Reconciliation

Chapter 22

Lockdown

and Debts of Honor

Max had Rook rush Ben, Albedo and the baby back to Plumber’s H.Q. and place guards around them 24/7; then ordered Cooper, a young Plumber he and his grandchildren had met eight years ago to begin an investigation. Cooper used his uncanny ability to ‘communicate’ with technology to operate multiple scanning devices simultaneously. Max wanted the now not-so-safe house gone over with a fine toothed comb millimeter by millimeter.

Pierce strode up to Max to report, “I’ve got a preliminary report, sir.”

“Go ahead what has your team found?”

“The first thing we did was confirm that what Gwen sensed was Vilgax.”

“And?” Max asked but he was already pretty sure he knew the answer; “Cooper found Chimeran DNA, but that wasn’t all.”

“Go on,” Max insisted, growing more worried and impatient by the minute.

“There were also traces of Sotoragian DNA,” Pierce continued with a small sigh, that implied that EightEight, one of her brothers or all three of them were here.

Rook walked up to Max and Pierce, “I have confirmed what Pierce and his team have found Magister Tennyson.”

“This was done by several members of what you could call Ben’s ‘rogue’s gallery’; I believe Sunder may also have been here.

Some of the color drained away from the faces of Gwen & Kevin who had just returned. They had heard about half of the awful litany of bad guys who were after Ben or Albedo, or both of them. Worse yet if they had even the slightest clue about the birth of Ben’s daughter they would be after her.

“Magister Tennyson, we must get Ben, Albedo and the child off-world; Vilgax, in particular, would not hesitate to destroy the Earth just to get the three of them.”

“The question is are they workin’ alone; or do these bad guys want Ben so bad, that they can put aside how  much they hate each other another?”

“Leave it to you to always look for the silver lining, Kevin,” Max said wryly.

“It’s what I do best,” Kevin said. He tried to put a slight smile on, but secretly he was extremely worried about Ben’s safety. Ben had seen some redeeming quality in Kevin when no one else did.

That little bit of faith had saved him. Kevin owed Ben his life several times over for that one small act of kindness.

Now if it came down to it, Kevin, and all the others here would make good on that debt to protect Ben, his daughter, and Albedo.