Alien vs. Alien

cleaning was left up to me, we’d be decorating in the finest of Washington, D.C. dust. I didn’t hate housekeeping, but we weren’t exactly best buds forever, either.
    Jeff grunted. “So, where do we start?”
    “Basement,” Cliff said. “Let’s do this quickly so you can all get back to prepping for the party tonight.”
    “You all go on ahead,” Chuckie said. “I need to talk to Kitty for a minute.”
    Jeff gave us both a searching look, shrugged, kissed my cheek, and he and the other men trotted off. This was the result of massive personal growth on Jeff’s part, much of which had happened because he’d finally caught on that Chuckie was no longer in love with me and was, in fact, in love with Naomi Gower, who was one of Jeff’s cousins.
    I waited until the others were out of earshot. “Okay, what’s going on?”
    “I need to run some things by you, and I don’t want an audience for it.”
    “Is this about the two dead Representatives and the one really sick one?”
    “No.” He gave me the “you so crazy” look. I got that look a lot. “Why would those incidents, however tragic, be related to tonight’s party or any of us in any way?otheJe
    “Dude, I figured it was safer to ask. You know how they teach you how to spell ‘assume,’ right?”
    Chuckie shook his head and laughed, then led me down the hall into Jeff’s office, closing the door behind us. He sat at the edge of Jeff’s desk. “I need you to talk to ACE.”
    ACE was a collective superconsciousness I’d managed to channel into Paul Gower what seemed like aeons ago but was, in reality, only about two years prior. Gower was not only one of Chuckie’s future brothers-in-law, but he was also the current Supreme Pontifex for the A-Cs, or, as I liked to think of it, their Pope With Benefits.
    “Why don’t you ask Paul whatever it is you need to ask ACE?”
    “I have. He says that ACE doesn’t want to talk to me.”
    “Huh.” ACE had never had any issue with Chuckie in the past. “What do Naomi and Abigail think?” The Gower girls were the most powerful of the talented A-Cs, to the point where no one, not even Chuckie and the girls themselves, knew the full extent of their powers.
    At least, they had been. Until the interstellar invasion.
    Naomi and Abigail had used their powers to protect all the various D.C. monuments at the National Mall—and all the people inside them. They’d managed to preserve our nation’s capital and history as well as many thousands of innocent people, but it had come at a cost. They’d had to use so much power for such an extended period of time, it had burned them both out. No one was sure if the burnout was temporary or permanent. The girls seemed to be handling this well, but I didn’t sleep with them, in that sense.
    Chuckie shook his head. “They haven’t talked to ACE since . . . right after the invasion attempt.”
    “Operation Destruction was pretty hard on everyone.”
    “Yes, it was. We test Mimi and Abby all the time. They still have no more powers than a non-talented A-C.”
    “I know you’ll get mad at me for the suggestion, but have you considered giving them a Surcenthumain boost?” Surcenthumain had been created by a whole host of our enemies, and it was the reason Jeff, his cousin, Christopher White, and Christopher’s “lost aunt” Serene all had beyond expanded powers. It was also the reason I wasn’t fully human anymore, Jamie having done the mother and child feedback that turned me into a semi-alien.
    Chuckie sighed. “All moral and ethical issues aside, Mimi and Abby aren’t handling being ‘normal’ as well as they think they are, so I’ve thought about it. But I don’t want to risk it without some sort of confirmation that it would actually work.”
    “What does Tito think?”
    “Doctor Hernandez isn’t convinced that we have enough data to safely guess, and none of us like the idea of using Mimi and Abby, let alone anyone else, as test subjects.”
    Chuckie was giving me a look that said I was asking stupid questions. I decided to take the logic leap. “So that’s why you want to talk to ACE.”
    “Finally. Yes.”
    “Does Paul know why you want to talk to ACE?”
    “Yes.”
    “Huh. Well, okay, let me give it a shot.” I’d been the one who’d figured out what was going on with ACE when we’d first “met,” and therefore ACE had a soft spot for me. As Reader put it, ACE cared most about me and Gower.
    Because I never wanted ACE to