The Communique, Chapter Three

Mailroom Duty at Flash Club Headquarters was never exactly a thrill a minute, and after the morning’s upheavals it was no wonder 4-H-N couldn’t keep her mind on the job. She was deeply happy Mini-Flash Pseudangelos had come home, that much went without saying. Yet the gladness bore with it a note of foreboding, because for all that 4-H-N’s so-called Special Program Task Force may originally have come to her in need, there was no longer any doubt they’d since come to view themselves as guests through choice alone. Sue’s mysterious little adventure was proof enough of that.

4-H-N sighed into the cavernous vault, heaped high with packages and parcels, and maybe even gifts as lovely as the one she’d received earlier that day.

But the two moons alone knew where Sue had got it. And that was the problem.

If the lot of them decided to up and leave tomorrow and join The Foretold One, as the galaxy feared they one day would, there’d be nothing 4-H-N could do to stop them.

She and Bobby were in over their heads.

It was surely time to tell her parents and Dylan. Her undercover mission was shot to pieces anyway, now that Bobby and the rest of the gang had graduated. There probably wasn’t even a gang any more, and if there was, their leader was now also the only neophyte. Comparing the situation to its closet Earth-correlative, 4-H-N suspected girls in the first rush of sophomore year wouldn’t want a freshman in charge.

It was fine that she hadn’t been advanced. Really. She had hoped, as anyone might, but it was fine.

Yes, here she was keeping store while every senior she knew was on manoeuvres, but advancement only happened in the most exceptional cases. A small part of 4-H-N did wonder what the Nereynis Incident and Limb Four were, if not that, but seriously, it was fine. Then, calming down a little, she reminded herself nobody knew about Limb, and that she hadn’t been a Mini-Flash nearly as long as those who had sponsored her membership.

Was there any point in her still being a Mini-Flash now?

If she really was going to share her secret, so that she and Bobby would no longer require furtive access to Flashlab Central, then maybe not.

Maybe there wasn’t an awful lot keeping her here anymore.

Oh, this mailroom, thought 4-H-N to herself, stretching and hoping to change the subject. It smelled enough even without her in it.

She wished she was out there getting up to interplanetary larks with the seniors.

With Flashlight.

The pair of them paying no attention whatsoever to whatever the emergency was.

That notion was good for a smile, not to mention helping the hours fly by.

At length a neophyte boy who 4-H-N didn’t know came in to collect a package. His visit was the only noteworthy point about that entire shift, and not in a good way…if, as 4-H-N was later to reflect, you could even say anything had happened at all.

She’d jumped up at once and asked for his name, with half a grin and half a grimace that invited him to comment on the rollercoaster experience that was mailroom duty.

Nothing but a name ensued.

It was an unusual one too, so it didn’t take 4-H-N a minute to dig out the delivery addressed to him. Wrapped in galactic mailing paper, its dimensions brought to mind a brick from back on Planet Earth, and picking it up 4-H-N found out it was as heavy as one too. This she clonked down on the counter in front the boy.

“Slow way to go about building a house,” she teased him, crinkling her nose. “What do you get next month, a floorboard?”

The boy merely signed for his parcel. And as he did so, he looked at 4-H-N in a way she couldn’t figure out.

As if, although she didn’t know him, he knew her.

Of course, it was silly to think anything of that. Her face and figure were plastered across every public service announcement on Dylan’s interpretation of the cause.

Even so, this didn’t feel like quite the same thing.

Fame produced fans, such as Flashslip for example, and it wasn’t quite fandom that burned at her from this strange boy’s stare.

A second later he was gone, taking his brick, without another word.

And 4-H-N wasn’t sure whether she’d made a new friend or a new enemy.

She sniffed.

“Guess I’ll see you around, Mini-Flash Phytolith,” said 4-H-N to the empty mailroom.

END OF CHAPTER THREE