Extraction (5 page)

The point at which we came up wasn’t really the end of the river. In fact, it was another underground cavern, where the water formed a lagoon much like the one that we originally entered.

“Now you can teleport us if you want,” said Rudi as we trudged up out of the water.

“Oh? So what was wrong with before?” I asked.

“Josh and I have subcutaneous trackers,” she said nonchalantly.

“What?!” I practically screamed. Smokey and Electra were also bug-eyed over this news.

“Tracking devices – under our skin,” she said. “Kind of like GPS.”

“So those goons at Chamomile know where we are?” asked Smokey.

“No,” Rudi said, shaking her head. “After we left, there was another series of explosions that destroyed the tracking equipment.”

“But I fried both the main power grid and the backup,” Electra said. “Why was the tracking device still working?”

“It works differently – kind of like email,” Rudi replied. When we all looked at her blankly, she went on. “You know how if your email goes down, the messages just kind of pile up? Then, when your email comes back on, all of the messages are still there – even those that someone sent to you while your account wasn’t working?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The tracking worked the same way. The info was still being recorded – the tracking system has its own battery for that purpose – and whenever the main power came online again, they’d be able to see what happened.”

“So if I had teleported you out,” I said, “the system would have recorded that?”

“It would have seen us wink out and reappear somewhere else, which would mean teleportation,” Rudi replied.

“But if you knew it was going to be destroyed before the data could be retrieved, why couldn’t Jim just teleport us back at Chamomile?”

“Because I didn’t
know
it would be destroyed,” Rudi answered. “I couldn’t see that far into the future concerning the tracking. But I did see that Jim would be able to safely teleport us later. So I’m sorry that I don’t know everything.”

I’m not sure how well that satisfied Electra and Smokey, but it was apparently the best any of us were going to get.

As I got ready to teleport us out, I felt an odd sensation, like a butterfly fluttering around my face, trying to attract notice. After a moment, I recognized it as Rudi shooting some strong emotions my way in order to get my attention. She wasn’t a telepath – at least not yet – but this was something she had done before to get me to notice her telepathically.

I asked.

I felt her give me a mental hug and smiled.

I asked.

she asked incredulously.

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

Now that was really weird. I asked, totally nonplussed.

I stood there, stunned. This was more than just a shock – it was completely unreal.

I swallowed and nodded almost instinctively. Of course I knew a Mr. Morrison. In fact, I only knew
one
Mr. Morrison. Although only a few people were aware of it, “Morrison” was the actual surname of the world’s greatest superhero.

Alpha Prime.

My father.

About the only secret better-kept than his name was the fact that I was Alpha Prime’s son. Still, the fact that this man, Megaton – whom I had never seen before today – knew my father’s name had to be significant in some way. Now I was wishing I could go back in time and speak to him.

I asked, barely keeping desperation out of my voice. But if what she’d said before stunned me, her answer this time left me completely stupefied, unable to fully process what I was hearing.

Rudi responded.

THE END

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