire or even floating dish antennae to the
surface."
 "Why do that from the bottom of the ship??" Cheetah wondered.
 "Saves space," Brian told her. "They can run the lines up outside and have
them float on the surface and keep taut; if the lines exited the platform
closer to the water, they'd be slack and subsceptible to tangling."
 "Well, we're not going to find anything here," Jason said. "I--"
 "Look at this," Brianna said, swinging the light above them. A ladder was
affixed to the wall, ascending through the service space and beyond.
 "I stand corrected," Jason called down. "We've found a Jeffries tube or
something like it. We're gonna check it out; you guys keep on going up the
normal way. We'll meet up with you later."
 "Be careful," Gina's voice came up through the hole.
 "We'll be as careful as we always are," Brianna responded before closing the
hatch.
 "That's what I was afraid of," Gina said quietly.

 "Did you bring even your GyroJet?" Jason asked Brianna moments later.
 "Of course," she answered, patting her shoulder holster, under her jacket.
"Are you nervous or something?"
 "Well, these guys have the capability to wipe out entire planets, and you're
almost completely unarmed, and I've only got a pack full of gadgets."
 "Put your trust in your equipment, Jay," she said simply, as they climbed the
ladder.
 "Oh yeah, right. It's not 'DON'T use the Force, Luke', yaknow. You do have to
rely on your mind instead of your tech-traps and toys."
 "Just keep climbing."
 "Did I ever tell you I was afraid of heights?"
 "Well, we're about nine hundred meters underwater, so you don't have to worry
about that."
 "No, 'was'. I conquered it."
 "Good thing, too, considering the quality of this ladder."
 "I thought you said I was safe.."
 "Well, don't you have the same tricks in your pack that Gina does?"
 "Yeah, but I've never tested it."
 "Wimp. Field testing's the way to go."
 "Um, have you been keeping track of how high we've gone?"
 "I think we're probably back at the level with the computer console by now.
Want to pop a hatch and see?"
 "Hang on." He pulled out and readied his GyroJet, and covered Bri'. "Okay, go
ahead."
 She booted a panel and it popped out of the wall, spilling light into the
serviceway. The two of them cautiously peered into the triangular hole, then
climbed through it and into a corridor.
 "Level 41, it says," Jason gestured to a stairwell door.
 "And what level was that one that we were on with the computer?"
 "46."
 "Hang on." Bri' tapped her communicator. "Gina, can you hear me?"
 A crackly transmission issued from the device. "Barely. Where are you?"
 "Level 41, west side, near the stairs. How about you?"
 "On the east side of the same level," Gina's voice came back. "There must be a
lot of interference around here."
 "We'll meet you in the compartment on this level," Brianna declared, and shut
the communicator off. The two of them opened a hatch in the hallway.
 They cautiously entered the engine room, with dozens of machines roaring away
at impossibly loud levels, while others that should've been quite noisy were
silent, but still running. Brianna tugged her hat downwards over her ears, and
Jason, having nothing else to protect himself with, put his Walkman earphones
on and turned on some music.
 They opened and passed through another door, and found themselves in a quiet
control room. Jason pulled the earphones off and looked around.
 Just then, the opposite door opened quickly and Gina, Brian, and Cheetah found
themselves staring down the barrels of two identical GyroJet pistols.
 "Don't DO that!" Brian snapped, trying to make his heart start pumping again.
 "You don't do that either," Jason returned, holstering the weapon. "At LEAST
knock before you open a door."
 "Yeah, SOMEONE here has trouble with that," Cheetah muttered.
 Gina looked up at her. "You're never gonna forgive me for that, are you?"
 Brianna tugged at Jason's arm and led him over to a computer console with
three terminals set into it. She started up one while he did another. Engine
and power management was the default control page for these terminals.
 "We should probably try to find out what they're up to, on the grand scheme of
things," Brian said.
 "Oh yeah, like they'd have their master plan saved in a text file somewhere?"
Jason said sarcastically, smiling.
 "Well, you know what I mean. Deduce. Find clues."
 Jason bit back a comment about Scooby and Shaggy, and continued to browse,
trying to find a way out of power management.
 He rebooted the terminal, and hacked into the autostart routine, forcing the
machine to go to the main menu for all command functions. Brianna was being
helped by Brian, since she couldn't read Zardon, which left Jason to poke about
on his own.
 Wincing at the shoddy security on the computer, and reminding himself to
triple-check his machine when he got back home, Jason waltzed right into
Command and Control. There were some unusual characters on the screen, and he
wasn't used to the keyboard (well, naturally, since the Zardons didn't exactly
use a qwerty or Dvorak layout), which meant he had spent all of 55 seconds
getting in. A new record!
 He smiled to himself as he clattered away, Gina and Cheetah watching over his
shoulder. The commander's name was Enthos, and his XO (or Zardon equivalent)
was Backer. Jason checked their personnel records and found that each man had
been in the army since adolescence--the equivalent of 30 Earth years of
service each. They were very well decorated and experienced soldiers.
 "Don't worry about that security alarm you just set off," Brian said half-
sarcastically. "We'll take care of it here."
 "Oop, shit," Jason muttered, concerned.
 "Relax--they're believing it was a power burp," Brian said. "We've got them
running a diagnostic now."
 "But we're safe, right?"
 "Completely masked. These two terminals are running a diagnostic on the reason
the power burped, as far as the techs upstairs know."
 "Good. Let me know if anything notable happens." Jay continued to plow ahead,
abandoning the personnel records for the time being and instead going to the
mission logs.
 "Um, Jay?" Brian said, smiling and pointing to the screen.
 "Hm?" Jay said, leaning over to the other console and looking. He blinked and
shook his head. "You'll have to excuse me. I'm overstressing my recently
repaired eyes."
 "This filename," he said. "Can you make it out?"
 "No."
 "Plans dot txt."

 Jay opened the file and was rewarded with a whole pile of gibberish. He
reminded Bri that perhaps the .txt extension didn't mean the same thing as it
did on an Earthbound machine.
 Jason backed out of that file and started to look around in the rest of the
directory, annoyed at the computer's apparent sudden slowdown. "Hey, you guys
running a heavy task over there?"
 "No," Bri' said. "Just browsing through weapons capabilities and that kind of
stuff."
 <Figures.> "I'm getting a major lag here." He said nothing more and focused on
trying to get the information they needed. Suddenly, he hit the jackpot.
 "In the mission logs!" he erupted. "The fifth entry is a huge document
describing what they're planning on doing. It.. involves bringing down the
Internet?.. and mutating it into something that can carry their own traffic
extra-terrestrially and locally, undetected! They're setting up a spy network
using Earth as a listening post!"
 Suddenly, alarms started howling. A green light began to spin around and a
grotesque-sounding horn started to wail.
 A message also appeared on the screen and Jason read it. "'Plans dot txt
trojan.. horse.. activated..' aw, shit."
 "I hate it when you 'aw shit' us into a firefight!" Brian hollered as the door
from the corridor burst open and disgorged four armed sentries with guns
blazing.
 The friends leapt to their feet and backed in towards the engine room, Jason
and Brianna and Gina firing back at their assailants. Brian was muttering
something about cocky computer hackers, and trying to take cover behind the gun
wielders. They squeezed through the doorway and into the engine room, and the
guns ceased.
 Which is not to say that it was silent; all the powerhouses and motors were
still running at capacity. However, projectiles failed to come their way from
any direction.
 "They must not want to damage their power units," Gina hollered.
 "If we can just stay in here a few minutes and not be deafened, maybe we can
work something out!" Brian offered.
 "Working on it!" someone else shouted.
 Britanny walked closer towards the door, cautiously, ignoring the screams of
her friends. She bent down and retrieved what looked like a spent shell casing
that had rolled into the room from outside. She thrust it in Gina's face. "Is
this yours??"
 "No," Gina admitted, and was about to continue when Cheetah swung towards Jay
and Brianna and asked the same question. Both of them answered in the negative
as well.
 "Do these Zardons use American-made ammo?" she asked.
 Everyone moved in close to see a nine-millimeter casing. It definitely wasn't
Zardon issue; Jason explained that they used thin, short spikes in a mini-
railgun type configuration.
 "So those FBI guys ARE involved!" Brian hollered. "They're getting something
out of this deal!"
 "He wasn't an F--oh, never mind!" Jason said. "Let's get out of here and
somewhere safe!" He found himself biting his tongue to keep from saying "I told
you so" to Brianna regarding her choice not to carry her armor or big guns.
 He glanced towards the door they had just come through; shadows underneath it
indicated that a crowd was forming. Odds were that there were people beyond the
other door, the one he and Brianna had originally used, too.
 It was their only chance, he decided.
 "Let's try to get back to the Jeffries tube!" he said into Brianna's ear. She
nodded and directed everyone to follow her.
 They got to the doorway, could hear nothing beyond it. Brianna gave an
optimistic shrug and shoved the door open.
 The hallway was empty, but they could hear footfalls in the distance. Gina
covered them while Jason and Brianna led the way back towards the tube access.
 Just as Jason was climbing into the wall access, he heard a commotion and some
gunfire. "Shit! Hurry!" he urged himself, lunging for the ladder.
 Brianna dove into the hatch as well, apparently trying to gain cover, and
collided into him. He lost his grip on the ladder and felt himself begin to
fall.

 "OH SHIT!" Brian hollered, seeing the two of them vanish into the dark
ladderway. Then he had to concentrate on his own predicament as people were
firing at him again.
 Something stuck in the access hatchway caught his eye as he tried to find some
cover.
 It looked for all the world like an old film canister.
 "Everyone get over here!" he shouted as he lunged for the bomb. Brit looked up
to see Brian up to his waist in the tunnel, apparently straining to reach
something. She pulled Gina back, who was still laying down covering fire, and
made it to Brian's position just as the latter pulled out a COBOL bomb.
 "We've got no place to go!" Gina protested, knowing how total the reach of the
bomb's contents were.
 "Trust me," Brian said as railgun spikes and bullets whizzed past. He glanced
up and saw, in the crowd of gunners, the same guy that had visited the house
and tried to make Jason scratch his neck with his elbow. Lurch also noticed
Brian, and then the rest of them, and hollered something indecipherible to his
colleagues on the firing line.
 "Almost got it," Brian said. "I know I shoulda studied these things. There!"
He twisted a knob in the center of the disc to a mark labelled "30". He then
dumped the bomb and retrieved the hatch door that Brianna had kicked across the
hallway when she and Jason had first entered the level, and thrust it into
Cheetah's hands. "You climb in last and pull this hatch in behind us so that it
seals!" he instructed. "We've got about twenty seconds!"
 He then made a leap for the ladder and caught it, hanging on for dear life in
the darkness. He scrambled down a few rungs, allowing Gina to climb out onto
the ladder as well. Then Cheetah came in, and then, while holding onto the
ladder with her feet and tail, tugged the panel back into place.
 The barrage of gunfire abruptly ceased once more.
 "We should get away from that hatch," came Brian's voice from below. "It could
give way if that bomb's more forceful than I think it is."
 "What happened to Bri' and Jay?" Gina wanted to know.
 "We need to go down and find them, too," Brian said as a rumbling noise began
to make itself known. "They might be hurt."
 They slowly made their way down as they heard and felt the entire level
tremble as millions of pages of paper filled it. Luckily, it was all confined
to Level 41.

 Jason heard Brian yelling as the former started to fall. The gunfire and
shouts faded as he and Brianna tumbled downwards.
 <Forty-one floors isn't a hell of a lot of time,> he thought. <I hope it can
hold my weight AND Bri's.> With that, he pulled the ripcord on the side of his
pack. 
 He was rewarded with a quiet prfftt as the pack inflated a tiny bit and then
got stuck. Presently, Brianna drifted past, her fall not being arrested, and
the two of them grabbed hold of each other.
 "What the hell's wrong with it?" she shouted.
 "I think it's all gummed up!" he screamed back, trying to kick at the pack.
"Try to dislodge it!"
 For several tense moments, they both flailed at the small bubble of fabric,
trying to get it to fully inflate while keeping a death-grip on each other.
Eventually, the pack messily expanded, melted chocolate all over it, and their
descent was slowed almost to a stop.
 Jason was above Brianna, arms around her, holding on for dear life, as the
makeshift chute gently lowered them to the bottom, their starting point.
Brianna smiled at him and rearranged her grip, arms wrapped around him too.
 "Looks like it works," she said.
 "Looks that way," he acknowledged. "Promise me, though, you'll keep the
chocolate bars in the OUTSIDE pockets from now on."
 She laughed. "You got it, partner."
 They touched down together, Brianna supine and Jason prone atop her. He got up
and deflated the pack, which made some odd-sounding noises as it returned to
its normal size. He'd have to clean all the gunk out of it before he tried THAT
again.
 They were in the small crawlspace they'd started out from some time earlier.
The antennae were still there, and now they knew them to be somehow linking up
to many hundreds of lines of communication, to help the Zardons take the
Internet down long enough to hatch a worm in it.
 Brianna switched her GyroJet over to EM Pulse mode and was about to let loose
when Jason stopped her.
 "Hang on," he said. "I have a better idea." He crawled over to one of the
antenna mounts and fiddled with the coupler.

 "Where the hell are we?!" Cheetah demanded to know.
 "About level three, I think," Brian answered, glancing around as he continued
to lower himself down further. "I'm thinking the bay where we parked has got to
be close."
 "I HOPE so."
 "Don't sweat it. At least we didn't see any blood or mangled bodies on the way
down. They must've made it down okay."
 "Unless they're a lifeless heap of broken bones at the bottom of the shaft,"
Gina suggested.
 "You're not helping, Gina." Brian came to the end of the ladder, and
recognized the triangular hole that they'd seen from the other side, when Bri'
and Jay first climbed up into the crawlspace hours earlier.
 He dropped down to the bay below and saw the truck and car sitting there,
untouched. Well, not entirely true--the truck had a faint blue glow from
within, leading him to believe that someone was inside and using the computer.
 He walked over carefully as the others dropped down and backed him up. He
reached over to the rear door and flung it open to reveal his normal seating
position occupied by a six-foot-ten hybrid/clone girl.
 "We need to do some work," she explained, indicating Jason behind her, in the
passenger seat. Both were typing furiously and didn't take their eyes off their
screens. "You drive." Brian took the keys from Brianna and dashed around to the
other side of the truck. 
 "We're leaving?" Gina asked her sister and Jason.
 "I think we've worn out our welcome, Gina," Jason said. "Besides, we can do
the rest of what we need to do from remote. Let's get out of here."
 "You don't have to tell me twice," Brian confirmed as the fusion motor howled
to life. On the metal floor, he and Gina did violent fishtail-turns and darted
back into the airlock. It was flooded and the two vehicles re-entered the
Atlantic Ocean.
 "Up? Down? Sideways?" Brian queried.
 "Away," Jason said. "Preferably not towards the coast just yet, but close
enough that we can maintain a watch on both the site and the computer links."
 Brian surfaced the truck with Gina's car following suit. They floated about a
mile away from the platform, just sitting there.
 "Um, are we in danger of them retaliating?" Brian wondered, looking at the
mammoth section of platform that she knew to be only the tip of the iceberg.
 "They're too busy," Brianna said. "They've stepped up their schedule and
they're going to have the worm ready to go in about 14 minutes. (Luckily, they
don't have enough time to start up the weather machine, too,)" she added under
her breath.
 She and Jay continued to pound furiously away at the keyboards. Bri, as well
as Cheets and Gina, watched intently towards the platform, since there was
nothing better to do. Occasionally, Bri' and Jay would ask each other a very
short question, and a very short reply would come. Only one or two words were
exchanged each time.
 Then, with seconds remaining in Brianna's estimated countdown, the two stopped
typing and looked at each other.
 "Let's hope," Brianna said positively.
 "Good luck to you, too," Jay nodded.
 "What did you do?" Brian wanted to know.
 "You'll find out in a few seconds."
 They all watched the Big Screen as the Internet slowed to a crawl, even worse
than a Sunday in March. Jay and Bri' showed no reaction yet, even though Brian
felt defeated. "Did we lose?" he wondered aloud.
 "Not yet; hang on." Jason was still staring intently at the screen, as was
Brianna.
 After a few more moments, suddenly all ties to the Internet from the Zardon
computer were severed messily; data packets were lost left and right. The
platform itself went dark and all the sensors and equipment on top stopped
moving.
 "What the--" Gina said over the radio.
 "Hang on a second," Jason told her. "Watch your screen."
 Even more moments passed, and the worm was completely insinuated within the
entire network. It looked to have quite a firm hold on the net; IP addresses
grew an extra field, going to five blocks of numbers. ".earth" was appended to
every address on the planet.
 They had determined while looking at the data in the power management computer
that the next step would be for the worm to render all security in the world's
milnets useless, creating a back door to every military site in existence.
 Time passed.
 Nothing happened.
 More time passed, and still nothing happened.
 Then, finally, something did happen. The link and the site originating from
the platform went pif! off the map.
 Brian made a puzzled sound.
 "Watch, it gets better," Jason said, smiling and giving Brianna a high-five.
 All at once, several other things happened. The platform powered up again, but
the site that reappeared on the maps was a massive central hub, using the
platform's antennae to receive information from the Internet backbone and feed
it up to the orbiting satellites using the dish on top of the platform. A task
running in a separate diagnostic window indicated that pings for Salusia-based
sites were now being received. Not long after that, several other planets in
the Interstellar Conglomerate came online--Coutts, Grenier, and Xylo among
them--but no Zardon.
 "We locked the Zardons out," Brianna said, using the same tone one would use
to speak of a misbehaving child. "There's no way they can get back in. We'll
let them hook up to the nets when they can behave. Oh, and we incapacitated the
platform, too--its systems are 100% devoted to running EarthHub now. The
weather disruptor is offline."
 "And, even if it weren't, the occupants of the inert platform are now having
to deal with a hundred levels of station jammed full of COBOL bomb output,"
Jason said, leaning back and stretching. "If they ever get out, which is
doubtful, they'll likely head home with their proverbial tail between their
legs."
 "What about those FBI guys?" Brian asked.
 "A, they weren't FBI guys, and 2, who cares?" Jason said. "My take on that is
that they were interested in our safety at all times. They weren't going to
kill us for Knowing The Truth(tm); they just didn't want to see hundreds of
thousands of people die in tornadoes and hurricanes due to our snooping
around. Besides, it's Miller Time. Let's head home."

 Once they were safe and sound at home, Jason checked his email and found one
from misc@gov.usa.earth. He opened it.

 Mister Low:
  Off the record, you did an outstanding job today. The cheers in
 Command Central didn't stop for a long time. Our techs couldn't
 figure out what you were doing until it was actually happening. The
 expansion of the Internet extra-terrestrially will be a giant
 benefit to the entire world and the Interstellar Conglomerate.
  On the record, however, you interfered with an interstellar
 incident, and a government operation. The potential to cause a
 disaster of heretofore untold proportions was, and may still be,
 extremely high. You were told to stay away, and it was for your own
 safety.
  I know your true past, and I know that you had a good idea of what
 you were going up against, but this is not some nameless planet on
 your patrol, and you are no longer invincible. I must demand that
 you let the professional agencies handle such events in the future.
  In light of the eventual outcome of this situation, I'm willing to
 overlook the opportunity of charging you with the above offenses of
 interfering with a government operation and unauthorized entry into
 a restricted area. However, be warned: I am watching you.

 Jason shut off the monitor, shaking slightly, and shivered a couple of times.
That brought him back to Earth, so to speak, and he shrugged it off. Nothing to
worry about, even if this guy IS Cancerman and can pull every string there is
in the entire government. <Nothing's gonna happen.>
 Brianna came in the room. She picked up the backpack that Jason had shrugged
off at the door and dumped all the contents on their bed. "I'll clean this up
now," she told him. "Sorry about that, by the way."
 "Hey, no sweat," he said. "Well, a teeny bit of sweat as we passed, oh, level
8 or so, but other than that, it was OK. Just like I said, please, no more
chocolate inside the pack."
 Brianna chuckled. She began to walk out towards the hall and onwards to the
laundry, but as she passed Jason, she took her hat off and plunked it down atop
his head.
 He looked at her in the reflection in the monitor, and she looked at him with
a pondering look in her eyes. "Hmm.."
 "Hmm?" he said.
 "Gina was right," she told him. "You really DO look good in my hat."

 12 MAY 1997
 05h41

 BRIANNA AND JASON'S ROOM

 Brianna woke up with a slight start, sensing that something wasn't quite
right. As she opened her eyes, she saw that Jason wasn't in the bed. In fact,
she noticed as she sat up, looking into the bathroom, the floor was wet and his
towel was hung neatly on the rail, damp. The fan hummed quietly to evacuate the
steam from the recently-used shower.
 She got up and walked to the bathroom, pushing the door open all the way. He
wasn't inside.
 She went back to the bed and sat on its edge, speaking in a whisper to what
appeared to be a clock-radio. "Computer."
 "Computer on," it answered.
 "Where's Jason?"
 "Jason is in the Bay of Tonka."
 "Off," she said, and got up again, plodding off towards the truck bay.
 As she silently opened the door to the bay, she saw the lights up to full
power and a figure inside moving around carrying things.
 "It'll never work, yaknow," she said, causing him to jump and drop the pile of
magazines he was ferrying from the workbench to a shelf.
 She smiled and approached as he tried to collect them all. Even when she knelt
down to help him gather the books, she still towered over him. "They'll never
believe that you keep this place neat."
 "Is it that obvious?" he asked with a sigh in his voice.
 "That you're trying to clean up before your family gets here, or that you just
dump stuff wherever you want to?" she grinned.
 "Ouch. I am surely wounded by that barb."
 "Oh, stop it." She stood up and carried the stack of magazines to the shelves
on the side of the Bay that was known as The Lab.
 "Well, I'm sure it doesn't look good, what with this room being the only one
messy in the entire complex."
 "I gotta admit, it was a surprise to see that you'd straightened up the
bathroom after your shower, breaking tradition again." 
 "Ow!"
 "Don't complain. If I wanted to 'wound' you, as you put it, I could REALLY get
nasty. When does their flight come in again?"
 "Ten-ten," Jason said. "American 719. Gate B20, upper level."
 "My, my, my," Brianna said to him from across the bay. "And what color shoes
will the pilot be wearing?"
 "Big red clown shoes," Jason said, sweeping all the tools off the workbench
with one arm, causing them to fall into the toolbox he'd placed at the end of
the bench. He kicked the lid closed and pushed the toolbox under the bench with
a foot.
 Brianna put a new bag in the trash can. "Tell me something, was your family
really as receptive to your story about us as you said they were?"
 "Yes," he said. "They'd just been told I was thirty-two-hundred-and-seventy-
six years older than I looked and had bounced around dimensions for a few
millenia. They were ready to believe anything." Then he remembered what he'd
told them about Brianna. "Umm.. I told them about your origins, and I might've
told them you were a crazed lunatic possessed by a curse at one point."
 She looked at him. "You told them I was all better, I hope."
 "Um.."
 "Oh, just great," she said, smiling as she worked on tying the garbage bag.
"You realize that that means that anything you've done in the past year is now
fair game for me to tell them," she said.
 "You wouldn't."
 "Why not? I'm a crazed lunatic possessed by a curse, remember?" she responded,
grinning, as she walked out towards the trash room.

 They met Jason's family at the airport four-and-a-half hours later. Jason and
Brian took the truck to pick up Jason's parents, and Brianna followed them in
the Mark Three to carry Rob and Jen.
 As they drove back towards the complex, they were barraged with questions,
like what have you been keeping busy with, how have you been doing, why does
that girl who's driving the car that Rob and Jen are in look that way, etc. Jay
and Brian tried to answer as best as they could, but usually, when one of them
started explaining, they were asked something else.
 Jason's father marvelled at the truck, mostly at its computing power. Brian
showed the elder Low how to use it to surf the net, and he played about for a
bit before they arrived back at the complex.
 Jay's parents showed mild surprise at the truck's descent into the underground
parking garage. Jason grinned as he heard none of the antennae scrape along the
ceiling.
 He parked the Tonka Truck in the Bay, shutting it off and hearing his parents
ooh and aah over the equipment lined along the walls. They climbed out, and
Jason's father went immediately to a stack of COBOL bombs. "What's this? Old
films?" 
 "Um, not so much," Jason grinned. "I'll show you later, when it's safe. Put it
this way--right now, it's not."
 Brianna brought the other two in and they all assembled behind the truck for
what Jason said was important.
 "Computer," he called out.
 "Computer on," Gina's computer's voice boomed.
 "Prepare to log four guests into the records."
 "State location and name."
 "Directly ahead of me, George Low, aka Sandy Low, aka my father. At about the
two o'clock position--"
 "Two-twenty-four," the computer corrected him.
 "At the two-twenty-four position," he said, rolling his eyes, "Rob Evans, aka
Woof. At nine o'clock--"
 "Eight-fifty."
 "Approximations."
 "Nine o'clock."
 "At the nine o'clock position, Jean Low, aka Jeannie Low, aka my mother. And
at three o'clock.." he paused, waiting for the computer to correct him, which
it did not, so he continued. "Jennifer Evans, aka Jenn, Jennie, and Woofette."
 "Hey!" she countered. 
 "Okay, okay.. computer, scratch the last alias for Jennifer."
 "Done."

 "So this is what you've been doing for the past year?" Jason's mother Jean
said to him and Brian, who were introducing the lot of them to their half of
the Bay. Gina and the rest had excused themselves to continue working on the
data they'd collected a week earlier on the weather disruptor.
 "Yeah," Jason nodded. He leaned against the truck. "Officially, we're listed
as experts in certain scientific fields, here to assist Gina with her
archaeological excursions. Off the record, we're adventuring partners, helping
her investigate some of the more unusual things that go on in the world. Gina's
been to the Fountain of Youth, lost cities of gold, alien burial sites, and all
that kind of stuff. Think of a 24-year-old female Indiana Jones with an IQ of
218."
 "Have YOU been to all those places?" Jennifer asked.
 "Well, no.. we've only been on a few jobs. We've been to--" He paused, then
touched a pad on the wall. "Hey, Gina," he called out.
 "Hey, Jay," she answered.
 "Is there anything I can't tell my family about our missions?"
 "No, not really. Just use common sense."
 "As always," he said, and broke the connection. "Anyway, we went to a small
island near the Gulf of Mexico last year and rescued some Americans, as a test
of our ability to work as a team. Aside from that, we've investigated a crashed
alien starship"--he left out that it was one he'd served on for several
decades--"gone to another planet briefly, and just two weeks ago, we were out
in the middle of the Atlantic thwarting a plan to destroy the Internet and
wreak havoc on the world's weather at the same time."
 "Does that have anything to do with the major changes that've happened in the
Internet recently?" George said.
 "Yup," Brian cut in. "Your boy here found a way to screw up the bad guys'
machine but still use it for the good parts of their plan, like expanding the
nets."
 "YOU did that??" Jean said.
 "Well, he had help from Brianna," Brian explained.
 "Brianna, now, that's the girl that drove us here, right?" Rob asked.
 "Right," Jason said. "It was nothing. We just hacked about in the computer a
wee bit and locked the primary users out. They went back to their home, uh,
base a few days ago."
 "Where was that?" Jen asked.
 "Um.."
 "Jay, it's obvious the people here are in tune with there being life on other
planets--they know that Salusians are here, and that the nets are now linked to
that planet," Brian said. "They were from the planet Zardon."
 This sunk in for a second, and everyone kind of accepted it.
 "So how do you move around out on the Atlantic, did you have a boat?" George
queried.
 Jason smiled. Finally, his chance. "No, we took the truck," he said, slapping
the back hatch.
 George blinked. "Pardon?"
 "This thing is what James Bond would've used had he ever been a 4x4 nut,"
Jason said, standing up off the rear bumper and walking around to the front. He
opened the hood. "This may look like a V-12 diesel from the outside, and it may
even sound like a V-12 diesel at times, when I want it to. In actual fact, it's
a four-stage fusion turbine with independent drive connections to each of the
four wheels. A power converter built into the engine runs all the electrical
equipment without need for an alternator, and thus no belts to get damaged." He
closed the hood again. "These are high-intensity-discharge headlights, light so
bright it's almost blue. They're not 100% legal, but then again, I've got a
pair of stock driving lights hidden inside the headlamp reflectors for when I
need to be legal. I don't use the headlights much, and I'll give you the reason
once we get into the cockpit--but keep 'nightvision' in your mind. Anyway, this
is a 12-ton winch on the front, to keep it useful as a 4x4. The tires and rims
might look stock, too, but like the engine, me and the girls made them all up.
The tires are runflat heavy-duty puncture-proof rubber--in other words, it'd
take a mortar strike directly on the tread to blow them out. The rims are
titanium with special attachments. The truck can, to Brian's chagrin a lot of
the time, fly and swim, and it's from the center of the hubs that the rocket
thrusters and or propeller devices deploy."
 He paused for breath as he opened the driver's door. He continued to show them
the truck, highlighting all the major equipment, and indicating everyone's
normal seating position: himself behind the steering wheel, Brianna beside him,
and Brian behind her. He showed off the HUD and the force fields in back, and
then had to suit up in his powered armor due to lots of ribbing and teasing.
 "Where did you come up with this thing?" George asked.
 Jason raised his visor. "Well, the truck itself was bought from a Dodge dealer
downtown. I had a custom body shop stretch the cab and the engine compartment,
and then the rest of the stuff we pretty much did ourselves."
 "You two?" Jean said, indicating Brian. 
 "Ah, no, me and Brianna."
 "Brianna again," Jennifer said. "Are you two going out or something?"
 Jason's face reddened. "Um, well,.."
 Brian leaned in and took over. "As a matter of fact, they indeed are an item."
 "Gee, thanks, Bri," Jason grumbled.
 "Wow," Jenn said, a look of shock on her face. "So don't we get to meet her?"
 "Didn't you meet her in the car?" he answered. "Never mind." He turned to the
wall panel again. "Computer, where's Bri'?"
 "Brianna is in the kitchen."
 "Hmm, that's completely on the other side of the complex." He pushed a button.
"Hey, Bri', it's me."
 "What's up?" came her voice.
 "My, um, family wants to meet you."
 "About time you got around to that! Want me to run?"
 "Actually, yes," he smiled.
 "Okay," she answered, and before the intercom had shut off, she was in the
room.
 "As I might've told you before, Brianna is a clone created from her sisters a
few years ago," Jason explained as she walked up. "And also as previously said,
her sister Britanny is a were-cheetah. From Brit, Bri' got her speed, strength,
some of her appearance, andhertemper," he said quickly (although she did catch
it and pretended to bop him in the side of the head). "From Gina, she got her
intelligence, the rest of her appearance, and her love for adventuring, as well
as her attraction to good-looking guys. We're still trying to figure out how
that paired her up with me."
 "Aww, you beat me to it," Rob grinned.
 Bri' leaned with her elbow on Jay's head. "I also got some of my personality
from Jason, believe it or not--I was still developing as a person when he and
Brian came on the scene. Jay's wit kind of grew on me--"
 "Oh, gawd," Jennifer groaned.
 "--and we more-or-less grew together as a team, with Brian as well. Although I
must admit, Jason's dreamed up some pretty bizarre stuff on his own, like those
COBOL bombs over there."
 "Those what?" George said, none of them having had the tour of the lab yet.
 "These canisters you pointed out earlier," Jason said, strolling over and
picking one up. He walked back to the group, tossing it to his father, who made
a surprised grab for it.
 "Don't worry, it's totally inert until it's armed," Jason said, completing the
trip over to his father and taking the bomb back. He explained the workings of
the device and was met with astonished looks.
 "Where did you come up with THAT?" his mother asked.
 "A guy I once went to SAIT with used that joke in a story he wrote one day
after being required to code COBOL programs all afternoon. I just adapted it to
real-life."
 "So once you set it off, then what?" Rob said.
 "Well, what happens is the room, or building, or whatever, gets filled at the
rate of about two cubic meters a second with the printouts. The people that get
trapped inside can still breathe, but moving around is tricky. If they try too
hard, they start to get VICIOUS paper cuts.." Jason chuckled.
 "How much can it hold?" someone asked, as Jason flipped the canister over a
few times in his hands.
 "Well, through a bit of creative packaging, and some technology I'm not
inclined to discuss, it can fill up to a nine-hundred-cubic meter area."
 "Wow."
 "Anyway, that's not all that we've been doing here," Jason said, tossing the
bomb into the truck and closing the tailgate hatch. "Let's show you around the
rest of it."
 "Um, Jay?" Brian said.
 "Yeah?"
 "Not that we don't want to hang around, but do you mind if Gina and I take
the truck out for some drivin'?" he asked. "I just want to check out some stuff
here and there, and do a bit of scouting around."
 "GINA and you? Sure, go ahead," Jason began, only to be interrupted as Brianna
leaned into the truck and said "Hang on a second," keying in something on the
keypad. She leaned back out and smiled. "Okay, there ya go."
 "Keys?" Brian asked.
 Jason tossed them to Brianna, who handed them to Brian as the latter climbed
into the cab. "Thanks," Brian said, powering the truck up.
 Momentarily, the vehicle departed, and then Jason and Brianna continued to
show Jay's family around the lab and later the house.

 "What did you have in mind?" Gina asked Brian as they reached the surface
streets.
 "Oh, just a few random things," he replied. "Mostly wandering, but I do have a
few things I want to visit."
 "What did Brianna do to the truck?"
 Brian smiled. "Probably told it not to let us go to their secret hiding spot."
 "Their what?"
 "They found a place nearby recently with a big meadow, some trees, and a fair-
sized pond, just out of town. I think they want it to stay theirs."
 "No argument from me," Gina smiled. "We can find our OWN hideaway."
 "Later on," Brian acknowledged, wondering how any of the others would react to
he and Gina being 'an item', as he'd put it with regards to Jay and Bri'. He
stopped at a 7-11 for a drink and a bag of chips, and then headed out towards
the highway.
 "Mind explaining where we're headed? I feel like I'm being kidnapped here,"
Gina said.
 "Sorry," Brian returned. "We're going to Roswell. We should be there in about
45 minutes."
 "Roswell?" she echoed. "What's in Roswell?"
 "A museum," he said. "And within that, a few dozen photos and other such junk.
I just want to check out a story I heard one time, to set my mind at ease."
 "I think you're thinking of the wrong Roswell," she said. 
 "No, you're thinking of New Mexico, but you're on the right wavelength. It
would appear that this Roswell experienced similar things in that time. That's
what's in this museum, and if my hunch is right, the museum, the encounters,
and all of the whole ball'o'wax is due to someone not knowing their geography."
 Gina pleaded to know more, but Brian clammed up for the remainder of the trip,
saying he'd only say more after he saw the photos and then told the others his
hunch, if it was true.
 They pulled into Roswell just before one p.m. and parked in the lot in front
of a building which had a sign that read "ROSWELL VISITATION MUSEUM". It looked
quite professional to Brian, more than he'd expected.
 It didn't open back up until after one o'clock, when lunch was over, and so
they were the first to enter. (About a dozen more tourists were also in the
museum that afternoon.) They browsed around, and Gina spent most of the time
with her jaw hanging open. Brian was grinning with eyes wide open.
 The 'visitation', which had occurred entirely on the day of 4 October 1952,
consisted of four vehicles that looked suspiciously like fighter planes in most
pictures. The pilots appeared human, or at least humanoid, from the grainy
photos available. Here encased in glass was a 30-06 rifle some freaked-out
farmer had used to fire at one of the ships, there a series of photos and
written remarks from a freelance journalist of the era. The big kicker, though,
was the 1:1 scale fiberglass representation of the ships. Brian commented that
it looked slightly embellished to him, as if the people describing it to the
sculptor/builder had been a little bit overeager, but for all intents and
purposes, it was a Guardian-moded Veritech in ISA colors.
 "Mike, Mike, Mike," Brian said, chuckling and shaking his head.

 "Don't you get scared sometimes?" someone put up question to Jason.
 "Not exceptionally," he answered. They were in the shared room that was
Jason's and Brianna's, in the underground complex. They'd toured the entire
building, including the upstairs, and now were just visiting. Jason was
silently worrying about what would happen later, when Gina promised that her
parents would come over and meet his. "I'm actually pretty safe here, even
moreso with the girls around. Bri' and Cheets are exceptionally fast and
strong, and Gina can work her way out of a jam pretty quickly too. Plus, she's
got a fleet of things she calls 'hurt-bots' which are basically androids
programmed to defend the lot of us. And to top it all off, Brian and I are
experienced veterans in combat and keeping ourselves alive. With all that, we
can work our way out of most any situation."
 George wanted to change the subject. "You talk about going out with Gina to
all these adventures all the time--are you ever going to do one on your own?"
 Jason and Brianna looked at each other and smiled.
 "We're trying, Dad," he said. "We have to find something on our own, first.
Brian and I did that with the weather thing recently--"
 "I've been meaning to ask you about that," Rob interjected. "The papers talked
about a government operation."
 Brianna grinned and leaned on Jason again. "The government operation part was
that they were trying to keep us away. Truth be told, if they had succeeded,
the world would've been invaded by aliens."
 "And as it stands now," Jason said, picking up the momentum before anyone
started talking about aliens, "all that happened is that the Internet got
expanded big-time."
 "And you were instrumental in that," George said.
 "Intimately," Jay and Bri' stereoed, sharing grins.
 "So anyway, are we ever going to see your name in the headlines?"
 Jason looked at his sister. "Eventually, eventually. Like I said, we needed
help for the weather platform thing, and that was covered up by the government
anyway. But the time will come when Brianna and I get to go solo and get our
names up in lights, too."
 "Unbelievable."
 The intercom beeped. "Guys?"
 "Yeah?" Jason and Brianna answered Gina's voice.
 "My parents are here."
 <Oh boy,> Jason sighed inwardly. "We'll be up in a second."
 "And we just got back with some interesting news about Roswell. All Brian'd
let me tell you is that you'd be familiar with the person who visited it in the
50s."
 "Now how would I manage THAT?" Jason retorted as everyone got up and headed
for the door.
 "He said he'd explain to everyone when he got us all together," Gina said.
 Jason shrugged at Brianna and the rest as well. As he exited the room, the
lights went out automatically and the door closed.

TO BE CONTINUED IN 'FIRSTS'
BOOK FOUR OF DIMENSION OUT OF RANGE