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“Sentient food? I mean, after it’s been cooked?”
“They don’t find sentience,” Chuckie said. “They find something alien to Earth.”
“Why the color spectrum, then?”
“Because we have DNA samples of what pure A-Cs and hybrid A-Cs are made of. So we can spot them. You know, so we know who the friendlies are?” Chuckie looked over to Martini. “Red means alien we don’t know about.”
Martini nodded. “That’s why the necklace and the tracker showed red. They’re metals from our home world, but not metals that are in our DNA. Baby, run it over everything else.”
I did. Only the one dish glowed red. Tim checked out the minibar and all the stuff in the refrigerator—all clean. Something in my brain kicked. “You said the front desk clerk thought she’d given Chuckie’s food order to the Catering department’s ru
“Yes,” Christopher confirmed. “And we’re not quite as stupid as you always seem to think. Already checked out every person in the Catering department. No one’s missing, no one’s extra. Everyone who’s supposed to be here today is, and no one has a day off today, either.”
“So we have an extra body. That the front desk clerk thought was someone she knew.”
“Right.” Christopher shrugged. “No idea of what to do about it, though.”
I hated to say this in front of Chuckie. “Okay, then the A-C we’re looking for is an imageer.”
“Come again?” Christopher sounded insulted. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you don’t have shapeshifters.” I looked around. Everyone else looked blank too. I had no idea why. It seemed obvious.
A-Cs with imageering talent were able to manipulate images, which was how the Imageering side of the Centaurion house kept the regular humans from realizing parasitic jellyfish things had splatted onto a human and turned said human into an alien superbeing monster.
In addition to manipulation, an imageer who’d touched the picture of a person would know everything about that person—Christopher had explained it as pictures taking a copy of the mind and soul as well as the body. The stronger the imageer, the more information he or she could glean from the touched image.
Christopher was the strongest imageer on the planet, and during Operation Fugly, he’d touched some of the pictures I’d had displayed in my apartment. This was why, during Operation Drug Addict, he’d recognized my old boyfriend from high school, Brian Dwyer, before I did. Well before, but hey, as I liked to remind everyone, I was the big picture girl. Details were for other people.
Chuckie almost never allowed his picture to be taken. I’d always figured it was because he didn’t think he looked good when he was younger and was more comfortable out of the limelight as an adult. Now I wondered how long he’d known just what kinds of aliens were on Earth.
But it wasn’t relevant to the current problem. Other imageering skills were. When we were recovering from that mad moment of not-too-wise passion in the elevator, Christopher had shown that imageers could also draw images using air molecules or some such. To me, this knowledge should have made what I was thinking obvious to all, but apparently the heavy thinking was somehow being left to me. Always the way.
“The fake ru
“My uncle’s name is Richard,” Martini said. “But, okay, that makes sense.”
“So they’re on the premises somewhere,” Chuckie said.
“One of them is, for sure. But A-Cs move so fast, it wouldn’t need to be more than one.”
Christopher closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he pulled out his phone. “This is Commander White. I want a full perso
Reader nodded and dialed. I looked at Chuckie. “I am so sick of being infiltrated.”
“Maybe they’re just confused.”
“Maybe.” Martini had his Commander hat on, too. “But maybe not.” He pulled out his phone. “We’re on internal alert. Yes. Right. Imageering. No, I’m not kidding. No, not Christopher. Every other imageer, however. Right. Handle it fast, handle it right, because if I have to come down there and handle it for you . . . Right, good. I want to know the moment you find anything suspicious. Any kind of suspicious. Right. Good. Yeah, Christopher’s very concerned. Yes, thanks for taking care of that already. Appreciate the help. Thanks, Gladys.”
“Gladys? You called Gladys for this?”
He gave me a sideways look. “You’d be surprised at what Gladys’ job title is.”
I thought about it. “I supposed Center Operator isn’t it.”
“No.”
I thought about it some more. “Why does the Head of Security run the intercom system?”
He gri
Christopher nodded back and mouthed, “Thanks.”
“Yes, I really would like to know who’s in there with you. Really? How interesting. Hello? Confirm, please. Okay, good. Take them all in. I want all of Imageering under the closest scrutiny. Looking for anything suspicious, particularly anything that relates to Commander Martini. Regular updates would be nice. Yes, with extreme prejudice.” He hung up and rubbed his forehead. “This sucks, but good call, Kitty.”
“You think your department’s been infiltrated?”
“Well, the reaction time’s not exactly what I’m used to when we’re under alert, so yeah, I’m pretty sure we have a problem.”
“Only one?”
“Hilarious.” Christopher looked at Martini. “Jeff, if my department’s infiltrated, what about yours?”
“If we have a rogue imageer out there, who knows?” Martini sighed. “At least it’ll be fast.”
“How so?” Chuckie asked.
“We move fast,” Martini said. “And we move faster in these kinds of situations.”
“How fast?”
Christopher and Martini’s phones both rang. Martini gri
CHAPTER 14
MARTINI AND CHRISTOPHER WERE BOTH DEEP in conversation when there was a knock. Chuckie pulled a gun out of his jacket and motioned for the rest of us to get away from the door. I dug my Glock out of my purse, and Reader and Gower pulled their guns out of their jackets as well. Nice to know the three of them were wearing shoulder holsters. Martini and Christopher still refused to, another thing I was working on.
Everyone else got out of the way. Four guns were probably good for one door, and that way, the others were in fallback position.
Chuckie opened the door so that he was to the side. And we were greeted by the threatening sight of Melanie and Emily, Lorraine and Claudia’s mothers. “Nice welcome,” Melanie said dryly. She looked a lot like Raquel Welch had when she was playing a cave girl.