AN: The only crossover of its kind that I know of. My thinking is that if you're going to have the Wormverse dominated by an incompetent conspiracy, you might as well make it funny. And it's already being run by Dr...

ooOoo

"Mother!"

I dragged my arm over to cover my eyes, but the damage was done. A stabbing headache delivered by a beam of light that should have been impossible. The light switch was biometrically locked, and I'd put the curtains on the same system after the incident last year. That meant there was only one possible source of the light.

When I pulled myself together enough to sit up I saw the dimensional distortion that I was expecting, but the figure silhouetted against the fluorescent lights was a surprise.

"Cyril?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to make sure you show up at today's meeting," he said, then tried to give me an intimidating glare. "And I told you, it's the Number Man now."

I couldn't hold in the laugh that burst out as I swung my legs out of bed and stood up. Ignoring Cyril's complaints about "seeing too much" was automatic by now-besides, thirteen years of boarding school had taken care of any body-consciousness issues I ever had. Really, it defeats the purpose of silk sheets if you put anything between them and your body.

"The Number Man? What happened to El Contador?"

His glare "intensified." It was almost cute.

"You know what happened to El Contador, Archer."

"Yeah, yeah, good times," I said, though to be honest most of that weekend was still a blur in my memory. "We should hit TJ again some time, you think they've given up on those warrants by now?"

"They haven't even rebuilt the police station yet! And for God's sake, would you put some clothes on?"

"Why bother?" I asked, reaching for the martini glass on the bedside table and slugging down a mouthful. "I'm not coming to the meeting. This is just-hold on."

I turned to face the door. "Woodhouse!"

We had to wait a minute for the old bag of bones to shuffle to the door.

"Yes, sir?"

The British accent was classy, but the overall effect was ruined by the fact that he looked like the Crypt Keeper's older brother.

"When did you make this martini?" I asked, holding up the glass in my hand.

"Ten o'clock, sir."

"And what time is it?"

"Ten thirty-two, sir."

"Exactly," I said, before tossing the rest of the drink in his face. "Every half hour on the half hour... it's a simple instruction. Go fetch me something worth drinking."

"Very good, sir."

I shook my head and turned back to Cyril after Woodhouse left the room.

"Anyways, like I was saying, this is just another one of mother's power plays. I'm a field agent. I don't go to meetings."

The room was getting a little drafty, though, so I moved to the closet to pull on some clothes while Cyril mulled that over. Black pants, black turtleneck-why go away from the classics?

"We discuss some pretty important things at these meetings, you know."

"Stop me if this sounds familiar," I said, bringing my fingers up to my temple in a mock psychic pose. "We don't know how to stop the Endbringers, they're going to destroy society as we know it in twenty years, unless Scion destroys the world first, and by the way we don't know how to stop Scion either. Did I miss anything?"

"That's not-"

He was interrupted by a panicked shriek and a babble of Russian as Nikki-or Tiffany or whatever her name was-finally woke up. The accent was cute last night, but it wasn't doing my headache any favors to have somebody yell at me in a language I didn't understand. On the bright side, she didn't believe in putting anything between herself and the silk sheets either.

I tried to offer up some calming words in her language as I fumbled through the drawer of the nightstand, but honestly I don't know what I was saying. After I finally found what I was looking for I approached her like a skittish animal, saying all sorts of nonsense in a soothing tone until I could give her a reassuring hug... and tap the hypospray up against her neck. She collapsed like a sack of potatoes and I tossed the spray to Cyril.

"Have the guys in R&D top that off for me, would you? And bring her in for the usual memory adjustment, yeah?"

"I'm not your whore retrieval service," Cyril said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"How many times do I have to tell you, once you get to a certain price level they're escorts?"

"Whatever," he replied, unmoved.

I grabbed the drink Woodhouse was carrying as soon as he came into the room, polishing it off while I considered the situation. Cyril didn't look like he was going to budge on this one, and Woodhouse could hardly hold up under the stress of carrying a dinner tray, let alone a person.

I sighed, then reached down to scoop Misty off the bed and threw her over my shoulder.

"You're just lucky that after ten years of lacrosse carrying around unconscious women is second nature to me," I commented as I stepped through the portal and started walking down the hallway.

"You mean because of all the upper body strength you built up from the exercise?" Cyril asked, falling into step next to me.

For a moment there was no sound other than our footsteps echoing off the walls.

"Let's go with that, yeah," I said. "The memory wipe station is still down in the first sub-basement, right?"

Cyril nodded. "You going to want them to make her forget the money you owe her?"

"God, I do that one time and you guys just won't let it go," I said, exasperated.

There was another moment of silence.

"Also, yes."

ooOoo