“I swear,” Zoe fumed, “if you don’t get to the point of all of this right quick, I am going to murder you!”

“That would be inadvisable,” the albino coolly parried, “since I am here to help.” He shuffled to put his back to the wall. “Do you know the saying about the government powerful enough to give one everything?”

“Yeah,” I replied, a bit bewildered at this. “It’s powerful enough to revoke it all again. Jefferson said it.”

“No, you idiot,” Zoe muttered, “it was Gerald Ford.”

“Regardless of its origin,” the albino continued, “it is true. And when that government is perilously close to conquering the world, it will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal…especially when you can know the future before it happens, and stop it before it begins.” As that sunk in to us, he continued. “Latrodecta was rescued and turned into what is called an ’ace’—her sociopathy permits her to travel into the future and peek behind the temporal veil. She’s gotten loose, and the powers-that-be want her caged up again.”