Chapter 17

Angel was in danger.

During an afternoon class, Lena had gotten an urgent Cassandragram. She needed to use her powers to "listen in" on Officer John - the one who had been so hard on Angel when asking about Ms. Wilson.

What she discovered was disturbing on many levels. The two men talking to him were expertly and heavily shielded. Lena could hardly sense them at all, except by way of their effect on the officer.

They played on his self image as a cowboy among cops - a man who did things his way and left the constraints of "procedure" to his more timid coworkers. They also played heavily on his suspicions about Angel, bringing him to believe that they had evidence she was involved in the Wilson disappearance, and that they were from a Federal agency which was preparing to do something about it. They hinted at official recognition if he helped keep the department out of it when they were ready to move.

By the time they left, he was feeling very full of himself. And very well disposed toward the Feds, as he thought of them.

Lena had acted quickly. She fed him doubt, and a suspicion that they knew a little too much about the Wilson disappearance. She also played on his image of the FBI and other agencies, as glory thieves, who come in and interfere with local matters for their own purposes, then take all the credit for what the locals had done. It had already happened to him. Twice.

The bottom dropped out of his good mood. They had played him. Even if they were legitimate Feds, which he now doubted, they would just end up screwing him over again. He couldn't trust them. Or their organization.

Lena would have done more with him, but the bell rang and she had to go to her next class. She had gotten a significant look from her teacher, with the thought that it had better have been important, and she would do well to get class notes and the assignment from a classmate.

"What do you think they're going to do?" Angel asked.

David answered. "It seems obvious. They're gonna make you disappear, like Ms. Wilson and the other bio elementals you told us about. After that ... who knows?"

The girls shuddered at the thought, but agreed it seemed all too likely.

Angel was faced with a dilemma. Who should she tell? Who should she avoid telling? She put off the issue of telling her parents, and went for more practical concerns.

"Lena, can you contact Mrs. Tabor? I start work at the spa on Monday, and I don't want this thing to catch her unaware."

"What do I tell her?"

"All we know. Or whatever the two of you decide."

Angel turned to Robin. "How much energy does your time travel take?"

"It depends. I can go backwards my limit and come back without being too tired. Why?"

"I want you to be our alarm system. When it happens, whatever it is, I want you to find out what, where, and when it is and then warn us well in advance. If you don't know about it happening right away, you may have to make some shorter hops in time and space to find out, and then go back to warn us. Can you do that, and then be able to act? My life may literally be in your hands."

If Robin had any doubts about her place in the group, or her value, that last statement eliminated them. She would do anything and everything she could to keep from letting them down.

Lena told Angel that she would be picked up after school on Monday. The driver would be someone Angel knew, and would check in with Lena before Angel would get in. She would then be taken directly to the spa.

That settled one thing. She would have to tell her parents about those arrangements.

David would get his chance to play spy. Once they knew when and where, he would be able to look around to see who, and track them. He and Robin could do the switch and snatch with her to get her out of the bad guys' hands.

The rest they would play by ear.

They discussed their strategies all the way to Angel's house, and on inside. Lena would coordinate their actions, and would be the point of contact for Future Robin.

"I gotta get a good name," Robin grumbled, after that last description.

They arrived at Angel's house, and went inside to continue the conversation.

Robin and Lena established some code words, to quickly convey status and trigger actions.

They all agreed that they would need to seem to be going about their normal business, and not alert the bad guys to their suspicions. They also agreed that they would probably not do anything until after the weekend, as long as Angel wasn't alone.

David brought up another possibility, and immediately wished he hadn't.

"What if they try to take one of your parents, for leverage?"

Angel agreed that she would have to tell them about the potential danger, and they would have to keep watch on her parents as well as herself.

David revisited an earlier statement. "Maybe we've seen too many of those movies. I never thought I'd say that."

The girls reassured him that it was better to think of such possibilities than to be caught flat footed when they came up.

"Besides," Robin concluded, "there will be more than enough unexpected bits no matter how much we anticipate."

With that cheery thought, they split up. Robin announced her intention to go swimming, then 'ported home. David and Lena headed for Lena's house.

When Angel's mother got home, she mentioned that the school had contacted her about Angel's exoneration, and that she had seen the records concerning the punishments of the Dean and the three girls. And a note about one of the mothers being banned from the campus.

Angel told her about the girls' confessions, and about the mother hitting her. Angel had healed the injury right after leaving the conference room, barely giving it a thought. She also told her that there was something she needed to talk to both of them about, when her father got home.

With a concerned look, her mother went up to change. By the time Angel's father came home, her mother was in the kitchen heating up dinner.

Angel barely noticed her food, which would have been an insult to her mother if it hadn't been for the way her mother was picking at it as well.

The after dinner conversation was not entertaining. The worst part was the fact that all three knew there was nothing more they could do. The police were potentially compromised, so no reliable help. And contacting them would almost certainly tip off the bad guys. They couldn't stand and fight. The bad guys were an unknown quantity, but were sure to be dangerous. And they had already kidnapped a far more powerful bio elemental than Angel was. Possibly more than one.

Angel got her parents to promise they would mentally shout for Lena if there was any sign of trouble. She would be listening for them, and in touch with the others. Angel assured them that she would do the same.

With the major issues up in the air like that, Angel took refuge in the familiar. She finished her homework, then snuggled in on the couch to watch shows with her parents. She couldn't stay up too late, because she had a theater inspection the next morning.

As before, Mandy would be picking her up. Lena would be checking Mandy for distress, duress, or bad intentions before Angel got in the car.

She laid out her clothes for the inspection, then got ready for bed.

Her sleep was troubled, with dreams of mysterious figures, movie style chases, and medieval dungeons interrupting her rest. When her alarm woke her in the morning, she wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or relieved.

The inspection was in a place called Louisville, between Denver and Boulder. Angel learned early on that it was not pronounced like the place in Kentucky, after hearing another recent transplant making that mistake.

The inspection itself turned out to be routine. But there was a little bit of tension as she was moving from one place to another. She noticed two men, in their early to mid twenties, watching her and acting suspiciously. With all that had happened, her paranoia quotient was high. She kept an eye on them, and used her eCom to take pictures and holos of them in case she needed to identify them later.

After they saw that she was remaining in plain sight, they went to concessions and bought some popcorn and soda.

She went into a storage room and peeked at them through the gap in the doorway. She was fairly sure they would not see her. And she apparently was right. After watching her go into the room, they looked around and then furtively ducked into one of the theaters.

She suddenly realized what was going on. The theater they ducked into was in a different direction than they had come from. They were nothing more than nervous house hoppers.

The chain allowed individual theaters to set their own policies about the practice. In general, they had done the right thing to be tolerated. The theater made more profit from the concessions than from the tickets. A large part of the ticket revenue went right back to the studios.

She went to the office and quietly checked with the manager. With some exceptions, such as making sure ratings restrictions were honored, he tended to let it pass when they bought concessions.

She saw no reason to put anything about it in her report. She had time for a "quality check" of a couple of things from concessions while she finished her report and waited for Mandy to finish her audit.

On the way back from the theater, her suspicions kicked in again. She noticed a dark blue van which seemed to be following them. Not quite the unmarked black vans of the movies, but disturbing. It was even more disturbing when they got off the freeway to get some lunch, and the van followed. But when they pulled in and stopped at the sandwich shop, the van simply drove by.

That might have been the end of it, but when they got back on the road a suspiciously similar van followed them onto the freeway. Angel used her eCom to document it, but didn't say anything to Mandy.

She got home with no problems, so she dismissed the event. If it was them, they were just scouting her out. But it could have just been an innocent coincidence.

That night, she got a call from a doctor in Sun City. The doctor didn't say much, other than that she was an elementologist and she wanted to talk to Angel about some interesting questions. She would be in the area the next day, to interview a couple of other young morfs, and asked whether she could stop by for a brief chat.

After consulting with her parents, and learning that the other morfs were David and Robin, Angel nervously accepted.

Angel told Lena about the van, but she wasn't able to find out anything more about it than Angel had.

That night and the next morning, Angel spent some time on the net looking up anything she could find about that Dr. Miller. She found a number of research papers, and other references that appeared to support her legitimacy. She also found out that she was the administrator of the Elementals registry database.

She was pondering that discovery when Lena interrupted her thoughts.

You got company. Lena announced. Apparently your Dr. Miller. She's fairly well shielded, but her emotions seem about right.

Thanks! Angel replied, then headed down to the door.

On the way, she called out to her parents that their visitor had arrived, then opened the door.

Unfortunately, she opened her mouth as well. "What the hell ARE you?" she practically shouted.

After a moment of shocked silence, in which she realized she had said that out loud, Angel blurted out "OhmygodI'msosorryIdidn'tmeanitthatway!" It hadn't been the doctor's striking appearance that had startled Angel. She had seen pictures of the cat woman hybrid while doing her research. It was something else. Something she sensed.

"I mean, you're an elemental. A really strong one. But you're not any kind of elemental I've ever seen before. And I thought I had seen them all." Angel explained, apologetically.

The woman smiled a little, and nodded an acknowledgement of the apology.

"Oh, God." Angel exclaimed. "I'm doing it again. Come in, come in." She held the door open for her visitor. As she entered, Angel's parents came and introduced themselves. She returned the favor, inviting them to call her Sanura, and was invited to sit.

After offering refreshments, which were politely declined, her parents retired to the kitchen to give them some semblance of privacy. They knew Lena would monitor the situation, and alert them if they were needed. Angel was aware of that as well.

"From what I've heard," the doctor started out, "you have some remarkable skills. I have never heard of a bio elemental who can read morfs better than screening telepaths, or recognize and predict the onset and nature of a case. Yet you, a young and - forgive me - supposedly underpowered morf, can apparently do so. In fact, several very reliable sources have verified those abilities."

"Well," Angel replied deferentially, "there is no supposedly about the underpowered part. Except for my own body, I can only extend my elemental power about a quarter inch from my skin."

Dr. Miller opened her briefcase, and removed some kind of electronic device. "May I?" she asked, indicating the device. Angel nodded, and she aimed it at her and looked at the display screen.

"Well," the doctor continued, "Your readings are certainly consistent with that. Which makes those abilities all the more remarkable. How did you develop them?" Angel was amused to notice that the doctor had put the device on the table, and it was still pointing at her. It didn't matter - she wasn't hiding anything about her elemental energy.

Angel recounted her grandmother's advice, and described her different kinds of observational training. She left out the part about modifying the microbiota, but sketched in the rest.

Dr. Miller was impressed. "How do you explain the fact that other, more powerful, bio elementals don't have these abilities?"

"I don't. Explain it, that is. I would imagine that they have the potential, but haven't bothered to train that part. They can do all those other, more impressive things that I can't. If I had their power, I probably wouldn't have done so either. It was just my need to leverage what little power I had that moved me to work on that."

"What else have you been able to do within those limitations?"

"I've been able to do some cosmetic stuff, like eliminate superficial scars and stretch marks. There was one little girl, an accident victim. She had a lot of surgery, and the insurance wouldn't cover treatments to eliminate the scars. Her doctor convinced me to do what I could for her. She still has some internal things they are working on, but she doesn't look like a rag doll any more." She stopped to think a moment.

"I've given some friends tans, even in tattoo like shapes. I've used my ability to see infectious stuff and destroy it in my job at the theater chain. Oh yeah, and I've made my mom and my friend's dad look better, by rejuvenating their skin. That kind of thing."

"I see." She made a couple of notes on her tablet, then changed the subject. "As I mentioned to your mother, I'm also here to find out about a couple of students at your school. Do you know David Streight or Robin Brown?" She looked at Angel expectantly.

"Sure. They're both friends of mine. And David's going out with my best friend Lena."

"What do you know about their post MORFS capabilities?"

"I know what they are, and I perceived them just before they started changing. Why?"

"An odd coincidence. And I don't like coincidences. They both got exceptional combinations of abilities, combinations which had not been seen before." She looked pointedly at Angel. "Do you know anything about that?"

Angel looked embarrassed. This was going to be the acid test for Pope Hill. If she didn't blow it.

"Kinda. I know some things they told me, but I'm not sure I believe them."

"What sort of things?"

"Well, you see ... there's this story going around, about strange things happening at Pope Hill."

"Pope Hill?"

"Over in the State Park." Angel waved her hand in the general direction. "There's some story about a Pope, who was later made into a Saint, doing something there. There's even a marker there, from some historical group." Angel shrugged.

"He was supposed to have done something major there, so the place is special or something." Angel paused, fishing for the right words. "Anyhow, there have been rumors about strange things happening there, going back at least a few decades. From a couple of people, we even heard about wishes being granted or something."

"Then, a little while after we moved here, I was walking near there with a couple of friends and we felt something. It was coming from the hill. It registered on my elemental sense in a way I hadn't encountered before. And Lena sensed something different."

"Lena?"

"My next door neighbor, and best friend. She's a telepath and an empath, and she sensed something weird too. We kinda put that together with the stories, and thought maybe there was something to them after all. Over the next few days, the odd stuff came and went."

"And?" Dr. Miller looked like she didn't believe a word of it.

"Well," Angel looked down, like she was a little ashamed. "We kinda talked David into trying out the stories."

"How?" The monosyllable replies were starting to get on Angel's nerves.

"Like a lot of teens, David had spent some time dreaming about what the best possible outcome of MORFS would be for him. What he'd look like, what powers he'd have, that kind of thing. We had him go to the hill when the odd stuff was strong, and think hard about what he wanted."

"And... ?" The doctor acted like she was pulling teeth.

"And later that day, I sensed he had some kind of infection. It was the kind that triggers MORFS, but there was something different about it. Like it was changing him first, then triggering the MORFS. The next day, I could make out where it was going, and I saw all those powers. The timeline looked clear enough, so we warned his folks. When we convinced them, they made appointments for him. Then nature - or MORFS - took its course."

"I see." Two syllables that time. Was it progress? She still didn't look convinced.

"Look, it's weird stuff, and I don't understand it myself. And I'm not explaining it very well. But it worked the same way for the others, so something is happening there."

"Others?"

"Robin did the same thing, and got what she wanted. And some guy from Smokey Hills ... well, he's a guy now. And he's saying the same thing happened to him. I never met him, so I can't say what the timing was. But he says he went there, and he got what he wanted."

"And his name is... ?"

"I don't know. I heard about him from Cassandra."

"Cassandra?"

"Penny Johnson. She goes to Smokey Hills, and she probably knows his name." Angel felt like she was babbling. And it was clear that the doctor wasn't buying it.

"And how do you explain all that?"

"I don't. The rumors have gone all the way from Divine Intervention because of the Pope to indian spirits to morfed prairie dogs."

"Prairie dogs?"

"Burrowing animals, about this big." Angel held her hands a little way apart. "There are a bunch of them around the area."

"I know what they are. How would they explain what happened to your friends?"

"Well, a whole bunch of them live together in a system of tunnels. I think it's called a town. Anyhow, it's like maybe some of them got powers, and they can work together to make it happen or something." Angel knew she was running off at the mouth, but couldn't stop herself.

"And you think that's what is happening?"

"Not really. I really don't know what it is. I don't really think it's the prairie dogs, because it feels like one thing rather than a bunch of them. And it doesn't feel like them, or like bunnies."

"What do you mean?"

"I can sort of sense living things. I know what things like them feel like because I have seen them where I felt their nature. I couldn't do that with whatever it is at the hill."

"But you're not sure?"

"Hey, gimme a break. I've only been ... like this for a few months."

"I understand. I was a boy before I changed, too."

"What? How did you... ?"

"I am in charge of the Elemental Database. I have access to all the information in the central registry." She mentally added "Including the parts that weren't in the stolen records."

We need to talk. After she leaves. Lena told Angel.

Angel hoped her reaction to Lena's comment would be interpreted as a reaction to finding out that the doctor knew her secret. That secret, anyway. The one about having been a boy.

Seeming to change subjects, she asked Angel "How are you doing with that change? Any problems?"

Angel described her struggles with defining her sexuality, and Lena's help in resolving parts of it. She also reiterated and expanded a little on her description of the Girl Boot Camp her relatives put her through. She also mentioned the advantage of having moved to a new place after all that, where she was only known as a girl.

The doctor asked her some general medical questions, and seemed satisfied with her answers. She thanked Angel and her parents for their time and cooperation, and left her card. Then she left.

She's on her way to interview David. Lena told her.

Let him know I told her the cover story about him and Pope Hill.

Already did. Robin, too.

What did you want to talk about, before?

There was more to the visit than she was saying. Someone got into the database she administers, and copied all the files about bio elementals. It didn't have the part about your past, but it did have your current information.