I can't imagine Max and Liz's anxiety over this. I hope they'll be able to protect her, I know they'll do everything they can for their daughter.Thanks for the update!!
Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 21 4/6/26 p. 19
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 18 2/11/26 p. 18
Oh, so Willa can see auras... so she definitely have powers. I just want her to be safe. I can't imagine Max and Liz's anxiety over this. I hope they'll be able to protect her, I know they'll do everything they can for their daughter.
Thanks for the update!!
I can't imagine Max and Liz's anxiety over this. I hope they'll be able to protect her, I know they'll do everything they can for their daughter.Thanks for the update!!
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max and liz believer
- Obsessed Roswellian
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NINETEEN
Hi!
I would have posted this sooner, but as you might have noticed, the board was down for a couple of days, which gave me plenty of time to worry about what might have happened to it. So happy that it's back!
Thank you to Stefuh as always. So grateful that you're letting me know that you are here—reading—and leaving me feedback. I hope this chapter won't rattle you too much…
And a big Thank you to Gigo. Always!
From EIGHTEEN:
As Max backed out of the parking lot and turned to drive back onto the interstate, his mind a black cloud of foreboding and introspection, I thought about all the children that were born at the same time as Willa. Whether they had started to exhibit any abilities, even though their parents were not alien. I thought of the pure energy that constituted a parim and if that alone could create abilities.
I thought about the Mayor. What his plans were. How he was planning on defeating the rebellion. Defeating us. I wondered how we would be able to protect our daughter from the war. How vital it was that no one found out that she had gifts.
What would the Mayor do if he found out that Willa had gifts? Willa, the first child born from two parims in thousands of years, with powers. It was not rocket science that this was attractive. Especially since she was a child. She could still be shaped. She could be used. For all I knew, they could brainwash her into becoming one of them.
Stop! Max cried across the connection, making me jump. Seeing my fright, his mental voice softened, Please, stop.
His dark feelings, combined with mine, draped over us like a wet blanket and a tear, the first of many, rolled down my cheek.
I’m sorry, I whispered.
He didn’t reply, his mind filled with images of our daughter. Of her as a newborn, falling asleep on my chest after a milk feed, her first smile, her first laugh, crawling, learning to eat with a spoon, taking her first steps, her first words. Every greeting when she had run into his arms when he came home after work. The tickles, the bedtime stories, the dancing in the living room.
Our daughter had recently started to develop the ability to heal, but instead of being a special milestone as the child of a hybrid, it felt as if she had been handed a death sentence. With her strong life force loud with giggles and talk behind our seats, we felt her slipping away.
Soon, the community would claim her. Soon, she would no longer be ours to decide for.
NINETEEN
Max dropped us off and basically immediately left for work when we returned home. There was a small goodbye kiss and a hug for Willa, but he was in a hurry to be out the door in more ways than one. He was breaking down. His thoughts and emotions weighed heavily on his existence.
Being a resident at the hospital was hard work. Even though he was better equipped than most—having in essence been a doctor since he was a kid—it completely occupied his mind and energy.
Which is what he wanted presently. He needed an excuse to get out of his dark mind.
Willa and I stayed at home, doing laundry, coloring, building cats with beads (she loved cats), making dinner (Willa loved to be involved in every step of the cooking process) and organizing some papers from school. All regular stuff. Willa was happy and content. Nothing seemed to linger from the meeting the day before or the talk we had in the car.
I was just sneaking out of her room, after making sure that she was fast asleep, when I heard the key in the front door. I had felt him coming closer to our home for awhile now. Like a comfortable and familiar buzz increasing in the back of my head.
I met him coming out into the hallway, the modestly lit space making him disappear somewhat in the shadows.
“Hey,” I whispered.
He stopped where the living room led out into the hallway, gently reaching his arm out to drop the keychain on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to close the distance between us. “Hi.” The dimness of the room kept me from reading his face, but the connection did not.
As soon as I walked within arms’ length, he pulled me in, put his arms tightly around me and crushed me to his front. His breath was warm—slightly too quick—against the nook of my neck as he buried his face against my skin.
I melted into his embrace, missing his touch acutely. Everyday tasks had not managed to fully empty my thoughts or my worries, even though they had been a fair distraction.
“There’s food in the fridge,” I mumbled against his warm chest.
I all but purred when he buried his hand in my hair, molding it against the back of my scalp.
“I don’t need food,” he mumbled. “I need you.”
His raw statement didn’t exactly come as a surprise. I could feel the need, the desire, the want, rolling off him in waves. His day old stubble brushed roughly along my cheek as he slowly pulled back, locking eyes with me for a second, his gaze making electricity shoot down the center of my being, before he pushed forward and captured my lips with his. I opened my mouth to his invitation, loving how his kisses always could make me fall apart at the seams. Melt in his embrace.
“I need a shower,” his voice ghosted into my mouth. “Join me?”
Outside of the desire, I had difficulty deciphering his emotional state. Did he need me close because of want, because of love, because of sadness, because of frustration…?
Silently, I nodded and let him lead me by the hand to the bathroom. I snagged the baby monitor when I walked past the kitchen counter, turning it on while Max was peppering kisses along the line of my jugular and almost dropping the miniature surveillance device down the bathroom sink as Max took on the assignment of pulling my sweatshirt over my head as soon as we entered the bathroom. His hands were everywhere, his lips following suit.
His mouth drank my moans as his hands pushed down on my sweatpants along with my panties. I struggled to keep up, the skin of his hands burning along my arms. I distractedly noticed the white light trailing along my skin, being emitted from the tips of his fingers. The sign of our connection. The sign of our bond firing up. Re-energezing. Re-vitalizing.
I was trying to keep up. Trying to get his clothes off at the same pace and failing miserably. He was pulling me along with him, while stripping off his own pants and turning on the shower with his free hand.
Before I could blink, he pushed my back up against the shower wall, the water from the shower head obscuring my vision, drenching our warm bodies.
“I need you,” he mumbled, kissing me ferociously, pressing the length of his body up against mine. I gasped at the feel of his naked body against mine. Of how hardness met softness, his body always kept in shape to be prepared to protect the people he loved, while my body had softened from the pregnancy with Willa. Softened and changed. My hips were a bit wider now, my abdomen had a little bit more skin (which was slightly being filled out now by the new baby residing on the other side of that physical barrier).
His lips scorched mine as his hands left my face to grab a firm hold of my hips, pulling me up to wrap my thighs around his hips. His mouth continued down my neck, across my collarbone, over the hill of my breast, which was swollen with pregnancy.
“How was work?” I gasped breathlessly, threading my fingers through his dark thick hair, guiding his mouth towards my nipple.
A violent tremble shot through me as the vibrations from his answer tingled over the sensitive skin, “Nothing remarkable.”
Amidst our blazing desire, we were both aware of the sucking feeling of energy from the center of our bodies. Of how the connection was fuelling and resetting us. How it was pushing us closer together, to a point where our need for each other almost became unbearable.
But we had lived with it for so many years now, it had almost become second nature to us. This was our normal. Oddly enough. Having been a part of the connection for so many years, as much as the connection was part of us, had trained us to somewhat resist it. To regain control over our bodies. At the beginning of the grasp of the connection, we were being pushed around like puppets. Now we were able to pace ourselves. Even though it took a lot of restraint.
My upper body arched into his as he brought his hand down to the apex at my thighs. The heat was building in my body, the want unyielding. The relief when he joined our bodies was like a cool comfortable blanket and our combined sigh of satisfaction was loud, mixing with the noise of the water pelting down our naked bodies.
His mouth drank in our sigh, his body pressing me up against the wall of the shower stall, our bodies flush together, moving in the most instinctive intimate dance.
“I love you,” he whispered against my neck before he fell apart against me, dragging me along with him.
We washed each other off in silence, caresses soft and fleeting over highly sensitized skin, before we silently relocated to our bedroom. While in there we took our time to love each other. Slowly. Thoroughly.
It was getting late into the night when we found ourselves on our sides, facing each other. Max slowly brushing his fingers along the lines of the side of my face, placing a strand of my hair behind my ear, before sliding down my neck, over the hill of my shoulder, down the length of my arm—my skin breaking out in pleasurable goosebumps following his touch. Then up again, up my arm, up the curve of my neck, to cradle my cheek, his eyes fixed on mine the entire time.
“I’m starting training tomorrow,” he said solemnly. “I have the morning shift at work and then I have a couple of hours off.”
I nodded. “You sure about this? You sure you want to do this alone?”
I still wasn’t sure it was the right way to go. The connection was a part of both of us and to find that power surge we most rationally needed to be two.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “I want to find the switch. I probably won’t be able to execute anything,” he threw me a wink, “without your input.”
I smiled at him, his small gesture warming me. I was worried about Willa, but I didn’t want to talk about that. I knew he was worried too and I also knew that he had closed that part of his mind off. He wanted to focus on one thing at the time. And first up was the project of gaining more control over the connection.
Neither of us knew how to deal with the Willa situation and it was enough that it was whispering through our minds. We didn’t need to voice it too.
Max started training the next morning, leaving me with the same thought from the night before. “I need control. If I can find the switch, we won’t be blindsided again.”
We were both acutely aware of the ramifications of again.
At the latest meeting, we had argued about moving to the Institute. About living our lives behind armed gates with rotating guards and protocols.
But Willa was four.
So we had decided upon schedules instead of soldiers.
Family instead of fortresses. We told ourselves it was enough.
Keeping up with our four-year-old’s normal life meant taking her pet cat Yoda to the veterinarian for his regular yearly checkup and vaccination.
Max was doing a long shift at the hospital and I had the afternoon off to run some errands. We weren’t being escorted. Not for something this small. Not for a vet appointment.
Yoda was communicating his displeasure at riding the car loudly and I could see Willa’s worried face in the rearview mirror. It was endearing how she would spend more time with her face up against the barred door to the transport cage than looking out the window, trying to offer her support to the cat with her soft voice and nonsensical comforting sounds.
It didn’t help though. Yoda kept on singing.
“Mommy,” Willa piped up, “Yoda’s sad.”
I looked at her through the rearview mirror and gave her an encouraging smile. “He’s not used to the movements and sounds of a car, honey. He’s a bit worried. But what you’re doing is great! Even if he keeps on meowing, you are telling him that you’re there for him.”
Willa didn’t look convinced, biting her bottom lip in worry, before wordlessly refocusing her attention on the cat. Looking in the rearview mirror from time to time, to keep check on my daughter, I started to take notice of a black car inching closer and closer.
I kept waiting for it to overtake us, but it kept on tailgating me.
What’s wrong?
I jumped as Max’s voice practically boomed through my mind. We usually couldn’t communicate like this—restrained by vast geographic distance—but I must be going into more of an emotional response and stress than I had realized, which usually enhanced our connection.
I think someone’s following me, I told him, wondering why I had declined Alex’s offer to come along to the vet. The clinic was close to home and we would be in the car most of the time. I hadn’t seen the excursion as a possible risk.
We’d agreed routines were safer than walls. Agreed soldiers would only make Willa a target.
My knuckles were turning white from my hold on the steering wheel. Were we in danger?
Take a turn somewhere and see if the car follows, Max instructed. He couldn’t really hide his distress from me, but he was doing a good job at keeping his instructions calm and level-headed.
I nodded to myself, glanced in the rearview mirror again, both to check on Willa and to see if the car was still there. Which it was. I tried to keep my control over the car cool, to not jostle Willa in the back and make her worried about what was (possibly) happening, while I turned into a side road.
The car followed.
It followed, I told Max, feeling oddly empty, filled with bereavement over being alone with Willa. I could have panicked. Give into the heavy feeling of the wet blanket wanting to creep up over my chest.
But something was clicking in my head. Survival. Maternal instinct. I needed to stay clear. To get us home.
That’s when another car came out of nowhere and slammed into the right front of our car.
Maybe it was Max. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the connection. But before a second had passed, before the car had started spinning its half-circle into the center of the road, my body angled between the front seats to be able to direct my arm and hand in Willa’s direction, pushing the protective field towards my daughter, seeing its shimmering veil close around Willa and her cat, before my neck jerked sideways from the force, throwing my head against the glass of the driver’s door.
The pain exploded in my head, mixed with the scream from Max, before my vision dimmed and the sounds diminished, increasing and decreasing in clarity, before I blacked out and cut out both my thoughts and the movement of the car.
My head was without pain when I came to, blinking my eyes open fearfully.
Liz?
Even though his voice was merely telepathic, it sounded hoarse. As if he had been screaming for a very long time.
I rubbed my forehead, mumbling to myself—and Max, “I’m fine. I’m fine,” trying to orient myself. Trying to remember what had happened. My mind was surprisingly clear, but I had problems acclimatizing.
I was in my car. I squeezed my eyes closed. I felt Max searching me, checking my status. Especially since he wasn’t getting a clear verbal evaluation from me.
You were in a car crash, Max explained, panic lacing his voice, barely controlled. Is Willa okay?
Willa!
I spun around in my seat and saw the cat cage unmoved in the backseat.
Good. Yoda was there. Unharmed.
Good.
My eyes flickered to the seat next to the cage, but I was having troubles registering what I was actually seeing.
The air felt thick, its thickness muffling all the sounds around me except a consistent high frequency ringing. The thickness was plumbing me into deep water where the colors were too bright, the edges too soft, where my own hands felt foreign.
Where the details around me disappeared, leaving me with only the lonely seatbelt. With the buckle hanging haphazardly to the side of the seat.
I blinked. My lungs felt constricted around my harshly beating heart.
The buckle was open. I frowned. I had buckled her up.
Another blink. My fingers were going numb.
I stared at the metal of the buckle as it caught the reflection of sunlight. Why was the buckle open?
In the backseat, Yoda was in his cage, quiet for now, just meeting my eyes, but the seat next to the transport cage — where Willa had been…
The seat looked…
Wrong.
Crooked.
She wasn’t there.
No.
No. She had been right there. She had been right there next to Yoda. Talking to Yoda. Buckled up.
“Willa?” I whispered, her name catching on my dried lips.
I pressed myself between the front seats to look down at the floor behind the seats. Maybe she had crawled down there to hide?
My searching hand came up with nothing.
Empty. Only the black protective rubber mat on the floor.
My throat felt too tight.
My eyes fell on her stuffed pet cat which was laying on the floor behind the driver’s seat. On its side. Crooked. The ringing in my head stopped abruptly.
“She’s not here,” I said, my voice breaking. “She’s not— Oh God.”
The details sharpened painfully around me, the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline invading my senses. I pulled in a strained breath as the reality brought the connection.
Max.
His panic laced with fear slammed into me, making me physically sway in my seat. Where is she?
I turned to get out of the car, being stopped by the seat belt, which was still buckled.
I couldn’t answer him. Tears were already spilling down my cheeks, my hands clammy, my breath unable to fill up my lungs as I stumbled out of the car.
Max’s emotions were too loud, his questions interfering.
I couldn’t answer him. Not now.
My eyes distractedly scanned my surroundings. The other car. Empty. The headlights of my car was shattered. The street was empty.
Empty. The street was empty.
Willa’s carseat was empty.
No birds. No traffic sounds.
There was no one here. I was all alone.
My dry voice barely got a whisper out, “Wi—?” I swallowed. “Willa?”
I started to run around at the sight, looking underneath the car, searching bushes and behind trees.
Liz-? Please-
“Willa!”
The sound came out thin. Broken.
Wrong.
It wasn’t loud enough. She wouldn’t hear me.
I turned right, where the car had come from, and then turned left. Before turning in the other direction again. Before going back.
Liz. Breathe.
“Willa!
Louder this time.
Please answer. Please.
I stumbled, wiping at hot tears obscuring my field of vision, “Please, Willa.”
In my body, Max’s panic sharpened and his thoughts became clearer.
My calling had lured some people out of their houses and I started running up to them, asking if they had seen a little girl.
With every shake of their heads and every pitiful look, my desperation deepened, and my connection to Max grew clearer.
The moment the white-haired elderly woman shook her head in response to my question, I stopped listening, her offer at calling someone for me meeting deaf ears as I turned. Only to slam into a solid obstacle.
Hands caught me.
Warm. Steady. Solid.
Max.
He was there. Both physically and mentally.
I looked up at his face, the sheen across his tormented eyes, the hard set of his mouth. His hands gripped my upper arms. Tightly. Too tightly.
Not tight enough to hide his shaking. Or his unsteady breaths fanning my face.
A wave of relief rushed through me, immediately drowned by guilt.
“Is everything okay?” The shaky old voice of the woman standing behind me.
“No.”
I looked next to Max. At the walkway past him.
Empty. Still empty.
Looking back up at him, his grip on my arms tightened further.
“No.”
She was not with him.
I collapsed into Max’s arms and he put strong tight arms around me. There was no resentment towards me or my actions. No fuel to my guilt. There was anger, and fear, but nothing directed at me.
With his closeness, I could focus more on his thoughts, the deafening loop of self-blame being subdued, and I realized that my search for our daughter was futile.
She was gone.
“Noooo!” I screamed against the side of his neck, Max’s arms tightening further around me.
The world narrowed. The woman’s voice. I could no longer see the empty streets or the curious neighbors. I was only aware of my own wails, the trembles of Max’s strong embrace and the…
I froze.
There was something in the connection. Something in Max’s mind. Something he was trying to hide.
Something colder than panic.
In our bubble of fear, panic and desperation, ice cold tendrils stretched out through the cracks of the box he had tried to seal away from me.
But he was not in control of himself right now. He couldn’t stop me from widening the cracks.
I didn’t need a name.
Green eyes. Red hair. That smile.
The Mayor.
Eugene Bleeker.
In Max’s mind he was holding our daughter’s hand. Small fingers wrapped in his. In Max’s mind he was turning away. Taking her with him.
My knees buckled.
TBC...
I would have posted this sooner, but as you might have noticed, the board was down for a couple of days, which gave me plenty of time to worry about what might have happened to it. So happy that it's back!
Thank you to Stefuh as always. So grateful that you're letting me know that you are here—reading—and leaving me feedback. I hope this chapter won't rattle you too much…
And a big Thank you to Gigo. Always!
From EIGHTEEN:
As Max backed out of the parking lot and turned to drive back onto the interstate, his mind a black cloud of foreboding and introspection, I thought about all the children that were born at the same time as Willa. Whether they had started to exhibit any abilities, even though their parents were not alien. I thought of the pure energy that constituted a parim and if that alone could create abilities.
I thought about the Mayor. What his plans were. How he was planning on defeating the rebellion. Defeating us. I wondered how we would be able to protect our daughter from the war. How vital it was that no one found out that she had gifts.
What would the Mayor do if he found out that Willa had gifts? Willa, the first child born from two parims in thousands of years, with powers. It was not rocket science that this was attractive. Especially since she was a child. She could still be shaped. She could be used. For all I knew, they could brainwash her into becoming one of them.
Stop! Max cried across the connection, making me jump. Seeing my fright, his mental voice softened, Please, stop.
His dark feelings, combined with mine, draped over us like a wet blanket and a tear, the first of many, rolled down my cheek.
I’m sorry, I whispered.
He didn’t reply, his mind filled with images of our daughter. Of her as a newborn, falling asleep on my chest after a milk feed, her first smile, her first laugh, crawling, learning to eat with a spoon, taking her first steps, her first words. Every greeting when she had run into his arms when he came home after work. The tickles, the bedtime stories, the dancing in the living room.
Our daughter had recently started to develop the ability to heal, but instead of being a special milestone as the child of a hybrid, it felt as if she had been handed a death sentence. With her strong life force loud with giggles and talk behind our seats, we felt her slipping away.
Soon, the community would claim her. Soon, she would no longer be ours to decide for.
____________________________________
.NINETEEN
Max dropped us off and basically immediately left for work when we returned home. There was a small goodbye kiss and a hug for Willa, but he was in a hurry to be out the door in more ways than one. He was breaking down. His thoughts and emotions weighed heavily on his existence.
Being a resident at the hospital was hard work. Even though he was better equipped than most—having in essence been a doctor since he was a kid—it completely occupied his mind and energy.
Which is what he wanted presently. He needed an excuse to get out of his dark mind.
Willa and I stayed at home, doing laundry, coloring, building cats with beads (she loved cats), making dinner (Willa loved to be involved in every step of the cooking process) and organizing some papers from school. All regular stuff. Willa was happy and content. Nothing seemed to linger from the meeting the day before or the talk we had in the car.
I was just sneaking out of her room, after making sure that she was fast asleep, when I heard the key in the front door. I had felt him coming closer to our home for awhile now. Like a comfortable and familiar buzz increasing in the back of my head.
I met him coming out into the hallway, the modestly lit space making him disappear somewhat in the shadows.
“Hey,” I whispered.
He stopped where the living room led out into the hallway, gently reaching his arm out to drop the keychain on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to close the distance between us. “Hi.” The dimness of the room kept me from reading his face, but the connection did not.
As soon as I walked within arms’ length, he pulled me in, put his arms tightly around me and crushed me to his front. His breath was warm—slightly too quick—against the nook of my neck as he buried his face against my skin.
I melted into his embrace, missing his touch acutely. Everyday tasks had not managed to fully empty my thoughts or my worries, even though they had been a fair distraction.
“There’s food in the fridge,” I mumbled against his warm chest.
I all but purred when he buried his hand in my hair, molding it against the back of my scalp.
“I don’t need food,” he mumbled. “I need you.”
His raw statement didn’t exactly come as a surprise. I could feel the need, the desire, the want, rolling off him in waves. His day old stubble brushed roughly along my cheek as he slowly pulled back, locking eyes with me for a second, his gaze making electricity shoot down the center of my being, before he pushed forward and captured my lips with his. I opened my mouth to his invitation, loving how his kisses always could make me fall apart at the seams. Melt in his embrace.
“I need a shower,” his voice ghosted into my mouth. “Join me?”
Outside of the desire, I had difficulty deciphering his emotional state. Did he need me close because of want, because of love, because of sadness, because of frustration…?
Silently, I nodded and let him lead me by the hand to the bathroom. I snagged the baby monitor when I walked past the kitchen counter, turning it on while Max was peppering kisses along the line of my jugular and almost dropping the miniature surveillance device down the bathroom sink as Max took on the assignment of pulling my sweatshirt over my head as soon as we entered the bathroom. His hands were everywhere, his lips following suit.
His mouth drank my moans as his hands pushed down on my sweatpants along with my panties. I struggled to keep up, the skin of his hands burning along my arms. I distractedly noticed the white light trailing along my skin, being emitted from the tips of his fingers. The sign of our connection. The sign of our bond firing up. Re-energezing. Re-vitalizing.
I was trying to keep up. Trying to get his clothes off at the same pace and failing miserably. He was pulling me along with him, while stripping off his own pants and turning on the shower with his free hand.
Before I could blink, he pushed my back up against the shower wall, the water from the shower head obscuring my vision, drenching our warm bodies.
“I need you,” he mumbled, kissing me ferociously, pressing the length of his body up against mine. I gasped at the feel of his naked body against mine. Of how hardness met softness, his body always kept in shape to be prepared to protect the people he loved, while my body had softened from the pregnancy with Willa. Softened and changed. My hips were a bit wider now, my abdomen had a little bit more skin (which was slightly being filled out now by the new baby residing on the other side of that physical barrier).
His lips scorched mine as his hands left my face to grab a firm hold of my hips, pulling me up to wrap my thighs around his hips. His mouth continued down my neck, across my collarbone, over the hill of my breast, which was swollen with pregnancy.
“How was work?” I gasped breathlessly, threading my fingers through his dark thick hair, guiding his mouth towards my nipple.
A violent tremble shot through me as the vibrations from his answer tingled over the sensitive skin, “Nothing remarkable.”
Amidst our blazing desire, we were both aware of the sucking feeling of energy from the center of our bodies. Of how the connection was fuelling and resetting us. How it was pushing us closer together, to a point where our need for each other almost became unbearable.
But we had lived with it for so many years now, it had almost become second nature to us. This was our normal. Oddly enough. Having been a part of the connection for so many years, as much as the connection was part of us, had trained us to somewhat resist it. To regain control over our bodies. At the beginning of the grasp of the connection, we were being pushed around like puppets. Now we were able to pace ourselves. Even though it took a lot of restraint.
My upper body arched into his as he brought his hand down to the apex at my thighs. The heat was building in my body, the want unyielding. The relief when he joined our bodies was like a cool comfortable blanket and our combined sigh of satisfaction was loud, mixing with the noise of the water pelting down our naked bodies.
His mouth drank in our sigh, his body pressing me up against the wall of the shower stall, our bodies flush together, moving in the most instinctive intimate dance.
“I love you,” he whispered against my neck before he fell apart against me, dragging me along with him.
We washed each other off in silence, caresses soft and fleeting over highly sensitized skin, before we silently relocated to our bedroom. While in there we took our time to love each other. Slowly. Thoroughly.
It was getting late into the night when we found ourselves on our sides, facing each other. Max slowly brushing his fingers along the lines of the side of my face, placing a strand of my hair behind my ear, before sliding down my neck, over the hill of my shoulder, down the length of my arm—my skin breaking out in pleasurable goosebumps following his touch. Then up again, up my arm, up the curve of my neck, to cradle my cheek, his eyes fixed on mine the entire time.
“I’m starting training tomorrow,” he said solemnly. “I have the morning shift at work and then I have a couple of hours off.”
I nodded. “You sure about this? You sure you want to do this alone?”
I still wasn’t sure it was the right way to go. The connection was a part of both of us and to find that power surge we most rationally needed to be two.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “I want to find the switch. I probably won’t be able to execute anything,” he threw me a wink, “without your input.”
I smiled at him, his small gesture warming me. I was worried about Willa, but I didn’t want to talk about that. I knew he was worried too and I also knew that he had closed that part of his mind off. He wanted to focus on one thing at the time. And first up was the project of gaining more control over the connection.
Neither of us knew how to deal with the Willa situation and it was enough that it was whispering through our minds. We didn’t need to voice it too.
***
Max started training the next morning, leaving me with the same thought from the night before. “I need control. If I can find the switch, we won’t be blindsided again.”
We were both acutely aware of the ramifications of again.
At the latest meeting, we had argued about moving to the Institute. About living our lives behind armed gates with rotating guards and protocols.
But Willa was four.
So we had decided upon schedules instead of soldiers.
Family instead of fortresses. We told ourselves it was enough.
Keeping up with our four-year-old’s normal life meant taking her pet cat Yoda to the veterinarian for his regular yearly checkup and vaccination.
Max was doing a long shift at the hospital and I had the afternoon off to run some errands. We weren’t being escorted. Not for something this small. Not for a vet appointment.
Yoda was communicating his displeasure at riding the car loudly and I could see Willa’s worried face in the rearview mirror. It was endearing how she would spend more time with her face up against the barred door to the transport cage than looking out the window, trying to offer her support to the cat with her soft voice and nonsensical comforting sounds.
It didn’t help though. Yoda kept on singing.
“Mommy,” Willa piped up, “Yoda’s sad.”
I looked at her through the rearview mirror and gave her an encouraging smile. “He’s not used to the movements and sounds of a car, honey. He’s a bit worried. But what you’re doing is great! Even if he keeps on meowing, you are telling him that you’re there for him.”
Willa didn’t look convinced, biting her bottom lip in worry, before wordlessly refocusing her attention on the cat. Looking in the rearview mirror from time to time, to keep check on my daughter, I started to take notice of a black car inching closer and closer.
I kept waiting for it to overtake us, but it kept on tailgating me.
What’s wrong?
I jumped as Max’s voice practically boomed through my mind. We usually couldn’t communicate like this—restrained by vast geographic distance—but I must be going into more of an emotional response and stress than I had realized, which usually enhanced our connection.
I think someone’s following me, I told him, wondering why I had declined Alex’s offer to come along to the vet. The clinic was close to home and we would be in the car most of the time. I hadn’t seen the excursion as a possible risk.
We’d agreed routines were safer than walls. Agreed soldiers would only make Willa a target.
My knuckles were turning white from my hold on the steering wheel. Were we in danger?
Take a turn somewhere and see if the car follows, Max instructed. He couldn’t really hide his distress from me, but he was doing a good job at keeping his instructions calm and level-headed.
I nodded to myself, glanced in the rearview mirror again, both to check on Willa and to see if the car was still there. Which it was. I tried to keep my control over the car cool, to not jostle Willa in the back and make her worried about what was (possibly) happening, while I turned into a side road.
The car followed.
It followed, I told Max, feeling oddly empty, filled with bereavement over being alone with Willa. I could have panicked. Give into the heavy feeling of the wet blanket wanting to creep up over my chest.
But something was clicking in my head. Survival. Maternal instinct. I needed to stay clear. To get us home.
That’s when another car came out of nowhere and slammed into the right front of our car.
Maybe it was Max. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the connection. But before a second had passed, before the car had started spinning its half-circle into the center of the road, my body angled between the front seats to be able to direct my arm and hand in Willa’s direction, pushing the protective field towards my daughter, seeing its shimmering veil close around Willa and her cat, before my neck jerked sideways from the force, throwing my head against the glass of the driver’s door.
The pain exploded in my head, mixed with the scream from Max, before my vision dimmed and the sounds diminished, increasing and decreasing in clarity, before I blacked out and cut out both my thoughts and the movement of the car.
****
My head was without pain when I came to, blinking my eyes open fearfully.
Liz?
Even though his voice was merely telepathic, it sounded hoarse. As if he had been screaming for a very long time.
I rubbed my forehead, mumbling to myself—and Max, “I’m fine. I’m fine,” trying to orient myself. Trying to remember what had happened. My mind was surprisingly clear, but I had problems acclimatizing.
I was in my car. I squeezed my eyes closed. I felt Max searching me, checking my status. Especially since he wasn’t getting a clear verbal evaluation from me.
You were in a car crash, Max explained, panic lacing his voice, barely controlled. Is Willa okay?
Willa!
I spun around in my seat and saw the cat cage unmoved in the backseat.
Good. Yoda was there. Unharmed.
Good.
My eyes flickered to the seat next to the cage, but I was having troubles registering what I was actually seeing.
The air felt thick, its thickness muffling all the sounds around me except a consistent high frequency ringing. The thickness was plumbing me into deep water where the colors were too bright, the edges too soft, where my own hands felt foreign.
Where the details around me disappeared, leaving me with only the lonely seatbelt. With the buckle hanging haphazardly to the side of the seat.
I blinked. My lungs felt constricted around my harshly beating heart.
The buckle was open. I frowned. I had buckled her up.
Another blink. My fingers were going numb.
I stared at the metal of the buckle as it caught the reflection of sunlight. Why was the buckle open?
In the backseat, Yoda was in his cage, quiet for now, just meeting my eyes, but the seat next to the transport cage — where Willa had been…
The seat looked…
Wrong.
Crooked.
She wasn’t there.
No.
No. She had been right there. She had been right there next to Yoda. Talking to Yoda. Buckled up.
“Willa?” I whispered, her name catching on my dried lips.
I pressed myself between the front seats to look down at the floor behind the seats. Maybe she had crawled down there to hide?
My searching hand came up with nothing.
Empty. Only the black protective rubber mat on the floor.
My throat felt too tight.
My eyes fell on her stuffed pet cat which was laying on the floor behind the driver’s seat. On its side. Crooked. The ringing in my head stopped abruptly.
“She’s not here,” I said, my voice breaking. “She’s not— Oh God.”
The details sharpened painfully around me, the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline invading my senses. I pulled in a strained breath as the reality brought the connection.
Max.
His panic laced with fear slammed into me, making me physically sway in my seat. Where is she?
I turned to get out of the car, being stopped by the seat belt, which was still buckled.
I couldn’t answer him. Tears were already spilling down my cheeks, my hands clammy, my breath unable to fill up my lungs as I stumbled out of the car.
Max’s emotions were too loud, his questions interfering.
I couldn’t answer him. Not now.
My eyes distractedly scanned my surroundings. The other car. Empty. The headlights of my car was shattered. The street was empty.
Empty. The street was empty.
Willa’s carseat was empty.
No birds. No traffic sounds.
There was no one here. I was all alone.
My dry voice barely got a whisper out, “Wi—?” I swallowed. “Willa?”
I started to run around at the sight, looking underneath the car, searching bushes and behind trees.
Liz-? Please-
“Willa!”
The sound came out thin. Broken.
Wrong.
It wasn’t loud enough. She wouldn’t hear me.
I turned right, where the car had come from, and then turned left. Before turning in the other direction again. Before going back.
Liz. Breathe.
“Willa!
Louder this time.
Please answer. Please.
I stumbled, wiping at hot tears obscuring my field of vision, “Please, Willa.”
In my body, Max’s panic sharpened and his thoughts became clearer.
My calling had lured some people out of their houses and I started running up to them, asking if they had seen a little girl.
With every shake of their heads and every pitiful look, my desperation deepened, and my connection to Max grew clearer.
The moment the white-haired elderly woman shook her head in response to my question, I stopped listening, her offer at calling someone for me meeting deaf ears as I turned. Only to slam into a solid obstacle.
Hands caught me.
Warm. Steady. Solid.
Max.
He was there. Both physically and mentally.
I looked up at his face, the sheen across his tormented eyes, the hard set of his mouth. His hands gripped my upper arms. Tightly. Too tightly.
Not tight enough to hide his shaking. Or his unsteady breaths fanning my face.
A wave of relief rushed through me, immediately drowned by guilt.
“Is everything okay?” The shaky old voice of the woman standing behind me.
“No.”
I looked next to Max. At the walkway past him.
Empty. Still empty.
Looking back up at him, his grip on my arms tightened further.
“No.”
She was not with him.
I collapsed into Max’s arms and he put strong tight arms around me. There was no resentment towards me or my actions. No fuel to my guilt. There was anger, and fear, but nothing directed at me.
With his closeness, I could focus more on his thoughts, the deafening loop of self-blame being subdued, and I realized that my search for our daughter was futile.
She was gone.
“Noooo!” I screamed against the side of his neck, Max’s arms tightening further around me.
The world narrowed. The woman’s voice. I could no longer see the empty streets or the curious neighbors. I was only aware of my own wails, the trembles of Max’s strong embrace and the…
I froze.
There was something in the connection. Something in Max’s mind. Something he was trying to hide.
Something colder than panic.
In our bubble of fear, panic and desperation, ice cold tendrils stretched out through the cracks of the box he had tried to seal away from me.
But he was not in control of himself right now. He couldn’t stop me from widening the cracks.
I didn’t need a name.
Green eyes. Red hair. That smile.
The Mayor.
Eugene Bleeker.
In Max’s mind he was holding our daughter’s hand. Small fingers wrapped in his. In Max’s mind he was turning away. Taking her with him.
My knees buckled.
TBC...
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 19 3/14/26 p. 19
NOOOO.
Poor Willa... Oh my God. Even if Alex had been with them, I'm not sure if it would have helped, but now Willa's in danger... (Yoda is such a cute cat name btw!)
Update soon, please!! Even though I know they'll probably have difficulties finding her.
This is stressful.(I saw that you had updated and that the site was back up!, told myself I would read later after doing my chores, and then the site was down again.
Hope it'll be okay now.)-
max and liz believer
- Obsessed Roswellian
- Posts: 838
- Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2002 10:45 am
- Location: Sweden
- Contact:
TWENTY
Hi!
Sorry about the delay
Stefuh: Yoda is rather cute, right? I wanted to add the alien theme to the cat's name Thank you so much for the feedback. Don't know if this chapter will make you feel any better though… 
Thank you, Gigo
From NINETEEN:
The world narrowed. The woman’s voice. I could no longer see the empty streets or the curious neighbors. I was only aware of my own wails, the trembles of Max’s strong embrace and the…
I froze.
There was something in the connection. Something in Max’s mind. Something he was trying to hide.
Something colder than panic.
In our bubble of fear, panic and desperation, ice cold tendrils stretched out through the cracks of the box he had tried to seal away from me.
But he was not in control of himself right now. He couldn’t stop me from widening the cracks.
I didn’t need a name.
Green eyes. Red hair. That smile.
The Mayor.
Eugene Bleeker.
In Max’s mind he was holding our daughter’s hand. Small fingers wrapped in his. In Max’s mind he was turning away. Taking her with him.
My knees buckled.
TWENTY
All of the children born at the exact same time as Willa around the world had been snatched—reinforcing the rebellion’s prediction, most notably George’s and Dresden’s, that the children were in danger.
I should have listened. I should have placed Willa in a protected facility—maybe even the Institute, as proposed. There were a lot of things I could have done differently. Especially not taking my daughter with me to vaccinate the cat.
I tried to focus on finding her. But my mind kept replaying the last memory I had of her, sitting in the backseat, innocent in her love for that cat. Innocent.
And I couldn’t shake the image of the Mayor walking away with her. We weren’t even sure it had been him—one of his lackeys was more likely—but that was the image Max had planted in my mind.
Those green catlike eyes hunted my every second. Sleep wouldn’t come. My mind spun into one nightmare after another—my four-year-old in the hands of a strange and dangerous man.
An alien.
Max and I were back at the Institute, sitting through endless meetings. The men around me built strategies while I carried Willa’s stuffed cat everywhere I went.
They kept me out of the loop—unintentionally, maybe—debating whether the children would be moved off-planet, while I lay awake at night, counting hours instead of progress.
Every night, I lay beside my husband, aware of his breathing—never settling into sleep—unable to reach him, to offer comfort. Max was as unapproachable as I was closed off. Our connection blurred, distant—something we could no longer reach emotionally.
Max told me that the kids were alive and unharmed. Because our inside man had confirmed it. My Max, Willa’s father, listed possible reasons for kidnapping like he was checking items off a grocery list. We needed the information, but it left us with a burning sense of false comfort.
He shared their theory: the Mayor hadn’t taken the other children randomly. They might serve a purpose. Something tied to gaeas. To energy. Maybe even to Willa’s time of birth.
Max told me this while brushing his teeth. His eyes were down. His voice flat.
I stared at the wall of his back, at the tension in his shoulders, trying to ignore what it meant that he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Especially when talking about things that concerned Willa.
It made sense to take our daughter. The daughter of the two people who had taken down Command. But somehow they had connected her to the other children. We clung to the idea that it was only that—an association. Nothing more.
Because Eugene wasn’t above hurting children. Or killing them.
I stayed silent as Max walked past me, while he repeated the words of military men. Cold. Precise. Detached. The fact that the kids were still alive meant they were being used. They were needed as leverage. To keep us in line. To stop us from fighting back—now that the mayor was back on Earth.
I circled the bed, pulling back the covers on my side and lay down behind him. My mouth was dry and shivers raced across my skin.
He was barely a foot away, but it felt like miles.
He had wanted us to train together. The objection to having me train while being pregnant had disappeared the moment Willa was taken. During training, we had to lower our mental walls. Opened ourselves to the connection.
Those moments hurt the most—when the emotions came flooding in. When we were forced to feel.
But Max was focused. Like a machine.
I lifted my hand to touch his back, but it hovered in the air. My breath caught. Instead, I pressed my palm to the small curve of my lower abdomen, grounding myself with the baby.
We had our intimate moments, but it felt more like maintaining the connection than love. Without it—without the structure—we wouldn’t have had the energy to reach other at all.
It didn’t mean I loved him any less. But something had changed. There was an automation to it that we never had before. Our love had turned into a task. Into a tool.
Five days.
Five days without hearing my daughter’s laughter. Without her voice—her strange backwards reasoning that somehow always made sense.
Five days without tucking her in. Without her hugs. Without holding her hand, brushing her hair, watching her draw one cat after another.
Her room was echoing empty. Her toys were still on the floor, no one had wanted to clean it up. Her existence in her own life had been frozen in time.
My hand trembled over my stomach as I imagined her—my little girl—being cared for by strangers.
Men—alien military men—who didn’t know the first thing about a human child. Especially not a four-year-old.
Was she warm?
Had they fed her?
Even if her basic needs actually were met, her emotional ones most likely weren’t. Keeping a light on when it was dark. Comforting her when she was afraid.
I knew what captivity did to a person. What it carved out of you. I had survived it. Barely. I’d had the fortune of having a boyfriend who could heal me by remodeling my nightmares, read my emotions before I had noticed them myself and offer me eternal support. I had also had a boyfriend who had gone through a similar ordeal which meant that we could support each other, to facilitate our healing.
Willa had no one.
At best she was with kids her own age, but they were also just that. Kids. Scared, lonely kids who were missing their parents. Who didn’t understand what was happening. And she didn’t know those kids. They didn’t know her.
I pulled the comforter up to my ears, preparing for another sleepless night.
We had to get her back.
The longer we left her at the hands of those men, the more we were going to lose of our carefree, beautiful little girl. They would be robbing her of her innocence, irreparably tainting her childhood.
On the sixth day after my daughter’s kidnapping, my eyes were unseeing as they gazed at Max pacing the floor in front of me, occasionally stopping at the table where Dresden was seated to look or point at the maps and documents strewn across the table. Their discussion was a background mumble at best. I had given up on listening. I had tried to get my head around their plans, but they were doing an excellent job at telling me just enough to let me in on bits of what was going on, but too little to enable me to put it all together for myself.
My thoughts ran in circles, guilt chasing fear. I wanted to be a part of this. We needed everyone’s minds and ideas to get our daughter back.
I know that they were probably not intentionally blocking me out of acquiring the whole picture. There was just too much history, too much alien knowledge and facts, that it would be too inefficient to bring me up to speed.
My finger was tapping against the table surface. The suffocating feeling of being unable to help my own child. I wanted to report her missing to the police. I wanted to put up “Missing Child”-flyers, I wanted to drive up and down the streets, looking for her. I wanted to do what the parents of the other children—whose children went missing at the same time as Willa—were doing. I wasn’t sure if I should be envious of those parents for not knowing that their children had been abducted by aliens or if I felt sorry for them because they were scouring their country through regular human means. Which were useless.
Ignorance is bliss.
Right?
My chest felt tight, my eyes burned. I watched the lines on Max’s forehead. How deep they were. How the anguish never let them smooth out. I noticed the whiteness to his knuckles as he clenched his fists. I felt his anguished heartbeat echo through my own veins.
My knight in shining armor was breaking. I could see the cracks between the plates, dark dirt creeping along the edges.
On the outside, he looked protected, his hard shell in place, but on the inside he was a raw open wound. A wound not even a healer could mend.
Pins and needles prickled down my arms, making my fingers ache. Hearing their words, but not taking in their sentences. My field of vision narrowed and crept closer around my husband’s silhouette. He had been the most important person in my life for the past 12 years and (unbeknownst to me) had been an important part of my life since we were kids. Always looking out for me. Always making sure that I was safe.
I clenched my fists, rubbed them against my jeans, then pushed to my feet and crossed the distance between my husband and I.
He stopped talking mid-sentence when I touched his arm. His eyes locked on mine—by instinct, not choice—already searching my mind. “Liz? You okay?”
I swayed under the weight of his attention. Like a starved woman.
His eyes flickered to my abdomen and I picked up on his worry about our unborn child through the connection, before I swallowed. “Will you come with me?”
He prodded my mind, the lines on his forehead growing even deeper, that suffocating distance creeping in from the edges of our connection, “I’m in the middle-“
“Will you, please, come with me?” I interrupted, the suffocating pressure in my chest rolling across the connection, breaking through the creaks of his stained armor.
He caught my cold hand, interlacing our fingers, and a shiver of warmth raced down my spine. My heart skipped a beat, as he didn’t give into the urge to remain robotic, turning in Dresden’s general direction without tearing his eyes away from my face, “Excuse me one moment, Dresden.”
“Max, no, we-“ The leader of the rebellion was engaging in a losing battle.
Neither Max nor I was paying Dresden much attention, as Max let himself be dragged away by me. His fingers were warm as they wrapped around my hand. There was a heat building in my cheeks as he let me guide him out of the room, into the yellow-painted hallway of the third floor of the Institute, further into an empty storage room down the hall.
My intention had been to speak to him, but the energy in my chest—burning through the connection—had other ideas. Closing the door behind us with a sharp kick of my foot, I pushed Max up against the wall. My lips crashed into his. His stubble scraped my skin as I fisted his hair and dragged him closer.
My virile husband was not late to respond. He opened his mouth to me, sliding his tongue into my mouth, and I melted.
A whimper of pleasure escaped me as my hands kept his face in a firm grip, keeping his lips close.
His hands were on the small of my back, underneath my shirt, up my spine, heatedly skimming over my shoulder blades, before landing in a firm pressure at the base of my neck.
My hands let go of his face, my tongue tasting his, thawing the aching numbness of my soul, as my eager fingers pushed up underneath his T-shirt, over the well-defined, hard muscles of his chest.
There were no words. Our mouths found other uses. Our minds unable to form words.
He feverishly moved his hands from my back, along the sides of my chest, brushing over my bra, catching underneath the bra straps and pushing them off my shoulders.
My head fell back, pleasure suffocating the anguished pressure in my body, his mouth trailing down the side of my neck.
My hands traveled down the expanse of his broad back and pushed underneath his jeans. My touch guided him closer. Slamming his lower body into mine as I reconnected our lips—our kissing desperate, wet and aching.
In a blur he had pulled my shirt over my head and unclasped my bra, quickly spreading kisses over my collarbone and down the hill of my breast. My hands were back into his hair, drowning in that soft thick hair, my pants loud and harsh in his ear.
I was clinging to him, my body shaking with need, throbbing with the loss of emotional intimacy during the past few days.
I started with the struggle of unbuckling his belt while he simultaneously tried to get my jeans off. The result was an uncoordinated disorganized dance, but somehow we ended up without our clothes, our bodies pulling towards the other like two magnets while we fell on the semi-soft pile of discarded clothes.
Our union was quick. Frenzied. Our breathing loud and strained. Our bodies warm and sweaty. The connection had us covered in blinding brightness as we eventually slowly pulled apart and rolled onto our backs, our loud breaths the only sounds in the room.
The bliss lasted a few long moments—then reality crashed in, cold and merciless. My wild heart beat slowed down beat by beat until it returned to the slow detached level of a mother’s loss.
I felt the distance growing between us, even when our naked warm skin was physically connected at our hips, my hand enclosed in his long fingers between us.
“You wanted to talk to me about something?”
I turned my head and looked at him. Traced his profile, the hard set of his jaw, the dark long eyelashes, as he stared up into the ceiling.
Contentment from our union was slipping through my fingers. “Well, this was certainly not the plan.” The attempt at holding onto the buzz from the sex fell flat. The air around us was chilly when it contacted with our damp bare skin.
Rather than speaking to me, he sat up and absently searched through my mind, like thumbing through the pages of a thick book.
It was the first time since we had connected as young adults that I felt something close to intrusion from him. And I wasn’t even sure he was completely aware of what he was doing.
But he stumbled upon the plan in my mind and turned to face me. “It could work.”
I rose up into seated position, folding my arms around my naked upper body. I caught his eyes looking at me, his gaze traveling down my naked form, a sad twitch to his lips.
It made me feel even more exposed.
He leaned behind him and pulled out my sweater.
Accepting the piece of clothing, my throat was dry as I tried to swallow. “She must have connected with us somehow. She saw Command kill us and Philip saw the light of the connection surround the three of us at that meeting.”
Max was pulling a T-shirt over his head. “Why haven’t we thought of this before?”
The distance kept on growing as Max started beating himself up. I let my sweater flow down my body, dipping down over my bare thighs as I tried to catch his evasive eyes. “We were focusing on finding her.”
“Like humans,” he huffed. He stood up. Sharply. Kept on dressing. “We were focusing on trying to find her as though we only had human means.” He looked down at me, his dark gaze firm. My hands closed in fists on top of my thighs. “Of course we should’ve used the connection.” He shook his head frustratedly, “God, we could have gotten information from her five days ago, or just-“
“We don’t know if we can yet.” I remained on the floor, semi-aware of the connection pulsing around us. As though it were trying to preserve what it had made us do, trying to preserve the reconnection through physical contact. But I couldn’t focus on the hum. “I’ve been thinking… Maybe if it was possible to reach her, we should’ve been able to when we have been strengthening the connection. Like just now.”
My eyes dropped to my hands on my lap, my thumbnail worrying the back of the two golden physical proofs of my commitment to Max on my ring finger. “I need to do something. I’m not helping her-“
I looked up as I heard him shuffle in front of me and met his eyes as he crouched down. He placed his hand over the top of my head, stroking down the side and I greedily leaned into his touch.
“Liz…” His voice sad, regretful.
I put my hand over his against my cheek and pulled his hand down to my chest. “No, it’s okay.” My throat was tight. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… I feel like I’m failing her. I’m her mother. I should be able to help her.”
We hadn’t talked about this. We didn’t want to talk about this. We were afraid we wouldn’t survive that talk.
There was a break in my voice and a sharp sting to my heart. “I should be there to protect her. I failed her, I-“
“No,” Max mumbled and pulled me into his warm embrace. “No. You couldn’t have stopped this.”
I fell into his arms. Collapsing into myself. Let Max envelop my senses. His smell, his warmth, his strength.
“I should have put us all in the Institute, like dad suggested,” Max said. “This is on me.”
I shook my head in the curve of his neck. “I could’ve agreed to it too. I just wanted them to leave us alone. But… We both could have thought otherwise.” I sighed, my chest imploding with sharp needles. “Barely a second goes by that I don’t wish I could go back. Just turn back time and I would have done so many things differently. I just never thought…” A sob escaped me and I chose to stop talking at the risk of disintegrating.
He dipped his head. “We never thought they would be able to take her from us.”
I bundled up the sides of his T-shirt in my hands.
We never thought they would be able to take her from us. We had grown comfortable with the connection, thinking that it would protect us and our family at all costs. We had become complacent. Carrying on with our lives as usual. Instead of going into hiding.
Which we should have done.
I was biting my lower lip so hard I could taste blood. I took everything in me to not collapse into a puddle of tears. I couldn’t break down now. I wanted to try to connect. It was important.
My discussion with myself had Max tightening his hold on me and whispering tenderly, “Let’s focus on her. Pull forward all the memories we have of her.”
I remembered the minutes when Max had been almost dead, with a big gaping wound in his abdomen, and I had managed to use his healing powers through the connection by thinking about him.
Pulling him back from the brink of death had been nothing short of a miracle.
This would be the same.
Max’s arms tightened around me, the side of his head pressed into the top of my head, my fingers curled into his T-shirt, the inside of my thighs pushed up against the outside of his jeans-clad legs. And we thought about our little girl. Memory glimpses of her as a newborn, of her tumbling around as a toddler, of all the playtime, her imaginative role plays, her dress-ups. We thought about moments when we had seen on the faces of family members how much Willa meant to them. How much of an impact she made to their lives.
We conjured up the physical feeling of holding her hand, wiping her tears, hugging her tightly. We felt the weight of her body when carrying her from falling asleep on the couch to her own bed. We felt the uneven pressure from her small fingers when she tried to tickle us. We felt her soft brown hair thread through our fingers and her wet kisses on our cheeks.
The energy of the connection sprung to life around us, carrying a hum that was both intense and comforting. Almost as if the connection itself was happy to be of service. Happy about us using it again and accepting its help.
But neither the power nor the hopefulness of the connection could contact Willa.
There was no response. No tingle. No whisper. No inkling of another presence.
No Willa.
Bit by bit, I came apart in his arms. I cried for my little girl. For her innocence that was now lost. For her loneliness. For her fear. I mourned that I had failed to protect her.
I have no recollection of what Max was thinking and experiencing at that time. The world around me was black and cold, even with Max’s warm body close. I had tried to remain strong for her. Had barely cried since the day they took her from me. But I needed to let it out now.
Somehow we got from the floor, finished getting dressed, got to our temporary room at the Institute and into bed.
Max didn’t turn his back to me that night, instead spooning his comforting warmth around my body, his kisses warm against the thin sensitive skin behind my ear.
I brought his hands down over my pregnant abdomen, braiding our fingers together, and together we tried to catch those futile enticing strands of beckoning sleep.
We were back to maps, reports and strategy management in our search for Willa.
Disappointment was too weak of a word to describe my feelings about the connection right now. This was the first time we had actively—together—asked for its help and it had failed.
A lonely tear rolled down my cheek, Max’s arms flexing slightly around my frame, before his close warm presence helped to lull me to sleep. The fitful state of oblivion lasted only for two hours before it snapped like a string.
We sat up at the same time, staring at each other and whispered, “Willa.”
She was there. We could feel her. In our heads.
Willa.
TBC...
Sorry about the delay
Stefuh: Yoda is rather cute, right? I wanted to add the alien theme to the cat's name
Thank you so much for the feedback. Don't know if this chapter will make you feel any better though… Thank you, Gigo
From NINETEEN:
The world narrowed. The woman’s voice. I could no longer see the empty streets or the curious neighbors. I was only aware of my own wails, the trembles of Max’s strong embrace and the…
I froze.
There was something in the connection. Something in Max’s mind. Something he was trying to hide.
Something colder than panic.
In our bubble of fear, panic and desperation, ice cold tendrils stretched out through the cracks of the box he had tried to seal away from me.
But he was not in control of himself right now. He couldn’t stop me from widening the cracks.
I didn’t need a name.
Green eyes. Red hair. That smile.
The Mayor.
Eugene Bleeker.
In Max’s mind he was holding our daughter’s hand. Small fingers wrapped in his. In Max’s mind he was turning away. Taking her with him.
My knees buckled.
____________________________________
.All of the children born at the exact same time as Willa around the world had been snatched—reinforcing the rebellion’s prediction, most notably George’s and Dresden’s, that the children were in danger.
I should have listened. I should have placed Willa in a protected facility—maybe even the Institute, as proposed. There were a lot of things I could have done differently. Especially not taking my daughter with me to vaccinate the cat.
I tried to focus on finding her. But my mind kept replaying the last memory I had of her, sitting in the backseat, innocent in her love for that cat. Innocent.
And I couldn’t shake the image of the Mayor walking away with her. We weren’t even sure it had been him—one of his lackeys was more likely—but that was the image Max had planted in my mind.
Those green catlike eyes hunted my every second. Sleep wouldn’t come. My mind spun into one nightmare after another—my four-year-old in the hands of a strange and dangerous man.
An alien.
Max and I were back at the Institute, sitting through endless meetings. The men around me built strategies while I carried Willa’s stuffed cat everywhere I went.
They kept me out of the loop—unintentionally, maybe—debating whether the children would be moved off-planet, while I lay awake at night, counting hours instead of progress.
Every night, I lay beside my husband, aware of his breathing—never settling into sleep—unable to reach him, to offer comfort. Max was as unapproachable as I was closed off. Our connection blurred, distant—something we could no longer reach emotionally.
Max told me that the kids were alive and unharmed. Because our inside man had confirmed it. My Max, Willa’s father, listed possible reasons for kidnapping like he was checking items off a grocery list. We needed the information, but it left us with a burning sense of false comfort.
He shared their theory: the Mayor hadn’t taken the other children randomly. They might serve a purpose. Something tied to gaeas. To energy. Maybe even to Willa’s time of birth.
Max told me this while brushing his teeth. His eyes were down. His voice flat.
I stared at the wall of his back, at the tension in his shoulders, trying to ignore what it meant that he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Especially when talking about things that concerned Willa.
It made sense to take our daughter. The daughter of the two people who had taken down Command. But somehow they had connected her to the other children. We clung to the idea that it was only that—an association. Nothing more.
Because Eugene wasn’t above hurting children. Or killing them.
I stayed silent as Max walked past me, while he repeated the words of military men. Cold. Precise. Detached. The fact that the kids were still alive meant they were being used. They were needed as leverage. To keep us in line. To stop us from fighting back—now that the mayor was back on Earth.
I circled the bed, pulling back the covers on my side and lay down behind him. My mouth was dry and shivers raced across my skin.
He was barely a foot away, but it felt like miles.
He had wanted us to train together. The objection to having me train while being pregnant had disappeared the moment Willa was taken. During training, we had to lower our mental walls. Opened ourselves to the connection.
Those moments hurt the most—when the emotions came flooding in. When we were forced to feel.
But Max was focused. Like a machine.
I lifted my hand to touch his back, but it hovered in the air. My breath caught. Instead, I pressed my palm to the small curve of my lower abdomen, grounding myself with the baby.
We had our intimate moments, but it felt more like maintaining the connection than love. Without it—without the structure—we wouldn’t have had the energy to reach other at all.
It didn’t mean I loved him any less. But something had changed. There was an automation to it that we never had before. Our love had turned into a task. Into a tool.
Five days.
Five days without hearing my daughter’s laughter. Without her voice—her strange backwards reasoning that somehow always made sense.
Five days without tucking her in. Without her hugs. Without holding her hand, brushing her hair, watching her draw one cat after another.
Her room was echoing empty. Her toys were still on the floor, no one had wanted to clean it up. Her existence in her own life had been frozen in time.
My hand trembled over my stomach as I imagined her—my little girl—being cared for by strangers.
Men—alien military men—who didn’t know the first thing about a human child. Especially not a four-year-old.
Was she warm?
Had they fed her?
Even if her basic needs actually were met, her emotional ones most likely weren’t. Keeping a light on when it was dark. Comforting her when she was afraid.
I knew what captivity did to a person. What it carved out of you. I had survived it. Barely. I’d had the fortune of having a boyfriend who could heal me by remodeling my nightmares, read my emotions before I had noticed them myself and offer me eternal support. I had also had a boyfriend who had gone through a similar ordeal which meant that we could support each other, to facilitate our healing.
Willa had no one.
At best she was with kids her own age, but they were also just that. Kids. Scared, lonely kids who were missing their parents. Who didn’t understand what was happening. And she didn’t know those kids. They didn’t know her.
I pulled the comforter up to my ears, preparing for another sleepless night.
We had to get her back.
The longer we left her at the hands of those men, the more we were going to lose of our carefree, beautiful little girl. They would be robbing her of her innocence, irreparably tainting her childhood.
On the sixth day after my daughter’s kidnapping, my eyes were unseeing as they gazed at Max pacing the floor in front of me, occasionally stopping at the table where Dresden was seated to look or point at the maps and documents strewn across the table. Their discussion was a background mumble at best. I had given up on listening. I had tried to get my head around their plans, but they were doing an excellent job at telling me just enough to let me in on bits of what was going on, but too little to enable me to put it all together for myself.
My thoughts ran in circles, guilt chasing fear. I wanted to be a part of this. We needed everyone’s minds and ideas to get our daughter back.
I know that they were probably not intentionally blocking me out of acquiring the whole picture. There was just too much history, too much alien knowledge and facts, that it would be too inefficient to bring me up to speed.
My finger was tapping against the table surface. The suffocating feeling of being unable to help my own child. I wanted to report her missing to the police. I wanted to put up “Missing Child”-flyers, I wanted to drive up and down the streets, looking for her. I wanted to do what the parents of the other children—whose children went missing at the same time as Willa—were doing. I wasn’t sure if I should be envious of those parents for not knowing that their children had been abducted by aliens or if I felt sorry for them because they were scouring their country through regular human means. Which were useless.
Ignorance is bliss.
Right?
My chest felt tight, my eyes burned. I watched the lines on Max’s forehead. How deep they were. How the anguish never let them smooth out. I noticed the whiteness to his knuckles as he clenched his fists. I felt his anguished heartbeat echo through my own veins.
My knight in shining armor was breaking. I could see the cracks between the plates, dark dirt creeping along the edges.
On the outside, he looked protected, his hard shell in place, but on the inside he was a raw open wound. A wound not even a healer could mend.
Pins and needles prickled down my arms, making my fingers ache. Hearing their words, but not taking in their sentences. My field of vision narrowed and crept closer around my husband’s silhouette. He had been the most important person in my life for the past 12 years and (unbeknownst to me) had been an important part of my life since we were kids. Always looking out for me. Always making sure that I was safe.
I clenched my fists, rubbed them against my jeans, then pushed to my feet and crossed the distance between my husband and I.
He stopped talking mid-sentence when I touched his arm. His eyes locked on mine—by instinct, not choice—already searching my mind. “Liz? You okay?”
I swayed under the weight of his attention. Like a starved woman.
His eyes flickered to my abdomen and I picked up on his worry about our unborn child through the connection, before I swallowed. “Will you come with me?”
He prodded my mind, the lines on his forehead growing even deeper, that suffocating distance creeping in from the edges of our connection, “I’m in the middle-“
“Will you, please, come with me?” I interrupted, the suffocating pressure in my chest rolling across the connection, breaking through the creaks of his stained armor.
He caught my cold hand, interlacing our fingers, and a shiver of warmth raced down my spine. My heart skipped a beat, as he didn’t give into the urge to remain robotic, turning in Dresden’s general direction without tearing his eyes away from my face, “Excuse me one moment, Dresden.”
“Max, no, we-“ The leader of the rebellion was engaging in a losing battle.
Neither Max nor I was paying Dresden much attention, as Max let himself be dragged away by me. His fingers were warm as they wrapped around my hand. There was a heat building in my cheeks as he let me guide him out of the room, into the yellow-painted hallway of the third floor of the Institute, further into an empty storage room down the hall.
My intention had been to speak to him, but the energy in my chest—burning through the connection—had other ideas. Closing the door behind us with a sharp kick of my foot, I pushed Max up against the wall. My lips crashed into his. His stubble scraped my skin as I fisted his hair and dragged him closer.
My virile husband was not late to respond. He opened his mouth to me, sliding his tongue into my mouth, and I melted.
A whimper of pleasure escaped me as my hands kept his face in a firm grip, keeping his lips close.
His hands were on the small of my back, underneath my shirt, up my spine, heatedly skimming over my shoulder blades, before landing in a firm pressure at the base of my neck.
My hands let go of his face, my tongue tasting his, thawing the aching numbness of my soul, as my eager fingers pushed up underneath his T-shirt, over the well-defined, hard muscles of his chest.
There were no words. Our mouths found other uses. Our minds unable to form words.
He feverishly moved his hands from my back, along the sides of my chest, brushing over my bra, catching underneath the bra straps and pushing them off my shoulders.
My head fell back, pleasure suffocating the anguished pressure in my body, his mouth trailing down the side of my neck.
My hands traveled down the expanse of his broad back and pushed underneath his jeans. My touch guided him closer. Slamming his lower body into mine as I reconnected our lips—our kissing desperate, wet and aching.
In a blur he had pulled my shirt over my head and unclasped my bra, quickly spreading kisses over my collarbone and down the hill of my breast. My hands were back into his hair, drowning in that soft thick hair, my pants loud and harsh in his ear.
I was clinging to him, my body shaking with need, throbbing with the loss of emotional intimacy during the past few days.
I started with the struggle of unbuckling his belt while he simultaneously tried to get my jeans off. The result was an uncoordinated disorganized dance, but somehow we ended up without our clothes, our bodies pulling towards the other like two magnets while we fell on the semi-soft pile of discarded clothes.
Our union was quick. Frenzied. Our breathing loud and strained. Our bodies warm and sweaty. The connection had us covered in blinding brightness as we eventually slowly pulled apart and rolled onto our backs, our loud breaths the only sounds in the room.
The bliss lasted a few long moments—then reality crashed in, cold and merciless. My wild heart beat slowed down beat by beat until it returned to the slow detached level of a mother’s loss.
I felt the distance growing between us, even when our naked warm skin was physically connected at our hips, my hand enclosed in his long fingers between us.
“You wanted to talk to me about something?”
I turned my head and looked at him. Traced his profile, the hard set of his jaw, the dark long eyelashes, as he stared up into the ceiling.
Contentment from our union was slipping through my fingers. “Well, this was certainly not the plan.” The attempt at holding onto the buzz from the sex fell flat. The air around us was chilly when it contacted with our damp bare skin.
Rather than speaking to me, he sat up and absently searched through my mind, like thumbing through the pages of a thick book.
It was the first time since we had connected as young adults that I felt something close to intrusion from him. And I wasn’t even sure he was completely aware of what he was doing.
But he stumbled upon the plan in my mind and turned to face me. “It could work.”
I rose up into seated position, folding my arms around my naked upper body. I caught his eyes looking at me, his gaze traveling down my naked form, a sad twitch to his lips.
It made me feel even more exposed.
He leaned behind him and pulled out my sweater.
Accepting the piece of clothing, my throat was dry as I tried to swallow. “She must have connected with us somehow. She saw Command kill us and Philip saw the light of the connection surround the three of us at that meeting.”
Max was pulling a T-shirt over his head. “Why haven’t we thought of this before?”
The distance kept on growing as Max started beating himself up. I let my sweater flow down my body, dipping down over my bare thighs as I tried to catch his evasive eyes. “We were focusing on finding her.”
“Like humans,” he huffed. He stood up. Sharply. Kept on dressing. “We were focusing on trying to find her as though we only had human means.” He looked down at me, his dark gaze firm. My hands closed in fists on top of my thighs. “Of course we should’ve used the connection.” He shook his head frustratedly, “God, we could have gotten information from her five days ago, or just-“
“We don’t know if we can yet.” I remained on the floor, semi-aware of the connection pulsing around us. As though it were trying to preserve what it had made us do, trying to preserve the reconnection through physical contact. But I couldn’t focus on the hum. “I’ve been thinking… Maybe if it was possible to reach her, we should’ve been able to when we have been strengthening the connection. Like just now.”
My eyes dropped to my hands on my lap, my thumbnail worrying the back of the two golden physical proofs of my commitment to Max on my ring finger. “I need to do something. I’m not helping her-“
I looked up as I heard him shuffle in front of me and met his eyes as he crouched down. He placed his hand over the top of my head, stroking down the side and I greedily leaned into his touch.
“Liz…” His voice sad, regretful.
I put my hand over his against my cheek and pulled his hand down to my chest. “No, it’s okay.” My throat was tight. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… I feel like I’m failing her. I’m her mother. I should be able to help her.”
We hadn’t talked about this. We didn’t want to talk about this. We were afraid we wouldn’t survive that talk.
There was a break in my voice and a sharp sting to my heart. “I should be there to protect her. I failed her, I-“
“No,” Max mumbled and pulled me into his warm embrace. “No. You couldn’t have stopped this.”
I fell into his arms. Collapsing into myself. Let Max envelop my senses. His smell, his warmth, his strength.
“I should have put us all in the Institute, like dad suggested,” Max said. “This is on me.”
I shook my head in the curve of his neck. “I could’ve agreed to it too. I just wanted them to leave us alone. But… We both could have thought otherwise.” I sighed, my chest imploding with sharp needles. “Barely a second goes by that I don’t wish I could go back. Just turn back time and I would have done so many things differently. I just never thought…” A sob escaped me and I chose to stop talking at the risk of disintegrating.
He dipped his head. “We never thought they would be able to take her from us.”
I bundled up the sides of his T-shirt in my hands.
We never thought they would be able to take her from us. We had grown comfortable with the connection, thinking that it would protect us and our family at all costs. We had become complacent. Carrying on with our lives as usual. Instead of going into hiding.
Which we should have done.
I was biting my lower lip so hard I could taste blood. I took everything in me to not collapse into a puddle of tears. I couldn’t break down now. I wanted to try to connect. It was important.
My discussion with myself had Max tightening his hold on me and whispering tenderly, “Let’s focus on her. Pull forward all the memories we have of her.”
I remembered the minutes when Max had been almost dead, with a big gaping wound in his abdomen, and I had managed to use his healing powers through the connection by thinking about him.
Pulling him back from the brink of death had been nothing short of a miracle.
This would be the same.
Max’s arms tightened around me, the side of his head pressed into the top of my head, my fingers curled into his T-shirt, the inside of my thighs pushed up against the outside of his jeans-clad legs. And we thought about our little girl. Memory glimpses of her as a newborn, of her tumbling around as a toddler, of all the playtime, her imaginative role plays, her dress-ups. We thought about moments when we had seen on the faces of family members how much Willa meant to them. How much of an impact she made to their lives.
We conjured up the physical feeling of holding her hand, wiping her tears, hugging her tightly. We felt the weight of her body when carrying her from falling asleep on the couch to her own bed. We felt the uneven pressure from her small fingers when she tried to tickle us. We felt her soft brown hair thread through our fingers and her wet kisses on our cheeks.
The energy of the connection sprung to life around us, carrying a hum that was both intense and comforting. Almost as if the connection itself was happy to be of service. Happy about us using it again and accepting its help.
But neither the power nor the hopefulness of the connection could contact Willa.
There was no response. No tingle. No whisper. No inkling of another presence.
No Willa.
Bit by bit, I came apart in his arms. I cried for my little girl. For her innocence that was now lost. For her loneliness. For her fear. I mourned that I had failed to protect her.
I have no recollection of what Max was thinking and experiencing at that time. The world around me was black and cold, even with Max’s warm body close. I had tried to remain strong for her. Had barely cried since the day they took her from me. But I needed to let it out now.
Somehow we got from the floor, finished getting dressed, got to our temporary room at the Institute and into bed.
Max didn’t turn his back to me that night, instead spooning his comforting warmth around my body, his kisses warm against the thin sensitive skin behind my ear.
I brought his hands down over my pregnant abdomen, braiding our fingers together, and together we tried to catch those futile enticing strands of beckoning sleep.
We were back to maps, reports and strategy management in our search for Willa.
Disappointment was too weak of a word to describe my feelings about the connection right now. This was the first time we had actively—together—asked for its help and it had failed.
A lonely tear rolled down my cheek, Max’s arms flexing slightly around my frame, before his close warm presence helped to lull me to sleep. The fitful state of oblivion lasted only for two hours before it snapped like a string.
We sat up at the same time, staring at each other and whispered, “Willa.”
She was there. We could feel her. In our heads.
Willa.
TBC...
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Re: Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 20 3/30/26 p. 19
Of course they didn't think about the connection first because they were too focus on physically finding Willa. Poor them, I understand why Max and Liz were so cold towards each other, especially Max, but at the end it was their closeness that brought them the connection to Willa. I hope she'll be able to show them where she is!!
Thanks for the update! Can't wait for more!
Poor them, I understand why Max and Liz were so cold towards each other, especially Max, but at the end it was their closeness that brought them the connection to Willa. I hope she'll be able to show them where she is!!Thanks for the update! Can't wait for more!
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max and liz believer
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TWENTY-ONE
Hi!
Hope you all had a very Happy Easter!
Stefuh - Exactly! It's the intimacy between Max and Liz that matters here. It's the energy source to their connection. But they are both pulling away, wanting to grieve separately. Which is not good. At all. Let's hope they can find comfort and support in each other instead of pulling apart. Thank you so much for your feedback!
Gigo - Thank you!
From TWENTY:
Max didn’t turn his back to me that night, instead spooning his comforting warmth around my body, his kisses warm against the thin sensitive skin behind my ear.
I brought his hands down over my pregnant abdomen, braiding our fingers together, and together we tried to catch those futile enticing strands of beckoning sleep.
We were back to maps, reports and strategy management in our search for Willa.
Disappointment was too weak of a word to describe my feelings about the connection right now. This was the first time we had actively—together—asked for its help and it had failed.
A lonely tear rolled down my cheek, Max’s arms flexing slightly around my frame, before his close warm presence helped to lull me to sleep. The fitful state of oblivion lasted only for two hours before it snapped like a string.
We sat up at the same time, staring at each other and whispered, “Willa.”
She was there. We could feel her. In our heads.
Willa.
TWENTY-ONE
We couldn’t communicate with her. Not in words. Not in mental images. We weren’t even sure if she could sense us or if she was even aware of having contacted us.
The bond to our daughter was like an old transistor radio, her presence drifting in and out of our minds through waves of static. The longest we had felt her clearly was a maximum of five minutes.
But most importantly, she was alive. To our relieved surprise, she seemed okay.
The emotions she was sharing with us were those of calmness, of being connected, and feeling safe. This mixture of emotions left us with an uneasy feeling. On one hand, we were comforted by her calm emotions, but on the other hand it had us wondering; how?! Was there someone there that she knew? Someone that protected her?
We did have one person on the inside, but he was not involved with the children. He had confirmed that the children had been taken by the mayor, but he himself worked closer to the mayor—and the mayor (thank, God) was not close to the children.
Basking in her warm presence in our bodies, we were wondering if she was together with the other children. If that had given her a sense of peace.
Last we heard from our inside man, the children were kept separated from each other. But maybe that had changed.
How was she suddenly able to reach out to us? Did that mean that she was close by? Had she been brought closer to us? Or did it have something to do with the other kids? If they also carried the original pure energy, maybe putting them closer to each other fueled them all.
“I need to tell Dad,” Max said, as the first rays of the morning sun crept above the horizon.
We had been occupied with listening to Willa all night, not daring to go back to sleep. We wouldn’t have been able to anyway. We had been focusing on sending her as much love as possible through the connection, hoping that she could pick up on it. That she would grow to understand what the feelings were. Interpret them. Even if she didn’t, we hoped that our love would strengthen her. Make her feel safe and protected. Even if she wasn’t.
I nodded. “Yes. We should.”
“Maybe they moved the kids,” Max said, pulling on some pants. “She could be closer now.”
I nodded again, pulling the covers closer around me as sat watching him from bed. “Maybe they know something.”
Max pulled a T-shirt over his head, his voice muffled, “I hope so.”
“Maybe I should come along,” I suggested.
He walked up to the bed, leaned over to give me a small kiss on the lips, “That’s up to you.”
He knew that the meetings had been making me feel worse. How they had reinforced my feelings of guilt over having been the one who had failed to protect Willa. At the same time, I wanted to be there and follow their reasoning, catch up on any news.
I worried my bottom lip for only a second, before reconsidering and climbing out of bed. “No, I’ll come with.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. I felt Willa acutely in my heart, in my very soul. The need to rescue her, to bring her home, was suffocating.
Scooting off the bed, I quickly put on some clothes before following Max down the corridor. Max stretched his hand out behind him, encouraging me to take it, as we walked.
I had an ominous feeling increasing in my center and I tightened my fingers around his offered hand. Call it intuition. Call it a gut feeling. But even though Willa was very present in our connection, I had a feeling that something bad was about to happen—or was already happening.
Max squeezed back, the pressure an attempt at comfort.
The meeting was already scheduled. All we had to do was show up.
As we reached the large room where we usually held all of the meetings, both Dresden and Philip looked up at our presence.
“Good,” Mr. Evans stated. “You’re here.”
The table in front of them was already covered in papers and pens. A laptop was open on Google Maps, giving the impression that the two men had engaged in a pre-meeting.
“Willa has contacted us,” Max said without preamble.
Had the two aliens been less alien, with no human costume that dulled their true alien reactions, we might have been bestowed with some shock and dismay. Instead their faces were blank.
“Willa?” Dresden asked. “You know where she is?”
“No,” I answered, Max’s fingers tight around my hand. “She somehow connected to us.”
“You can feel her?” Mr. Evans implored.
“She might not know that she’s doing it,” Max filled in, walking us over to the table. “We are not able to communicate with her.”
“Has she done anything like that before?” Dresden wanted to know.
Max was sifting through the papers on the table, something catching his interest, making me answer in his place, “No. Right around the time that the mayor started to show up on Earth, Willa told us that she had seen us dead—at the hands of Command—which made us suspect that she had somehow gained access to our minds.”
Mr. Evans’ eyes darkened, boring into Max’s bent neck, “Is that true, Maxwell?”
Sorry, I whispered through the connection.
Max looked up at me while giving my hand a squeeze, We have to tell them everything.
I nodded and together we straightened and met the disapproving looks from the elder men.
“We didn’t want her to get dragged into this mess so we didn’t tell you,” Max said.
“Well, look how well that played out,” Mr. Evans established acidly.
My stomach tightened with reminded guilt and Max took a step closer to me while looking at his father with dark eyes.
“What exactly happened?” Dresden cut past. “Was Willa aware of being in your minds at the time?”
I swallowed and shook my head. “We asked her about it, but she thought it was a dream.”
“And we didn’t correct her,” Max added.
Mr. Evans met Dresden’s eyes as Dresden turned to his colleague. They shared a quick muted discussion before turning back to us in unison. “Have you had any other proof of her developing abilities?”
We looked to Dresden, considering his question for a brief moment, before Max answered, “A couple of weeks before she was taken, she said that Liz and I had beautiful colors around us.”
Mr. Evans turned his back with a deep sigh and focused his attention on the laptop.
I felt like a disobedient child, being forced to come clean about shoplifting. Disappointed parents as a consequence.
“Okay,” Dresden said, “That changes things.”
“That puts Willa in even graver danger,” Willa’s grandfather stated, making that ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach burn. He was still focusing on the laptop.
“What would the mayor do if he found out that Willa has abilities?” Max asked, his voice strained.
Mr. Evans looked up and stated gravely, “Anything.”
Dresden threw him a glance and his voice was softer as he tried to smooth over the statement, “It means that she would not only be the descendant to two parims, someone he could use to blackmail you. She could be used. As a-“
“-weapon,” I filled in, dread saturating my heart. My free hand searched out the chair behind me, needing to sit down.
“If trained properly, she could effectively be used against us—against you,” Dresden continued. “And knowing that she’s your daughter, we wouldn’t be able to—wouldn’t want to defend ourselves.”
I sank down on the chair, whispering, “No no. She wouldn’t be used for that. She’s only a child. She’s little.”
“It would only mean that he would hold onto her for longer. For years.”
Coldness flooded me. “No.” Ice cold fingers encircled my heart and squeezed. Painfully.
“He’s already been away for many years to plan his attack, Elizabeth,” Mr. Evans filled in, a soft pity in his voice, “He’s in no hurry. In 7-8 years, she would be fully trained, her mind most likely altered—brainwashed—into being one of them.”
I remembered the words of Max’s grandfather right then. How parim souls were more susceptible to being tainted by evil. How they lost their purity were their minds manipulated. Did that also mean that they were more easily manipulated by evil? More easily won over by the wrong side?
“That’s not going to happen,” Max said forcibly, “because we’re bringing her home. Right?”
I looked up at my husband, searching for comfort, searching for something on his face. But his jaw was set in stone, his gaze fixed on the elder men.
“We’re working 24/7 to make that happen, Max,” Dresden assured him. Offering zero comfort.
A knock at the half-closed door interrupted our discussion. Looking over, I saw a tall light-haired man, all dressed in black, with a grim set to his mouth. “Excuse me, sir?”
Dresden straightened. “Yes, Miller?”
“One of the men has found a box outside of the premises, sir,” the man referred to as Miller replied.
Dresden glanced at Max and I, before asking, “Have you opened it?”
There was a beat and I noticed a sickly yellow-green swirl in the man’s aura. “Yes, sir.”
It’s bad news, Max’s voice whispered through the connection.
Mr. Evans looked impatient. “Anything in it?”
All three of us, sharing in the ability to observe auras, could see how this man’s collected front was in stark contrast to how he really felt. The man’s eyes brushed across Max and I, as if he was hesitant to say anything more with us being present.
The action did not go Dresden unnoticed, “It’s alright, Miller. Go ahead.”
The guy straightened, cleared his throat, and said, “It’s Lester.”
I felt Max tense next to me, at the same time as Mr. Evans took a step forward towards the man.
I had never come across that name before, but I could tell that Max had. Even before his thoughts went through my head, Lester is the inside guy. Our infiltrator.
“It’s his head,” Miller continued and cleared his throat. “It’s his head in the box.” He straightened and added, “Sir.”
Dresden was already out the door, with a “Show me, Miller,” before the full ramifications of what the man had told us hit me.
“Fuck,” Max whispered and slowly sank down on the edge of the table behind him.
I was looking between the two men in the room. The silence demanding answers. The panic in my chest was building. This was bad. I didn’t want to ask and have confirmed what I already could guess.
That our spy—our guy working undercover close to the mayor—had been killed and his head had been sent to us.
“His cover was blown,” Max breathed.
I kept looking between the men, a shiver having been put in motion at my very core. I knew with every fiber of my being what this meant, but I didn’t want to voice it. I wanted the decapitation of one of our men and the ramifications of that to remain hidden in the unspoken reality.
I tried to focus on Willa. On the warmth that Willa’s subdued presence in my mind brought me. Nothing had happened to her. She was still there.
Unharmed.
“Dad?” Max asked stressed. “What’s happening?”
“Eugune decapitated our spy,” Mr. Evans declared impassively. As if he was somewhat surprised by this.
“Yes.” Max’s voice rose with impatience. “That was very clear. But what does this-“
He was cut short by Dresden re-entering the room, breathless, hurried, putting a piece of paper on the table next to us. I could see the blood stains on the paper from where I was seated.
“He left a note,” Dresden said grimly.
Max quickly walked up to the table to retrieve the tainted piece of paper, beating his father to it, who stopped just behind him to read over his shoulder.
I read the letter with Max’s inner eye, apprehension building, fear invading my every cell like a poison.
Want to ever see your progeny again? Feel free to join us.
Safe travels,
Eugene Bleeker
Antarian Travels
“FUCK!” Max roared, making me jump.
I watched in shocked silence, my thoughts decaying while my hands were shaking, as Max crumbled the bloodied piece of paper up and went savage on the content of the table.
His reaction made my own worse. His anguish was one I had only seen when I myself had been threatened or injured, from his memories. I had never witnessed it first hand.
His father stretched his arms out towards Max, appeasing, “Max, calm down.”
“He’s moving the children off the planet,” Dresden interpreted, thus confirming what I knew the hint in Antarian Travels to mean.
Max slammed his fist into the wall at this, repeating a “Fuck!” whereas I was having troubles breathing with his all-consuming emotions flooding the connection.
I focused on Willa, on her presence, but it was difficult to feel her with Max’s feelings of desperation, fear and anger mowing down everything around him.
“Max!” I screamed at him, trying to capture his flailing arms as he went around the room, taking his anger out on chairs, tables and doors. “Max! Stop! You’re scaring Willa!”
He quickly turned to face me, his eyes a stormy ocean of darkness and wetness, his breathing harsh and loud.
“Calm down,” I ordered him, my own voice cracking with fear. “She’s feeling this too.” I knew I had gotten through to him, felt him trying to rein in his feelings, trying to filter what got broadcasted. I became aware of the tears on my cheeks as I repeated sadly, “She’s feeling this too.”
He pulled me up from the chair and crashed me into his body, his arms tight around my trembling body. “He’s taking her off the planet.” His words were warmed by his breath into the junction between my shoulder and my throat. “She’s lost. We can’t get to her.”
No… I started fighting his embrace, wanting to break free, wanting to look at him, hit him or scream at him that he was wrong. We couldn’t give up now. We couldn’t give up on our daughter.
“Liz, Liz,” he mumbled into the feverish skin of my neck, his hold on my squirming body tightening. “We can’t follow.”
I opened my mouth to tell him otherwise when the small soft presence at the back of our connection—the one represented by Willa—disappeared. Like turning off a switch.
We froze. Every emotion grew to a standstill.
Next, jumped as Dresden’s cell phone started ringing.
Max’s grip instantly loosened and we turned our heads in unison towards Dresden.
“Dresden. Yes… Okay. No. Okay. That’s not good.” Dresden looked over in our direction, something akin to desperation in his eyes while continuing the call. “Yeah. We will get back to you. Stand down.”
He disconnected the call, frozen with his eyes on the telephone screen, making Max impatiently prompt, “What?”
I couldn’t feel Willa. Her joining to our connection had been shaky the whole time, but there had never been complete silence. Not since she had showed up a couple of hours ago.
“Our men confirms that an Antarian spacecraft has been spotted in the airspace, leaving Earth.”
TBC...
Hope you all had a very Happy Easter!
Stefuh - Exactly! It's the intimacy between Max and Liz that matters here. It's the energy source to their connection. But they are both pulling away, wanting to grieve separately. Which is not good. At all. Let's hope they can find comfort and support in each other instead of pulling apart. Thank you so much for your feedback!
Gigo - Thank you!
From TWENTY:
Max didn’t turn his back to me that night, instead spooning his comforting warmth around my body, his kisses warm against the thin sensitive skin behind my ear.
I brought his hands down over my pregnant abdomen, braiding our fingers together, and together we tried to catch those futile enticing strands of beckoning sleep.
We were back to maps, reports and strategy management in our search for Willa.
Disappointment was too weak of a word to describe my feelings about the connection right now. This was the first time we had actively—together—asked for its help and it had failed.
A lonely tear rolled down my cheek, Max’s arms flexing slightly around my frame, before his close warm presence helped to lull me to sleep. The fitful state of oblivion lasted only for two hours before it snapped like a string.
We sat up at the same time, staring at each other and whispered, “Willa.”
She was there. We could feel her. In our heads.
Willa.
____________________________________
.TWENTY-ONE
We couldn’t communicate with her. Not in words. Not in mental images. We weren’t even sure if she could sense us or if she was even aware of having contacted us.
The bond to our daughter was like an old transistor radio, her presence drifting in and out of our minds through waves of static. The longest we had felt her clearly was a maximum of five minutes.
But most importantly, she was alive. To our relieved surprise, she seemed okay.
The emotions she was sharing with us were those of calmness, of being connected, and feeling safe. This mixture of emotions left us with an uneasy feeling. On one hand, we were comforted by her calm emotions, but on the other hand it had us wondering; how?! Was there someone there that she knew? Someone that protected her?
We did have one person on the inside, but he was not involved with the children. He had confirmed that the children had been taken by the mayor, but he himself worked closer to the mayor—and the mayor (thank, God) was not close to the children.
Basking in her warm presence in our bodies, we were wondering if she was together with the other children. If that had given her a sense of peace.
Last we heard from our inside man, the children were kept separated from each other. But maybe that had changed.
How was she suddenly able to reach out to us? Did that mean that she was close by? Had she been brought closer to us? Or did it have something to do with the other kids? If they also carried the original pure energy, maybe putting them closer to each other fueled them all.
“I need to tell Dad,” Max said, as the first rays of the morning sun crept above the horizon.
We had been occupied with listening to Willa all night, not daring to go back to sleep. We wouldn’t have been able to anyway. We had been focusing on sending her as much love as possible through the connection, hoping that she could pick up on it. That she would grow to understand what the feelings were. Interpret them. Even if she didn’t, we hoped that our love would strengthen her. Make her feel safe and protected. Even if she wasn’t.
I nodded. “Yes. We should.”
“Maybe they moved the kids,” Max said, pulling on some pants. “She could be closer now.”
I nodded again, pulling the covers closer around me as sat watching him from bed. “Maybe they know something.”
Max pulled a T-shirt over his head, his voice muffled, “I hope so.”
“Maybe I should come along,” I suggested.
He walked up to the bed, leaned over to give me a small kiss on the lips, “That’s up to you.”
He knew that the meetings had been making me feel worse. How they had reinforced my feelings of guilt over having been the one who had failed to protect Willa. At the same time, I wanted to be there and follow their reasoning, catch up on any news.
I worried my bottom lip for only a second, before reconsidering and climbing out of bed. “No, I’ll come with.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. I felt Willa acutely in my heart, in my very soul. The need to rescue her, to bring her home, was suffocating.
Scooting off the bed, I quickly put on some clothes before following Max down the corridor. Max stretched his hand out behind him, encouraging me to take it, as we walked.
I had an ominous feeling increasing in my center and I tightened my fingers around his offered hand. Call it intuition. Call it a gut feeling. But even though Willa was very present in our connection, I had a feeling that something bad was about to happen—or was already happening.
Max squeezed back, the pressure an attempt at comfort.
The meeting was already scheduled. All we had to do was show up.
As we reached the large room where we usually held all of the meetings, both Dresden and Philip looked up at our presence.
“Good,” Mr. Evans stated. “You’re here.”
The table in front of them was already covered in papers and pens. A laptop was open on Google Maps, giving the impression that the two men had engaged in a pre-meeting.
“Willa has contacted us,” Max said without preamble.
Had the two aliens been less alien, with no human costume that dulled their true alien reactions, we might have been bestowed with some shock and dismay. Instead their faces were blank.
“Willa?” Dresden asked. “You know where she is?”
“No,” I answered, Max’s fingers tight around my hand. “She somehow connected to us.”
“You can feel her?” Mr. Evans implored.
“She might not know that she’s doing it,” Max filled in, walking us over to the table. “We are not able to communicate with her.”
“Has she done anything like that before?” Dresden wanted to know.
Max was sifting through the papers on the table, something catching his interest, making me answer in his place, “No. Right around the time that the mayor started to show up on Earth, Willa told us that she had seen us dead—at the hands of Command—which made us suspect that she had somehow gained access to our minds.”
Mr. Evans’ eyes darkened, boring into Max’s bent neck, “Is that true, Maxwell?”
Sorry, I whispered through the connection.
Max looked up at me while giving my hand a squeeze, We have to tell them everything.
I nodded and together we straightened and met the disapproving looks from the elder men.
“We didn’t want her to get dragged into this mess so we didn’t tell you,” Max said.
“Well, look how well that played out,” Mr. Evans established acidly.
My stomach tightened with reminded guilt and Max took a step closer to me while looking at his father with dark eyes.
“What exactly happened?” Dresden cut past. “Was Willa aware of being in your minds at the time?”
I swallowed and shook my head. “We asked her about it, but she thought it was a dream.”
“And we didn’t correct her,” Max added.
Mr. Evans met Dresden’s eyes as Dresden turned to his colleague. They shared a quick muted discussion before turning back to us in unison. “Have you had any other proof of her developing abilities?”
We looked to Dresden, considering his question for a brief moment, before Max answered, “A couple of weeks before she was taken, she said that Liz and I had beautiful colors around us.”
Mr. Evans turned his back with a deep sigh and focused his attention on the laptop.
I felt like a disobedient child, being forced to come clean about shoplifting. Disappointed parents as a consequence.
“Okay,” Dresden said, “That changes things.”
“That puts Willa in even graver danger,” Willa’s grandfather stated, making that ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach burn. He was still focusing on the laptop.
“What would the mayor do if he found out that Willa has abilities?” Max asked, his voice strained.
Mr. Evans looked up and stated gravely, “Anything.”
Dresden threw him a glance and his voice was softer as he tried to smooth over the statement, “It means that she would not only be the descendant to two parims, someone he could use to blackmail you. She could be used. As a-“
“-weapon,” I filled in, dread saturating my heart. My free hand searched out the chair behind me, needing to sit down.
“If trained properly, she could effectively be used against us—against you,” Dresden continued. “And knowing that she’s your daughter, we wouldn’t be able to—wouldn’t want to defend ourselves.”
I sank down on the chair, whispering, “No no. She wouldn’t be used for that. She’s only a child. She’s little.”
“It would only mean that he would hold onto her for longer. For years.”
Coldness flooded me. “No.” Ice cold fingers encircled my heart and squeezed. Painfully.
“He’s already been away for many years to plan his attack, Elizabeth,” Mr. Evans filled in, a soft pity in his voice, “He’s in no hurry. In 7-8 years, she would be fully trained, her mind most likely altered—brainwashed—into being one of them.”
I remembered the words of Max’s grandfather right then. How parim souls were more susceptible to being tainted by evil. How they lost their purity were their minds manipulated. Did that also mean that they were more easily manipulated by evil? More easily won over by the wrong side?
“That’s not going to happen,” Max said forcibly, “because we’re bringing her home. Right?”
I looked up at my husband, searching for comfort, searching for something on his face. But his jaw was set in stone, his gaze fixed on the elder men.
“We’re working 24/7 to make that happen, Max,” Dresden assured him. Offering zero comfort.
A knock at the half-closed door interrupted our discussion. Looking over, I saw a tall light-haired man, all dressed in black, with a grim set to his mouth. “Excuse me, sir?”
Dresden straightened. “Yes, Miller?”
“One of the men has found a box outside of the premises, sir,” the man referred to as Miller replied.
Dresden glanced at Max and I, before asking, “Have you opened it?”
There was a beat and I noticed a sickly yellow-green swirl in the man’s aura. “Yes, sir.”
It’s bad news, Max’s voice whispered through the connection.
Mr. Evans looked impatient. “Anything in it?”
All three of us, sharing in the ability to observe auras, could see how this man’s collected front was in stark contrast to how he really felt. The man’s eyes brushed across Max and I, as if he was hesitant to say anything more with us being present.
The action did not go Dresden unnoticed, “It’s alright, Miller. Go ahead.”
The guy straightened, cleared his throat, and said, “It’s Lester.”
I felt Max tense next to me, at the same time as Mr. Evans took a step forward towards the man.
I had never come across that name before, but I could tell that Max had. Even before his thoughts went through my head, Lester is the inside guy. Our infiltrator.
“It’s his head,” Miller continued and cleared his throat. “It’s his head in the box.” He straightened and added, “Sir.”
Dresden was already out the door, with a “Show me, Miller,” before the full ramifications of what the man had told us hit me.
“Fuck,” Max whispered and slowly sank down on the edge of the table behind him.
I was looking between the two men in the room. The silence demanding answers. The panic in my chest was building. This was bad. I didn’t want to ask and have confirmed what I already could guess.
That our spy—our guy working undercover close to the mayor—had been killed and his head had been sent to us.
“His cover was blown,” Max breathed.
I kept looking between the men, a shiver having been put in motion at my very core. I knew with every fiber of my being what this meant, but I didn’t want to voice it. I wanted the decapitation of one of our men and the ramifications of that to remain hidden in the unspoken reality.
I tried to focus on Willa. On the warmth that Willa’s subdued presence in my mind brought me. Nothing had happened to her. She was still there.
Unharmed.
“Dad?” Max asked stressed. “What’s happening?”
“Eugune decapitated our spy,” Mr. Evans declared impassively. As if he was somewhat surprised by this.
“Yes.” Max’s voice rose with impatience. “That was very clear. But what does this-“
He was cut short by Dresden re-entering the room, breathless, hurried, putting a piece of paper on the table next to us. I could see the blood stains on the paper from where I was seated.
“He left a note,” Dresden said grimly.
Max quickly walked up to the table to retrieve the tainted piece of paper, beating his father to it, who stopped just behind him to read over his shoulder.
I read the letter with Max’s inner eye, apprehension building, fear invading my every cell like a poison.
Want to ever see your progeny again? Feel free to join us.
Safe travels,
Eugene Bleeker
Antarian Travels
“FUCK!” Max roared, making me jump.
I watched in shocked silence, my thoughts decaying while my hands were shaking, as Max crumbled the bloodied piece of paper up and went savage on the content of the table.
His reaction made my own worse. His anguish was one I had only seen when I myself had been threatened or injured, from his memories. I had never witnessed it first hand.
His father stretched his arms out towards Max, appeasing, “Max, calm down.”
“He’s moving the children off the planet,” Dresden interpreted, thus confirming what I knew the hint in Antarian Travels to mean.
Max slammed his fist into the wall at this, repeating a “Fuck!” whereas I was having troubles breathing with his all-consuming emotions flooding the connection.
I focused on Willa, on her presence, but it was difficult to feel her with Max’s feelings of desperation, fear and anger mowing down everything around him.
“Max!” I screamed at him, trying to capture his flailing arms as he went around the room, taking his anger out on chairs, tables and doors. “Max! Stop! You’re scaring Willa!”
He quickly turned to face me, his eyes a stormy ocean of darkness and wetness, his breathing harsh and loud.
“Calm down,” I ordered him, my own voice cracking with fear. “She’s feeling this too.” I knew I had gotten through to him, felt him trying to rein in his feelings, trying to filter what got broadcasted. I became aware of the tears on my cheeks as I repeated sadly, “She’s feeling this too.”
He pulled me up from the chair and crashed me into his body, his arms tight around my trembling body. “He’s taking her off the planet.” His words were warmed by his breath into the junction between my shoulder and my throat. “She’s lost. We can’t get to her.”
No… I started fighting his embrace, wanting to break free, wanting to look at him, hit him or scream at him that he was wrong. We couldn’t give up now. We couldn’t give up on our daughter.
“Liz, Liz,” he mumbled into the feverish skin of my neck, his hold on my squirming body tightening. “We can’t follow.”
I opened my mouth to tell him otherwise when the small soft presence at the back of our connection—the one represented by Willa—disappeared. Like turning off a switch.
We froze. Every emotion grew to a standstill.
Next, jumped as Dresden’s cell phone started ringing.
Max’s grip instantly loosened and we turned our heads in unison towards Dresden.
“Dresden. Yes… Okay. No. Okay. That’s not good.” Dresden looked over in our direction, something akin to desperation in his eyes while continuing the call. “Yeah. We will get back to you. Stand down.”
He disconnected the call, frozen with his eyes on the telephone screen, making Max impatiently prompt, “What?”
I couldn’t feel Willa. Her joining to our connection had been shaky the whole time, but there had never been complete silence. Not since she had showed up a couple of hours ago.
“Our men confirms that an Antarian spacecraft has been spotted in the airspace, leaving Earth.”
TBC...
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