Chain of Crimes: Part 2

 Way over in Los Angeles, Amelia Finnegan was holed up in a wide studio/bedroom filled with computer equipment, hammering away at the keyboard like a typical Hollywood hacker would; except she was actually pumping out code in a command prompt window. It was a bedroom because she had a murphy bed installed in the back, and otherwise this room would’ve been rather Spartan-looking.

 Amelia’s terminal was almost as complex as the Jetts’. Two flat-screen monitors were hooked to a Windows CPU below a huge dark desk, and 3 old cube-case CRT monitors stood to either end, two stacked on the left, another on the right.

 As for what was on the screens, it was actually a little random. While the one Amelia was looking at had a large command prompt window filling with crazy code combinations, the other flat-screen showed a Skype chat with Sarah, left on “inactive” status so she could do her work, then report back when necessary, three standard windows showing files dug up from her previous hacks; The top left monitor had a camera view of the outside hallway, the one below was turned off; and the last screen, while somewhat staticky, was picking up a video feed on something new. This was no analog TV signal; it was an internet transmission from Router’s cybernetic transceiver implant.

 Amelia stopped typing to look at that monitor, and resumed her chat with Sarah, “Mrs. Jett, I’m picking up something on my end! Or um...I think Router’s found something!”

 “Yes, he’s here showing it to us right now!”

 Router’s voice buzzed though Amelia’s headphones like a weak cell phone connection, “Sorry about the weak feed, your base is sitting on the edge of my transmission range!”

 “Say what?”

 “I can’t send anything farther out than L.A., and you’re sitting right on the edge.”

 “But what the hell is it?” Amelia demanded with impatience.

 “It’s...It’s my husband’s old lab! All the way out in Colorado!” Sarah gasped.

 “You’re kidding. Why of all places would the GeneGang hide THERE?” Amelia asked with a shake of her head.

 Router answered, “Maybe it’s because of their background. According to the profiles we got from the police, apparently whatever powers these guys have, they appeared from some chemicals used in the lab...or rather, stolen from Howard on his way out, and so they’ve set up HQ there to keep making more!”

 “They’re limited?”

 “No, once a power chemical is in a subject’s bloodstream, it’s permanent unless neutralized with an antidote. Which reminds me, I’d better get Alan to reload that old gun just to be safe. Anyway, we don’t know exactly why they’ve relocated there, but it can’t be good.”

 Sarah turned in her chair, and continued, “You know, Router, for a cyborg you don’t look as buff as those in the movies.”

 “That’s because this limb isn’t for strength. I was an amputee and had to get it replaced years ago. What surprises me is how whatever liquid you guys...um, your husband put me in didn’t short out these implants. Oh, and call me Weston, I prefer Router as my hero name.”

 “By the way, Weston,” Amelia interrupted, “I like how you’re literally a walking internet router and telepath in one. Much better explanation than whatever nonsense Samantha Ford could pull off in this movie I was watching before I started working.” (Getting the references yet?)

 “Movie? What kind?” Sarah inquired.

 Amelia looked down at the floor, saw the DVD case and read it out loud: “The 11^th Hour, sequel to the 7^th Guest – 2016 20^th Anniversary Remake”.

 “Huh, never heard of it.”

 “I’m not surprised, the original 1996 version was a game and movie in one, but MAN did it suck, according to my Dad who played it back then. This remake is WAY better,” Amelia paused, then changed the subject, “Hey, Sarah, uh...you know that lab, is it okay if I use your credentials?”

 “Yeah, sure; the whole family had top security clearance. One second,” Sarah moved away from the webcam and dug through some old files on the computer. In a few minutes, she dug up a text note and emailed it to Amelia: “Login: SJett, Password: sustorm465”

 Carefully, the hacker typed those credentials. But to her surprise, the prompt read: “ERROR: NO USER REGISTERED IN DATABASE. ACCESS DENIED.”

 “Huh? Why is it saying ‘No user in database?’”

 Alan walked into the room, asked his mom what was happening; and he told Amelia over an open microphone, “Sorry, but I remotely wiped the servers a while ago and transferred the data to my laptop. The whole lab is a blank slate now.”

 “Then why am I hitting firewalls and security protocols?” Amelia asked with frustration.

 “My guess is the GeneGang put those up. You’ll have to break through them on your own, I’m afraid.”

 “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll check back in an hour or so.”

 “Thanks, see you later, Amelia.”

 “Bye.”

 The skype chat ended, and Router thought of something sneaky, “You know, these techno-psychic powers have always been fun, and I’ve got a trick up my sleeve I’d like to pull when we get to that lab.”

 “What is it?”

 “It’s a surprise, but there’s one word to it: Scaring.”

 “I like it, but let’s be sure not to give ourselves away when you do it.”

 “Got it.”

 Then another of the Jetts’ accomplices spoke up over the radio, “Thissss is Nargus, I have new intelligenccce for you.”

 “Nargus? Well, tell us what it is! But please try to tone down the hissing,” Alan replied.

 “I am sorry, it will take a long time to perfect that. I shall use Morse code instead.”

 Alan listened carefully as long and short beeps slowly chimed in on the radio, and he quickly typed them on a side keyboard into a word document. “THE SONS OF RA HAVE PERFECTED A DEADLY MANMADE VIRUS. STAY ALERT FOR CARRIERS IN YOUR AREA.”

 “A what?” Sarah asked puzzledly.

 “Exactly what it says, and that’s horrible!” Alan gasped.

 Alan returned to the work room, where Samantha was sketching ideas for abstract sculptures using an ordinary pencil. Finding his smartphone on the table, he dialed Lora’s number and passed the buck to Sam, “Looks like another mission’s coming up, and this time it sounds uber-serious!”

-----

 Lora was back home, taking a shower and currently in the stages of washing her long golden hair. The feel of Dove conditioner on her rubber locks was enticing, to say the least. Although the gel smoothed out the texture and didn’t make her fingers snap from one area to another like an inflated balloon, Lora couldn’t help but feel awesome in multiple ways about having such unique powers, all from a genetically bonding alien super-costume. Sure, there were other elastic girls out there, so she’d seen over the years, but this form was quite unique.

 Subconsciously, Lora’s chest and rump increased in size somewhat while she reveled in these thoughts. She noticed this when one hip brushed the side of the tiled wall, and a single thought reduced the size back to normal. Then she switched to rubbing her body down with a soap bar, greatly quickened by stretching her arm to any spot she wanted.

 By the time the shower was over and Lora had dressed into some jeans and a sweater, Mindy was waiting for her in the living room with Lora’s phone in hand. Apparently she’d missed a call from Alan. But just as she was about to call it back, all of a sudden a sharp pain assaulted her temples and made her feel a little dizzy. Her skin felt warm, and not in the good way. Stumbling back to the sink, Lora fumbled in one of the drawers for a thermometer, and stuck it under her tongue. After about 20 seconds, in which time the dizziness had increased by a few degrees, the thermometer read “102˚F”. Yep, a fever all right.

 Trying to hold back a sniffle from allergies, Lora moved over to her bed, laid down, and dialed her brother’s number.

 “Alan? You called?”

 “Yes, we’ve got some new intel, and it’s crazy important!”

 “Well, tell me, what is it?”

 “Two things: A) Router picked up a signal showing that the GeneGang are nestled in our family’s old genetics lab, and B) There’s a virus in our area developed by the Sons of Ra, and Nargus told us to stay away from carriers.”

 Her heart skipped a beat at that last sentence, but she stuttered, “V-v-virus? What...what kind of virus?”

 “We don’t know yet, but it’s deadly!”

 “Funny you should mention that, because I’m exhibiting some symptoms right now!”

 “Oh crud, like what?”

 “I have a fever of 102, dizziness when walking, and a stabbing pain in my temples! And to think I was just enjoying myself in the shower just--uh, never mind.”

 “Well, my advice then is to stay in bed. I’ll take care of Mindy for you, but tell Mr. Hearst about missing work. He’ll have to excuse you if this is newsworthy, and by now it probably is.”

 “Thank you so much, Alan. But uh, one more thing.”

 “Eh?”

 “I think I ran into a carrier when I was getting Mindy from school. A black kid sneezed on my neck while I was stretching towards Mindy, and somehow Germ-X didn’t kill it.”

 “Ooh, then that really is serious. That kid was definitely a carrier.”

 “All right, I’ll try to take care of myself. I just hope this doesn’t adversely affect my powers. The last thing I need is my limbs stretching everywhere or my head inflating like a balloon.”

 “Mmm...yeah, that is important. I’ll get Nightingale on this, too. Whatever this virus is, Emergency Man should be the guy for the job.”

 “Thanks. It’s so good to know that we have other heroes at our fingertips, metaphorically speaking. Frankly, I was afraid they’d dislike us for having been locked up by our Dad.”

 “Well, we took care of ‘em, trained them back to full status, and treated ‘em nicely. But it did take a while for them to know us. Anyway, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you back in about an hour.”

 “Okay, bye,” Lora ended the call just before entering a coughing fit.

-----

 Alan was busy in his workroom trying to find the ammo for Howard’s old dart rifle. Sarah helped him look, and after some digging through the stacks of industrial black cases, she dug up 6 magazines of chemical darts, with 5 darts in each clip. Alan loaded the first one just in case, stuffed the remaining magazines in a pouch strapped to his belt, and slung the gun’s strap over his shoulder.

 Samantha, however, had to go home because her dad was coming back from his business trip in Arizona. In her stead, Alan had called in 2 heroes for backup: Emergency Man and Io, with Router also coming along.

 Alan gave his mother a gentle hug, whispered, “I’ll be back,” then proceeded out the entrance and down the freight elevator to wait for EM’s helicopter to come in. Fortunately, Alan already had his suit, earpiece and belt on, although the faint smell reminded him to get it seriously dry-cleaned, since machine washing, while effective, could only do 2/3 of the job.

 For some reason, Emergency Man’s red helicopter didn’t show up in the span of a whole hour. It wasn’t like him to take so long to get here thanks to that incredible response record of his. And Alan had heard over the transmission that Io would be on that chopper as well. As for Router, he had already gone ahead in his own car, and would be sending back reports. As of yet, he’d received none.

 But just when Alan thought of going back inside, an unmarked carrier truck pulled into the parking lot. From what he could see, that truck was designed for hauling refrigerated cargo, but what would it be needed for at a bookbinding factory? Then what seemed to be the driver walked out, and approached Alan directly. He had a cap tilted low so his face wasn’t that visible, but he spoke, “Um, is this the residence of...Mr. Alan Jett?”

 “Yes...it is...” Alan answered slowly and with a tone of suspicion.

 Out of nowhere, the man put down his clipboard and pulled a bag over Alan’s head as quick as a mad cat, then started hauling him by the shoulders into the back portion of the truck. Slamming the door and latching it tight, that mysterious figure scrambled back into the cab, switched on the freezing unit, and drove off to an unknown destination.

 Alan wasn’t bound by any ropes, and he didn’t suffocate in that time, so it was easy to get the bag off. As for being able to escape, that was another ball game. Alan started banging on the walls of the van, and shouting, “Hey! Let me out! Open this door or I’m calling the police! I mean it! STOP! THIS! TRUCK!” But his anger and vigor started to drain as the air in the van grew close to 46 degrees, around the temperature of a fridge.

 After about 5 minutes of those futile attempts, Alan tried growing in size again, but to save power, he threw the belt to the floor and safely tucked the earpiece away next to a couple of boxes. He summoned his strength and grew at a fairly slow speed, feeling the cold steel of the carrier strain under the continuous growth. He could hear the metal groaning in protest, and his knuckles and scalp began to warp the surfaces. But then the truck stopped and he felt something even colder than the carrier itself. A concentrated cold spot near Alan’s right knee made him want to shrink immediately, but the chill was already spreading through him, and his knee was frozen to the spot – which fortunately wasn’t that far off the floor. Something was so cold it was lowering his internal body temperature! He would suffer mild hypothermia if this kept on for long! Finally, he yelled, “Okay! Okay! I’ll stay put, just stop that!” And Alan resentfully returned to normal size.

 Then he gasped in shock at the realization that he hadn’t picked up Mindy yet, and he feared the worst. Immediately, Alan’s right hand darted for the earpiece and he called frantically, “Mayday! Mayday! This is Alan Jett! Can anyone hear me? I’ve been locked inside a refrigerator truck and the temperature’s dropping fast! I haven’t been able to get Mindy yet, and backup has not yet arrived! Anyone copy? Over,”

 Static was all that came through for a few minutes, then Adam Nightingale’s soldier-ish voice reported back, “Alan, is that you? I’m having trouble finding you on the radar, but we’re close by. I had to change course once that transmission went through. Where do you think that truck’s heading?”

 “I wouldn’t know, there are no windows in this thing!” Alan coughed as the digital thermometer read 31 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s already freezing in here, literally!”

 “Wait a minute; I’m moving in lower...” Adam paused, “Yes, that truck’s headed for your sister’s apartment! Over,”

 “Crap, that’s where Mindy is! Can you get there before this truck does?”

 “I don’t think I can, it’s a cramped section of town and I don’t have clearance to land. Io could try, though; she can fly.”

 “Good. Io, are you getting all this?”

 “Affirmative, Alan. What’s the address of that apartment?”

 Hastily, Alan recalled that address, “2826 Vega Avenue, 3^rd floor, Apartment C.”

 (Author’s note: I keep forgetting what the exact address was in previous episodes. So this is it, and I’ll have to remember it.)

 “Got it, is Mindy still there?”

 “Should be, I just know my sister’s there, but she’s sick with a...very serious virus.”

 “Roger, I’ll see what I can do, Io out.”

-----

 Io, also known as Kim Callahan, was a 23-year old woman of Hawaiian descent, (See “Hero-villain list” for powers) with a skin-tight costume with patterns of molten rock and an erupting volcano in the shape of a bird. When she leaped out of the helicopter, her pyrokinesis summoned a phoenix-like construct of pure fire that allowed her to fly safely to the apartment complex below. Kim noticed that truck rounding the corner into the parking lot, so she raced up the stairs in nervous trepidation. Coming across Apartment C, she knocked on the door and waited. Mindy opened the door, but stepped back a little as she didn’t know this heroine.

 “Who is this?” She asked timidly.

 “I’m Io, your parents know me. We’ve gotta go, your uncle’s in trouble and someone’s coming after you with a truck!”

 “Should I turn into Double Mindy?”

 “That’s a good idea, but hurry!”

That mysterious fridge truck was already in the parking lot, and the suspicious driver was now ascending the stairs. Mindy made it into the hallway, and both she and Io started running back to the entrance. However, that man in the cap had already arrived, and he made a dive for Mindy.

 Io, noticing this, blasted him hard with a blazing ball of fire, and she shouted, “Run!” to Mindy. The girl took that order without question and ran hastily back down the stairs. But unlike Kim, Mindy wasn’t in as good shape, and her 8-and-a-half year-old body already tired out on the bottom of the stairs. She attempted to hide under them and mold herself against the wall, but that guy, again, was one step ahead and happened to be coming back down.

 Mindy couldn’t help but shiver in fear, and that fear prevented her from maintaining camouflage. The man noticed this and inspected the wall below the stairs. He grabbed at the mass of her body, felt the scent and texture of DoubleMint chewing gum, and ripped it straight from the wall. Then, all of a sudden, he pressed his other hand to Mindy’s gooey body and it almost instantly froze solid, with frost on the surface and no longer rippling in the air. Mindy tried to turn back to human shape, but to no avail. She nearly cried from all this happening at once. The mysterious dude unlocked the sliding door to the carrier once again, threw the girl’s body inside, then thrust the door shut again and locked it even tighter this time.

 By the time Io made it downstairs – that guy had put up quite a fight and taken a lot out of her, the truck was already pulling away. She fired beams of blue fire at the tires, but missed as it rounded the corner and sped off.

 “This is Io calling Nightingale. Whoever was driving that truck has just made off with Mindy; I’m returning to the chopper now.”

-----

 Alan had spent hours and hours trying to break out of that frigid steel prison. He kept banging and kicking the walls, more often when the driver stopped for breaks, hoping someone would hear him. But unknown to Alan, the driver used his ice powers to shoo away strangers with cold air. His screams didn’t go through the metal at all, either, and over time they slurred into animal-sounding grunts. Mindy was nothing but a frozen blob of gum on the floor, kept in hibernation. He hoped she would last a lot longer due to being made of a different material entirely. Eventually, he slumped to the floor in exhaustion, and by the time the 8^th hour rolled by, Alan already fallen unconscious from the chill of -42 degrees, but the last thing to go through his mind was the fear of hypothermia, once again. He was the only real victim who was in confirmed danger of dying through extreme cold. Who knew how long rubber girls would last; He didn’t long it took for Mindy to pass out, but the suffering even a civilian child would have had to endure in that cold was the stuff of nightmares.

 As for the three on Emergency Man’s chopper, Adam kept a steady course to Colorado, following the truck carefully on the Radar and hi-tech scanner array. He stayed above the clouds to keep out of the no-fly zones, obviously.

 By the time the truck reached its destination, it was about sundown. The driver had backed it up to a loading bay, and the unconscious bodies were loaded onto a conveyor, then hauled on gurneys to individual medical rooms on another floor, secured with ID-card locks. These were the examination rooms for previous human subjects tested with metahuman RNA compound injections, those who didn’t turn out as lucky as Alan with manifested powers. Fortunately, heating was on in those rooms and both of the Jetts regained their internal body heat in a period of hours. But they were still unconscious.

 Adam’s chopper landed quietly on an appropriate helipad used for the aircraft the lab used to own, back when Howard had apprehended the test subjects. A cold shiver went down Kim’s spine as she stepped off the vehicle, as all that information had been fed to her by Alan and the other scientists not long after she stepped out of that tank, and remembered it all. Adam and Weston felt no different.

 But Weston turned to the two heroes and asked them, “Ready?”

 They nodded, and he commanded, “Let’s move in!”

-----

 Alan’s passing out turned into a vague dream as his brain started coming back into sensuality. Visions of being in an unknown lab, blurred together from his family base and VelociTech Industries came up, but this time his father was not present. Instead, robots with cuboid heads shoved him into a man-sized glass box and locked him in, and he looked about. In a second cubicle was a skeleton of metal that eerily reminded him of a Terminator with no skin; one of the robots proceeded to an 80’s-era computer terminal and hammered in some commands to start some kind of process. Then a beam of blue light slid up and down his body through the glass, apparently scanning it for something. Over in the other cubicle, a scanner emitting red light, disturbingly, was replicating Alan’s body, down to every tiny detail, onto that mechanical skeleton. When the process ended, a blank-eyed copy of Alan Jett stood silently in the cubicle, somehow even more terrifying than his father’s right eye distorted through a magnifying glass. Then one of the robotic blockheads (wink wink) released the robot, and with one keystroke, it stepped with a stiff gait over to the box where Alan was, unlocked it, and Alan himself stepped out.

 Disturbingly, the android uttered, “Original is obsolete; must terminate immediately!” in a monotone form of his own voice. Then the android reached for Alan’s neck by one hand, grabbed his scalp with the other, and brutally snapped the spinal cord in half. Right there, the dream ended.

-----

 Adam broke out an LED flashlight, as the lights were off in a maintenance corridor they broke into from the outside. The cramped brown hallway made moving forward very difficult, especially with Adam in front with all that buff in the way. But some more minutes led him to a door marked “Loading Bay A-4”, and he took that door immediately, with his comrades following close behind.

 An examination of the bay doors indicated that one was indeed occupied by the refrigerator truck, but there was no sign of the prisoners. But Io released a wave of infrared light that revealed heat traces of wheels curving into another corridor and towards an elevator. A tiny UV flashlight that Adam used revealed a fingerprint on the button to basement level 2.

 “Man, would we call ourselves crazy-prepared?” Router asked nonchalantly.

 “Nah, I’m crazy-prepared, Kim’s powers are just very useful.”

 “Thanks, Doc,” Kim replied with a blush that showed through her dark tan skin.

 The elevator stopped at a dark green and sterile white corridor with pale yellow doors on both sides. The two directly ahead of them had traces of water on the floor, and looking through windows on the doors showed that Alan and Mindy were indeed in there, sleeping. Alan had dozed off again after his nightmare, thinking it would go away.

 “Wow, those guys look kinda wet after they were locked in a freezer truck. Mindy’s dripping off the table there, literally!” Kim remarked in a low voice.

 “Whatever. It’s Alan that needs the most attention, so I’ll go in there, you two take care of Mindy. Um...” his voice trailed off when he noticed the card locks. “Damn, what kind of hospital locks patients in with ID cards?”

 “Insane asylums, maybe?” Kim asked in a wild guess.

 “Move over, I got this,” Router interrupted while extending his computer probe from the right index finger in his cyborg arm.

 He first plugged the probe into a socket in the scanner, and downloaded its parameters so he’d know what sort of magnetic code would be necessary to open the lock. Then he made a “Rock-on” or “Y” sign with his hand and deployed a magnetized metal strip that spanned between the fingers. He carefully slid it through the lock, and to everyone’s surprise, the light turned green, and it unlocked the door. Router repeated the process with the second lock, and came out with the same result.

-----

 Adam stepped carefully into the room where Alan was still sleeping. Looking around, he didn’t find the place half bad for a research facility’s med bay. There was even a tray of food on the floor, still warm judging from the moisture he felt from the larger plate cover. Another thing on the floor, though, was a tablet that showed a strange computerized female face with H.R. Giger-like green lines pulsing in and out from the edges. He simply turned the tablet off and whispered in Alan’s ear, telling him to wake up. It took several tries, but he eventually came around.

 Alan moaned, “Oh God, where am I? Did someone take me to the hospital?”

 “Not exactly; we’re in your family’s old lab.”

 “Oh yeah...that’s where we wanted to go...” he paused to yawn and stretch his arms.

 “How do you feel, Alan? I imagine being locked in a freezer truck was no picnic. You should be really lucky that you didn’t freeze to death.”

 “Better now, because this place has heating. I still feel kinda cold, though. And I had this dream where the Borg from Star Trek tried to assimilate me, after another dream where robots cloned me and had me terminated.”

 “Youch, that’s terrible, two nightmares in a row. But let’s check to make sure you’re okay for real.”

 Adam paused the conversation and rooted through the drawers – which thankfully were all unlocked, and in one of the topmost drawers he located a digital thermometer and a plug-in compact pulsoximeter.

 “Hey, wouldn’t you be carrying that kind of stuff on a regular basis?” Alan asked still tiredly.

 “No, but I always keep a stash of medical supplies in my chopper. It’s more of a fireman’s gear that I haul around when people need rescuing. Today, I’m travelling light because this isn’t technically a rescue mission. Anyway,” Adam paused while walking back towards Alan who was now sitting upright on the gurney. Alan took the thermometer and placed it in his ear, then removed one of the gloves and stuck his index finger in the electronic heart-rate scanner, while Adam took the other end and plugged it into an outlet in the floor. His temperature read 92.9 degrees Fahrenheit, so he still needed something warm, but his heart rate and pulse were fine. Adam asked him while turning on an overhead adjustable lamp, “Now, I’m going to need you to take off that suit, as your hand looks very pale.”

 “You got it, Doc,” Alan replied. Lowering one of the handlebars, Alan climbed off the wheeled bed, stood up, took off the belt and unzipped his costume. His gray T-shirt was terribly moist from his sweat having been frozen and melted again, but he took it off anyways. Leaving the “pants” of the suit on, Adam was disturbed to notice what happened to his friend’s skin: From the neck down, Alan’s arms and torso were completely gray, almost blue, and in a couple of spots on his arms, rashes from burns had shown up.

 “Ooh, you’ve got hives from cold exposure! Well, there aren’t many options, but if we want to take down the GeneGang, I have a couple ideas.”

 “Like what?”

 Adam walked over to a linen closet on the right side of the room, pulled out a simple white blanket, and tossed it to Alan.

 “Blankets and Allergy pills are all I can think of right now for short-term cures. The way you described everything makes me think of a news article I read back in May of 6 years ago. Someone driving a truck like that locked inspectors inside on purpose because they ticked him off about something. www.usatoday.com/story/news/wo…” Adam paused and looked at an auxiliary storage cabinet, only he found it locked. Fumbling in one of his uniform pockets, the rescue operator fished out a set of lock picks and used one to unlock the cabinet. Inside, he found a bottle of Zyrtec, and handed it to Alan, asking him to take two pills. Finally, Alan draped the blanket over himself, and Adam brought the still-warm tray of food to his “patient”.

 Lifting the covers, Alan noticed that the plates held a bowl of chicken soup, wrapped crackers, an apple, a glass of water, and a brownie. He pondered as to just how hostile the GeneGang seemed to be, even though he still had no information on them yet. Regardless, the warm food helped along with the blanket.

-----

 Io, meanwhile, had been helping Mindy back to consciousness. She had to collect all the pieces of the little girl’s body, which fortunately had now congealed into blobs of gum; then mold them all back together. Io had no idea how elastic girls managed to function in life-threatening situations like extreme cold. It was a weakness, no doubt, but how much damage would they actually endure compared to real humans like Alan?

 Regardless, Mindy reformed and sat up groggily. Io spoke first, “Hey, Mindy. Are you all right?”

 “Hi...ohh,” she started to speak but couldn’t form any words because of how groggy she was after that cold exposure.

 “You’re cold, aren’t you?” Kim assumed. Mindy just nodded, then Kim projected a soft wave of warm air like what one would get from a heater, and soon Mindy felt like she was wrapped up in a warm, comfy blanket. After a few minutes, Io asked, “Does that feel better?”

 “Yeah, much better,” the little girl yawned while stretching her arms longer than a normal human’s. Then she inquired, “Where are we?”

 Io gulped, “Your grandpa’s old lab. Some bad guys have taken it over, but we’re here to stop them.” Although she wasn’t that confident in those words, and anxiously worried about the state of things back in Centropolis. She looked through the window, and saw Router pacing back and forth in the hall, also deep in thought.

 Then Io saw Mindy looking at her in confusion out of the corner of her eye, and stopped worrying again.