“Is that all it takes?”
I shrug awkwardly. “It doesn’t hurt that I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Thank you for stopping me today. And thank you for being the hero that I didn’t know I needed.”
A shudder runs through his body…or maybe it’s mine.
“Not just today. That’s over forever. But I’ll be your hero whenever you want.”
“Should we get you tights and a cape?”
“Very funny, woman.”
“What? I’m sure you’d look good in them.”
“Woman.”
“Woman.”
“Fine. I’m going to sleep, but just know I don’t mind having you around at all. With or without the cape, you’re still my hero.”
Debrief
Max
I shouldn’t have left. It’s too soon. Fiona needs me.
More like you need to see her to assure yourself she’s still fine.
“So, have you thought of redecorating?” Everett asks as we walk into my secret lair. “It’s all a little sterile.”
That boy is going to drive me out of my mind. “The draw isn’t in here.” I use a biometric scan and a voice-activated password to enter an unassuming set of doors. “This is the draw.”
“Wow…is that…”
“The world’s most complex supercomputer with all the bells and whistles that haven’t been fully developed, let alone released to the public. These are all my prototypes.” Well, not all of them, but a lot of them.
“What can it do?”
Everything. “I’ll let you try it out later.” The kid is going to give me gray hair.
“Could you set off a nuke from this thing?”
Or an aneurysm. “Don’t even think about it. I’m treating you like a mature adult, act like one.”
He nods. “So, you and Fea…you’re good, right?”
“Yeah, we’re good. Instead of my love life, why don’t we talk about that bunker of yours? And all the helicopters that showed up.”
Everett sinks down into a chair by the main terminal. I’m going to need to add another one for him…but it’s going to need some training wheels…for now, at least.
“Pull up a map. I’ll show you where it is.”
Ten minutes later, I’m staring at a bunch of trees and a one-lane road. “There?”
“It’s a black-ops bunker. It was built by the US government back in the fifties and ‘decommissioned’ soon after. From the information I was able to get when I poked around in there, they had about two hundred people living down there. Most were doctors and military.”
