Part One

In one case, literally.

"Get off me!" Kathy Demarco said disgustedly at the Gloob that decided to slop over her.

"Sorry," it said, and glopped off, oozing away.

Susan Gwyndel and Kavi looked at it. "What I want to know," Susan mused, "is why that Gloob wanted to glop over Kathy in the first place."

Kavi shrugged. "They love practical jokes. Anything to get a laugh."

"Tell me about it," Kathy muttered.

The three of them started down to the cafeteria. On the way, they passed Nicholas Connelly.

"Hi, Kathy," he said, then paused. "You smell of Gloob."

"She got glopped," Susan said with a straight face.

"Glopped," Kavi repeated, also with a straight face.

"Glopped," Nick repeated. His goggles made it easy to keep a straight face.

Kathy glared at them. "Shut," she said, "up."

His sister shrugged. "She's in the library, I think."

Nick snorted. "I think she spends an inordinately large amount of time with John."

Crysta Xandi grinned. "Why're you so concerned with your cousin?"

"Well, he also spends a lot of time in the library. Just like Sarah."

"Nick," Nar il'Wathi said wearily, "he's an Archivist. Of course he spends time in the library."

"Even so, he's.... er..... never mind."

"Haven't seen Kathy around, either," Ril al'Tana commented.

"She's in our dorm," Susan said, "washing Gloob out of her hair."

Ril gave an elaborate shudder.

Just then, Sarah Descan sat down at the table with her tray of food. Without a word, she started eating.

The others looked at her. After a while, Kavi asked, "No word of greeting?"

Sarah glanced up at them. "Why?"

"It's standard."

"I pride myself on not being a slave to convention."

"What were you doing in the library, anyway?" Nick asked.

"I was looking through the various files, to see if any Apocalypse members had been questioned by the Guardians before."

"And?" Susan prompted.

"Not a one."

"That's strange," Crysta commented. "When I was in there, I always heard the unit commander complaining about how many men he lost, and I'm sure that some of those were captured."

Sarah shrugged. "Maybe I overlooked some disks. I'll get back to the library later."

"And all that took you four hours," Nick said dryly.

"Hey, I'm not the Dark Sentinel. I'm only a sprite." Sarah was about to continue her meal, then hesitated. "I did find something rather interesting, however."

"And that is?"

"An undelete program."

"Excuse me?"

"Remember how you did all that hacking for us? Well, this program apparently reverses all of it."

Nick choked on his food. "What?"

"It was mislabeled as a maths datadisk. I was wondering why a math datadisk was hidden so well, so I ran it on my laptop. Big mistake. I spent an hour or so clearing all my previously deleted data from my laptop. Then I tried it on the Academy's cadet record."

"How did you manage to get in?" Nick asked.

"You're not the only one who can hack. In any case, I ran it on the record, and a lot of interesting stuff came to light."

Susan sighed. "This is getting too weird. I think I'll go check on Kathy. I know that she takes a long time to shower, but this is ridiculous."

"'Long time'?" Nick said incredulously. "That doesn't even begin to describe her."

"And how would you know?" Kavi asked.

"Hey, I stayed with her since I was three. Of course I know."

"That sounds so interesting," Ril said with a playful grin.

"Don't go around getting funny ideas. We're more like siblings than..... anything else."

Susan rolled her eyes. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

"Really. Honestly."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Kathy leaned over to Crysta. "I don't think I can take much more of this," she muttered.

Crysta shrugged. "Well, they didn't call Dr. il'Mani's class an 'insomnia therapy session' for nothing."

"What happened to Susan?" Peter asked.

Kathy's brow furrowed. "I thought she was with you."

"No, she went up to see you."

"Never saw her."

"It's not like her to be late for class," Crysta mused.

"There's a first time for everything," Nick said, coming into the conversation.

"Yeah," Kathy conceded, "but I don't think Susan's the sort to miss classes just like that."

Just then, the PA boomed, "Will Alpha group please meet Prime Jennings in his office immediately."

"That's us," Kavi told them. "Come on."

"Think it has anything to do with Susan?" Kathy asked.

Nick made a face. "I rather think it does."

"We don't have much time," Prime Jennings said. "I'll get to the point. We were slightly worried when we noticed that Susan wasn't in Dr. il'Mani's class. When she didn't show up, I ran a search for her keytool."

"And?" Nick asked.

Sarah held up something.

Kathy gasped. "That's Susan's keytool! But..."

"But a Guardian always stays with his or her keytool, unless there's an emergency," Prime Jennings finished for her. "Which is why I called all of you here. I fear Susan may be in great danger."

Kavi took Flash from Sarah. "Judging from the fact that it's more or less intact, I think that Susan was surprised, or she took it off voluntarily."

"Now why would she want to do that?" Peter asked puzzledly.

"That's what we're trying to determine," Prime Jennings said.

"Personally," Nick said, "I'd say that she was surprised. Where did you find the keytool?"

"In the turbolift," Prime Jennings said. "And we ran scans on it too. It was almost as if one moment she was there, the next gone."

"'Almost'?" Ril said, picking up on the Prime's slight hesitation.

"Well, we did find traces of energy. There was an energy discharge of some sort, but the traces were almost negligible as to be invisible to the scanner."

"Any idea what sort of discharge it was?" Nar asked.

"Unfortunately not. That we even picked up any clues regarding Susan's disappearance was nothing short of miraculous."

Nick thought for a moment. "What are the ways by which a person can spontaneously disappear?" he asked.

Kathy shrugged. "Vaporization, meson disruption...." She noticed everybody staring at her. "Hey, I'm only looking into all the possibilities."

"The scary thing is," Nar said, "those are possibilities. I mean, the energy trace could be anything, right?"

Prime Jennings nodded. "Our techs are currently trying to determine its nature. But I doubt they'll come up with anything new."

"I think we can rule out vaporization and things of that sort," Kavi said. "I mean, those sort of weapons leave way much more energy traces than that. Nobody has the technology to bring the energy discharge down."

"Then again," Crysta put in, "nobody had the technology to build the Darkling Armour either. But they did it all the same."

"Even so, Flash would've been vaporized as well. And yet here it is."

"There is one other way that Susan could've disappeared," Ril announced.

"And that is?"

"A portal."

Nick shook his head. "I don't think so. Susan wouldn't have walked into a portal that suddenly appeared in front of her."

"Who said it was in front of her? I'm sure you can't help going into a portal if it materialized right under you."

"And who do we know has the technology to open portals wherever they wished?" Peter asked, though all of them already knew the answer.

"But I don't think the Apocalypse is behind this," Ril said eventually. "I mean, why go for Susan? She may be in Alpha group, but there are the rest of us. And they could also simply capture Prime Jennings by opening a portal under him, couldn't they?"

"Thank the powers that be that none of them have thought about that yet," Prime Jennings murmured.

"So where does that leave us?" Crysta asked.

"Somewhere," Sarah said suddenly. "I've been doing a search for Susan's life signs within the radius of a portal generator's range. No matter how much technology will progress, there's still a limit as to how far a portal can transport people."

"When can you get the location?"

"I don't know. It all depends on luck. Oh, and if I happen to get it, prepare a medical team."

"Why?"

"Susan must've been dragged into the portal, not dropped into it. The fact that Flash is here proves that. Her kidnapper must've knocked her out, taken Flash off, and then escaped into the portal with her."

Nick stared at her. "You mean you knew all along, and you didn't tell us?"

"Well, no. You all seemed to have so much fun putting forth theories. I didn't want to spoil the mood."

"I will never understand you, you know that?"

"I'd like to keep it that way."

Prime Jennings cleared his throat. "In the meantime, Alpha group will be ready in the hangar not more than five minutes after I give the announcement."

"Uh, sir," Nar spoke up, "what happens if Sarah can't locate Susan?"

Prime Jennings smiled grimly. "Then we try harder. Any questions?"