The Trinity Sitch – Book 1: They Say Everyone Has a Twin
Chapter 10
"They say everyone's got a twin, KP…" Ron said, scowling and pointing at Neil, "…and one of them is ALWAYS EVIL!"
"Amp down on the drama, Ron." Kim said, glaring at her boyfriend.
Ron held out a hand and ticked off his points. "Dona, good. Shego evil. Jimmy good, this guy, so the EVIL!"
"So, how do you know that I'm not the good one and Jimmy is the evil one?" Neil said with a wry grin. He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Ron.
"Because he's married to Dona…and he tried to save me from the Toxic Coffee of Doom!" Ron replied without missing a beat. Murky just rolled his eyes.
Despite Wade's warning that Neil was on his way, the four from the future were shocked to see one of their counterparts calmly propping his bike against the wall after dropping out of the sky. His entrance was beyond unusual, even to Kim who was accustomed to arriving via parachute. Gary, Dona, Murky and especially Jimmy just stared for what seemed like quite a long time.
It finally fell to Anne Possible to chase everyone inside, instead of standing out on the stoop as the sun rose. She passed out a fresh round of coffee to most of them, Jimmy and Neil politely refusing, both of them accepting juice instead.
Tinker hadn't been there for some time, having gone to the Space Center with Kim's father and Justine Flanner in order to gain access to some serious computing power. The engineer and the hyper-intellectual student kept chatting away about theories and technologies that only Wade had any hope of understanding. The young man might have been an overall genius, but when it came to quantum theory and the like, Flanner was the unrivalled queen of her specialty. She was beyond genius, she was an utter prodigy. The technology Tinker was describing to her opened new and wonderful avenues to her. It was entirely likely that, given enough time, the two of them could cause the next step in human thought. That, or they could be the most dangerous pair ever to meet.
So far their only contact had been a call from James Possible explaining they were all okay and were settling into a computer lab, with Tinker and Justine jabbering away about concepts that were even well above his head. He basically had to be there to secure their security clearances.
Neil did not look exactly like Jimmy. Of course, they had the same features, the long straight nose, the deep-set steel-blue eyes, the dark brown hair, though Neil had some lighter highlights where the sun had bleached it through his bike helmet vents. He looked like a version of Jimmy who had diverged at some point in his life. Where Jimmy was lean and wiry, Neil was somewhat heavier, both from slightly bulkier muscles and from a slight gut. He was clean shaven save for a tiny square beard on his chin called a 'soul patch.' Where Jimmy's hair was cut short, Neil had shoulder length hair. He was dressed from head to toe in a jumpsuit much like the ones Global Justice wore, but in solid black. There was no way anyone was going to mistake the two of them.
He took a long look at Dona while she in turn studied his features. She looked for a while at his hair, recalling the time many years ago convincing Jimmy to let her cut his long hair short.
"Wade was certainly telling the truth." He said. "You do look almost exactly like Shego."
"Almost?" Kim asked. "I was convinced the moment I saw her."
"Nope, not quite. Just something I can't put my finger on is different about her, and no, it's not her skin or eye color. That can be faked."
"So far you're the only one who hasn't mentioned I've got a narrower butt." Dona said, glancing from Murky to Ron.
"Well, I really haven't seen her for a few years."
"Exactly how well did you know Shego?" Kim asked, crossing her arms.
Neil suddenly looked like the cat who swallowed the canary. "Oh, pretty well, but like I said, that was a while back."
Wade was listening in via the Kimmunicator. The seed of an idea crossed his mind and he moved to act on it, pulling one of his many keyboards close and typing furiously.
"Oh, I think this is yours." Dona pulled a wad of cash out of her purse on the coffee table. "Tinker assumed that what happened to us in our universe happened here as well and he thought he had found an old, forgotten bank account."
Neil accepted the roll, then handed it back to her. "Wade pretty much explained that to me before I came. I know you're cut off from your money here, so you'll need at least a little."
"How do you know Wade?" Kim asked.
"Well, before yesterday morning I didn't. He contacted me when I tried getting a hold of my bank to figure out why somebody was withdrawing my money in Middleton. I thought it a pretty odd coincidence that it was happening here…"
"See KP, Evil twin! He's spying on us!" Ron still wasn't convinced.
"Chill, there dude." Neil said, starting to get annoyed at the younger man. "It's not like the two of you are keeping a low profile. Besides, I still get reports about you from GJ in my inbox. I guess you could say I'm a bit of a closet fan."
"You work for GJ?" Kim asked.
"I used to. I gave it up a while back after I was sidelined for a while. Went back to being just a civilian. I was, for all intents and purposes, your predecessor."
"My what?"
"That's so not possible, dude." Ron said, crossing his arm. "We've never heard of you and Dr. Director hasn't ever mentioned you either."
"I said you two don't keep a low profile. I did. Only Dr. Director and a few of her staff knew about me and I didn't stick around once the bad guys were taken down. I just melted into the shadows and let them get all the glory. I preferred it that way and I didn't make myself a target."
"I still say he's the evil twin!"
"Ron!" Kim growled.
"Dude? What is your damage? I used to work with Global Justice. They're not in the biz of working with evil types." He turned back to Kim. "So, as Red would say here, what's the sitch?" Neil asked.
"Red?" Kim asked, and eyebrow rising in irritation. She cast a critical eye on his hairstyle again. It wasn't exactly what one would call a 'Mullet,' it was just plain long. Neil just grinned at her.
Keeping a wary eye on him, she explained what little she knew already. "Okay, Drakken and Shego must have been out of prison for a while now, we don't know how long, though it's probable the real ones never reached prison in the first place, meaning they've been at large since May. Somehow they switched themselves with Synthodrones so nobody would know they were gone this time. Somehow Drakken found out that Dona and her friends were here, more specifically, that their space ship was here. He may be completely whack, but he's an expert on weapons so he apparently recognized just how powerful the little ship was, so he attacked Jimmy and Gary and carted the ship off. Now, somehow he figured out how to get past their security and he got the ship flying, and at least one of the weapons systems working."
"It was a pair of particle accelerator cannons." Murky explained. "It's a ship-to-ship weapon, kind of like a gatling cannon on a fighter jet. It's the default weapon on the Valkyrie and he's pretty dangerous with it. In fact, there's a whole lot of hurt built into that ship he can get to easily, but that's not the main worry. It's the Ion-Lockin Cannons.
"The ILCs are the Valkyrie's main offensive weapons. They were designed to punch through the armor of capitol ships. They draw their power directly from the three main engines. Now, if you think about it, we're talking about ion engines that can propel the ship to speeds many, many times the speed of light. Imagine that kind of power directed through a weapon.
"Now, the Valkyrie was considered many years ahead of her time when she was built, but now technology is catching up to her. We still use her for short hops when it's just not feasible to take Jimmy's yacht, the Phantasm."
"Jimmy has a yacht?" Neil asked. "I must be in the wrong business."
"Don't fret about it." Jimmy said, rubbing his temple opposite the bandage. "If you knew the whole history of that thing you'd be just as well off right here like you are. We do have one thing going for us. The ILCs are disabled. When I retired from the military, they wanted to dismantle them completely, but Tinker convinced them that the engines wouldn't function properly with the cannons removed." He winced, lowering his head into his palms for a moment.
"Jimmy?" Dona asked, concern creeping back into her features.
"I'm okay, honey. My head just hurts. I'm not used to being injured for this long. Anyway, they installed a special interlocking device that can only be removed with a specific key that is only kept by four star and above commanders. I always assumed Tinker could get the interlocks off if he really had to but I never considered having him try.
"It still worries me, though, that this Drakken guy could bypass the security so quickly. Tinker already told me that your level of technology is much higher than it should be for this era, so it's entirely possible he could devise some way to bypass or remove the interlock. When that happens, he'll be able to level whole cities with just one cannon. The Valkyrie has three."
"I only saw two, on the port and starboard engine thingies." Kim said.
"She has three. The centerline engine is actually the most powerful of the three, but the ILC cannon can only be used when the Sparrow fighter on the nose is deployed."
"So, what's our next move?" Kim asked.
"Well, we've got a problem." Murky said. "The Valk has state-of-the-art electronic countermeasures. Now, while I don't have a clue as to how Drakken found out about it, your military has no tech that is capable of detecting her. So, unless somebody just happens to see him flying around at low altitude, there's no way to find him."
Wade was listening with only half an ear. He was running into a brick wall and he didn't like that. Of the five new friends, two of them he knew there would be no record of. If they were destined to exist in this universe they wouldn't even be born for hundreds of years. That left Jimmy, Murky and Dona. He made the connection to Neil immediately, considering his accounts were all flagged and watched by GJ. Murky was almost as easy. Sergeant Millard Bedarest was serving in the US Air Force, currently deployed in the Middle East. There was no need to bring him into this, his service there far too important.
The problem was Dona. He hadn't mentioned that he had already hacked into their interlinked communicator system, downloading some basic personal data from the imbedded ID system. The birthdates there were fake but he assumed the month and day were correct. He scanned multiple databases for her, starting with Boston, then expanding the search. Still nothing. There was no record for Doña Delores Marks born on that date. He was further frustrated trying alternate spelling of her names, like Marx and Donna and the like. Nada!
Where logic failed, one had to play a hunch. He started looking for any babies born to parents named Marks on that date, and the days surrounding it. Finally there was a lead. A woman named Isabel Delores Marks was brought into an emergency room at Saint Eligius Hospital three days prior to the target date. She had been in a horrible car crash with her husband, who had died at the scene. She was badly injured and not expected to survive and was pregnant, nearly to term. The baby was delivered by C-section but the mother did not make it. The birth certificate read "Infant Female Marks" with the name portion left blank.
Apparently no next of kin could be found. Her mother had been a naturalized citizen, originally from Ecuador, the Father an older gentleman from Boston with no other family that could be found. The girl had been adopted almost immediately, as infants often were.
It took more digging, since such records are officially sealed. Wade knew he meant no evil by prying, but he was curious now. This alternate "Dona" would be an adult but he would respect her privacy, just as he respected the alternate "Murky's" but he had to know.
The family was named Godfrey. They eventually adopted five children in total, an older brother named Herman, a younger brother named Mervin and twin younger brothers named Wendell and Wesley. "Dona" was given her own name, Sherry.
So that's why he could not find a Dona Marks (since he knew Neil was never married he never even considered searching for Dona Argus.) He read on. Not long after adopting little Sherry they moved to Chicago.
Go City!
Four boys, one girl, the youngest being twins? In Go City?
He looked at the names again. Herman Godfrey, Sherry Godfrey, Mervin Godfrey, etc. Just to be sure he held his fingers over the screen, blotting out portions of their names.
He-go, Me-go and two We-gos!
And She-go!
There is was, right in front of him, a secret he and the rest of Team Possible had been trying to divine for years!
He had found Shego's secret identity! And that meant Dona not only looked just like Shego…
…she WAS the Shego of her universe!
He keyed his mike to interrupt the two teams, who were still butting heads about how to proceed. "Um, guys, I think you may want to take a look at this!"
It took them only minutes to read through the notes. Everyone looked at Dona, who turned white as a sheet.
"See, one of the twins are always EVIL!" Ron exclaimed.
Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney. All Intergalax Characters © Nelson Binch
A/N Revised 2-25-06