The Ongoing Adventures of Stupendous Girl!

Götterdämmerung (Part 7 of 7) – Page 2 28 Sep 2010

The strange woman went on. Was she the leader of the two? The spokesperson? Was she the one who shot Lewis? Anything seemed possible.

“We’re with the police – a special section. We’ve been on Lewis’ case since he faked his own death.”

Faked his own death? Well, if he’d been alive not five minutes ago and threatening his former fiancée with a gun… Irene decided to stick with her last thought, that anything seemed possible. Almost against her will. Irene’s eyes started to flicker open.

“We knew he was up to something, but we hadn’t told anyone else. We weren’t sure who to trust – it seemed like he might have some help within the RCMP. Maybe it was a mistake, but we did our best. And John…”

Now, they had Irene’s attention. She propped herself up, with great effort, to a kneeling position and stared intently at the pair, both wearing dark black suits and sunglasses that gave them the look of Secret Service types. The woman was indeed holding a rifle, and if Irene found it odd that she was wearing men’s clothing, she said nothing about it.

The strange man winced slightly, involuntarily, at being seen. The woman  didn’t, though. To be sure, it would have been better if Irene hadn’t looked at them, and they certainly couldn’t stay around long enough for the real police to get here and see them, and start asking questions. But what harm did it do for Irene to know their faces? If they were lucky, if John lived and they could cover up everything that had happened tonight well enough, the Project would reassign them. For a partial failure like this, where John had been shot on their watch, they’d be lucky to get sent to Siberia. If John died, or if their cover-up was less than complete (in short, if partial failure turned to complete failure, full stop) they’d be dead. The Project would see to that. In either case, Irene would never see them again.

“We’ve already called an ambulance for John. He’ll be on his way to Port Manteau General by now. When you’re ready, you should go visit him.”

“I will.”

She said it with a surprising certainty, a surprise even to herself. But if these cops had called an ambulance already, it meant he wasn’t dead yet and there was still hope. That was more hope than she’d had before. So she’d go see him, and she’d go get her powers back from the strange old lady, and maybe if she was really lucky things would go back to normal, or as close as it ever got to normal in her life.

No, wait, she thought. Not normal. Stupendous. She would be stupendous again.

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