"Fisk! I told you to stay away from Benita." Rosabel scolded, scooping up her grey-and-white cat as he tried to open the door to William's office.
William scowled. This was the sixth time this morning she'd said Benita instead of Ben or Benjamin—which was his boy cat's name. And she spoke to the cat like it was a human, which was weird, even for an alien.
She rubbed the cat's back as it rested its head against her chest. "Well, I know, but that's really no excuse. And don't give me that nonsense!"
"She speaks cat," Marissa said as she walked by with a bundle of wires. "Don't scoff—it's true."
"It's impossible." Will maintained, folding his arms.
"Nah. I know a lot of things—the language of cat very much included. They tell me stuff. Fisk here has a vertebrae five above his tail, and it you rub it—instant purr spot! He'll tell you anything."
Missy dumped the cords on the desk by the Rift Machine and went over to scratch behind one of the white ears, cooing. The two girls stood there, talking in low voices about the Rift and randomly stopping to murmur to the cat and then picking up where they left off.
"Right. Well. I'll go to do work and—do something." He raised his voice. "What do I do?"
Rosabel only barely glanced up. "Huh? Oh! Um, feed the Weevils, would you? I'm busy."
"Petting the cat?"
"Well, Fisk needs some love, otherwise Benita will end up pregnant. There's also the Rift Machine—it needs the power rerouted around a mechanical glitch in one of the heating coils caused by a reaction to the glue on that ridiculous clothespin doll, which is creating a—" Rosabel broke off with a huff. "Never mind. You wouldn't understand."
Yeah, that's me, the idiot who's paid to point and shoot, he thought bitterly as he grabbed the cooler of raw meat.
"Never feed the Weevils angry!" Beth yelled from the stairs. She and Adrianne had been working on how to best defend and besiege spiral staircases with a bow—apparently it was a big problem in medieval castles, and they were both fascinated with finding the solution.
He made a rude gesture at her without turning, and an arrow whizzed past his ear a second later. "Watch yourself, human!" Adrianne said.
-.-.-Cardiff-.-.-
"The readings appear to be coming from in here," Anne said quietly, pointing to a warehouse on the docks.
Annabel rolled her eyes. "I can read the screen, thanks."
"That's enough arguing," Peter snapped. "What is with you two today?"
"Annabel is PMSing and it's somehow my fault." Anne offered.
"Anne swans around acting all superior!"
"Girls!" He said urgently.
"You can just get off your psychologist high horse, alright? You and William were bitching about each other yesterday."
Peter grabbed her shoulders and tried to spin her around. "Annabel!"
"What's wrong?" Anne asked, turning. Then, "Uh… Peter?"
"I know," Peter said grimly.
Annabel spun around, just in time for the sonic pulse to knock all three of them out. She had just a brief moment of consciousness in which all she could think was, oh, not again!
-.-.-Headquarters-.-.-
Rosabel's fingers brushed a copper wire and she jumped back swearing, not for the first time. "We need to introduce a coolant to keep these cords from melting, at least while I determine a stronger insulating material to use on these. It overheats in here, and one of these days someone's going to get electrocuted. And if, in the course of dying a painful death by electrocution, they happen to close a circuit and cause the Rift Machine to malfunction, which could easily rip a hole in the fabric of the universe, I will be very angry."
There was no answer, and she stuck her head out. "Hello?" She said.
Once again she was met by silence.
"I am being extraordinary in here, and lecturing extensively, and there's no one to stand around in awe. REMIND ME AGAIN WHY I EVEN HAVE YOU ALL!"
"Rosabel!" Marissa said, skidding into the room. "You remember those weird signals from alien technology we sent Annabel, Anne, and Peter to collect? I have reason to believe they're using a biodampening force field, and they have a significant amount more tech than we thought."
"Err… Do I want to know what happened to that team to make you notice that?"
"Well… Their life systems and comms appear to have faded, but that's not possible—they either work, or they don't. Thus I could determine they were actually just dimmed by some sort of biodamper."
The half-human woman frowned and turned her attention back to the Rift Machine, which had started making very worrying sounds at a pitch just a bit too low for human ears. Of course her darling little contraption chose right now to malfunction. All this Rift activity was causing problems. Something big was coming, and there was a funny little twinging at the back of her mind because of it.
"I can't leave," Rose said. "Literally, if I leave now, the adverse affects could be innumerable."
Marissa took a deep breath. "Right. I'll round them up and into the truck."
"Hunter's at his AA meeting—how much tech do you think there is?"
"There can't be much. A biodampening force field doesn't work on, say, Rift activity monitors—and there haven't been any large readings."
"Right. Don't interrupt Hunter, then. Just get Will, Beth, and Adrianne and fetch the others—I bet they just wandered into the force field without noticing. Oh, and lock Fisk in my office, would you? I don't want him being exposed to any of the omicron-B radiation."
"Sometimes I think you make this stuff up." Marissa said, but Rosabel heard her walk away all the same.
Rosabel frowned at the Rift Machine as it changed pitch. "Come on, don't do this, I don't understand!" She hissed. "What's your problem?"
She couldn't speak to the machine like she could other aliens and animals and humans, but it made sense to her like wordless music did. Sometimes she wished the Rift was alive and could speak to her, so she wouldn't always be the smartest person.
Something was coming, and she didn't know what to do about it, but there were eight people who'd trust her to save the world from it anyway.
Not for the first time, she wished her biological family wasn't the flakiest one in the world—with her father meandering the Earth, mourning lost lives, and her mother pretending to be dead while she flew around the universe like her father.
Then she shook away her dark thoughts and hummed Beethoven as she returned to the fuses.