Chapter Text
+April 1994+
They'd meant the invitation as a sock to the face. Marjorie Husted University, the shiniest new private university in Houston, already fully accredited, would be greatly honored to have an eminent physicist and innovator in the space field blah blah blah words. Hey, Dr. English, America's favorite--or most infamous, anyway--octogenarian multimillionaire inventor businesswoman smartypants. Come teach a year of classes as a visiting professor to Texas's freshest crop of wannabe astronauts! We're so close to NASA headquarters, after all. We'd love to have you. It'll be fun.
And it would have been. Jade wouldn't call herself the teaching type, but she was eighty-four years old and could use a change from the everyday humdrum of reinventing science and running her competitors into the ground. Even her regular jaunts to Bengal (the People's Republic of Bangladesh now, she reminded herself--had been reminding herself since 1947) to study and enjoy the familiar, fertile fields off the Ganges had felt a little...dry. Wrangling freshmen could be the perfect sabbatical, she thought.
But Marjorie Husted University was a Betty Crocker property. Jade would find no opportunity for an invigorating game of tiddlywinks here, not when she was going up against her grandmother.
Of course, Jade always made business a pleasure. Usually she managed it by shooting things she didn't like in the face. And MHU was in Texas, so that particular idea wasn't off the table. And she had to admit the chance to sabotage Granny's next brainwashing plant brought a sharp little stab of glee to the old cor humanum.
On the one hand, going would be a pointless risk, and her war with Crockercorp was far from over. On the other hand, at least it wouldn't be boring.
The decision took no time at all.
Jade called a company-wide pow-wow to let them know she'd be taking the summer off to draw up lesson plans before shipping off to Houston, where she'd be teaching an experimental astronomy course. She'd be leaving Skaianet in their capable hands, and they'd better--Jade told them with a canine gleam--take care of her baby. Some giggled nervously, but most grinned back with the same fierce fondness. Looking over her company, this den of wolves she'd brought together, Jade felt not just accomplished, but proud. Instead of voicing it, she reminded them that she wanted regular reports and that she'd be keeping an eye on both stocks and products while she was away.
Her CFO clapped her on the shoulder on his way back to his desk, and Jade knew they knew without her saying it. They'd keep her pack safe until her return.
That left Jade free to draft the president of Marjorie Husted a gushing, ebullient letter of acceptance, as sweet as Grandmother Betty's famous brownies. She made a special trip out to a friend at IBM for a custom-made, hideously fluorescent lime typewriter ribbon just for the occasion.
She hoped whoever read it got a headache and signed it,
Dr. Jade English, M.A., M.S., Ph.D.
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medalist 1968
TIME Person of the Year 1976
Faraday Medalist 1989
IEEE John von Neumann Medalist 1992
Woodrow Wilson Awardee for Corporate Citizenship 1992
"And humble, too," she cackled before sealing the envelope with her teeth.
+August 1994+
Jade arrived a month early to ensure she'd have all the equipment and textbooks she'd need. She thought she'd get a good sniff around the campus, too, but setting up her classroom--they gave her sole use of a small auditorium in a brand new physics building--took more of her attention than she'd planned. She had to familiarize herself with sliding-panel blackboards and projectors her instructors could only have dreamed of. The walls were too bare, so she ordered extra posters of nebulae and spectral diagrams that she then had to correct herself on taped-up sheets of green and yellow construction paper.
But she couldn't complain about the lab gear waiting for her in the Colonel Hilary Sassacre Center for the Physical Sciences. Telescopes, spectrographs, photomultipliers, diffraction gratings, and computers--everything they gave her was highest-end, almost (but never quite) as impressive as what she worked with at Skaianet. And it all came in that ubiquitous Betty Crocker red. Jade had to put up with it, of course. She couldn't just reject free tech, and while the budget they'd allotted her was generous to the point of nausea, she didn't think the university would take kindly to her using it to replace sixty brand-new computers with her company's own inventions.
That didn't mean she couldn't sneak back into the labs at night and crack open the hardware, remove the brainwave-altering implants within, and erase the subliminal messages from every program. But that meant more time she couldn't spend snooping around the other departments and administrative offices. And she had to take more catnaps in the cute little office they'd given her, with its comfortable leather chairs and big window. She made sure to rearrange the furniture so the best sniper could only look in and weep.
Her TAs hadn't gotten to campus yet, so she took all the laboratory set-up upon herself. When the physics department chair, a liver-spotted old man from Calcutta (no, Kolkata now) who eagerly switched to Bengali whenever he spoke to her, found her for the fifth time at the top of a ladder without a spotter, he finally sat down with her across one of the lab benches.
"Dr. English," he said, hands folded just so on the tabletop, "please, for the love of goodness and everything holy, especially the personal happiness I feel when I walk into a room and see no bloody body splattered all about--please, find someone to help you do these things until the holidays are over. For me. For my own peace of mind."
Jade scrutinized his face for any sign of scorn or sabotage, but found none. Most of the faculty at MHU were average, if eccentric, folk; they had no idea what monster ultimately signed their paychecks. Professor Dutta had innocent intentions, if vaguely patronizing ones. And Jade liked him. He lived two blocks from campus with his son, his daughter-in-law, and two overweight flat-coated retrievers he'd named Sarama and Sagan.
So she laughed a little, leaned back, and let it go. "If you say so, Ijay! But only because I wouldn't want you to have a heart attack on me."
Dutta smiled at her. "If you don't mind my asking, Dr. English, how old are you this year?"
"Oh, I'd be," she said in a slow creak, pretending not to know, "only about eighty-four. Why?"
The crows' feet at his eyes crinkled even more deeply with his unexpectedly wide grin. "I'm sixty-three. Good day, Mother, and do take care."
His laugh was just as broad as his smile, and Jade was still chuckling when she left the building later. She exited smack into the start of an afternoon thunderstorm. A boy stood smoking just outside the door. He'd pressed his back flat to the wall to get out of the rain and tucked both hands into the pockets of his track jacket.
"Aren't you hot in that?" she asked, still grinning. Even with the rain, it was at least ninety degrees out in this part of Texas.
The boy glanced at her--or she thought he did, it was hard to tell behind the knock-off Ray-Bans he wore. She couldn't see much of his face at all between the sunglasses and his long, shaggy hair. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and turned away from her to exhale, which she appreciated. "You know it," he drawled tonelessly.
Jade nodded, in good humor, and read the sky. The mass of thunderheads above didn't look like it would budge any time soon. She could feel the kid's eyes on her, and she realized idly that he shouldn't be a student, since even orientation wouldn't start for another two weeks. The dorms weren't open. If he didn't live near here, he'd have a long way to go in this downpour.
"If you stub that out, I'll let you in where it's dry," she offered.
He did look at her now, and she could just make out the arch of two raised eyebrows over the frames of his glasses. "Grandmom, I'm touched, really," he started, but she cut him off with a punch to the arm that made him drop his smoke.
"Don't 'Grandmom' me, wiseass." Jade folded her arms over her chest and smirked at the look he gave her, rubbing his arm. "It just so happens I could use an extra hand or two setting things up before classes start. So what will it be, whippersnapper? In or out?"
"Welp." He stared down forlornly at his already-soggy cigarette, then ground it the rest of the way out with the heel of his Converse. "Now that you've made it clear you only want me for my body, ma'am, how could I say no?"
She held the door open for him and cuffed his other arm as he passed through. "Good answer."
He tossed her a hurt look over his shoulder. "Hey, handle with care. I have a strict no-return policy on damaged merchandise."
"Well, it's all right if I have to take you home. I made extra sure to pick an apartment with a pet-friendly policy."
The boy laughed, if it could be called that. It was a voiceless breath through the nose and a half-moon smile, but he let her steer him forward without complaint.
+September 1994+
His name was Dave, and he worked at the video store across the street that ran behind the H. Sassacre Center, which he affectionately called "The Sass." His boss's daughter had asthma and he banned smoking on the premises on principle, so Dave would hop across the street on breaks. He'd just been enjoying an after-work drag in his usual spot when the clouds broke open, and then, well, she knew the rest.
("Kidnapping," he called it. "Undocumented Tex-Mex slave labor."
"Community service!" she retorted. "Now get up there and hand me those Dobsonians, I've got a better place to store them for now. No, not those--the big telescopes."
"As the wicked witch commands."
"Don't test me, my pretty.")
Dave held his All-Stars together with duct tape and a prayer and didn't seem to own more than two pairs of pants, but somehow he'd gotten his hands on one of the priciest-looking camcorders on the market. Jade suspected it might not even be on the market yet; he answered evasively about the make and model, and when she asked for specs, all he ever gave her was incomprehensible mumbling about DIF blocks and 4:1:1 chroma subsampling. He was a cagey, hopelessly gangly bundle of bleached hair and bravado, and, luckily for Jade, he was just tall enough to reach the top laboratory shelves without the ladder Professor Dutta seemed so harried about.
And it was nice, actually, to have his help. Jade hadn't realized how much the work was taking out of her. Small wonder she'd been napping so much.
"So you're not in school?" She asked the third day in a row he turned up to help her.
"Nah." He cursed as a box she handed him turned out to be heavier than he'd expected, but he managed to hoist it into an overhead cabinet. "No offense, Abuelita, but I've got better things to do with my time than catch flies while some egghead drones on about old white dead guys. Oh, man, that one was good, I gotta write that one down." Dave's voice dropped into a distant mutter. "Catching flies on the graves of dead white guys, something about slaves, turning soil into spoils, toil, yeah, sloughed mortal coil. Hell yes, that's the fresh shit."
Jade snorted and nudged the back of his head with a rolled-up poster of the solar system. "Well," she said and then chose not to continue until he lifted his eyebrows to show she had his full attention. "Are you free on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons once classes start?"
Dave mulled the question over and shrugged. "I could make myself free. Go full Abe Lincoln on the Strider Confederacy, emancipate the hell out of these future dates. Said Moses down in Egypt land, let my weekdays go." He waited for her to be impressed. She tapped her fingers against her elbow. He sighed. "I can talk to my boss, I guess. Why? Are you still gonna be shifting stuff around after orientation? You need a TA for Boxology 101?"
"Yes, Dave, that is exactly what I teach here, all the fancy telescopes and computers you're moving around are just to impress people. I was thinking," she continued before he could weave that into some other nonsensical rhapsody, "that I might like to have these classes recorded. For posterity! I'm only going to do this once, and when you get to be my age, you start wanting to put things away for the future."
He tilted his head a millimeter, and Jade knew she'd taken him off-guard. "So, what, you want it on tape?"
"Exactly! You're always talking about cameras, so I thought it might be fun." She made a box of her thumbs and pointer fingers and smiled at him through the frame. "But if you're not interested, I guess I can ask the A/V department..."
"Whoa, hey, did I say I wasn't interested."
Dave looked at her with a quiet thoughtfulness she hadn't seen on him before. Somehow, it made him seem even younger, more cautious of a world he didn't have the experience to own. She wouldn't go to the A/V department, she realized. Jade couldn't trust anyone who wouldn't answer directly to her; the Batterwitch had her ways to twist the media to her own purposes. So she weathered Dave's regard patiently and likewise took his measure.
He was a kid, she thought. A boy with silly notions of grandeur and little more. But still--that little meant he was more. He had ambition. She'd seen it in how he handled his camera, and she saw it now in his even, unmoving gaze. Or maybe it was something else, that unsaid hunger behind his sunglasses.
The ones who came to Jade hungry were the quickest to bite and hold for her.
"I'll pay you," she said.
That broke the spell. "How much?"
She told him, knowing it wouldn't matter, knowing he just needed an excuse to accept whatever it was that he wanted from her. When MHU's fall term started a week later, Dave beat her to every lecture, a mute, steady shadow behind the tripod at the back of the room.
+November 1994+
"Anyone who so much as breathes the word 'midterm' in my hearing--and I have excellent hearing for a woman my age," Jade warned them, waving her newspaperkind with sparkling sternness, "will get a swift whack to the snout. Leave your TAs alone! They won't grade any faster with you breathing down their necks. TAs, no stipend this week if you give in to peer pressure! Believe me, I will find out! Does anyone have any more questions?" she asked over the end-of-class rustling and chattering. They were over time, as always, but the kids never seemed to mind. Most of them, if they'd had evening classes scheduled after hers, dropped them or transferred to another section. She took a certain amount of territorial pleasure in the fact.
A boy in the center rows started to raise his hand, and she pointed at him with her paper before he could take it back. "Josh!"
Josh made a face like he'd swallowed a pollywog and looked around. Half the class had already left, and only a few people--the die-hards, the fans either of her celebrity or her knowledge--remained. This didn't seem to comfort the boy as he stood. "This is kind of about what--what you were talking about last week, with the expansion of the universe and all. It's kind of a dumb question, though." He adjusted his glasses and smiled pleadingly.
"That's fine! I'm not going to tell you I don't believe in stupid questions, but I do believe in teaching." She grinned. "Didn't think I'd let you off the hook that easily, did you, Josh?"
He chuckled and looked down. "I guess not, Dr. English. Okay. Do--Do you think," he stammered as he tugged at his tie, "if the universe keeps spreading outward, do you think it will take us longer to discover any--any extraterrestrial lifeforms that may exist? On v-viable planets, I mean. If there are any."
She stood straighter, hands on the podium, suddenly steel-serious. She had to choose her next words carefully. "Are you asking me about alien contact?"
Danger, danger, screamed her nerves. Somewhere, her grandmother was watching, needle teeth bared, claws around Jade's heart.
"Uh. Yerm, um." The other hangers-on tittered behind hands and whispered to one another as they packed their notebooks. Josh floundered, scratched his bristly hair, and then surprised her by grinning, all embarrassed innocence. "Yes?"
He had no idea. She smiled and leaned forward. "Oh, no. What makes you think they aren't already here?"
It was those remaining students who saved her, laughing as if she'd cracked the greatest joke all day. Josh chortled along, a good sport. None of them had seen the declaration of war in her smile, tucked behind her teeth like a bullet.
But Dave raised his head from behind his camera, and he wore that keen, watchful interest again. Jade looked down and shuffled her papers.
"Don't forget, all late lab write-ups so far are due in my mailbox by four P.M. on Thursday. Don't give up! Even a ten is better than a zero!"
Dismissed, the last stragglers trickled out, and a big bruiser of a girl--Jade recognized her as a rugby player, what was her name, Kate?--slapped Josh amiably between the shoulder blades and hooked her arm around him, teasing. Jade scanned the room for any other watchers, though Betty must have had eyes she couldn't see, and clomped off stage. She was glad Professor Dutta allowed her her eccentricities. Her combat boots would serve her better here than the pumps suggested in the department dress code.
"Dave, could you take my lecture notes back up to my office when you're all packed up?" she asked as she made her way up the aisle.
"Uh--"
"Great, thanks!"
She didn't linger for his answer. Her fingers itched, the little hairs on her arms rose and told her battle, and after the tensest, most arduous elevator ride of her life, she slammed the roof door of the Sass open straight into a drone's metal face.
Jade knew these fights like breathing, now, and she thrust the butt of her rifle into the robot's optic sensor without missing a beat. The glass lens gave with a comical tinkle, and she reversed her grip to shove the muzzle into the crack and fired. The drone spasmed and fell, leaking thick, organic fluids. Jade only kicked it aside and ducked around the corner of the stairwell enclosure. Just in time: a spray of bullets peppered the wall where she'd stood.
"I hate urban strife," she growled to herself and put on her computer-guided targeting goggles.
Three more drones were closing in, moving at angles so the construction equipment still (still!) sitting on the roof would block her fire. She broke cover and felled one with a beautiful headshot; it crashed into the hood of an aging Jetta parked below. Jade winced. She'd have to send Paul an apology before the next faculty meeting. An apology and a new car. Curse the Batterwitch.
She withdrew behind the enclosure again and chewed her lip. She couldn't hit the other two drones from her position, and they were fanning out to catch her in a pincer between them. She had to move.
Easier said than done, said her creaking hips.
It's you or me, she told them, and you're me, so shut up!
Another burst of gunfire by her ear decided her, and she dashed for the other side of the roof, hoping to get behind one tarp-covered machine that offered at least a little defense. The door to the stairwell swung open behind her.
"Dave!" she yelled, reaction time too slow.
Later, she'd wonder what kind of life he'd led before now, because Dave's instantaneous response was to somersault under the barrage and come up running. "Fire escape, go!" he called, his camcorder nestled in the crook of his arm like a football as he made towards her.
No time to argue. She grabbed the ladder and clambered down, though her one arm trembled under the weight of both body and gun. Dave skipped the ladder entirely, dropping from the roof to the first landing with an impact that shook the whole escape. He protected his camera first, she noted as he rolled to his feet again. And then a drone rounded the building, arm already raised to shoot.
"Jesus!" yelped Dave, and Jade heard the distinct click of an activated fetch modus.
With an almost cartoonish metal ring, a salvo of WEAPONS (4+1+1+3+1+1+1=12) launched itself from Dave's sylladex. If drones could look surprised, this one's jaw would have hit the floor as an assortment of knives, throwing stars, and gunblades skewered it through. It hit the thick concrete wall of the Sass and then hung there, sparking, like a particularly large and ugly species of Lepidoptera.
Jade looked at Dave. He had one hand clapped over his mouth, but he lifted it to do a quick calculation on his fingers. "J's worth eight points," he said finally.
"Keep moving, you butter-brained fuckass, there's one more!" Jade shouted, hobbling down the metal stairs as fast as she could.
He followed closely, not pushing, but keeping up a low and rapid mantra of "go, go, keep going, shit," that she really could have done without. She'd lost sight of the last drone, and people must have noticed the noise by now. Spectators would provide more distractions and targets for the drones. Grandmother Betty knew Jade wouldn't stand do let an innocent get hurt.
"Go ahead of me! I'll cover you!" said Jade, turning and grabbing Dave's arm. He stared at her, nodded, and scooted past her only to vault over the banister again. Steel clanged under his shoes as he leaped and squirreled groundward like a sugar glider. She continued to descend at her more senior-friendly pace, both ears straining for the jets of the missing drone. A gunning motorcycle down the street tricked her hearing, and she ground her teeth together in frustration.
"Uh," Dave said, two stories down. "Abuela."
She stopped, then craned over the side.
The drone had turned its thrusters off to sneak up on foot. Now it stood on the school green over Dave's crouched form, gun pressed to the back of his head. The flat glass of its eyes showed nothing as it stared, motionless, gaze trained on her. Dave was frozen, too, one hand still on the ground from his landing, camera tucked against his stomach.
"Well, shit," she muttered, and started to lower her gun.
The revving engine grew suddenly deafening.
Jade's mouth fell open as a motorcycle careened up the wheelchair ramp from the science quad, soared over Dave's head, and smashed its front wheel straight into the drone's throat. The robot fell under the bike, which bounced once with the impact, and then something crunched.
It was the drone's head beneath the back tire of the motorcycle.
Space itself held its breath.
Dave gaped over his shoulder, shades slipping down his nose. The small crowd of students that had gathered started to speak in hushed awe. The motorcycle grunted to life again, and as the rider started to guide it off the busted robot, Dave whipped his camcorder to his eye to get it on tape.
Jade swore under her breath as incredulous laughter bubbled up from her stomach. He'd been filming the whole time. She wanted to run down and shake him.
The rider put one foot down and removed her helmet.
"Dr. English, I presume," said the young woman with a prim, but bright-eyed smile.
"Hello. I like your bike!" Jade called down, putting her rifle away just as Professor Dutta exited the Sass.
"I--what--Dr. English?" he asked, plaintive. He held out both hands palm-up toward the very dead robot behind the building.
She straightened as well as she could, ignoring the protests from her lower back. "Sorry, Ijay! Science project gone wrong, you know how it is."
"Kids these days," muttered Dave in agreement, and the crowd relaxed, if it didn't disperse. Jade's reputation for excitement preceded her, and the school had been waiting for something wild all semester.
A sophomore called campus security as Jade took the rest of the stairs down. The mysterious motorcycle rider--blonde and golden-brown, not unlike Dave--tossed her a pager.
"I'll talk to you later," she promised. "I like my bike, too. I'd rather they didn't impound it for reckless driving and endangerment on college grounds."
"Dr. English, what exactly is going on here?"
The cyclist wheeled around and was gone. Dave started to stand, but he aborted the movement with a grimace and sat carefully instead.
Jade frowned and hurried to his side, brushing Professor Dutta off momentarily. "Dave, are you okay?"
"All systems green, ma'am, awaiting the signal for take-off." She squatted in front of him, pressing her lips into a thin, white line, and he started fiddling with the camcorder. "Rolled my ankle a little on that last landing. It's no big, I can get home, I just." She thought she could see his eyes flick up and then away again. "Guess I can't skate it. Might take me a while."
"Do you folks need an ambulance here?" asked a security officer, approaching Jade, Dave, and Professor Dutta with concern.
"No," said Dave, who then failed spectacularly to stand up.
"I rather think you do," said Dutta drily.
Dave's grip tightened on his camera and he looked at Jade, his face drawn and determined. She hesitated, but when the officer picked up his radio, she put a hand on Dave's shoulder and stood. "It's all right, officer, he's one of mine. If it's just a twisted ankle, I can take care of it myself, and if I think it's worse I'll take him straight to the hospital. Would that be all right, Dave? I'll drive you home."
"Make sure you can move it 'fore you say yes," said the security officer.
Dave was still looking at Jade, searching for something in her face. "Yeah, all right," he said, and gave his foot a little wiggle. "Yeah. I'm good."
Jade patted his shoulder and turned to Professor Dutta and the officer to explain the accident--a cleaned-up version, of course. She knew nothing about the girl on the motorcycle and didn't pretend to. The drones she claimed were experimental Skaianet tech (sometimes it galled Jade how close the comparison really came); the rest she filled with physics buzzwords like gravitation and figurative examples of non-Euclidean space until the security officer just nodded helplessly and waved her off. Professor Dutta still looked skeptical, but she gave him a sheepish smile and pressed her palms together until he shook his head.
"Just tell me later," he said, putting his hands behind his back. "See to the boy. And, Dr. English," he added, half-turning to face her.
"Yes?"
He canted his head towards the Sass, where the drone Dave had accidentally shish-kebabed still hung limp. "Can I trust you to pick up all your toys by seven A.M. tomorrow morning?"
She saluted sharply, then winked. "Now who's the mother, sonny boy?"
He smiled, not as broadly this time, and left. Jade stooped by Dave, who had gotten bored of the proceedings and now lay flat on his back with a Game Boy in his hands. Someone had brought him an icepack for his ankle, and Jade captchalogued it for later.
"Okay, Mister Tough Guy. Ready to walk?"
Dave didn't answer for a few moments. Jade pushed slowly down on the Game Boy until it bumped into his glasses.
"Mnh," he said.
"I'm going to take that as a no." She looked him over, chin in her hands. "You know, you're really skinny. Do you get enough to eat?"
"Dunno about you, Abuela, but I'll have you know a proper Southern belle never talks about her weiaAH--"
Jade lifted with her knees, one arm under Dave's legs, the other around his back. He dropped his Game Boy onto his chest and clutched at her shoulder, looking more terrified than he had under pursuit by Imperial drones.
"Christ--put me down, what're you doing, you're like a hundred years old!"
"Oh, stop whining, you're perfectly safe as long as you're with me." She tested his weight. He was heavy, but not the worst load she'd ever hauled. Not even the worst in the past year. Her back groaned, but held. "My truck's parked right in front of the Sass, anyway."
She set off at a trot, and after a few seconds of whimpering about osteoporosis and muscle loss, Dave seemed convinced that she wasn't about to collapse under him like a folding umbrella. "Hey, if you can cart this much cargo on your own, the hell was I throwing all those boxes around for?"
"Ijay--the professor I was just talking to, the one who wanted to call you an ambulance--he seems to have some kind of superstition about old ladies and ladders."
Dave eyeballed her, one brow raised over the frame of his shades. "Abuelita, after today, I don't think anything could kill you short of a nuclear explosion. And even then I'd need to see the body. How's your brother Kal-El?"
She barked a laugh. "I'm flattered, Dave, but I'm really just an--"
"Alien?"
He asked it in a low, earnest voice, one that didn't carry past her ears. Jade glanced down at him quickly, and there was that hunger again: waiting, wary, sharp.
"No," she told him in the same voice. "But let's talk about it at my place."
"All right," he agreed, like he had all the time in the world.
The drive to her apartment was quiet. Dave held the icepack to his ankle and watched Houston go by out the window of her truck, apparently copacetic with his lot. Jade tuned the radio to classic rock but kept the volume down, and after ten minutes of companionable, but anticipant, silence, they arrived at her apartment.
"I've got the whole first floor. Rich grandma privileges." She opened the passenger door for Dave and helped him out. "Think you can make it?"
He put some weight on his ankle and winced, but nodded. "Yeah, I'm cool. No problem." She wound her arm under his anyway and, with her support, he managed to hop along. As they crossed the building threshold, Dave mumbled, "Heh."
"What?" Jade asked.
He gave her a sidelong smile. "You remembered my no-returns policy on banged up goods."
"Dave." She rolled her eyes, thwapped the back of his head with an open palm, and slipped out from under him to unlock her apartment. "How does your mother put up with you?"
A shrug. "Wouldn't know."
"Well, I guess I don't have a choice. I break it, I buy it, right?" She opened the door and smiled softly at him. "I never thought I'd be the kind of old lady to take in stray toms. Think I should get you a flea collar?"
"Mee-yow, Granny." He limped inside and flopped face-down onto her couch, shins dangling across the armrest. She locked the door behind her and he muttered something into the pillows, but Jade's pocket beeped at her.
"Who's that?" he asked as she pulled out the pager.
After reading the number, she picked up the phone by Dave's feet and nudged him to roll over. "I think this is our dear H. M. Stanley."
"I'll pretend I get that obviously ancient reference."
"Shh!"
The phone was ringing, and a girl picked up. Jade recognized the velvety alto. "Hello."
"Hi! This is Jade English, I'd just like to thank you for saving my boyfriend today." Dave coughed, and Jade just swept his legs off the armrest and sat down, twanging the phone cord like a spring. "I'm going to make some macaroni and cheese for his ouchies and then sit down for all the questions I'm sure he has for me. Would you like some?"
The girl chuckled. "Macaroni, ouchies, or questions?"
"Pick your top two."
"I'd be honored to share some cheesy interrogation noodles with you," said the motorcycle girl. "My name is Rose Lalonde, and I believe we're going to be very good friends."