Lori Dixon: Agent of F.R.E.E.D.O.M.

 

Chapter One:

Fall 2007

 

“Where the hell are your pants?!” Lori said as she walked back into the living room from the kitchen with two mugs of hot chocolate for her and Nicolae.

 

“Over there.” Nicolae pointed at the arm chair, which, sure enough, his pants were draped over.

 

“Would you mind telling me why they’re there instead of on your body?”

 

“Well, I just thought, you know…seeing how well the evening has gone so far…” Nicolae got up from where he was sitting on the couch and slowly made his way over to where Lori was standing with the hot chocolate.

 

“Out.”

 

“What? But the evening’s just-“

 

“OUT! NOW!” Lori gestured angrily with one of the mugs of hot chocolate.

 

“Fine, fine, I’m going! But can I just—“

 

“Now, or you’ll find out just how hot this hot chocolate is!” She flung the door of her apartment wide open and pushed Nicolae out, shutting the door behind him.

 

Then she opened it again quickly, tossing the hot chocolate in his direction, but carefully holding onto the mug. After all, no need to sacrifice her coffee cup collection just to make a point.

 

“AHHHHH!” a cry of agony resounded in the hallway. “You psycho!”

 

Lori shut the door and sighed wearily. “I should really work on controlling my temper,” she mused out loud. She sighed again, this time less wearily. “Well, I guess it’s an AIM night tonight.”

 

The thought of it actually thrilled her a little bit. Lori had been so busy working on her thesis lately that she hadn’t actually spent too much time on AIM over the past month or so, which was surprising, considering that National Novel Writing Month was coming up in a couple of weeks. Fortunately, this year she already had a title. Not coming up with a decent title for her novel each year had been a fear she’d begun to harbor every year since her third year when she wasn’t inspired with a title until the ten minutes right before it kicked off.

 

After she turned off her away message on AIM and waited for someone she knew to sign on, Lori checked her email.

 

There was only one new email in her inbox; while she didn’t recognize the sender, it had made it past her spam filter, so she went ahead and opened it on up.

 

 

“Ms. Dixon,

 

We believe you might be interested in working for us. One of our agents will contact you shortly with more information.

 

Sincerely,

 

J. Berenson

 

PS: Delete this email in twenty seconds or it will crash your hard drive.

PPS: Just kidding.

PPPS: Or am I?

 

 

Lori’s eyes went wide, and she hurriedly clicked delete. She waited, holding her breath for a full minute before she was reassured that her hard drive was safe.

 

“Well, that was a strange email,” she commented to her cat Puck, who had just sauntered into the living room. Lori leaned back in her chair; no one was online, and that was frustrating.

 

Brrrring! Brrrring! Her cell phone rang, but she didn’t recognize the number. “If I wasn’t so bored, I wouldn’t answer this,” she told Puck as she hit the “OK” button.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hello, Ms. Dixon. I believe you got our email?”

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“Let me explain. My name is C. Wildlife, but you can call me Agent C.  The organization I’m with has a proposition for you.”

 

“What?”

 

“F.R.E.E.D.O.M.”

 

“Freedom? Aren’t we already free?”

 

“No, not freedom, F.R.E.E.D.O.M.”

 

“Uh…”

 

“Formerly known as F.R.E.N.C.H.”

 

“Ohhhh!” Then, “What do you want me for?”

 

“We have our reasons. If you’re interested, and you should be since you have no life outside your thesis and your online friends, come to 1313 Mockingbird Lane tomorrow afternoon and we’ll tell you more.”

 

“But what will I be—“ the line cut off. “Doing?”

 

******

 

“Wait a second! Nicolae’s in training, too?!” Lori thought two weeks later as she was introduced the others who had made it through the first 2 levels of testing and were entering the training levels.

 

He licked his lips and pursed them in a kiss, winking at her.

 

“Keep your pants on, Karpaithya,” Agent R said curtly. “Don’t forget you’re still being evaluated.”

 

“Yes, ma’am!” As soon as Agent R’s back was turned, Nicolae made sure to catch Lori’s eye and make an obscene gesture.

 

Lori sighed. November was going to be a more difficult month than she’d thought it would be.

 

******

Lori noticed the sound of someone signing onto AIM. As she typed up the last page in her thesis, she checked her buddy list.

 

It was John! He was just the person she’d been wanting to talk to since all of this crazy stuff had started going on with her.

 

Lori: John!

John: Lori!

Lori: So, what have you been up to?

John: Sitting around.

Lori: Still? Don’t you ever do anything but that?

John: I sat in class yesterday. Does that count?

Lori: Lol. I guess, if you want it to.

Lori: Oh! I forgot to tell you!

John: ?

 

There was a pause as Lori realized something. She couldn’t tell John about her new job. She’d been sworn to secrecy; and while Lori knew she could trust John not to say anything about it to anyone, she had this twisting feeling that telling him about this new aspect of her life would be a bad idea.

 

Not because he’d tell anyone, but because he’d know. And if someone found out somehow that John knew, that could have dire consequences someday in the far-flung future. Or even just a year from now.

 

“Crap.” She tried to think of something else she could bring up that would be fitting to follow the “Oh!” she’d typed in.

 

Lori: Well, actually, it’s not that much. Do you remember that guy I threw the hot chocolate on?

John: Yeah, I think so. The cute one who called you a psycho?

Lori: Yeah.

John: The guy is perceptive.

Lori: I ran into him today

Lori: and I’m not a psycho!

John: Did you throw more hot chocolate on him?

Lori: Nah. This time it was coffee.

Lori: French Roast coffee.

John: Bwah!

 

 

Chapter Two:

January 2008

 

“Where the hell are my pants?” Nicolae, better known now as Agent Karpaithya, demanded, barging into the mission tent in boxers.

 

“How should any of us know?” asked Agent T with a smirk. As far as crew leaders went, he was generally the most lax of all the agents that comprised The Five.

 

And he didn’t give a damn about the varied predicaments Nicolae seemed to have a habit of getting into, predicaments usually involving missing articles of clothing. He didn’t give a damn about much, it seemed, unless you counted Agent R. The two of them obviously had some kind of thing going on between them, but it was one of those weird unofficial type things that basically involved a lot of double connotations in the conversation whenever the two of them were in charge of a mission together. This was one of the rare times that they weren’t.

 

“So, back to the plan, people,” Agent J said, trying yet again to get the agents to focus. “As I said before, the enemy is smarter than we thought. If we don’t do something soon, the very maps we’re using right now to organize a plan could be outdated.”

 

“What exactly is the enemy doing again?” Lori, now Agent Dixon, asked.

 

“They seem to be claiming entire countries through a cunning use of—“

 

“Where the HELL are my pants?” demanded a shivering Agent Karpaithya.

 

“Flags,” finished Agent J.

 

“What? Where did you say my pants are?”

 

“I didn’t, Agent Karpaithya. I said the enemy is creating a vast empire with their cunning use of flags. That’s their attack technique.”

 

“Oh. But what about my—“

 

“Agent Karpaithya, aren’t you supposed to be at your surveillance post right now?”

 

“Well, sir, I was, or I was on my way to begin my scheduled surveillance when I realized I couldn’t find my pants anywhere.”

 

“So you trekked though 3 feet of snow all the way over here just to ask us if we knew where your pants are?”

 

“Uh…yes?”

 

“Do you not have any other pants you could wear instead?”

 

“Well, I…I did, but those were…they suffered an unfortunate accident.”

 

The rest of the agents in the mission tent stifled giggles, and Agent J struggled to keep a straight face. Agent T didn’t even try; he laughed right out loud. “An accident?”

 

“Yes, sir.” It took Nicolae a couple of moments to realize what he’d just said. “Oh, not that kind of accident, sir! I…uh…”

 

“Agent Karpaithya, I think that will be quite enough. You are dismissed.”

 

“But—“

 

“Out!”

 

Nicolae scurried out of the tent, back into the frozen cold of the Siberian tundra. Agent T turned to the other agents. “Okay, which one of you did he try to sleep with last night?”

 

Three of the female agents raised their hands.

 

“And who hid his pants?” Lori started to raise her hand.

 

“Well, I guess w—“

 

KABOOM! The sound of a nearby explosion stopped the discussion instantly.

 

“Quick! To your posts! Agent T, get these documents to a secure area!” Agent J barked out orders, snapping into battle mode. Lori and the others quickly darted out of the tent to see what had happened. Not twenty feet away lay a smoking heap of waste.

 

“Someone should probably go over there and find out what that is,” suggested Agent Lawrence.

 

“Hell, I’m not going near it,” replied Agent Hunter.

 

“Me, either,” said Agent Matthews.

 

The three of them looked at Agent Dixon.

 

“Oh, fine. But if I get blown up, I’m coming back to haunt all three of you,” Lori said before she cautiously made her way over to the smoking mound.

 

A pair of charred boxers was the only identifiable piece of refuse. “Ya’ll? We’ve uh…I think we lost Agent Karpaithya,” she said.

 

“You’re joking,” said Agent Feeny. The other agents walked over to where Lori was standing.

 

“Nope. See the boxers?” Lori breathed a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have to deal with Nicolae’s lewd advances anymore. There was no way he’d be coming back after an explosion like that.

 

“Oh, my…” one of the agents started to sob loudly. The other agents turned to look at her very strangely. Lori walked over to her.

 

“Are you going to be okay, Agent Sculley?”

 

“I…I…” the sobbing continued, now even harder. Not knowing what else to do, the rest of the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. agents just stood there looking at Agent Sculley. Finally, she calmed down enough to get out a full sentence.

 

“It’s just that…my whole world has just been completely flipped inside out…”

 

Agent Matthews nudged Agent Lawrence. “I thought all you girls hated Agent Karpaithya?”

 

The sobbing Agent Sculley overheard Agent Matthews. “Oh, no, I’m not crying because I’m upset about Agent Karpaithya exploding into unidentifiable bits and pieces…I’m crying because until now, I was so sure that there wasn’t a God, that miracles and supernatural events don’t occur. And now my whole belief system has just been overturned.” She wailed loudly, but seemed to be coming to terms with it. “I just never thought that after all those years, Agent Mulder would actually be right about this kind of thing.”

 

“I guess the question we should ask now is who did it?”

 

“Personally, I like Agent Sculey’s explanation,” said Agent Hunter. “It’s a lot less work for all of us if Agent Karpaithya’s death was just God making a humanitarian gesture.”

 

******

 

Lori, or Agent Dixon as she was still getting used to being called, cautiously lifted up the flap to the commanding agents’ tent. Agent T and Agent J were inside, hovering over a map with little red flags stuck onto it here and there.

 

“Agent Feeny said the two of you wanted to see me about something?”

 

“Agent Dixon, right?” asked Agent J.

 

Lori nodded. 

 

“Well, Agent Dixon, this is how things are. I know you’re a new agent, and that this has been your first official mission, but the two of us have just been given orders from Dr. M, and it seems like you’re the right agent for this next job. Apparently, Dr. M has taken a liking to you, for whatever reason, and wants you to be the main operative for this highly specialized mission,” Agent J told her.

 

Agent T handed her a thin booklet. “Now, the most important advice we can give you is that you have to be careful on this new mission; this is uncharted territory for our agency, and the people you’re going to be getting involved with might not only be dangerous, but they also have a highly specialized coded vocabulary you’ll find explained in this booklet. You will have to master this vocabulary in order to get close to anyone worthwhile to us.”

 

“Any questions you might have should be answered in the booklet as well. Should a situation arise and you need to be rescued from the grounds…well, I hope Karpaithya’s death gave you a renewed faith, because prayer’s going to be just about your only option,” said Agent J.

 

Lori’s eyes widened, and she glanced down at the booklet in her hands.

 

“Morphz?”

 

“Yes. We need you to infiltrate the Morphz Club.”

 

 

Chapter Three:

February 2008

 

Lori, or Agent Dixon as she was to everyone else present, stared as she saw her mode of transportation to Seattle approaching from a distance.

 

“You have got to be kidding me, people. There is no freaking way I am going to go anywhere on one of those,” she told Agents T and A.

 

“I don’t see the problem,” said Agent T. “It’s just a regular old Greyhound bus. It’s not our fault or Dr. M’s fault that we’re suffering from budget cuts; this new administration is just a little too miserly for F.R.E.E.D.O.M.’s tastes. So we have to cut corners where we can.”

 

“Yes, and we cannot let every agent fly an Invisible jet. They lose them far too easily,” Agent A told her.

 

“I always thought that the Invisible jets were just another myth,” said Agent Green as she checked her hair out in the reflection of the Greyhound bus windows. She pulled out a hair brush and started making adjustments to her upswept blond hair.

 

“A myth? No, they can’t be, or Agent R wouldn’t have had me spend two weeks searching for one of them,” Agent Tribbiani told her.

 

“But did you ever actually find the Invisible jet, Agent Tribbiani?” asked Agent Gellar.

 

“He didn’t, but that was only because he was too busy hitting on the two female agents that Agent R had accompany him in the search,” said Agent Bing.

 

“So that’s what he was doing,” said Agent Buffay. “I thought he was just citing random lines from that awful soap opera.”

 

“Which awful soap opera?”

 

“The one with that Dr. Drake Remoray guy.”

 

“Hey!” protested Agent Tribbiani. “I am Dr. Drake Remoray!”

 

“Well, buddy, I wouldn’t quit my day job if I were you,” Agent Buffay told him. Agent Tribbiani paused to mull over Agent Buffay’s statement.

 

“But…but being Dr. Drake Remoray is my day job!”

 

“Then I guess you’re pretty much screwed, huh?” said Agent Gellar-Bing.

 

Agent Tribbiani grinned. “I suppose you could choose to put it that way if you wanted to.” Every single one of the other agents groaned at Agent Tribbiani’s shamefully bad play on words.

 

“So,” said Agent T trying to get the gaggle of agents to focus on the task at hand, “here’s the plan for this mission: Agent Dixon is going to infiltrate the Morphz Club for us while the rest of you continue your daily lives and work on your hobbies.”

 

“Something about this mission seems just a little bit unfair,” Agent Dixon pointed out.

 

“Would you prefer it if I had Agent Tribbiani go along with you?” asked Agent T.

 

Lori glanced over at Agent Tribbiani, who was now gazing at a bag of cookies intently, obviously deep in contemplation…or as closely to “deep in contemplation” as he could ever hope to come.

 

Lori looked at Agent T. “Come to think of it, Agent T, I think I’m gonna pass on your suggestion.”

 

“A wise idea,” said Agent A.

 

The driver of the Greyhound sounded the horn. “Well, you know what that means, Agent Dixon,” Agent T said with a meaningful glance.

 

“Do I have to?”

 

The Greyhound hour honked again, this time more impatiently.  Agents T and A folded their arms very matter of factly, Agent Tribbiani ate one of the cookies he’d been gazing at in contemplation, and Agent Green was fixing her hair again. Faced with these sights, Lori did the only sensible thing she could do: she got on the Greyhound and put as much distance between herself and the others as possible.

 

“Is it just me, or are half of our agents oddly familiar for some reason or another?” Lori mused from her window seat on the Greyhound.

 

******

 

Upon her arrival in Seattle, Lori decided the most important thing for her to do would be to set up a base of operations. Not that I’ll be operating on anything; the world of science has always baffled me since tenth grade biology with Mrs. Freeman.

 

Lori paused as she realized that what she had just written was possibly one of the most pathetic attempts to score extra word count that she had ever, ever, ever tried. And she knew that she had made some pretty pathetic attempts at scoring extra word count in the long history of writing that she had, especially when you considered the crazy ramblings that Lori often found herself getting into when it was the month of November and she was trying so very desperately to catch up on her word count because she always felt like she was far, far behind everyone else that she knew; and of course, as a competitive person, it really irked her when people managed to work in semi legitimate word padding that really served no purpose other than to boost their word count; after all, would it really kill any of them(and she included herself in this group of “any of them” that she had in mind) to make an effort to not use shameless word padding, even if it did mean a complete and utter lack of the pointless rambling that one often comes across in any body of work over fifty thousand words that is attempted in just thirty days?

 

She decided to mark out that portion of her entry in the mission journal she was keeping for Agent A, this particular mission’s mission commander. Lori had to log a minimum of at least five hundred and thirteen words per day, and sometimes she had a little trouble coming up with that many words. Especially when the only thing she had done all day was sit in a Greyhound bus that she had never wanted to get on in the first place.

 

But now, back to the task at hand; she needed a base of operations. Or at least some place where she could sleep. As she wandered through downtown Seattle looking for an appropriate hotel, her stomach growled as she noticed a Taco Bell in the distance. Lori thought back on a conversation she had had with Agent C shortly after her induction into to F.R.E.E.D.O.M., when she had finally been told what the mysterious acronym stood for.

 

“Federally Recognized Espionage Enterprise Dedicated to Ordering Mexican,” Agent C had informed Lori and the rest of the newly inducted agents.

 

"Ordering Mexican?" Lori had asked Agent C.

 

"Yeah. Apparently the girl in charge of naming it hadn't eaten Taco Bell for a very long time and decided for whatever reason that it would work better than Obliterating Metropolises."

 

"Ah,” Lori had commented. “Well, it is a little less...violent that way."

 

Agent C shook her head. "That's what you think. You haven't been at headquarters after Agent A's had Mexican for lunch."

 

Lori kept walking right on past the Taco Bell. It would be a little while before she would be going there for lunch again. The image she was able to conjure up of Agent A eating there was a little more than she had ever wanted to think about. Stupid overactive imagination, she thought to herself.

 

After a pretty decent scouring of the city, Lori gave up any hopes of finding a hotel that would house her for free for an indefinite amount of time. Lori was going to have to rely on her connections in Seattle it seemed, or she would be getting a lot less sleep in Seattle than even she was accustomed to.

 

Suddenly, her cell phone rang.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Lori Ann! How are you?”

 

“I’m doing pretty good. How are you?” Lori asked, trying to figure out who the voice on the other line was.

 

“I’m great. What are you up to?”

 

Emily! It was Emily, her old camarade de chambre from Angers, Lori realized. “Well, actually I’m wandering around Seattle trying to find a place to stay for the night.”

 

“Really? What are you doing up here?”

 

“I’m in town on…uh…business stuff.”

 

“Oh, that’s cool. Hey, if you want, you could always come over to my place and stay until you find some place else to stay. I’m sure Robert wouldn’t mind,” Emily assured her.

 

“Seriously? You have no idea how grateful I’d be.”

 

“Sure. It’ll give us a chance to get caught up, and you can meet Audrey.”

 

“Great! Now just tell me how to get there,” Lori said.

 

*****

 

Finally, at last, after spending quite a good long time avoiding actually carrying out her mission on the premise that she had to keep up her appearance as a normal civilian and that the best way to do this was to spend a month just hanging out with Emily, her daughter Audrey, and even Robert on occasion, Lori found herself at the entrance to the Morphz Club.

 

Not sure what else to do, Lori rang the doorbell.

 

A guy who looked oddly similar to Dean Cain answered the door. “Hey, who are you, and what insipid ideas have you come to torment me with?”

 

“Uh…” Lori trailed off. This was Jeff. Jeff Sampson. The god of Animorphs, or at the very least the Morphz Message Board. He had a million wires attached to his head and his eyes didn’t really seem to be tracking on any one particular thing as they darted back and forth, making him look very much like a crazy person, but then again, this was Jeff Sampson. The guy who actually got a special dedication from K. A. Applegate in Animorphs #22. He was allowed to look a little crazy if he wanted to.

 

Of course, most of the avid Animorphs readers who kept up with stuff like that would tell you that the special dedication was really just a clever ploy to cover up the fact that Jeff Sampson was really just K. A. Applegate in disguise. Or that K. A. Applegate was really just Jeff Sampson in disguise. Either way, the general consensus was that only one of the two of them was really real, and that both of them were the real author of Animorphs.

 

“Look, lady, I’m busy here, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve got three different series to write for in just a little over a week’s time, and I’ve got to find a way to refute John, Lord of Darkness(dum, dumm, dummm!)’s claim that Baste is actually a cat goddess instead of a tiger goddess the way I’ve written her in the book in one of my many attempts to link the Egyptian gods and goddesses to the battle morphs of Animorphs. So if you could please just give me your sales pitch like the last evil Mary Kay cosmetics salesperson who came here and talked me into buying over one hundred dollars’ worth of lipstick and white face powder for my random Michael Jackson impersonations and leave me alone, I’d appreciate it.”

 

Lori blinked.

 

“Uh, that last part about the lipstick and white face powder stays between the two of us, okay?” Jeff said nervously. “I don’t want people to know the secret behind my Michael Jackson get up.”

 

Owner of Morphz Club susceptible to Mary Kay cosmetics sales pitches for his own twisted reasons. Also seems to have a thing for Michael Jackson impersonations... Lori made a mental note for her mission entry later.

 

“Actually, I’m not a Mary Kay saleslady. I’m Lori,” Lori told him.

 

“Lori?”

 

“Yes, I’m Lori.”

 

“Lori?”

 

“You might remember me better as Fluffer McKitty. You are Jeff Sampson, right? And this is the Morphz Club, isn’t it?” Lori asked him.

 

“Oh, right. You’re the crazy chick with the thing for Scotland and Marco, aren’t you?”

 

Lori nodded. “Yep, that’s me.”

 

“So what exactly are you doing here?”

 

“Well, you know how us crazy oldbies from Morphz are,” Lori explained. “I decided that I had to check out the latest happenings at Morphz the other day, and I saw in the ‘Official Questions for Jeff Part Twelve Hundred and Eight’ that you had started up this little club over here in Seattle.”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Well, can I come in then?” Lori asked.

 

“Oh, right. Sure, come on inside; we’re in the middle of renovating a couple of the areas so that we can have everything in sync with our new vision for the Morphz Club, but all in all I’m sure you’ll find it pretty impressive.”

 

******

 

After canvassing most of the grounds and being rather thoroughly impressed by everything she saw, Lori excused herself to the restroom. When she got inside and had the door firmly shut, she pulled out a roll of microfilm and loaded it into the camera hidden in her hat.

 

Lori had a diverse collection of hats, a collection almost as diverse as her scarf collection or Scarlett Fyre’s infamous collection of sexy red high heels and sexy red dresses. Lori felt that hats were always a good topic of conversation; all you had to do was randomly shout “Hats!” and people would turn and pay attention to you, even if only for a short amount of time. So when Agent R had told her that F.R.E.E.D.O.M. was trying to come up with a new fashionable way of disguising mini cameras, hats had been the natural suggestion for her to make.

 

The camera in her hat was set to snap photos automatically every six seconds until the microfilm ran out, and Lori had approximately twenty minutes’ worth of microfilm to work with before she would have to reload the mini camera.

 

However, from what she had seen, despite the insane coolness that was the Morphz Club, Lori didn’t really think that there was all that much there that F.R.E.E.D.O.M. would be interested in. Also, there was the issue of her not really feeling very comfortable turning over information about the Morphz Club or Jeff Sampson and the moderators he had working under him. Lori had spent far too many years being friends with most of these people to want to ever do anything to them that could be potentially damaging.

 

But then again, F.R.E.E.D.O.M. never seemed to really do all that much of anything from what she could see from the past five months or so she had spent working for the agency. Everything up to this point had seemed rather pointless. Of course, there was always the possibility that everything so far was just a façade, yet another test to see if she really was competent and able to do the jobs that they needed to have done when something important should arise.

 

But probably not.

 

So Lori stepped out of the restroom to begin her task of getting as much information about the Morphz Club as possible. And one thing was for certain, the Morphz Club had to be one of the coolest places that Agent Dixon had ever been to in her entire life; there were different areas that did different things according to their topic.

 

One of the areas that Lori thought was probably the coolest was the Morphz Memorial Museum, an odd collection of various items, most of them directly related to the Glory Days™ of Morphz. Upon discovering this area, Lori was hardly able to contain herself, the nostalgia was so pervasive. “What all have you got here?” she asked.

 

“Well, actually, we’ve got a lot of really random crap here in this area,” said the Moderator who had been assigned to show Lori around. She motioned for Lori to sit down as she pointed out various items.

 

“First of all, there’s a MASSIVE book that contains print outs of every single post that Jeff and a bunch of other Morphz boardies have managed to collect amongst themselves, as well as other random things that have been donated to the Morphz Club over the years, items like a box of the commemorative Oreos that Ann baked on the five year anniversary of the first time she had fed one to Matt, several of the toy soldiers that Brenda the Aussie used in the epic “Hi, there” thread in the Animorphs forum, and we’ve even got that extremely unfortunate microwave used to carry out Trent’s very first disturbing science experiment.”

 

Lori blinked in disgust as the Moderator pointed out the infamous microwave.

 

“Yeah, I know, it’s kind of a sick addition, but there are actually people who come here just to see it.”

 

“Oh, dear,” was all Lori could think of to say in response.

 

******

 

After spending an entire day at the Morphz Club, the time finally came for Lori to say her goodbyes. They turned out to be rather short, because Jeff was hard at work on a couple of different books, as well as coordinating the lighting in a new area of the Morphz Club.

 

“So, I guess I’ll see ya later, alligator?”

 

“After while, crocodile,” Jeff replied absentmindedly.

 

With that, Lori left the Morphz Club, feeling slightly wrong about what she had done as far as her spy work had gone. And yet, she had a foreboding feeling that this was only going to be the tip of the iceberg as she continued working for F.R.E.E.D.O.M.

 

“It’s just the Morphz Club. Why on earth would the Five possibly want to harm the Morphz Club?” she asked, trying to reassure herself. “Just the Morphz Club. Not like it’s a cult for kids who hang on every little word a particular children’s author says or anything.”

 

Her mission now complete, Lori pulled out her cell phone and dialed 373-3366, the phone number that Agent J had given her to call him at when she finished up.

 

“Hey,” she said.

 

“Code?”

 

“It’s not like I said the ‘Andalites fondled the Yeerks tenderly,’” Lori said into the receiving end of the phone.

 

“Ah, Agent Dixon. I take it you have successfully completed your mission then?”

 

“You could put it that way,” Lori said.

 

“Good, good. We’ll send the bus up for you in a couple of weeks. Until then, have a nice vacation.”

 

Lori groaned. I’d rather walk home than take that freaking Greyhound bus. With that thought, she ran back to get her stuff from Emily’s and begin the long walk back to Alabama.

 

 

Chapter Four:

May 2008

 

After hitchhiking her way across the country for over a month, Lori finally arrived back home in Alabama. However, after having seen multiple country sides as well as cityscapes, Lori had come to an inevitable conclusion; she would not be spending the rest of her life in Alabama, as beautiful a state as it was. The time Lori had spent up in the northeastern US where she had done most of her thesis work had also been a deciding factor in this new decision.

 

Oddly enough, though, the official F.R.E.E.D.O.M. headquarters were stationed in Atlanta, Georgia. So Lori couldn’t move too far away, or she’d end up spending half of her salary just on travel expenses. So Lori figured she would settle for the city life of Atlanta for the time being, until she could convince the Five to move the headquarters to somewhere just a little bit more sensible.

 

It didn’t take Lori too long to find the perfect house; it had a balcony, a large backyard, and a really big walk-in closet. Not to mention a nice kitchen and a rather decent sized living room, perfect for entertaining lots of friends. After the first NBOT convention had been held in Disney World a year ago, Lori had always welcomed her various online friends to come visit her; thus far the only ones who had taken her up on her offer had been Tina and Margie, which made sense seeing how they lived the closest to her.

 

Lori would have to do some serious budgeting to be able to afford the house, but that had never stopped her before. She hadn’t touched her savings in three years, and they were considerable. Plus, even if her salary sucked, Lori would get commission on certain jobs.

 

Shortly after moving all her stuff into the new house, Lori got a call on her cell phone. “You didn’t tell us where you were,” Agent J said.

 

“If I had told you where I was, it wouldn’t have been much of a vacation, would it have?”

 

“Good point. At any rate, the holiday’s over; we’ve got a special mission for you, and this one’s actually for the government and people important to the government, not just Dr. M.”

 

“A government job, eh?”

 

“Yeah. Less prestige, but at least if you die they’ll go all CIA and put a gold star in that book for you if you end up like so many other agents who have worked for them in the past.”

 

Lori gulped.

 

“What do you mean, ‘if you die’?”

 

“Well, the problem is we don’t exactly know the full nature of what you’re going to be investigating. It’s something of a mystery to all of us. There’s only a 50 percent chance or so that the mission could turn out to be fatal.”

 

“You’re kidding. 50 percent?!”

 

“We like to be optimistic. Come on down to headquarters and Agent R will fill you in on what we know for sure, and what we need you to uncover for us through whatever means necessary.”

 

Lori sighed. “I’ll be right—“ the phone line went dead. “There.”

 

******

 

“One word for you,” said Agent R to Lori. “Cinque.”

 

“Cinque?”

 

“Cinque.”

 

“What does it mean?”

 

“That’s one of many questions we need you to answer for us. The best we can tell, that word has something to do with a group of people on their way to an unknown destination.”

 

“And this matters because?”

 

“Because that word has got people in the Whit—er, the Grey House worried,” Agent R told Lori, tripping up on the new name for the President’s mansion.

 

After the revolutionists had swarmed the White House and painted it grey saying “there is no white or black, only grey”, it had thereafter been referred to as the Grey House. But even after a year, it was still a little difficult to remember that the White House was, in fact, grey. The people in charge of upkeep had been happy about it, at least. They didn’t have to worry quite so much about keeping the exterior spotless.

 

And of course, the color of the thing kept changing after that. The current President liked to think of himself as something of a decorator. So it had also been the Periwinkle House, the Green House, the Blue House, the Sea Foam Green House, and the Burnt Sienna House. Rumors were that it would soon be the White House again, but for now, it was the Grey House.

 

“The current administration thinks there may be some sort of danger posed by this rag tag group of…groupies,” said Agent R.

 

“Really?” Lori was starting to be intrigued by the mystery of it all.

 

“We only have a few clues that might help lead you to them; first of all, one of the groupies is believed to be a Jim Dixon of Orlando, Florida. Records of plane tickets and a call to his place of work confirm that he traveled to Pennsylvania, where we believe the group originated from.”

 

“Jim Dixon? Dixon?” Surely this wasn’t the same Jim Dixon that John had always included in various stories and anecdotes about his childhood friends. Surely there wasn’t some kind of actual connection here beyond this Jim having the same last name was Lori.

 

Agent R noticed the distracted look on Lori’s face as those thoughts ran through her head. “Yes, I realize the coincidence of your two last names, but it’s entirely coincidental,” Agent R assured her.

 

“That’s quite a logical thought there,” Lori complimented Agent R.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

Agent R pulled a snapshot from one of her back pockets. “This is the only other clue we have that you might be able to put to use; it’s a picture of some of the people we believe to be connected to this ‘Cinque’ gathering at the main gates of the Cedar Point Amusement Park, the Roller Coaster Capital of the World in Sadunsky, Ohio. Unfortunately, it’s been through a lot, and it was taken from a distance, so the details are hard to make out.”

 

Lori took the grainy, smudged photograph from Agent R and examined it closely. There were three people in the photo, one of which looked like he was probably trying to skip towards the gate; from the position of his feet in the photo, Lori guessed that the guy who was skipping had probably tripped over his own feet about three seconds after the snapshot had been taken.

 

And while she couldn’t quite place what exactly it was that made her feel the way she did, Lori knew that something about the skipping figure in the photo was very familiar. Weird.

 

“So, what exactly is it you want to know?”

 

“Well, considering how we don’t know anything about this “Cinque,” whatever or whoever it is, anything you find out is going to be more than we already know.”

 

“And by saying that you mean…?”

 

“Find them. Watch them.”

 

“How difficult can that be?” Lori asked, a question she would later regret asking.

 

******

 

Lori pulled into the parking lot of the Moobie Burger and cursed every single agent she could think of at F.R.E.E.D.O.M., even inventing some, as well as coming up with extremely colorful curses for the guy who had sold her the road map she had been using, the map company that made the road map she had been using, and whoever had messed up at the map company that made the road map she had been using and had mixed up the east and west indicators on her road map.

 

“New Jersey. Of all places to get lost and end up in, it had to be New Jersey. It’s never any place exotic like West Virginia or the Sahara or the Siberian tundra, oh, no, of course not,” she ranted. “No, I wind up in freaking New Jersey, and of course, I don’t realize it until I come across the freaking Moobie Burger.” Lori pulled off her helmet, still frowning and muttering curses under her breath after having rather clumsily parked the hot pink F.R.E.E.D.O.M. moped Agent R had given her to carry out the Cinque Mission.

 

“I swear, whoever it is that’s in charge of this freaking spy organization really needs to watch some James Bond or Mission Impossible or any spy movie and take some notes on what kind of transportation spies are supposed to use to carry out their missions,” she grumbled as she opened the door to the Moobie Burger. “Even the guys in I-Spy had cool spy stuff.”

 

Once inside, with her Moobie Burger and chocolate shake in front of her, Lori pulled out the road map she had been using, as well as a pen to make corrections. After a good thirty minutes, she finally had a sort of discernible route traced out onto the map, all the way to the spot where the photograph had been taken. Seeing how she didn’t have anything else to go on, Lori had decided that the Cedar Point Amusement Park, Roller Coaster Capital of the World, in Sadunsky, Ohio would be the logical place to start her investigation.

 

“And I swear, if I don’t get some kind of out of country mission after this one, I’m quitting,” she declared to no one in particular. “Being a spy is not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said, not knowing at that point in time just how true her statement was.

 

******

 

Phut. Phut put put put puuuuut. Agent Dixon had just passed the one mile marker for Sadunsky, Ohio and the Cedar Point Amusement Park when the hot pink moped she was driving began to make vague, inhuman choking noises.

 

“Uh-oh,” she said as she glanced at the fuel gauge. The little hand on the dial for the fuel gauge was stubbornly stuck on Full.  “I thought it was a little strange that this thing was getting over 200 miles to the gallon.”

 

It was then that the motor of the hot pink moped died on her completely.

 

“Oh, for crying out loud! When am I going to catch a break? I’m a mile away, for goodness’ sake! It could have held on for just another mile!” Lori got up from the hot pink moped and set it on the kickstand, then kicked it over with her foot.

 

“Yeee OWWW!” she hollered, clutching her foot in one hand while hopping up and down on the other. “Ow ow ow OWIE!” she whimpered.

 

In the distance, a flash of lightening lit up the sky, and seconds later, a clap of thunder resounded.

 

“Oh, freak, no. It is not about to—“

 

Suddenly, a deluge of water fell from the sky, as if someone had cut on not just a water faucet at full blast, but a fire hydrant at full blast. It was raining buckets, it was raining pitchforks, it was pouring, it was raining cats and dogs, the Devil was beating his wife, God was crying; no matter which idiom you chose to describe it, there was a heck of a lot of water that just suddenly came out of nowhere(or the sky) and dumped itself onto that general area.

 

“—rain,” she said, defeated. She sat on the side of the overturned hot pink moped and buried her head in her hands.

 

However, just as she was beginning to cry and give up any and all hopes of ever leaving that spot and actually accomplish her mission, an 18-wheeler stopped, washing a wave of water over her and drenching her even more thoroughly than the rain had managed to accomplish so far. The driver of the 18-wheeler stepped out and walked over to her.

 

“Something wrong, miss?” the trucker asked in a distinct Scottish accent.

 

“I got lost and ended up at the Moobie Burger in New Jersey, my moped’s out of gas, I’m soaking wet, and—“ at this, Lori’s voice caught in her throat and tears welled up in her eyes, not that you could really tell because she was already covered in water. She buried her head in her hands again.

 

“Well, where are you going? Maybe I could give you a ride if it’s on my way.”

 

Lori looked up at the trucker. He had nicely cut, fair hair and deep, stormy blue eyes. And he was the definition of sexiness. He probably had a gorgeous singing voice too she guessed.

 

He didn’t seem like the type who would kidnap her and then rape and kill her.

 

Then again, that’s probably exactly the same thing all those other girls that it happened to thought.

 

“Uh, well…actually,” at this she glanced at the tag on his shirt. “Actually, Mr. Ewan McGregor, I think I’ll be okay. I already called one of my friends,” she lied.

 

“You sure you’ll be okay?”

 

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be just fine. He should be here any minute. He’s, uh, really big and strong and stuff. And he’s got…uh, a pick-up truck. That he grills steaks on. And a rifle. With lots of bullets. And he won the NRA rifle-shooting contest last year,” Lori said, lying through her teeth. She didn’t know anyone even remotely like that, or at least, she hadn’t since she graduated high school.

 

“Well, if you say so, Miss…?”

 

He wanted a name? “Portman,” she said, using the first one that had come to mind.

 

“You know, I have a feeling I know that name from somewhere. Have we worked together before?”

 

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

 

“Are you sure? Let’s see…Portman, Portman…Natalie Portman, right?”

 

“Nicole. Not Natalie.”

 

“Oh. Well, nice meeting you then, Miss Portman. Tell your rifle-shooting friend to make sure you’ve got gas in that hot pink moped of yours before the next time you try to go anywhere.”

 

“Oh, I will.”

 

“And, now, I guess since you don’t need my help, I’m going to get out of this rain and be on my way.”

 

“Thanks anyways,” Lori called out as the Ewan McGregor guy walked back over to his 18-wheeler and left her there in the pouring rain.

 

She sat there for a moment and pondered what to do next.

 

“Screw this,” Lori said finally. “Forget F.R.E.E.D.O.M. I’m going someplace where I can fulfill my dreams!”

 

And it was then, right after the truck driver had started up the engine and driven off into the distance that Lori made the connection.

 

“Natalie Portman! Nicole Kidman! Star Wars! Moulin Rouge! …EWAN MCGREGOR!” she shrieked, jumping up from her makeshift seat on the side of the hot pink moped. “WAIT! COME BACK, EWAN! COME BACK TO ME, EWAN MCGREGOR! I have DREAMS! And YOU can FULFILL THEM!” she yelled, running in the direction the 18-wheeler had driven off in.

 

A mile down the road, Lori slipped in a pile of mud next to an on-ramp. She sighed as she laid there covered in muck and finally gave up on her doomed pursuit. “Gah, I am such an idiot, “ she told herself. “Ewan McGregor! I had Ewan McGregor offer me a ride somewhere, anywhere, and I didn’t take it. What is wrong with me?!”

 

She picked herself up out of the muddy pool of water and looked up at the sign next to the on-ramp. “Sadunsky, Ohio: Home to the Cedar Point Amusement Park, Roller Coaster Capital of the World” it read in large capital letters.

 

“Well, at least I made it here,” she comforted herself. She noticed there was a gas station up ahead, and quickly made over there, despite her shoes that were now mud-soaked and squishy. When she stumbled inside the gas station however, she realized that her shoes weren’t the only things about her that were mud-soaked.

 

“Lawd have mercy, child, what happened to you? You look like you done been through a hurricane or something,” said the woman behind the counter. The Southern accent took Lori aback, but it was a welcome change from what she’d grown used to hearing.

 

Lori started to stammer out a response, but she didn’t feel so good all of a sudden. In fact, she felt kind of whooz—

 

******

 

“Saints alive, she’s starting to come ‘round,” said a female voice that Lori didn’t recognize.

 

“I reckon it was all that rain water got to her, you think?” said another unfamiliar woman’s voice.

 

“Might could be, might could be. It’s that or whatever gave her that nasty cut on her leg there,” said the first voice. Lori’s eyes fluttered as she tried to open them. Someone pressed a moist washcloth onto her forehead.

 

What the…where the freak am I? Lori wondered to herself. She opened her eyes, and saw two wrinkly faces hovering over her expectantly.

 

“Who are you people?” she asked, trying to sit up.

 

“Now, girl, don’t you worry none. You done fainted right there in that convenience store, and we had to call the ambalance for you, so you just sit back there in that hospital bed and get rested up.” It was only then that Lori took the time to look around her and see that she was, in fact, in a hospital room.

 

“But…I fainted?”

 

“You stumbled inside and just collapsed right there in front of the counter, ‘fore I could get an intelligible word out of you,” said the other wrinkly face, which Lori now recognized as the lady behind the counter. “Good thing it was me there, too, and not that guy who normally comes in when that other guy calls in sick. I wasn’t even supposed to be there today!”

 

“The Lord must be with you, child,” said the first lady. 

 

Lori frowned. Well, whatever angel he’s got on guardian duty for me sure must have ADD or something, seeing how he only seems to be focused on guarding me at really random times. With my luck, I probably got the angel that gets distracted by TV shows and secretly wants to become Spider-Man, she thought to herself. She shook her head and closed her eyes…

 

******

 

“Lori? Lori Dixon? Is that you?” a new voice asked. Lori opened her eyes again. Gone was the hospital room, the hospital bed, and the two hovering wrinkly faces with Southern accents. In their place was the on-ramp to Sadunsky, Ohio, the muddy, sparsely grass-strewn ground, and a figure yelling from a boat being pulled on a trailer that had stopped on the side of the road.

 

“Huh,” Lori wondered out loud to herself. “I must have passed out when I tripped in the mud…”

 

“Lori Dixon! It is you!” the person in the boat cried. He climbed down the little ladder on the back of the boat, and came running straight at Lori. It was only when he neared that Lori realized who it was.

 

The massive afro. The annoyingly childish voice.

 

Shia LaBoeuf!

 

Back at the NBOT convention in Disney last year, she had ended up in a Doom Buggy in the Haunted House with him somehow; she still wasn’t sure how exactly it had happened, but she was pretty sure that Zach and Rick were the ones responsible. The Disney Haunted Mansion had never been a scary ride before, but somehow the addition of Shia LaBoeuf to the Doom Buggy made it one of the single most terrifying experiences of her adult life thus far.

 

And then, after the Haunted Mansion ride ended, he had tagged along with her for the rest of the day, and despite Lori’s many attempts to ditch him by hiding out in the women’s restrooms for extended periods of time, jumping out of that train that runs around the Magic Kingdom, and running haphazardly through the afternoon Disney parade, she didn’t manage to shake him until she “accidentally” hit him with a gift shop door and made a break for the exit gates.

 

As various scenes from that day flashed through her mind, Lori realized there was only one thing she could do if she were going to spare herself Shia LaBoeuf’s company for what could be endless days, weeks, even months or years if the door trick didn’t work again: she had to get as far away as she could. And she had to go now. And she had to go fast.

 

Without even acknowledging that she had heard a single word Shia LaBoeuf had yelled in her general direction, Lori took off for the on-ramp, and she didn’t stop running until she had reached the gates of Cedar Point Amusement Park, the Roller Coaster Capital of the World. She glanced back behind her, and breathed something of a sigh of relief. No sign of Shia LaBoeuf…but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t close behind, so she would have to do this quickly, and then go into hiding until she could be sure he was gone.

 

She walked over to the main gates and tried to pick up finger prints, but the rain seemed to have washed away any traces of older finger prints, as well as any shoe prints that might have remained. Lori sighed. It didn’t seem like there was much in the way of evidence or anything that could help lead her to this mystery of Cinque. She fingered the photograph in her pocket, pulling it out to make sure that she was, indeed, in the right location.

 

She was. She began to tuck the photo safely back into her pocket, but paused to look at that skipping figure again. What was so familiar about that guy?

 

Dejected, but still on high alert for any indicators of Shia LaBoeuf’s possible approach, Lori started to walk away from the gates and go find a hotel to hide out in for the next couple of weeks. Then she tripped on the side of the sidewalk, falling rather clumsily into a nearby bush next to the entrance to the amusement park.

 

And there it was. Her first lead. Her first “in” to all this Cinque stuff.

 

There, not two inches away from where her face had landed, was a crumpled piece of paper written all over with various notes, some of which had lines running from one part to the next. But it wasn’t the lines, or even the notes that caught Lori’s attention. No, Agent Dixon was aware of something much more sinister going on with that sheet of crumpled up paper.

 

There were locations written on it, not in any sort of order that she could discern, it seemed, but locations nonetheless. And one of those locations had a developed an important significance over the years, not through any study of her own, but because it was a place often cited by her So Weird obsessed friend, John.

 

Hope Springs, Colorado.

 

There were several other locations listed, but her gut instinct told her that the one place she would eventually run into and find out more about this whole enigmatic Cinque thing was Hope Springs, Colorado.

 

But first, she was going to have to make sure Shia LaBoeuf didn’t follow her over there, so after carefully folding up the paper and putting it in her pocket, Lori booked a room in the nearest hotel she could find, using the name Schmetterling Roarke.

 

******

 

As much as it killed her to have to wait to go to Hope Springs, Colorado, the several weeks she forced herself to stay inside the hotel in Sadunsky, Ohio were put to good use; she actually managed to finish her thesis and mail it in to her university. A couple of days later, she got word by phone that she would get her doctorate at the end of the semester. Needless to say, Lori was pleased; now she could finally quit working for this crazy spy organization and get down to what she really wanted to do: teach.

 

But she wouldn’t get her Ph. D for another month or so, not until the beginning of June. Until then, she really needed to keep some kind of cash flow coming into her bank account, so she resolved to finish this one last mission, and then she would be out. For good.

 

She called Agent J to tell him this.

 

“This is my last time,” she blurted out as soon as he answered.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I’m in for this mission, but that’s it. No more after. And I’m serious. No one is going to ‘guilt’ me into it. I’ve done enough.”

 

There was a pause over the phone as he thought about that for awhile. “You’re right. You have done enough. You drove a hot pink moped from Atlanta to…wherever it is you are now.”

 

“And it just happened to run out of gas and die on me a mile before I reached my destination,” Lori added.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“One of these days, it’s just not going to work, you know? Ten more seconds on that hot pink moped would have gotten me to the exit ramp I needed to get to, but it didn’t make it that far. And before that, it was the Greyhound bus to Seattle. And before that, Agent Karpaithya died out of God’s random kindness to the rest of the world. I mean, come on. Enough is enough.”

 

“You’re right,” Agent J said.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Lori was surprised that Agent J took it so well. She thought about it a little more, and realized she shouldn’t have been so surprised. Even if he was the leader, and had been the one to first contact her about working for F.R.E.E.D.O.M., he had never been pushy about it.

 

“What are you going to do Sunday?” he asked.

 

That took Lori by surprise again. “I don’t know. These past few days I’ve worked on finishing my thesis. Done dramatic readings of my favorite scenes from books. But this will be the two week mark.” Lori shrugged audibly. “I don’t know, man.”

 

From what Lori could hear over the phone, she could tell Agent J was nodding.

 

“But I’ll tell you one thing, Agent J. A week from now I don’t want to realize I’m still being followed by Shia LaBoeuf.”

 

 

Chapter Five:

Late Spring/Early Summer 2008

 

“Dun, dun, duh nun! Dun dun dun dun duh nun!” The picture on the TV Agent Dixon was watching changed from the soap opera Passions to the “Special News Report” screen, and then to a shot of Stone Phillips looking important. 

 

“In breaking news, officials in Brook, Illinois are blaming the same group believed to have recently burned down Dirty D’s Saloon in July, Ohio for what we can only say is one of the most tragic events in hotel casino history. Reporting from the scene is journalist Doug Roth. Doug, can you describe what the scene is like over there for our viewers at home?” asked Stone Phillips as Lori watched the TV in shock.

 

“Hey! Eve was just about to admit to Julian that she’s always loved him! And David was about to confess to Grace that he was blackmailed into untruthfully telling her he was her husband before she got amnesia and married Sam!  You can’t cut in with the news at a time like this!”

 

She almost turned off the TV, but intuition told her to leave it on.

 

“Yes, it is a sad state of affairs here in Brooke, Illinois, Stone. Thousands of people’s luck literally ran out on them late yesterday night when the largest hotel casino in town, Lefkowitz Towers, unexpectedly collapsed. The death toll is estimated at around one thousand people and is expected to rise during the night if no more survivors are found.”

 

Behind Doug, there was a huge pile of rubble, where the hotel and casino had apparently once stood. It was a grim sight; Lori sat down on the bed as she continued to watch on the hotel TV.

 

“Doug, what do we know about the collapse? Is there any evidence of foul play?”

 

“Well, Stone, it’s really too early to say for sure, but firefighters believe they may have found traces of C-4 that were detonated, possibly causing what has happened here today.”

 

“But the belief is that the people responsible for this are the same people believed to have burned down the establishment owned by Don “Dirty D” DiSalvo Jr. in July, Ohio, am I correct?”

 

“Again, Stone, officials here are still saying it’s too early to know for sure, but the mayor has said that this new terroristic death cult is on the top of the list of suspects.”

 

Suddenly, a man stumbled into the view of the camera and began shouting.

 

“I saw him! I saw him do it! I saw the whole thing, and it’s that fiend, that Cinque guy who burned down that other place already!” the man naked save for a pair of boxers hollered. Doug Roth looked vaguely terrified that he would have to actually interview the guy live on camera like an actual reporter, but was miraculously saved when the man collapsed, falling to the ground suddenly.

 

“Somebody get this man to a hospital!” Doug Roth said with authority. Out of nowhere, two medics appeared with a stretcher and carted the man away.

 

“Well, Stone, there you have it. The man responsible for this ghastly atrocity is the infamous and enigmatic Cinque, the leader apparent of the latest terroristic death cult. The man you saw on camera is one of many eye-witness accounts that link Cinque to the bombing.

 

“Thanks, Doug,” said Stone Phillips, turning to the camera as the view turned back to a shot of him behind a desk. He had a crisp new sheet of paper in front of him.

 

“It seems that the family of the owner of the collapsed building, who died from injuries related to the bombing earlier today, has just offered a large sum of money to whomever captures Cinque. Along with the $60,000 dollar bounty that Don “Dirty D” DiSalvo Jr. has placed on Cinque’s head, this makes him the most wanted man in the country.”

 

A picture of a police sketch appeared to the upper left of Stone Phillips’s face. “The police sketch we’re showing is one made shortly after the burning down of Dirty D’s Saloon in the tiny town of July, Ohio. Officials are asking for anyone who knows someone who looks like the figure in the sketch to go to the nearest police station as soon as possible, in hopes of apprehending this dangerous criminal.”

 

The screen went back to Passions, but it was too late; something had already prevented Eve from admitting her love for Julian to Julian, and Ivy had apparently found something new to blackmail David Hastings with and thus stop him from telling Grace he had only been pretending to be her first husband so that Ivy could convince Grace’s real husband, Sam, to leave Grace and indulge in his passion for Ivy.

 

“Dang it!” Lori said, angry that she’d missed what had probably been a couple of crucial new plot twists that she probably would have explained to her in great detail only a couple dozen more times during the next two weeks of the show before it cycled back to the varying love triangles involving Luis, Sheradon, Antonio, Ethan, Teresa, Gwen, Beth, Charlie, Miguel, Kate, John, Charity, Fox, Whitney, Chad, Latoya, Puff Dog, and the link that tied them and all the rest of the characters together, Tabitha the witch, whose only goal in life was to split everyone up from whomever they were currently with.

 

The show had come a long way since Timmy the Living Doll’s death, and Lori hated to admit that she was actually pretty well up to speed on everything that had happened since she had started watching about a year before Timmy’s death. It was scary how simply flipping the channel and seeing a kid pretending to be a living doll and deciding to continue watching out of the mere disbelief that a show with premises as ridiculous that could actually exist would make you end up being a junkie of that show for the next several years, sadly, probably, for the rest of your life.

 

“And speaking of scary,” Lori said to herself as she paced around the hotel room floor, “this Cinque thing is really starting to get crazy. I have got to quit vacationing on F.R.E.E.D.O.M.’s semi-existent money and start working on finding this guy and his followers.”

 

Lori called downstairs and asked them to send a bellhop up to her room. Surely after nearly two months in Sadunsky, Ohio, it would finally be safe to venture out of the hotel.

 

“Besides. Maybe Shia LaBeouf was in that casino and I’ve got nothing left to worry about,” Lori reasoned aloud. She picked up her cell phone and dialed headquarters.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey, Agent T. It’s Agent Dixon; is Agent R there?”

 

“Secret code?”

 

Lori sighed. “It’s a lollipop life.”

 

“Here’s Agent R for you, Agent Dixon.”

 

“Agent Dixon?”

 

“Agent R? It’s me.”

 

“I know it’s you, Agent T just told me it was.”

 

“Right.”

 

“So what is it that you want, Agent Dixon?”

 

“I need transportation from my current location. Hopefully Agent J told you about the sad state of disrepair the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. moped is now in.”

 

“Ah, that’s right. Hmm…well, we’ve got a lot of agents out on new missions right now, but I’ll have something sent to you as soon as possible.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“You might want to save the thanks until you see what I’m sending you, Agent Dixon.”

 

Chapter Six: SIX! Six chapters!!!

Midsummer 2008

 

Lori gasped as she entered the Holiday Inn hotel lobby. She had made it. She had actually made it all the way to Hope Springs, Colorado on a pogo stick.

 

It had to be some kind of a world record, but Agent Dixon didn’t have time for that. She was on a mission. The same mission she had been on since May of that same year, but a mission nonetheless. And Lori had vowed to carry out that mission, and carry it out she would, at least until she got word that her diploma had safely reached her mom’s post office box in Alabama.

 

Which reminded her that she should probably call her mom up and see if any packages had come for her recently; her mother had a history of getting Lori’s mail and forgetting it even existed until Lori said something to her about it. That had happened more times than Lori could count on her fingers and toes combined.

 

But back to the lobby. Lori tried to catch her breath as she waited in line to book a room; she had her handy false ids ready; this time she had decided to be Layla Sachsen for the duration of her hotel stay in Hope Springs, Colorado. You know, just to be sure that Shia LaBoeuf hadn’t caught on to her false identity back in Sadunsky, Ohio.

 

You can never be too safe where the teeny-bopper stars of Disney’s early year 2001 or so crap TV shows are concerned, Lori thought to herself, still gasping. Especially if they have afros.

 

Unfortunately, she still hadn’t caught her breath very well by the time it was her turn to register, but she made due with barely coherent rasping sounds and wild hand gestures.

 

When she got to her hotel room, she decided she would most definitely have to try similar tactics in the next hotel she stayed in; somehow, she had been put up in one of the plushest suites in the hotel, despite only signing to pay $50 a night.

 

Then again, the fact that the concierge was an orangutan might also have had something to do with the price discrepancy. But Lori wasn’t about to complain, not when she was finally going to get the first good rest she had had since her last night in Sadunsky, Ohio, before she’d received the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. pogo stick in the mail from headquarters and been told it was the only transportation that the organization could currently afford to provide her to get all the way over to Hope Springs, Colorado.

 

If I wasn’t planning on leaving that place as soon as I get my doctorate, I would definitely do something about the Department of Transportation, Lori mused. Now that the journey was over, it was a little easier to look more kindly upon the Department of Transportation sector of F.R.E.E.D.O.M.     ; Lori didn’t want to torture them to the point of insanity anymore. She just wanted to strangle them to death.

 

Lori reached into her pocket for the key to the mini bar, but instead pulled out the grainy photograph. Lori had studied that picture so many times in the past couple of months, to the point where she knew every detail in it, but still the identity of the skipping figure eluded her. Lori sighed, knowing it would be over soon enough for her.

 

“Time for the task at hand. My doctorate could arrive any day, and it probably wouldn’t hurt anyone if I actually uncovered something important,” she said aloud. “Like who on earth is in this picture with that Jim Dixon guy.”

 

And so she set to work.

 

******

 

Unfortunately, Hope Springs, Colorado was a little larger than Lori would have liked for it to be. Ideally, it would have been a town with a population of ten or so, and all of them would have some kind of first hand knowledge about what or who Cinque was, and where it or he or she was heading and why. But Lori simply wasn’t that lucky. She would have to settle for wandering randomly around the town, hoping against hope that her intuition, instinct, and pure, unadulterated Fate would either put her in the path of the Cinque groupies or lead her to them.

 

She had just wandered down a small little road when she heard something that made her ears perk up.

 

“Yo! Come here!” called out an annoyed voice. Lori started to walk towards the annoyed voice, until she noticed someone else out of the corner of her eye who was also heading towards the voice.

 

“Huh. They must not have been talking to me, I guess,” she said to herself. But something told her that she should still follow the guy the voice had called out to. So Lori pretended to check and see what time it was on her watch, which allowed enough time for the guy to get ahead of her. Lori slowly started to follow after the guy, taking careful note of his appearance in case this hunch of hers actually led to something more productive than the random stalking of someone she’d never seen before.

 

After turning a corner, she saw the guy meet up with a small group of other people.

 

“It’s about time you got your ass back here, Jim,” said the owner of the annoyed voice, a scraggly looking guy.

 

Jim?

 

Surely not Jim Dixon. No way. I’m not supposed to be this lucky, Lori thought to herself. She pulled out the grainy photograph and held it up as discretely as she could manage to and still be able to compare the various people in front of her to the ones in the photograph.

 

Sure enough, two of the figures were exactly the same, the one who was apparently Jim, and thus, probably Jim Dixon, his name being the only other link she had to this whole Cinque thing aside from the grainy photograph, and the other figure matching that of the owner of the annoyed voice. But she didn’t see the skipping figure anywhere around.

 

“Look man, I’m sorry. I came across a vintage comic book store and I couldn’t help myself, you know?”

 

“Yeah, well, you can tell that to Cinque when we get back to him and have to explain what took so long,” said one of the groupies, who Lori noticed had not been in the grainy photograph. Jim shrugged, and the group started walking towards the east.

 

A few minutes later, they stopped. “Wrong way,” Jim told them. They headed for the west, coming straight toward Lori and her extremely well conceived disguise as a normal person taking a casual stroll along the sidewalk. Lori kept walking, and once a good 20 feet or so was between her and the Cinque groupies, she turned around and began following them again, this time pulling a hat out of her purse, already loaded with microfilm.

 

All she would have to do would be turn it on when the groupies reached Cinque and then Lori would have concrete evidence of who Cinque was, and she could call her part of the mission closed and get her doctorate and find some unwitting university and start teaching there. She was already beginning to imagine the obscure quiz questions she would ask her very first class of undergraduates.

 

A few minutes later, they stopped. “Wrong way,” Jim told them. They headed for the east, coming straight toward Lori and her extremely well conceived disguise as a normal person taking a casual stroll along the sidewalk. Lori kept walking, and once a good 20 feet or so was between her and the Cinque groupies, she turned around and began following them again.

 

A few minutes later, they stopped. “Wrong way,” Jim told them. They headed for the west, coming straight toward Lori and her extremely well conceived disguise as a normal person taking a casual stroll along the sidewalk. Lori kept walking, and once a good 20 feet or so was between her and the Cinque groupies, she turned around and began following them again.

 

Lori suddenly began to have that strange feeling that comes when one is experiencing déjà vu. Probably because she and the Cinque groupies had been doing the exact same thing that they had been doing for the past twenty minutes.

 

Finally, however, the Cinque groupies got themselves going in the right direction and didn’t have to turn around anymore. An hour after Lori had first realized that she had, in fact, found the Cinque groupies, they met up with the guy who apparently was Cinque, or at least, Lori assumed he was Cinque seeing how all of the groupies kept calling him that.

 

She held up the photograph, comparing the skipping figure in it to the guy that seemed to be Cinque.

 

Yes. They were one and the same. Tall. Dark hair. That odd familiarity that Lori just couldn’t explain.

 

“So, Joh—uh, I mean, Cinque, what are we doing next?”

 

Whoa, Lori thought suddenly. Hold on just one cotton pickin’ second. No freaking way. Can’t be. It just can’t be…can’t be who I think I just thought it was, she said to herself, not even daring to say the name in her head for fear doing that would make it a reality.

 

Her mind flashed over the events of the past few months. She hadn’t been on AIM too much, so maybe his absence was explainable…but then again, there had been no emails from him, not a single one, and usually he at least responded to the occasional email. And no posts on the RPGs, not any of them.

 

And then there was the connection to Jim Dixon. Lori tried to reason that away. Jim’s a common name, she told herself. And Dixon is…sort of common. After all, he and I have the same last name. Who am I to say there can’t be another Jim somewhere around here?

 

But there was the scrawled-over piece of paper, too. With the notes…and the lines…

 

Lori started frantically searching in her purse for that piece of crumpled up paper. She dumped her purse out onto a nearby bus stop bench, and finally found the paper amidst several other papers full of notes for her next NaNoWriMo attempt. She looked it over.

 

The notes weren’t just ordinary notes. They were names. And the lines weren’t simply arbitrary, the way they had seemed to be at a casual glance.

 

No. These lines…these names…

 

It was a family tree!

 

And that was when Lori realized something else. What had led her to Hope Springs, Colorado in search of Cinque in the first place.

 

So Weird. The locations on that piece of paper were locations that Fi had been to in various episodes of So Weird. And she knew those locations well. Better than anyone who had only ever seen three entire episodes should know, thanks to one particular person and his obsession.

 

There was only one person that Lori could think of that would be connected to all of this, to a Jim Dixon, to a detailed random family tree, to the locations of places visited during various episodes of So Weird, to an origin involving Pennsylvania.

 

She had already turned on the camera in her hat; the microfilm was probably already half full of pictures of the Cinque groupies and their leader apparent, Lori thought as she tried to focus on something other than what seemed to be the grim truth.

 

And there it was. She simply couldn’t hold back the thought anymore, no matter how  much and how deeply she wanted to keep it from reaching her consciousness.

 

Lori sat down. Very suddenly. It looked a little funny, or would have to someone who understood the situation. A secret agent simply falling down onto a bench strewn with papers.

 

Lori would have laughed if she’d seen it, at least.

 

John.

 

John.

 

John was Cinque.

 

Cinque is John.

 

The thought bewildered her. Lori’s adrenaline started to pump as she realized what she had just realized.

 

John Dougherty is Cinque. Cinque! Of all the people Cinque could possibly be, it would be John! Of course! It’s the only logical turn of events possible! The person wanted by the government for terrorist actions, for the deaths of hundreds, over a thousand innocent people and who I’ve been assigned to hunt down and deliver to the authorities…is my Muse Maan.

 

What was she going to do? She certainly wasn’t about to turn him in to the people at F.R.E.E.D.O.M. She thought about dropping the mission, but that wouldn’t do any good at all; it would just mean that someone who didn’t understand that John was a perfectly harmless guy who was just obsessed with Cara DeLizia and all things related to So Weird and/or Alan Moore and/or Trigun and/or Animorphs and/or Remnants and/or—

 

Lori paused for a moment, realizing that now was definitely not the time to try and list all of John’s obsessions. She didn’t have weeks to waste on that, not right now. She had to do something. Now that she knew John was Cinque, she had two options.

 

She could go up to John right now and work the whole thing out. They hadn’t had secrets as muses before, and Lori was pretty sure that eventually, someday, he’d get around to telling her what this was all about and what he was up to anyways, so why shouldn’t she go ahead and cut to the chase and ask him right out?

 

Or she could turn tail and run back to her hotel room and try to figure out how to cover up both the fact that she now knew who Cinque was and the fact that she wasn’t about to turn him in. Destroying the microfilm would be the most important thing, of course.

 

I should have realized, should have known there would be some kind of a catch when I stumbled on to that stupid Jim Dixon guy.

 

Lori decided against the first option, realizing that it might seem faintly stalkerish if the girl he’d been talking to over AIM for quite a long time suddenly randomly turned up and demanded to talk to him. At the very least, it would definitely be weird. Not that that weirdness even came close to touching the insanity of what she had just discovered. So Lori would have to settle and go with the second choice.

 

“Oh, man,” Lori said to herself. “Oh, man. This sure as heck was not what I was expecting when I woke up this morning.”

 

Lori didn’t dare stay there any longer, out of fear that she would be noticed by the Cinque groupies, and out of fear of the possibility that she wasn’t the only agent that had been assigned to the Cinque Mission, that she was secretly being watched by another agent.

 

But that was a risk she was going to have to take for now. She couldn’t turn John over to the authorities.

 

He was harmless. Really. Lori was certain of it.

 

Mostly, at least.

 

Gah. Over a thousand people, though?

 

Lori didn’t even know where to begin processing all the emotions she was having; she was certain her psychology professor would have been able to tell her where to start if she was still taking psychology, but she was obviously not, and would therefore be forced to deal with this in the only way she knew how to deal with something of this magnitude. Which, in this case, meant finding some kind of explanation for why John…er, Cinque…had done what he had done.

 

There’s a reason. He had a reason. He had to have had a reason, a perfectly logical reason for doing it. It…it wasn’t really his fault or something…maybe he didn’t even do it! And if he did…he had a reason. There’s always a reason.

 

Everything happens for a reason. It was Lori’s mantra.

 

She put the grainy photograph back in her pocket, and put everything else back in her purse, and then started to make her way back to the hotel to mull over this crazy new revelation that had just completely rocked her world.

 

Cinque was John.

 

John is Cinque.

 

Cinque.

 

John.

 

One and the same.

 

“This is insane!” she muttered angrily as she turned around to catch one last glance at the guy she now knew to be Cinque, in the vain hope that he would suddenly be a different person, but Lori simply had no such luck.

 

It was still John. Had to be. The Irony Gods wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

It’s just my luck, Lori thought. Just my luck that my grandmother and my own mother, of all people, were right, and that the guy I’ve spent the most time chatting with online turns out to be a homicidal arsonist cult leader.

 

It was a crazy, zany, whacky world where her mother was actually right about something involving computers.

 

She picked up a gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream on the way to the hotel; tonight was going to be a rough night as Agent Dixon began to come to grips with this new discovery.

 

 

Chapter Seven

August 2008

 

As the camouflaged helicopter landed in a clearing next to the Amazon rainforest, Lori still couldn’t believe both the sheer lack of luck she was still having concerning what was now known as her primary mission and the strangely good hand she had been dealt on what was her current secondary mission: infiltrating the illegal Oreo ring organized by the South American drug lords of French Guiana and Colombia.

 

It was just what she wanted to be doing as a secret agent: get to know the bad guys, make them trust her with millions of dollars worth of illegal goods, and then spring the trap on them that would not only help her country and spy organization, but also net her quite a hefty commission.

 

Which would definitely help out with the payment on that house in Atlanta, not to mention allowing her to afford a nice wedding gift for Margie and Jasey(whose name she had gotten officially changed to Roseidous a couple of weeks ago for a wedding shower gift to the both of them; now Margie wouldn’t have to worry about the two of them being plagued by people who wanted Jasey killed, and Jasey wouldn’t have to worry about being killed by the people who wanted him dead on principle).

 

Lori hopped out of the helicopter as she thought about these things. The wedding would be at the end of August, so hopefully she would be able to round up the illegal Oreo-smuggling drug lords before then; she was definitely due a vacation after this current mission, or at least as much of a “vacation” she could get by with and not be forced to hand over the Cinque Mission to some other spy.

 

“And I can’t allow that to happen,” she affirmed to herself. If she was nothing else, Lori was a loyal friend first and foremost. That, and Lori was still trying to figure out just what she should do about the Cinque Situation.

 

She rubbed her hand over her face, and looked at her hand, puzzled at the green and brown smudges on her hand for a moment until she remembered that she was wearing camouflage make up, too. She and Agent Walker, Agent Truman, Agent Adler, and Agent McFarland quickly made their way over to the edge of the rain forest. The helicopter lifted off, and they were left alone.

 

“Hey, this isn’t the resort!” said Agent Walker in a distinct high-pitched voice. She was obviously disgusted by the surroundings.

 

“Yeah, where are all the cute cabana boys and sexy lifeguards?” asked Agent McFarland.

 

“Guys, we’re in the Amazon rain forest. We’re on a mission,” Agent Truman tried to explain to Agents Walker and McFarland.

 

“You’re damn straight we’re on a mission,” said Agent Walker. Then Agent McFarland giggled. “Okay, maybe you’re not straight, Agent Truman, or I’d be damned if you were, but we’re still on a mission to drink martinis and have generous amounts of oil applied to our bodies by gorgeous cabana boys,” Agent Walker corrected herself. With that, she opened her purse and pulled out two martinis, one for each hand.

 

“I guess I really messed things up, didn’t I?” asked Agent Truman in a sarcastic tone.

 

“Oh, honey! I wouldn’t say that…except I don’t know any other way to say it!” Agent Walker took a sip of one of her martinis and then a sip from the other one and laughed. “Come on, kids. Let’s get out of this place. I’ll call Rosario and get her to send Pilot with the new jet to get us out of here.”

 

“But, but…the mission,” Agent Dixon tried to explain.

 

“Oh, I didn’t mean you, honey. I don’t care about you. You can stay here and do what the crazy guy who thinks he runs everything told us we’re supposed to be doing, ‘kay?”

 

“Uh…”

 

“You’ll do just fine on your own. Ah, there’s Rosario and Pilot now.” With that, Agents Walker, McFarland, Adler, and Truman left Lori in the Amazonian rain forest with the task of infiltrating the drug overlords on her own.

 

But then again, Lori was slowly beginning to realize that despite all the other agents who worked for F.R.E.E.D.O.M., there really weren’t all that many who seemed to do much of anything besides her and the Five. Normally, such an imbalance in job responsibility would have made her seriously consider quitting or at least demand a raise or something.

 

But she couldn’t quit. Because then the Cinque mission would be turned over to some other agent, and despite the other agents’ general incompetence, pure blind chance could always play a role in their mission(as it often did seem to do for the other agents, and yet, never for Lori) and uncover the truth.

 

“Damn John and all his insanity,” Lori swore to herself. “Darm him! Darn it, darn it like a sock!”

 

She sighed. She had to focus. She had to get this job done. And she had to do it before August 30^th if at all possible.

 

Gah. Why did that thought remind her of NaNoWriMo so much?

 

******

 

“And that is our plan,” said Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One.

 

“What do you think?” asked Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two.

 

Sure, they had names besides Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two, but those names were way too difficult for Lori to try and pronounce. That, and Lori was just too lazy to learn how to say them the way she needed to. Along with the fact that apparently, the Evil Criminal Drug Lords liked being called Evil Criminal Drug Lords. Lori figured it was because it made them feel much more important and official, and possibly even evil, because how could you not be important and official and evil when you have people calling you an Evil Criminal Drug Lord?

 

You just about couldn’t, that’s how.

 

Lori looked at Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two. “Just a few thoughts…because that’s all I really have to spare. The rest are taken up with thinking about cake.”

 

“Cake?” asked Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One.

 

“Cake.”

 

“Cake or death?” asked Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two, who was a member of the Church of England.

 

“Cake,” Lori said affirmatively, effectively side-stepping the error another, less fortunate person had made earlier when asked the same question when they had accidentally replied “death?”, not thinking that Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two was serious.

 

“Now, about the plan?” Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One asked, slightly impatient.

 

“Ah, right. Well, I think it’s quite a good plan, but you might want to reconsider that decision to smuggle the tainted super-happy Oreos into Canada. The Canadians are really much too happy already. I don’t think the rest of the world is ready for a country of people happier than Barney on crack at a The Land Before Time movie marathon.”

 

“But isn’t that what we want? For the Canadians to overwhelm the world with their happiness, and thus allow us the chance to quickly land on all shores and claim each continent with our many flags?”

 

“Tell me again about the flag part. I want to make sure I’m understanding you completely on that.”

 

Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One sighed resignedly. “It’s a very simple plan. In the very same way all the Western countries who participated in colonization many years ago claimed entire regions by simply planting a flag and saying they owned it, we will have our representatives destroy all flags in a country while its citizens are distracted, and then we’ll plant our own flag in that area and claim it for ourselves. If we time it right, we should achieve total world domination in under two weeks.”

 

“But what if they protest?”

 

“It won’t matter. We’ll have a flag. But they won’t. And so that means we’ll win by default.”

 

“Yeah. If they try and tell us we can’t take over and rule their country and suppress them and steal their natural resources for ourselves, we’ll just remind them that they really should have thought to keep a flag handy.”

 

Agent Dixon nodded. She had to admit, it was a nearly flawless plan.

 

Well, nearly flawless except for the fact that three seconds from now, a troop of secret agents working for F.R.E.E.D.O.M. would bust the place and put both Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two where they rightfully belonged: working as assistants on Martha Stewart’s new cooking show, The New Martha Stewart Cooking Show for Criminals. After all, with a show like that, they could get a fresh start in a completely new business, and it was already too late for them to corrupt it.

 

Three seconds after that initial thought, a troop of secret agents working for F.R.E.E.D.O.M. busted into the secret lair the three of them were sequestered in and began the task of putting both Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two where they rightfully belonged: working as assistants on Martha Stewart’s new cooking show, The New Martha Stewart Cooking Show for Criminals.

 

Agent T and Agent R walked over to Agent Dixon. “Job well done, Agent Dixon. Very well done, I have to say,” commented Agent T, the warmest praise that Lori had ever heard Agent T give to anyone ever.

 

“You wrapped up this little operation a lot quicker than we thought you would, especially when you’re so busy working on the Cinque Mission,” Agent R said. “And you know what that means.”

 

“A raise? Health care benefits? A brand new car?” Lori asked eagerly.

 

“Hah. Hah. And, this month only, a special bonus ‘hah.’ No, Agent Dixon, the day our organization is able to provide you with those amenities will be the day the rest of us all quit our jobs and move to the South Pacific to start our own nations,” Agent R said.

 

“Then what did you mean?”

 

“You’re on holiday! Or, as much as you can be with your primary mission still going on. We’ll let you know when we need you again.”

 

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” said Agent T, nodding.

 

“Do I at least get a ride back home?”

 

“Uh…well, actually, it’s kind of funny that you should mention that…”

 

“You’re kidding. I’m stuck having to walk back?” Lori asked, incredulous. “From the freaking Amazonian rainforest?!”

 

“Well, we do have a skateboard that you could use if you want,” Agent T added in quickly.

 

“A skateboard?!?! That’s ludicrous!”

 

“And yet, if you don’t want to walk back, it’s pretty much your only option for transportation,” said Agent R. “If you want it, it’s over in the back seat of the stretch limo we came in and will be using to go back to the United States in.”

 

Lori sighed. She couldn’t say it was an entirely unexpected turn of events. And a skateboard probably was going to be better than walking that far. She went to the back seat of the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. stretch limo and pulled out the skateboard. Lori set the skateboard on the ground and waved good bye to Agent T and Agent R before stepping on it and pushing off towards what she believed was the general direction of the nearest U. S. border.

 

She got about half a foot on it when she started wobbling, and a whole foot later, she fell over, having lost her balance. It was definitely going to be a very long journey home, Lori realized. She decided that for the next mission, she would insist that she at least get a tricycle. Or maybe a Big Wheel. She could be satisfied with just a simple Big Wheel if she had to be.

 

 

Chapter Eight:

August 30th, 2008

 

Lori fumbled for the keys to her house as she approached the front steps; it was hard for her to find them in the bottom of her bag, seeing how the sun was only just now beginning to rise in the east. Lori had not been to her house since she had left for the Illegal Oreo Ring Mission(Lori made another note to herself that she needed to get F.R.E.E.D.O.M. to start coming up with much cooler, less obvious names for the various missions).

 

Instead of coming straight home the way she had hoped she would have been able to, she had been way laid in the town of Hartselle, Alabama, when she was, much to her chagrin, spotted by the locals and forced to participate in a lottery for who would become the next evil Mary Kay sales person.

 

The results of the draw were the first ever conclusive evidence Lori had (well, aside from Agent Karpaithya’s rather fortunate and still unexplained fatal explosion) that there was some force working to make at least a couple of things work out in a good way for her: Agent Dixon’s name had not been drawn, thank God. She would have rather been stoned to death.

 

“Dang it, Margie and Jasey are getting married this afternoon,” she said to herself. “And I haven’t even had time to go shopping and find them a really good wedding present or anything…stupid skateboard,” Lori said, throwing it into her neighbor’s yard.

 

“Hey! That hurt!” her neighbor yelled, apparently having been hit by the skateboard.

 

“Sorry! You’ll survive,” Lori called out in apology. Then her hands happened upon something that was jingling in her purse. “Hah-HAH! My keys!”  She unlocked the door and walked inside, dropping her back pack by the stairs and making her way to the answering machine. It was blinking, so she naturally hit the little play button.

 

“You have six messages. Would you like to listen to them?”

 

Six? SIX messages? That was it? For an entire month? Lori frowned. What had happened to the old days when people actually appreciated the fact that you were out risking your life to keep the country safe and preventing Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two from smuggling tainted super-happy Oreos into Canada?

 

Lori pressed the play button again.

 

“Hi, Lori, this is Hedrick Chapman, and I just wanted to speak with you briefly about the need our local high school has for sponsors and mentors. If you have any interest in being a mentor for our new after school program for teens, please call 1-800-742-7464.

 

Lori punched the delete button.

 

“Yo, Lori, what’s up? It’s Mike, remember me? Mike Andreadis. We used to go to high school together and stuff? Well, I just got out of prison the other day, and I ran into your friend Jennifer the other day and she said you haven’t been up to anything lately, and so I got your phone number from her. Anyways, uh, we should hang out some time and get caught up. That would be so cool. Give me a call, my number’s 467-2219.”

 

Lori couldn’t get her finger to hit the delete button quickly enough. Prison? What kind of psycho actually goes out of their way to tell people that he just got out of prison?! Lori shuddered. And he calls me?! Oh, just wait until I get a hold of Jenn for this. I can’t believe she gave that creep my phone number. He was scary enough in high school without her giving him my phone number.

 

“Gah. Why is it always the psychos who call me?” she wondered aloud before the next message began to play.

 

“Lori! Hey, it’s John, Lord of Darkness(dum, dumm, dummm!!!)!”

 

Lori rolled her eyes at herself. She should have expected a message from him after having said what she had just said. She listened as the message continued.

 

“Okay, anyway, it’s really just John. I got your emails from the past few months, I’ve just been unbelievably busy and stuff. But, hey, I’ll see you at Margie and Roser’s wedding in a few days, right? It’s going to be a whacky day, I’m sure. Let’s just hope X-Raytor’s not the priest for the wedding, and all should go pretty well. Anyway, I have to go, but I’ll see you there!”

 

Busy? He’d been busy for months? Doing what? Inventing a new way to sit around? Burning and collapsing random buildings while traversing the country with a gaggle of followers who called him Cinque, and were being searched for by the government?

 

Oh. Right. That second guess was actually pretty accurate, wasn’t it? No matter how much Lori tried to forget it, tried to not think about the primary mission she’d been given, there it was.  “Gah! I am going to beat John to a pulp when I see him at that wedding. What on God’s green earth was he thinking with all of that lunacy?”

 

Lori had moved on to being angry any time she thought about what “Cinque” had done. Angry at everything John had done, angry at what he had done to those people, angry at the people for getting in the way and getting themselves killed, angry that she was stuck in the middle of all of this…just angry in general, basically. Violent.

 

Yeah. Violently angry.

 

She let the other messages play without really listening to them all that much. One was from Margie, about the songs Lori was supposed to be singing at the wedding, one was from Alexis, who wanted directions to where the wedding was supposed to be taking place outside Atlanta as well as to inform Lori that it was “Hammer Time,” and then the last one was Alexis saying she had managed to get directions from Margie, so Lori didn’t need to worry about the first message that Alexis had left on her answering machine, and that it was still “Hammer Time.”

 

That done, Lori carried her back pack upstairs, then set her alarm for ten o’clock, as she planned to sleep for the next four hours so that she wouldn’t be a complete zombie during the wedding and the reception afterwards. After all, this was going to be a major event: the very first wedding of any Morphz boardie, and not just one, but two! Together!

 

It was kind of a scary thought.

 

Okay. Not kind of scary. Definitely scary. Especially Margie and Jasey…or Roseidous, as he was now officially named thanks to the visit Lori had made to the Witness Protection Program for him.

 

And there was also the fact that Lori was actually going to meet John face to face for the first time, since she’d only seen him in passing, having been too busy hiding from Shia LaBoeuf at the first (and thus far, the only) NBOT convention last year to actually participate in any of the events that happened afterward(of course, John hadn’t shown up until the last day, either, but that had been in a general protest against Disney, so it was sort of understandable…okay, not really, but Lori could understand how John could see that as an completely rational response to the decision to have the NBOT convention at Disney World, considering how Disney had wronged them all in the past, especially him).

 

As she climbed into bed, Lori cursed Zach and Rick for their role in the Shia LaBoeuf incident yet again, and then she briefly flashed on the memory of waking up at the on ramp for Sadunsky, Ohio. If she had woken up a minute later, she might still be stuck with Shia LaBoeuf.

 

The mere thought sent chills down her spine. Ech. What a terrible fate.

 

“Great. Wonderful. Now I’m going to have Shia LaBoeuf nightmares for the next four hours,” Lori muttered to herself. She rolled over on her side and clutched her large purple pillow, hugging it to herself as she quickly fell asleep.

 

******

 

Beep! Beeep! BEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Lori’s alarm went off as noisily as ever. She rolled over and tried to ignore it, but the ringing only grew that much louder. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

 

“Gah, fine,” Lori said, rolling over and hitting the snooze button, and then collapsed back onto her bed, still clutching the big purple pillow she had had for years and years. She snuggled up to the pillow and glanced at the alarm clock.

 

“You know, the one thing I did not miss when I was in the jungles of South America was you,” she told the alarm clock. “There’s something to be said for being able to sleep in, and what should be said for it is that it’s one of the best things in the world. I bet it’s even better than Scrabble would be, if I ever got the chance to play Scrabble with anyone,” Lori said. “Not that that’s likely to happen soon.”

 

Lori paused for a second to think.

 

“Okay, sleeping in is probably not better than Scrabble, but I bet it’s pretty darn close,” she amended. Lori closed her eyes, and with her head nestled up next to the pillow, she was just about to fall asleep again when the alarm clock went off again.

 

Beep! Beeep! BEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

 

“Gah! I’m awake!” she cried, and reached over to hit it and shut it off. This time, she looked at the time on the alarm clock.

 

“Oh, crap! The wedding’s in three hours and I haven’t even bought them a wedding present yet!” Lori said. She jumped up from the bed, suddenly really wide awake, and she hurried to get herself ready, singing to rehearse the songs she was supposed to be singing at the wedding while she was in the shower.

 

Thirty minutes later, Lori was ready, and she jumped into her good ol’ Honda Accord, or Marco, as she called him more affectionately. She gunned the engine and backed down the driveway.  “Come on, Marco. We’ve got to go shopping and find Roses and Roser a gift in the next hour and a half,” Lori told the car.

 

Lori glanced at the fuel gauge. It was on full…but she wasn’t about to take any chances that Marco would end up the way the hot pink F.R.E.E.D.O.M. moped had, stranded on the side of the road a mile away from Sadunsky, Ohio. “First stop, the nearest gas station,” Lori said to Marco. “And then I can get to work trying to find the two of them a wedding gift.”

 

Half a mile down the road, Lori turned the car back on around and went back to the house. “It would probably help if I had my purse with my wallet and check book inside it, I would imagine,” she observed.

 

******

 

Despite the harriedness of the morning, Lori managed to get over to the wedding early and get a good seat for the actual ceremony(she needed a front seat since she was supposed to be singing for some of it), after dropping her gift off in a room that was literally packed to the brim with gifts. It was quite a large wedding, but then again, that was to be expected when you had a general invitation go out to all the Morphz boardies, who by then numbered over 700. Not all of them were in attendance, of course, but a surprising number had turned out for the event.

 

The ceremony was short and sweet, with the reception following quickly thereafter at a really lovely little park. Lori had no idea who had been in charge of the catering, but she definitely approved, and she knew that Ann approved as well, if only because there was fountain made entirely of Oreos, filled with milk. It was really a weird sort of thing to have at a wedding reception, but it got looks of awe from most of the guests(all of whom knew the Oreo’s reputation), and it was a definite topic of conversation.

 

“Did you try any of the milk?” Tabi asked Matt.

 

“Are you kidding? I have a little more sense than that,” he told Tabi. “It’s Oreo-tainted. I don’t even want to chance what might happen to me.”

 

Further away from the table of refreshments, a group of NBOTers had gotten together to chat. Because she had gotten to do most of the singing for the wedding ceremony, Lori was in a rather good mood, despite the lack of sleep she’d gotten.

Ann and Juliet and Tina sat on the picnic blanket with her, all in their various gowns. Ann was helping herself to a package of Oreos that the rest of them instinctively stayed away from.

“Ann, did you make these brownies?” Tina asked.

“Of course!” Ann said. “But don’t worry, they’re not the ‘special’ kind.”

Lori laughed. “God, how long has it been since I’ve heard that one?” She shook her head.

“About as long as I’ve gone without hearing someone yell ‘Sleep is for the week! The teak!’ every time I go to bed.” Juliet said.

“I can come over, if you want.” Ann offered.

“No, trust me, that’s okay.” Juliet laughed.

“I sort of miss the glory days of Morphz, you know?” Tina said.

“Who doesn’t?” Juliet said. “I’m just glad we all stayed in touch.”

“It’s funny, when we started out, you wouldn’t think that just making some friends on the Internet would affect our entire lives,” Ann said.

 

“I guess we have KAA to blame for that,” Lori said. “Hey, have any of you been up to Jeff’s place?”

“The Morphz Club?” Ann asked. “Of course! Me and Margie went up there last summer. With the exception of that time we needed to pick up Ja- er, Roseidous because he lost his train ticket, that’s the only time I’ve ever had an excuse to go to Seattle.”

“I’ve heard about it,” Juliet said. “But I haven’t gotten the chance to go yet. What’s it like?”

“You haven’t gone yet?” Tina demanded. “I’m hoping you have a good excuse!”

“Er, I was building a shrine to Snape?”

“Good enough for me!” Tina said.

“Seriously, though, you should go there,” Lori said. “It’s this big building, and inside it’s this huge… fun house, I guess you could say. There’re all these different environments, and different areas for different forums--”

“And Jeff controls it all with his mind,” Tina said. “He’s hooked up to this big mainframe, and he controls all the environments and stuff through his brain. Like Billy Weir, in Remnants.”

 

“But you only got up to book seven…” Ann said.

“Shhh!” Tina said.

“Doesn’t that get sort of, I don’t know, lonely?” Juliet asked. “Being hooked up to a computer all day?”

Ann laughed. “Not if you’re Jeff. He can project himself anywhere, inside or outside Morphz, and for friends, family, and oldbies like us, he just invites them down to where his physical self is. And he writes while he does all of this, which is just plain scary. He was telling me, though, that he’s trying to work on a program that will project the environments and moderate the board automatically, without his constant attention- you know, so he can get outside one of these days. When I was there, he had these three moderators too, but I don’t know how that’s going…”

“That’s sort of-“ Lori started to say, but was interrupted as a shout erupted from somewhere nearby.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” John came barreling down a hill, over the blanket, and stopped- with his head in Lori’s lap.

“Son of a- JOHN!” Margie yelled from somewhere.

“Sor- owies.” John said.

“John!” Ann said.

“Ow!” John said.

And it was then that John looked up and saw Lori looking down at him. He looked up at her. She looked back at him, not really sure what to say. This wasn’t exactly the way she had expected to meet him for the first time, after all. But then again, it was John.

 

“I-uh-I-“ John managed.

“John!” Lori said, realizing that now was not the time to confront him.  “Long time no see! Could you get out of my lap?”

“I-uh-I-I-I-“

“Want me to poke him?” Ann asked.

“Sure.”

Ann poked John with a twig and he sat up.

“Hey!” Then he turned back to Lori. “I-uh-I-I-I-“

And John looked into Lori’s eyes.

And Lori looked into John’s eyes.

Wow, John is still sooooo weird, she thought briefly, then giggled to herself. So Weird. What an appropriate thought. So fitting.

 

Oddly enough, though, all the desire Lori had had to beat him into a pulp over what he had done as Cinque was suddenly gone. And she couldn’t for the life of her explain why or how. She was still confused, still upset, and definitely still angry of course; she just wasn’t feeling violent anymore.

 

Lucky for John.

 

Lori looked back at John. He was still staring at her.

 

“Yes?” she asked expectantly.

 

“I-uh-I-I-“

 

“Guys! Major problem!” shouted Todd, who had happened to glance at the refreshment table. “The fountain’s about to collapse!”

 

Everyone, including Lori, made a mad dash over to the refreshment table to save the Oreo Fountain, leaving John sort of standing there next to the picnic blanket by himself, his hands in his pockets.

 

“Uh…never mind, I guess,” John said with a sigh.

 

******

 

Lori surveyed the room and the preparations she had set up for the party, content with what she had managed to pull together in just two days’ worth of planning. Lori, very much like one of her favorite RPG characters, Scarlett Fyre, had always liked any excuse to throw a party, and she was pretty damn good at it when she made even a half-hearted attempt, or at least that’s what she liked to think.

 

“And my parties turn out much better than the Semi Annual Justice League Sadie Hawkins socials do. Probably due to the lack of the possibility of evil villains crashing the party at any moment…and no one streaking,” Lori mused aloud.

 

“Yeah. The Semi Annual Justice League Sadie Hawkins Social always seems to go downhill after the streaking,” she said. But there would be no streaking at her birthday party. Not if she could help it.

 

And of course, what better excuse to throw a party than her 25^th birthday, especially when some of the Morphz boardies were still in town?

 

Especially when it’ll get my mind off of everything that’s been going on, Lori thought briefly, but forced herself to stay away from that topic of thought.

 

Lori took another look at the guest list; she always invited a ton of people to these things, with the understanding that everyone wouldn’t make it to every party she threw. Birthday parties generally had the biggest guest lists, though, for obvious reasons.

 

“Oh, like none of the rest of you like the ‘getting lots of presents’ part of your own birthdays,” Lori said aloud, scolding the readers judging her for the apparent materialism that her motivation for inviting lots of people was based upon. “Who doesn’t like getting lots of new stuff? At least I’m admitting the truth.”

 

Lori walked around the isle in the kitchen, where she had just finished setting up and arranging most of the food. There were two cakes, one that was a cheesecake, and another that was a normal ol’ 5 layer devil’s food cake with cream cheese icing. Both of the cakes were homemade, naturally, as were all of the appetizers.

 

Puck, Lori’s faithful cat, meowed loudly in protest to the fact that despite all the delicious food, he was still stuck with dry cat food, and in protest to the fact that he knew that if he tried to jump up onto the counter, Lori would push him back off. None of this, Lori had to admit, was exactly fair to Puck, but he would get over it—she had spent far too much time cooking everything to let Puck just go whole-hog--or whole-cat--at the food.

 

She had spent way too much time cooking to allow Puck to do that. Lori’s kitchen had been a wreck when she had finally finished cooking, but it was worth it in her opinion.

 

However, before she could admire her own handiwork any longer, the doorbell rang. Lori looked at the clock: it was already five minutes until four o’clock. The day had gone by much more swiftly than she had thought.

 

Lori went over and answered the door.

 

“Lori! Hey! Gah, it’s been such a long time since we saw each other,” said Tina, who walked right on in.

 

“Yeah…a whole…what, two weeks?”

 

“Well, actually, there was lunch on Tuesday at that cute little café near the Atlanta Zoo,” Tina reminded Lori.

 

“Oh, that’s right. So…less than a week? Gosh, it really has been quite a while since we’ve had time to hang out, hasn’t it?” Lori asked with a grin.

 

“Okay, so I was exaggerating just a little bit. But you know what I meant.” Tina set her present on the coffee table, which Lori figured was as good a place as any for what presents might be accompanying the expected guests. “Everyone’s been ‘in real life’ lately, not online.”

 

“Yeah, I know. It’s kind of weird to see everyone semi-frequently offline nowadays, isn’t it?” Lori asked, shutting the front door. “But it’s fun.”

 

“Yeah. Jasey and Margie’s wedding was absolutely crazy though. I still can’t believe that the Oreo fountain collapsed on top of Matt.”

 

“And surprisingly, all the Oreoness didn’t have any adverse effects. That was unexpected,” Lori joked.

 

“It didn’t have any adverse effects that we know of yet,” Tina corrected.

 

“True,” admitted Lori. “For all we know, a dog or a snake or a chicken or goodness only knows what else might be the next to ring the doorbell, and then we’ll know that after all those years of joking about Oreos, Ann really was serious about what would happen to Matt.”

 

The doorbell rang, and the two of them exchanged glances. Lori went over to open the door; sure enough, Matt was on the other side, but fortunately, he was not a dog, or a chicken, or a snake, for that matter. Just the normal old “just like Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter Extraordinaire” Aussie that he had always been.

 

Well, maybe not “just like Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter Extraordinaire.” After all, unlike the Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter Extraordinaire, Matt did still have all of his limbs, and his face showed no signs of savage mangling thanks to years and years of crocodile hunting. But he was still an Aussie. Just like the Croc Hunter was. So there was still something of a comparison to be made.

 

“What…why are the two of you looking at me so strangely?” he asked, turning around to make sure there wasn’t some kind of monster, perhaps a giant cookie or King Kong or some other such nonsense,  behind him.

 

There wasn’t. This was real life, after all, not some kind of crazy RPG that all of them let their imaginations run wild on.

 

The rest of the guests arrived in quick succession after Matt’s arrival, and the party was going very well, with people eating and mingling…okay, not mingling so much as Lori’s friends from high school, college, and work hanging out in the kitchen and making a point to avoid Lori’s slightly whackier Morphz boardie/NBOT friends, who were at the same time dispersed throughout the rest of the house in groups of two and three, generally commenting on the glory days of Morphz, Margie and Roseidous’s wedding, and all the food Lori had made for the party.

 

Lori’s friends from high school, college, and work stuck with conversation revolving around observations they had made or were making of the various NBOTers and Morphz boardies.

 

“I swear to you, I saw that guy at the Most Wanted for Stalking M. Night Shyamalan web site,” Jenn whispered to Melissa.

 

“What were you doing there?” Melissa asked, twirling her two-toned hair with one hand. “You’re not a Patel, are you?”

 

“Uh…” Jenn looked very confused. “What’s a Patel?”

 

“If you don’t know, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

 

“Yeah, well I know that the one guy over there, the tall one with the dark hair who’s mostly been going ‘uh—I—I—uh—I” every time he tries to talk to Lori, you know? I could swear to you I saw him when I was in Seattle a month ago. Doing some weird crap,” Rummer said to the rest of them.

 

“Weird crap?” asked Hayley.

 

“Weird crap,” Rummer said affirmatively. “That guy is so weird.”

 

“Well, I don’t care who they are or what they’re doing, if another one of them comes up to me and goes, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me, you’re just like the Rachel from the books,’ I am soooo going to go postal on them,” Rachel said, her blue eyes flashing as she swept back her blonde hair to one side.

 

“Well, at least you don’t have a cousin named Jake or a best friend named Cassie,” April said. “Because then you really would be screwed with a gathering of Animorphs freaks like this.”

 

April was one of the few “in real life” friends of Lori’s who had actually read Animorphs, so she understood the Morphz boardies just a little bit more. Just enough to know what to say and what not to say.

 

And enough to know to be scared.

 

“But I do have a friend named Cass—oh, right. Good point.” Rachel stopped just shy of giving any Morphz boardies with particularly good hearing something new to bug her about.

 

Well, admittedly, it was one of the more awkward birthday parties Lori had held, but it wasn’t a total loss, Lori told herself.

 

Okay, so that previous thought was a lie, Lori confessed to herself, but at least everyone liked the food. That has to count for something, she figured.

 

After everyone had eaten their cake and Lori had opened the large pile of presents that had stacked up on the coffee table, people started to slowly drift off and leave. Lori frowned as she realized that during the entire party, she had only seen John a few times, and always just in passing, whereas she had talked to everyone else quite a bit.

 

She frowned again, mulling this over. Surely he’s not been avoiding me. I mean, he came to the party. And we’ve always talked online easily enough. It wouldn’t be hard for him to strike up a conversation.

 

And speaking of John, what was he up to, she wondered. Had he left already? Lori still wanted to ask him about Cinque. Lori needed to ask him about Cinque; she never had been one for waiting for an answer for very long when she was curious about something. It drove Lori crazy not to know stuff, especially when it was stuff that she was probably going to have to continue to hide from government officials who were paying her big bucks not to keep that very same information under wraps.

 

And this is more than just that, Lori reminded herself, not that she really needed to remind herself. I have to find out why. I mean…it’s John. How could he do something like that? How could he be responsible for several hundred people dying?

 

Lori shrugged, not knowing what else to do and figuring that he had probably already left, and as the party started to wind down, she took an armful of presents and made her way on up to her room on the second story of the house. As she opened the door(rather awkwardly, considering the fact that her hands were quite full of presents and really not exactly free to grab a hold of the door knob and turn it to open the door) Lori realized that John had not, in fact left.

 

How did she realize this? Well, the answer to that was simple enough; John was standing there in her bedroom, right next to her dresser, looking at the pictures that Lori had in picture frames that were sitting on top of the dresser. And dancing.

 

Yes. Dancing. Quite an interesting dance at that.

 

“Ahem,” Lori said, clearing her throat and making her presence known. She almost hadn’t wanted to; it had seemed like the dance was only getting started, and Lori was kind of curious to see where it would go from there, but then again, she didn’t want John to embarrass himself unknowingly.

 

“Lori! I—I—was just, uh—that is, I was only—“ John started to stammer. His Sexy Dance of Confidence had been interrupted at a crucial point, and now John was back at square one.

 

“Are you always this articulate offline?” Lori asked. “Cause if you are, that’s really misleading considering the way you are online.” Which would only be half of the misleadingness, but it would be a start, at least.

 

“No, I’m usually, uh, well, I’m—“ now that Lori had pointed out the obvious difference(or what she thought at the time was an obvious difference) between John’s cool, smooth charm and witty repertoire(or ability to make lame puns, whichever you prefer to call it) online and the way he spoke to her in real life, John was even more flustered than he had been. And that was saying a lot, considering what he had been planning to ask her today, as soon as he had finished his Sexy Dance of Confidence.

 

Lori laughed as she set down the presents on her bed. “Really, John, I don’t bite. I was just joking about the way you’ve been talking…and that was quite…an interesting little dance there.”

 

There was something of an awkward pause as John absorbed this new insight on his dancing capabilities. After all…interesting was a good thing…right?

 

John screwed up his courage and decided to just get it over with. “Lori, would you go out with me?”

 

Lori looked back at John, somewhat surprised. 

 

“Go out? With you?”

 

John nodded.

 

“As in, go out like a date, or go out like friends?”

 

John nodded.

 

“Wait a second. That didn’t exactly answer my question,” Lori said. “Go out as in a date date? As in a real date?”

 

John nodded, this time vigorously. There was another heavy, sort of awkward pause in the room as Lori thought about it.

 

Finally, after what seemed like ages to John, but was really only a couple of minutes, Lori smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Now wasn’t the time to ask John about Cinque, but she would have another chance to ask him if they saw each other again. “Sure. Why not?”

 

“Great! I’ll, uh, I’ll email you! Or we’ll figure it out on AIM,” John said. “I’m in town for the next few weeks house sitting at Roser’s country home just outside the city.”

 

“Sounds like a plan.” Lori grinned. John in person had a strange effect on her; she wanted so badly to forget what she knew.

 

“Good.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Uh…” With that for his final comment, John bolted, leaving Lori in her room to mull over what had just happened.

 

“Well…that was sort of unexpected,” Lori said to herself. “But it’ll be fun. And if it’s not, I can turn him in to the authorities and have a clear conscious,” she said with a shrug.

 

She was joking.

 

She hoped.

 

Chapter Nine:

Fall 2008

 

It had been nearly a month since Lori and John’s impromptu meeting at the base of that green hill at the reception for Roses and Roser’s wedding. Good as it had been to see everyone again(they’d all met up with each other at some point by now, either at Jeff’s in Seattle or at the NBOT convention they’d finally held a couple of years ago) it had made Lori begin to think about things she didn’t like to think about.

Firstly, the thought of Roser and Roses on honeymoon—but she quickly blocked that out of her mind--if Margie felt up to that, more power to her, Lori told herself. And she’d be sure to avoid the TV upon their return as rumors had been flying about their involvement in a new version of the Newlywed Game.

But secondly, and what lay heaviest upon her mind, was her thorough lack of luck in the relationship department.

Being an international spy had taken up most of her time since she’d started almost a year ago; she’d had no time for a social life until recently. Worse, with Lori having turned 25 just a week and half ago, she was reluctantly reminded of that old movie Never Been Kissed. Especially since it had come on TV the night before her big birthday party.

This was possibly the only reason Lori had said yes when John asked her to go out with him.

 

Okay, that and that Lori didn’t see any reason not to give this a chance. After all, nowadays, who knew? Crazier stuff had happened before, and was bound to happen in the future. But then again…

 

What have I gotten myself into? she wondered as she heard the doorbell ring. She gave herself another once over in the mirror before heading downstairs and answering the door.

 

“John?”

“SCOTTISH!” John shrieked at the top of his lungs. Lori jumped back, eardrums ringing.

“…Right then…” she said, slowly backing away.

“I uh, uhhhhhh,” he stammered, looking into Lori’s blue eyes again. Lori looked at the box.

“What’s in the box?”

“Uh, Scottish coffee! That’s it! …You still like coffee, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Lori said, taking the box from him. “Though I can’t say I’ve ever heard of…are you coming inside?” she asked abruptly. John stepped inside obediently.

“Sooo…” John tried to think of something to talk about.

“Weird?” Lori said with a grin.

 

Needless to say, from that point on(well, okay, so there were a few minor snags along the way like falling out of the gondola and the way the food John had fixed had exploded in quick succession) John and Lori’s first date went rather…well…at the very least, it ended on a pretty good note.

 

It wasn’t until John had finally left later that night that Lori realized she had never managed to get him to talk about Cinque. Or at least, John had screwed up once and said something about Cinque as she dragged him out of the river half-choked with water, but it had been completely unintelligible. Something about goats.

 

I’m starting to wonder if  maybe, just maybe, I’ll be a whole lot better off not knowing just why he did what he did, Lori thought as she was getting ready for another date with John.

 

John would be going back to Pennsylvania soon, by the end of the week at the latest, because Roseidous(or Jasey, whichever name you preferred to call him now that Roseidous was his legal name under the Witness Protection Program; Lori alternated between the two, using Jasey when she didn’t want to figure out how to spell Roseidous, and Roseidous or Roser when she couldn’t remember what Roser’s original name had been) had decided to sell the home in the country side that he had acquired and that for the past month, John had been house sitting. And yesterday, a group of unbathed, starry-eyed lint worshippers had made a down payment on the house in the country side.

 

Apparently, they needed somewhere to hole up for the next end of the world, and Roser’s house was located in the only coordinates that would survive total destruction. Lori thought it was refreshing to finally see a cult that wanted to outlive the end of the world as opposed to giving in to the inevitable much too early, like so many other cults seemed to do.

 

Even if they were, oddly enough, a cult devoted to the worship of lint.

 

“Lint is everywhere,” one of the leaders had said. “It surrounds us, it penetrates our dryer screen thingies, and it binds the galaxy together.” His followers twittered their agreement.

 

“Okay, I think it’s safe to say that certain people have been watching a little too much George Lucas,” Lori had told John when she helped him show the house in the country side off to the lint worshippers for Roser. “And too many Downy or Bounce or Snuggles or any of the rest of those brands of fabric softener commercials.”

 

“So long as they stay away from Star Trek, I think they’ll be okay,” John had reassured Lori as they led the group of lint worshippers into the spacious exercise room, where the TV was showing a commercial about Whirlpool washing machines.

 

“Or So Weird reruns?” Lori had said as a joke.

 

John had stuck his tongue out at her.

 

“I can’t believe you would joke about stuff like that, Lori! Besides, you know I’m still waiting on Jon Cooksey to reply to that email I sent him with the fully detailed and colorized So Weird family tree. He’s got to know something more I can add to it. He’s just got to. At least about Rick’s side of the family, considering how little we know about them.”

 

But before John had been able to go on any further(and he would have been able to, Lori was certain of it) the Woolen Master(in other words, the leading lint lunatic), who had by that time noticed the Whirlpool washing machine commercial, quickly jumped into action, hopping onto the treadmill, and motioning for the others to get on the other pieces of exercise equipment.

 

“Phasers on full power! Arm lint brushes! If the Washers want a fight, we’ll give them one! Make it so!”

 

“Too late about the Star Trek,” Lori had said to John.

 

At any rate, the lint worshipping cult was set to move in by Friday at the latest(which just happened to be Halloween, coincidentally, not that it mattered as far as lint went, seeing how lint was supposedly beyond all holidays according to the Woolen Master) and here it was already Thursday. Yesterday, after the two of them had gone to lunch and then  Lori had helped John pack up his suitcase to go back home to Pennsylvania.

 

Lori sighed. John would be here in 20 minutes, and after their date tonight, she had no idea when she would see him again. John would be catching an early flight out, and despite the lessening of security at airports since the revolution, the security was only beginning to go back down to what it had been like in 2006; if you weren’t actually flying out of the airport or working at the airport, you still couldn’t go beyond the parking lot. So going to see him off wouldn’t really do all that much.

 

Not to mention that John was flying out at 7 in the morning.

 

Which would mean getting to the airport no later than 5:30 in the morning.

 

And while Lori had stayed up past 5:30 in the morning in recent times(like this past Sunday, for instance) Lori had never, not since that early morning bus ride to the beaches at Normandie when she had studied in France, ever woken up in time to get to anywhere by 5:30 in the morning. And she wasn’t about to break that five and half year record.

 

Agent Dixon had principles, after all. And she was sticking to them.

 

Brrring! Brrrring! Brring! Brring! Brrrrrring! Lori’s cell phone went off just as she was starting to blow dry her hair.

 

“Gah. Who is it?” Lori asked as she checked the caller id.

 

“F.R.E.E.D.O.M., Atlanta, Georgia” read the display screen.

 

“Crap,” Lori muttered to herself. “Holiday’s probably over. And my hair’s still wet.”

 

Lori hit the talk button on the phone, and tried to hold it up to her face to where she could still hear and talk, but not get water on it or have it make squishy sounds as it rubbed against the water on her face from her still-wet hair.

 

“Hello, this is Lori.”

 

“Agent Dixon! Good to hear your voice again,” said the distinct voice of Agent R. “How is the vacation going?”

 

“Very well,” Lori replied, and grinned from her side of the telephone as she thought about the past two months. “Very well indeed.”

 

“That’s good. Now, I know you’ve been on holiday, but you did say you would continue your work on the Cinque case since you’re the only agent Dr. M seems to trust with the assignment. Have you uncovered anything new or insightful about it so far?”

 

“I’ve haven’t been able to find much yet, but I’m still looking over those documents I found en route to the Amazon,” Lori half-lied. “Hopefully they’ll shed a little more light on this mystery man and his intentions, which should in turn give me a clearer direction in which to go.”

 

“Good. I was just checking in with you on that; the government and other officials have had to drop their investigations thanks to budget cuts and a few new scandals at the Taupe House, so you’re the only person still officially on his trail. But keep enjoying your holiday; some of our other agents have uncovered some very interesting information concerning the foodstuffs that Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number One and Evil Criminal Drug Lord Number Two were planning to illegally smuggle into Canada and distribute. At some point, we may be creating a completely new division, and if we do, you’ll be the first in line for a head position.”

 

“Really?” Lori could hardly believe what she was hearing. Right at a year with F.R.E.E.D.O.M., and already a possibility to head up a brand new division within the enterprise? Lori could hardly contain herself.

 

“It’s a month or so down the road before we’ll make the final decision to go through with this, but the odds are that we will. Dr. M would be outraged if we didn’t.”

 

“Wow,” was all Lori could think of to say. Lori had never been very eloquent when she was really surprised about something, but she had to say something.

 

“Well, keep up the good work and enjoy the next month or so,” Agent R told her.

 

“Oh, I will.”

 

“Have a good evening, Agent Dixon.”

 

“You too, Agent R.”

 

******

 

Two months had passed since Lori and John’s first date, and it was Thanksgiving to boot. By now they had lost count of how many dates they’d been on, and only the majority of their outings had involved major catastrophes(some of which would go down in the history books later, some of which the two of them would try to erase all mention of outside their own nostalgic reminiscing).

 

Lori still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask John about his life as Cinque. But any day now. Any day now, Lori would force herself to confront what she kept pushing to the back of her mind, that the man she was dating was responsible for all those atrocities.

 

Lori really hated to do it because she knew how tacky and cheap it sounded(and that was just in her mind, it would have been worse if Lori had actually spoken it aloud), but Lori couldn’t help but compare the situation she was in to the one that Eve had found herself in when it came to Julian: Lori was, after all, dating a man who loved her but had done terrible things in his past.

 

Of course, in retrospect, at least John hadn’t gotten drunk in Bermuda and slept with her daughter’s best friend who happened to be the daughter of the head of his household staff. Hmm. Perhaps Passions isn’t the best place to draw relationship analogies from, Lori reasoned.

Lori had come up to Pennsylvania to celebrate the holidays with John and his family, but something had gone awry in the kitchen once again(John swore it wasn’t his fault the cranberries, pecan pie, and turkey caught on fire and exploded simultaneously, even if he had been the only one in the kitchen at the time).

 

“Really! It wasn’t me!” he’d protested. “I swear!”

John’s family had gone to eat at the neighbor’s…but John had never really liked the neighbors. That, or he was just too embarrassed to visit after they caught him parading around in black tights in his backyard in a desperate attempt to come up with inspiration for his John, Lord of Darkness(dum, dumm, dummm!!!) series several years ago.

Lori was betting heavily on the second possibility.

 

What John didn’t know was that Lori had received a call from Agent R with F.R.E.E.D.O.M. ordering her to leave the “Cinque documents”(the invented paper trail Lori had created so she could pretend to be actively seeking out the now disapparated Cinque and his followers) and spend some time up in Pennsylvania in the area they had originally traced Cinque’s origins to, and that that was one of the main reasons Lori was in Pennsylvania.

 

“It would have been a nice bonus that John’s here, too, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s John, and the fact that he is Cinque, so it’s only logical that I would end up doing research on John’s (or Cinque’s, whatever) Origin over here,” Lori had complained to herself.  “Stupid freaking Cinque.”

 

Lori still wasn’t any closer to figuring out why John had done what he had done, despite her actually doing real research instead of faking it the way she had been in Atlanta. Her natural curiosity was giving her a lot of grief over the complete and utter lack of information, too, but it was still counterbalanced by Lori’s refusal to really think about it all.

 

Most of the time, Lori pushed her thoughts to the side, moving on to a newer, happier train of thought when various flashes of that news broadcast flashed through her mind, but then every time she did start to accept and acknowledge the person John had been as Cinque, Lori…

 At any rate, that was how Lori and John ended up at Les Ordures Chères, a fancy-shmancy, hoity-toity, Frenchy-wenchy restaurant in the city. A very expensive French restaurant at that. John knew it was a sign of class when he could only understand twenty percent of the menu. Lori knew it was going to make for an interesting Thanksgiving meal.

“What is this?” John asked.

“French food.” Lori said.

“I know, but, uh, what is it?” John looked at the detailed menu blandly, apparently not recognizing anything.

“Well, you ordered it…”

“I just picked something that looked interesting…”

“I thought you took French in school?” Lori took a sip of her water. Dinner would be arriving soon.

“Yeah, but I always hated the food vocab…”

“Do you even remember what it sounded like?”

“I think I ordered… uh… the canard ay lorangee…”

“Canard à l’orange?”

“Yeah! That’s it! I recognized it from class!”

“It’s duck.”

“Duck?”

Lori smiled. “With oranges.”

“Oranges?”

“Yep.”

John thought for a moment. “… Ooooh. That makes sense. Um, I’ve never had duck before…”

Lori shrugged. “Eh, you’ve tasted one bird, you’ve tasted them all…”

Suddenly, from within the kitchen, John heard a loud: “QUACK!”

“What was that?” he asked.

Lori blinked. “Uh…”

“QUACK!”

“It’s a duck!”

“I’m sure it’s not yours,” she said.

“Quick! The idiot’s canard à l’orange is getting away!” someone yelled.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of other idiots here,” Lori said reassuringly.

John nodded, and then said, “Hey!”

“Oops, sorry. Didn’t mean it like that…”

“Yeah, that idiot named John Dougherty’s duck is getting away!” The voice yelled from the kitchen. John raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sure-“ Lori began to say.

“That idiot John Dougherty, seated across from Lori Dixon at the third table from the right of the front door! His duck is escaping!”

John and Lori exchanged looks.

“Maybe we should go to McDonald’s or something…” Lori said, but she instantly regretting having said it. Burger King was so much better, and besides, the local McDonald’s was still under reconstruction after that freak unexplained accident that had completely obliterated it.

“Ye- GAH!” John threw himself onto the floor as a half-plucked duck burst out of the kitchen and flew at his head.

They were moving very indiscreetly towards the front door when a waiter grabbed John’s arm. “And where doo yoo zeenk zat yoo air going, Monsieur?”

John coughed. “Um, I just realized, French food gives me, uh, French… food… sickness. So, uh, I was just going to leave and-“ Lori looked on as John began to explain their way out of there. This would be interesting...

“Au contraire, Monsieur,” The waiter said, wagging a finger at him. “Yoo ate zee bread. Yoo drank zee wine…”

“I actually had water…” John said

“And zee bread, zee drinks- zey cost money, Monsieur. Beaucoup d’argent.”

“Wait, I know what that means!” John said. “That means it costs a lot of money! Go me!”

“For bread and drinks?” Lori demanded, finally jumping into the conversation on the off chance it turned into a French vocab brawl (not that John was lacking in vocabulary; at this moment in time, it was still a guess, but Lori imagined John would make for quite a good opponent in a game of Scrabble).

“Zis ees a French restaurant, Mam’zelle. Everyzing ‘ere ees expensive.”

“Well zi- this is ridiculous!” Lori said. “Bread’s supposed to be complimentary! And we brought our own wine!” Lori paused for a second, realizing that bringing your own wine to the restaurant wasn’t generally an accepted practice; but then again, it wasn’t like they had brought their own mini keg of it into a French karaoke bar and were drinking from that in lieu of paying for anything.

“But zee water-“

“Oh, that was tap water!” John said. “If not hose water!”

The rest of the restaurant had fallen quiet, and John realized that the other diners were watching the argument.

“Zat was not ‘ose water!” The waiter exclaimed. “Zat was zee finest l’eau naturelle from our springs in Avignon!”

“Well, too bad!” Lori said. “We’re not paying!” She had half a mind to put some of her spy training to use and use her Vulcan Death Grip on the waiter. And then Lori wondered why after an entire year with the knowledge of how to do that, she had yet to make use of that attack technique. If only she had thought to use it on Shia LaBoeuf back at the onramp to Sadunsky, Ohio!

 

Then again, there was no way Lori was ever going to get that close to Shia LaBoeuf ever again if she could help it.

“Yoo weel pay!” The waiter shouted.

“No, we won’t!” Lori was not about to be intimidated by yet another rude French waiter. She had had quite enough of that stereotype while she had studied in France.

“Oh, yes yoo weel!”

John immediately recognized this as a perfect chance to be valiant. In fact, he had read it in Dr. Roser’s Guide to Love: “A perfect chance to be valiant is when your date is insulted by a snobby French waiter who insists you pay for some cheap water.” Lori, of course, didn’t know this was John’s motive at the time, but she figured it out later when she stumbled across John’s copy of the book and noticed this passage highlighted with a check beside it.

“The lady said no, sir!” John said. Lori blinked.

“Eef yoo do not pay, yoo weel both be scrubbing out zee peeg buckets!”

“Oh, yeah?!”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah?”

“Oui!”

Not having an adequate response to the French waiter’s startling use of… French, John jumped to the next step. He snatched a wineglass off of a nearby table and threw it in the waiter’s face.

“Ha! Who’s ‘oui’-ing now?!” John demanded.

“OUT!” The waiter roared. “OUT BEFORE I CALL ZEE POLICE!”

“Ha! Like they’d listen to a French waiter!” John said. “Or should I say, a Freedom waiter!”

The French waiter snarled.

“Are you angry?” John asked.

“Of course I am!”

“Well, good! You shouldn’t have to endure the idiotic stereotypes that jingoistic American bastards place on your people and culture, simply because your country didn’t agree with our former cowboy president’s murderous campaign on a country that we were reportedly trying to ‘save,’ whereas we really know that he was just trying to wipe all dark-skinned races from the face of the Earth in order to become the guest speaker at the next Klan dinner!”

Pause.

“Um, and the Frenchie said that.” John muttered.

“Yoo are right, Monsieur!” The French waiter said. “Too long ‘ave I grown bitter under zee scornful eyes of zee neo-patriots! I should no longer ‘ave to ‘ide behind zee pervasive stereotypes about my people, which, in zeir own way, take away my national pride and sense of identity!”

“Straight on!” John said. “Who else thinks it’s time for a nice, rousing round of ‘La Marseillaise?’”

“Allons enfants de la patriiiiiiiie,” the waiter sang.

“Le jour de gloire est arrive!” The rest of the restaurant joined in.

“Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L’etenard sanglant est leve!”

John and Lori sneaked out the front door as the singing continued.

“That was great!” Lori said outside.

“Well, I always did think I did a decent rendition of ‘La Marseillaise’ ” John said.

“No, I mean- wow! Where’d you learn that?”

John smiled. “Well, it’s not really something you learn… Just something I picked up… uh…”

“Where?” Lori asked.

“Um, on the road. Er, in… college.”

“Oh…well, it was still amazing. I thought we were going to be cleaning out ‘zee peeg buckets’!”

“LOL!” John said. Lori gave him a look.

“Sorry,” He coughed. “Reflexx.”

They continued to walk down the dark sidewalk, and John realized that Lori was looking at him. “Well, I’m sorry, it’s just that I haven’t gotten chatting for three straight years out of my system yet!”

Lori laughed. “No, it’s not that. It’s just- uh…”

John looked at her. Was this a good thing?

“It’s just that it’s like seeing a new side of you…”

“The side of me that can deal with the French?”

“Hmm… no, I think it’s something else.”

“The side of me that can talk my way out of tense and possibly humiliating situations?”

“No, I’ve seen that plenty of times. Like all those times you abandoned me when we were chatting.” They both laughed.

“And I had to dance?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Quite a sexy dance, from what I remember!”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that…”

They stopped under a streetlight in front of John’s house, and faced each other in the halo of light. After a second, Lori ruffled John’s hair.

“Hee… goofball.”

Silence. Finally, Lori said: “Um, John?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… nothing.”

“Oh.”

More silence. Then, John said: “Um, Lori?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… nothing.”

“Oh.”

They made their way back inside the house, but it still stank of the combined odors of burnt cranberries, pecan pie, and turkey. Seeing as no one else had returned from the neighbors yet, they went outside and ended up cuddling in the hammock.

John looked up at the stars, trying to forget everything but these past two months as they lay in the hammock together. Lori turned to face him.

 “John?” she whispered urgently. Now was the time. She had to ask him about Cinque. She had to know before this went any further than it already had.

 “Lori?” He was still having to avoid direct eye contact for fear of being reduced to a drooling chunk of chiseled man-flesh.

 “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

 “What?”

Lori panicked. I can’t ask him now, it’s been too perfect a night!  “I…uh..are you—ticklish?!” she started tickling him, and he squirmed in the hammock, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, and at the same time trying to get at Lori and tickle her in retaliation.

 “Hah! Gotcha!” John cried as he began tickling her, and she laughed as she tried to get out of his grip. Suddenly, the hammock flipped, knocking the two of them to the ground, a tangled mess of arms and legs, with John on top.

He looked into her eyes and was going to get up and ask if she was okay, but Lori looked up into John’s blue eyes, and all John could do was say “Lori, I-uhhhh…I-uhhhhhh…”

Finally, Lori said: “Uh, John?”

“Yeah?”

“Um… nothing.”

“Oh.”

More silence. Then, John said: “Uh, Lori?”

“Yeah?”

“Um… nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, JESUS CHRIST!” someone yelled from a window. Both Lori and John jumped, and John finally rolled off of Lori and laid beside her on the ground.

“Just kiss each other already!” the voice yelled. “We all know you want to! Just do it!”

“Yeah!” someone yelled from another window. More and more voices chimed in.

“What are you WAITING for?” yet another voice shouted.

Lori looked at John.

John looked at Lori.

John shrugged. “Well, I hate to disappoint my audience!”

And without even thinking, John leaned in.

They kissed. John and Lori. Muse Muffin and Muse Maaaan.

“FINALLY!” someone yelled.

As much as Lori had expected John to kiss her, she still hadn’t expected it to really happen. But there he was, kissing her, and nothing else mattered.

 

Not even Cinque.

 

 

Chapter Ten:

Late November(After Thanksgiving) 2008

 

The next couple of months were something of a blur for Lori as the relationship between her and John grew more intense. There was also the fact that she had not been assigned to any more secondary missions, so she didn’t really have anything else to occupy her time aside from throwing the authorities off of the now disappeared off the face of the Earth Cinque’s trail.

 

Which was something that she was getting to be quite skilled at doing, despite herself and the mixed feelings she had about the whole situation. She didn’t like lying. Especially not when it could get her fired…or, considering she was working for the government and yet was still aiding the leader of a suspected terrorist death cult, convicted of treason.

 

Lori was still having a difficult time dealing with what John(as Cinque) had supposedly done. It wasn’t something that Lori could just forget about, no matter how much she wanted to. No matter how much she cared for John.

 

I need some kind of explanation. I deserve that much, Lori told herself as she watched John load the DVD player with that old LXG movie. They had decided to make tonight a rant-fest for all the movies that had been made that were shamefully untrue to their sources, and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman starring Sean Connery as Tom Sawyer’s father figure was the most painfully logical first choice for a rant-fest of that kind.

 

She could do it. She was going to ask him.

 

“John?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I…I’ve been meaning to ask you about something.”

 

“What?”

 

“I…uh…what all do you have in your Animorphs merchandise collection again?”

 

How many times would she keep trailing off like that and asking something completely random?

 

But Lori couldn’t bring herself to confront him about it. She didn’t know(or didn’t want to know) if it was because she was scared of what John would say, if his explanation simply wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her, or if she was just not confronting him so she could continue to avoid the issue. It was probably both. 

 

Does it really matter?

 

 Well. That was an interesting question there. This was going to be a fun little inner debate.

 

Does it? Does it really matter?

 

Well, of course it matters. I mean, we’re talking about thousands of people. And a bar. And God only knows what else.

 

So?

 

Weird?

 

Focus, girl. So what? It’s all in the past. It was Cinque. Not John. He wasn’t himself, he was someone else. Not this guy sitting here next to you, already ranting about the obvious inaccuracies of this movie and the inattention to the original storyline. Cinque is someone completely different.

 

So he’s a schitzo now, huh? Yeah, that’s a healthy prospect for the future, Lori.

 

Not a schitzo. A guy who cares about you.

 

The same guy responsible for all those deaths.

 

Not the same guy. Look at him. Does he really seem capable of that?

 

Lori looked at John, who was now sitting next to her on the couch.

 

“What, Muse Muffin? I take it back! I didn’t mean to make the crack about Scotland just now, I swear! I just got carried away in the heat of the anti-Sean Connery ranting! Don’t hurt me!”

 

Lori laughed. “Don’t worry about it...just let me have the first crack at ranting about the impossibility of the Nautilus navigating the canals of Venice, and I’ll forgive you.”

 

Okay. I see your point. But he still—

 

Nuh-uh. None of this “but he” stuff. You’ve got secrets too, you know.

 

But I never—

 

You’re a spy. You just started, but what if you end up doing something you regret in the future? Would you want to be blamed for that?

 

No…

 

And he probably regrets what he did. And maybe he didn’t…After all, when has he said anything about his time as Cinque?

 

Well, there was that time when I pulled him out of the river and he was babbling incoherently—

 

You know what I mean. He’s hiding it.

 

Yeah, but hiding it because he’s sorry about what he did or hiding it because he’s sorry that he might get caught?

 

You know John better than that.

 

I think I do.

 

You do.

 

Yeah. I guess so.

 

So I ask again, and you know it’s the truth. He’s not Cinque anymore. He’s John. John. And John cares about you. Maybe even loves you.

 

Aren’t you moving a little too fast there? We’ve only been dating since the end of September, and it’s only just now the end of November.

 

Less like a wall, Lori. Stop doing so dang much thinking. Be more like a river.

 

Oh, that is just not fair. I can’t believe you just pulled that on me.

 

 Does his past really matter? Does it?

 

John shifted on the couch, sitting closer to her now.

 

And I say again, of course it—

 

And then John reached his arm around her, snuggling her up next to him. He took one of her hands in his, stroking it lightly, thoughtlessly, with his other hand. Without thinking, Lori rested her head on his shoulder.

 

“Of course it doesn’t matter,” she muttered to herself, giving up. You win.

 

“What?”

 

“Kiss me, John.”

 

“What?”

 

“I don’t want to think about anything else. Just kiss me.”

 

******

 

Bring! Briing! Briiiiiing! Lori’s cell phone began to ring just as she was really getting going good with the passage she was working on for her National Novel Writing Month novel. Lori was actually very, very far behind this year, mostly because she had gone to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, and because she had actually been doing the work that F.R.E.E.D.O.M. wanted her to do while she was up there.

 

So now it was the very last day of November, and she had four thousand words to catch up on in the next three hours. Lori was certain that she would finish, if only she could just get the words flowing. Lori had already written nearly three thousand five hundred words that evening already, but it had taken her nearly four hours for that, mostly because she kept letting herself get interrupted by people on AOL instant messanger.

 

“But I am going to do this. I am going to finish writing this bloody freaking novel. I’ve never not finished a novel, “ Lori reminded herself as she typed like mad.

 

Of course, as fate would have it, it was just as all of this was happening that her cell phone began ringing.

 

She toyed with the idea of not answering it, then, realizing that she was wasting time as she decided whether or not to answer it, Lori decided to check the caller ID so she would know whether to waste her time with the phone call or not.

 

“Crap. Bloody freaking heck,” she said in what she hoped wasn’t too terrible of a British accent, having spent the plane flight back to Atlanta watching the latest British movie starring Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Rupert Everett, and a now even more decrepit Alan Rickman.

 

Lori always seemed to talk to herself with a British accent after watching movies with casts that were mostly composed of British people. It was odd, sure, but at least now it meant she felt that she had an excuse to add “bloody” in front of her still tame expletives(that really weren’t expletives, but were generally the most expletive words anyone could catch her saying out loud).

 

“Bloody. Freaking. Heck,” she repeated as she looked at the display on her cell phone, emphasizing each word equally. It was the number for F.R.E.E.D.O.M.

 

She sighed. “I have to answer it. Gah. Bloody stupid freaking job. Bloody spies.” Lori turned it on.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hello, Agent Dixon. This is Agent A. I believe that you have already been informed that there might be a new position opening up as the head of a brand new division, is that correct?”

 

Lori thought for a moment, and then remembered.

 

“Yeah, I remember. I guess you’re calling in regards to that?”

 

“Yes. After a thorough analysis of all of our agents, Dr. M has made a final decision on who will be the new head of this new division.”

 

“And?”

 

“And it is going to be you.”

 

“Me?” This was good news. Definitely good news. She definitely should be getting a raise this year if this was the case.

 

“Now, realize that this will not mean that you will receive an increased salary or stipend,” Agent A informed her.

 

“Carp,” Lori said out loud.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Uh…Carp. I was, uh, trying to figure out what to fix for dinner.”

 

“Oh. For a second there, I thought you had mispronounced ‘crap’ in the disappointment of not getting an increase in salary.”

 

“Oh, uh, no. Of course not. I can deal. Maybe next year?” Lori hinted, hopeful.

 

“Probably not, Agent Dixon.”

 

“Darn it!”

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“Darn it! That’s how I can fix that holey sock! I can darn it!”

 

“I suppose you could…anyway, Agent Dixon, while you might not be getting a pay raise, you will get significantly more prestige and influence within F.R.E.E.D.O.M. “

 

“Really? What kind of prestige and influence?”

 

“Well, as you know, until this new department becomes official, we have only ever had five departments.”

 

“Right.”

 

“And the Five have each been in charge of a department.”

 

“Yes, so…oh…” Lori trailed off, having caught the meaning behind what Agent A was leading up to. “You don’t seriously mean…?”

 

“Yes, Agent Dixon. As soon as this new department is officially a part of F.R.E.E.D.O.M., we will no longer be the Five.”

 

“Ya’ll will be…”

 

“The Six. Because there will be six departments.”

 

“Six? SIX DEPARTMENTS?!” Lori couldn’t help but get a little carried away with what she had just realized.

 

“Calm down, Agent Dixon. There is more.”

 

Lori took in a deep breath. “Okay. Right. More. Tell me more. Tell me more.” Like does he have a car?

 

Okay, this is a really inappropriate time for Grease references to be popping into your head, you know, Lori reprimanded herself.

 

“Agent Dixon, you have come very far with our little organization—“

 

See! Very far! That’s part of the next line in the song!

 

Get a grip. You’re supposed to be an adult by now.

 

Gah, fine. I’ll try and reign it in just a little bit more.

 

“and so that’s why we think you would be perfect for this,” Agent A finished up. “What do you think?”

 

“Perfect for what again, sir? I’m sorry, I think there must have been some, uh, static. I didn’t quite catch everything you said.”

 

“What I’m saying here, Agent Dixon, is that if you will accept the position as head of this new department, then you will be the newest one of us. The sixth member of the Six. And you’ll no longer be Agent Dixon.”

 

“Who will I be?”

 

“Agent L. We would have you be Agent D so as to not have our secretaries be forced to relocate all of your files under a different letter of the alphabet, but the one time we tried to have another Agent, an Agent D, well, it just didn’t work out very well.”

 

“Ah. Well, that’s fine. Agent L has something of a nice ring to it. But would you mind telling me just what sort of department I’m supposed to be in charge of? As in, what kind of stuff will be we be doing?”

 

“Meet us at Zone 91 at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Both myself and Agent C have been here for the past week organizing and making room for the new department, and both of us will give you a full run down of everything that we have in mind for this new department, as well as what your responsibilities will be.”

 

“Nine o’clock…Atlanta time or Zone 91 time?”

 

“If only I knew, Agent Dixon. I never have been able to get all of these different hours straight. Of course, everyone, even Dr. M tells me they’re all the same hours, but…things happen simultaneously in different places at different times…and yet these events are happening at the same time. How can anyone make sense of it?”

 

“Yeah. I don’t get how they’re everybody’s hours.”

 

“You mean people have told you that, too?!”

 

“Yeah..so…your hours or mine?”

 

“Yours? Mine?”

 

“How about nine o’clock Zone 91 time? That’s later for me. I can get more sleep.”

 

“Okay. Are you sure you know when that is?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“If you’re late, I’ll explain the situation with the different hours to Agent C. I’m certain she will understand.”

 

“All right. See you tomorrow at nine o’clock your time!” Lori hung up the cell phone and sat back down in front of her computer. Two hours left. She was going to finish.

 

Even if it meant having her characters quote large sections of her thesis at the very end of her novel.

 

******

 

Chapter Eleven:

December 2008

 

Lori drove her car Marco up to the rusty gates that separated Zone 91 from the rest of the area. It was a fairly desolate looking part of the countryside, but just as good a location as any for a secret base of operations. The headquarters in Atlanta were fine for visitors, for trainees learning the latest from imported Chinese monk fighters, and for deterring spies from other countries from the real thing, but downtown Atlanta was pretty impractical for anything else.

 

Bloody traffic.

 

Of course, that didn’t mean that Lori liked having to get up early in the morning after staying up all night trying to finish up in time for National Novel Writing Month just to drive to Zone 91.

 

But she had finished. Two minutes before the deadline for her time zone(Lori had pushed herself to finish on “her” time instead of “everybody” else’s time).

 

Lori got out of the white Honda Accord and opened the gates, then got back into the car and drove on into the compound.

 

“We should really look into getting a security guard or something. Maybe some guy who’s always looking for a fight, a guy who lives and dies by the sword. A warrior. Someone who wouldn’t be tempted by parties and secret agents of the opposite sex,” she commented to Marco.

 

Marco was characteristically silent.

 

Lori shrugged. “But you only find that kind of person in a superhero RPG. And even then, that kind of character gets forced into going to social events that he wants no part of.”

 

Upon entering through the (again, unguarded) double doors into the main building (which, despite there being five departments, was decidedly not shaped like a pentagon, but instead very haphazardly, with strange angles and different stories and half stories; rumor had it some architecture student had designed it a few years back, not knowing that he was not, in fact designing a house or a corporate building, but rather what would become the base of operations for F.R.E.E.D.O.M.), Lori, who was still Agent Dixon, began her search for Agent A and Agent C.

 

After a couple of hours, Lori was beginning to get discouraged. She only had an hour before it was nine o’clock Zone 91 time from what she could tell based on the clock in the last office she had been in. Lori opened another door at random, and found herself in a long hallway with only two doors, one a little to the left, one a little farther to the right. They were labeled P-201 and P-203. No help at all.

 

Pick a door, Lori said.

 

She took a deep breath. “Door number one.” She opened door P-201, and a blast of fresh air hit her. Sunlight blinded her. She blinked, trying to get her eyes to adjust.

 

The rhinoceros blinked, too.

 

“Ahhhh!” Lori yelled.

 

She jumped back and slammed the door.

 

“Wrong door!” she said. “Definitely wrong!”

 

Lori opened the other door and went inside; there was no rhinoceros here, nor any other kind of wild animals. In fact, the room was very dark. Agent Dixon fumbled with her hands along the wall, feeling around for a light switch. She finally found the light switch, several feet away from the entrance, next to a bookshelf, but when Lori flipped the light switch up, nothing happened. She flipped it again. Nothing. Up. Down. Up. Down. Still nothing.

 

“Light bulb must be blown,” she said. “And obviously, Agent C and Agent A aren’t in here.”

 

Agent Dixon began to leave, but in a (long overdue) bout of clumsiness, she stepped down on her right foot kind of sideways and ended up tumbling backwards; Lori reached out wildly for something to stop the fall and keep her from re-spraining her ankle, and caught hold of a candle stick holder that was mounted onto the wall next to the bookshelf.

 

The bookshelf swung open wide, even as Lori awkwardly stumbled back onto both of her feet. Finally stable again, Lori peered into the opening the bookshelf had been covering up; it was very dark.

 

Out of curiosity, she reached over and flipped the light switch again.

 

Sure enough, the passageway lit up brightly, a row of electric candles now brightly shining down the length of the passage.

 

“Find something there?” an unfamiliar voice asked. Lori spun around to see where the voice was coming from.

 

The light shining from the electric candles in the secret passageway was just enough for Lori to be able to make out the outline of the figure the voice had obviously emanated from. He (and it was he, or at least that was what Lori was guessing from the pitch of the figure’s voice) was a little on the short side, of an average build.

 

“Who are you?”

 

“I can’t tell you my last name or where I live.”

 

“Uh…okay…”

 

“Believe me, I wish I could. I would like nothing more than to be able to tell you—“

 

“Wait a sec. What are you doing here? And why are you quoting the first lines from Animorphs #5 The Predator?”

 

“Now, hold on just one minute. How do you know what I’m quoting from? No one’s ever noticed that before!”

 

“Look, dude, Animorphs #5 The Predator is one of the top five greatest books in the world. Ever. How could I not have it memorized?”

 

“Finally! Someone who understands!” There was a pause. “Who are you?”

 

“Oh, right. Like I’m going to tell you,” Lori replied. Then, “I live in a paranoid world. But just because I’m—“

 

“ ‘—just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean I don’t have enemies.’ Yeah, I know all that.”

 

“I have real enemies. Enemies that would—“ Lori started again.

 

“ ‘That would freeze your blood if you only knew.’ And I do,” the figure finished again. “Look, we can do this all day, and all we’ll end up doing is proving the absolute supremacy of Animorphs #5, but I think we both already know that. So who are you?”

 

“Come into the light,” Lori said. The figure complied and walked up to Lori.

 

Lori drew in a sharp breath.

 

Even with the shadows of the lights dancing over and slightly obscuring his face, she could see who it was, plain as the cover of Animorphs #10, but a slightly older version of that picture.

 

He had dark hair. With olive skin. He was decidedly cute. And as Lori had already noticed, he was a little on the short side, but now that he was standing right in front of her, Lori could see that he was still just slightly taller than she was.

 

“Marco!” Lori shouted. He flinched when Lori said the name. “It’s you! You’re REAL! I KNEW it! I knew you had to be real!”

 

He shook his head no.

 

“No. I’m not Marco. Marco is a fictional character from Animorphs,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s not real. And I’m not him, I swear.”

 

Agent Dixon blinked. “But…but…you look just like him! So—“

 

“Weird coincidence, I know, I know. And would you believe that was my nickname back when I was in seventh grade? Crazy girls from church.” He shuddered at this thought. “Say…you don’t have any lavender nail polish on you, do you?” he asked warily.

 

Lori thought for a moment about this and the contents within her purse. “No, not that I know of.”

 

“Good.” The guy who was not Marco breathed a sigh of relief, but Lori was still puzzled.

 

“Well…then…if you’re not…if you’re not…then…” Lori couldn’t quite finish her sentence, but the guy who was not Marco decided to help her out a little bit.

 

“Then who am I?” he asked, completing the question for her.

 

“Yeah.” Lori squinted her eyes at him, peering more closely at his features. This guy who was not Marco had a vague familiarity about him, but Lori couldn’t for the life of her decide why that was. And she was starting to get rather bloody sick of all these people and their unrelenting vague familiarity.

 

He stuck out his hand. “ I’m Lando—eh, just call me Dr. M.”

 

******

 

The rest of the day was quite a zany one. It was an interesting start for the month of December, that was for sure. Upon discovering that Agent Dixon was the soon to be Agent L, Dr. M had taken her to the room where Agent A and Agent C were waiting for her.

 

Agent Dixon(or, as she was soon to be, Agent L) was not shown where the secret hidden passageway led to or what it was for.

 

As usual, this meant that Lori was burning with curiosity to know exactly where the secret hidden passageway led to and what it was for. Plus whatever other information she could get about it. However, Dr. M made no further mention of it, and Lori had the distinct feeling that he would not tell her any more than she already knew.

 

Patience is a virtue. A virtue. Patience. You can be patient and wait until later to find out about it, Lori told herself. Besides, surely it’s something I’ll find out more about when I’m officially sworn in as one of the Six.

 

Of course, after a week at Zone 91 as Agent L and still no mention of any secret hidden passageways at all, Agent L began to get a little frustrated with her wait. So Lori busied herself with helping out with the creation of the new department, starting with personnel. After all, there had to be people to work there besides her.

 

What really intrigued Lori about this new department was that she had almost complete free reign over it. She could be a mean boss, she could be a demanding boss, she could be a bitchy boss…she could even be all three in much the same way one of her previous bosses had been. But Lori was pretty certain that she was going to do her best to avoid being any of the aforementioned three kinds of bosses.

 

It did take Lori a little while to accept just what her department was going to be designated for, though.

 

“Oreos.” Agent C sat back in her chair, but looked like she would have been much more comfortable in a more relaxed setting. A bale of hay in a barn, perhaps, instead of a large leather armchair in her office.

 

“Oreos?” Surely Lori had heard that wrong, she had reasoned at the time.

 

“Yes.”

 

Huh, Lori had thought. I thought for sure that I had misheard Agent C. Lori took in another sharp breath, this one not quite so sharp as the one she had taken in when she saw Marc—er, Dr. M.

 

“OREOS?!?”

 

“Yes. Why? Is there some kind of problem with Oreos? You’re not allergic, are you? Not that it would really matter, but still.”

 

“No, I’m not allergic. Well, not technically, that is.”

 

“Ah, good…wait a second. ‘Not technically’ ?”

 

“I tend to try my best to avoid eating them. I have reasons. Trust me.”

 

“Oh. Well, you won’t have to eat any,” Agent C reassured Lori at the time.

 

“Good.”

 

“Not that you would have much of a choice if you did need to eat some.”

 

“So just what exactly do Oreos have to do with F.R.E.E.D.O.M.?” Lori had asked, changing the subject at that point.

 

“Well, when we busted that illegal Oreo Ring, we found a lot of people they had used on test subjects for the effects of happiness.”

 

“Yeah, I know. That made it to the papers, after all. And I have friends who read the papers and tell me what’s going on in the world,” said Lori, who had always found it much more time-saving to just let other people let her know the big news.

 

In fact, Lori hadn’t known about the big revolution back in 2007 until she had gotten a really random email from her friend Jean Louis asking her to explain the new United States stance on gun control. And it was actually a month after she got the email before she knew that was what it was about; he had, of course, written it to her in Dutch, having assumed that she had actually made more than a half-hearted attempt to continue her studies in the Dutch language. So Lori had had to spend a good month reviewing what she knew of Dutch grammar(which was sadly very little as she had forgotten most of it) and checking back and forth between dictionaries. It wouldn’t have taken her so long if she hadn’t been in the middle of her Great Animorphs Marathon™ and thus rather without the time to spend translating a Dutch email, and then replying to it in Dutch--that had really been what had taken so long; she had always been better at interpreting what other people said as opposed to coming up with dialogue on her own, and Lori blamed that on the fact that it was much harder to come up with lots of extraneous words in a language where you didn’t quite have full command of all the vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.

 

And Lori hadn’t found out about the counter revolution until a couple of weeks ago, when her cable TV went spastic and showed nothing but C-Span for an entire week, which she couldn’t bring herself to actually watch; in taping a newspaper over the TV screen so she wouldn’t forget and hurt herself by turning on C-Span, Lori had noticed a story about the Counter Revolution. Something about the Caribbean.

 

“At any rate, we found some very interesting side effects that we believe with the proper research and development team could be altered to be very beneficial to the government. If we succeed with this, we’ll be the head honchos, not that damn CIA.” Agent C’s face had an uncharacteristic scowl on it. “Damn CIA.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Yeah. And let me tell you if you didn’t already know, the CIA gets some major government funding. Plus they get all the really cool spy jobs instead of the rather sucky ones you people get stuck with.”

 

“I knew there had to be some kind of reason we always end up with really random mission assignments,” Lori had said.

 

“Yeah, and if we could just get half the funding the CIA gets, we could do away with this whole ‘sitcom characters who are secret agents in their spare time’ thing and get some more ‘real’ secret agents.”

 

“So…Oreos, huh?”

 

“Yes. Oreos.”

 

“What is it about Oreos?”

 

“We’re not exactly sure, but that’s okay.”

 

“It is?”

 

“Yeah. Because your department is in charge of finding out the answer to that very question.”

 

“Ah. I see.”

 

“You have until January to get a team of experts together.”

 

“January? Of what year?”

 

“Why, this next January, of course. Year two thousand and nine. Y2K9.” At this, Agent C began to giggle to herself.

 

“But it’s the eighth of December! That’s less than 30 days!”

 

Agent C had continued to giggle softly.

 

“You’re laughing at the impossibility of it?!”

 

“No, no. Y2K9. K9. As in canine.”

 

“Canine?”

 

“Dogs. Canines.” At this, Agent C had begun to laugh raucously.

 

“Oh. Uh…why exactly is that funny?”

 

Agent C stopped laughing. “You know, I really don’t know.”

 

“Just like I don’t know how I’m going to pull together a stellar research team in just under three weeks.”

 

“You’ll find a way to manage, I’m sure,” Agent C had said, and Agent Dixon, or Agent L as she was now known, had started to get up to leave.

 

“Of course,” Agent C had told Lori as she made her way over to the door, “some people would say that you can usually find a pretty good team by dropping in at abandoned constructions sites.”

 

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

 

“Oh, and before you leave, Agent R wanted to see you about something.”

 

“Any idea what it was?”

 

“Something having to do with sinks or something. I didn’t quite get it. She said it with this funny accent or something.”

 

“Said what?”

 

“Sink kay…or was it kay sinks? Sinks way? However you say it. Agent R said you would know what I was talking about.”

 

“Yeah. I’ll be sure to stop by and see her about it. Thanks.” Lori had kicked herself mentally; she had been doing so well not thinking about Cinque that she had forgotten to send in her weekly update for that week. Lori realized that she was going to have to do something about this whole situation soon, or things were going to get really complicated. But she didn’t know what to do, and that was the problem. Lori certainly didn’t want to give John up to the authorities, and besides, even if she did, at this point, she could go to jail as an accomplice for having hidden what she knew about him all this time for so long.

 

In fact, Lori knew that turning him in was the one thing she could never bring herself to do. But this had really begun to start putting her into rather an awkward situation at work; Lori knew it would only get worse as time elapsed and the two of them got closer.

 

And their relationship was definitely starting to get much more serious.

 

Of course, Lori had reasoned, it wasn’t like she and John were going to get married soon or anything. They were Muses, but they weren’t crazy kids either. When he proposes, Lori had said to herself, that’s when I’ll figure out what to do, figuring that it would be months before John would work up the courage to ask anything near that.

 

After all, it had taken two full months, an exploded Thanksgiving dinner, “La Marseillaise” and the nosy yet encouraging urging of John’s Peeping Tom neighbors for Lori and John to get to their first kiss. Lori doubted there would be any sort of circumstances similar to that happening any time soon to spur anything else on.

 

“No problem,” Agent C had said. “And hey, swing by my office now that you’re going to be here at Zone 91 more often. Me, you, and Agent R can have a gossip session or something.”

 

“Gossip session?”

 

“Or a girl’s night out. Something to celebrate F.R.E.E.D.O.M.’s new gender equality.”

 

“Uh…okay…”

 

“Well, it’s just we thought when Dr. M announced he intended to include a new department that he would try instating another guy like what happened last time. And then Agent R and I would have really been outnumbered,” Agent C had explained.

 

“Ah. Sure, we’ll have to do that sometime.”

 

“What about this next weekend? There’s a big Save the Chickens and Whales rally in California I’m already planning to go to. The three of us could go! It would be fun, and we’d be helping out Mother Nature at the same time.”

 

Lori had shaken her head no. “I’ve got a team to assemble,” Lori said, relieved that she had an excuse.

 

 

******

 

Lori had just finished eating her dinner, and she was now pacing back and forth through her living room, frustrated as she tried to think of where to start in creating her stellar Oreo research team. Then she kicked the armchair.

 

“Oww! Gah!” she hollered in pain. “Owie ow!” She began to curse the armchair, and then herself for having stupidly kicked it.

 

Just as she was really getting into it, creating a strange Franglais scene as she threw random French and British curse words in both for good measure and because Lori didn’t feel bad saying curse words that held very little actual negative connotation for her (“Merde! Putain! Bloody freaking arm chair! Salope!”—Lori really liked saying that one—“Salope! Puuuutaaaaain!”) , the telephone rang from where it was resting in the little phone holder thing in the kitchen.

 

Lori stumbled over and answered the phone, still balancing on one foot. Years of Tae Kwon Do and learning how to kick with force didn’t always help a person out, it seemed, at least not when that person had decided to kick a very sturdy armchair instead of a person or a block of wood.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Lori!”

 

“John!”

 

“What are you up to, Muse Muffin?”

 

There was a brief pause as Lori rapidly tried to think of something to tell him besides “Cursing in Franglais because I hurt my foot when I kicked an armchair out of my frustration at not knowing where to start in creating my stellar Oreo research team so that I can wow everyone at F.R.E.E.D.O.M., the spy organization I secretly work for that actually has me in charge of not just a new department, but the international head hunt for a guy that you used to be but are no longer, at least as far as I’ve been able to tell and convince myself since we started dating.” Lori thought that might be just a bit much for him to take in all at once. Not to mention that it would kind of undermine the whole secret agent thing she had going on.

 

So Lori decided to opt for a much less detailed approach. “Not too much. Why? What’s up, Muse Maan?” Lori asked with a grin. Even when she said it aloud, the “Maan” in “Muse Maan” still had at least one extra “a.”

 

“I’ve been busy! I came up with a revised version of obscure Justice League RPG and obscure Animorphs character match-ups!”

 

“Ooo. What new obscure character match-ups have you got this time?”

 

“Well, this is probably my seventy sixth revised version of obscure Justice League RPG and obscure Animorphs character match-ups, so even though I’ve actually done all of these characters a few times already, I was thinking about the essential role Tree plays in the Ellimist Chronicles while I was procrastinating and not going Christmas shopping, and that led me to think about—“

 

Here Lori zoned out briefly, not from boredom, because she was still actually actively listening, but because for some reason, it had hit her(quite literally, actually, because Lori smacked herself over the head for not having realized it much, much sooner).

 

Lori knew exactly who she needed to have on her stellar Oreo research team.

 

Ann! Ann Chovi!

 

How could Lori have not made the connection sooner? Ann was perfect for the job. If there was anyone who knew anything at all about Oreos and the possible effects they could have on a human being, Ann was the one person upon whom Lori could definitely count. Not to mention that Ann could probably easily do more than just explain what Oreos could do; she very likely could also figure out how exactly to get the Oreos in such a state that they could do what she wanted them to do.

 

And that was when Agent L got really excited.

 

Lori knew the direction the research needed to go. The only possible direction the research could go with Ann in charge.

 

Not only that, but Lori already knew the perfect test subject. And Lori was certain that Ann would approve.

 

“and we also know, like I already told you, that Fi’s brother Jack is actually a reincarnated knight who is going to have to—“ John went on as Lori tuned back into what he was saying. The fact that his rambling about character match-ups had somehow turned into a discussion of So Weird random facts didn’t surprise Lori in the slightest. For John, all roads led to So Weird, in much the same way everything led to Scotland(or just Ewan McGregor) for Lori.

 

“Morph!” Lori shouted with glee. “Hah hah! Morphing! He has to morph!”

 

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

 

“Morph?” John asked. “No, Jack doesn’t have to morph,” he corrected Lori. “I mean, I don’t know if morphing is really in the realm of So Weird. There was never anything in the So Weird Writer’s Notes™ about it…” John trailed off, now deep in thought as he contemplated this idea.

 

“No, not Jack,” Lori said. Oops. Didn’t mean to shout that out loud.

 

“Of course, there’s not any real reason why there couldn’t be an episode involving morphing…” John mused aloud.

 

“John?”

 

“Lori?”

 

“I really need to get off the phone; I just realized I need to make a phone call for work.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“But we can continue this later, alright?

 

“Sure! Oh, and before I forget—“

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t make any plans for this Wednesday, okay? I’m gonna be in town and I want to…I want…” John trailed off.

 

“And you want to what?” Lori asked, suddenly alert. Maybe he’s finally going to tell me the truth.

 

There was a sigh on the other end of the line, but when she heard it initially, Lori thought it sounded less like a sigh of longing and more like a tension-relieving sigh. Then again, the phone didn’t always have the clearest reception; so Lori reasoned that she had just misinterpreted the tone of the sigh.

 

“I want to spend some time with you, Lori. I miss you,” he confessed.

 

“Aww, you’re so sweet. I miss you, too, John.” Lori twirled the phone cord with her fingers.

 

“And you’ll keep Wednesday night free?”

 

“Just for you,” Lori assured him.

 

“Good.”

 

“Well, now that we have that settled, I really need to be getting off.”

 

“Yeah, I should go get some sleep.”

 

“So I’ll see you on Wednesday?” Lori asked, just to be sure she had heard the day correctly.

 

“Yep! I’ll be there Wednesday!”

 

“Until Wednesday, then. Sweet dreams, Muse Maan.”

 

“Goodnight, Muse Muffin.” They both hung up at the same time, having long ago discovered that if they didn’t, the two of them could very easily end up saying good bye for twenty minutes before actually hanging up. Just one last “Oh!” and they could quickly find themselves off on a tangent that would last God only knows how long.

 

And then Lori dialed Ann’s phone number.

 

“Hello, may I please speak to Ann?”

 

“We don’t have anyone here by that name,” the person on the other line told Lori. She hung up.

 

“That’s weird,” Lori said. Then, “Oh. Duh. That’s not her real name, is it?” She dialed Ann’s phone number again.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hello, may I please speak t—“

 

“Aren’t you the same girl who called just a second ago asking for someone named Ann?”

 

“Oh, I meant to say Laura.”

 

“How did you get ‘Ann’ from ‘Laura’? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”

 

“Circles!”

 

“Circles?”

 

“Circles!” Lori affirmed. “I’m Lori Ann, and Lori is a derivative of Laura, so naturall—“

 

“Well, we do have a Laura. Hang on just a second and let me go and get her for you,” Ann’s mother said, stopping Lori before she could get any further with her explanation.

 

Obviously, Ann’s mother had dealt with some of Ann’s online friends before.

 

Lori waited on the other end of the phone line, and it was only as she glanced at the clock on the display on the stove that Lori realized it was after ten o’clock at night, and Ann’s parents probably were not thrilled about Ann having friends call that late. Well, it’s just a little too late to be worried about it now, Lori said to herself. The damage has already been done.

 

“Hell—Hellbeast! Stop that!” There were scuffling sounds as Ann apparently tried to get her cat, Hellbeast, to stop attacking her. From what Lori could hear over the phone, Hellbeast had jumped onto Ann’s shoulder from behind, which then caused Ann to spin around manically as she tried to wrest the cat off of her.

 

“Hello?” Ann finally asked when the battle had come to a cease fire of sorts.

 

“Ann! It’s Lori!”

 

“Hey! How are you? And why are you calling me this early?”

 

Lori laughed. “So your mom’s not mad?”

 

“Nah. She’s used to it. You know. Stalkers.”

 

“Oh, right,” Lori said, nodding to herself. “You really need to stay away from elevators, Ann.”

 

“But then I have to take the stairs.”

 

“Good point. But you still need to find some way to avoid all of these lift boy stalkers.”

 

“Probably. I’m just waiting for a rich one to come along, and then I can run away with him.”

 

“Ah, yes, that’s right. Just find the one with lots of money, huh, Ann?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“So…there’s actually a reason I’m calling you, besides the normal crazed ranting and rambli—“

 

“He proposed, didn’t he?! John proposed! I knew it!”

 

Lori laughed. “Are you crazy? We’ve only been going out for a little over two months.”

 

“Yeah, well, I bet you he proposes in the next week,” Ann said confidently.

 

“Whatever. Not gonna happen, Ann.”

 

“He has to, or I lose twenty bucks.”

 

“I highly doubt that he’s going t—wait a second. You lose twenty bucks to who? How?”

 

“Well…some of us from Morphz got to debating about how long it would take John to propose if he ever did…and one thing led to another, and—“

 

“Ya’ll are betting on me and John?!”

 

“Kind of?”

 

“Ann!”

 

“Lori!”

 

“I can’t believe ya’ll would do that.” Lori shook her head, but thought about it for a second. “Okay, I can believe ya’ll would do it, but still!”

 

“What was it you were calling about again?” Ann asked, expertly deflecting the conversation to a new topic.

 

“What are you doing for the next couple of days?”

 

“Baking Christmas cookies, probably.”

 

“Well, speaking of cookies and proposals, I’ve got a job proposal for you. But you have to catch a flight to Albuquerque and meet me outside the airport.”

 

“Okay…”

 

“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to Albuquerque.”

 

“All right. I’ll be there on the first flight out, provided you pay.”

 

“It’ll already be paid for when you go to the ticket counter.”

 

******

“So what exactly is this all about, Lori? Why did that guy just run a mini vac around me like it was some kind of scanner for lint?” Ann demanded as Lori dragged her by the arm past the security protocol(which actually did consist of a mini vac converted to scan for weaponry, as well as a cool but extremely outdated voice recognition device that Agent T had managed to swipe from the set of the first Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise) of F.R.E.E.D.O.M.’s secret base of operations a couple hour’s drive away from Albuquerque.

 

“And what was up with that sign we passed coming in? ‘Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.’ ?”

 

“You’ll see, you’ll see, I promise you,” Lori assured Ann. “But first you have to meet the rest of the Six.”

 

“The Styx? I didn’t know you were a fan of their music, Lori. How did you ge—“

 

“Not Styx. Six. The Six.”

 

“Oh…I don’t get it. Who are the Six?”

 

“That’s what you’re about to find out.” Lori opened the door to a small room, where Agent J, Agent R, Agent T, Agent C, and Agent A were waiting for both Lori and Ann to arrive.

 

“This is the Six,” Lori told Ann. “Agent J, Agent R, Agent T, Agent C, Agent A, and Agent L.”

 

“I’m only counting five, Lori.”

 

“I’m Agent L, Ann.”

 

“Ahhh. Okay. That makes sense. So why did I just take a three hour flight to Albuquerque and then let you drive me two hours to this godforsaken building exactly?”

 

Agent J stood up. “Perhaps I should give her the run through,” he suggested.

 

“Sure,” Lori said, motioning for him to take the floor. Lori went and stole his seat as he walked over to Ann and explained F.R.E.E.D.O.M.’s new department and the goal they had for that department.

 

By the time Agent J had finished, Ann had the biggest grin on her face that Lori had ever seen.

 

“When do I start? WHEN DO I START?!”

 

“We need to get a few more researchers…would you care to be in charge of that while I work on finding test subjects?” Lori asked.

 

“Sure!”

 

Agent C frowned. “Test subjects? You’re not planning on using monkeys or anything, are you? Animals have feelings, too!”

 

“Of course we’re not going to be using animals as test subjects,” Agent L reassured Agent C. “But we do need animals to be acquired, as well as human test subjects for when Ann and her team of scientists get the preliminary batch of Oreos ready.”

 

“Well, I guess that could be okay. But I want you to know, Agent L, that I might have complex moral issues with your new department if your research is going to involve stuff like this all of the time.”

 

Lori shrugged. “Just remember it next time you eat a hamburger.”

 

Agent C scowled.

 

“Now that our chief scientist is on board, I’m going to leave the rest of you and go help Ann acquainted with the building and the new wing in which she’ll be working,” Lori said, and she took Ann to go and do just that.

 

With this matter settled for sure, Lori had a feeling that she would be making a little trip to the Land Down Under sometime in the near future. But not for another week; Lori had told Agent R she thought she was close to finding a former accomplice of Cinque based in the outskirts of Atlanta(a complete lie to buy Lori even more time; Lori figured she could keep F.R.E.E.D.O.M. off of John’s trail for a good long while if could just keep this kind of stuff up), and so Lori would have to spend the next week in Atlanta, until Thursday, before she could take on what would be a fairly arduous task of convincing a certain person to hop on board this as yet unnamed new secret project.

 

******

 

Wow. Wow oh wow oh WOW. Awesome. Wow. Lori’s thoughts were simple enough to make sense of given what she had just been watching for the past several minutes.

 

On Wednesday night about 20 minutes before John was supposed to swing by Lori’s house to pick her up for some kind of surprise(John hadn’t actually told Lori that he had some kind of surprise in store, but Lori had pieced it together from the way he seemed to sound all shaky every time they had talked since that phone just after Lori had kicked the armchair), John had called Lori and cancelled.

 

Not only had he cancelled, but he had cancelled with an obviously bogus excuse, which had upset Lori. It wasn’t like John to do stuff like that.

 

Oh, and it is like him to kil—

 

Shut up! Lori had thought angrily as she flipped on the TV, stopping briefly on the Batman movie from the fall of 2004, the movie that had stunned the world with an outright statement of what had really been going on between Batman and Robin during all those years and years of subtle and not so subtle dialogue.

 

But Lori had quickly turned that off, and then Lori had heard sounds coming from the backyard and had gone out onto the balcony to see just what was going on, thinking maybe it was burglar and that after all those years of Tae Kwon Do, she would finally see some benefit from those classes aside from the chronic soreness she had grown used to over time.

 

It hadn’t been.

 

It had been John. In a tux.

 

With a piano and that Jim Dixon guy there in the backyard to actually play the piano.

 

How John had managed to get a piano into the backyard with Lori having heard the kind of commotion that should have caused was beyond anything Lori could find an explanation for, but there was a piano there all the same.

 

And what had followed after John had realized that Lori had noticed that he was there in her backyard had certainly not been anything Lori had expected at all.

 

He sang for her. A medley of some of Lori’s favorite songs, some of which John knew a little bit better than others, some of them he didn’t know quite as well, but he had sung all of them with such…so much…such…well, wow.

 

Lori was absolutely blown away by the whole thing. It was so completely random, so crazily romantic…

 

And there had been Scottish involved.

 

So it was completely understandable that our brave heroine’s only coherent thoughts at this particular moment were along the lines of “Wow. Wow oh wow oh WOW. Awesome. Wow.”

 

For some reason, Lori was having a hard time articulating words at this point, but she managed somehow.

 

“Wow- John…” Lori pushed back from the railing. “Hold on a second, I’ll come down.”

When she came out through the back door, John stood there, still looking sheepish.

“That was- thank you.” Lori said. “I just- I don’t-” She ran out of things to say and just stood there, grinning. He’s so crazy. So sweet.

“Listen,” John said. “This isn’t the only reason why I’m here. I, uh, I have something to, um, to ask. You. Something to ask, um, you.”

Lori’s heart was hammering against her ribcage. “I-um, okay.”

“Well, um,” John said. “Um…”

“Do it!” Jim whispered from the sidelines. John looked at him frantically.

“Do it!” Jim repeated.

“Well, Lori, I-“ John gulped, and reached into his pocket. “I- um- I-I-I-uh…”

“Y-yeah?”

 

“Lori?” John closed his eyes and dropped onto one knee. Lori’s eyes opened wide as she saw him do it.

 

No. Freaking. Way. He’s not going to--

 

 “W-will you marry me?”

John popped open the box he had pulled from his pocket, exposing a ring with an octagonal diamond set in it. The ring was gorgeous, but of course that was the last thing on Lori’s mind

Lori froze. What-? What about Cinque?

John’s face was turning red and he looked horribly embarrassed. If Lori had known he was thinking about going and crawling into a hole and dying for being such an idiot…

“John,” Lori said. “I-“

 

Screw Cinque.

 

Literally?

 

Get a grip! John. Loves. You. Forget Cinque. This is real. This is right.

John clamped his eyes shut, Jim leaned forwards, and all the extremely nosy neighbors (Lori’s set) stared from their windows. After what seemed like an eternity…

 

This is right.

“Yes.” Lori said. “Yes!”

John stood up quickly, and they rushed into each other and kissed, and-

“YES!” Jim cheered and started applauding.

The extremely nosy neighbors did the same, whooping and hollering loudly.

John and Lori pulled back and looked at each other, smiling. John took the ring from the box and slipped it onto Lori’s ring finger.

 

“John…the whole song thing was just…wow.”

 

“So you liked it?”

 

“Of course! Do you think I would have just said yes if I hadn’t?”

 

John had a brief flash of horror dance across his face.

 

“But you know I would have said yes at even the most botched attempt at what you just did,” Lori reassured him.

 

John smiled, much relieved.

 

“Oh, man. My mom is going to freak,” Lori said. “She is going to freak.”

 

“Why?”

 

“She’s finally going to have to dish out money for a wedding. That, and how exactly am I going to tell her I met you online?”

 

“Tell her we met through AIM. Just don’t bother telling her what it stands for. That’s what I did with my parents. Odds are it’ll take them a good long span of time to figure it out,” John said.

 

“Oh, good idea.”

“So I guess maybe we should start talking about the, uh, the wedding sometime?”

 

“Yeah, we probably should. There’s a lot involved, you know.”

 

“What? A priest or someone to do the ceremony, somewhere to actually have him do the ceremony, and some cake afterwards? That’s not much.”

 

Lori sighed. “Weddings tend to be just slightly more complicated than that, John. But we’ll figure it out.”

 

“Well, what are you doing tomorrow? I’m in town for the week.”

 

“Gah!”

 

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

 

“I have to fly out on business tomorrow afternoon,” Lori told him.

 

“Gah. That sucks.”

 

“Yeah.” There was a brief pause. “Heck, why don’t you just come along? It doesn’t have to be business all the time.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Think…vegemite. Kangaroos. Steve Irwin. Foster’s.”

 

“Foster’s?” This only confused John.

 

“Think Animorphs #44.”

 

“Australia?!”

 

******

 

So Ann was right, Lori thought to herself as she and John got off the plane and walked through the security check in the Sydney airport. John did propose less than a week after she said he would.

 

I wonder how much money Ann made?

 

Lori was briefly thankful that she hadn’t had the time earlier in the week to join in on the betting, as she now knew that she might would have lost a sizeable sum of money. Yesterday night had been crazy.

 

But definitely in a good way.

 

John and Lori rented a very…earthy looking SUV and drove for awhile before they got to Matt’s house, where Matt was spending his Christmas after graduation and where Lori and John would be bunking down for cheap on the bunk beds in the guest room.

 

“Your work won’t pay for you to stay in a hotel?” John asked incredulously when they pulled up to Matt’s house and Lori explained the rooming situation.

 

“Budget cuts. Trust me, you have no idea the strings I had to pull to get us in a commercial jet instead of a rubber dinghy with a broken propeller.”

 

“You’re just joking.”

 

“Trust me, I wish I was. You ought to try getting to Hope Springs, Colorado on a pogo stick.”

 

“Hope Springs?” John squeaked. “Hope Springs, Colorado? When were you, uh, when were you there?” He had stopped dead in his tracks as they walked with their stuff to Matt’s front door.

 

Lori slapped herself mentally. How could she have gone and mentioned the town where she’d found out who Cinque really was? Was she stupid? Was her subconscious consciously sabotaging her?

 

“Oh, awhile ago,” Lori replied, purposefully vague in her answer. It apparently worked, because John seemed to regain his composure.

 

“Ah…wait, a pogo stick?” John asked as they finally reached the door.

 

“Yes.” Lori pressed the doorbell, then gave the door a couple of authoritative raps.

 

“Gah. That had to have sucked.”

 

“Oh, it did. I hate pogo sticks.”

 

“I would think so.” At this Matt opened the door.

 

“Gidday, mates!”

 

“Matt?” said John.

 

“Gidday, mates?” asked Lori, already intent upon adding Australian to the list of accents she had acquired over the years.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be repeating everything I say while you’re here,” said Matt.

 

Lori looked away innocently. “’Course not,” she mumbled, lying outrageously.

 

Fortunately, Matt didn’t notice this. “What else have the two of you been up to besides flying halfway across the world?”

 

“John proposed to me Wednesday night,” Lori said.

 

“And she said yes!” John said with a grin.

 

“No joke. I don’t think you’d both be here in Australia if she’d turned you down,” said Matt. He looked at John. “You do realize if you had waited another week I wouldn’t have lost twenty dollars? I thought you would wait for Christmas.”

 

John laughed.

 

“Of course,” Matt went on, “I got out of it a little easier than some of the other boardies over at Morphz; I paid in Australian dollars. Ann wasn’t too pleased.” He shook his head. “Not happy at all…but come on then, let’s have a look at the ring.”

 

After Lori showed Matt the engagement ring and gave him plenty of time to oo and ah over it and the fact that Lori and John were now engaged, Matt gave Lori and John a tour of the house, introduced the both of them to the rest of his family, and helped them get their suitcases up to the guest bedroom.

 

“Gah! Do you two really need all this stuff?” Matt asked, heaving the last suitcase onto the bottom bunk bed.

 

John jabbed a thumb in Lori’s direction. “Ask her. I only brought the two big suitcases, the duffle bag, and the black back pack.”

 

“I didn’t bring anything but a back pack and a make up bag!” Lori said. “You brought way more stuff than me!”

 

“Yeah, but I’ve got your hairdryer in one of the suitcases, and your Bible is in my duffle bag. So those are really your luggage,” John said, nodding as though it made perfect sense.

 

“A hairdryer and a Bible in there does not make it my luggage!” said Lori.

 

“But the Bible is heavy!” John complained. “It’s really, really, really heavy,” he explained to Matt.

 

“It’s going to be heavier when I hit you over the head with it to knock some sense into you,” Lori told John, and she started trying to open the duffel bag, searching for the Bible as John stood there, wincing in anticipation of what was apparently the inevitable.

 

Matt took this as evidence that John had faced Lori and the Lord’s wrath via Lori’s Bible before, but he was incorrect in this assumption. It was just that Lori’s Bible really was very heavy, and the thought of it whacking him over the head was not the happiest of thoughts for John.

 

Matt decided to stop the near argument he had started. “Whoa, guys. It’s okay. Packing way too much random crap is the American way, after all.”

 

At this, both Lori and John turned towards Matt and raised an eyebrow.

 

“The American way?” John asked.

 

“What exactly do you mean by that?” asked Lori, her hands on her hips.

 

Uh-oh. Having both of them turn on him was not what Matt had been planning to do, even if it had stopped Lori from beating John over the head with a large Bible.

 

“Uh, uh..” Matt stuttered, trying to figure out how to change what he had begun to say. “LOOK! It’s Cassie in kangaroo morph!” Matt shouted, pointed at the window opposite the door. Lori and John raced to the window.

 

“Where? Where is she?” John asked, his eyes scanning the early afternoon scene outside. It was summer in the Land Down Under, and there were small children playing in the sprinkler of a nearby yard.

 

“Is that her? Do kangaroos look like small children playing in a neighboring yard?” Lori turned to ask Matt.

 

Matt wasn’t there any more; he had made a break for it as soon as Lori and John had dashed to the window.

 

“Huh. That’s odd. He left. I wonder why?”

 

“Well, I don’t see Cassie anywhere in sight. And there aren’t any other kangaroos, for that matter,” John said.  “Weird.”

 

“So when did Matt say they were going to have dinner?” Lori asked, yawning. The flight from Atlanta was beginning to catch up with her.

 

“Seven o’clock,” John said.

 

“My time, your time, or Australia time?” Lori yawned again, glancing at her watch. She didn’t even want to begin sorting out the time difference at this point.

 

“I dunno,” John said. Now he was yawning. ”Probably Australia time, seeing how we’re here and everything.”

 

“Ah, that’s right. Good point.” By now, they were both beginning to realize how tired they were. Lori looked at John. John looked at Lori. They both looked at the bunk beds.

 

“I claim top bunk!” cried John.

 

“No fair! I want to be on top. Bottom is boring,” Lori said.

 

“Well…too bad! I already claimed it!” John started to climb up the ladder to the top bunk. Lori tackled him and pulled him off the ladder.

 

“You take the bottom bunk!” she said.

 

“But being on the bottom isn’t as much fun! You can be on bottom!” John cried.

 

“No!” Lori shouted in response.

 

“Yes!”

 

“No!”

 

“Yes!”

 

“No!”

 

“No!”

 

“Y—hey, wait a second. This isn’t a Bugs Bunny cartoon!” Lori said. He’d almost tricked her, too.

 

John crossed his arms. “Look, I’m the guy, so I get to be on top!”

 

“Oh, you did not just do that. You did not just pull the male supremacy card.”

 

“And what if I did?”

 

“Well, it’s not going to do you any good, because you know the women’s equality card trumps the male supremacy card any day of the week.”

 

John mulled this over.

 

“I get to be on top!” he said intelligently. “I’m the guy.”

 

“I still don’t see why you think that entitles you to be on top.”

 

“It does. There are unspoken rules for this kind of thing!”

 

“Suuuure.”

 

“There are!”

 

“Look, we’re never going to get to bed if we keep arguing over this.”

 

“So let me be on top and let’s get on with it!”

 

“No. There’s only one way to settle this fairly,” Lori told him.

 

“And that is?” John asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

“We’ll take turns. You can be on the top and I’ll be on the bottom this time, but next time we’ll switch positions.”

 

“Hmm. I guess that could work.”

 

“Good. Now let’s get under the sheets and get some sleep.” With that, John climbed up the ladder and crawled into the top bunk bed, and Lori curled up on the bottom bunk. Of course, just as John was falling asleep, he was startled as something hit him from underneath. Then again, it was more like a kick.

 

“Hey, what’d you do that for?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“You know!”

 

“I was stretching. My legs hurt from the flight,” Lori explained.

 

“Did you have to stretch them by kicking the mattress?”

 

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Lori couldn’t help but grin to herself. Serves him right. But she had had her revenge; much as she was tempted not to, Lori would keep her promise and not kick him again.

 

“Thanks.” John pulled the sheets closer to him. “Goodnight, Muse Muffin.”

 

“Sweet dreams, Muse Maan.”

 

******

 

“No, I’ve never danced naked in the rain. I’ve never killed anyone with my bare hands, either, but that’s not to say I never will,” Lori heard John’s voice from the kitchen saying as she made her way over there after having finally awakened from her nap. The top bunk had been empty when she had woken up, so Lori had assumed John was around somewhere and had gone looking for him. She entered the kitchen.

 

“You haven’t?” Lori asked as she walked over to the kitchen table where Matt, John, and Matt’s mother were seated.

 

John looked puzzled. “Of course not.”

 

“Ah.” At this, Lori’s thoughts began to race. I knew it! I knew he wasn’t responsible for all those people dying!

 

“Dancing naked in the rain naked could be dangerous. I might get pneumonia or something.”

 

“Ah.” He was just talking about the dancing part. Hah!

 

Would you PLEASE just leave me alone? Shut up. Go away.

 

Fine. Marry a murderer.

 

That’s not what he is! Gah. I don’t want to think about this right now. He couldn’t have done it. Go the freak away!

 

I’m only here because you want me to be, you know.

 

“Shut up!” Lori yelled.

 

John, Matt, and Matt’s mother jumped, startled at the sudden interjection.

 

“Are you okay, Lori?” John asked. “This isn’t about the bunk beds, is it? I agreed you get to be on top next time.”

 

Lori frantically searched for an excuse. “No, no, it’s nothing. I just…I just couldn’t believe what you said. That’s all.”

 

“Look, I’m not X-Raytor!” John said in his defense. “I don’t go streaking through parties!”

 

“I know, I know. Sorry. I must still be jet-lagged.”

 

“Jet-lag can do strange things to people,” Matt’s mum said helpfully. “You probably just woke up too soon. Matt, why don’t you take her back to the guest room? John’s volunteered to help with dinner.

 

“I did?”

 

“He did?” Matt asked.

 

“He has now,” Matt’s mum said. She looked at John. “If you’re going to get married, someone has to teach you how to cook without exploding anything.”

 

“But that’s always the fun part!” John protested. He looked to Matt for help.

 

“Come on, Lori,” Matt said, looking away. “Let’s get you back to the guest room like Mum said.”

 

As they reached the guest bedroom, Lori spoke to Matt. “Look, when I asked to stay over while I’m here on business, I wasn’t completely honest with you.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m here on business, but…it’s top secret. Spy type stuff.”

 

“Spy type stuff?”

 

“Yeah. Think Mission Impossible, but without dangling from the ceiling.”

 

“No dangling from the ceiling?”

 

“Not yet, at least. Look, I’ve come because I’ve got a proposition for you.”

 

“Lori, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you girls, I’m gay. I’m just not interested in you that way. Besides, what about John?”

 

“Not that kind of proposition, gah! Get your mind out of the gutter!”

 

“Oh. What kind, then?”

 

“I can’t tell you everything until you agree and are sworn in, but here’s what I can tell you: we’re developing a super secret weapon. One that no one else has. Well, except maybe the Andalites.”

 

“Morphing?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You’re kidding.”

 

“No.”

 

“How?”

 

“Well, remember our good old friend Ann Chovi? She’s heading up the research.”

 

“You don’t mean…?”

 

“Oh, yeah. Oreos.”

 

“Whoa.” Matt took a deep breath. “And the US wants me to be involved? How? What for?”

 

“Who better to be our final test subject?”

 

“Test subject?”

 

“Yeah. Test subject. You’ll be the first.”

 

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m not American or anything. How could I work for the US government?”

 

“Well, we’re not technically the government. I mean, sure, we’re subsidized by them and most of what we do is stuff they want us to do, but at least a little bit of the time, we’re on our own.”

 

“Ah. I see. So the organization you work for is like a government puppet of some kind, huh?”

 

“Yes, that’s exactl—no, no, not at all. It’s like a ‘for hire’ type thing. When the government doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to bother using up their agents for something, that’s when they call us in. And that’s why we get really, really spastic and diverse things happening.”

 

“Okay…”

 

“And the more stuff we have to offer, well, the better chances we have of getting hired for more stuff instead of the CIA.”

 

“So you’re mercenaries? Spying mercenaries?”

 

“Uh…” Lori stopped to think, as she really hadn’t bothered to figure it all out before. “I guess we kind of sort of are. But in a good way. For the challenge more so than the money.”

 

Matt coughed. “Yeah, sure.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Oh, nothing.”

 

“Trust me. It’s not often a glamorous life-style. But there are benefits and gifts. Kind of.” Lori thought about the fact that had some halfway competent government operative gotten a hold of the Cinque Situation, odds were that she and John would not be looking forward to the same bright future they currently were.

 

Yeah. Some benefit.

 

A “gift” with a curse. Two separate lives, one protecting the life that Lori wished she was able to live without it having to be protected. Two selves; one,  the secret agent for F.R.E.E.D.O.M.  who knew that John was, at least acting as someone else, capable of killing thousands of people who had the ill fortune to stay in hotel casino where they ended up gambling away more than just a few quarters in a slot machine. The second, a recently graduated grad student who’d just gotten engaged to the hilariously funny and completely harmless John she’d known for years.

 

I could probably sell the story rights to Lifetime for big bucks. It’s so television for women.

 

“Two strong, independent girls. One body.”

 

As usual, Lori shrugged the thought away. Matt wouldn’t be involved in any of that, anyways. 

 

“So are you interested? At all?”

 

“I don’t know…”

 

“Morphing, Matt. You could be the first person in the history of mankind to actually have the ability to turn into an animal. Maybe even use it to save the world.”

 

“Hmmm..” Matt said, obviously mulling it over. “Why me, though? I know it’s more than just because Ann’s doing the research.”

 

“That’s most of it.”

 

“But not all of it.”

 

Lori hesitated. “No. It’s not,” she said finally.

 

“So what is it?”

 

“There might be side effects, or at least, the research Ann has done in the past week suggests that there could be. And we can’t get government funding if we do the human tests on an American.”

 

“So you come for the Australian, eh?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

There was a long pause as the two of them just stood there in the hallway outside the guest bedroom. Matt looked down at his feet in contemplation, and Lori fiddled with her watch.

 

All of the silver varnish had finally come away after years and years of her wearing it, so that it was now a nice copper all over. It was a very pretty watch, or least Lori had always thought so, and it had lasted longer than any other watch Lori had ever owned. Certainly longer than the one that Lori had gotten for Christmas one year and then ended up leaving in her pocket and washing it in the washing machine a month later.

 

Washing machines could be dangerous, Lori had concluded then. Any machine that could get her into so much trouble for having washed her watch in it was definitely a machine to view with a great deal of caution.

 

Finally, though, Matt looked up and met Lori’s eyes.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Really?!”

 

“Yeah. Let’s do it!” Matt said, winking at his use of that popular old line from Animorphs.

 

******

The rest of Lori and John’s five day stay in Australia went by in a blur of vegemite(which they both had the sense to avoid, but were still confronted with countless times), Crocodile Hunter and Leo DiCaprio sightings(still a disturbing pair after all these years, but not really any more disturbing than most other celebrity pairs), and John exploding various dishes of food in Matt’s kitchen as Matt’s mother tried in vain to show John how to cook without doing just that.

 

“Bam!” John cried.

 

“Bam?” Matt’s mother had asked.

 

“Bam! That’s what that Emeril guy that Lori can’t stand always says when he’s cooking on the Food Network. And he’s a chef, so if he can imply that explosions are supposed to happen when you cook, then so can I.”

 

“You know, John, it might not be a good idea to imitate the chef that Lori doesn’t like. Pick and choose who you emulate.”

 

“Nah. She likes it when I annoy her like that.”

 

“Oh, really?”

 

“Yeah. Taking the time to annoy someone to no end—that’s true love,” John had informed Matt’s mother.

 

“If you say so.”

 

“Look, I’m not saying I don’t end up having to do a lot of dances and writing lots of poems for her because of some of the stuff I do. But sometimes it works.”

 

“Strange.”

 

“Nah. I call it the Marco Factor.”

 

“I don’t even want to know,” Matt’s mum said, shaking her head. She started to clean up the mess from making the last dinner that Lori, John, Matt, and Matt’s family would be sharing together before Lori and John went to the airport and flew back to the US.

 

BAM!

 

“Aaaaah!” John shrieked as a tray of sushi he had made exploded.

 

“How do you manage to do that?” asked Matt’s mother.

 

“It’s a gift?”

 

******

 

“Lori?”

 

“Lynne!”

 

“What are you doing here?” Lynne asked as Lori strode into Lynne’s office to make one last secret agent related visit while she was still in Australia, before she and John left in a few hours. “I didn’t know you were here in Australia!” Lynne said.

 

Lori nodded. “Yep. Been here a few days, but me and John are flying out this evening. I thought I would swing by and see you, though. I’ve got sort of a business thing I was wondering if you could take care of.”

 

“Sure! What’s up? What do you need?”

 

“Well…here’s the thing. It’s got to be a secret.”

 

“I can handle that.”

 

“Even from John. And it has to stay a secret even after we get married.”

 

“Married?”

 

“What? You’re the only one besides John and I who weren’t in on the whole betting thing at Morphz?”

 

“Betting thing? What, John gambled and won you or something? Or vice versa?”

 

“No, no. I guess you’re not up to speed on things then, huh?”

 

“No, I guess not. What happened? What do you mean, married to John?”

 

“He proposed. A few days ago.”

 

“You’re joking.”

 

“Nope.” Lori held out her left hand as proof. Lynne let out a low whistle.

 

“That’s…crazy. Insanely crazy.”

 

Lori laughed. “So…can you help me out with this business thing or not?”

 

“Sure, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to see anyone on a frequent basis. And I already handle your other accounts.”

 

“Yeah. That’s why I’m coming to you. I need a separate, secret account.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“I’ve been drawing paychecks that are considerably larger than what my bank account can insure, plus I don’t want to give John any hints that I’m anything more than a typical journalist for CNN. A bank balance of several million dollars might give it away.”

 

“So you’ll be needing…hmmm…” Lynne paused in thought. “Probably Swiss.”

 

“Yeah, that’s about what I was thinking. And you can handle everything from your end if I have my pay wired over here?”

 

“Oh, yeah, definitely. And I’ll keep track of everything.”

 

“Thanks. How much am I going to owe you for this?”

 

“Oh…not much. We’ve been friends for ages, after all.”

 

“What about a 10 % commission on whatever I send in for you to transfer to the secret account?”

 

Lynne nodded. “Well…I’m definitely not going to turn down an offer like that if you’re sure about it, Lori.”

 

“Don’t even give it a second thought.”

 

“I just have one requirement.”

 

“And that is?”

 

“You have to tell me where all this money is coming from.”

 

Lori frowned, mulling it over.

 

“Hmm. Well…I guess I could do it. But you know if it gets out to anyone at all, the people I work for will have to have you shot or something.”

 

“You’re joking.”

 

“Not really.”

 

There was a brief silence between the two of them as Lynne considered this.

 

“I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

 

“Okay, then. Well, it all started this one night when I checked my email after I’d kicked a blind date out for having taken off his pants while I went to make hot chocolate…”

 

 

******

 

When they arrived in the Atlanta airport on early Christmas Eve morning after the lengthy flight back, Lori and John were both ready to fall out from sleepiness; but Lori’s mother had been adamant about her daughter needing to make an appearance for her birthday and Christmas.

 

So once each of them had gone through the quadruple security check required just to leave the airport(“ ‘Welcome to Atlanta’ my ass,” they had both said upon seeing the welcome sign situated just outside the third security check), they took Lori’s car and drove from the airport parking lot the two hours it took to get to where Lori’s mom lived in Alabama.

 

“Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!” Lori screamed. “ Look out! Lookoutlookoutlookoutlookout!” she yelled.

 

“Would you please shut up?” John demanded. “I’m trying to drive here!”

 

“Car! Car! Car!” Lori yelled.

 

John yanked the wheel left. The car sped by, horn blaring. The driver stuck his hand out the window and made a sign with his fingers.

 

“That was rude,” John said. “And totally uncalled for.”

 

BAM!

 

“Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

 

“Oh, it’s just a sign post,” he said. “Chill out.”

 

BAM! BAM! BAM!

 

“Okay, so it’s four sign posts,” John said.

 

“Get off the side of the road, you lunatic!” Lori said.

 

John yanked the wheel to the right. They bumped off the side of the road, sort of grazed another car, and…

 

BAM! BAM! BAM!

 

“Do you hate sign posts?” Lori asked. “Is that your problem? Do you just HATE SIGN POSTS?!!”

 

“I can’t drive with you screaming in my ear,” John said.

 

“You can’t drive at all!” Lori said. “Left! Turn left! There, there! Turn left! It’s that way,” Lori said, taking time out from screaming as they got off the exit ramp and headed into town.

 

John turned left. He missed the actual street, but fortunately, the restaurant that was situated on that corner didn’t have any trees in the front lawn.

 

BUMP! Over the curb. BUMP! Rear wheels over the curb. John stepped on the gas and tore across the well-manicured lawn in front of the restaurant.

 

“Cool,” he said.

 

“I’m going to kill you, John,” Lori said in a weirdly calm voice. “If I survive, I am gonna kill you.

 

John shrugged, unsure what else to do.

 

“You said you could drive!” Lori accused.

 

“Okay, so it’s not exactly like Crusin’ USA.. I’m doing the best I can.”

 

When they did finally arrive at Lori’s old house, Lori couldn’t get out of the car soon enough.

 

“Marco, I’m so sorry,” she apologized to her car, hugging the surprisingly still intact hood as John unloaded the trunk. “I’ll never let anyone come near the steering wheel but me ever again.”

 

Marco stared back at her blankly.

 

“Lori! You’re home!” The side door swung wide open as Lori’s mother dashed out from the house.  Lori quit hugging Marco and turned to give her mom a hug.

 

“Happy Birthday!”

 

“What’d you get me?” Lori’s mother asked, not missing a beat. “You went to Australia. What did I get?”

 

Lori laughed. “We weren’t there that long, Mom. And it was a business trip, not a ‘for fun’ trip, you know.”

 

“But you got me something.”

 

Lori shook her head in defeat, giving up. “Yeah, yeah. Just be patient, you’ll get it once I can get a chance to get it out of my bags and stuff.”

 

“You mean I have to wait?” she asked, disappointed.

 

“I have something else, though. I’ve got news.”

 

“You’re engaged!” Lori’s mom said with complete certainty.

 

“How’d you know?” Lori asked.

 

“You’ve got a diamond ring on your finger. Your mom’s not stupid, you know,” her mother said, talking about herself in the third person.

 

Lori wondered for a second if maybe that was where she had picked up that habit. It was that or spending way too much time chatting and iming on the Internet.

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

“So where is he? Where’s this guy? Is it him over there?” she asked, pointing at John, who was standing safely back a few feet.

 

Lori nodded. “Mom, this is John. John, this is my mom,” she said, introducing the two of them and mouthing, “Don’t forget it’s her birthday,” to John as she stood behind her mother.

 

He got the hint. “Happy Birthday, Mrs. Dixon.”

 

“Nice to meet you, John,” Lori’s mother said. And then she launched into the third degree. Lori buried her hands in her face for not having thought to warn John that her mother could be just a little bit inquisitive at times.

 

Okay. Not a little bit inquisitive. A lot a bit inquisitive.

 

“So where are you from? What do you do? How old are you? How long have you two known each other? How tall are you exactly? Do you have any brothers or sisters? What do your parents do? How did the both of you meet? Did you know Lori speaks French? She spent a whole semester there. Did you meet her in France? Are you French? Do you speak French? Would you like some coffee or something else to drink? Maybe some hot chocolate? Are you in the choir? Did I already ask you where you’re from, or did I forget to ask that? Have you—“

 

John blinked at the onslaught of questions, bewildered. Lori stepped in to rescue him from having to attempt any answers.

 

“Mom! Leave him alone. Geez. And you wonder why I never bring friends home, let alone a boyfriend or a fiancé.”

 

“I’m just curious! I just want to know what kind of guy John is, that’s all.”

 

“Mom. Give me a little credit. I’m not one of your friends’ daughters.”

 

A little high and mighty for someone who’s brought home a nationally infamous crime figure, aren’t we? Lori smacked that thought away. She simply was going to forget about that part of things as much as she could. And Christmas time was one of the times during which Lori was emphatically not going think about it.

 

Lori’s cell phone chose this inopportune time to ring.

 

“Gah, hang on, ya’ll. I’ve got a call. Go on inside, I’ll be there in a minute,” Lori told her mother and John.

 

John’s eyes went wide as Lori’s mother motioned for him to follow her.

 

“Hurry back!” he mouthed to Lori.

 

“You’ll be fine,” she replied equally silently as she hit the talk button on her cell phone. Lori reached back into the car to get the CD she’d bought for John for an early Christmas surprise. The two of them could dance to it later in the day, or maybe that night. “Hello? This is—“

 

“I know who you are. And I’m going to destroy you. And Cinque.”

 

Lori’s stomach lurched violently. “Who are you?” she hissed over the phone.

 

The voice on the other end of the line was deep and sort of familiar, like way too many things seemed to be. “Oh, trust me, you know who I am. I’m just calling to let you know I’ve been keeping my eye on you and everything you’ve been doing these past few months. And you’re going to pay for what you did to me.”

 

Now Lori was confused. As far as being a secret agent went, she’d been doing fairly tame stuff. Well, except for—“

 

“And no, I’m not connected to the either of the Evil Criminal Drug Lords,” the deep voice said.

 

“What…what did I do to you, then?” Lori asked. “If I did anything, I swear I didn’t mean to, and just let me know what I can do. I’ll fix it, I promise.”

 

“Hah! Empty promises. I’m tired of those. That’s all anyone ever has to offer.”

 

“No, it’s not. I mean it. Let me help fix things.”

 

“No. I’m going to destroy you. And Cinque.”

 

“What do you know about Cinque?”

 

“Enough to know that if something happened to him you would never forgive yourself. Enough to know exactly who he is, and how to hurt him. Enough to know that hurting him is the best way to hurt you. And I am going to hurt you, Agent L . Agent Dixon. Lori. The future Mrs. Dougherty.”

 

“Who are you?”

 

“Oh, you want to know who I am? Really? Are you sure you can handle it?”

 

“Just tell me who you are.”

 

The voice laughed a very sinister laugh. “Okay, I’ll tell you. My name is—“ the phone line went dead, and Lori stood there in the driveway in shock as her old cat Jean Loup walked up to her and rubbed up against her legs, purring loudly.

 

******

 

Chapter Twelve:

January 2009

 

“and this is Ann, and Matt, and—“

 

“Yes, yes. That will do. You do not have to introduce us to everyone in the department,” Agent A told Lori, who was now completely and officially known as Agent L, the head of the brand new Bizarre, Random, and Miscellaneous Stuff department of F.R.E.E.D.O.M.

 

It had been done; Lori was now, after just over a year, part of the upper echelon of F.R.E.E.D.O.M., and on top of being in charge of the new department and pretty much having free reign over it, Lori had been able to talk Agent R in to completely relinquishing the Cinque Situation to her. This meant that Lori would only have to come up with false reports to give to Dr. M once a month, instead of false reports for Agent R ever week.

 

Not only would not writing out all of those reports save quite a few trees, it also allowed Lori to forget as much as possible for most of the time.

 

Of course, the strange phone calls were starting to take the place of what had used to be the only real reminder. And as much as she tried, Lori couldn’t get the mysterious caller to stay on long enough for her to trace the signal to any location more specific than a largely populated city. So far, nothing had happened to her or John, but the whole situation made Lori one extremely worried secret agent.

 

Lori had already pushed and pushed Ann to work harder to make more progress on the Oreos, but it was a long and arduous task that was ahead of Ann. Nonetheless, Matt was scheduled for his first testing session in just over a week, and hopes were running quite high.

 

“You know,  if this works…well, I can’t just be ‘Matt.’ I’m going to need something better. A name with some pizzazz or something,” Matt told Lori a couple of days before the first testing was supposed to take place.

 

“Huh?”

 

“You know. A name. I’ll sort of be a superhero. And superheroes don’t ever have names like ‘Matt.’ “

 

“Well, you do have a point there.”

 

“Any ideas?”

 

“I don’t know. There are lots of possibilities. And you’ll want to have a catchy theme song, too,” Lori added.

 

“How about the Australian Wonder?”

 

“Too generic. Besides, wasn’t that the name of that guy who spent a couple of years trying to imitate Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter Extraordinaire only to end up as mince meat in the jaws of a sea crocodile?”

 

“Eh. I had forgotten about him. Rum luck he had.”

 

“Rum luck indeed. I remember someone telling me that the newspapers said he was drunk at the time.”

 

“Oh, gah. Could you have made a worse pun?”

 

“Definitely. I haven’t even had any coffee today, so this is nothing.”

 

Matt stared at Lori.

 

“So, anyways. About your superhero name. I’m thinking that it should probably have something to do with Oreos, since they’ll be what give you your powers.”

 

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Of course, at the same time, what if Popeye had gone by the name ‘Cans ‘O Spinach Guy?’ Do you honestly think the cartoon would have soared the way it did? Or if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had been the ‘Teenage Green Ooze Turtles’ instead? Or if Captain Planet’s moniker had been ‘Strangely Colored Dude Called Up By Five Ethnically Diverse Kids With Rings?’ Or what if it had been—“

 

“Spider-Man! And spiders!” Lori cried suddenly as she glanced over the bookshelf in her office. Lori had a copy of each of her favorite books, including graphic novels, taking up space on her bookshelves that were probably supposed to be dedicated to books that were profoundly dull but generally considered to be more impressive than graphic novels, Animorphs, and various foreign language dictionaries and grammar books.

 

“Spiders? Eww,” Matt said, shuddering.

 

“No! Ultimate Spider-Man! The ULTIMATE superhero comic book!” Lori cried.

 

“Really?”

 

“Well, Watchmen is probably on a slightly higher echelon of graphic novelry, but you haven’t read it, and I hope to God you didn’t see the horrible movie of it that some crap director made a couple of years ago,” Lori said, continuing, “so if I were to ramble about the utter coolness of Rorshach or the Nite Owl and the Owlship or Dr. Manhattan and how perfect their names were for them, you wouldn’t get it at all.”

 

Matt blinked. “Eh…good call on that.”

 

“But everyone knows Spider-Man!”

 

“Sure,” Matt said in a tone that was meant to appease Lori. Unfortunately for him, after years of dealing with anti-Animorphs cynics and people who thought that “graphic novels are just comics, and comics are for kids,” (it still shamed Lori to think that for awhile there, she had actually been one of those “comics are for kids” people) Lori was well-acquainted with that tone.

 

Lori raised her eyebrows at Matt. “Look, why don’t you borrow my copy of something?”

 

“When would I have the time to bother reading it?”

 

That was definitely not the right question for Matt to ask.

 

“Easy. It’s part of your job description now,” Lori told him.

 

“What?”

 

“Yeah.” Lori handed Matt her extra copy of Watchmen. “Have this read before the first testing.”

 

“You’re kidding me,” Matt said as he looked at the yellow cover, trying to discern what the red splatter on the picture was. Wine? Grape juice?

 

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

 

“Uh…yes?” Matt asked hopefully.

 

Lori shook her head. “Nope. Read it. And—“

“But—“

 

“No buts. And I’ll know if you haven’t read it.”

 

“Ann!” Matt cried out imploringly. “Ann, tell her I haven’t got time for this kid’s stuff!”

 

Ann looked up briefly from the table she was seated at, hard at work at having the first batch of human-ready Oreos prepared in time for the scheduled initial testing. “I think Agent L’s right, Matt,” Ann said with a grin.

 

“What?”

 

“Read!” Ann barked.

 

“Thanks for backing me up, Ann,” Lori said as Ann returned back to work. Ann waved her hand in a gesture that somehow clearly said “No problem; anything to spread the love of graphic novels and/or an appreciation for Alan Moore’s genius” and returned back to the work at hand.

 

Matt sighed. “I give up. I’ll read it.”

 

“Good. And I’ll be thinking about a fitting superhero name for you, I promise.”

 

“Yeah.” He turned to leave and get started reading.

 

“Oh, and Matt?” Lori called out as Matt got to the door.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Be careful when you get to Chapter Seven.”

 

“Careful? Careful how?”

 

“Keep a bucket of cold water handy, or at least be prepared to need a cold shower afterwards. Let’s just put it that way.”

 

“Ah. Uh…okay. I’m not even going to ask.”

 

“You won’t need to. And whatever you do, don’t read it on any kind of flying hovercraft.”

 

 

Chapter Thirteen:

April 2009

 

As the months had passed, Agent L and her underlings had made significant progress in the development of what had come to be known as “The Butterfly Effect,” a secret operations name that had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual project they were working on, but had sounded pretty damn cool to all of them.

 

There was also the side benefit that it was a semi-obscure reference to Animorphs #19, which pleased most of the agents involved with F.R.E.E.D.O.M., since Lori had used most of her free time at the secret operations base in Zone 91 running an Animorphs library(Lori also lent out graphic novels, but Agents A, T, C, R, and J were far more enthusiastic about the Animorphs books, for some inexplicable reason).

 

It had taken two months after the first initial human testing for Ann to develop an Oreo that Matt could take and actually control what he turned into. The results of the first few months had been very interesting, however. Matt had been turned into everything from a dog to Richard Simmons to a green-eyed llama to Professor Severus Snape from Harry Potter to Vin Diesel and many, many other bizarre and random miscellaneous creatures.

 

Lori and Ann had been immensely thankful that Tina was not in any way involved with The Butterfly Effect, considering how likely it was that Tina would have shot them for taking her poor, dear Snivellus away by changing him back into Matt.

 

But by early March, Ann had hit upon the recipe she needed in order for Matt to have some control over what he changed into. Unfortunately, Ann had considerably more trouble figuring out how to give Matt some control over the length of time he stayed morphed.

 

Ultimately, Ann had been forced to scrap the idea of creating a new kind of Oreo, and she had set to work at using the properties and potential contained within normal Oreos that anyone could get from the grocery store. She also pointed out how it would be much more convenient and less dangerous for others if it was Matt who was altered, and not the Oreos.

 

And finally, after months of research and late nights and endless work, Ann had hit the jackpot during a brief trip back to the less of a big secret headquarters in Atlanta. The idea had come to her in the form of an epiphany after she had eaten an entire wedge of cheese for an early morning snack. An hour later, Matt was standing in his hotel room, a changed man in quite the literal sense.

 

“So tell us again why you decided to turn yourself into Brad Pitt?” Agent L asked Matt.

 

“I was curious.”

 

“Curious?”

 

“You know. About…” Matt looked down.

 

“Oohh.” Ann and Agent L cringed, but were still oddly drawn to him. Something about his hair. Or his face. Or his…

 

“No! Not that!” Matt/Brad Pitt cried, realizing the mistake he’d made in looking down to see if his shoelaces were tied.

 

“Sure, Matt.”

 

“Yeah, Agent Kilgariff. I’m sure you’ve got another logical excuse up your sleeves,” Agent L said.

 

“Oh, shut up,” Matt/Brad Pitt said crossly.

 

“Well, how long are you going to stay like that?”

 

“I’d kind of like to go out and do something and get mobbed by adoring fans.”

 

Ann thought about this. “Well, it would be a good way to see if it wasn’t just us being really hopeful that this final concoction actually works. What do you think, Lori?”

 

“I think we could risk it. Besides. I’ve got to meet John for lunch in little while.”

 

“Isn’t he a journalist now?”

 

“Yeah…well, he’s an intern at the Inside View. For awhile now, actually.”

 

“Won’t that be kind of dangerous? What if he suspects something about the fact that we have Brad Pitt accompanying us to lunch?”

 

“It’s the perfect opportunity; if anyone needs to mistake the transformed Matt into Brad Pitt, it’s an intern for a tabloid newspaper—not that that’s what it is, but that’s what most people think it is—And if John suspects something is up, we can cover it up and get him not to talk. We won’t be able to do that with anyone else. Besides, it’s not like he’s turned himself into Ewan McGregor. If you’d gone and done that,” Lori said, turning to Matt/Brad Pitt, ”then it would have been hard to explain how exactly I was keeping myself from jumping you on the spot.”

 

Matt/Brad Pitt nodded. “Yep. See the logic in my choice now?”

 

“Heck, if you had morphed into Ewan McGregor, I can’t promise you I wouldn’t have jumped you right here,” Lori confessed.

 

“Again, see the logic in my choice?”

 

“Oh, definitely. Can’t have John hunting down you as Ewan McGregor or the actual Ewan McGregor for some kind of pointless honor killing like in that horrid Chronicle of a Death Foretold book I had to read for my Honors Great Books class back in 2003.”

 

“Definitely don’t want that,” Ann said, nodding.

 

“At any rate,” Lori said, changing the subject ever so slightly, “well, I just got word yesterday about an assignment in Segundo, California. And a Brad Pitt morph could be just the thing we need. The only other agent we have that could get access to the place we need to get into over there would be Agent Green, and she’s busy with her day job. They keep renewing her contract and giving her more money.”

 

“Shame, isn’t it?”

 

“Yeah. We lose more agents that way, I swear…” Agent L trailed off in thought. “Well, let me just call John and give him a heads up about our new friend.” Lori took her cell phone out from her purse and dialed John.

 

“Hello?”

 

“John!”

 

“Lori!”

 

“Hey, what are you up to?”

 

“Just sitting around.”

 

“Ah. Well, if it’s okay with you, I ran into Ann and a friend of hers while I was heading back from the bridal store, and I invited them to lunch with us. You don’t mind, do you, Muse Maan?” Lori asked, using John’s nickname in hopes it would soften any resistance he might have to the idea of company with lunch.

 

“No, it’s fine.”

 

“And I should warn you about her friend,” Lori started to say. “He’s kind of a big celebrity type.”

 

“Big celebrity type? Who is it, Ewan McGregor? And you haven’t jumped him already? Where is he? He hasn’t tried anything yet, has he, Muse Muffin, because I swear if that tartan-wearing star from Moulin Rouge and the Star Wars prequels tries anything I’ll—“

 

“No, no, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s just Brad Pitt.”

 

“Oh, that’s all? You made it sound like there was something to be worried about.”

 

“Well, it is Brad Pitt.”

 

“Hmm. You have a point. I remember reading somewhere that in that Montana movie, Brad Pitt’s lips were actually responsible for crushing some people to death.”

 

“Sooo…” Lori waited for John to continue, not knowing how to continue the conversation after a point like that.

 

“Weird,” he said with a laugh. “It’s fine if he comes. Maybe I can get a few answers about what’s been rumored about Segundo, California out of him. And it’s not like we’re all going to the Oscars. It’s just lunch.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Oh! And I completely forgot to tell you—“

 

BEEP!

 

“Gah. John, I’ve got a call on the other line, and it could be work-related. Okay if we finish this at lunch?”

 

“Sure.”

 

BEEP!

 

“I gotta go. Until lunch, Muse Maan!”

 

“Until then, Muse Muffin!” John hung up, and Lori changed to the other line.

 

“Hello?”

 

“I’d get a different dress for the wedding if I were you,” the deep voice that had already called Lori several times suggested.

 

“What?”

 

“It makes your hips look big.”

 

“Oh, you did not just tell me that. Now I’m really going to hurt you when I find you.”

 

“You won’t find me. I’ve already found you. I could be anyone. I’m watching you all the time.”

 

Lori sat down on the hotel bed, hard. Ann and Matt/Brad Pitt looked on, slightly confused, but they had no idea what was being said by the mysterious person on the other end of the phone line. Fortunately, Lori had the sense to press the tracing device she had installed into her cell phone a few weeks ago after the tenth mysterious call.

 

If I can just keep him on the line for another minute, I’ll know where he is.

 

“So when did you become an expert on wedding dresses?” Lori asked.

 

“I know what looks like crap and what doesn’t. That’s all.”

 

“Ah. I see. So what do you want?”

 

“I’ve already told you what I want. But since I’m a nice guy, I’ll give you a chance to put off the inevitable.”

 

“A chance? To put off what, exactly?”

 

“I’ve already told you.”

 

Just another few seconds. Keep him talking. Keep him talking.

 

“Well, what exactly is it you want me to do?”

 

“Stand him up.”

 

“Who?”

 

“John. Cinque. You know. Stand him up. Don’t go to lunch. And don’t make excuses.”

 

“That’s just stupid.”

 

“Maybe. But that doesn’t matter. Do it, or I call up the authorities and tell them who he really is. And I’ve got proof to back up my claims.”

 

“Why should I believe you?”

 

“You don’t have to believe me, but I’ve told you what I’ll do. Now you just have to do what I asked you and you’ll buy some more time. You just have to trust me.”

 

“Trust you?! You’re kidding me.”

 

Just another few seconds.

 

“Sad how we can’t trust anyone anymore, isn’t it? John hides his past from you, you lie to him about who you really are, and here I am, asking you to trust me.”

 

“Do you realize just how much you sound like the creep from that movie Phone Booth?”

 

“Just do it.”

 

The line clicked and went dead. Lori checked the display.

 

She’d done it. The call had been traced. Lori entered the coordinates into the GPS locator, and was shocked at what she discovered.

 

Whoever it was that had been calling her, he was in the hotel. The same hotel that Ann and Matt were checked into. Either right above or below the room they were in, and since the hotel was only three stories high, that seriously cut down on the time it would take to find the right room.

 

And I’ll be damned if I don’t find him right now, Lori thought to herself.

 

“Guys? Change of plans. We’ve got a mission.”

 

 

******

 

“GAH!” Lori shouted. “DON’T YOU DARE LET HIM GET AWAY!” Lori shouted as she and Matt/Brad Pitt saw the mysterious guy round the corner. Ann was two floors down checking the other hotel room, but Lori and Matt/Brad Pitt had found the guy. The three of them tore down the hallway, with Lori close at the heels of the mysterious guy, who was only wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and Matt/Brad Pitt close behind her.

 

“Aaaaaeeeeee!” Lori shrieked as she collided with a maid’s cleaning cart at full speed; she hit it with such force that she actually flipped head over heels and landed back on the other side of it on both feet. Lori didn’t miss a beat; she kept hot on the guy’s trail. He threw open the door to the roof, closing it behind him, and as Lori neared, she heard a dead bolt click into place from the outside. Her heart sank at the thought that this psycho might actually get away.

 

Matt/Brad Pitt finally caught up to her. “Step aside! I’ll take care of the door,” he said gallantly. He ran full force at the door, and hit it with all his might. He flew back from the impact so fast he almost got whiplash.

 

“Owww.”

 

Lori held back tears as she thought about the possibility that this guy was going to get away, and then she was suddenly gripped by determination. That door was going down.

 

Now.

 

Lori stepped back just enough to give her a slight running start, and channeled every thought she thought could possibly help give her enough power to kick down the door.

 

And then Lori kicked it down.

 

“Daaamn, girl,” Matt/Brad Pitt said. “Of course, you know I loosened it up for you.”

 

“Sure you did,” Lori said, and tore up the steps to the rooftop, exposed to the noon air.

 

The mysterious guy was at the end of the roof furthest away. He turned back to look behind himself and saw Lori running towards him. Far behind her, Lori could hear footsteps as Matt/Brad Pitt thudded up the stairs. Lori turned to see just how far back Matt/Brad Pitt was.

 

When Lori turned back around, the mysterious guy was gone.

 

“NOOO!” she shouted. Lori ran to the edge of the other end of the roof where he had been two seconds ago and peered over down at the ground below.

 

Nothing.

 

There was nothing.

 

Well, except for some bushes and the road, but nothing in the way of fleeing figures or a smashed up body.

 

“Where’d he go? He can’t have disapparated into thin air!” Lori cried. She leaned over a little further, clutching hold of the railing for safety.

 

But then the last thing she expected to happen happened, even though in job like this, Lori generally found herself expecting the unexpected, thus making the unexpected expected instead of the unexpected like it had been before Lori began to expect it.

 

Lori felt someone push her, a someone that was probably the mysterious figure who would be able to make his escape now that Lori was otherwise occupied, and then Lori had the distinctly horrible feeling that she was falling. She noticed the ground racing towards her, and realized that she was, indeed, falling. And rather quickly at that.

 

“Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!” Lori screamed as she plummeted to the ground. She flailed her arms about wildly as she tried desperately to get hold of something to stop or slow the fall. “Aaaaaaaahhh—“

 

Ow, Lori thought briefly as she collided with the pavement in the parking lot, and then she collapsed, unconscious.

 

******

 

“Yo! You shoulda seen it. Shia is all ready to break out the can on Dougherty, and what happens…Dougherty breaks his hand.”

 

“Wait, what?”

 

“Dougherty breaks Shia’s hand.”

 

“Dougherty breaks Shia’s hand?”

 

“He just broke it and said: What did he say? “Next time, I’m gonna kill you!”

 

“He said that?”

 

“Yeah, said it was payback time and all that.”

 

“Wow. Broke his hand.”

 

“Yeah, it was all mangled like this.” The shady guy held up his hand with his fingers in funky angles, as if to demonstrate how screwed up Shia’s hand had been. “Dude went to the ER.”

 

“Guess he’s out of F.R.E.E.D.O.M.”

 

“No doubt. ‘Less he can learn to shoot a gun with his nose.”

 

“Wow, John beat up Shia.”

 

“Laid the smack down!”

 

“Huh.”

 

“That guy is like a scary alien freak, man.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Dougherty. First, what? Like he doesn’t say two words all year. Nuthin’. Just all in full-geek mode, right? Then all of a sudden he’s all—he’s all burning a bar down, then he’s all up in our face. Then he’s all smackin’ Shia down.”

 

“You guys should lay off him anyhow. I always said it.”

 

“Yeah, you did.”

 

“Matthias, come here,” a figure wearing boxers said. The two guys turned to face the slightly older, boxer-wearing figure.

 

“Matthias, are you friends with that Dougherty kid? The one who had the accident and destroyed the hotel?”

 

“The Lefkowitz Towers? Uh—yeah. We do NaNoWriMo together. Writing buddies. But—Nicolae—y’know, his group is—they can’t afford to buy a new hotel or—“

 

“No. I want you to bring the boy to the—“

 

This is odd. What is Nicolae doing here? And why is Matthias Wasser, who just happens to, oddly enough, have been the President of the United States, and some random shady guy discussing how John beat up Shia LaBoeuf? Lori was extremely confused, and struggled to open her eyes.

 

Wait a sec. Open her eyes?

 

Oh. Duh. It’s just a stupid, completely non-metaphorical dream. Lori squinted, opening her eyes just barely.

 

“Hey, I think she’s starting to wake up,” Lori heard Ann say.

 

“John’s on his way,” Brad Pitt’s voice said after the sound of a flip phone closing shut. “Said he was only a couple of minutes away.”

 

Wait a second. Is this another dream? Lori thought back to the last thing she remembered. Falling off the roof. Lori thought back a little further. Flipping over the maid’s cleaning cart. Lori thought back a little further than that. Watching Matt morph into Brad Pitt.

 

Okay, not a dream. Utterly strange, but not a dream.

 

“Do you think we should call an ambulance or something?”

 

“I don’t know.” Matt/Brad Pitt shrugged his shoulders.

 

“Well, she fell three stories. Wouldn’t you say that warrants a trip to the emergency room?”

 

“Yeah, but what about this spy stuff? Won’t it be a little suspicious that Lori was just randomly up on the roof and got pushed off by some mysterious guy we can’t even identify or say anything about?”

 

“True. We could just say it was attempted suicide, you know.” Ann nodded.

 

“Oh, yeah. That’ll go over well with everyone.”

 

“Okay, maybe not. But what are we going to say then?”

 

“I don’t know! You’ve been doing this stuff longer than me!”

 

“A week! A week longer! That’s it! Besides! You were in Spy Games! You should know how to deal with a situation like this!” Ann said.

 

“Look, just because I morphed Brad Pitt doesn’t mean I got his memories, too. Don’t you remember anything about Animorphs?”

 

“Enough to remember that they had to touch whatever it was they wanted to morph into, and you didn’t.”

 

“I touched his face on that magazine. Maybe that was all it took.”

 

“Ooo, you think so? Do you think there’s any chance you could do that to a picture of—“

 

“Muse Muffin!” John cried as he ran up and saw Ann and Matt/Brad Pitt standing next to a crumpled Lori.

 

“What happened? How’d she fall?” he asked, kneeling beside Lori, who was still just awake enough to distinguish voices. John looked up at both of them.

 

“Did you call an ambulance?”

 

“Well…”

 

“Uh…”

 

“Well? Did you?” John demanded.

 

“No?”

 

“You didn’t call the ambulance? Are you crazy, the pair of you?” John pulled out his cell phone and began to dial 911 when he wondered something.

 

“Uh…what’s the number for 911, guys?”

 

Ann and Matt/Brad Pitt stared blankly back at him.

 

“Look, Lori’s fine. A trip to the ER will just be a waste of money,” Ann assured John.

 

“She’s unconscious!”

 

“Not true!” Matt/Brad Pitt said, pointing at Lori “Her eyelids are fluttering. She’s waking up.” John handed his cell phone up to Ann absentmindedly and focused his attention back on Lori. He brushed her hair back, away from her face .

 

“Lori? Wake up, Muse Muffin,” he said. “Your Muse Maan’s here.”

 

From where they were both standing, Ann and Matt/Brad Pitt fought back the powerful urge to throw up.

 

Huh, Lori thought. John’s here. How did he get here? How did he kn—“No!” Lori shouted suddenly, sitting up and snapping into full consciousness.

 

“What? What’s wrong, Lori?”

 

“He got away!”

 

“Who? Who got away?”

 

Suddenly everything came flooding back, and Lori realized who she was talking to. “No…no one,” she said lamely, reaching her hand to rub her head. “Must have been a bad dream or something.”

 

“Oh. Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah…at least, I think so. How’d you get here?”

 

“Brad Pitt called.”

 

“Brad Pitt? Oh, wait, that’s right.”

 

“Do you want to try and get up?” John asked, reaching around behind Lori’s back to help hold her up.

 

“Yeah.” Slowly, and with a lot of help from John, Lori got back up on her feet. “Well…I don’t think I broke anything. Thank God. I’ll just be sore for a month or so.”

 

“That was a long fall,” John said. “How’d you do it, anyways?”

 

“What? Fall?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I don’t know. One minute, I’m, uh, opening the window to get some fresh air,  and the next thing I know, I’m waking up with you sitting here beside me,” Lori lied.

 

“Funny. There aren’t any windows open on this side of the building,” John remarked, glancing at the hotel wall.

 

“I guess a maid came into the hotel room and shut the window while I was lying here unconscious.”

 

“That’s probably it. That, or you let a group of pseudo feminists help you fall from the roof for free and just don’t remember...Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’ll call an ambulance,” John said.

 

“No! I meant ‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ not ‘Yeah, I need to go to the hospital,’ “ Lori explained.

 

“Oh. Are you sure?”

 

“Yeah. I’m really fine.”

 

“Yep, you are,” John said with a wink.

 

Lori groaned. “You know that has got to be one of the lamest pick up lines ever, right?”

 

“Not as lame as that one about you being a great actress.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You know. ‘Cause every night you star in my dreams.”

 

Lori groaned again. “Gah. That is a lame line,” she agreed.

 

“And that’s not even my lamest one.”

 

“Oh, dear.”

 

“You know, you’re just like a parking ticket, Lori.”

 

“A what? How is that?”

 

“You’ve got fine written all over you.”

 

“Gaaaah. Now that’s lame.” Lori shook her head and then gave John a kiss.

 

“But see how well it works?” John said with a grin. Lori laughed and leaned in to give him another kiss.

 

“Hey, are you two anywhere near being finished?” Ann asked.

 

John and Lori stepped back from each other and blushed. “Uh, yeah.”

 

“Good, because I’m starving. Let’s go get some lunch,” Matt/Brad Pitt said.

 

“Good idea.” The four of them started to slowly make their way to a nearby restaurant, but Lori stopped. Something was nagging her in the back of her mind.

 

He got away. And if you go to lunch, you know he’ll do what he said, if he hasn’t already gone and done it.

 

“Something wrong? I knew we should have gone to the hospital,” John said.

 

“No, no. I’m just…I’m really not hungry. Why don’t you three go on without me? I’ve got some work I need to be doing anyways,” Lori said.

 

“Bwah!” Ann said. “Work? Who needs it! Procrastinate!”

 

“I’ve been putting it off too long already.”

 

“Oh. Procrastinate anyways!” Ann said helpfully.

 

“I really can’t. Look, I’ll see you all later, okay?”

 

“Uh…okay. If you’re sure.”

 

“Want me to walk you?” John offered. “And for entertainment, I could tell you all about the latest email I got from Jon Cooksey while we walk.”

 

“Nah. I’ll be fine.”

 

“Oh.” John frowned.

 

“As soon as I get this work done, I promise I’ll take a day off and we can spend it together,” Lori assured John. “And you can spend that whole day rambling if you want.”

 

John smiled. “You know how I get when I ramble. Are you sure you won’t mind?”

 

“Definitely not,” Lori said with a wink.

 

******

 

“Count Von Groovy?” Lori said aloud when she found the name that the room the mysterious guy had been staying in had been reserved under. She had gone back to hotel to search the records after she left everyone on the way to lunch.

 

“What kind of person goes around calling himself that? What kind of parent doesn’t have the decency to change their last name so their child doesn’t have to suffer through childhood and adolescence with a name like that?”

 

Lori sighed. At least this might would make tracking down the mysterious phone calling guy a little easier. After all, royal titles weren’t handed out to just anyone, at least not titles like “Count.”

 

Not unless you found treasure on the isle of Monte Cristo, that is.

 

Lori’s first instinct was to check the phone book for any obvious correlations, but that yielded nothing except the discovery that there was also a Von Guilty, but as suspiciously close the names were, Lori reasoned that the mysterious guy would have to remain Von Groovy until she could find proof that he was Guilty, too. Von Guilty was innocent until proven to be Groovy.

 

As she sat down in Matt’s hotel room, which she was using as a base of operations for the hotel-related end of the search, Lori absentmindedly reached for an Oreo. “Man, if I had just been a little bit faster.” She bit into the Oreo, and then it hit her. It was so obvious.

 

“Oreo-Man! That’s it!” Lori cried, then grabbed for her phone and called Matt.

 

“Matt! Hey, it’s Agent L,” Lori said, careful to use her secret agent name, not that it really mattered.

 

“What’s up? John’s gone to torment the waiter with his rendition of La Marseillaise even though this is a pizza place, so we can talk freely for a little bit. Did you decide to join us for lunch after all?”

 

“No, but I finally figured out a superhero name for you!”

 

“Really?!”

 

“Yeah!”

 

“Cool!” Matt said.

 

“I know!”

 

“What is it?”

 

“What’s what?” Lori asked.

 

“My superhero name. What did you come up with?”

 

“Oreo-Man!”

 

“Oreo-Man?”

 

“Yeah! Oreo-Man!”

 

“Cool! Do I get a theme song?”

 

“Sure! I don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll figure one out!” Lori assured him.

 

“Awesome!” Matt, or rather, Oreo-Man, exulted.

 

“Look, I’ve got to get back to work, but at least you’ve got a name now!”

 

 

******

 

Chapter Fourteen:

June 2009

 

“Ann!” Agent L hissed. “Get Oreo-Man! Tell him we need him now!”

 

Lori had spent the past two months tracking down the “Count Von Groovy” guy she had determined was the mysterious caller; it had been a hectic time, especially since she and John had set a date for the wedding and began to make all the preparations for it even as Lori was constantly away on “business.”

 

The three of them, Lori, Ann, and Oreo-Man had traversed several continents and met with angry natives everywhere. Now they were finally in sight of Count Von Groovy’s castle just outside Paris, where a crazy party was apparently going on, hosted by none other than Count Von Groovy himself.

 

Ann radioed Oreo-Man on the walkie-talkie. “Oreo-Man! We need you to hurry up and get your butt over here!”

 

About five seconds later, from a distance and growing more and more loud as the figure approached, a superhero theme song could be heard.

 

Oreo-Man, Oreo-Man
Does whatever an Oreo can!
Okay, that's nothing, but it's a bit sublime
He turns into animals all the time!
Look out!
Here comes the Oreo-Man!

Can he turn into a duck?
Yes he can, so listen up
Can he turn into a giraffe?
Yes he can, but you'd probably laugh
Hey there!
There goes the Oreo-Man

In the chill of night,
Wherever there's a mystery
He is there, alright
Just as long as it's not past three!

*drum solo* A.M.!

Oreo-Man, Oreo-Man
Heroic, brave, charming, good-looking, intelligent, MODEST Oreo-Man!
Time to change? Down it goes
But this tasty secret, no one knows!
To hiiiiiim, Oreos do more than taste NICE
They're just a way of LIFE
For the Oreo-Man!

 

As the song finished, Matt, or rather, Oreo-Man, came into full view. He hid the speakers the song had blared from in his back pocket.

 

“You know, now that I’ve got the theme song down pat, maybe we should look into getting me a better costume,” he suggested.

 

“What?”

 

“I mean, I’m not saying anything extravagant. Just something simple. Something slightly more stylish,” he said.

 

“More stylish? What, now you want to be on Vogue?”

 

“No, no. Just something that coordinates a little better.”

 

“What’s wrong with what you’ve got on?” asked Lori.

 

“It just doesn’t say ‘Oreo-Man,’ you know?”

 

“That’s because you’re a secret agent. With top-secret powers,” Lori explained. “We don’t need it to say ‘Oreo-Man.’ Besides, you’ve got enough to announce you what with the theme song blaring every time you come into view.”

 

 “Ah. Right you are.”

 

“Yeah. Now come on! I need you and Ann to distract everyone else at the party while I hunt down and finally confront this Count Von Groovy guy!”

 

“Distract everyone? Do you really think it’s going to be that difficult?”

 

“Well, considering no one paid even the remotest attention to that bohemian artist guy who was cutting up his face with a razor blade while all the rest of them were in the middle of a massive game of Literati, yeah, I’d say you have a difficult task ahead of you,” Lori told him.

 

“A game of Literati, eh?”

 

“Yeah. Crazy bohemians with their crazy lifestyles.”

 

“Envious?” Oreo-Man asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Nah.” A pause. “Okay, maybe a little.”

 

“Well, at least you’ve only got a short wait ahead of you before you’re happily married and have a Scrabble partner available to you any and every day of the week,” Oreo-Man pointed out.

 

“This is true,” Lori agreed. “Now, come on! We’re wasting time!”

 

“Okay, okay! Geez, you act like you’ve got a personal vendetta against this guy instead of it just being yet another boring government assignment like everything else we’ve had to do while tracking him down has been.”

 

“Oh, hush. Just go distract them.”

 

“I’m going, I’m going. Come on, Ann,” Oreo-Man said, taking Ann by the arm. “Help me distract them.”

 

“Distract them? By doing what? You figure I should do my Lord of the Dance impersonation?” Ann asked.

 

“Yeah, that would probably work.”

 

“Okay!”

 

******

 

“Hah! I have you now!” Agent L cried. “I have you, Count Von Groovy!” Lori pointed her sidearm(which was empty; again, budget cuts at F.R.E.E.D.O.M., combined with Lori’s intense lack of desire to shoot with anything more than a BB gun at anything) at Count Von Groovy, who was unsuccessfully hiding in a corner of the library, his face turned towards the shadowy corner where two bookshelves met.

 

“No, you don’t! You can’t even see me!”

 

Lori raised her eyebrows. “Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you, you know.”

 

“Of course it does! If I can’t see you, how can you possibly exist?”

 

“Well, you’re talking to me. Doesn’t that qualify my existence?”

 

“Ah. Good point.” Count Von Groovy turned around, still cloaked in shadow.

 

“Who are you, for real? Why have you been trying to black mail me? And why in God’s name are you only wearing boxers?”

 

“Everything is better without pants,” Count Von Groovy explained.

 

“I’ll take your word for that…now, answer my other two questions!” Lori waved the sidearm wildly, like she might shoot imaginary bullets at any moment.

 

At this, Count Von Groovy stepped out of the shadows.

 

And what Lori saw, she could hardly believe.

 

“Nicolae?! Nicolae Karpaithya?!”

 

“In the flesh.”

 

“But…but you died! You exploded into little bits, leaving behind only a pair of boxers!”

 

“That’s what you all thought happened.”

 

“But…”

 

Nicolae/Count Von Groovy smirked. “You and the rest of the agents at F.R.E.E.D.O.M. always thought you were so much smarter than me. But you especially, didn’t you?”

 

“What? No, of course no—“

 

“Save it for someone who’ll listen to your lies. Like your precious Muse Maan. Or should I say, ‘Cinque?’ “

 

The actual voicing of the name made Lori step back. After two months of focusing on Count Von Groovy to the point of forgetting almost everything else, Lori had, unbelievably, forgotten almost everything else. Including Cinque. But now the doubts came rushing back, and she remembered her original reason for hunting down Count Von Groovy/Nicolae.

 

“How do you know about that?” Agent L hissed.

 

“It’s pretty easy to find out when I’ve been tracking you and everyone you’ve come in contact with ever since you all thought I exploded after you stole my pants and hid them from me.”

 

“I didn’t!”

 

“Suuuure you didn’t.”

 

“Really! I never wanted to have anything to do with you or your pants!” Of course, as soon as Lori said that, she knew she was lying again. Lori had been the one responsible for the disappearance of Nicolae’s pants that time. It had been a little prank to get him back for something he’d done earlier that week, though with over a year and half gone by, Lori couldn’t recall just what he had done. Definitely something to merit what had seemed to Lori to be a minor prank.

 

“Liar. You know, being a secret agent really does suit people like you.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

“Sneaky, trixy people like you. Perfect material for secret agents. Except for one thing.”

 

“Oh, and what’s that?”

 

“The rest of the secret agents had enough sense not to let themselves get attached to anyone else. Especially not anyone in such a precarious legal situation as your prehhhh-shush Cinque is in. You’re not as trixy or invincible as you think, Lori.”

 

“I still don’t see why any of this is a reason for you to have a vendetta against me.”

 

“You wouldn’t.”

 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“I’m not telling you. I’ve said too much already. I’ve definitely spent enough time answering questions I really shouldn’t be answering according to the handbook.”

 

“The handbook?”

 

“I found it online and haven’t had time to finish reading it yet, but it’s the Evil Overlor—gah, there I go again, explaining things when I should be using this time to get as far away as I possibly can before you get that Oreo-Man of yours up here to take me down.”

 

“Oh, I don’t need Oreo-Man to do that. I can manage quite nicely on my own,” Lori said.

 

“Well, in that case, I’m off. Have a jolly good time at the party, and remember, if I don’t call you any time soon, I’m still watching you, and I will turn in Cinque. I’m just waiting for the right time. Gotta finish reading the handbook and all first.” With that, Count Von Groovy/Nicolae Karpaithya darted past Lori up a flight of stairs. Lori tore after him, and followed him up to the entrance to the rooftop.

 

“Not again!” Lori cried, running after him at full speed, but it didn’t do her any good. Count Von Groovy/Nicolae Karpaithya jumped from the roof. For a second, Lori breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that surely the fall from a height of thirteen stories would kill him, but a few seconds later, a helicopter pulled up, and Lori was able to make out Count Von Groovy/Nicolae Karpaithya resting in the passenger side.

 

“Nooo!” Lori yelled.

 

Count Von Groovy/Nicolae Karpaithya rolled down his window. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Lori! I promise you that!”

 

******

 

Chapter Fifteen

July 2009

 

Agent L was almost done giving everyone a tour of the not-so-secret headquarters in Atlanta after having answered several annoyingly stupid questions from a group of annoyingly stupid children. Lori turned to look at the group as she turned off her cell phone. She had received yet another menacing call from Nicolae/Count Von Groovy, but Lori shrugged it off, knowing from her sources and the GPS auto tracker she now had installed in the cell phone that he was somewhere in the United Kingdom.

 

“Let’s continue, shall we?”

 

KABOOOOOOOM!

 

“What was that?” twittered the children, curious. Lori sighed. Now that she and John were spending more and more time together, Lori had really begun to get an idea of just how destructive John could be when it came to preparing food.

 

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got a good idea,” Agent L replied. “Come on kids, follow me.”

 

Sure enough, when Agent L and the gaggle of children walked into the kitchen, John, who had apparently just gotten out of the pool in the backyard as he was standing in the kitchen in his bathing suit dripping water everywhere, was the only one in sight. “What happened this time?” Lori asked.

 

“I’m not sure. I was just trying to make some popcorn. I swear I wasn’t actually intending to explode anything this time,” John said. “It’s a good thing I was still soaking wet from the pool or I could’ve caught fire or something.”

 

Lori looked at the microwave, which was now smoking and charred. She pushed the open button and looked inside, even though the top of the microwave was no longer there.

 

“Ah. I see what happened.”

 

“What?”

 

“You put the bag in with the wrong side up. Happens all the time around here from what I’ve heard.”

 

“You CNN reporters sure do spend an awful lot of time with stuff about F.R.E.E.D.O.M., don’t you?” John asked. Lori had finally had to come up with an excuse beyond being “away on business” for all her extended trips. She’d told him she was working for CNN as a reporter.

 

A flat out lie, but it worked, as much as Lori hated telling it. She had thought originally that it would be so outrageous a lie that John, who was actually a real journalist(even if it was for a newspaper occasionally reputed to be just another tabloid aimed for sci-fi nerds) would see right through it, but no such luck.

 

“It’s just where I’ve been assigned. Gotta start somewhere.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well, kids,” Lori said, focusing her attention back on the annoyingly stupid group of children, “that’s it for the tour. Go find your parents and bother them.” As the children dispersed, Lori walked over to John, who was still dripping water from the pool.

 

“Hey, where’d you get that scar from?” Lori asked, noticing a large spot on his shoulder.

 

“Scar? What scar?”

 

“That one. On your left shoulder.” Lori pointed.

 

“Oh, that? That’s nothing. It’s just I was…uh…dancing. In a chair.”

 

“Dancing in a chair?”

 

“Yep. And I fell.”

 

“And did that?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Ah. I see.”

 

John turned to get a new bag of popcorn out of the kitchen cabinet, and Lori noticed something else.

 

“And this chair dancing accident, it gave you a matching scar on the other side of your shoulder?”

 

John hesitated for a second, but then nodded. “Yep! That’s it! Just a freak chair dancing incident.”

 

“Funny. Looks more like—“

 

“Like what?” There was a faint trace of panic in John’s voice.

 

“Like a bullet wound. Like you got shot and the bullet passed through.”

 

John gulped. “Now, you know me. When would I have gotten shot? I don’t go near guns.”

 

“Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” Lori said slowly. “Besides, if you got shot, you’d have spent a long time in the hospital. And it’s something you would probably have mentioned when important stuff came up in our chats.”

 

“Definitely.”

 

Oh, come on. You’re going to buy that? That’s a scar from a gunshot wound and you know it. You paid attention in training. You know it’s about a year old. And you know what John was up to a year ago.

 

Nothing!

 

He was Cinque. And he’s not going to admit it to you, no matter how many times you try to trick him into it.

 

“Come on. It’s the fourth of July, and they’re having a barbeque out back. Let’s go,” John said.

 

“Okay,” Lori said absently. So the two of them made their way to the back yard behind the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. headquarters, where Agent J was making a speech at one end of the pool before turning on the grill.

 

“-ankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences any more. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it is fate that today is the fourth of July, and we are once again fighting for our F.R.E.E.D.O.M. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation! We’re fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice ‘We will not go quietly into the night! We will not banish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!”

 

“He’s a little excited for a barbeque, isn’t he?” John asked.

 

“This is tame compared to last year.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Or at least, that’s what I hear,” Lori said, covering herself as she realized that she wasn’t supposed to have had any connection to this place a year ago, at least not as far as anyone outside of F.R.E.E.D.O.M. knew.

 

Agent T walked up to Lori and John. “Agent R wants to see you right away, Miss Dixon,” Agent T said, keeping up the façade Lori had informed them of. The other agents had understood.

 

“She does?”

 

“Yep. Sounded urgent.”

 

Lori glanced at John. “Gah, I hope I didn’t misquote her or something,” she said. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Lori went off in search of Agent R, finally discovering her in the atlas room, holding a tray of Szechuan shrimp. “You know those are old, right?”

 

“They are?”

 

“Yeah. Should have been thrown out ages ago. I think Agent C brought them back from that stint she had in Asia.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“You wanted to see me about something?”

 

“Yeah. I got a phone call a couple of days ago.”

 

Lori gulped. “A phone call?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“From, uh, from who?”

 

“The Purple and Green Polka Dot House.”

 

Lori breathed a sigh of relief. “Ohh. From them.”

 

“And I probably don’t have to tell you this, but they’re still worried about the Cinque Situation.”

 

“Oh, I can definitely understand that,” Lori said, nodding. “He’s just so hard to track down. Like he’s right there in front of me, and yet, something’s keeping me from actually getting him and turning him in.”

 

“Have you turned up anything new? Dr. M wanted me to ask you, seeing how he’s been away for the past couple of months.”

 

“Well…”

 

“Like a location? Anything to go on beyond what we already know?”

 

“Well, I’ve been planning on spending some more time up in Pennsylvania—you know, more investigative research type stuff. Into Cinque’s origin and that kind of thing.”

 

“We really need something to tell the Purple and Green Polka Dot House. The fact that he’s been invisible for almost a year now is really upsetting them. Can you tell me anywhere Cinque or his followers might be? Anything?”

 

“Well…some of my, uh, my sources say they might be in…” Lori’s eyes darted around the room searching for a possible location amongst all the maps. Her eyes fell on the map of the United Kingdom hanging on a nearby wall.

 

“Scotland. They might be in Scotland.”

 

“Scotland?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay. Well, then, guess where we need you to go?”

 

“Scotland?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“But…” Lori was oddly torn. “But I’ve got a wedding to plan!”

 

“Look, we warned you when you started this job, secret agents don’t make good spouses unless they’re married to other secret agents.”

 

“But…”

 

“He’ll just have to understand.”

 

“But…”

 

“Deal.”

 

“Gaaah.”

 

“Look, if you find Cinque, you can come back.”

 

“Why do I have to be over there right now? I mean, is there really that much of a rush with us not knowing for sure he or his followers are there?”

 

“Hmm. I guess you have a good point there.” Agent R sighed. “Look, I did give you control over the Cinque Situation, I know. I’m just…well…we got the budget for next year.”

 

“And?”

 

“Well…I don’t know how to say this…Dr. M was going to try and break it to you gently at the barbeque today.”

 

“What?”

 

“After December of this year, we’re going to have to cut the Bizarre, Random, and Miscellaneous Stuff department.”

 

“WHAT?!” Lori roared.

 

“I’m sorry. The Oreo-Man project just took up too many resources; we can’t keep F.R.E.E.D.O.M. afloat if we have six departments.”

 

“Wait a second. Does that mean..?”

 

“Your old job will still be open to you, don’t worry,” Agent R tried to reassure Agent L.

 

“I don’t believe this. I don’t FREAKING believe this. I’m being demoted?”

 

“Not until after December. And not because we want to, because we have to.”

 

“Gah.”

 

“You’re telling me. All of the other departments are down to 2 secret agents each, and that’s killing us.”

 

“Hang on. You mean our entire organization now consists of a grand total of…” Lori stopped for several seconds to count it out with her fingers. “You mean to tell me that our entire organization now consists of a grand total of what, eleven agents?”

 

“Thirteen, until December’s over. Then it’ll be eleven, because when we cut your department you’ll have to let Ann and Oreo-Man go. You can stay on as a semi-independent operative to give us some flexibility outside our departments.”

 

“What happened to the whole ‘vast and untouchable’ concept we’ve had going on for so long?”

 

“Competition. The world of super spies and espionage is full of it. And there are all these smaller groups nowadays that keep popping up. It’s worse than the dot.com small businesses thing that happened back at the turn of the millennium, except these organizations are unstoppable.” Agent R frowned. “Damn Philadelphia Freedom League…”

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Oh, nothing. The thing is, the sixth department, your Bizarre, Random, and Miscellaneous Stuff department was a last ditch effort on our part to give F.R.E.E.D.O.M. a fighting chance of making it another five years. But not even Oreo-Man is appealing enough to government needs.”

 

“So that’s why you’ve been so adamant about the Cinque Situation,” Lori said.

 

“Yep. We need some concrete information to give Homeland Security or we’ll lose the funding we get from that, too. And that’s half of our budget.”

 

Lori’s jaw dropped open. “Half?!”

 

“Oh, yeah.”

 

“Whoa. I had no idea.”

 

Agent R nodded.

 

“Well…when’s the latest I could get back with something tangible and still have us keep our funding?”

 

“They start working on the budget in April, but in order to keep it, we’ll have to get something to the government no later than the end of December, I’d say.”

 

An idea began to form in Agent L’s mind. “Look, I promise I can have something to you by the end of December. I just can’t get over to Scotland before December. Will that be okay?”

 

Agent R drew in a deep breath. “Just do it.”

 

******

 

Chapter Sixteen:

Late December 2009

 

Lori, or Loren McGregor according to the name on her passport, stepped off the Easy Jet plane and onto the pavement outside the Inverness airport. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, remembering the very first time she had done this, so many years ago. It seemed like yesterday.

 

“Would ye mind hurrying up a wee bit there on the exit ladder, lassie?” asked an attractive Scotsman about her age who was standing behind her.

 

“Auch, Ah’m sorry!” Loren McGregor…that is, Lori…replied as she took a few steps away from the exit ladder. Lori was already getting into the groove of pretending to be Scottish, not unlike all the times she had done the same thing as a cashier several years ago(and still continued to do on random occasions) when she had actually used her accent and the basic knowledge she had of the town of Inverness and study abroad programs to convince the people she was ringing up that she was, in fact, a Scottish exchange student who happened to have family in Alabama.

 

Sometimes Lori had wondered just how people could really believe as wild a story as that, but no one had ever challenged her on it. Probably because most people didn’t really know as much about Scotland as they should, considering how it was the land from whence came the worshipfully gorgeous Ewan McGregor, the lovely voiced Sean Connery, haggis, piping hot steak pies from The Baker’s Oven, and Loch Ness’s Nessie

 

“Auch, it’s nothing, Miss,” the attractive Scotsman about her age replied. “My name’s Ambrose. Sean Ambrose.”

 

“And I’m Loren. Loren…uh…McGregor,” Lori said, searching for the name on her passport as inconspicuously as possible.

 

Just then, Ann and Matt…er, Oreo-Man made their way down the exit ramp behind Sean. “Hallo, there,” Ann said. “I’m…” there was a pause as Ann tried to remember her Scottish alias. “Chicka McNugget.”

 

“That’s…a very interesting name.”

 

“Picked it out on my own,” Ann, or rather, Chicka McNugget, said proudly.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Err, that is, my parents let me get it changed when I was old enough.”

 

“Ah. I see…from what?” he asked, wondering what could possibly be worse.

 

“You don’t want to know.”

 

“And I’m Guyver Mac,” said Matt/Oreo-Man, thrusting out a hand for Sean Ambrose to shake.

 

“Nice to meet you, I suppose.” The handsome Scotsman looked bewildered at the introduction of these two new people.

 

“Oh, we’re her friends,” Guyver Mac explained to Sean Ambrose.

 

“You are?” he asked.

 

Lori winked behind Sean’s back at Ann and Matt/Oreo-Man, or Chicka McNugget and Guyver Mac, as Sean knew them, and then feigned surprise. “I don’t know who they are. They’ve followed me ever since I used a paperclip to fix the ketchup dispenser in the airport McDonald’s.

 

“Want to get out of here?”

 

“Sure. Let’s go.” When they were out of sight and Sean was busy pointing out historic sites Lori already knew everything about, she textoed Ann and Matt a message, asking them to start canvassing the town for Count Von Groovy while she chatted up the locals to get information.

 

 

******

 

“So are you from around here, Loren McGregor?” Sean Ambrose asked Lori as the bartender handed them their first round of drinks: Scotch on the rocks for Sean(oddly appropriate for someone in Scotland, Lori thought), and a Rude Cosmopolitan for Lori. While Scotland and all of the United Kingdom abounded with pubs, this was the only place in all of Inverness where there was room for dancing, too.

 

Lori was finally in “The Nightclub.” It was pretty tame as far as night clubs went, but the music was definitely loud enough. And of course, for old time’s sake and yet another example of bizarre coincidence, that horrid old “Put Your Shoezies On” song was playing. Lori shuddered and focused back on the conversation and her answer to Sean.

 

“Well, kind of. Back when I was at uni, I spent a pretty long time in this town.”

 

Four days? Four days is “a pretty long time?”

 

“Ah, I see.”

 

“And what about you? Are you—“

 

“BEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!” Lori’s cell phone starting ringing wildly. “Gah, I’m sorry, I should probably get this,” Lori told Sean. She stepped up from the bar and walked over, trying to find a spot where the music wasn’t quite so loud.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Lori?”

 

“John?” Lori could have hit herself over the head. She should have checked the display; the last thing she needed was John hearing a night club in the background when Lori was supposed to be in Indochina covering a war for CNN.

 

Again, Lori wondered just how anyone could believe a story as ridiculous as that, but then again, she remembered the way characters in novels and people reading those novels easily suspended disbelief when the author needed them to.

 

“Muse Muffin? How are you? You made it over there safely?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Lori said hurriedly. She wanted to talk to John, but not right now. She needed to know if this Sean Ambrose guy was a cover guy for Nicolae/Count Von Groovy the way the last guy who had spoken to her on the exit ramp of an airplane had been back a few months ago when the Oreo-Man Adventures had taken them to Papua New Guinea.

 

“Are you okay, Lori?”

 

“Of course I’m okay, John. Why do you ask?” This time, Lori did hit herself over the head for having asked an open ended question like that, and thus most definitely prolonging the conversation when it didn’t need to be prolonged.

 

“Well…I mean…”

 

“What?!”

 

“Never mind, it’s okay. I guess you’re busy.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sorry, John. Look, I need to go.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Suddenly, the guitarist for the live band that was warming up for later played the chords for part of her solo. “Bye!” Lori said, hanging up the phone and hoping that John hadn’t happened to have heard the guitarist in the background.

 

“BEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!”

 

“Crap,” Lori said. She knew she had to answer it; she had just gotten off the phone with him, after all. John knew she had her phone on her now; not to answer would be far too suspicious. And Lori couldn’t have John finding out she was a secret agent, or she wouldn’t be a secret agent anymore; she’d just be an agent. She tossed back her drink, downing half of it before setting it back down and answering the cell phone.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Was that a guitar solo I heard in the background? Because it was amazing.”

 

“Uh…” Lori said, suddenly not very good at stalling creatively. She cursed herself for having already drunk half of her drink. She looked back at Sean Ambrose. Surely he was far too Scottish to be as evil as the guy in Papua New Guinea had been.

 

“I thought you were in Indochina,” John said.

 

“I…am!” Lori said. “Papua New Guinea! I’m here!”

 

“I just said Indochina. Not Papua New Guinea.”

 

“Oh, right. Well…”

 

“Where are you?”

 

“Indopapua New Guinea?”

 

“Ha. Ha. And, now, because it’s just two months after the honeymoon and 4 days before Christmas, you get a special bonus ‘ha.’”

 

Lori laughed weakly, not sure what else to do. Not like she could tell him the truth. That would go over really well: “Oh, fine. I lied. I’m in Scotland. And I’m having drinks with this Scottish guy who’s been macking on me since I stepped off the plane so I can find out if he’s actually some kind of front guy for an evil phone calling freak who has sworn to get me back for stealing his pants and hiding them from him in what seemed to be an innocent prank at the time, but has now made him threaten not only to hurt me, but hurt you by exposing your secret identity as the formerly infamous Cinque, who I was supposed to hunt down and turn in to the authorities, but didn’t when I found out that Cinque was you, John.”

 

Oh, yeah. That explanation would go over soooo well with John. Lori took another large drink from her glass.

 

“Where are you? For real?”

 

“For real? I’m in Papua New Gui—no, wait! I’m in Indochina!” Lori had never really been much of a drinker. She downed the rest of the drink anyways, though. Clearly, the alcohol was already having a bad effect on her judgment or she would have had the sense to know that more alcohol was going to make things worse, not better.

 

“Lori, what…what is going on?” John sounded upset.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean?’ We’ve only been married for two months, we just got settled in Midtown—and, by the way, you are amazing for letting Ian and Jim stay with us—and suddenly you have to jet off to cover a story in Indochina, but now that you’re supposedly there, you can’t remember if you’re there or in Papua New Guinea?!”

 

“Oh.”

 

“And there’s the fact that I’ve never heard of guitarists using war zones as a place to practice their solos.”

 

“John, I—“

 

“I just…look, I just need to know that you’re telling me the truth. If we’re going to be married to each other, we have to be completely honest with one another.”

 

“Honest. Yes,” Lori nodded on her end of the phone. She motioned for the bartender, cupping her hand over the phone. “Got any Cointreau?”

 

The bartender shook his head. “We don’t carry that.”

 

“Oh. Get me…what’s something good and strong?”

 

“Long Island Iced Tea. Or tequila. We’ve got some of that.”

 

“Get me one of each,” Lori told him, and put the cell phone back up to her face.

 

“Lori? Are you there? Loooori?”

 

“John! I’m here!”

 

“Good.”

 

“So. Honesty.”

 

“Yeah. Where are you again?” John persisted.

 

“Look, John, the camera crew’s finally set up. I’ve got to go on the air. Call me back,” Lori said, and hung up, feeling extremely guilty. The bartender passed her the first drink, the Long Island Iced Tea. Lori tossed it back in three gulps, making a hideous face thanks to the taste of the drink. About five seconds later, her cell phone rang again.

 

“BEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!”

 

“GAH!” Lori fumbled in her purse for her phone; her coordination was starting to suffer from the seven different shots of liqueur in that one drink. Finally, she found it and turned it on.

 

“You’re not on CNN, Lori.”

 

“What?” How did John know? How had he found out? Did Nicolae finally carry out one of his threats?

 

“I just checked the channel. No live reports for the next half hour.”

 

Whew. “Ohhhh! Right! Well, we were going to, but then Anderson Cooper over here tripped and fell on the camera guy. And then the camera broke,” she finished lamely.

 

“Why do you have to be there if Anderson Cooper is already there to report?”

 

“Uh…because I’m still in, uh, training. You know. They want to be sure I’m ready before they put me up in front of the camera.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Yeah.” The bartender passed her the shot of tequila, along w/ a lemon and a salt shaker.

 

“Look, Lori, I know you’re not telling me everything.”

 

“What?” Lori drank the tequila the way she’d watched everyone in France drink it all those times they had gone to the bars, or at least as best as she could remember in a half-drunken haze: pour salt on your hand, lick off the salt, toss back the shot of tequila, suck on the lemon. Lori wasn’t sure if she even liked tequila, but at this point, she couldn’t really taste it anymore, so she motioned to the bartender for another as she continued the conversation.

 

“You can’t be,” John said.

 

“Of course I am!”

 

“I thought we agreed to tell each other everything.”

 

There was a long pause as Lori thought about this. She had been the one to instigate that rule shortly before the two of them had gotten married. She had done it in hopes of getting John to explain about Cinque, of course, but it hadn’t done her any good. John had continued to be evasive about those few months in 2008.

 

“Yeah, well, have you been keeping up your end of that agreement, John?”

 

Lori could hear John’s breathing grow slightly shallower over the phone. He was obviously thinking about it. He had to be. Lori absentmindedly fingered her wedding and engagement rings on her left hand as she waited for John’s answer.

 

“Of course I have,” John lied. Lori’s heart sank. There went pretty much any chance she had of getting John to talk about it of his own free will. And Lori wouldn’t try to get an explanation out of him anymore if he wasn’t going to volunteer the information.

 

Of course, that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. And if he wasn’t telling, well, then she didn’t have to, either. She motioned to the bartender for another tequila.

 

“Yeah, well, ah’m keeping up to the agreement jusht ash well ash you, then,” Lori said, suddenly slurring in a strangely horrible Southern/Scottish Sean Connery accent as the tequila kicked in. “Now ah really do have to get back to work, ooookaaaaay? Ah’ll be back home in a couple of weeksh, ah promishe,” she said.

 

“Are you drunk?” John demanded, noticing the slurring in Lori’s voice.

 

“Of coursh not. Ah’m sotally tober!” Then Lori hung up before their usual goodnight ritual. She was fuming mad, and half drunk, which was at least twice as drunk as she had ever been in her entire life, so at this point, Lori could see no other course of action to take but to drink a few more drinks.

 

“Bartender?”

 

“The laddie over there has your tequila, lass,” the bartender told her. Sean waved from his seat at the other end of the bar, and Lori stumbled over there. She picked up the tequila as she leaned against the bar counter and swallowed it in one gulp, not even bothering with the customary salt and lemon.

 

“More.”

 

“Wow. That’s mighty impressive, Loren.”

 

“Thanksh,” Lori said, though Sean’s face was very fuzzy. “At leasht, I think sho.”

 

“Bartender?” Sean called out.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Sean tossed several five pound notes onto the bar. “Why don’t you just give us the bottle of tequila and some lemons and salt?”

 

“If it’s okay with the lassie.”

 

“Suuure,” Lori slurred.

 

******

Lori awoke to the sound of seagulls calling out across the River Ness and the sharp, unfamiliar pain of a hangover looming over her. A cold breeze was blowing in through the open window, and Lori crawled out from under the covers to close it, grumbling as she did so. She pulled at the window, but had trouble getting it to come down; the rings she was wearing started to hurt her fingers, so Lori pulled them off to put them in her pocket until she could get the window down all the way. After a couple more minutes of struggling with the window, Lori finally managed to shut it, and reached back into her pocket to put her wedding and engagement bands back on her finger.

 

It was then that Lori noticed she had not two rings, but three. She had a third wedding band. That she hadn’t had yesterday.

 

“What the…where’d this come from?” Lori’s head was spinning, but really not as badly as she had always imagined it would. She stumbled over to the bathroom for a glass of water to chase away the lingering hangover and to ponder about the new ring and where it had come from.

 

“Where’d what come from?” a male voice asked from back in the bedroom.

 

Uh-oh.

 

Lori gulped.

 

She had been pretty drunk last night. And angry at John.

 

And with that Sean Ambrose guy. That Scottish Sean Ambrose guy.

 

Lori’s stomach twisted painfully.

 

“No. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t…”

 

“Are you okay in there?” a heavily accented voice asked from the bedroom.

 

Lori looked back at the mirror, at her reflection and tried to take a deep breath. She opened the bathroom door and peered cautiously into the bedroom.

 

“Matt!” Lori yelled, relieved.

 

“Lori!”

 

“Matt! It’s you!”

 

“Yes…it is me.” Matt looked slightly confused. “Who else would it be? Ann and I rescued you from that sneaky Scottish guy.”

 

“Sneaky Scottish guy?”

 

“Yeah. We finally found you two outside a church at like, 3 am last night. You were completely smashed.”

 

“Ah. Right. Yeah.”

 

“You don’t remember?”

 

“Uh…not really?”

 

“Oh, my God. You really don’t know what happened last night, do you?”

 

“No…what happened?” Lori asked, growing nervous again.

 

“Well…we stopped you outside the church…but not before you had gone in.”

 

Lori gulped. “What’d I do?” she asked in a whisper.

 

Matt looked Lori in the eye. “You got married. Again.”

 

“But…”

 

“Yeah. I mean, there’s no way it’s legal seeing how you’re already married and you were using your alias, but you apparently went through the ceremony. Dead drunk.”

 

“Oh, God…”

 

“Look, I’m not going to tell John, and Ann doesn’t know. I was the one who spoke with the reverend. Ann was busy knocking that guy’s lights out for having gotten you drunk.”

 

“Oh, my God. My God. Oh. Dear. Freaking. Goodness,” Lori said. “How…how am I going to face John?”

 

Matt sighed. “You were drunk. You didn’t know what you were doing. And it was definitely that guy’s fault.”

 

“Doesn’t matter. I still did it.”

 

“He got you drunk!”

 

“Oh, God…” Lori trailed off. “It’s my fault I was drunk. I can’t believe I—“

 

“BEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!” Lori’s phone began to ring wildly.

 

“What if that’s John?!” Lori shrieked in a panic. “What am I going to say? What am I going to tell him?”

 

“Lori, calm down. Answer the phone, and if it’s John, tell him you can’t talk, and then you’ll hang up and we’ll figure out some way for you to break this to him,” Matt told her. “Or just not tell him. Might be the better idea.”

 

“Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I can do this.” Lori picked up the cell phone and hit the talk button.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Have fun last night?” a familiar voice asked.

 

“Nicolae!” Lori hissed. “It’s Count Von Groovy,” she mouthed to Matt before turning back to focus on the phone call, hitting the trace button out of habit. “What do you know about last night?”

 

“Enough to know I’m going to have fun with the next phone call I make to Midtown, Pennsylvania.”

 

“You wouldn’t dare.”

 

“Oh, wouldn’t I, though?” Nicolae laughed harshly. “Trust me, I’ve been waiting a long time to have as much fun as I’m having right now.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Turn him in.”

 

“What? No!”

 

“You’ve got two options here, Lori. You either go back to the States and turn John in as Cinque and let him face the consequences due to him, or I call him up after I hang up from talking to you and I tell him what you did last night.”

 

“You’ve got no proof.”

 

“Oh, really? You think I don’t have the connections I would need to get a copy of that marriage license? Or that I wouldn’t have pictures?”

 

Knots began to form in Lori’s stomach.

 

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know it would come to this eventually.”

 

“You’re an evil man, you know that?”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Why are you doing this to me?! Why me?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“So I hid your pants from you one time nearly two years ago. So what? How on earth is that reason for what you’re doing?” Lori demanded.

 

“People have to face the consequences of their actions eventually. I’m just helping along the inevitable.”

 

“You’re not helping anyone!”

 

“The truth hurts.”

 

“Quit using clichés!”

 

“Quit hiding everything from everyone you know! If you didn’t have these secrets, none of this would be happening. You did this to yourself.”

 

Lori glanced at the tracer. He was at the Inverness airport.

 

“Either you make John deal with what he’s done to hurt people, or you deal with what you’ve done to John. It’s your call, Lori.”

 

There was a long silence as Lori began to panic.

 

“Who’s going to suffer? John as Cinque, or John as your husband?”

 

Wait.

 

It was then that Lori had a brilliant idea.

 

“I…I’ll turn him in.”

 

“You will?”

 

“Yeah. I’ll leave right now.”

 

“Call F.R.E.E.D.O.M., too. Tell them.”

 

“I…okay. I will,” she said. Tears began to well in her eyes as Lori realized what she was about to do.

 

Tears of joy.

 

******

 

“So, tell me again, what are we doing?” Ann asked as they pulled up to the Inverness airport and stepped out of the taxi. She had missed out on the phone conversation that Matt had been privy to, so she was a little behind.

 

Not that Lori was telling either of them everything. Not by a long shot. But she was telling them the version they needed to know.

 

“You and Matt are going to do something to make sure no one can fly out of here.”

 

“What?”

 

“Up to you two. I’m sure Oreo-Man can figure something out.”

 

Matt/Oreo-Man nodded affirmatively, and he and Ann darted off to go do what they did best: cause mayhem and mischief. Lori, meanwhile, had a different destination. She had already made the necessary phone call to F.R.E.E.D.O.M.

 

The Inverness airport was a fairly tame place; with only 7 gates and 3 flights going out and coming in for the entire day even though it was now just three days before Christmas. It was not what you would call the busiest of airports, thankfully, considering how lax the security was. And it was certainly nowhere near as horrible to navigate as Charles De Gaulle was. Gah. Lori hated that airport.

 

At any rate, it didn’t take Lori very long to locate what she was looking for, after having passed a castle made out of large brightly colored Legos on the way out to a lone luxury airplane sitting at one end of the runway. Lori climbed inside the airplane, making her way to the back, towards the men’s restroom.

 

Yes, the men’s restroom. Because according to the tracer, that was where Nicolae was hiding.

 

Lori kicked open the door.

 

“Gah. What is wrong with guys? This place is a wreck,” Lori observed. “You’d think rich business types would make a little more effort, at least.” She sighed and began the task of finding Nicolae. It didn’t take her long; most of the stalls were missing their doors, and it was, after all, still a tiny airplane bathroom; there were two stalls. Lori found Nicolae in the one furthest from the door, and she grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him out into the corridor of the airplane.

 

“I’ve finally got you. You evil freaking conniving little prick.”

 

“So this is your choice, huh? You’re just going to dig yourself deeper, is that it? Nothing I’ve done got your attention?”

 

“Oh, no. No, I’ve finally figured out how to take care of you,” Lori told him, her eyes narrowing.

 

“And what exactl—YOW!” Nicolae hollered as Lori socked him in his gut. “What’d you do that for?!”

 

“Don’t tell me you weren’t expecting it, Cinque. I’m sick of chasing you around.” She socked him again. “That’s for the wild goose chase.”

 

“What? Cinque? I’m Cinque?”

 

Now Lori was sure of it. The plane was moving.

 

Gah. Ann and Matt…er, Oreo-Man must have been stopped.

 

“So you finally admit it. Thank God. I thought it was going to be difficult to get a confession out of you.” Lori grinned at him menacingly…and for some reason, Lori had the disconcerting feeling that they had begun to move. Fast.

 

“What?!” demanded Nicolae.

 

“Don’t try and deny it. I’ve got the proof.”

 

“I’m not Cinque! You know it!” Nicolae roared. “John is Cinque! Not me!”

 

“Just calm down. You’re obviously upset. It’s okay, Nicolae. I’ve got some nice people who are going to take you to a nice place and help you, all right?”

 

They both fell to the ground as the airplane took off.

 

“Did we just take off?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Oh. Crap.”

 

“And you’re crazy!”

 

“No, Nicolae. You are.” Lori smiled.

 

“John’s Cinque!”

 

“Nicolae, I know it hurts you that I moved on, but you’ve got to face facts, and you can’t blame John for what you did. Even if you weren’t thinking clearly when you did those things.” Lori was lying through her teeth, but whatever it took. She was going to be rid of this guy.

 

“I’m not crazy!”

 

“That’s what everyone says.”

 

“I’m not! You’re not going to make me take the rap for this! You’re NOT!” Nicolae cried, and before Lori could stop him, he pulled a pistol from his jacket. Pointed it at her.

 

“Whoa, Nicolae.” Lori stepped back and lifted her arms. “Look, no one’s going to hurt you. Put the gun down.”

 

“Give me the tape!”

 

“What?”

 

“The tape! You’re recording this! It’s the most classic Nancy Drew trick ever!”

 

“There’s not a tape, Nicolae,” Lori lied. “I’m not recording anything.”

 

“Raise your hands higher!”

 

Lori obliged him, lifting her arms high, and as she did so, the airplane tilted slightly, causing the tape recorder to shift in her jacket pocket and fall to the ground. Nicolae was distracted by the clatter the falling recorder caused just long enough for Lori to reach out and try to wrest the gun away from him. The both of them slammed up against the exit door as they struggled for control of the weapon.

 

And then, not too surprisingly considering the circumstances, the door popped open; they were low enough that there wasn’t a change in cabin pressure, but high enough for any kind of fall to be fatal.

 

Lori took advantage of the surprise opening of the door to grab the gun and throw it out of the airplane. “There!” she shouted over the roar of the airplane.

 

Nicolae’s face flushed red with rage; he jumped at her, but Lori stepped just enough to the side for him to lose his footing and topple out of the airplane.

 

Lori sat down on the floor of the airplane and breathed a sigh of relief, but she breathed too soon. Glancing at the door, she noticed a pair of hands gripping hold of the airplane, and she carefully made her way to the edge of doorway.

 

“Help! Don’t let me fall!” Nicolae shrieked like a little girl. “Help!!”

 

In one swift, thoughtless movement, Lori took hold of Nicolae’s hands. “Thank you! Thank you, Lori!” he cried, relieved, but too soon. The airplane jerked to one side.

 

Lori let go.

 

And Nicolae fell.

 

 

It took Lori a few minutes to realize what she had done.

 

“It was an accident,” she said out loud over the roar of the plane engine. “I didn’t mean to…”

 

To kill him? You let go. On purpose.

 

“He’s…dead. Gone. Oh, my God,” Lori said. “He’s finally gone…”

 

Lori, you’re a…

 

“I’m a murderer. I let go. God,” she said. “Oh, God, what am I going to say? It was the airplane,” Lori said, slowly growing more panicked. “Yeah. That’s it. The pilot’s fault. Not mine. I’m not a killer. It was the plane.”

 

Not this. This is on you. You let go, and you meant to.

 

But did she? Really? She didn’t want to answer that.

 

“Oh, God. Ohgodohgodohgod. He was evil…but I never…he didn’t deserve…I’m not supposed to be the bad guy! He was! How could he do this?”

 

Lori buried her head in her hands, appalled at what she had done. Sick to the core of her being…and yet, on another level, relieved. No one would come after her or John anymore. John’s secret would stay with her. And no one was going to find out the truth about what she had just done.

 

But what was she going to tell F.R.E.E.D.O.M.?

 

******

 

"Suicide?” Dr. M and Agent R asked in unison.

 

“Yeah. He…he just couldn’t face the consequences of what he’d done, I guess,” Lori explained. She shrugged grimly.

 

“Well, good work. No more having to look for that Cinque guy. So what are you planning to do now that we’ve had to scrap your department? I know you passed up the reward money for handling Cinque…so you’ll stay on as an agent, right?”

 

“Actually…I don’t think I can do this any more.” Lori toyed with one of the glass balls on the little Christmas tree that had been set up in the office. The budget was apparently still suffering, considering the resemblance the tree bore to the one Charlie Brown had in that movie. Lori set aside the ornament when she caught her reflection in it.

 

“What?”

 

“This. F.R.E.E.D.O.M. I just…I can’t,” Lori said flatly, walking over to the door. She didn’t want to mention she had a hard time looking at herself in the mirror now. And of course,  Lori was a lot more accepting now of what John had or might have done. She certainly wasn’t one to judge, considering. “I can’t deal with any more secrets.”

 

“We understand.”

 

“Merry Christmas, guys. It’s been fun while it lasted,” Lori said. She made her way out of Zone 91 for the very last time and got in her car.

 

“Come on, Marco. It’s Christmas. Let’s go home.”

 

******

 

“What’d you get? Huh? What’d you get, Muse Muffin?” John asked excitedly, even though he already knew what was in Lori’s Christmas stocking, having stuffed it himself.

 

Lori smiled. “Ohhh. I never would have guessed! My very own Hip-Hop Santa! And a So Weird CD!”

 

John grinned broadly. “OH! Let’s play the CD while we open presents!” he shouted suddenly, jumping up. Lori handed the CD to him and he dashed over to the CD player. Lori reached into the bottom of the stocking to make sure she had gotten out all of the candy, and her hand touched a piece of paper. She pulled it out and started to read.

 

“Ms. Dougherty,

 

We believe you might be interested in working for us. One of our agents will contact you shortly with more information.

 

Sincerely,

 

S. Ambrose

CIA

 

PS: No, your husband doesn’t know we put this in your stocking.

 

 

Lori’s eyes widened.

 

“What’s wrong, Muse Muffin?” John asked as “Another World” began to play--the cool version that is, the one with David Steele doing most of the singing.

 

“Nothi—“ Lori started to say as she crumpled up the paper.

 

“BEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!”

 

“Hey, isn’t that your cell phone, Lori?”

 

***cue Mission Impossible theme***