The Infected 3: Cast Iron (20 page)

He waved a bit and sat up, standing easily, showing a pair of tight biking shorts. Not naked though, so good enough. He was in his forties, forty-six, which was three years younger than she was, but still had abs going on under the hair on his chest and stomach. It wasn’t bad, but it ruined his look just a bit. She’d never gone in for really hairy men.

“Anything new? Operative Cooper collected some data from the man she followed from the bar last night.” Marcia grinned and hefted the bag in her left hand to about shoulder level.

“His wallet. She tried to preserve it for fingerprints even. Pretty slick, considering she hasn’t had any real training at all yet. We need to get on that.”

Lancaster rubbed his face and stifled a yawn, getting an answering one from Bridget and Burke. Everyone smiled about it, but listened to the blond man.

“Excellent. I agree as far as the training goes for Cooper. Yi has been showing her some hand to hand and fire arms techniques, which we should step up I think. He needs to do something different soon anyway or he’ll burn out. He’s kept up with his practice and is getting better, but teaching can’t hurt at the stage he’s at. For the rest, well, I can do some of it. You want to cover the rest?”

Did she? Marcia was a lot busier day to day than she let on, but Penny was potentially a major asset, now that they could talk to her and communicate what they wanted. It was worth a little lost sleep to make sure that happened.

“Yes. I’ll get with you and Brian when we get back and work up a schedule.”

The large man nodded and looked at Bridget and then her, gesturing toward the uniforms.

“Photo shoot I don’t know about today? Or is it just that we’ll probably all end up on camera a hundred times before lunch?”

Bridget shook her head.

“Neither, I’m just on duty, working security for the cooking show team. Cooper is with me on that. I’m in charge.” She said it in that half fierce way of hers that generally meant it would be an issue if you disagreed with what she just said, but Marcia backed her up with a nod.

“Right. Who’s running it on the agent side; she needs to coordinate with them on it. I’d like Chambers to take lead, if possible. Training.” Why not? It was real enough, since they needed eyes watching for anything, just in case. The problems the day before had bumped things up to a high alert status as far as she was concerned. Not strictly a Team one activity most of the time, running anything except publicity, but it was one way to keep the girl sharp and ready.

Maybe out of trouble too.

Burke held up his hand, just about mid-chest height.

“That’s me. It’s not a high threat situation, or wasn’t before the events of yesterday. Still, given everything I think having three of us on it can’t hurt. Should we get Ink involved too? He’s security for Goblin’s group.”

Before Marcia could say yes, Reyes sighed.

“Tobin. He really doesn’t like being called Goblin. It was an assigned name, but kind of insulting. He won’t mention it, because of his first mode, but I can tell it bugs the crud out of him. We don’t have a different one for field use yet, but if it’s just us, I think his real name would work better.”

Burke didn’t miss a beat, just shifted gears without hesitation.

“Right, Mr. Peterson then, since he’s going to be a VIP. Should we include his detail as well?”

Marcia thought for a few seconds. It was a strange thing, since the ones most likely to catch flack were the Uglies, but they were also the most able to take care of themselves if it came to a fight. Warren was the most vulnerable that way out of everyone they had with them. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have the regular agents keeping tabs.

“Do it. Ink’s solid, but things are getting strange here. Speaking of which, any news on the missing people?”

Reyes pointed to the laptop in front of him and shrugged.

“So far Morris’s story checks out. We can’t find his daughter, Harpo, Weathers or Mic. They all have family members missing too. Weathers’ son’s family is off the grid, along with Harpo’s daughter, though Morris mentioned her being worried, so that might be a new thing. Mic doesn’t really have anyone that I can find, so that’s hard to tell. What that means I don’t really know yet. It seems like too many people for them to all be snatched from different locations without it being noticed. We’re planning to do some calling around to double check in about an hour, just to make certain we aren’t looking at a computer generated smoke screen. If it plays out, we’re planning a trip to the stores where the last credit and debit transactions took place.” He shrugged. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but so far looked like Cal hadn’t just lost it.

Not that Marcia was all that pleased with the man at the moment. He’d always been a bit of a pig, if in an affable enough way. Old age and stress had made him worse though, it looked like. At least if all the Infected crap and refusing to work with them wasn’t just a signal she was supposed to be reading somehow. More than anything she wished that she’d gotten Christian in on the matter the night before. It was a waste of resources not too and it would streamline things incredibly if she’d help out. That last part might be a problem, because Chris tried to avoid reading minds when possible and this still wasn’t work related, but if she would, it might just save a whole lot of time.

As things stood there was almost nothing for them to do for a while, except get to breakfast with everyone else. That meant getting people out of their rooms, which would probably take a while. Marcia started making the rounds, pounding on door after door, only to find a mixed reception waiting for her.

Denis was up when she knocked and looked tense when he let her in, even though the other two with him sounded happy enough as they puttered around, getting ready for the day. She remembered to talk to him about what was going on, but decided not to do it in front of Peggy and Lauren, since it might be about them in some way. Denis feeling trapped into a relationship or something or not wanting to hurt their feelings but not being interested in them as more than friends? That probably wouldn’t even be a real issue with Peggy, but Lauren had problems that way. Her first mode was loneliness. It couldn’t be helped. Except when Denis washed it all away at least. That would probably be enough to make the woman fall in love with him.

“Hey Marsh. What’s up? Do we need to…” He trailed off and looked at her meaningfully, asking if there was an emergency that he wasn’t supposed to mention out loud.

Good man. He was learning and everything.

“Breakfast. We’re all going together, so that we can get on the same page for the day. Ten minutes.” It would take longer, but telling people that would just get them to be even later.

“Oh? Um, sure, I guess.”

She moved to the next room, which took more pounding to get people up, since it was Tobin and Ink’s room. Apparently Ink was a sound sleeper. Tobin was ready in a few minutes though and moved out to follow her as they got the others in turn. The boys didn’t let her into their room though, which made her wonder if someone else was in there. It didn’t take her long to figure it out, since Kerry wasn’t in any of the other rooms.

She looked at the small black and green man next to her, but he just shrugged.

“It’s a convention. People do stuff. They’re old enough. Besides, if they share a bed I don’t have to share with anyone else.” He turned all green though, a dramatic thing she’d only seen a few times before. When he got scared he kind of changed color to match his surroundings. It wasn’t a very good camouflage but it was more entertaining than not. She kind of thought this one was just his version of blushing though.

Probably because the other two had been having sex. In front of him. Kind of mean of them, since dating wasn’t easy when you looked like a frog, most likely. Everyone that knew him loved Tobin, but that didn’t mean he was exactly hip deep in woman that wanted to sample his wares. Except for possibly Christian. She had Mark though. Marcia had never asked if it was an open relationship or not. Chris would probably be alright with that sort of thing, given her history, but Mark always seemed a bit quiet. Of course she hadn’t known him before he popped, so he might have a lot more held inside than she’d ever know. Well, if that worked for them, she wasn’t going to complain. Otherwise she was going to have to find someone to sleep with Tobin herself. That it wasn’t already a vast problem was probably because his life was looking up over all, what with the album and people actually liking his music. Even the bigots just claimed he had an unfair advantage singing, rather than trying to claim he wasn’t good at it.

A short half hour later everyone was traipsing down to the hotel’s restaurant, wondering if they’d be served at all. It was a hit or miss thing and Penny offered to sneak over and clean out the buffet if they tried to get rid of them.

Brian smiled, which actually looked genuine.

“Argh matey! Thar be Penny, scourge of the high buffet.” He was teasing, but Penny chuckled.

“Darn straight. How else can I get by in the world? Still, it means we won’t starve, if they shun us like Amish ne’er do wells or something.”

They didn’t. In fact the waitress that served them smiled a lot and treated them all like they were famous or something. She didn’t even hesitate to put in a special order for Lauren, which had the chef out to ask for particulars, since she had to drink everything through a straw and needed a very high calorie diet. That ended with Mark running back to the kitchen with the man, but got a nice protein drink for their giant armored friend. Served in a large glass pitcher that had a soft fog of condensation already forming on the outside.

“Wow, this is good. What is it? Hazel nut and chocolate with bits of donut?” Lauren sounded pleased enough, though it seemed a bit overdone to Marcia. It was basically a milkshake after all. Even Marcia could make one of those.

Of course, she just got a normal plate of food and another bottle of oil. Olive this time, from the label. She downed it in a few minutes, treating it like water and made herself finish the food on her plate. It might not help much, drinking oil straight, but it was something worth trying. No one looked at her funny about it though. Not at their table. Next to them a man stared for a bit, but then just whispered to the woman next to him for a while. It was probably about her, but she didn’t really care. She’d been drinking oil straight. It might just be noteworthy to some people.

Unless they were planning an attack, noticing her breakfast seemed relatively harmless. Unless… it was a trick to distract her from paying attention somewhere else. She looked around, but didn’t see anything except people eating their own meals and a few people watching through the windows at the front of the place. Brian was sitting directly beside her and got more than his share of attention from the watchers, considering they had actually celebrities in the room with them, but Karen just smiled and put an arm over Marcia’s back, sitting on the other side of her as she was.

“It looks like the press is getting in. Would you trade seats with me? That or start feeling Brian up? Charlot wants us to point out that I’m not a lesbian again.” She leaned in closely, just being friendly by nature. It got confusing for the press at times though.

“Sure, we can switch, but if you really want to sell the whole straight thing, you might not want to get that close to me or the other women on camera. Just saying.” She smiled though. It was darned hard not to like Karen. The woman was probably her best friend in the whole world most days. She pushed the plates around and changed places with her. Lady Glory was dating Proxy after all. They were sharing a room and everything.

That wouldn’t keep people from making false claims though. Reporters pretty much just made up half the news anyway now. They had for a long time, but it was starting to get really bad as the newspapers died out. The ones left were mainly tabloids and that meant the remaining few real ones had to step up and become competitive with those to even have a chance. In a few more years even the Times and the Herald would probably be filled with gossip and innuendo.

The day was pretty busy it turned out, for the people attending the conference specifically. For the others not so much. Unless they wanted to attend the various events, or help with them. Mark and Warren pointed out that they were supposed to come up with decorative cakes for a competition later in the day, even though they didn’t have anything planned. It was a last minute thing, since the guys from a cake decorating show the network had decided to come and challenged “Steinberg and Friends” to a contest. They’d cheated of course, coming with some advanced equipment and some cakes already made up.

“Good work too, I peeked. Still, we should try. Even if we lose badly. We don’t want to seem like poor sports or anything.” Mark spoke gently, which was something he almost always did, except on his show. It was part of how he coped with his first mode, an otherwise crippling fear of nearly everything. If he got too scared, he’d freeze time around him until he could calm down. That he wasn’t jumping in place, coming in and out of his powers field of effect over the contest showed he probably wasn’t that worked up over the idea. Even if the other guys were cheating.

Brian shrugged.

“I’d help, but unless you need something microwaved I’m kind of useless in the kitchen. Still, I’m here if anything that I can help with comes up. Floor scrubbing or whatever.” He sounded cold about the whole thing, probably wondering if this new contest was just being put together to make them all look bad. It clearly was. Marcia could see that, the question was only, why was it being set up like it was? There was a lack of information there. It could be the network, or the people from the other show. It could even just be general hazing, since “Steinberg and Friends” was the new show on the channel. Or it might have been people trying to get them, for being Infected, or the lesser version of that where they merely wanted to show they were better than the Infected.