“Yes?” Gozen’s voice wasn’t nearly as mechanical as those of Generation K — it had some inflection and a more normal tone.

“There’s a problem,” a scout reported. “One of our contacts has been damaged. She has sent no signal for the past five hours. Surveillance tapes show that she was attacked. She is presumed dead.”

Gozen considered. In all likelihood, the plan could continue. First, a report to the Uber-Director, detailing what he could find out about their contact. Then he would sit back and wait for the right opportunity. It shouldn’t take long.

His job was to eliminate the dangerous mutants. The Uber-Director hadn’t specified how. Or how long he could take doing it. Or how much pleasure he could get from it.

All those things were up to him.

“Get into the shelter,” Gozen told his troops.

Chapter 45

45

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Today’s theme: Weirdness at the bottom of the world.

Our lives are pretty freaking weird already — what with the wings, the fleeing for our lives, etc. And yet we can still be amazed when things get even weirder. Cool.

Some stuff has kept life interesting for us lately: (1) Iggy can see, off and on. He needs to be practically snow-blinded for it to kick in, but he’s actually seen stuff. Made Max wish she’d brushed her hair sometime in the last month. (2) We’ve flown with snow petrels. They’re beautiful white birds, about pigeon size, that are all over the place here. They’re like flying pureness, to sound stupid and goofy. If Angel were an actual 100 percent bird, she’d be a snow petrel. The Gasman would be an emu. (3) There have been some penguin incidents, caused by uncautious belly-sliding down packed-snow slopes. Did you know that a penguin, if startled, might suddenly barf on you? We didn’t either. Did you know how revolting regurgitated, half-digested krill and squid is? I do now. (4) We performed a daring rescue at sea, made possible by Max and yours featherly. Unfortunately, the person we rescued turned out to be a mole who’s probably been spying on us for the past week. So now we’re most likely in mortal danger, as per usual.

Fortunately, the person we rescued didn’t make it. So I’m guessing her reports have slowed way down. In the meantime, whoever’s out there planning God knows what, we’re onto you. We see you coming. We’re not going to take it well.