After locking up her office, the Phantom Jungle Girl and I raced downstairs to the waiting Y+Thems van. Rubber Brother was in the passenger seat; with an elongated arm, he opened the sliding side door for us to hop in back. Domina was behind the wheel; she was the only Youthful Permutation. The others—Soren, Kiddo, and Tempy—were never part of our plan, Jasper wanting to keep the operation light and mobile.

     But much to my surprise, my sister Avie and Kozmik Kat were waiting for us in the back seat.

     “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Avie, you’re a civilian; this is a job for megaheroes.”

     “The cat helped her stow away, under a tarp,” said Dana. “By the time we realized it, we were halfway up Woodward Avenue. There was no time to circle back, and nowhere to drop her off.”

     I scowled at Kozmik Kat. “This is what I get for not letting you crash at my garret apartment, I suppose,” I said, “and making you stay with the Y+Thems and my sister at the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City.”

     “She opens my cans of cat food for me,” said Koz. “Which is more than you would do. Where do you expect my loyalties to lie?”

     “Audrey’s my friend, too,” Avie protested. “Maybe I’m no Ms. Megaton Man, but if Wilton’s abducted her and is holding her in some secret government research laboratory under the campus of Arbor State University, I want to help out, too.”

     “Yeah, but they’re fusing together realities down there and creating new Megaton Monsters and stuff,” I said. “You could get hurt, Avie. It’s going to be dangerous enough for us part-time crime busters. I don’t want to be worrying about you on top of everything else.”

     “But I brought my own baseball bat, see?” said Avie, brandishing the weapon she had stowed under the seat. “Besides, I’ll have Koz at my side.”

     “That’s not going to do much good if Mervyn Goldfarb’s still a big, bluish Bulky Guy,” I said.

     “Wait a minute,” said Koz. “Nobody mentioned the big, bluish Bulky Guy was back.”

     “Who’s Bulky Guy?” asked Dana.

     “Never heard of him,” said Jasper.

     “It’s settled,” I announced. “Once we get to Ann Arbor, Avie, you and Kozmik Kat are driving back home to Detroit, at once. I don’t want to be worrying about you on top of everything else.”

     “You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Koz. “Anyone who can explode into blue jelly all over an alley and congeal again is somebody I don’t want to mess with twice.”

     Avie tucked the bat under the seat. “Oh, you’re no fun,” she said.

Well after midnight now, traffic was light on the roadways of Metropolitan Detroit. If we had taken the freeway, the normal forty minutes from Royal Oak to Ann Arbor might have been cut to twenty-five. That would have been Dana’s inclination; she was chomping at the bit to step on the gas. But Jasper, who was navigating with the aid of an unfolded roadmap, directed her to hew to the back roads, lengthening the trip to over an hour.

     “ICHHL’s up there with their killer satellite,” he explained. “I don’t want to give Megatonic University any warning the New Detroit Crime Busters are a-comin’ for ‘em.”

     If anything, the erratic route we were taking would likely trigger the suspicions of Secret Agent Preston Percy and his minions, had they been watching. But the likelihood their telescopic lenses were trained on us, however, was not high.

     “How do you know ICHHL won’t be tracking me through my visor, cape, and buttons?” I asked. “They’ve been known to spy on me before.”

     “This van’s got a number of cloaking technologies that make it invisible to every form of detection except the naked eye,” said Dana, patting the dashboard. “The only thing we have to worry about is the State Police ticketing us for going too slow.”

     “Let me take a look at those things,” said Jasper. I took off my visor and handed them to hi . That’s when I noticed was wearing his Rubber Brother uniform for the occasion; it was the first time I had seen him dressed in leotards. He sported a visor very similar to mine.

     “Hmm,” he said, examining my visor.“Do you know who made yours?”

     “No,” I said. “My grandma sewed the fabric of my costume. But I don’t imagine she made the visor, or where the buttons are from. Don’t you know who made yours?”

     “They were just issued to me,” said Jasper. “Came in an unmarked package one day. Guess it meant I’d made the grade as a megahero. But they never worked right—always showing me things that weren’t there.”

     “Me too,” I said. “Like the old Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters in New York—a skyscraper that isn’t there anymore. And the layout of Megatonic University—it’s all discombobulated.”

     My visor had also shown me things that were really there, too, but invisible—like the Partyers from Mars flying saucer, the George Has a Gun, that even know was sitting behind my old Ann Street residence. Really there—but parked in some other reality, a dimension away.

     “Maybe your sighting of Bulky Guy was erroneous, too,” Koz suggested. “I’d sleep a lot better at night if I thought you were only seeing things.”

     “I wasn’t wearing my visor when I saw Mervyn Goldfarb in the bookstore,” I said. “Although later they indicated he was in several places at once in the underground lab.”

     “Multiple Bulky Guys!” said Koz. “I shudder to think…. I’m glad my goggles don’t show me any of that computerized stuff. Then again, I can’t work controls with my claws.” He took off his cyclopic, red-lensed goggles, like the ones Megaton Man wore, and showed me the insides—filled with tiny little screens, sensors, and control panels. “If I could, maybe they could give me X-ray vision and heat rays all kinds of other stuff.”

     Jasper handed me back my visor. “My visor doesn’t have any visible buttons,” I said. “They must be next-generation megahero eyewear. They seem to respond whenever I touch the temples in certain ways, giving me readouts and playback of video recordings and stuff. But Preston never gave me a complete tutorial. I’m reluctant to mess with them too much—I might burn down a city block.”

     “I don’t trust technology,” said Dana. “Unreliable. I think your sister’s got good instincts—a baseball bat. Plain and simple.”

     I put my visor back on and looked at Fanny—the Phantom Jungle Girl, alter-ego of Donna Blank. Her skimpy tiger-print bikini—as well as the office with Bobo the Gorilla and the Brilliant Brain—all seemed real enough.

     “So Donna, how does a white woman become the Phantom Jungle Girl, anyway?” I asked. “Have you ever even been to Africa?”

     “It’s a long story,” Donna replied.

     “We’ve got time to kill,” said Jasper.

     “All right, then,” said Donna. “You asked for it. Listen, my children…to the Secret Origin of the Phantom Jungle Girl!”

Donna explained that she had been an orphan—hence her last name, which was left blank—who never had any clue of who her real parents were. She had always been a good student, so much so that an anonymous patron was willing to pay to have her removed from her lowly orphanage and sent away to a distant, private boarding school. There, on her sixteenth birthday, she received a strange visitor.

     “She was a strange, old black woman—dressed in the garb of what they used to call a witch doctor,” said Donna, or Fanny, since she was dressed in her garb as the Phantom Jungle Girl. “She spoke with a kind of Creole French accent, and called herself Mammaw Voodoo.”

     “Sounds like some of the relatives of my adoptive father,” I said.

     “Daddy’s Cajun,” said Avie, listening intently.

     “Mammaw Voodoo informed me I was descended from a long lineage of female adventurers who had become imbued with the spirit of B’Nu Gullai as the reward for achieving some long-lost adventure.”

     “B’Nu Gullai?” said Koz. “Is that like Jamabalaya?”

     “She told you who your real parents were?” I asked. “I’ve become obsessed recently with finding my biological father, as Avie will tell you.”

     “Nothing as prosaic as that,” said Donna. “Mammaw Voodoo is unconcerned with European names or identities—mere biographical information is irrelevant to her. What was important was that my mother had been the Phantom Jungle Girl before me, and her mother before her.”

     “But Donna, you’re a social worker,” I said. “And you run a detective agency on the side. Aren’t you even curious about your own hidden past?”

     Donna only shrugged and stared blankly out the opaque eyes of her tiger-striped cat-eye mask.

     “Our mother might be a megahero named the Mod Puma in another dimension,” said Avie. “Ever hear of her?”

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     “I’m afraid not,” said Donna. “But I’ve met other adventurers who knew my mother,” said Donna.

     “She’s sleeping with one of her mother’s old lovers,” said Dana, laughing. “Didn’t the fifties Phantom Jungle Girl used to bang that bundle of mummy bandages? …Pretty incestuous, if you ask me.”

     Donna visibly flinched at the remark. Something told me it was deeply hurtful.

     “You should be more respectful when you speak of the Meddler,” said Jasper. “That cat’s a local legend.”

     “The Meddler’s a cat?” asked Koz.

     “No, he’s a bundle of mummy bandages, like Dana describes,” said Jasper. “Although he has a cat—a black one called Dr. Sax. I tried to get ahold of him for this caper, but he must be busy with another case. I’ll bet he’s already cased this Megatonic University joint. We could use shadowy, netherworldish-type where we’re going.”

It was nearly three a.m. when we finally reached downtown Ann Arbor. A light rain had given the empty Main Street a sleek appearance; the closed storefronts along empty bus shelters along the street seemed desolate and foreboding. At least no one so a group of colorful characters—me in my primary colors, Rubber Brother in purple and green, and Fanny and Dana nearly naked in tiger stripes and black leather, respectively got out near the kiosk that concealed the entrance to the underground lab.

     “You’re driving straight back to Detroit,” I said, leaning in the passenger window.

     “But you guys will need a getaway car,” said Avie, climbing in behind the wheel. “At least we should sleep over with Trent and Stella, so we’ll be nearby.”

     “Can’t tip them off,” said Jasper, craning a rubbery neck. “If the former Megaton Man and See-Thru Girl get wind of it, we’ll have ICHHL on our necks in New York minute.”

     And I didn’t want the Partyers from Mars to be alerted, either. “Just go back to Detroit,” I insisted.

     “You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Koz, buckling up in the passenger seat. “Before that Bulky Guy blew up in the alley, I thought I was going to wet myself.”

     “You’re a sacredly cat,” said Avie.

     “I don’t deny it,” said Koz. “Now, tally ho, Avril, old girl.”

     The van trundled off down the street, leaving us four megaheroes alone. I felt through gloved fingers the seam in the kiosk that concealed the doorway to the stairs leading down a hundred and fifty feet below the Arbor State campus. I found it and pried it open.

     “Don’t look now,” I said. “But Megatonic University, here we come.”

     I wasn’t sure what to expect. On my first visit, the underground facility had a medieval feeling, replete with dank stonework, cobwebs, and lit torches hanging out from the walls. The second time, after I chased Mervyn Goldfarb down this rabbit hole, the same facility had a sleek, painted, dropped-ceiling, fluorescent-lit office building feeling to it.

     This third time appeared much the same as the second. As we wound down the spiral stairs, lights came on; at the base of the stairs was a climate-controlled series of sterile, fluorescent-lit corridors.

     “This is what I imagine the Pentagon is like inside,” said Jasper.

     “At least they haven’t remade it yet again,” I said.

     Ahead of us was the guard station. Seated at the desk was the same guard—a big, African-American woman—that I’d seen on my second visit.

     “Hello, Ms. James,” the guard called out, as the four of us approached the desk. “Here to visit Dr. Joe? You won’t find him this time of night, I’m afraid. But I have your permanent badge. You brought visitors, I see. We always welcome our crime fighters in uniform.”

     She handed me my very own Megatonic University I.D. badge with my name—Clarissa James—and a nice head shot and everything; and here I’d expected we’d have run a laser-beam gauntlet.

     “No, we’re not here to see Dr. Joe,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect him at this hour; but I am a bit surprised you are. Don’t you ever sleep?”

     The guard laughed. “Oh, I like the quiet of the night,” she said.

     “I imagine it gets pretty quiet down here,” the Phantom Jungle Girl said to Dana. The way she wielded her jungle javelin, it was clear she was expected trouble any moment.

     I also noticed Dana had grabbed the baseball bat from the van.

     I turned and looked at the guard, who was smiling broadly and vacantly at me.

     “I’ll just have you all sign in for the record,” she said. “I’ll give you all your visitor’s badges as soon as this little machine prints them out.”

     I signed the ledger as I’d done before, and Jasper, Dana, and Fanny did the same. I was starting to feel foolish I had brought along reinforcements.

     “Friendly place,” Fanny whispered to Dana.

     “Too friendly,” said Dana. “Something’s not right about this set-up.”

     Jasper had been craning his next, stretching his body around to get a look at the security cameras arrayed along the corridor below the ceiling; he also snuck a peek at the monitors behind the guard’s desk. “No sign of Audrey.”

     “Is anybody working in any of the labs at this hour?” I asked.

     “You’ll find some night owls, I’m sure,” said the guard. “We have tour guides now—I’ll make a call; they’re probably on the other side of the campus. In the meantime, feel free to look around. You know the rules—lookee, no touchee. If you break it, you bought it.”

     The four of us strode past the guard station and down the passage until we came to a node of corridors that branched off in several directions.

     “Maybe it’s like Arbor State’s library system,” I said. “Open twenty-four hours.”

     “A top secret laboratory is not the same as a library,” said Jasper. “I smell a trap.”

     “We wanted inside—we’re inside,” said Dana. “After we find you’re friend, we’ll worry about breaking out of this place.”

     “Any idea which way to go?” asked the Phantom Jungle Girl. “My jungle sense tells me this way, but we could split up…”

     “I have a better idea,” I said. I detached the brass buttons of my cape from my collar bones. “Cape, find Audrey,” I said. “You should remember her—she’s the Asian girl who wore you that one time.”

     I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work—last time I had visited, the cape had gotten confused and didn’t know which way to turn. But this time it fluttered in front of me, a gesture I had learned to recognize as a nod of affirmation, then it swiftly flew down one of the corridors.

     “He’ll show me what he finds through the little cameras in his buttons,” I explained. I tapped the temple of my visor so that I could see the images my cape was recording.

     “Wait a second,” called the guard from back at the guard station. The four of us froze; we hadn’t exactly waited for her to give us permission to pass. “You forgot your visitor’s badges.”

     She came striding toward us, waving the badges.

     “You just have to wear these at all times,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re free to…to…”

     The guard suddenly jerked to a stop, freezing like a statue. That’s when I noticed the electrical cable she’d been dragging behind her from the guard station. It seemed it had been stuck to her shoe but had finally stretched taut. With her last step, it had detached.

     Jasper swooped around the guard with his rubbery body. He picked up the cable.

     “A quarter-inch jack,” he said. He examined the heel of her shoe. “And a matching plug. She’s wired, or she used to be; she’s come undone.”

     Dana waved the baseball bat in front of the guard’s vacant eyes.

     “A robot,” said Dana.

     “That explains the long hours behind the desk,” said Fanny. “I wonder if there’s a union.”

     “I was wondering who the heck they would get to work down here,” said Jasper. “It’s more than a little claustrophobic. Not to mention, the size of the labor force required to staff a facility this large would create quite a parking problem on the surface above.”

     Dana pried the visitors’ badges from the guards lifeless fingers. “Microchips,” she said. “These things are imbedded with tracking devices. Whoever runs this place definitely wants to know our movements.”

     “Wait,” I said. “My cape’s sending images to my visor.”

     “Did it find Audrey?” asked Jasper.

     “I think so,” I said. “It seems to have located something in one of the labs…”

     Suddenly, the images went dead.