When Kim screamed, Anne Possible felt like her own heart was going to break. She held Kim tightly and tried to tell her that everything was going to be fine, but the girl dissolved into hysterics and even Ron’s presence could not calm her down. She had no choice but to sedate the girl. She sat at Kim’s side and looked down at her sleeping form. They had shaved Kim’s head in preparation for the surgery and while the hair would grow back, she wasn’t sure if her little girl would ever be whole again.
Anne left the recovery area and walked down to the conference room that the GJ director had commandeered. Ron was inside, standing with his back against one of the walls, arms crossed and a disbelieving sneer on his face. “Either the orders came from your office or they didn’t.” he growled, “Which is it?”
“It’s not that simple, Ron…” Dr. Director replied. “We’re not…”
“Competent…?” he interrupted sarcastically, “Honest…?” his voice rose, “The good guys…?” He almost screamed.
Anne placed her hand on his arm, “Ronald, please calm down.”
“That fucking bitch fucked up Kim’s mind and you want me to be calm!” He started pacing around the small room, pent up energy boiling out of each step. “How can you stand there and listen to this psycho whore after what she did to Kim?” One of the agents put a hand on his weapon. Ron caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and whirled to face him in a Tai Shing Pek Kwar stance, “Pull it out mother-fucker and give me an excuse to kill you!” He yelled. Dr. Director motioned for the agent to stand down.
“Ronald…” Mrs. Possible said hesitantly, “maybe you should get some rest…”
“As long as that woman is here,” somehow he made the phrase sound more insulting than any he had used before, “I’m going to stand right here; between her and KP.”
“James…?”
“Can’t argue with the boy, dear.” Her husband replied, “I agree with his sentiment, if not his choice of language.”
“Betty…?”
“Can you blame them, Anne?” The GJ head asked. “The evidence is stacked against Global Justice and me.” She shook her head, “I know I’m innocent and you’ve given me the benefit of the doubt, but…” she gestured vaguely, “They don’t have our history and they think I’m taking advantage of your friendship.”
“I think you’re a manipulative bitch from hell and if the Doctors P weren’t here, I think I’d kill you with my bare hands!” That earned Ron an arched eyebrow and a look that said it wouldn’t be an easy task. Ron gathered himself for another verbal assault.
“Please stop threatening each other for just five minutes!” Anne’s world was under attack, someone had nearly destroyed her daughter’s mind and even if the surgery was successful it would be months or years before she could live a normal life. Her friend was at the top of the suspect list and her husband was encouraging their daughter’s sidekick to be belligerent toward everyone in a misguided belief that he was protecting his little Kimmie-cub. There was no one for her to draw strength from and somehow, for Kim’s sake she needed to keep everyone from falling apart.
Wade had told her that as soon as he released his data to the NSA, they had dispatched agents to bring Betty in for questioning. Betty had to know they were coming and if she was guilty, why would she hang around? Unless she was so confident in her power base that she no longer cared weather anyone knew about her criminal activities. That was a prospect that Anne did not want to consider. In the meantime, she was trying to make sure Kim had a chance to recover and that Ron didn’t just start attacking Global Justice agents at random. It was actually feasible that he might hurt one of them; she saw the fear in their eyes when he went into that martial arts stance.
Wade was busier than he had been in a long time. As soon as he released his records to the NSA they tried to trace him, he was ready for that. He wasn’t prepared for the other federal agencies tried to figure out where he was located. The CIA, FBI and Homeland Security began scouring on-line databases and data mining Usenet groups desperately searching for clues to his identity. So far he was holding his own but the amateur hackers had picked up the scent and began sending out their own ferrets and that would soon be a big factor.
“Mom.” He called into the intercom.
“Yes, dear.”
“We may need to leave, quickly.”
“What on earth are you talking about, boy?”
Wade brought his mom up to speed about Kim’s situation and his part in it, he asked her to pack a bag of essentials just in case and turned back to his computers. None of the agencies trusted each other enough to pool resources and he wanted to do everything he could to keep them paranoid. The hackers could turn the tide in his favor if he could unite them, not necessarily with each other but against the agencies. A coded query, soliciting support from his fellow hackers, received several positive responses.
Shego collected her things quietly. The idiot Drakken was asleep in his lab, downed by the pills she had slipped into his (she suppressed a shudder) cocoa-moo. Two weeks of hearing his moronic babble and idiotic rantings had given her a headache that she feared would never go away. The pale thief had already planned on leaving tomorrow but a conversation she overheard that morning had changed her timetable and her destination.
The blue scientist had taken a call from someone named Gemini and Shego recognized the name from her kitten’s story. The conversation was obviously in code but she had surreptitiously recorded as much as she could and now she wanted to get it to Q-Bert to see if it would help the girl. Walking through the lab it took a great deal of self-control not to throttle the sleeping madman. She hopped into the hovercraft and set the controls for Go City, when she was out of range of the lair’s security system she parachuted out and started looking for a ride to Middleton.
“We’ve got him, sir!” the excited operative yelled. “Ten-sixty W. Addison St.”
“Send two full crews; I don’t want this nerd to get away!”
Within minutes all of the major law enforcement agencies had units rolling to the indicated address, someone was leaking information like a sieve and none of the agencies could get a step up on the others. Wade fed the confusion as much as he could by cross feeding data and making sure that no agency felt that their own information was secure.
When it became clear that the agencies were actually sending units to the address, Wade noticed a change in the hacker traffic. Nearly all of the amateurs recognized the location immediately and the tide began to turn in the computer genius’ favor as they all started trying to make fools of the government. Soon the agencies were being fed a new address every few seconds, the pursuit ground to a halt as the various agencies tried to sift through a mountain of false leads.
Shego surveyed the hospital and decided that it would be absolute suicide to try to get in now. Agents from GJ and the NSA were already entrenched and the FBI was setting up a command center in one of the parking lots. Local and State police were checking every car and there seemed to be a canine unit every ten feet. She could probably get in, but she doubted that she would be able to find the girl, get the information to Q-Bert and then get out without losing some blood. She had to find the nerd, but how?
The pale woman headed to a local internet café and found an unoccupied table. The atmosphere of the cyber-deli was tense and when she logged in she could see why. Even a casual hacker like her could see that something big was going on. She thought for several minutes and began composing a message that should get the boy’s attention. When she was satisfied, she uploaded it into the online maelstrom and sat back to wait for a response.
So intent was Shego on waiting for a response, she didn’t notice when the Barista approached her table. “Miss…?”
“What do you want?” the pale woman snapped in surprise.
“There is a small issue with your order,” the middle aged black woman said, “The queue is backed up and Jaydoesn’t think it’s possible to retrieve your items.”
The pale thief picked up her things and followed the woman behind the counter and out the back door. “Is it safe for you to bring me to him?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? I ain’t lettin’ no one near my baby boy.” The woman said dismissively, “But I brought you this.” and handed a Kimmunicator to Shego and stepped into a waiting car. The car pulled away from the alley and changed colors several times while Shego watched. By the time it reached the end of the block, Shego couldn’t be sure which car the woman was in.
“Hi Shego.” Wade greeted her. He looked a bit harried.
“I have some information about that Director woman.” Shego said quickly. “I recorded a conversation between Gemini and my former employer but it’s in code. I thought you might be able to decipher it.” She plugged her jump drive into the Kimmunicator’s USB port.
“It’s coming in now,” Wade said. She could see him typing constantly, switching from keyboard to keyboard and sometimes inserting or removing disks.
“Is Kitten…? I mean Kim… Is she…?” The pale woman found herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
“The surgery went OK but she didn’t come out from under the anesthesia very well.” The teen said worriedly, “She was hysterical and Mrs. Dr. P had to sedate her.”
Shego made her way to a secluded rooftop in silence while Wade continued his virtual battle with the government agencies. It was easier now; most of the amateur hackers were running interference for him just to tweak their noses at authority.
“Why are you doing this?” He asked the thief curiously.
The question struck Shego as odd, mostly because she hadn’t examined her own motives. Now, uncomfortably searching her soul for the answers, she was having difficulty expressing herself. “She… seems so strong… so helpless… I just…” The pale thief shifted uneasily, “I guess I don’t really know why I want to help her, but I do.”
Wade smiled at her from the Kimmunicator screen. “She has that affect on just about everyone.”
Shego was lost in thought. What was it about the red head that commanded this emotion from her? She had been surprised by the unwavering loyalty the kitten’s friends showed and now, she was the one thinking of stepping in front of a bullet. The pale thief just wanted her kitten to succeed and that was reason enough for now. If they survived the next few days, she’d examine her feelings in more detail.
Shego approached the doors of the hospital at a dead run covering nearly twenty meters every second; she didn’t have time for subtlety or stealth. Wade had said Kim was in immediate danger. The pale woman did not waste any energy on generating plasma; she was putting everything into her mad dash and relying on her unexpected speed to protect her from any gunfire. None of the police or agents was prepared for her blitz and Wade timed the power failure to coincide with her entrance perfectly.
As the doors shattered before her, the lights went out momentarily until the back up generator came online. By then, she was already in the stairwell and the agents surrounding the building were in chaos. Most of them thought there had been a bomb blast of some kind and none of the witnesses to Shego’s approach were being taken seriously. The pale thief was nearing the third floor when Wade’s voice spoke into her ear, “fifth floor: Go left, room five-eleven.”
“Got it.” She had time to say before she blasted through the door. It was supposed to open toward her, but she was moving at a more normal speed now and had enough energy to summon a plasma discharge. The GJ agent on the other side of the door never knew what hit him and slid across the floor under the heavy steel door. Shego came out sprinting again and would have overshot her kitten’s room if not for a judicious transfer of kinetic energy from her body to the bodies of the agents standing near the door to Kim’s room.
Shego went in and picked up Kim’s frail form, she weighed almost nothing and it was hard to believe this was the same body that gave shelter to her vibrant kitten. She looked strangely forlorn with her head shaved and the small but ugly surgery scar on the left side of her skull. Even now, sedated as she was, Shego could tell the girl was fighting the demons in her nightmares. She turned to carry the helpless girl to the ride Wade assured her would be waiting in the hospital’s underground garage and found her way blocked by a hard looking woman with a patch over her right eye flanked by four large well built men in matching suits.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the woman asked menacingly.
“Somewhere safe.” Shego responded, looking for an alternate exit. On her own, she could dispose of the squad and the woman, failing that a five story fall would be painful but survivable and unexpected enough to make a clean get away. With the helpless red head in her arms, she wasn’t sure she could get past them and she wasn’t about to jump out the window.
“Kill them both!”
Next Time:
Chapter 14- From the Ashes.
Shego vs. The Most Powerful Handgun in the World