“How are they?” James Possible asked.
His wife smiled at him over the video phone. She knew that he would have liked nothing better than to be right there at the hospital and hold his daughter’s hand until she woke up, but he could do more good back at the Space Centre. Sensors had gathered tons of data on the energy discharge Shego and Kim had produced and it was their best chance to learn more about Kim’s powers.
“Still unconscious, but otherwise okay,” Jane Possible assured her husband. “That spectacle on the tarmac really tired them out. The good news is that Kim is barely emitting any radiation anymore. And no glowing hands.”
“That’s really good news,” James agreed.
“What’s new on your end?” she asked.
James sighed. “Not much yet. The energy Kim and Shego discharged was a very exotic mixture. We picked up plasma energy, hailing from Shego probably, and seismic sensors also registered an extremely powerful pressure wave ripping out from their location. I can’t really make heads or tails of it yet. The power reading was right off the scale. Some satellites actually picked it up. The beam they created flared up right into the upper atmosphere, several hundred kilometres.”
“That’s pretty impressive,” his wife said, but sounded more worried than impressed.
“Scary is more like it,” James spoke his mind. “I can’t be certain, but I’m afraid that Shego’s powers have also increased. At least Professor Kruger thinks so.”
“James? Got a minute?” Professor Ramesh came into the room. The astronomer, one of James’ old college buddies, looked both tired and anxious.
“Go back to work,” Jane told him. “I’ll call you the moment Kim wakes up, okay?”
James nodded and blew her a kiss, then signed off.
“So what have you got?”
Kim slowly returned to consciousness, relieved to find that the burning pain she’d experienced before passing out seemed to be mercifully absent. There was still a slight buzzing somewhere low in her body and she felt kind of cold, but that was it. Sighing, she opened her eyes.
Hospital room. She’d been in enough of those to recognise it instantly. Blinking, she tried to remember what exactly had happened. The burning energy inside her had worsened to the point where she’d hardly been conscious, much less aware of what was happening around her. She dimly remembered someone picking her up, someone who then clasped her hands and… made the pain go away. Someone with a familiar voice.
“Back among the living, Kimmie?”
That voice, to be precise. Shaking her head, Kim looked over to the side and found another person in the room, lying on a second bed. Despite the unusual attire -pale blue hospital gown instead of black-and-green catsuit- she had no trouble recognising her roommate.
“Shego?” she asked, wondering if she was actually still asleep and dreaming. Why else would she be sharing a hospital room with one of her worst enemies?
“In the flesh. By the way, you owe me a catsuit.”
The confusion must have shown on her face, because Shego sighed. “You don’t remember much, do you?”
Kim’s mother chose that moment to walk in, a big smile blooming on her face when she saw her daughter awake.
“Kimmie, are you all right?” she asked, sitting down beside her girl and gently touching her hand. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel… I think I’m better now, yes.” She looked over at Shego and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What is she doing here?”
Shego, hearing the whisper without problem, looked slightly offended.
“She helped save you, Kim,” her mother told her. “Don’t you remember?”
Kim closed her eyes, trying to recall the last few minutes before passing out. Yeah, there had been someone there who helped her get rid of all that burning heat inside of her. Shego? The voice she remembered did sound like Shego, but why would the villain help her?
Shego guessed at her thoughts and sniffed. “Don’t get teary on me now, pumpkin. I was paid good money to help out. Besides, how can I keep kicking your ass when you burn yourself to a crisp?”
Jane Possible walked over to her and took her hand, a move that surprised Shego.
“I don’t care why you did it,” the older woman said. “You helped save my daughter’s life. Thank you for that. Thank you.”
“You’re… welcome,” Shego muttered, taken off guard by this show of gratitude.
“Yes, thank you,” Kim said, still a bit confused. Why would Shego help her, even for money?
The two young women shared a long look, both trying to figure out what the other was thinking.
“Shego, if it’s not too much trouble,” Kim’s mother began, sitting down between the two beds, “I would like to ask you some questions about what happened back at the Space Centre.”
Shego seemed to think about that for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m still too winded to go anywhere right now, so feel free.”
“Thank you. You… you said that Kim was suffering from energy build-up. What exactly did you mean?”
Looking over at Kim, Shego explained how her powers -and Kim’s, too, she figured- worked. How they converted sunlight and background radiation into plasma energy (in her case at least, God only knew what exactly Kim’s power was) and stored it inside her body somehow. And how, if that energy wasn’t used, it would just keep building until, well, she had never waited to find out exactly what would happen to her, but she guessed it wouldn’t be pretty.
“So it’ll happen again,” Kim asked, dreading the thought of experiencing that much pain again.
“If you don’t wise up, yeah,” Shego answered. “You need to discharge regularly, princess. Can’t be helped. I do it about once a week unless I manage to drain my energy by other means. Like fighting annoying little cheerleaders, for example.”
Kim made a face at her at that comment, but her thoughts were busy going over her earlier words. It seemed she would need to get a handle on these powers, one way or the other. Simply suppressing them, ignoring them, that wouldn’t work. Not unless she wanted things like her hurting that man to happen again. She shuddered at the memory.
“I still don’t know how to make them work,” she admitted, looking at Shego. “Heck, I don’t even know exactly what they do. They’re not like yours. No flames, no heat. Just… force, I guess. I can’t control it.”
“You did manage back at the Space Centre,” Shego told her. “Not the smoothest move ever, but it got the job done.”
“I don’t remember much,” Kim said. “I… there was so much pain and… I’m not sure I could do it again.”
Kim’s mother turned to look at Shego.
This was so not happening, Shego fumed. Two redheads, looking almost identical except for their age, were giving her pleading looks that would do a puppy dog proud. It wasn’t made easier by the fact that there was earnest desperation in their eyes.
“Quit it with the looks, okay?” she snarled at them.
“We still need your help, Shego,” Dr. Possible said. “I would like to hire you to help Kim control her powers permanently. What is your price?”
Shego was about to tell her where she could stuff her money, but somehow the words never made it out of her mouth. There was something very compelling about two Possible women giving her puppy dog looks and she found herself caving. Damn it, she never caved!
“Okay, okay. A thousand dollars a day. Plus, you make sure there are no cops or GJ goons on my tail. And if Dr. D calls and needs my help for another world domination scheme, I’m outta here.”
Kim gasped, obviously shocked at the amount of money she asked for. Even more shocking, though, was Kim’s mother immediately nodding and shaking her hand to seal the deal.
“Agreed. One condition, though.”
“Oh? And that would be?”
“Payment won’t start until you’re both fully recovered and out of the hospital. In return you won’t have to worry about your hospital bill.”
Shego thought about it for a moment, then agreed. Truth to tell she didn’t really need a hospital. The combined discharge of power along with Kimmie had drained her more thoroughly than she’d ever done on her own, but all she really needed to recover was some sleep and some sunlight. Still, she couldn’t fault Dr. Possible’s business sense.
Leaning back in the hospital bed, she folded her hands behind her head and grinned at Kimmie.
“So, pumpkin? Know any fun games to pass the time?”
Professor Ramesh led James Possible into the astronomy lab of the Space Centre, where quite a few of his colleagues were already assembled. James immediately noticed the grim looks on their faces.
“Okay, what’s up, people? What’s the newest crisis?”
Ramesh motioned for him to look at the main screen, where a schematic diagram of the Earth and near-Earth space was displayed.
“We fired up every sensor, telescope, and scanner we could find the moment your daughter and Ms. Shego began their display outside. We wanted to track the energy, see how far up it went, how powerful it was, all that.”
“I know. But I already saw the readouts from those scans, remember? So what…”
“Stay with me for a moment, James,” Ramesh interrupted him. “As I was saying, we tracked the energy discharge. Its range was impressive, it almost reached space. I daresay the two of them together could, under ideal circumstances, shoot down a satellite without ever leaving the ground.”
James was getting impatient and apparently it showed on his face.
“Anyway, we had three major radio telescopes reconfigured to track the energy and… well, with all the hubbub we kind of forgot to reset them. So they’ve still been tracking the energy these last few hours.”
“But the energy dissipated, didn’t it?” James asked, confused. “So what…?”
“We were confused at first, too,” Ramesh admitted. “But look at this!”
The big screen showed a simulation that first displayed the discharge of Kim and Shego, as it shot from the surface of the Earth into space and then dissipated. A bunch of data scrolled alongside the line that represented that discharge, analysing frequency, intensity, and a dozen other parameters. Nothing happened for a few moments, then the perspective shifted. The three radio telescopes apparently realigned to resume their original function, turning their unblinking eyes back into outer space.
Only to pick up a new target. One that emitted the exact same energy signature as Kim and Shego’s discharge had earlier. Among dozens of others.
“What is that?” James whispered, studying the data.
“We can’t be certain,” Ramesh admitted, “but Professor Kruger has a theory.”
The leading expert on the Go City meteorite stepped forward, looking as if he had aged ten years in the last few hours.
“We always knew that the meteorite that crashed in Go City was a small fragment of a much larger celestial body, a comet that passed so close to Earth that it brushed the atmosphere.”
“Yes, and?” James asked.
“I believe that is the comet, Dr. Possible,” he pointed at the screen. “I believe that it is on an elliptic orbit around the sun which takes it past the Earth every seventeen years, roughly. It’s coming back now.”
Dr. Possible thought about that, studying the data.
“You could be right. And… and it would explain some things, wouldn’t it? If the comet is emitting the same radiation as its fragment, its return to Earth might be the reason the powers of Team Go are increasing. And the reason why Kimmie’s previously dormant powers have now activated.”
“Yes, I thought of that, too,” Professor Kruger said. “Unfortunately it leads us to two very uncomfortable conclusions.”
James looked at him questioningly.
“The comet is still a very large distance away, Dr. Possible. More than 100 million kilometres. Its velocity is about 50 kilometres per second. Which means it will take at least another three weeks, give or take, until it reaches the Earth.”
“Which means during that time the powers of Team Go, Shego and Kim, will continue to increase. Is that what you are saying?”
Kruger nodded. “That is one thing, yes. I am afraid that, if your daughter has trouble controlling her current power level, it will only get worse during the next three weeks. And even Team Go and Shego, who are experienced in controlling their powers, won’t have it easy.”
James sighed deeply, wondering whether the universe itself might have it in for his beautiful baby girl.
“You said two things,” he remembered. “What is the second?”
“We took a good, long look at the comet’s trajectory,” Ramesh said, taking over. “This is all still very much guesswork. We’ll be able to get better data as the comet gets closer, but…”
“But?”
Ramesh sighed deeply. “From the looks of things the comet won’t simply brush Earth’s atmosphere this time, James. It will hit the planet dead-on.”
TO BE CONTINUED