“Good thinking,” Lex replied, then looked up at the rest of their friends at the table. “Does anyone else here speak another language?”
Only Victor raised a hand. “Spanish,” he said. “My mom hailed from Peru. I really only learned it as a kid, though, so a lot of my vocabulary is pretty simple.”
“OK,” Lex continued after looking back at Riss, who appeared to have finished what she wanted to say. “Who here is interested in looking into option three: specifically, going to Europe?”
Everyone raised a hand or nodded. “OK, so am I,” Lex responded. “Is anyone more interested in any of the other options mentioned? Option 1? Option 2?”
There were no raised hands and a number of people shook their heads. “No,” Kate responded. “If they’re going to treat us like this here, they don’t deserve to have us in this country.”
“All right,” Lex responded, turning to Riss. “How long do you think it will take to get passports?”
Riss sighed. “Well, I’ve looked into it, and in order to get them made and not draw extra attention, I think it’ll be about a month before I can get them to us.”
“OK, so we have a month to plan for our overseas move,” Lex said, almost to herself. She looked back up at Casey. “Can you see if you can contact someone over there who can help you set up a tour? Lou, could you work with Casey on the logistics of getting us out of the country? If either of you need special computer assistance, I’m sure Riss can help.”
Riss smirked while Casey and Lou both nodded. “Kate, Victor, I think we’ll only be able to take a few things with us, and we’ll need to buy mostly new musical equipment once we arrive due to the power differences. So, could you work on what we should do with all of the leftover things that we’ll have here? If we could recoup any money, that would be great but not absolutely necessary.”
The two of them looked at each other for a moment and then Kate looked back at Lex with a smile. “Don’t worry, we’re on it.”
“I’ll work on the best way for us to make our exit here, so that we can get away as cleanly as possible and hopefully not make any waves,” Lex finished with a sigh. “I guess we’ll all have to work on figuring out what we want to take with us. We should try to minimize as much as possible. Casey and Lou should eventually have the information about how much it can be.”
As Lex looked around the table she saw a lot of smiles. Even for the solemn faces, everyone seemed to share an excited look, and she glanced at her friends, Lex could feel her own face soften into a smile in return.
Maybe
, she considered,
maybe this can be an exciting adventure rather than just something that will worry me sick
.
Kate elbowed Victor as Lex watched. “We’re going to live in Europe. How cool is that?”
He looked over at her, giving a little smile in return. “You’re going to have to work on your American manners and I’m going to have to work on changing over all the gadgets I bring, since the current over there is different.”
Lex cleared her throat as Kate laughed in response to Victor’s comment. “Before we break up for the night, did anyone want to add anything?”
Through a chorus of ‘no’s and head shaking, the group broke up. Lex had to work out again before she felt tired enough to sleep due to all the adrenaline running through her. As she moved through the form she’d created yet one more time, she found herself wondering if Mr. Chen would ever see it, now that they’d be moving even farther away than before. She still thought of her old teacher as her head hit the pillow that night.
The next morning when Lex awoke, she held the thread of a memory about a dream she’d had that Mr. Chen had been in as well, but it slipped away as she fully woke up. She smiled as she stretched, however, because she realized she’d figured out the best way for them to get out of the country. Throwing on her robe, Lex ran downstairs. As she’d hoped, she found Casey and Lou having breakfast.
“Hey, Casey, Lou,” she said a little breathlessly and smiled at the two of them before she continued. “I’ve got an idea, but I’m going to need your help in order to make it happen, and I’d like you to add your ideas if any come to you while I explain what I’ve got in mind.”
Lex briefly went over what she’d come up with, watching for Lou and Casey’s reactions as she did. By the time she’d finished, the two of them were both smiling: Lou in the restrained way he had, and Casey with a big grin on her face. “Hell, that’s crazy. I love it,” Casey said. “You’re going to get some help from Riss, too, right? She’s the one who has all the website stuff set up.”
“I was planning on it,” Lex agreed with a nod. “Lou, what do you think?”
He nodded in response. “I’m sure I can come up with a few things to help with misdirection, too. I’ll talk with Riss about that.”
Lex smiled then, actually feeling excited, not just jittery and nervous like she usually got when trying to plan what to do next. “Sounds good. I think I’ll get a workout in and then wait until everyone’s up to tell them all at once.”
A couple of hours later, after Riss had gotten up and Casey had gone around the house to collect everyone, Lex stood at the head of the table. “Well, an idea came to me last night about how we should get out of here,” she began, looking quickly around at all the faces. “I think we should schedule a final US concert before we bug out of this country. You know, like a farewell show.”
She saw a few skeptical faces, but mostly people seemed willing to hear her out. As she explained the particulars, she saw more and more smiles until she’d finished, and Kate broke out laughing.
“Every time you come up with an idea I’m sure it’s your best one, and every time you come up with one to top it,” her friend said, still smiling. “I think we should do it. What about everyone else?”
Everyone nodded or said ‘yes’ except for Victor, who asked, “Do you think this will interfere with us being able to leave the country?”
Lex sighed. “When I tried to think about the best way for us to go,” she explained, “it occurred to me that the best way to do it would be to provide as much misdirection as possible and lots of pageantry to hide the things we don’t want them to see. From the research Riss has done on MSI’s pursuit, it seems they try to keep the police at arm’s length, so I think we can take advantage of that by providing them with more trails than they can follow up on themselves. Between what I’ve asked Riss and Lou to help with and what we’re going to do at the concert, we’ll stand a much higher chance of getting out of here unnoticed than if we didn’t have anything as spectacular going on, as I see it.”
He nodded. “Count me in, then.”
“All right,” Lex replied with a nod. “Would you and Kate find someone local to promote the show, like someone to hang posters and stuff? We don’t want to spend too much on it, but we do want people to know and hopefully help drum up a good number of attendees.”
“No problem,” Victor answered, and Kate agreed with a nod.
“Riss, can you handle the promotion online?” Lex asked. “An announcement of the show and periodic reminders to our fan list? Casey is going to set up the venue as soon as she can this week, so you can get all the ticket-buying particulars from her.”
“Sure. If I see anywhere else I could post it where it might get attention, I’ll do that, too.” Riss’ fingers flew a moment later as she noted something in her laptop. After a pause, she continued without looking up. “By the way, I’ve been listening in on MSI’s activities, and they’re scrambling after what happened. They don’t seem to have any idea what’s going on, but they’re doing their best to find out. I’ll keep watching them and let you all know what I see.”
They talked for a bit longer and then the group broke up to take care of their separate tasks. Lex worked with everyone over the next few days and weeks in order to get everything ready for the show. She was up late one night, about two weeks before the show, talking to Riss as they checked on whether or not anyone seemed to be interested in their activities.
Riss said as she looked through some database entries, “The crew that we met in Seattle has begun remembering what happened, but no one seems to have a definite idea. They’ve internally posted some very bad drawings of someone in a black hoodie, and some shadowy drawings of a crowd of people they think could number anywhere from three to ten.”
“Huh,” Lex said, nodding and feeling a little numb. “I guess it did work, at least for a little while.”
Riss shrugged. “MSI appears to have realized they were on to something, though, and they’ve ordered more people out here. It seems they’ve ordered everyone to avoid working with the police as much as possible, probably because they want to spirit everyone away to the labs if they find us. They’ve spread teams out across the West coast. None in Arizona yet, but they’re moving around, so I’ll keep an eye on them.”
Lex nodded again, then said, “Thanks for keeping up with it. Let us know when you find out anymore. Along those lines, do you know where the passports are?”
“They should be on their way here now. Hopefully we’ll get them later this week,” she finished, glancing over at Lex.
After a pause, Lex asked Riss, “How do you feel about what we’re doing? Do you think this is going to work out?”
Riss smiled her almost invisible smile in response before turning back to her computer. “With all of us working on it, there’s no way we can fail.”
The week before the show, Kate and Lex were talking, making logistical plans. At one point, however, when the two of them talked about the opening bands and a shadow passed over Kate’s face, Lex sighed.
“Look, Kate, I’m really sorry everything worked out this way—” Lex started, Kate’s strong voice cut her off.
“Don’t apologize,” Kate said with a genuine smile. “We all took our chances, and we all knew this could happen at any time. I feel bad about having to leave, and I really don’t want to have to leave Jack, but we all need to stay free and the best way to do that is to stick together. I tried to explain as well as I could without giving anything away when I talked to him to let him know we’d be missing the final show date for our last tour, and it sounded like he understood.”
Kate sighed, then continued. “I’m glad Jacob’s Hammer and End of the Road agreed to do this show with us, though, because at least I’ll get a chance to say goodbye properly. Anyway, don’t you worry about it; there’s nothing more you could have done that you didn’t do.”
Lex nodded, then smiled as Kate bumped shoulders with her. “Come on, let’s get back to planning for the show,” Kate said with a big smile.
The show date came even more quickly than seemed possible since everyone had been so busy, but the evening before the show, Lex felt confident that they’d made everything ready. Everyone seemed to feel excited as they drove over to the hotel where their friends were staying, and exchanged lots of hugs once they found the right rooms.
“Hey,” Laura said as she and Lex finished hugging, “you didn’t have to put us up at all, you know, much less in someplace as nice as this.”
The blonde looked at the suite behind them and shook her head. Lex shrugged in return. “Well, we felt like we owed you after ditching the final show, plus, well, we wanted to have you all over, but thought it might be safer to meet you here.”
Looking seriously at Lex, Laura asked, “Hey, do you mind if I ask, what trouble all of you are in? I just can’t believe you’d do anything against the law or anything like that.”
Lex sighed, then looked over to catch Casey’s eye. The taller woman nodded. “Well, why don’t we wait until we have everyone gathered together to tell you about that? It’ll probably be easier to explain it once.”
Laura nodded, then went off to gather the rest of the members of the traveling bands. Once everyone had piled into the suite, Lex swallowed once before she started talking. “It’s so nice to see all of you again, and I want to thank you for understanding that we had to cut out of the last show in Seattle.”
She looked around for a moment and noted that everyone seemed to be listening intently. Lex took a deep breath and continued. “Laura just asked me what kind of trouble we were in, and it’s a fair question from friends like you, especially since you’ve been inconvenienced by what happened. It’s not so much anything we’ve done, really, but who we are that’s gotten us in trouble. The real problem is that we can all do things most people can’t, and apparently that’s valuable enough to some people for them to want to keep us in a lab and do experiments on us until we keel over.”
Noting the looks of consternation on her friends’ faces, Lex briefly summarized their previous employment, the fact that they had run to live, and her own experience afterwards. “So, after that, we’ve just been trying to live, you know, to figure out how to be safe and live our lives in peace, but these people don’t want to let us go. We ran into someone in Seattle who wanted to take us back to the labs, so we had to fight and take off.”
Sarah looked outraged. “Surely what they’re doing isn’t legal?” she asked, her quiet voice raised for one of the first times Lex could remember.
Lex returned her look sadly. “Actually, from what Riss has been able to find out, it is. It came as one of the many backroom deals during the Bush administration. If anyone has, I think they say ‘abilities beyond a normal human,’ they are subject to this sort of treatment. Basically, they figured if they said you were different, they could deny you human rights, kind of like Guantanamo, I guess.”
Everyone fell silent for a moment, and Lex stared at the floor, but she brought her head back up as she heard a question from Eddie. “So, what can you guys do that most people can’t?”
She smiled, once again happy at Eddie’s talent for being able to bring everyone’s spirits up during tough times. “Well, we can all do different things.”
“Yeah, if you’ve ever heard Lex sing and noticed that you feel all these crazy things, you’ve experienced one of the things she can do,” Kate said, smirking as she stood next to Jack.
Lex ducked her head. “Yeah, well, I’d demonstrate, but we can’t be sure they don’t have someone here like they did in Seattle. I know one thing we can do, though,” she finished, her eyes straying over to meet Casey’s.