We had an enormous suite to ourselves at the top of a ritzy hotel not far from the beach. Based on the other people I saw walking in when we did, I was guessing they usually catered to a slightly more elite clientele than a bunch of backwoods hicks from the Arizona Strip.

Agent Ellerham and Government-Issue Smith ushered us in and up to our rooms quickly. Sage disappeared to explore the facilities, while Smith plucked my sleeve at the door.

"Mr. Williams, I have a message for you from Juana Lopez. She has had quite a tiring day, and though she is on her way here, has decided to retire to her own room tonight. She says she will see you in the morning."

I felt a little deflated. It was still fairly early, and I was starting to get overwhelmed with all the strangers. Juana probably felt the same way. “That's fine then. We'll see her tomorrow.” The agent withdrew.

Grandpa sat down at the elegant table in the middle of the lounge room. It was covered in a white tablecloth that had a smaller gold tablecloth on top of it, and a vase of pretty flowers that looked very expensive to me. I didn't have any idea what they were.

Sage popped out. "Can we go somewhere cool for dinner?" she asked.

"Would it be alright for you, Miss Williams" Agent Ellerham said. "If we stayed in and you ordered off of the room service menu instead? They have a two-star Michelin restaurant in this hotel. You can order anything you like."

Her eyes went wide. "Is that good?"

"They're probably not as good as Mama Grace," I said, "but yeah, that's pretty good."

She went in search of the room service menu. I draped my coat over the back of a chair, took off my gun belt, and laid it next to the coat. The two agents watched me disarm without commenting. I took off my boots, unlacing them one after the other, and sat down in the plush armchair, put my feet up, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. It wasn't any use.

"I assume if you want us to stay in, that means you've got an agenda for us," Grandpa said in a dangerously calm tone of voice.

"Yes, sir, Colonel, sir. We've had various pieces of intelligence from the aliens and a few other pieces slipped in by Colonel Ames and some of his assets, but we haven't been able to independently verify any of it until now. We were hoping you would be willing to give us a full briefing on the situation."

Grandpa sighed. "Figured it was something like that. Alright, let's order up some grub and then we'll give you what we know. Sage, you found that menu yet? I feel like taking a sizable chunk out of these fellows' discretionary budget."

Ellerham brought out a laptop as Sage and Smith ordered up a feast. I tossed in a request for decent beer. “We’ve been fielding requests from CIA, FBI, the Joint Chiefs, and multiple allied intelligence agencies to interview you guys,” Ellerham said. “Sorry. This part might be rough.” He pulled up videoconferencing software.

There were already a dozen people waiting for us. Some of them were generals. I tried hard not let my mouth hang open as more joined. Ellerham explained some ground rules — to them, not us. They had someone on the other end collecting questions to ask who would be in charge of muting and unmuting anyone deemed worthy of speaking up. Grandpa, Sage and I could say whatever we thought necessary.

“First question,” the colonel in charge of asking questions said from the screen. “Colonel Ames’s intelligence portrays the reality engine as an intelligent being disposed favorably toward humanity. Do you agree with this suggestion? Please elaborate.”

Fortunately, the food and beer arrived, so we ate and we talked and occasionally we listened to some bigwig make a speech — Ellerham and the colonel on the other end were pretty good at shutting down nonsense, but when you get that much brass in one videoconference you’re going to suffer through a couple snoozers.

I was honestly impressed how much they knew. We worked long into the night. Sage eventually started drooping into her hot fudge sundae, so I made her go and shower and crawl into the enormous bed in her room.

The agents had seen to it that someone went shopping for her. She had a dozen different outfits to choose from, including three different bathing suits for tomorrow. They said they'd picked up some stuff for Grandpa and me, but not quite as many choices.

As we were working, I heard a disturbance outside. I leapt up instinctively, trying to Quick Draw, but my gun sat in its holster across the room. The agents were almost as fast as I was, heading for the door, drawing their guns.

"Stay back," Ellerham said.

I wanted to ignore him but caught myself. This was their turf, not mine. They stood by the door, guns ready, one beside the door, one two steps behind it. After a moment, they relaxed. They kept up their positions until, after another minute, Ellerham tapped his ear. I hadn't even noticed the earpiece before then. Then the two of them came back to the table.

"Sorry about that. A reporter got past our cordon and made it almost here," Ellerham said.

"I thought you might be keeping us down low," Grandpa said.

Smith snorted. "Your face probably went up on every social network in the world a hundred thousand times in the last day. We've just been trying to keep away the professionals, the ones who would really like to get their hands on you. Her especially.” He nodded at the room where Sage was sleeping.

I had seen a few mentions of our exploits in the material the government men were showing us. Now I tensed. There hadn't been that much talk of Sage.

"How much do you guys know about her?"

"There were about 400 kids taken across the English-speaking world. More than that in Asia, Africa, South America, but they didn't tend to make the news the way the ones here or in Europe did. Not as many photos of grieving families.” Ellerham looked pensive. Smith shook his head.

“Sage was just one of the sixty-three American kids lost until some of those videos started leaking.”

“From Source B?” I guessed.

The government agents had all of their information labeled by sources. There were the official communications from the Galactic Committee that was overseeing the exploit, a couple of rogue missives from corporations that had tried to do business with Earth before getting caught and dragged off by the Galactics, whatever Ames had brought them, and then three separate sources that snuck their information in through the internet and hadn't yet been traced.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Source B was the one with the best videos. I had seen my own fight with the squid monster at the end of phase two in that stack. It bothered me immensely. That fight had been barely two weeks ago, and here it was back on Earth. The point of view on the video made me pretty darn sure it had been taken from one of my team's all-seeing eye cams.

I had a couple of theories about how they could have gotten it, none of which I liked.

"Source B," Smith confirmed. "She features kind of a lot. We weeded it down for you since we were pretty sure those videos were accurate and we didn't need confirmation on them. At this point, I'd call her America's sweetheart, but honestly, the whole world knows Sage's face now."

It was just one more nail in the coffin of us ever having a normal life when this was over. I touched the place on the back of my neck where I knew the system had inserted the Ethereum support device that was keeping me alive. We had all been required to go up to the Hub for the surgery to get it implanted and our first charge loaded. If we were here more than a week, we would run out of Ethereum and die. Not that it was a concern since the system would yank us back to the reality engine in — I checked my watch — approximately 56 hours.

Grandpa stood up. "It's late, gentlemen," he said. "I think I'm going to bed now. If there's anything else we can help you with, well, we'll talk tomorrow, but I think we've given you intelligence spooks plenty to work with."

Smith started to protest. Ellerham put a hand on his arm. "We'd always take more," he said, "but you're right. You've earned a break. My team and I will be on duty all night. I'm afraid we've bugged this room, so if we hear any untoward noises we will come to check. If you need to go anywhere, please use the house phone and call for one of us to escort you."

"You guys gonna be with us tomorrow at the beach?" I asked.

"Every step of the way," Ellerham confirmed.

"Then I hope you get a decent night's sleep and I hope you packed your swim trunks."

Smith smiled for such a short fraction of a second I thought I was mistaken. “If the government wanted me to go swimming, they’d have issued me gear,” he said, "Good night, Captain Williams, Colonel Twofeather."

We ordered room service again for breakfast the next day. Sage kept interrupting her meal to dart back into her room and try on a different bathing suit. "I just can't decide. I love the pink one, but it might be too tween. I'm almost an adolescent now, nearly thirteen.”

"Got another eight months before you're thirteen,” I pointed out as I bit a mouthful of scrambled eggs and followed it up with some crispy, honest-to-goodness pork bacon. "I like the pink one."

She stuck her tongue out at me. "Shows what you know, Shad." She slipped back into the room, tried on the silver one, wore it under a cover-up for most of breakfast before going back and trying on the last one. She came back out wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

"No bathing suit?"

"It's underneath, obviously.”

“Made up your mind for sure?"

"Yes." She looked a little defiant and a little smug. I glanced at Grandpa. He had stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He sighed, finished his bite, drank his coffee, and stood up. "Well, we're wasting time. If you're ready, Sage, I guess we'd better go to the beach."

She skipped off to grab her sandals. I leaned over to Grandpa. "That look on her face, I'm worried about..."

He held up a hand. "Son, I've raised a teenage girl once already. Made some really stupid mistakes. I've learned you pick your battles."

I thought about it and decided Grandpa was right. I had a pair of swim trunks on and a t-shirt. As we prepared to leave the room, I strapped on my gun belt and covered it with my coat.

Sage stopped in the doorway. "Shad, you're not wearing that coat.”

"I'm not leaving it here."

"You look like a flasher."

"Well, I'm not.” I sounded pretty lame to myself, but there was no way I was leaving my trusty magic coat behind.

Juana was waiting for us in the hotel lobby. She looked tired, with bags under her eyes, but she stood up and smiled as she saw us. She was wearing a yellow button-down dress and sandals and a big floppy sun hat.

"It's good to see you three," she said.

"Have you got a bathing suit?" Sage asked. "If not, we'll stop on the way. I'll make Government-Issue Smith buy you one."

"Government-issue Smith?" Juana said, sounding amused as she turned to greet our handlers. They introduced themselves. "No, Sage, I had quite a wardrobe waiting for me. Did I have you two to thank for it?"

Agent Ellerham cleared his throat. "Actually, ah, since we had a time crunch and an unlimited budget, I called in some outside consultant help." He looked really uncomfortable. "My wife. She's really good at shopping. I had to pay her ticket out here, but she's waiving the usual government consultant fee, and I think we'll manage to slip it in through the paperwork."

"Well, I hope you've invited her along to the day at the beach," Juana said cheerfully.

"Actually, I have her arranging for the Orange Dream concert tonight. She'll meet us up later. My daughter is going to kill us when she finds out we were at Orange Dream and didn't bring her, but I thought that would be too big a strain on the government budget."

What is there to say about a day at the beach?

Well, it was crowded, but this was LA. It was always going to be crowded. The beach was actually cleaner than I expected, with no hypodermic needles or human waste anywhere. Either I had always been listening to the wrong stories about the state of affairs in LA, or maybe the government agents had brought in a cleaning service to have the place tidied up before we got there.

We spread out. I tucked my gun belt under my coat, swapped my cowboy hat for a big floppy sun hat, and slathered on some sunblock. Grandpa turned his nose up at the stuff.

"You wouldn't need that if you didn't have so much white boy in your DNA," he said.

"Everyone is supposed to wear sunblock, Grandpa," Sage said. "Even if you do have more melanin than I do. It prevents skin cancer.”

“I don’t really think that’s on my list of things to worry about any more,” Grandpa said. He hadn't taken off his button-down Hawaiian shirt. I could see the chain that held my abuela's necklace alongside the medicine pouch he always wore.

"You all right?" I asked Juana. "You seem tired."

"I'm fine," she said. "My mother's parents, my abuela and abuelo, were there when we arrived. I guess you three weren't the only ones expected."

Agent Ellerham cleared his throat. "No ma'am, we had a complete list of everyone who would be arriving from Colonel Ames. He gave specific instructions about the sort of reception we were to give everyone. There have been a few hiccups and hassles. Some media has gotten past the protection we've wanted, and there were a few unhappy reunions."

Juana's face went almost pale. She swallowed hard. "Yes," she said. "I could see there would be."

There was an awkward silence. Then she stood up and took off her dress. "Come on, Sage, let's go swimming," she said.

Sage was still wearing her shorts and t-shirt. She looked nervous. Then, defiantly, she pulled off her t-shirt to reveal a blue bikini.

I sat shocked, unable to say anything at the sight of my baby sister wearing a bikini.

"Alright, come on," she said as she dashed to the water, Juana in her heels.

"Good work, Shad," Grandpa said. "Very smooth. I like the way you managed to stick your foot in your mouth without saying anything."

"But I didn't say anything," I protested.

"And Sage noticed." He shook his head. "This is good for her, Shad. She doesn't have much of a chance to be an ordinary kid. Let it go. She'll be back to murdering nightmares out of Russian fairy tales and risking being ripped to death by extinct flying dinosaurs soon enough."

I sat on my beach towel until I started to feel awkward about it. Then I went to join the girls in the water. The surf was a little too rough for my liking but Juana and Sage weren't going very far out. The waves crashed in and hit the beach pretty hard, but I saw some kids playing and the surfers didn't seem to be having any great luck, so it must not have been too much.

Sage had regained her cheerfulness. She had a big stripy beach ball and lobbed it at me. I batted it back. She leapt up and hit it dead on, laughing. We played a pretty low-key game for a while before she got bored and went back up onto the beach. Juana and I followed her out of the water. Juana was wearing a modest ivory one-piece bathing suit and had her hair pulled up.

"You alright?" I asked again.

"I'm fine. Some of it's just harder than I expected."

"Yeah, I get that. Are you really up for a K-pop concert tonight?"

"Oh, that I wouldn't miss for the world," she said. "Mostly because I'm going to get to watch you and your grandfather squirming in a sea of pre-adolescent girls who are ready to throw their underwear at the stage but haven't quite figured out why yet."

I groaned. "Don't remind me," I said. “Anyway, that's not the worst of it.”

She looked startled. "What?"

"They didn't tell you? We've got a VIP ceremony and an early dinner before the concert. Medal ceremony. I guess Grandpa's getting another bronze star or some such."

Juana groaned. "If you told me that, I would have stayed back in Texas."

"Why do you think I didn't tell you that?" I teased.