Chapter Seven

Gut Feelings

"When I was a young girl, my mother always instructed me to trust my instincts. My gut instinct now says that Simmons was behind it. Why else would Sector Seven be publicly disbanded after Mission City when it had nothing to do with terrorists?" Stanton asked, pacing calmly. When nobody immediately responded, she snapped, "Well?"

"Aliens." Riley coughed out, earning a look from Stryker, who was the only 'new' pilot in the small group in the general's tactical room.

"Maybe your gut is out of whack since Oroville." Tom suggested, and pointedly ignored the general's glare. "Anyway, where's the beer? We should be celebrating the end of Sector Seven, not questioning it," he asked, meeting the general's gaze.

"Hear hear." Jackson said, raising an imaginary toast. He straightened up only when Stanton glared at him. "Sorry ma'am."

"Keller told me that I would need a justifiable excuse for targeting an American city next time. Proof he can actually hold. So I need to get that somewhere." Stanton muttered to herself as she pulled out a small black box from the travel bag on the small table nearby. "Now, I'm sure you are all familiar with the base attack in Qatar that occurred a few days prior to Mission City, correct?" she asked.

As everyone voiced an affirmative, Alexis noted with slight interest that Stryker was now looking interested in the general's words… the first time since his arrival in fact. He inched forward a bit and a focused look seemed to make itself present as he stood slightly in front of Riley and Andrew. His head was slightly bowed as if to catch the general's words better.

Things remained tense between them. Tyler, panicking at the thought of Stryker's vengeance, confessed the prank to Stryker within hours of its conception. Both Ari and Alexis were then easily manipulated into springing their own trap. Since then Tyler had been constantly avoiding them, especially since Ari said that all she wanted to do at that moment was strangle him to death.

Now the original seven pilots plus Stryker were in the general's personal tactical room (more commonly known as the plotting room among the Area 51 personnel), mainly because the general wanted to show them a few items she had 'borrowed' from Keller. Alexis knew this stage of the hunt extremely well; the probing stage. Stanton would use items and recordings to probe her audience for any information that could be useful to giving her a lead.

"I think it was transforming aliens." Riley announced. "You know, they could transform into cars and planes and then slip among us. Then they wouldn't be noticeable in the confusion of battle. Captain Thompson did say that the 51st was supposed to back us up, and an unmarked jet or two did join us before they started shooting at us."

Marcia, always the quiet one, spoke up. "An inside job makes more sense. You know, paybacks for Oroville," she said, squirming when she noticed Stryker's intense gaze upon her.

"I don't know. You tell me." Stanton said, pulling a flashdrive from the box and slipping it into the computer and activating the file. It occurred to her just then whether to warn the others to cover their ears or not, but she decided not to.

Everyone except Stryker and Stanton recoiled slightly from the screechy grating-like sound that cut across the room. "Ugh… turn that off!" Ari yelled, covering her ears.

The loud screeching stopped, but then Ari demanded loudly, "What the hell was that?"

Stanton grimaced as she took out the flashdrive from the computer and said, "Something that Keller thought was very important. He encoded all of the attached information. When they come, the analysts will be working to break all the codes." She noticed Tom's questioning gaze and said, "They were not ready to leave D.C. when I was, so Keller is sending them over when they are ready to go."

"Has anybody considered that these terrorists could be international and that these are their secret codes?" Andrew ventured.

"Nobody claimed responsibility for this. There was no evidence to suggest that possibility, but we won't rule that out." Stanton assured him.

"Aliens." Riley coughed out, only louder this time.

Stryker of all people stepped forward and said, "I do not believe that Riley's 'aliens' exist."

"Hey! You weren't even there! How could you be so sure of that?" Riley snapped, but immediately backed off when Stryker glared at him.

"However, I do believe that Simmons, along with the hu- I mean, person named Samuel James Witwicky were involved with the ah, terrorist attacks at Mission City." Stryker said, and then stepped back into the line of pilots, effectively ending his part in the discussion.

Alexis knew there was no need to continue; Stanton generally needed just names and/or a motive and then she was off, constructing a scenario that ended with the crime, the terrorist attack in this case.

"There is something still missing." Stanton murmured. "I feel it."

"Yeah. The aliens called 'Autobots'. I heard Banachek and Simmons saying…" Riley began, rather dedicated to his alien theory.

"There are no aliens!" Stryker snarled, interrupting Riley. "Get it through your thick skull already!"

"You weren't there!" Riley shouted back, getting angry now. He swung a punch directly at Stryker's face, but Stryker easily dodged it. A circle around the combatants formed as everyone moved to get out of striking range. Stanton moved in, shouting at the two of them in an attempt to break it up. Tom left the room altogether, presumably to get a stick of some sort to split the fighters apart. Jackson just lunged into the fight in order to pull Riley out.

That was then that Alexis saw Stryker sneaking out of the tactical room, using the confusion as a cover to escape further grilling. She then noticed that there wasn't even a faint scratch on Stryker, whereas Riley was poorly handling a broken nose that was bleeding profusely. The goal however had been achieved, and the topic on aliens or Autobots or whatever the heck they were called was promptly forgotten.

"Thomas!"

They all turned to see that Stanton was standing by the computer searching frantically for something. "Where is the flashdrive?" she demanded. "Where is Thomas?"

"Tom ibn't bere." Riley managed to say around his broken nose.

Stanton stared at him and then snarled, "No, really? I'm too blind to tell on my own! Where is he?"

Riley shrugged.

Growling, the general stowed the black box back into the travel bag, picked up the bag, and then stormed out of the tactical room.

"Whoa." Jackson said, and then it became quiet in the room for a few seconds. Slowly but surely the other pilots began filing out of the room. Alexis waited a moment and then left and went in the direction of the hangars.

She had a suspicion about the perpetrator behind the theft.