She stared at him. "You mean that."

"I do. I'd rather trust that most people will do the right thing, and the brave thing, most of the time, than to think that everyone's an evil, cowardly creep just waiting to stick it to me and mine."

"I cover that side," Chuckie said.

She chuckled. "Well, it's good that one of you does." She looked up at Jeff. "But it's no wonder the opposition doesn't want you on the ticket. You're an impressive man, and that's a rare thing these days."

"I think you're impressive, too," I said to Chuckie.

Jeff sighed. "Always there's someone impressing my wife more than me."

Chernobog snorted. "I doubt it."

"I have another question. Why do you think what's going on now is going on?"

She blinked. "Excuse me? English isn't my first language, though it's rarely an issue. However, I have no idea what you mean."

"So few ever do, Boggy, so few ever do."

"Boggy? What?"

"It's a nickname."

"My God. Please, call me Bogdana."

"Um, you realize that I'm still going to get Boggy from that, right?"

"You could just give us your real name," Jeff suggested.

Chuckie looked at her closely. "She did. That is your real name, isn't it?"

"No. But I'm willing to use that name."

Chuckie laughed quietly. "You're lying. Why toss out a name that sounds so close to your pseudonym, especially after Kitty gave you a nickname you don't like? That's actually your real name."

"Yeah, it is." Jeff nodded to me. Good, he'd read her emotions. Always nice to have that working for us.

"Go me and my awesome interrogation skills. But back to what I was asking Bogdana, sometimes known as Boggy, here. We've had a variety of attacks over the past twenty-four to forty-eight hours." Gave her a high-level recap. "So, I'm asking if you have insights or thoughts about why our enemies rolled all that they've been rolling yesterday and today, versus, say, last week or next month?"

"The election? It seems obvious."

"Yeah, and I can buy the stuff with Bruce Jenkins in regard to that. But not a bunch of bombs, that bizarre quicksand attack, the attempted assassinations of Vander, Serene, yourself, and so on. Just wondering if you might see something, some pattern, that we're missing because we're too close to it."

"Or, short of us dying or my stepping down as a candidate, what you think we might be able to do to stop it," Jeff added.

Chernobog seemed to be giving this some thought, but we were all distracted by the containment room door slamming shut.

Once I landed from my jump for the ceiling, turned around to see Serene, Henry, and Ravi all outside and hopefully out of harm's way.

"Okay," Serene said. "I reactivated him. He'll be online momentarily." She reached out and took Mrs. Maurer's hand. "I hope I did it all right."

Mrs. Maurer nodded. "You did your best, dear. That's all I can hope for." She looked over at Chernobog. "What do you hope for? If they could do this to my son, they can do it to yours, too."

Chernobog gave her a long look. "I would like your son returned to you as I would like mine returned to me."

"But even if this works," Mrs. Maurer's voice trembled but she held it together, "I'll only get a part of my son back. He'll never be all him again."

"No, he won't be." Chernobog cocked her head. "Why are you asking me these questions?"

"Because I don't trust you," Mrs. Maurer snapped. "And these are decent people trying to do good, and they're also trying to trust you. If you love your son, truly love him as I love mine, then you'll help them, and not betray them."

"I-"

Mrs. Maurer sniffed and interrupted Chernobog. "You can say anything you want. It's your actions that will matter. Prove that you're worth what they'll do to protect and help you. Prove that your son deserves a full, normal life, instead of being turned into a robotic version of himself."

With that she turned away and stared through the window at the robot with her son's skin and brain.

"Are we sure those windows are safe?" I asked Jeff, somewhat to change the subject and somewhat because I was still kind of freaked out.

"Yes, Mrs. Martini," White answered for him. "They are. Remember, we're good with fail-safes."

True enough. White, Chuckie, and I had experienced a major one at the end of Operation Confusion. "Great. Just want to be sure and all that."

We all clustered around the containment room. Really questioned our wisdom, but decided hyperspeed would just save the day as it tended to.

Maurer was lying there, looking like a dead person or a robot whose plug had been pulled; I couldn't decide which. But all of a sudden his eyes blinked slowly, once. Then rapidly, several times. Color came back into his cheeks and his chest rose and fell. He sat up and looked around, and once again he looked just like a real man.

"God, Antony Marling did good work. I mean, it's horrible work, but the man really was an artist. What a damned pity he was totally evil and completely batshit crazy."

Maurer got off the table and came to the window where his mother and Serene were, which was where Jeff, Chuckie, White, and I were, too. He banged on the glass. "Mother, what's going on? Why am I in here? Where are we?" He sounded far away, like he was in a giant fishbowl, which he kind of was. But still, he was in a containment room. Was shocked we could hear him at all.

"We can hear because it's set up for that," Jeff said quietly to me. "And yes, I read you, and yes, even though we can hear him, we won't be hurt if he explodes."

"Don't let him out," Chernobog said. "Trust me, he's not safe yet."

"As in not safe because he's going to explode, or not safe because we don't know what program he's currently running?"

"Both."

Serene nodded. "We need to wait until Ravi hears from the Science Center. We need to know if what I removed explodes or not."

"What do we know if it does or doesn't?"

"I think it's still active, so if it explodes, it means we got everything and the destruct sequence was triggered by someone. If it doesn't explode, it may mean nothing or it may mean that I didn't get everything."

"What about his self-destruct things? You got all of those."

"Again, we'll know soon."

"Just wait, Cameron, dear," Mrs. Maurer said. "This is for your own protection."

So we all waited, and while we did, I thought again. I was getting better at thinking to myself, versus aloud, but there was still nothing better for my mental processes than running my yap.

Gave up the silent treatment. "So, who set the bombs in the Israeli and Bahraini embassies? Not the ones Nightcrawler set, but the ones that were set to go off sooner."

"Stephanie," Christopher said. "She has hyperspeed, and she was in D.C. working for Vander. Take your coffee break, plant bombs to kill your family, grab a Starbucks on the way back as cover."

"Makes sense. We figure Ronnie's Kids helped Club Fifty-One and the Church of Hate and Intolerance set the ricin bombs, right?"

"Yes," Serene replied. "Per everything we've learned."

"Boggy, can we fix what was done to the imageers?"

"I hate that nickname. And I don't know. I don't know where the toxin is or what it is, specifically. But that's what it is, I believe-a toxin that affects whatever part of the brains that control the talent. But it's definitely in your main research facility, the one I accessed to take your data."

"Nicknames are given out of love, babe."

"So you claim. Even nicknames someone hates?"

"Yes. It'll grow on you."

"What do you call Olga?"

"The Oracle. Or Olga. Or She Who Knows All."

"And I get Boggy. I see who you like better."

"She's never worked against us. So, we need to have a more thorough search of the Science Center done pronto."

"Just sent James a text," Jeff said. "Walter apparently gave him the heads up and he's started literally an inch-by-inch search. He said to tell you that, yes, they're starting in the air vents and circulation system."

"Wow, he definitely needs a vacation. And good initiative Walter."

"Thanks, Chief," Walter said. Didn't shock me-I'd told him to keep the com open.

"Walter, did we miss anything that you and the rest of Team Oliver might have heard, seen, or experienced that's key?"

"No, Chief, I don't think so. But, ah, would you like my opinion?"

"I'd love it, Walt. What do you have for me?"

"I think we need to consider why Colonel Hamlin thinks he's safer if he doesn't let us protect him than if he does."

There were a lot of comments I could give to this. Buchanan had been attacked right after dropping Hamlin off somewhere. We were really public figures now. We were public figures constantly under attack. And more. But I chose to, instead, ask a question. "Walt, why do you think he feels that way?"

"I think he's figured out who the Mastermind is-and it's someone very close to us. So close we won't believe it without solid proof, which I don't think he has yet."

CHAPTER 84.

BEFORE ANYONE COULD COMMENT, or I could share my musings on this from a little earlier, Serene's phone rang. "Yes? Yes? Great! No, good job. Yes, good work. Thank you." She hung up.

"What happened?" Jeff asked.

"The remote destruct just went off. It was in a contained room, no one was injured. Huge blast radius, though. If it had gone off here it would have leveled the Embassy. Same with Colonel Butler's destruct. But," she said quickly as all our mouths opened, "they were able to deactivate his bombs, too. Dulce has been online with us and doing the same procedure we have. Both were a success."

"Walter, I want a portable OVS given to every Field agent, and I want a set for the Embassy, the Pontifex's Residence, my parents, Kitty's parents, the Israeli and Bahraini embassies, and all bases worldwide. If James has a problem with this, tell him it's a congressional decree."

"Yes, sir, Congressman Martini."

"And tell him Imageering agrees with the congressman," Serene added.

"Yes ma'am, Commander."

"I also want Field teams assigned to the Armstrongs and the McMillans, and if we already have teams on them, add on more personnel. That goes for every non-Centaurion location getting an OVS as well, and yes that includes Kitty's parents, regardless of what Angela may want to say about it."

"Got it, and have relayed. Commander Reader agrees and has also assigned three teams to protect Lieutenant Colonel Gonzalez. He's been verified as ninety-five percent organic, by the way. Commander Reader said you'd want to know."

"We did, thank you. Move Caroline into the Embassy, please," I added. "She may protest, but she's been an attack point before." Unless she was the Mastermind. Heck we totally trusted her. But if she hated Chuckie, I'd never seen any indication of such. And we knew the Mastermind was a man. So, great, unless Caroline was doing Mastermind work in drag, she was out as a suspect.

"Yes, Chief. Do you want family and friends brought into lockdown?"

"No, not yet," Jeff said.

Had a thought and made a call. "You're still alive, kitten?"

"Yeah, for now. Mom, I think you need to increase security on Russell Kozlow." Chernobog's head swiveled toward me.

"Why so?"

Brought her up to speed on the android and android destruct situation. "We need to create metal detectors that somehow include OVS detection in them." And why this hadn't occurred to me or anyone else before now was beyond me.

"We were, but all the data was taken and it was a lower-level restoration requirement," Mom said. Ah, it had occurred. Go team. "However, if the data is truly back now, we can probably do so fairly quickly. Possibly before the National Convention, but I wouldn't count on it."

"Why not? I'd bet Dulce could get those suckers out fast."

"Yes, they could. And for the half of Congress that feels that they'd be signing up their constituents and themselves to be probed by aliens, that's a frightening idea. It's not the creation alone that's the issue, Kitty. It's the legal use of this kind of scan that will be the bigger holdup."

Managed not to say that we used the OVS all the time. We did because we could-the law for us was the Pontifex, the Diplomatic Corps, and Alpha Team. All of whom were all for using the OVS. But Mom had a good point. Heaved a sigh. "They're risking being blown up by an android that looks like the congressman next door."

"We're all at risk every day, kitten. But unless you also think we should be tapping everyone's phones twenty-four-seven, you have to go through the proper channels and procedures. Otherwise you have a fascist dictatorship. Or anarchy."

Refrained from making a snippy comment about the NSA. Because, you know, they might be listening. "Think the Mastermind is in the NSA?"