Chapter 3
I don't know who was more surprised to hear him say that -- me or Angela. Angie, of course, had no clue as to what any of this was about. I, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was talking about, but what he said made no sense.
Okay, in case you're new here: A couple of months ago, Padma was captured by Enclave, and I jumped through a teleport trap to go try to save her. I went to a lot of trouble to rescue her from their clutches and get her safely home, almost getting myself killed in the process. Given that, they would naturally conclude that Primes Indigo and Violet were joined at the hips. Er, hip. Or something like that. At any rate, they would assume that any girl hanging around Prime Indigo would most likely be Prime Violet. That much I understood.
And, as I thought about it, yeah, I guess Padma and Angela superficially resembled each other. They were both athletic teenage girls, both about average height (for girls), and they probably weighed within twenty pounds of each other. Cover them with an obscuring violet force shield, and maybe you couldn't tell them apart.
But the thing was, after Enclave had captured Padma, they had quickly conned her into powering down the force shield that blurred her features, and then they had stripped every stitch of clothing off her. Enclave knew what Prime Violet looked like! They had been able to see every square inch of her Indian-dark skin, and she looked nothing like my very Chinese younger sister.
So now I was the one who burst out laughing, and it was only partly for show. "You really are nuts, little red hedgehog dude," I said when I could speak. "There's no way my sister could be a Prime."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Angie cut in indignantly. "I could too be a Prime. I'm good enough!"
"Angie, you're a high school senior. You're taking five AP classes, you're in marching band and chorus, and you're on, what, the tennis team or something? With all that and Tae Kwon Do, you don't have time to be a Prime."
"Well, okay, maybe not," she agreed reluctantly. "But I could be one if I wanted to."
JB Swift obviously didn't care about our sibling back-and-forth, and he didn't seem too happy at the way I had laughed at him. He curtly motioned for the Zoinks to drag Angie and me forward. Lily followed us passively. I wondered whether we were going to be yanked and shoved all the way to Enclave headquarters, but he stopped after about fifty yards. "All right," he said to the empty air. "Pull us in." And just like that, we were teleported to an Enclave base.
As I mentioned, I had been through an Enclave teleport trap before, and of course Wizzit teleports us to places all the time, so I knew what to expect. I also knew it could be disorienting for the inexperienced, though, so I carefully watched Angela and tried to stumble around about as much as she did when we arrived, just to keep up appearances.
When I had jumped through the teleport trap to save Padma, I had materialized in a large room, about the size of my high school's gymnasium. The room we were in now, though, was a bit smaller, roughly as big as, oh, my parents' basement. JB Swift rushed over to a wall display as soon as we arrived. "Bring up the pictures we took of the purple Prime," he snapped into a microphone.
There was a pause. Presumably, the person (or monster or alien or whatever) on the other end was giving him some sort of reply. After a moment, he spoke again: "Then get me the authorization!" Another pause. "Because I believe I have brought her in with the indigo Prime, and I want to confirm."
He waited for a reply, growing more impatient with every passing second. He turned away from the display, paced for a bit, and then he muttered, half to himself, "Idiots! This will take forever." He raised his voice slightly. "Lily, front and center." Lily pushed her way through the Zoinks to stand meekly in front of the scarlet hedgehog. He said, "Lily, self-report."
Lily clasped her hands behind her back and said in a monotone, "I am uninjured. I am not ill. I do not need to perform any bodily eliminations. I have been awake for twenty-one hours, forty-two minutes. I last ate ten hours, thirty-four minutes ago. I last drank one hour, thirteen minutes ago. Overall status: I am hungry and very tired. I should eat and sleep soon to maintain optimum functionality."
Angie turned to look at me, a horrified expression on her face. "Is she a robot?" she mouthed at me.
I shrugged. Wizzit had always insisted that she was one hundred percent human female. From my own experience, Li Lin-fa was lovely and sweet-natured and felt as warm and soft as any woman, and she kissed like no robot I had ever met. Even Lily Lee, for all the trouble she was causing us as a minder, behaved as if she were a real person. Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick seemed to have no emotions or personality whatsoever.
JB Swift's face softened, losing some of its impatience. "These idiots have been making me work you too hard," he said, with what sounded suspiciously like fatherly concern. "After I have dealt with these two, we'll get you a quick bite to eat, and then I'll put you to bed." Lily, her face as impassive as a stone wall, might not even have heard him.
His answer came a few minutes later, although it looked like it wasn't the answer he wanted. He listened, rolled his eyes, and then, with a great show of self-restraint, he said patiently into the microphone, "Then can you please have someone who does have clearance take a look at this girl we've brought in and see whether she's the purple Prime? . . . . Fine, I'll wait!"
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, an oddly human gesture for someone who looked like a two-foot scarlet hedgehog. "Rough day at the office, huh?" I said, feeling an odd sort of sympathy for him.
"You don't know the half of it," he replied wearily. "Damn the bureaucracy of this place!" A few more minutes passed, and then he looked up at the screen suddenly. "You're sure? It's definitely not her? . . . . Yes, I understand." Turning to Angie, he said, "I guess you're not the purple Prime after all." He waved resignedly at the Zoinks. "Take them into the other room."
"Hey, wait!" I said. "Why don't you just let her go, since she's not the one you're looking for?"
"Because I don't want to!" he snapped, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.
The "other room" turned out to be maybe twice as big as the one we had been in. It had about twenty or thirty guys in it, sitting or standing around in small groups. They turned to look at us as we were shoved inside, and I swear, every single one of them waved at me and said, "Hi, Trevor!"