Different Kind of Destiny (CC, All,MATURE) Complete 12/11/06

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 7:17 pm

Part 4a

(Liz Parker's diary, edited after the fact.)

I came out of the drug-induced fog sitting with all the others, in a Mexican food eatery about a block and a half away from Tess' place. It took them quite a few tries to tell me, Maria, and Alex all that had happened at Tess' party after people had started the second, highly doped, batch of punch. Having to whisper, and the fact that Max, Michael and Isabel didn't seem to remember all the details clearly, and would disagree with each other on particular points, didn't help.

"I, I can't believe this," Maria said, starting to hyperventilate. "Drugged punch, laced with something that doesn't even match up with all of the things that my Mom warns me about. An alien shapeshifter impersonating the football player guy. Freaky guys in dark uniforms just standing there and watching. I... I'm sorry, it's just getting to be a little too much."

"I understand," Max replied softly. "I wouldn't object if you wanted to associate less with us, but as we've discussed, it's not clear how much that would help you with these people by now. It's not fair and it's too much to deal with, but we have probably each been targeted, and we need to play the game and find some way to play it better than everybody else, or lose everything we care about."

There was a long, awkward moment of silence after Max whispered that. It was Isabel, finally, who spoke. "Well, any idea what our next move is??"

Another short pause, and Michael jumped in. "I say we go up and see 'our friend.'" It took me a second to place the reference -- Topolsky. "Taking all reasonable precautions... but she's a resource to us now, and an associated part of our team. She may see something that none of us can."

There was an uncomfortable tentative agreement to that, and then we dropped all the conspiracy business and tried to just look like a bunch of teenagers, friends, hanging around together and grabbing dinner at a fast food dive. Pretty soon, I was even fooling myself.

* * * * *

Okay, this is a long entry, but bear with me. I want to record everything as well as I can while this is fresh in the brain cells.

It was early this morning (Sunday,) when Max and Isabel picked me up in the Jeep, again with the emphasis on casual. Izzie and I chatted about the most unimportant things we could think about as Max went off to pick up Alex, and then it was west out of town, heading for the reservation.

Max got very serious for a second just as we left the city limits. He nodded to Isabel, who started doing her new 'sensor sweep' trick all around.

She stopped after a little while, (maybe ninety seconds,) and stayed quiet, thinking. Max looked over at her a few times, and then burst out with "well?"

"I'm not entirely sure," she admitted. "There's a lot of complicated electronic equipment in the car anyway, and I'm far from expert in all of it that belongs here. Nothing seems to be broadcasting, at least, nothing coherent enough to be picked up any decent distance away. As far as bugs that might be recording us 'silently' to be read later in some fashion... that's tougher. But I can't see anything that's 'looking' or 'listening' to us particuarly, for whatever that's worth."

"I think it's enough," Alex sighed. "I guess even with your, umm, talents, there aren't any easy answers, are there? Trying to strive for perfect security is really only good for making yourself crazy."

"Maybe so," Isabel agreed slowly. "Doing without 'acceptable' security is just plain being stupid... but I think we have that. Only... Be on the watch out for any suspicious characters hanging round the jeep, okay Max??"

"Um, sure," he agreed. "So... well, I have to admit, I've pretty much given myself a headache, trying to guess what Tess' motives are. She... she's human, I'm convinced of that, but seems to feel like she has a right to be sympathetic about aliens, and us in particular, even though none of us have ever confided in her about what we are. There are connections all over the place between Tess and the special unit, but..." He frowned, trying to figure out what it was that was bugging him. "She doesn't seem to *like* them, or what they're doing. She doesn't say it straight out, or refuse them anything outright, but..."

"Maybe they're threatening her or something," I said, a little tentatively. "To get her to play ball. Or..." A connection hit me at that moment. "Or maybe threatening someone close to her, like her Mom off in Santa Fe that she was careful to us"

"Hmmm." Alex thought about that. "Maybe. It seems to fit, everything back to when Topolsky first spotted her and her father. Except, why would they go to so much trouble? What makes Tess special? They probably don't have a lot of agents who can believably pass for being in high school, true, but I'd imagine there's probably a few. They could find someone with all of Tess' obvious qualifications who didn't have to be coerced into the job, or do without."

"Unless her prime recommendation for the job was something that *isn't* obvious," I finished. "Hmm."

"I'm not at all sure that you aren't leaping to very tenuous connections," Isabel pointed out. "Maybe Tess is doing exactly what the Special unit want her to, whether that's confusing us, cultivating us... or something else."

"You have a point," Max allowed. "The part that's kinda freaking me out, I have to say, is that at the party, while she was presumably under the influence of the punch... she went and made out with Nacero. Now, probably she didn't know who he was, and maybe he was trying to find out more about her, just like we are... but it just seems really strange, doesn't it??"

"Yeah, kinda," I said. We drove on in silence for a fairly long time.

"Something, I have to admit, has been nagging at me for a little while," Alex said eventually. "Max, at the end of the pool party, after you'd figured out that Casey was really Nacero -- you asked him where you all come from, right??"

"Uhh, yeah," Max replied. "I thought none of you really remembered that part."

"It came back to me after I went home yesterday. Now, I realize that you meant the question in a kind of cosmic way... what star, what galaxy your people are from, that kind of thing. But I started thinking about it a little more directly... as in, where you came from just before you ended up wandering in the desert, getting picked up by various people. It's pretty clear that if you'd been left in the ship after it crashed, the only place you'd have grown up would probably be some top-secret government lab, but that's obviously not the way it happened. Liz said that you mentioned something about incubation pods... do any of you know where they are??"

"Not precisely, no, though it's something that's occured to us before," Max said, looking over at Isabel, who nodded slightly. "The memories we have that go back that far are extremely vague... more like the faintest possible impressions than reliable recollections. Michael mentioned something to me about tunnel or cave walls, and Isabel talked about poking her hand back into the pod and feeling something gooey still inside. I don't really remember any more than coming out from someplace dark and seeing the stars for the first time." He sighed.

"Even though we know we walked a long way, from the areas we were picked up, it had to be somewhere north by notheast of town," Isabel said. "Which was pretty much the region where whatever it is crashed in 1947. That's as far as we've got."

"Even when we were young and Michael was kinduv obsessed, we spent more time looking for the ship or government facilities than trying to rediscover our incubation pods," Max admitted. "If they'd kept us safe for --- well, for more than forty years, they had to be pretty well hidden. And none of us seemed to have any memories that were helping to lead us back there."

I nodded, and they were silent, though Alex had a familiar pensive expression on his face. Suddenly he burst out, "'How many years did Max, Michael, and Isabel have to stay in their incubation pods?' A candidate for the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Huh?? A long shot I know."

"What the hell are you blabbering about?" Isabel shot, then instantly melted. "I'm sorry, honey, just kind of getting nervous about talking about all of this stuff, and I didn't understand what you meant. I'll try to keep from biting anybody's head off like that again today."

"Umm, okay," Alex said after a moment. "I know it was a bad joke... in 'Hitchhiker's guide', they find out that the ultimate answer in the Universe is 'forty-two', and there's a lot of fuss and speculation about what the question actually is. When Max said 'more than forty years', I stated doing the math in my head, and kinda got carried away when I realized it was coming out to forty-two."

"Actually, a little less than forty-two, sad to say," Max admitted. "The crash was in July of '47, and we came out more like early May of '89. Forty-one years and about ten months."

"Too bad," I sighed. It's strange, but on some level I thought that would help to protect Max and the others, if it had been so important, cosmically, for them to be 'born' the way they were.

We got to the cave about then, and found River dog and Topolsky, Michael and Maria all waiting for us. It took a little while to catch the first two of them up on everything tha had happened lately, and then Alex looked to Max for permission, and started explaining his idea about Tess being threatened or blackmailed by the special unit - possibly her father being threatened by them too.

"Yes, I think I agree with you," Kathleen T agreed after a long moment of thought. "It explains some of their behavior, but leaves open the question of 'why' -- not so much why don't they want to play ball with Pierce, but why he'd bring them here if they don't. I don't think Tony Harding, (if that is his real name,) would be the only person who could manage the Kilohertz arcade as a front for them... and even if he were, that doesn't explain why his daughter would have to be the deep-cover agent to contact you guys. I feel like if this is any part of the answer, there's something pretty damn big that we're still missing. Alternatively, maybe they're setting up the 'threatened into working for the FBI' angle as part of something to gain your confidence, in which case she's going to have to tell you about it at some point, and explain why. And you can make up your mind then."

"Hmmm..." Michael considered this. They were all sitting on patches of grass or sand or folding chairs a little way from the entrance to the cave. "Something else I'd like to ask you about... this other alien, Nacero. The shapeshifter. Did you ever hear anything about him from the Special Unit, Miss... umm, Katy?"

She smiled tightly. "Well, I heard the stories about the wandering alien. Somebody who escaped from the scene of the '47 crash before the Air force got there, wandering this part of the country ever since... and killing more than a few people. Actually, I kind of got the impression that they think one of your group, probably you Max, are the same person as that wandering alien... that he took the shape of a little kid and got 'adopted' by a human family for some nefarious scheme of his own. Handful of different theories about how you'd fit into that scenario Isabel... the one that sticks out most clearly in my mind would be that you're actually Max's offspring - that he was able to reproduce asexually or something." She sighed. "But, well, the fact that Nacero and the three of you were fairly clearly all together at that party ruins those theories... or so it seems to me. How Pierce will see it when he reads the reports, is a little harder to say."

"Did he ever try to target Special Unit personnel that you know of?" Isabel put in.

"I don't think so... most of the murders that I heard about were more like crimes of passion or opportunity. He was trying to interact with people as another human being would, but didn't have the language or social skills for it, lost his temper and killed them in a rage. Or he needed something and knew off the bat that he didn't have any way to get it from its rightful owner other than brute force."

She sighed. "He's killed people in the special unit, yes... ones who have been trying to capture or follow him. But I never heard anything about him organizing a planned assasination of a Special Unit leader or something like that. Either he guesses that would be a bad idea, or his brain just doesn't work in those terms."

"About the only thing we know is that he has some interest in the orbs," I put in. "He impersonated Michael to steal the first one... the one that he might have showed us where to find, buried in the desert. Just about the time that we were saving you and getting the second orb in exchange... like --"

"Like he did not want you to have both of them together, for an extended period of time?" River dog suggested.

"But we still don't know how to use them, either of them," Max said with a sigh.

"By the way, there's something I wanted to mention," Topolsky put in. "I think I've gathered from a few stray references that the three of you... you think you were on that ship that crashed in '47 with Nacero?"

"Umm, yeah, it..." Isabel thought about that. "I suppose it was just the simplest theory -- why??"

"I think that the Special Unit believes that there was another ship that landed in the Roswell area," Kathleen said. "One that didn't attract as much attention because it didn't crash down. Around, umm... I think it was between nineteen seventy-two and seventy-five. Maybe the three of you, or your embryos or whatever, came in that ship instead of the first one??"

An amazed look passed between us kids. "Well, it would help cut down that extended incubation time," I said, "which I've always thought a little strange." I shot a look over at Alex. "Cuts your forty-two years down to, what, around fifteen or sixteen??"

"Sounds possible," Max replied. "But why send us here as embryos at all?? Why are the aliens sending ships to earth in the first place? And so different... Nacero was able to take care of himself when the first ship crashed. Someone or something had to hide our pods when we arrived, whenever that was."

"Maybe it was so you guys could integrate into humanity better," Maria suggested. "Nacero can't, he doesn't fit in. I don't think he understands us, though he's had years to study. But... but his thinking patterns are still inhuman. You guys didn't have any set patterns, you learned pretty much what all human kids learn, albeit getting a slightly later start. Maybe that's the point."

"Could be," Michael said. "But that leaves the slightly freaky question -- what do they want us to DO now that we can blend in with human culture??"

I think Maria was about to say something in reply, but suddenly Isabel held up a hand and hssshed her. I strained, my ears, trying to hear if anything was going on. For a long moment, there was nothing but the sounds of the outdoors, and then -- a car. Driving way too fast on one of the rough paths around here... probably not the road that we'd used to arrive... and approaching quickly.

There was a moment of panic, and then desperately I took charge. "Topolsky, Max, Michael, Isabel... go." I pointed at an angle, the direction that the car noise seemed to be coming from but also hugging the rock wall that the cave was part of. After a few minute's walk in that direction, I knew, there was a footpath into some stone hills, that the car would never be able to follow. "Maria, Alex, you're with me."

Max hesitated, but I could see that he recognized the sense of it. Just like Maria and I had been the time we were out this way on the father-child camping trip -- the three of us could act as decoys, because we weren't really who anybody was trying to find, it seemed. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to protect me, because whoever it was might get pissed at the decoy routine... but he knew that I wanted to keep him safe, and I couldn't do that and let him protect me at the same time.

We all rushed off in different directions, except for River dog, who probably wouldn't attract too much attention just staying put. Alex and Maria stuck close behind me as I charged off to intercept the approaching vehicle, wondering what it was that I'd find.

It turned out to be a light blue SUV -- with Tess Harding behind the wheel. She braked to a bouncing stop right amid the three of us, threw open her door and charged out, meeting me about ten feet away from the car. "Good, it's you guys," she whispered intently. "Umm... Liz, wanna go for a quick ride??"

I was stunned speechless for a moment, until she prodded with an impatient, though quiet "Well?"

"Ummm... err, why?" I heard myself ask, not much louder than Tess herself had been talking. "Seeing you around school notwithstanding, and your party, you're still kinduv a stranger to me... and I believe there's some merit to the old saying about taking a ride from a stranger."

"Okay, here's why," Tess said even more softly and surely, and took a deep breath. "Liz, my father and I have gone to a lot of trouble in order to speak with one of you privately today, without *certain* other people being able to overhear. You're my first choice - I feel safe with you somehow, for reasons both obvious and less than. I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be interested in what I have to say. But our window is slamming shut, because there are two other cars following mine, and they're gonna be here in fifty-five seconds. If you don't come soon, I'm going to have to drive off without you, because none of us want them to find me here with you guys."

I hesitated only a moment. This was clearly Tess' last gambit, where she told a sob story about being forced to work with the Special Unit, and the gang had pretty much decided that she had to be allowed to play her cards, and then we'd all decide how much we were going to trust what she said. "Okay," I said quietly, and rushed over to scramble into the shotgun seat of Tess' car, as she regained the driver's position. I just had time to wave to Maria and Alex, partly a friendly farewell, partly a reassurance that I would be okay (I hoped,) and partly a cue for them to get back into the brush and greenery surrounding the path. And then Tess had stamped on the gas, and her four-wheeler's engine roared to life with entirely too much enthusiasm.

"So..." I started, but Tess shook her head, gesturing to something near the ignition key. At first I didn't understand anything beyond the fact that she was telling me not to talk, and then it started to fit, maybe. A listening device, planted in Tess' car, that she couldn't turn off? That would explain why she had gotten so far from the car to talk, instead of staying in her seat, and why she had been so quiet. But if that was it... how would we get to talk without being overheard??

I only saw one car behind us, and only a very brief glimpse of something black and shiny it was, but I didn't really doubt Tess' word that there were two of them. She started to drive even more quickly and recklessly down the forest path, heading a little deeper into Frazier woods, (I was getting thrown back and forth and around even with the seatbelt on,) and then pulled to a sudden stop again. I looked at her in confusion, and Tess made a clear 'get out' gesture. I did, and realized that Tony Harding, Tess' father, was waiting for us, and he slipped behind the wheel as soon as Tess had cleared the way for him. Well, that answered one question, maybe... Tony would drive the car away, taking care of both the listening device inside, and (for a while at least) the pursuing agents in the black cars. But somebody would probably notice that we could have gotten out at this point, and agents on foot would be dispatched to follow our trail.

"Quick!!" Tess hissed at me, and led the way into the woods, following a route so rough I hesitate to even call it a path... just a twisting way that managed, through sheer luck, to avoid having to actually walk through any trees or branches. I was puffing and sore quickly, not used to this sort of thing. Tess seemed to be frantic, but bearing up under it stoically.

"Was..." I panted, "was there a bug in the car??" Might as well try to get some facts at this point.

"Save your breath," Tess advised, but a few seconds later she admitted, "Yeah. Very advanced little gizmo - no way to stop it from recording without permanently disabling the ignition and setting off the anti-theft device, making the car undrivable. Records on super-micro memory circuits, which can be downloaded wirelessly from a hundred yards away or more."

I concentrated on my breathing and running for a little while, and even caught up to right behind her. "They'll be trying to find us, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "But I don't think they will, until we have a better chance to talk... here we are, watch it." It was a good thing that she'd warned me, or I might have run right off the seventy-five foot escarpment that suddenly loomed over another patch of forest. "Umm..." Tess looked this way and that, and led me to a tall evergreen tree. Hidden among its branches was a black plastic-fabric vest, attached to a bungee cord that was tied on further up the tree. The way it was set up, you would probably be able to...

"Oh, no. You're not getting me to jump down there."

"Suit yourself, I guess," Tess snapped a little irritably. "Wish you luck trying to find your way back to your friends, then." She had unfastened the vest by now, and quickly strapped it on. "If you do follow me down, though, do yourself a favor and stay away from the blue button." She hopped off the ledge, falling down quickly. Because of the way the cliff hung over itself at this point, she wasn't in any danger of bouncing against the wall, I saw, and she landed softly on her feet, ran up a small rock and grabbed onto a tree as the cord tried to retract, and managed to unsnap the vest mostly with one hand and send it part of the way back up to me.

I hated this with an intense passion, (never been wild about heights, though it's never been much of an issue living here in Roswell,) but it seemed to me that there was nothing for it but to follow through. I pulled the vest back up quickly, and put it on, noticing the big 'blue button' that Tess must have been talking about, on the back near the collar. I didn't even touch it, just made sure that the fit was as tight as possible, (Tess and I have about the same body type, but she's a little fuller across the front. Fit pretty well on me though, so it must have been tight on her.) Tried to judge the way that she had done this, and jumped.

I very nearly ended up bobbing about five or ten feet in the air, but Tess caught me and helped me down, and gave a solid whack to the blue button. Suddenly the lift from the bungee was gone, and I landed a little awkwardly, followed by the length of the stretchy cord. Button must have set up a tiny explosive charge or something, right where the bungee was tied to the tree. Damn, they very nearly *had* thought of everything. If the special unit agents managed to follow our tracks to the edge of the cliff, they probably wouldn't see any trace of how we could have gotten safely down.

Tess helped me take the vest off and stashed it, and the bungee, in some bushes, and led the way up yet another path deeper into the forest. This one wasn't too long though, and ended up at a place where a lazy creek settled into a pool about forty feet wide and seven feet deep before continuing on. I had no intention of diving in for a swim, but it looked pretty and I dipped my hands into the water and washed a little sweat off my face and legs. She wasn't in a hurry any more, so clearly this was the 'place that we could talk,' and I had to admit, I didn't expect the special unit agents, no matter how clever and well-equipped they were, to be finding us very quickly.

That didn't mean I wanted to hang around any longer than necessary though. "You said you had things to say that I would be interested in," I wheezed, still catching my breath a little. "Say. Why don't you start with who you really are and why you're involved in any of this?"

Tess shrugged. "Tess Harding is my real name. I'm just a sixteen-year old girl... well, with slightly unusual parents."

There was a short pause. "Your dad?" I repeated probingly. "And your mother, who's stuck with work in Santa Fe?"

"Yes and no," Tess sighed. "Yes, my dad, who you've met. No, my mom isn't really working, though she is 'stuck' in Santa Fe. It's dad and I who are doing a job, and Mom is being taken care of to make sure that we behave. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

She sat on a tree trunk and scooped up a handful of pebbles, tossing them into the pool one at a time. Tess was wearing blue jean cutoffs that went nearly to her knees, and sandals and an oversized t-shirt with a chili peppers logo on it, and suddenly she looked very ordinary indeed. It seemed strange that she looked so much like any other high school girl, and yet she was wrapped up in the middle of all this alien craziness. Maybe Tess thought the same about me, come to that... I'm nothing special to look at either, even if Max thinks I'm pretty.

"My dad used to be special ops when he was younger," Tess started. "Green Beret. Maybe technically he still is, even though he hasn't been on a mission like that for years, but I think they don't let you quit something like that, you just get to go on 'Individual Reserve' - i e, you can live your own life until the next time that they need you. And my mom... well, my mom has parapsychic powers."

I must have snickered at that, and she shot me a dirty look. "What... with everything that you must know, you don't believe that certain human people, because of unlikely genetic sequences that no one else has, might have unique and unusual powers? And that some of these people have a vested interest in making sure that the rest of the world either don't know or don't believe in their powers, because that gives them a secret edge against everybody else??"

I blinked in surprise. "I guess I hadn't thought about it. I suppose that would suggest that your hidden parapsychic conspiracy makes sure to have people publicly claim to have psychic powers every so often, and makes sure that they get debunked, in order to cover any stray tracks or rumors that would inevitable emerge?"

Tess smiled, almost apologetically. "It sounds a little crackpot, doesn't it??"

"Little bit, yeah," I admitted. "But maybe even the crackpots are right sometimes. So, you say that your mom was psychic?"

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "Not one of the nasty ones who was trying to use their gift for selfish reasons, and screw the whole rest of the world. She had inherited the gift from her father, though, and he had made an enemy of some of the important people in the psychic conspriacy... then he died in a quote 'accident.'" A short pause. "Yeah." I wasn't quite sure what sign from me she might have been agreeing with, or if she just thought she knew what I was thinking. (She would have been pretty much right - it was quite a leading phrase.) "So mom tried to use her powers for good, but didn't do anything to disrupt the status quo, and in exchange they helped her find good altruistic opportunities. She did some secret missions for the government, which is how she met my dad in the first place. They worked a lot together, but once I was around four or five they both retired from their old lives and tried to disappear into suburbia as much as possible. Even after my mom found out that I took after her."

"Things started to change around the end of last summer. I started to have weird dreams, and then to sense strange things while I was awake. My mom told me that I was picking up on mental signals, but I could tell that there was something that she wasn't saying. After a few weeks, I started to put it together on my own. The thought broadcasts that I was overhearing weren't human."

I was pretty much stunned speechless, unable to even run what Tess was telling me past the skeptic filter, though I knew I'd have to make sure to do that later. The idea that Tess was psychic... and that she'd been receiving alien thoughts around the same time that I'd found out Max's secret... just the concept had thrown me for a loop.

"I put this part together later - mom was trying to keep all of this secret, because she knew, very vaguely, that there were people who would be interested in what I'd done, and she didn't want me, or any of her family, anywhere near them. But it wasn't always possible to keep things secret in those circles... someone was keeping tabs on our family, closely enough to tell that something had changed, and then they didn't stop until they knew as much as we did, or more."

"That's when they took me to meet with Pierce for the first time."

"Agent Pierce??" I repeated dizzily. "The leader of the Special Unit??"

Tess smiled a little, but it wasn't a happy expression on her at all... like she had confirmed something that had already been guessed at, but wasn't good news. "So Topolsky told you that much, huh?? Well, know this: Topolsky knows next to nothing about Pierce, though she may think she does. The real Pierce is one of the leaders of the... the psionic cabal, and she understands that to be known, even slightly, is to become a target. Especially when it comes to other psionics. So she works as much as possible through an intermediary, a man, who the FBI and the rest of the world know as 'Daniel Pierce.' I would probably have never met the real Pierce, if she didn't think that time was of the essence."

My head was spinning again. "There's something that I'm not sure I get here. Why would a... a psionic be so interested in aliens??"

Tess's mouth became hard. "Well, to start with, there are some similarities between psionic power, and the kinds of things that aliens can do. The cabal found that out when they heard the first reports about the alien killer - the one who crashed here in 1947."

"It makes sense, that if psionic powers come from unusual human DNA, maybe from mutations or something like that... than another race, an older race, might have powers that go far beyond ours. Natural selection could have had extra centuries or millenia to hone their abilities... to test one combination against another, and keep only the winner. Nacero has done things that Pierce and the other top human psionics can only dream about. The same goes for your friends. And Pierce won't stop until she can control that power, one way or another. Either she'll try to learn to do what your friends can do for herself... or she'll make them work for her, somehow or another."

"Umm... okay." I frowned. "What exactly did Pierce want you to do, once she knew you were picking up alien thoughts?? How do you know all this about her motives?? From the way you describe her, she doesn't exactly sound like the 'oooh let me tell you all about my evil plan' type."

Tess laughed. "No, she isn't. To answer your first question, at first she just wanted me to tell her what I was picking up, in as much detail as possible. She didn't tell me anything about the why - that was mom. Grampa had told her a lot about the players in the cabal -- it was information that he had gathered to try and bring them down with. And mom's a pretty smart woman, and was able to figure out some of the specifics herself."

"It was after Pierce found out that mom had been telling me this sort of thing, that she decided Dad and I would be coming to Roswell ourselves. Mom would stay behind, of course, as a hostage to our good behaviour."

"And that's it, pretty much, what I wanted to tell you. We don't want to see any of you guys caught by Pierce -- my sympathies are entirely with you, and Nacero, compared to her, and my parents pretty much agree with that. But there's very little overt that we can do, while my mom is a guest of the special unit."

"Are you expecting us to help her escape, or something like that??"

"Not expecting, really..." Tess said slowly. "Though I can't deny it'd be nice... really risky, but nice. Really, though, I just wanted to warn one of you what the score really is."

And here was the moment of truth. "And why exactly am I supposed to trust you about any of this stuff??"

Tess sighed and stared into my eyes for a long moment, holding her left wrist out very deliberately. I could see, peripherally, that she was wearing a small gold-plated dial watch, and after several seconds I realized that this was the point. She took her eyes away to deliberately scan the face of said timepiece. "It is... ten minutes after eleven, mountain daylight time." She dropped her wrist, and closed her eyes, a pensive expression coming across her face. "Max is... worried about you, well, that's no surprise. Also entertaining a, erm... umm-uuh a rather interesting daydream involving the two of you, someplace that looks like the Hondo reservoir, and, eei, skinnydipping. Ask him for the rest of the details later. Michael is standing behind Maria, his arms around her, and trying to figure out if he can scrape up enough money to take her out dancing at the Silver Spiral next week... assuming, of course, that the Secret Unit hasn't caught him by then. Isabel is talking with Alex about... heheh, about me, and the UFO hunters, and whether Nacero kills to protect himself or just because he loses his temper." She opened her eyes and smiled teasingly. "Of course, I could tell you about that... at least, as much as I told Pierce. Seems only fair."

"About Nacero, and his motives??" I repeated, still a little dubious. More than a little, actually, until I was able to check out Tess' predictions with my friends. "Because... because you overhear his thoughts, as well as the others."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Of course, there have been times, I think, when he's killed out of protection, but-- Well, he has human emotions, like your guys do, but he never had a good chance to learn how to control them. He's figured out some of the basics by sheer trial and error, but 'losing his temper?' Yeah, Nacero, as you call him, is very prone to that. If you ever meet him again, be very careful."

"There's also... also something that I haven't been able to figure out, because his mind is so different from mine, and because it happened so long ago. Maybe right around the time of the '47 crash. Something that he lost, that was incredibly valuable to him. That's the root of his anger and hatred maybe, and I have to warn you... he seems to blame the new three for what he's lost. Max, Michael, and Isabel. So they have to be *extra* careful when they're dealing with him. I'll try to tell you if I figure any more of it out."

She sighed and paced around. "So, that's it. It explains, as I hope you realize, why Pierce is working with my father and I, even though she can tell we don't like her, and we do like you. She has my mother to keep us in line, and as far as she knows, I'm the only human psychic in america who's tuned into the alien frequency. Maybe in the whole world." She sighed. "And here is where we part company I think. They're starting to search this part of the woods -- probably won't hurt either of us as long as we're not together."

"That's a guess, and so comforting anyway," I spat a little angrily. "Of course they won't hurt *you*, but they'll suspect that you told me something, maybe something that they don't want to get to Max. And just how am I supposed to get home or anything? Hike to the highway and hitchhike?"

"Don't worry, there's almost no chance they'll find you anyway," she assured me with that maddeningly sincere smile. "And, well, you've got your cell, right, and Max has his??" I nodded, a little blankly. "Call him and tell him to pick you up on the Breer loop road through the woods... he knows where it is and how to get there. And the loop is just a few minute's walk that way." She waved off into the forest.

I was far from certain, but I took out my phone and made the call, and when Max assured me that he did know how to get to that road (and even about where I would probably be, based on the location of the cave,) I shook my head at Tess in disbelief, and started walking off.

* * * *

Okay, so the special unit agents didn't get anywhere near me, true enough, and Max picked me up quickly. Given the prediction that government operatives were in the area, following Tess, we ended up all piling into the two cars and heading off in a random direction away from the woods... well, not all of us - the six who had driven up that day and Miss Topolsky, who we definitely didn't want one of Pierce's people to happen across by accident. Isabel, Alex, and Kathleen took the Jetta, and Michael and Maria rode wth Max and I in the jeep.

I told the guys some of what Tess had told me, including her 'telepathic reception' of what the guys had been thinking about that particular time, and all of them confirmed that it seemed to be on the level. (Maria giggled when I mentioned Max's skinny-dipping fantasy, and hugged Michael's arm when he silently confirmed how scared he was about getting captured by somebody.)

"So, what do we think about her story in general terms, then??" I asked nervously.

"The psionics stuff... I'd say I preobably accept that, tentatively. There's no particular reason why the sort of thing we should do is exclusive to alien status, that there's no way some small percentage of humans would have similar powers," Michael said softly. "That Tess has some kind of ability to mentally eavesdrop on us, and Nacero too... it certainly seems so. That doesn't mean we should trust her, of course... she might be completely in line with Pierce's plan, or whoever it is who's really pulling the strings here, and just trying to gain our trust."

"About Nacero..." Maria put in. "Exactly what was it that she told you about his motives? You kinda skipped over that part."

I repeated it, as nearly as I could, and saw all three of my friends get deep 'thinking face.' "He lost something, something tremendously important to him, and he takes it out on us??" Max repeated. "I wonder what it could be."

"Probably not just losing his homeland or whatever, because you don't have that either," Maria put in. "Or... well, you had nothing to do with him getting stranded here, we don't think."

"I don't think we really have enough information to make a good guess," I sighed. "Are we just going to keep driving out here all day??"

"I was kind of making for a motel out in the middle of nowhere I remember," Max said absently. "The indian reservation is too hot for Topolsky right now, she can't go back there for tonight. Figure she can stay here, there's no particular reason for anyone in the unit to be able to find it within a day or two. Then we can swing around to the north of town and get back to Roswell from that direction, I guess."

"Oooh, we gotta swing by Blackie's and grab some food," Michael insisted, smiling.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:59 am

Part 4b

LPD (Liz Parker's diary) again...

Well, between getting Kathleen checked in at what must be the most remote, godforsaken motel in the state of New Mexico, and going for barbecue food (which was, I have to admit, quite delicious) on the way home, it was after sunset before we finally got back to Roswell. Michael and Maria quickly disappeared into his apartment for a little private time before she'd have to rush home and make curfew, and Max and I spent a little time out on my balcony before I went in to say hi to the parents. We didn't do any more than kissing, and not much of that, but spent more time talking, not really about anything at all. Just hearing his voice, without any worry in it, seemed to relax me, and I needed that.

Mom and Dad were curious as to what I'd been up to all day, of course, and there wasn't much that I could tell them, just that I went out driving with Max and ended up talking with some old friends and some new friends in the woods, and then we headed back out into the desert. They're probably just glad that I'm not getting into detention any more over Max, or coming back with slightly weird-looking hickeys.

Met up with Max, and Michael, before school again Monday morning. Michael was interested in finding some way to talk to Tess himself, or with more of the group around, but ideally not with the meanest boys in the FBI listening in. We talked a bit about possible plans, and it felt a little like we were reliving the Topolsky thing all over again, though things weren't quite the same this time. (That gave me an odd idea, in fact. We had decided to trust Topolsky because Isabel dreamwalked her. Should she try dreamwalking Tess too? How would Tess' supposed psychic powers interact with Isabel's dreamwalking talent?? There was probably no way to be sure.)

Max and I left Michael and swung by each of our lockers quickly before first period. The door to the bio lab was closed and locked, which was unusual so close to the bell, and so the entire class was crowded closely around. I spotted Isabel and Alex nearby and hurried over to say hello to them.

I didn't notice anything weird about the tall, buff guy with the determined expression at first. It was only at the last second that the long streak of shiny metal emerged from whatever he had been hiding in his palm, and something inside my brain KNEW that that wasn't right. I think I yelped, Isabel turned to him with a look of alarm on his face, and he pushed his hand right up to her hip.

Driving the blade into her.

The guy pulled it back after a split second... just a single, purposeful stab. Alex's face had dropped in utter outrage, and he dived after the attacker, but unfortunately Isabel's leg had slid into his path and he tripped over her awkwardly. The guy turned to go and I shouted out "Stop him! He's got a knife, he STABBED HER!"

Two other tallish guys amid the waiting students... I think Ryan Crowley was one of them... did actually get into the stranger's way, blocking his exit. The one whose name I can't remember grabbed his knife arm just past the wrist, and he dropped the weapon. From the way it looked to me, he might well have just dropped it offhandedly, because he didn't need it any more, as likely as because the grip had made it in any way hard for him to hold onto it.

And, the buff guy... (he HAD to be Nacero, didn't he? Who else would have had the nerve to do this? Why would Nacero have attacked Isabel? Just to prove some kind of point??) brushed them aside as easily as if they were calm three-year olds, breaking into a casual jog and turning to pass through the doors that would get him to the stairwell... and to the outside of the school building.

I turned back to Max and Isabel at this point. He had rushed over to look at her, while I'd been focused on the guy who made the attack. There was a lot of blood, and a very ugly looking hole in Isabel's pants, and in the flesh underneath, that should never have been there. Max had torn off his shirt sleeves to try and staunch the blood flow. I squatted down opposite him, quickly shed the flannel overshirt that I had just happened to wear to school that day, and handed it over. The tank top underneath was enough to be decent, (if not much more than that.)

Max took it, looked up at me, and I nodded at him, reaching out to tear it up myself, to give him the idea. As his eyes locked on mind, I could see the fear underneath. There was no way that he could heal Isabel, at least not right now, in front of all these witnesses. And there was no reassurance that I could offer him. The wound itself and the blood loss didn't seem life threatening, though certainly they were serious. But weren't there some important organs down there, near the bottom of the abdomen? Were the kidneys nearby? And what if she caught some kind of infection from the knife... or Nacero could have deliberately coated it with something that would be poison to her...

It only seemed a moment before Michael and Maria were there... how could they possibly have heard so quickly? They should have been on the other side of the school... and then I realized that Michael didn't necessarily have to get his information through the usual channels. All of them had been working on honing alien senses... maybe Michael had felt Isabel's pain directly, or heard me screaming from so far away, or detected the blood decomposition particles in the air...

Blood. Isabel's blood was all over, and every drop of it needed to be disposed of, just in case. Maybe the attacker hadn't been Nacero after all, but a Special unit agent. That would explain the motive, and an FBI operative might have the strenth or martial arts training to have brushed by high school boys like that. Were they trying to get proof that Isabel was an alien? Did they suspect her? They might well, especially after the Pool party. We'd probably been watched there even when we thought we were alone, and Isabel and the other aliens hadn't been affected by the drug in the punch as much as humans. She said she'd faked being totally loopy when meeting one of the agents, but audio-visual surveillance would probably show that to be an act. Come to that, she might have blurted out something incriminating while she actually been delerious, after drinking the second batch and before shaking it off.

And then Mister Seligman and the vice principal were on the scene. "Oh, my lord," Seligman muttered. "What, has nobody gone to call an ambulance?"

"No, no ambulance," Isabel muttered weakly. I wouldn't have thought she was still awake, but apparently some words could still get a reaction out of her.

"She's very scared of hospitals," Max blurted out, "and it isn't as bad as it looks. Maybe if we can just get her to the nurse's office for now?"

Seligman shot a look at Mister Wyatt, who shrugged. "They have that gurney which should be just the thing," Alex said, stepping shakily away from Isabel. "I'll run over and get it."

Max shot a look at Michael, Maria, and I as Alex left, and I thought I could tell the message that he was trying to send. Isabel would probably be okay physically... almost certainly if Max had a chance to be all alone with her and clean up the worst of the damage. But the blood all around was a more subtle and pervasive threat, and the three of us could help best by disposing of it as quickly as possible. Max was her brother, Alex her boyfriend, and it would be suspicious if they were anywhere but at her side.

I don't really remember who helped load Isabel up onto the spring-wheeled stretcher, or when they left. I don't remember too much of cleaning up the blood, though I do remember the odd grin of satisfaction on Michael's face as he glared at a soaked rag, and the red stains slowly turned to murky brown. I guessed, and heard the confirmation later, that he'd been blasting the individual blood cells apart so that even if a sample was taken, it would reveal nothing incriminating except unusual elemental traces. (Which was something that Michael hadn't even thought of until I mentioned it, and his face fell before I assured him that that would be difficult, also much more ambiguous and less substantial evidence than intact alien cells. But that was later.)

I sat through second period class, unable to concentrate on anything, and hurried over to the nurse's office to see how Iz was doing. The nurse was off in the walled-off nook, talking on the phone, (to Max and Isabel's parents maybe?) so Alex, Max, Isabel and I were able to have a quick confab alone by the infirmary beds. Max had already swept this area for bugs, and it was clean.

"She'll be fine," he assured me, "it wasn't as bad as it looked, almost nothing important was touched. One semi-major vein coming in from the upper leg had been nicked, and I repaired that slightly, just to be sure it wouldn't rupture again and start off internal bleeding. But even if that had gone a bit worse, she wouldn't have been in danger of much more than... well, missing the rest of term I guess."

The rest of us nodded a few times. "So, which is it?" Alex whispered intensely. "A special unit attempt to get some of her blood... and scare us in the process? Or Nacero, sending some kind of message or just generally pissed at you guys?"

That question hung in the silence for a moment. "Cleanup in the hallway went smoothly," I said. "Michael thinks we got it all, and I'd tend to agree. If they wanted blood, there'd have been some other kind of diversion, right? Heck, he coulda just kept the knife."

"Hmmm..." Max weighed this. "I was able to take care of any blood that got on her clothes, the dressings, or the gurney I think. So unless we've missed something, that isn't a worry. But if it's Nacero who's suddenly stepped up hostilities against us... that's deeply unsettling. All the evidence indicates that he's very unstable. What if he doesn't stop with a relatively harmless wound next time?"

None of us had anything to say to that, which is probably good because the school nurse came back somewhat unexpectedly.

----------

This afternoon, once school had let out, we put Michael's plan into action and 'kidnapped' Tess. Alex and Max were staying with Isabel, not that we really expected anything else bad to happen to her. Maria drove.

"Get in," Michael growled as the Jetta pulled to an idling stop at the curb, next to her. I think she was surprised for a moment - I wasn't really supposed to be looking at what was going on, so much as keeping an eye out for anybody who might be watching us, or keeping an eye on Tess. But there were no signs of Special unit agents, even undercover ones, (as far as I could tell,) and soon Tess was in the backseat with Michael, and Maria was slowly creeping out into the street.

"No, not yet," Michael warned, and Maria slammed her foot back down onto the brake. Michael's hand probed the air around our newcomer, narrowed into the vicinity of her wrist, (I kinda saw this in the rearview mirror,) and then he unfastened and grabbed a kinda heavy and thick bracelet, waving it in front of Tess' face without a word. She blinked, and nodded, and Michael tossed it through the open window, out onto the sidewalk where Tess herself had been standing just moments ago. "Now drive," he growled, probably taking some pleasure in being able to order Maria around. Drive she did.

"I... I heard about Isabel, and I'm sorry," she muttered. "Been trying to figure out what it was that set him off, but I still can't get close to..."

"No, we're not talking about that yet," Michael told her severely. "You're claiming to have paranormal powers?" Stunned, Tess nodded slightly. "Anything a little more direct and observable than probing into our thoughts??"

"Umm, only one little trick," she mumbled, and stretched one hand toward the front of the car, before Michael stopped her with a fierce glare and a muted rumble deep in his throat. "The bottle of water... may I?"

"Liz?" Michael insisted, and I took the little bottle from the cup-holder and passed it back.

"Do you want to hold it?" Tess asked, and Michael took it. Tess stared at the bottle intently, for about thirty seconds... and the water started to boil.

"Whaa??" I asked. All pretense of being a forward lookout was gone by this point - I was turned around in the seat, watching what was going on between Michael and Tess. "Michael, doesn't that hurt??"

"No, the bottle isn't even warm," he said, slightly awed.

"The water isn't warm either," she said. "Just boiling. You can pour a little bit of it into your hand if you want, now that it's going."

He did... and looked from the little bubbling bit of water in his hand to Tess' face back and forth several times, dumbfounded. "That's... that's like impossible."

"Not really... just temporarily reducing the evaporation point..." she said. "Heating water to its normal boiling point would be much more useful... as a weapon talent, among other things. But I can't seem to master that. This is a parlour trick... an unusual one, but absolutely pointless."

"Well, it's pretty convincing that you're a psychic or whatever, if you call that a point," Michael conceded. "Or, just possibly, that you're no more human than I am."

Tess stuck her arm out immediately. "What do you guys want from me, blood??"

That was my cue. "Actually, no, something a little less messy... or obvious." I passed back a little wooden tongue depressor and a small plastic sample container, damp inside. "Scrape that lightly against the inside of your cheek, and wipe it off inside the sample containers. I know pretty well what human and nonhuman cheek cells look like."

Tess took only a moment before following through. This was partly a bluff... under these conditions, it was hardly a sure thing that sufficient cells would survive well enough to be found and examined, but hopefully Tess wouldn't know that. Even if not, though, nothing would be decided if the test got ruined... which was better than walking into something that Tess was prepared to fake her way out of. (If by some chance she actually WAS an alien and trying to hide it from us.) "Don't go too deep... a patch of cheek tissue big enough to see or touch with your naked eye would be impossible to examine microscopically anyway."

"Now... Isabel??" Tess repeated, after handing the sample container back to me.

"You think it was the mysterious fourth alien??" Maria asked her. "Nacero?"

"Yeah, if that's what you call him," Tess agreed. "The shapeshifter, who's been wandering here for decades. I've grown to recognize his... his anger, his pain, but I didn't realize that he was going to direct it on Isabel until it was too late. And I couldn't be sure that I wasn't being watched at school... going to the scene would just attrack extra attention to the attack. You got everything cleaned up okay I hope??"

"Yeah, as it happens we did," Michael muttered. "So you didn't realize that she was in danger until too late. How convenient. When are you actually going to do something useful for us?"

"I helped distract them when you were running away from the Bandzfest," Tess reminded us, "Pierce might have been pissed off enough to actually try capturing you, with whatshername hanging in the balance. And, well... I don't suppose you'd call anything about the pool party useful?"

"Not overwhelmingly," I muttered. "It brought up a lot of questions, but what we need are answers."

"Well, noted!" Tess shot back, a bit prissily. "I'll see if I can drag up a few for you!!"

"Okay," Maria said, a lot less confrontationally. "And some way to be safe from the boys in blue would help too. In return... we'll start figuring out if there's anything we can do for you guys and your mom."

"Thanks," Tess sighed. "But I don't know what that could be, I have to admit."

Silence filled the car for a moment. "Do... do you want us to let you off again??" Michael asked a little awkwardly.

"Umm, if you could drop me outside the arcade, that'd be great," she said. "Was going to drop by on Dad quickly. And see if they've added any new microphones around town since last week."

----------

Alex:

"Max??!"

As the call came from outside the bedroom somewhere, he looked at Isabel, then me, and shrugged awkwardly. "Probably going to have to tell them something about the attack. The Powers that be must have mentioned that I was there when it happened."

"It'll be okay," Isabel said, lifting up a hand to reassuringly touch his forearm. "Just tell them what happened, well, most of it anyway, and leave out the speculation. The important thing is that I'll be okay... give them a little time to adjust and they'll see that."

Max smiled, still looking a little pale, nodded at me and made his exit. I sighed, looked down at Isabel as she lay on her bed. "I just wish we could know that for sure," I mumbled, hardly realizing I was actually saying it more or less out loud until the thought was nearly complete. Isabel shot me a concerned look.

I rubbed her arm. "Okay, you weren't hurt too badly today, and that's a good thing. But... but now what? The evidence so far suggests that you were stabbed by an intelligent, insane creature who can perfectly disguise himself, however he wants, and has a grudge against you, Max and Michael for some reason that you don't even know about. The other plausible theory is that the attack was orchestrated by a pervasive, secret government agency with huge resources, and they were daring enough to have you attacked in public because they know that none of you guys can use your alien powers effectively in front of people who know you without exposing yourselves, and that they might have done it to secure a sample of your alien blood which they probably didn't get a chance to do." Took a deep breath there and tried to calm down and stop rambling... sheez, I'd given Maria a strong run for her money, as it were.

"The point is that this looks like just the harbinger of things to come... this situation is going to get more dangerous for all of us from here on in."

"Well, maybe." Iz sighed. "But... but I can't focus on that right now, I'm sorry. I've been hurt, and I need you to make me feel better right now, not to worry and frighten me. Is that too selfish?"

I took a moment to consider the question. From a tacitcal slash logical viewpoint, every moment that Isabel pretended ignorance of the dangers surrounding her seemed to make them even more dangerous, and that was a hard thought to abide. But psychologically and emotionally... yeah, her need for comfort and a safe mental space while she was recuperating was valid. When the time came to fight for her life, for any of the rest of us, she wouldn't let illusions get in the way: Isabel would fight with every weapon she had, and probably steal a few more. There was no immediate danger now, though.

"What do you want me to do?"

She smiled, relaxing against the pillow. "Tell me a funny story."

"Hmmm..." Thought a moment about that. "Well, this is kinda funny. It's about the time that my mom and Maria managed to talk me into trying out for softball in junior high. Now, the coach split everyone trying out into fielders and batters to start off, and he took one look at me and told me to play center field, right? Well, after the first few batters had come up and not gotten anywhere near center field..."

----------

LPD continues...

"So, um, what's the word?" Max asked as he sat down with the three of us in a Crashdown booth.

"Umm, not here," Michael muttered, and he discretely waved a finger towards the wall and then past his ear. No-one had checked the dining room for listening devices or other bugs lately, and there was no sense in taking chances.

"Oh, right," Max muttered. "Umm, okay, so what's up for tonight?" He paused in thought only a second. "Hey, isn't today the day that we said we were going to all go out dancing?"

"Umm, yeah, actually it was," I agreed, "but, well, not sure about anyone else, but I don't think I feel up for it now, after the day we'd all had." If it was Nacero who had attacked Isabel... well, we weren't sure what kind of message he might have been trying to send, but possibly if he saw the four of us all going out together and doing our best to look like we were having a good time, he might decide that we weren't taking the message seriously and that he would have to deliver it again.

And there was no way to tell for sure what Nacero might see, or what he could hear, (in public, at least,) because he could be anybody. He could be right here in the cafe somewhere, watching us without making it obvious by staring or anything. That was a creepy thought, and I did the best I could to shut it out of my mind.

"Yeah, me too," Michael muttered. "You don't mind too much, do ya babe?" He smiled apologetically, reaching over to take Maria's hand in his. "I could kinda tell that you were looking forward to the occasion, but..."

"No, I totally feel the same way," she insisted. "It's a shame, because I was really hoping to have a good time, but -- er, not after what happened to Isabel." She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "So, what else? I *do* kinda want to hang out with you all, the whole gang right now, instead of going home by myself." And she shivered a little bit.

"Umm," Max thought about that. "We could have a home movie night or something -- that worked pretty well the last time we tried it." I remembered what he was talking about and smiled -- the night Max had made the deal with Topolsky to save her, in the old playhouse... everyone had crowded into my living room upstairs and we'd watched 'the princess bride' and 'return of the jedi' straight through, and then the alien kids had passed around the first orb - the one that Nacero had stolen several days later - and experimented with trying to get it to do something.

"Yeah, cool," Michael agreed. "Isabel should be able to sit up some, right? How about we have it over chez Evans?" Max smiled and nodded.

"But there's still one question to be settled," Maria muttered, her voice sounding very quiet and serious. "What movie or movies??"

I giggled a little. "How about 'Aliens'?"

Michael laughed. "Why not Independence Day??"

In the end, we got 'Men in Black,' which Max and Maria assured me was such a funny and over-the-top romp that it wouldn't raise any anxiety even given the current situation, and the Monty Python holy grail, another definite comedy crisis, even if I have a little problem understanding exactly what funny things they're saying in the English accents.

We didn't talk much during or after the movies, and certainly nothing about aliens, orbs, Tess, or the special unit. There was some griping about an upcoming test in English Lit, and that set Alex off into one of his own little comedy routines about imitating the teachers and administrators at school.

It was an evening of complete denial, up to a point. Michael put on some tunes once the movies were over and Max took me by the hand - he held me in his arms and we danced about the living room. Alex was sitting next to Isabel on the couch, cracking more jokes and keep her company - even though the wound seemed to be nearly healed, Max and Izzy's parents insisted that she should be resting as much as possible, so she'd stayed spread out on the couch the entire time since coming out of her room for the first movie. I know that if I were in her position, I'd appreciate a guy like Alex doing so much to lift my spirits.

When the abrupt, crashing noise and soft cry first rang out, I had no idea where it had come from or what it might mean. Max and I got out of dancing position, one arm each still around the other, and looked around. It was a few long seconds before I zeroed in on a space near the sideboard. A pitcher quarter-full of reddish pink liquid - probably Mrs Evans' cran-cherry punch, was sitting on the sideboard, along with three full punch glasses and two empty ones. Several sizeable fragments of a sixth punch glass were visible on the hardwood floor, as well as glinting splinters and spilled punch. Maria was standing practically in the middle of the wreckage, staring at Michael, who was a few paces away, and staring back at her with concern and surprise on his face.

"Ummm..." Max cleared his throat. "I know my mom won't be pleased about losing one of her pretty glasses, but is that all the matter, or..."

"I don't think so, Max," Michael whispered. He waited a few seconds, as if expecting Maria to reply, but she seemed to still be speechless. "She was pourng drinks for all of us, but I didn't think there would be anything wrong with going up to her and putting my arms around her waist from behind. Maria just *freaked* -- she practically threw the glass down at the floor and yelled." That had to be an exxageration; at least, the only cry that I remembered didn't really qualify as a YELL, but oh welll.

"I stepped back away; I'm not quite sure, maybe I was worried that I'd hurt her or something. Maybe I just knew that something was upsetting her. And then she turned around and started staring at me like... well, like this. Maria? Maria, can you hear me??"

"I... I can hear you," she whispered as if in a trance. "I, I see--" Maria shook herself at this point and seemed to become more fully aware. "I saw something, Michael, when you touched me then. I didn't mean to freak you out like that: guess I had trouble processing what happened for a few moments. But I'm okay now, I think. And... I think I might be able to help find those pods that you guys came out of -- if you're interested."

The silence was so intense that I half expected to hear someone else drop and break something. "The... the pods?" Max repeated. "But -- but how?"

"I'm not sure if it was a flash like you guys get," Maria said, sighing. "But, when Michael touched me right then... it's like a series of images got burned onto my brain. They're a little fragmentary and jumpy, so I'm not sure if they'll be enough. But I'm pretty sure they show the route that you guys took... probably Michael himself, all the way from a dark place where he came out of the goopy wet, to where you guys got picked up by the Evanses and he panicked. You know where that was, right??"

"Umm, yeah," Isabel said from over at the couch -- of course she had been following this just as intently as Max and Michael had. "We all have fragments of memory of that trip, and we've tried to trace it back to the origin, without success. But it's worth a try, maybe -- you might have info that we don't, or at least not consciously."

Maria smiled, and then looked around her. "Aww, I'm sorry about your mom's glass Max." Carefully she stepped away from the scene of the accident, trying not to slip in spilled punch or get any glass slivers embedded into the soles of her shoes.

"Let me try something." All of a sudden Isabel was standing up, and crossing the room quickly towards us without running. She squatted down, gazed intently at the pieces of glass, concentrated, and the pieces flew together!! Within seconds the vessel was once again whole, sitting on the hardwood as if it had been carefully placed there.

Wonderstruck, I reached out and grabbed it. "Liz, be careful!!" Max's voice came a few seconds too late, but there seemed to be no reason to fear. There were no splinters or sharp edges sticking out of the glass. Along what might have been the breaking points it seemed to be a little bumpy and uneven -- sings of Isabel's inexperience with this sort of thing maybe, or perhaps that she hadn't gotten all of the splinters and thus had not had enough material to work with. Or perhaps both. But it still seemed extremely cool.

I turned around to say as much to Isabel, only to realize that her eyes were half closed and that Michael and Alex were holding her from each side - seemingly their grip was the only thing keeping her from keeling over. "Damn fool thing to try, Isabel," Michael was mumbling under his breath. "You're hurt, your power levels have to be lower than usual, so whatdidja have to experiment with a new power for? It was a frickin' punch glass for cripes' sake, not worth putting yourself at risk for."

"Yeah, I kinda thhee that now Michael," Isabel said with a slight slur in her voice. "Didn't really think before I did it, I just acted. But I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about that kind of impulsiveness."

Maria snorted at that, and Michael shot her a dark look. "Okay, I guess I know how you feel when I put my ass on the line without thinking in through," he told her. "Will try to knock it off it you agree the same."

Isabel just giggled weakly in reply.

We broke up the party not long after that. Maria, Michael, and Max agreed to meet tomorrow after school and drive up into the desert, see if Maria's flash info turned out to be worth anything. (Maria was a little worried that the images might fade overnight, but Max pointed out that it would be suspicious for them to disappear in the middle of the night -- especially after Max and I had gotten in a lot of trouble for pulling something similar -- and that if whatever information Maria had got couldn't stay stable in her noggin for a little while, it probably couldn't be relied on in any event. I wasn't too sure about that logic, but decided not to argue with it for the time being.

Max invited me along for the hunt, but I told him that I'd have to think about it, not being sure if it'd be too weird watching all three of them put strange alien memories to use without having anything to contribute myself. Maria said that she'd take Michael home, and Alex offered to drop me off at the cafe. I would have appreciated a chance for a private goodbye with Max on the balcony, but had to agree that it made more sense for him to stay here at home and make sure that Isabel would be okay.

----------

I dreamt that night.

The dream was as if I were standing in Topolsky's little motel room, though she didn't notice me at all. It was very dark out and the little battery-powered analog clock was reading 2:15, (presumably AM,) but Kathleen had a light on and she wasn't in bed.

She was sitting on the small couch, with a whole bunch of playing cards laid out on the table in front of her. It seemed to be a kind of game of solitare, though not one I'd ever heard of before. The layout was dominated by four rows of varying lengths, each with a different suit face up. The top row as she saw it, for instance, was single cards, in the diamond suit. Then in the second row, little stacks, probably two cards each, with a heart face up. The third row had stacks of three with a club on the top, and the last had little packs of four with a spade facing up. None of these face-up cards shared a rank, a three or jack or whatever, in common.

She dealt cards three at a time from a face-down stock to a face-up tall stack, which was familiar to me from one of the harder klondike variants that my Dad plays. Slowly I started to realize some of the rules, because when the seven of hearts came up, she checked the row of diamonds to see if the seven of diamonds was there -- when it was, she put the seven of hearts on top of it and moved the resulting stack down to the hearts row. The objective must be to get all thirteen ranks down to the bottom row. There was also a column of small stacks of cards down the left of the layout, of which presumably the top card of each stack could be played out onto the main layout whenever possible, but the lower cards would not be available until all cards above them had been played off.

Was this really what Topolsky was doing, this minute? Or was it symbolic of something in my subconscious mind?? If there was symbolism, I suddenly realized, the order of the suits in the layout was, evocative to say the least. Suggestive of Topolsky's story, what we knew of it. First came diamonds, the money - a job offer from the FBI. Then, she betrayed her employers for the sake of affection -- because she had sympathy for Max and the rest of us. That was the hearts. Next came the violence of clubs, both literal and symbolic, as she was drawn into Pierce's attack against us. Would the spades really come next -- digging her grave soon??

Topolsky played on, completely unaware of my morbid thoughts, and if any similar insight had struck her about the game, she gave no sign of it. In fact, she was smiling, probably because she thought the game was going to come out neatly for her.

All of a sudden, there was a huge thudding impact on the door, severe enough to set up secondary vibrations in the walls and the floor, jostling the cards out of position. Both of us looked at the door in fear and shock, as another WHAM rang out. The third time, the door broke and most of it flew open.

It was strong, dangerous men in blue suits of course... the 'boys in blue' of the special unit. They didn't notice me either, but grabbed Topolsky. She fought as hard as she could, (showing some cool karate moves or something similar,) but was quickly overwhelmed. The only words she let out as they dragged her from the motel was an overwhelmed, strangled plea. "Isabel -- help me!!"

And with that, I woke up, confused, sweaty, and panicked. Why had she called for Isabel, at the end of the dream. Had Kathleen actually been taken by the special unit? Was there any safe way to be sure if she was okay or not?? If her hiding place *was* secure, then calling her or going out to see her could compromise it -- the unit was definitely watching US.

I didn't know what to do at all.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:14 pm

Part 4c
LPD continues...

I don't really remember how long I sat in the middle of my sheets, confused and not really thinking anything that made sense. But bit by bit a few coherent thoughts began to fit together. First... I couldn't just go back to sleep, pretend like this might not be important. There was just no possible way.

The obvious thing to do would be to pick up the phone and call Max. But... well, I was starting to learn that a little paranoia could be healthy. Since the special unit had moved into town, we'd done our best not to talk about alien business at all at the telephone. Under the circumstances, even for my to call and invite Max over in the middle of the night might serve to clue someone in that I knew there was trouble, if they were monitoring the line. But... what were my other choices? To leave the Crashdown and walk all the way to Max's place?? (It really was an inconveniently long way.) Or to take my dad's car, even though I'm not supposed to drive it without parental permission??

Looking back, I'm not sure if I can explain exactly why I was so certain that Max was the person who I had to bring this new development too... it's just something that seemed to have arrived in my mind fully formed, not allowing any other alternative thoughts to develop myself. The only question was how, and eventually, uncomfortably, I decided on the car. Quickly changed into some casual street clothes and snuck through the apartment and the cafe's back room, not turning any lights on as I went.

Don't really remember the drive very well at all, except for the fact that I nearly ran into a fire hydrant as I turned out onto Second street. The next clear thought is of knocking on Max's bedroom window, again and again, hoping that I'd wake him up before attracting the attention of anyone else. Finally he was there, suddenly staring back out at me, and opening up the window so I can climb through. Max was only wearing a white tank top and comfy pajama bottoms. "Liz?? Liz, why are you, erm..."

"I'm, I'm really sorry," I blurted out. "Wouldn't have, umm, wouldn't have bothered you this late at night if it weren't a... err, could you sweep the room? Just in case?"

Max frowned in concentration, and went as if to get a broom or something like that, but after a few steps he caught himself and did the little wavy thing. "We're clear," he murmured. "Haven't found anything in here in days, since there was that weird doohickey stuck to the outside wall."

I blinked... he hadn't mentioned a doohickey as far as I could remember, but that wasn't what was important now. "Max, I had a... well, a kind of weird dream, and as strange as it sounds, I'm very worried that I might have been dreaming of something real."

"Something real?? I don't quite understand. Like Isabel when she dreamwalks, or..."

"Not quite like that. When Isabel does her thing, she's inside someone else's dream, someone's subconscious. I dreamed of what looked like a real place, someone who was awake. And I'm worried that what I saw was something that was actually happening, or something like that. It was Topolsky, Max. And she got captured by Special unit agents."

That got through to Max. "How sure are you that it wasn't just a regular anxiety dream, Liz?? I can understand that being something that you'd worry about, but..."

"It didn't feel the same as any of my other dreams, Max," I told him. "Everything I saw and heard was so vivid, so detailed... like I was actually standing there in the motel room with her, only invisible. I remember every second of it." A pause. "Maybe it wasn't even a dream at all, but a case of spontaneous astral projection or something like that."

"Okay," Max sighed. "Well... if it's not a dream, then what do we do about it? Do you... do you have any suggestions, Liz??"

I collapsed down onto his bed. "Sorry, Max. This thing has me so rattled I can hardly think straight. All I knew was that I had to come here and tell you about it... I didn't, well, I didn't trust the telephone, under the circumstances."

"It's alright." He was there next to me, wrapping a comforting, protective arm around my body. "I'll do whatever I can to make this all right. That's a promise."

I sniffed a little bit and looked at him. "Thanks. What did I ever do to deserve a guardian like you? Ever since that day in the cafe, you've been keeping me safe."

"Oh yeah, such a great guardian I've been," Max said, chuckling wryly. "Knowing me has dragged you into all of this stuff, that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Okay, erm... Topolsky. Uhh... well, we need to find out what happened, if anything, at the motel tonight, and we need to find out discretely. Without giving away anything to the Special Unit that we can help, and above all without leading them to her, if they DON'T have her already. That means that the telephone is out again."

"Umm... yeah, that's what I thought," I mumbled. "Do you have a phone number for the motel, as a point of information?? I realize that we shouldn't use it unless there's absolutely, positively, no other alternative, but..."

"Oh, yeah," Max said. "Do you want me to give you a copy, just in case?"

"Umm, yes please!" Max hurried over to his desk, pulled out something from the wallet in his pocket, copied a few numbers onto a small scrap of paper, and hurried back to the bed to hand it to me. I turned it to the light to read... a number with a 505 area code, and a room number. Stuck it into my pocket. "Umm, okay, so then what? Drive out and check on her in person??"

"Yeah, I think that's really the only alternative left," Max sighed. "Taking every possible precaution to keep the special unit from following us or tracking us while we do."

"Alright," I muttered. "Sounds good."

"The problem... is going to be personnel," Max continued quietly. "I'd appreciate a little backup in this situation, and Isabel is in no shape to go, so that kind of means Michael. But... well, I don't really want to leave Isabel and my parents here all alone. Just in case someone is waiting for an opportunity." He looked over at me. "There's another, kinda worrying, thing that's just occured to me."

"Oh, boy. Well, let's hear it. Like we need something *else* to worry about."

"If we accept that your... experience wasn't just an ordinary dream, what if it was a vision SENT to you by someone else?" Max asked. "I mean, Tess has told us that there are psychics in the Special Unit, and who knows what they can do. Nacero's powers, also, are more than somewhat unclear. If any of those people wanted to frighten you, they could have somehow projected that imagery into your head maybe."

"Yikes, that does make some sense," I mumbled. "But... double yikes, if they could do that, they'd either have to already know where Topolsky was, to get all the details right... or to explore my mind carefully enough to find out what her room looks like before starting the 'dream.' And if they can find out that much from inside my head..."

"Then, they could probably find out where the motel is and how to get there," Max muttered. "Yeah. I hope it isn't so." He thought about that. "WIth the special unit, I can't really see any reason why they would have sent you the vision when they could just get the info and then snatch her quietly in the middle of the night. But then, I'm not sure I'm looking as many moves ahead as the special unit is. Nacero... well, he might not be as interested in getting to Topolsky as rattling and tormenting us." I groaned.

"Okay, umm... speculating about motives is all right, but maybe we'd better get back to the point... personnel," I said. Max nodded. "How about... Michael comes with us, and Maria comes over to keep an eye on Isabel? I know that she hasn't got superhuman powers, but..."

"Yeah, that could work... I'd feel a little better just knowing that someone else was here, even if it doesn't make that much logical sense," Max admitted. "My parents might find it a little odd that she's here."

"Umm... Isabel could say that she was having a hard time sleeping, after the attack, and asked Maria over to keep her company?"

"Could work."

Things took a while to get organized, even though Max decided to risk using the phone to call Maria over, rather than running over there, waking her up somehow, and then coming back. Isabel was a bit grumpy up when I woke her up and explained the plan to her... 'So I have to sit up all night, and maybe lie to my parents and say that I couldn't get to sleep, when really there's nothing I'd like better than going back to my warm and cozy bed?' But she understood why we were so worried, pretty much, and agreed to play her part.

"Max, what about Tess??" Isabel asked. "If she's psychic, like the special unit head honchos... maybe she could help protect me."

"I'm not calling her over," Max insisted. "Or anything. Besides, she can't do anything but make water cold-boil and tell what aliens are thinking... neither of which are terribly helpful for defense. We'll talk to her tomorrow, maybe... see if she has any more insights on Nacero, or any experienced guesses about what the unit might be up to. But not tonight." Isabel nodded.

"And what about Alex??" Maria put in. "Do we just let him sleep through all this?"

"I wish that I could," Isabel grumped under her breath.

"I... I don't think it's likely that Alex is in any danger," I put in. "But maybe we should go by his place... his family doesn't live that far from Michael's apartment. See if he wants to come with us or not."

"Okay," Max said. "That's good. Safety in numbers, and strength too."

"Keep him safe," Isabel breathed, and shot a look over at Maria before adding, "Michael too, of course."

"Yeah," Maria agreed.

"We'd better be going," I said, looking out the front windows, and then did a double-take. "Shi-oot, grrr. My mom's car. What the heck do we do about... I don't think it would be smart to take a road trip in that, but..."

"Leave... leave it here," Isabel suggested, "and around 6 am, Maria and I can take it back to the Crashdown and have Beetlejuice breakfast platters or something. Would your parents have noticed that it was missing by the time the cafe doors open??"

"Ummm...." I tried to concentrate on the schedule, but Maria was the one who answered first.

"No, Lucy, Ramon, and Agnes are opening up this morning, so the Parkers will probably sleep in a bit." Isabel nodded happily.

"Alright, here." I put the keys on the coffee table. "Come on, Max... we'd better get going."

We slipped out the back kitchen door into the Jeep. "Watch carefully," Max whispered to me before starting the engine. "Any sign of... well, you know."

I nodded, but there was trace of anybody around us in the mid-night stillness as Max drove over to Michael's place, woke him up, and then at Alex's place I slipped inside, (using the spare key always buried in the garden next to Mrs Whitman's favorite... well, I can't remember the name for it. Tall, stalky plant that blooms with beautiful orangey flowers in the early summer. Anyway, I slipped up to Alex's room, gently woke him up, and asked if he wanted to come with us. Once he was awake enough to answer the question, he agreed to come.

The shocking moment came as Max was driving straight up through the north side of town. A station wagon turned off a side street, maybe four car-lengths behind us. Michael, Alex, and I immediately started trying to stare into the windows, but since the only light sources were the headlights of the wagon, shining nearly straight at us and away from its own windows, and the street lights casting shifting lights and reflections as they seemingly streamed over us, it was just about impossible to tell who was inside or if they were paying attention to us.

"Turn unexpectedly, Max," Michael suggested, and I made a little noise of agreement. Max nodded, slowed down slightly, and then made a wide left swing onto Wilsher boulevard. The wagon didn't try to follow us at all, and when Max had driven through a small square, west one block, back south one block, and back to main street, there was no sign of anyone else, so he turned back north. Alex and I looked even more carefully, trying to pick out someone who might be following us more carefully now that we'd lost the first car, but there was no trace. Michael even tried scanning with his powers.

"I can pick up the wagon, several blocks ahead of us... turning right again, probably on Mescalero. Nobody else close enough to be aware of us." As we passed Mescalero, Michael continued to report. The wagon made no sign of turning around to try following us again.

When route 285 north crossed the bypass, otherwise known as route 70, there were a few cars that turned onto the road around us, but now there were no side streets any more to pull the same trick. Were we being too paranoid about other cars?? There was no easy way to tell.

"Is there... is there something you can scan for that would be a good indicator of government agents??" Alex asked softly.

"Guns," I guessed. "Special unit people will have guns. Not many other people will be carrying firearms in their cars... I hope."

"Okay," Michael muttered. "What can I scan for with a gun?? Is there something that makes up a part of a gun that won't be in cars and people and what have you??"

"Umm... something in the firing pin?" Max ventured.

"No good," Alex put in. "Scan for zinc, and you'd pick up all the car starters. *COME BACK, ZINC!!*" Max and I stared at him in mystification, while Michael chuckled. "Sorry... Simpsons line."

"The gunpowder, then?" I suggested. "There's sulfur in gunpowder right, quite a bit of it."

"If you're in the eighteenth century, maybe," Michael said. "Modern gunpowder is made of nitrocellulose... which has pretty much the same component elements as people."

"Oh, whoops." I sighed.

"Okay, come on, we're barking up the wrong tree," Max said. "Scanning for elements isn't the only way -- Michael, can you scan for shapes? Like, shapes that are made up of iron or steel??"

"Oh, yeah, I guess so," Michael replied. "Of course. Wouldn't be hard to recognize a gun by its shape." He shifted awkwardly around, doing the alien hand thing. "Right there, three cars behind us and a lane to the left. Two passengers, both packing. Umm... what do I do now??"

"Try to cripple them somehow," Alex suggested. "Umm... blow out the tire?"

"Maybe... but that's probably tough because it's constantly spinning, and a little obvious anyway." Max muttered. "Liz, can you hold the steering wheel steady for a little bit?"

"Umm, I guess - why?" I very definitely did not reach out to hold the wheel yet. "Max, what are you thinking of doing, and why can't Michael do it??"

"I want to try blowing out something inside their engine," Max muttered, looking around a bit. "They probably won't be expecting that -- I hope. It'll be less suspicious if they're NOT special unit, for sure. And Michael still isn't as good with really fine-tuned uses of his powers."

"Umm... okay." I sighed. "Say when."

"Now." I reached out and grabbed the wheel. Max twisted around about as far as he could in his seat, (he'd already undone his seat belt, I noticed, and kept an even firmer grip on the wheel just in case.) A little glare, an alien waving gesture, and what seemed an incredible amount of waiting. "Max, less gas." The car slowed slightly, enough that we weren't in danger of rear-ending the subcompact in front of us. Finally Alex and Michael cheered, and once Max had started driving again I looked back. The car Michael had indicated was nowhere in sight.

"They pulled over to the left shoulder," Alex said. "Any idea what it was you got, Max??"

"Maybe burst the radiator hose, or something like that."

"Nice," Michael muttered. "I need to keep practicing."

From there the trip proceeded calmly enough. Michael kept scanning every so often for guns, or a few other suspicious items that Alex and I thought of, but there was no trace of special unit pursuit at all. Driving the last little way to the motel was exciting in a different way, because there was no well maintained road there... just a half-paved one-lane track through the desert, with no lights on it at all. "Stop here," Michael suggested, when we could finally just sort of make out the lights of the office in the distance.

"Okay, what's our plan from here in?" Alex asked. "There might be agents here, if they've taken Topolsky. Waiting for us to visit her next... or to catch us too if they did send Liz that dream on purpose."

"Umm... we leave the car here," Max suggested. "Move slowly, watching in every direction as well as we can. If there's no sign of anyone suspicious by the time we get there, I knock on her door and let us in, and we see what's what."

"Okay, here's one suggested addition to that plan," I volunteered. "As much as the suspense is already killing me, maybe we shouldn't just go straight for her door. Circle the entire motel, far enough out that we're not obvious in the lights. Whatcha think??"

"Sounds good," Alex muttered. "Long and tiring, but smart."

"Okay, let's get to it, snails," Michael joked, jumping softly out of the back of the Jeep.

I'm not sure I can describe exactly what it was like to slowly and silently slink around the desert. Not even quite sure how long it took, though it felt like maybe an hour and a half. There was absolutely no sign of anything unusual... well, I'm assuming that a twentyish blonde leaving a motel room in her nightgown and storming off in a blue pickup truck doesn't really count as unusual in a place like this. Certainly it didn't seem to have anything to do with us or our own worries. (I wonder if the pickup truck was hers, and if she was sharing her room with anyone.)

Finally, we'd made most of a circuit of the motel area, and there was still no sign of any special unit agents. (Max and Michael had been doing alien sensor sweeps now and then, I think.) "Okay, let's move over to near that telephone pole there," Alex suggested in a whisper, "and move in towards her door at a trot. We can't really slink around in the lighted parking lot, so batter to have a little momentum on our side."

"Okay," Max said. "Now... I worked something out with Topolsky regarding unannounced visits, and should probably stick to that as closely as possible. I'm to knock a specific pattern on the front door. She will NOT let me in, but will be warned that it MIGHT be me or someone else friendly if she hears that knock. Then I unlock the door with my powers... and go in and figure out what's going on." He paused. "Liz, you come with me, Alex and Michael try to guard the door?"

"You got it, boss," Michael quipped.

Everything seemed almost surreal, with all of the precautions we were taking, and no real sign of danger. After strolling over to the telephone pole, we jogged over to the door of room number 15, and I stuck next to Max as he knocked in a syncopated rhythm on the door, waited maybe ten seconds, and put his hand over the door. A deadbolt noisily THUNKed over, and he opened the door and stepped through. I stepped behind, but hesitated before going over the threshold.

For a second, it was dark inside. Then a light switched on... and Topolsky was sitting up in bed, blinking blearily and wearing a West Roswell High t-shirt... it was one of Max's things actually, that had been brought up while Topolsky was staying in the cave at the reservation. "Umm... Max, Liz!! Hi... what are you guys doing here??"

I instantly felt very silly. Not only had there not been any evidence, really, of a special unit trap set for us, but Topolsky had pretty obviously not been dragged off by the special unit... or so it seemed. "Umm... well, it's a long story, but we thought there might have been trouble," Max mumbled as I stepped inside and closed the door. "You... you haven't seen any sign of the special unit, have you? No-one's been in here tonight?"

"No... no-one since you guys dropped me off, day before yesterday. I was getting kinda bored, though I know it's better to be bored and safe than... than the alternative." Topolsky rubbed her eyes. "So, umm, what kind of danger were you thinking of? Did you think the special unit had taken me away?"

Max shot a significant look at me... he wasn't sure whether to tell Kathleen the whole story about my dream. I wasn't either, and I wondered if we were thinking along the same lines. All of a sudden, a new and deeply frightening possibility had struck me. While we had been making plans and driving around and sneaking through the desert feeling like idiots, was it possible that the special unit HAD grabbed Topolsky, and done something to her, and put her right back?? Had managed to break her mind somehow, convert her, so that she would act as a double agent within our conspiracy? Was that within their power?? We'd have to risk asking Tess about that, since she seemed to know so much about the Unit.

On the other hand... if Topolsky *was* compromised, telling her about the dream didn't seem like such a huge breach in our security, and if she was still on our side, she might have a useful perspective. Still, I decided to wait and let Max take the lead in this, for now.

"Well, okay, let's see," Max mumbled. "First thing you should know, is that Isabel was attacked at school today." Good, good. That one shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but Topolsky, sitting out here in the middle of nowhere as she was.

"What... really? Who... who was it?"

"It looked like a high school kid, but not one that any of the witnesses were familiar with," Max said. "We're thinking that it might be an alien shapeshifter... or an undercover special unit agent. She wasn't too badly hurt, but still... it was a shocking thing."

"Hmmm..." Kathleen thought about that. "Maybe he was trying to get a blood sample from her?"

"It doesn't look like that, directly," I put in. "The attacker could have just kept the knife if he wanted blood... no-one really had time to take it away from him. But he dropped it at the scene of the crime. We did what we could to destroy any traces of blood anyway... I think we succeeded."

"So, if it was the Unit, they were probably just trying to send a message or to spook you," Topolsky reasoned. "You were careful coming up here, right??"

Max and I both broke out laughing... and somehow that was a cue for us to move away from the door and find places to sit down in the motel room. "We were so careful it nearly drove us crazy," Max admitted. "Taking just about every precaution we could think of."

"All... right. Now, if it wasn't the special unit, but the alien shapeshifter... well, I don't think I know what his motives might have been for attacking Isabel."

"We asked Tess about it," I said. "She said something about Nacero being angry at us, that there was something he thought was taken away from him. Oooh, boy."

"Alright, well, thanks for telling me," Kathleen replied. "But... well, if that's what you came up to tell me about, then the timing is -- strange, to say the least. Was there something else."

Another look shared between Max and I. It somehow seemed like we'd already crossed the line without knowing it... If we were going to really distrust her, then I shouldn't have admitted that we were still taking Tess Harding into our councils. "Yeah, I had a dream tonight... a dream that something had happened to you," I said. And started to briefly go over the points from the dream again.

"That... that doesn't sound anything like anything that's really happened," Topolsky said. "I don't even HAVE a deck of cards here, though I was thinking of asking if somebody could bring one." A pause. "Is it superstition to think that that might not be the best idea now??"

"Probably," Max muttered in a low voice. "If the dream is an actual glimpse of the future, then it can be changed, I would assume... but changing one part of it doesn't invalidate everything else that's going to happen. If you decide not to get playing cards... then you'd just be doing something else, maybe sitting here bored out of your skull, when they come for you."

"Great." Topolsky sighed.

"Well um," I put in. "If there's no crisis here, we should probably better be heading back. Anything we can do for you??"

"No," she replied. "Oh, wait, one thing. If they might get me here... I want to have some way of at least letting you know that something's gone wrong. Alex is a clever guy, he should be able to set up a panic trace on a phone number... so that you'll be able to tell if it's been rung through to, even once."

"Okay," Max said. "Alex is outside, actually, on lookout. I'll get him." He smiled and headed back to the door.

-----------

(Isabel):

Maria sighed, and I did a half yawn. "Yeah, I'm bored too," I told her. Bored... and nearly out of my mind with worry about the others; especially Max, Michael, and Alex -- but I didn't say that part out loud.

"Yeah, well, that's kinda par for the course," Maria pointed out. "There's been a bunch of bored waiting in this gig." We were sitting down in the kitchen, with just one little light on, in case anyone walked by on the street and happened to pay attention to the house. "Hmmm... if I were anywhere but here--" Maria paused to think.

I laughed softly. "Like they played it on 'Buffy'??"

"Yeah, pretty much. Liz and I picked up on that, though we haven't done it in a while. Okay, if I were anywhere but here... I'd like to be relaxing on a beach somewhere in Hawaii or the south pacific, somewhere nice and far too tourist-ey. Lying right on the gleaming white sand, not bothering with a towel or anything because it's just sand and it'll brush away, something fruity and frothy and with a pink parasol in the glass within easy reach. Michael will be there, probably he wouldn't want to lie in the sun, and he'll be complaining a bit about this or that, because he's Michael and that's what he does. But he'll lean down and give me a kiss, and then go and find a magazine and a hammock in the shade or something like that. And after watching the sun sink through the faint whisps of cloud and down into the ocean, we'll go and have dinner with Max and Liz at a native sushi place... not Japanese sushi but something with a similar idea." She paused, realizing how that last bit sounded. "Um, you and Alex are welcome to come along if you want, I just... somehow that wasn't quite how I pictured it, you know."

"It's alright," I assured her. "Well, the beach sounds nice and all, but I think I'll pick something different. I'd be with Alex, I think... sitting together at an observation deck for a really tall building in a big city. Manhattan maybe, or Chicago. Yeah, Chicago sounds good. We might make out a bit right there, in public, hehe." I could feel my cheeks reddening as I lingered on the thought. "And maybe I'll go over to the railing just before we're about to leave, and look straight down for as long as I can stand to. Then we'll go back to the hotel... you and Michael, Max and Liz will have rooms right next to ours. And then out into the big city for some sightseeing and dancing."

"Cool," Maria said. "Have you guys already had dinner when you're up at the top of the building??"

"Hmm, I'm not sure," I admitted. "Umm... we had something in the late afternoon... might grab a little something in the middle of the dancing... some chicago style pizza maybe, or oven-roasted chicken with noodles."

"Cool," Maria muttered, and sighed in contentment. After a long moment of silence, she seemed to start growing restless again. "There has to be something else that we can do. Grab a deck of cards maybe, and play gin rummy??"

"Ooooh, no." I shuddered more violently than I expected. "After hearing Liz's description of her dream, I suspect it'll be a while before I want to have anything to do with a pack of cards."

"Oh, sorry."

"Nah, it's okay," I told her. "Umm... how about checkers, actually? I think there's a board and a set of pieces in the hall closet."

"Bring it on, alien girl," Maria said, grinning. "I am *so* good at checkers."

I laughed, and went to get the stuff. I'm pretty good at checkers myself, regularly beating Max and Michael, even though Max takes comfort at being able to clean my clock with chess, and both of them generally have more of a knack at card games. (Hmm... I should try playing games sometimes with Alex, even though he's probably a whiz at everything.) Soon it became clear that we were pretty evenly matched, and I had a lot of fun playing against Maria. Always thought that my own style was 'unconventional' strategy... both compared to my guys and the few times I've played against people who seemed more at my own level. But Maria just came at me out of left field, much more of a loose cannon than I could be, forcing me sometimes to stick to the basics if I wanted to have a chance... and, on the other hand, there were times that I was trying to get just as creative and inventive as she was.

We had just started a new game, with Maria being up four games to three, when her watch started to ring off. "Oooh, we'd better head over, grab breakfast, and return Liz's car."

"Oh... right." I frowned at the board... there were a lot of good reasons for leaving right now, but I didn't really want to leave the field of battle without at least tying the score. Oh well... no real answer to that at the moment. "Okay, erm... do you remember what it was like outside when you came over?? Do you think I'll need my jacket?"

"Umm... it probably couldn't hurt," she pointed out. as I stood up. "How's your side, by the way?? You know where you got... erm, cut."

I stretched slightly, and smiled. "Feels like it's completely gone away, actually. Maybe if I'd been thinking clearly I should have told Max that I didn't need to be protected and stay behind."

"Well, hopefully they're on their way back by now," Maria said.

"Yeah." I folded up the board, stacked all the checkers into their box, and put them on one of the shelves in the kitchen... just in case there'd be another opportunity to play in the near future. Then I went out to the front hall to grab my jacket. "Ohh, what do we do about your mom's car, Maria??"

"Oh, okay... you follow me to my place, and I'll leave it there and get into Liz's car with you," Maria suggested. "Shouldn't take us long."

And that was pretty much what we did. The two of us were still among the first half-dozen or so into the Crashdown dining room to order breakfast. Liz's parents were nowhere in evidence.

"Okay, so, erm..." I tried to think of something to say. "Have you ever really lain out on the beach without a towel? Because brushing off the sand is one thing, but I think it would just never be as comfortable as it looks."

----------

Back to LPD:

"Okay, I feel a little foolish," Max admitted as we passed the city limits. "But, well, we've learned a few interesting things that may come in handy later."

"Yeah," Michael muttered. "How to freak out, and a few things about realizing a situation where we might not have to." I groaned at that.

"Umm... there's a really suspicious dark blue sedan that just pulled up next to us," Alex pointed out. "Should we..."

Max looked over at it. "Oh, yeah. They're special unit." He sighed. "Why don't we just let them follow us for a while if we want to?? The hell, I mean."

I shrugged. "Sounds good to me." A change of subject seemed to be called for at that point. "How about we drop in at the cafe and see if Maria and Isabel got there."

"Hey, you'll get no argument from me!!" Alex chimed in.

"It wouldn't suck," Michael muttered in his usual understated way. "As hard as it is to say, I actually have an odd craving for UFO probe sausages." That set us all off laughing.

Maria and Isabel were indeed still there in the dining room, and we pulled up a second table and ordered breakfast. Two guys in dark blue suits came through the door after us, and I tried to discretely signal to them that we shouldn't even hint about any Roswellanian subjects.

"I'm feeling a lot better today," Isabel mentioned. "Don't think I need to go back home... even if the alternative is going to class."

"Cool," Max said.

"Oh, Isabel and I were playing 'if I were anywhere but here' earlier..." Maria added. "You guys wanna go a round??"

"I think I'm gonna have to go with an old favorite," I decided after about a second. "Disneyland... probably riding Big Thunder Mountain with someone very special." Reached under the table to take Max's hand in mine. "Knowing that once the ride is over, there's an ice cream sandwich with my name on it. Something simple like that."

"Not bad," Alex admitted.

The guys all ended up taking their turns. Max picked wandering the streets of Rome, which was a little off the track of what I would have expected... but he's good at defying my expectations, and I've learned to see that it's a good thing. He certainly made it sound like an attractive option. And soon enough dinner was over, and a new question presented itself... what were we going to do about getting to school, since the only vehicle there for the six of us was the Jeep.

"It's still nearly two hours 'til homeroom," Alex pointed out. "Some of us could walk, or take the red line bus."

"Nah, I don't think so," Michael said. "Max could drive a few of us out to somewhere we can get more wheels."

That was pretty much what happened. Max, Isabel, and Alex drove over to Alex's place to ask if he could borrow his dad's car, and I hung around the crash with Maria and Michael for a while. The blue-suit guys shared a look when the first group left, but by this point they actually had some food at their table, (they couldn't be here without ordering and not attract attention,) and neither of them left. Maria bragged a little about how she'd taken the lead in a hard-fought series of checkers games with Isabel.

I can't really remember what all else happened this morning... after the exciting events of the middle of the night, it's all starting to blur a little. When the cars came back, I rode with Max, Maria, and Michael up to campus. Actually, I think only Max came back to the cafe, Alex and Isabel didn't then.

The special unit sedan followed us most of the way to the school, but then turned away... probably didn't want to attract attention by parking in the student lot without student ID or something. Michael checked around for any signs of other agents, but couldn't find any... unless they were pretty convincingly undercover as students or teachers.

"I've got an idea," I whispered to Max as we walked across the edge of the football field. "We'll probably need to cut class. Meet back here when third period stars." Max blinked once, and then nodded. I sighed softly.

"I'll make sure to pass the word to Tess."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:03 pm

Part 4d

(Liz Parker's Diary continues...)

Just before closing the janitor closet door, I took out my cell phone and scanned the distant hallway, spotting Michael and pointing the shiny black bulb at him until the phone beeped. Alex had rigged up these little add-ons to all of our phones for better security at short ranges... infrared voice messaging, he called it. Nobody else could possible intercept these communiques, unless they had another device in the light of sight from the sender, with the encryption codes that Alex had put in. I put the phone up to my ear and pressed the button to play Michael's message. "She's coming your way - everything looking good. Clean aside from the doo-dad Max told you about earlier. Twenty-five seconds to intercept." That meant she should be coming by, just about...

"Now," I whispered, and Maria went and opened the door again. At first I couldn't tell that much about the person outside, except that she was surprised that a closet door had opened right in front of her. Then Tess stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Maria reached out and made sure it was locked.

"Fancy meeting you here," she muttered, bringing up her arm significantly. One of the buttons on her sleeve was noticeably bigger than all the others on her shirt.

"We can talk freely," Maria said, startling Tess. "That gizmo isn't recording anything - never was."

"How the heck do you know??"

"Max and Isabel checked it out pretty thoroughly in the cafeteria," I said. "It's built to send out a locater transmission, but they're pretty damned sure that that's all. Nothing that would pick up light radiation, or sounds, and store them in and organized way. Nothing that's sensitive to a radio trigger, or some other remote control like that."

"Can they really tell so much?" Tess asked, looking impressed.

"We hope so," Maria said. "Alex has been drilling Isabel pretty closely with some electronics stuff, having her sense them and analyze capabilities. She isn't wrong much."

"Alright," Tess said, seeming to accept this all. "What's up?"

"Okay, first off... there's something I want to try this afternoon, once school lets out. Out in the street right outside the Crashdown, across the street from where Max works. Quarter to four. Can you be there?"

"Sure I can, but I'd like to know a little bit more about it."

"I want Max to confront one of those Special Unit guys." Tess seemed stunned by the notion. "Nothing too bad, just shouting at him and calling him weird for following us around. I want very much to see what they'd do, if it changes their behaviour. And I want them to know that we're not going to just stand around passively and wait - occasionally we might do something unexpected."

"Are you sure you're ready for what their response might be, Liz??" Tess asked softly. "I mean... I admire the idea in principle actually... I'm a little jealous that I didn't think of something like it first. But Pierce will get exactly what message you're sending, and she might step up the timetable on her own plans."

"Let her," I insisted defiantly. "Waiting for her to be perfectly ready to come and swoop in will never get us anywhere. Our guys have resources that I don't think she could predict, and forcing her into moving early might give us a fighting chance."

"It might... might also get somebody killed," Maria realized out loud, looking pale. "But you're r--right Liz. We've gotta do something."

"Okay," Tess said. "I'll be there. Anything else?"

I decided to open up with her. She seemed to be holding up her end of the implicit bargains we'd made, and I decided to trust Tess with some more details. "Is there... is there anybody in the special unit who could futz with my dreams? Or can Nacero do that sort of thing maybe?"

"I... yes, it would take a powerful broadcast telepath but it's possible. I don't think Nacero has that sort of ability, especially not with humans. Why??"

"I had a very weird dream last night. About... about a friend of ours. Making me think she was in trouble."

"The rogue FBI agent?" Tess guessed. "The one you were meeting with in the Indian reservation a few days ago??" Hmm... I hadn't been sure how much she'd guessed about Topolsky. Probably been able to find out a lot from being connected to Max, Michael, and Isabel's thoughts... boy, that idea was really getting creepy.

"Yeah. The dream was really detailed... with all kind of information about... about the hiding place we moved her into after you and I had that talk in the woods - a place we thought she was safe. In the dream, she was dragged away by agents. But when we finally got up there, being very careful about being followed and walking into a trap and such, everything was fine."

"Hmm... I have to say I'm not sure," Tess admitted. "To create an illusion with that much detail would normally have required the psionic to have that information available about the setting... and, as you might have realized yourself, if the special unit had that info they could simply have grabbed her without warning you, instead of frightening you and apparently doing nothing, accomplishing nothing else. It doesn't seem to make much sense as a tactic. You don't think it could just have been a regular dream?"

"It didn't feel too regular." Since everything else seemed to be pointing in that direction, I was softening my stance. "Then again, these aren't regular days for me. Maybe it was just my brain's way of letting out a little stress."

"Okay. Oh, one other thought... I don't know for sure that it's possible, but my mom said she heard about it once. A very skilled psionic might have been able to implant the framework of that dream... the conceptual basis, in such a way that your own brain filled in all the details. Again, I'm not sure what the point would have been, but that might explain something."

"New topic," Maria said. "The guys... Michael, Max, Isabel. They're not sure where they came from - in the direct, physical sense. They have dim memories of coming out of incubation pods, hidden somewhere out in the desert, but haven't been able to narrow that down. Do you know anything about those? It just might be important."

"Umm... no, I don't think so. I've never deliberately reached that deeply into any of their minds, and I don't think I came upon anything relevant to it by pure chance. Umm... I think Nacero has been to a place like that, several times, but I'm not sure exactly where it is - or when he's been, whether it was before Max and the others showed up... I kind of think it would have been after."

"Hmm..." I thought about that.

"If they trust me enough, I could try doing a deep probe into one of their subconscious minds," Tess offered. "Face to face would be best for that kind of thing, to avoid any possible complications. I promise - I won't deliberately go after anything else, and I won't tell anyone anything that I find through such an operation. In fact, I can probably try to do it so that I get nearly nothing at all directly from their thoughts... just help them to consciously access a long-repressed memory."

"We'll tell them," Maria said. "Right now, we'd probably all better get out of here before anybody starts banging down the door."

"Yeah." I opened the door. The hallway was pretty empty - everyone else having gone to classes by this point. Isabel was leaning against a locker not far away, trying her best to make it look like she had nothing better to do. A little ways further down the hall, a guy in a blue suit was doing a much worse job of being inconspicuous.

We all hurried off to class. Nobody here but us studious and slightly tardy teenage girls.

----------

"Okay..." Max muttered. "Everybody clear on the plan?"

"Yes, of course we are," Isabel sighed. After a second, she muttered, "Sorry, I was feeling nervous and jumpy. Yes, I'm clear."

"I'm clear," I said.

"So am I... and our friend is still just about four car lengths behind the Jeep, which sounds good," Alex finished.

"Okay," Max mumbled. He turned off of second street and parked in a different area than he did normally, about a block and a half south of the Crash. We got out and started to head up the street. For some reason, I had a completely insane urge to wave at the Special Unit agent who had managed to find a spot to park himself, (we'd picked this place partly so that it would be hard, but not too hard,) and followed us at as great a distance as he could. There would have been almost no chance that I'd have spotted him if I hadn't been looking, but since I was, it wasn't hard.

We had arranged all of this pretty carefully. The four of us come north, Tess heads south, and Michael and Maria come from the east, all timing it so that our paths converge, and we pass each other, right outside the diner. Michael and Maria headed in as if it was time for their shift, Isabel waved hi to Tess. Each of us had exactly one boy in blue, and they were more than a little surprised to find that they all ended up at the same place at the same time. Ours had caught up to us as we got near to the restaurant... probably wanting to be sure that he could see whether we went in, or ducked around to go up to my balcony, or headed over to the UFO center, or what.

Max and I nodded at each other at the exact same moment, and we all turned around. Max headed forward, while Alex and I stayed where we were, and Isabel dodged out to the side, standing in the parking lane of Main Street, bracketing the east side at least partially. Michael was guarding the west flank, which was the entrance into the Crashdown dining room, keeping Maria behind him. Tess was glaring at them from the south. So suddenly, they found themselves calmly and efficiently surrounded.

And Max strode forward, carefully but with a bit of fierce energy in his movements. "Hey, what the hell's the deal??" he called out loudly. The streets around the center of Roswell were always busy, this time of day, and several passers by were already starting to pay attention to the unusual confrontation "Look at me, mister, 'cause I'm talking to you. No, don't look at your friends and pretend you don't hear me!!"

I took a deep breath. Could something go really badly wrong here? I remembered the message that whoever had sent by stabbing Isabel. And these guys were openly carrying guns. If one of them shot Max, and they threatened to shoot anyone else that kept them from getting away, then what??

We couldn't even... Max was the only one with the healing touch, at least with enough of it to save the life of somebody with a serious gunshot wound. Physician, heal thyself? Not likely in this case.

Forced myself to calm down. They *could* do that, theoretically, but there was zero chance that they would, that they would have been ordered to use deadly force in so public a situation. It would turn the entire town upside down and possibly lead to a serious investigation of the Special Unit, in the worst possible light. They didn't want that kind of publicity.

At least... not unless it seemed like there was no other choice.

Fortunately, things didn't seem to be going badly. "You've been following me and my friends for days now!" Max was shouting, really getting into the fun of it. "Did you think that we were blind, that we weren't noticing? Who do you work for?? Have we done something wrong??"

The agent he had been focusing on particularly, the one who had been following the four of us, smiled a little sheepishly. "Listen, kid, I wish I knew what to tell you."

"Do you admit that you've been following me?" He didn't say anything, though it seemed like he made the tiniest little nod. "Are you willing or able to say ANYTHING about it??"

A long pause. "Then I'll give you two choices. Either get the hell out of here," Max took a deep breath, "or I'll grab one of you by the arm and take you to a Sheriff's deputy, tell him you've been stalking me. See what the law has to say about that."

That part was pure bluff, and probably Max's idea. Valenti might have come to find Max when he found out that Hubble was trying to kill him, and told Alex that he was looking out for us, but I still wasn't sure we could trust his motives. On the other hand, I kind of got the feeling that Valenti didn't like FBI or other outside authorities snooping in his town, so he might appreciate the chance to make trouble for a Special Unit agent just on principle.

But it looked like he wouldn't get the chance. None of the blue-coats seemed happy about it, but they were starting to head off, across the street where Isabel stepped aside to clear a path that they could take, across the street. Somebody started to clap - I couldn't tell quite who, or why. Max did a good job of staying and watching until all three of them were out of sight, and then we lost little time in heading into the dining room - all seven of us.

"Of course, they'll be back and following us again soon," Tess whispered softly. "They'll be hanging further back, harder to spot. Probably less noticeable clothes than the blue suits -- better cover stories in case of a confrontation like that. Switching out with other agents more often, so it'd be harder to make the case that there's a threatening pattern."

"Party pooper," Michael muttered. "I don't care, it did my heart good to see that." And that, to tell the truth, was most of the reason why I came up with this plan. Slightly scary tactical advantages were well and good, but it had been clear to me this morning that our side needed a morale booster, and even a hollow victory would be better in that vein than nothing at all.

"By the way, Maria mentioned something else that I can maybe help out with," Tess said softly. "But maybe we should talk about that somewhere else."

"Yeah, okay," Isabel said after a moment. "But not right now. Right now - we eat!!"

"And drink," Michael added. "Though... not booze drinks, just sodas and such."

"And just maybe, we'll be slightly merry," Alex finished.

Maria and Max shot him an odd look.

-----------

After consuming a rather starting quantity of greasy snack food, a few of us headed upstairs to chez Parker. Michael and Maria really did need to get on shift, and Alex's parents had called through to the diner, and asked him to come home as soon as he could, so that left Tess and Isabel, Max and me. Tess quickly explained more ore less what she had told Maria and I in the janitor's closet.

"A deep probe?" Max repeated as if he didn't like the way the words sounded when they came together that way. I couldn't really blame it.

"Maybe 'probe' is the wrong word to use around aliens," Tess said, and giggled nervously. Isabel and Max were both staring at her flatly. "And maybe I shouldn't have even said that. Oh well. Call it... a guided memory retrieval session. I'll be using the contact I have with your minds simply to help you remember, to put you in better touch with your earliest memories. That way should be *extremely* safe... and very few privacy issues too. I won't be able to 'snoop' hardly at all on what you find out." Tess made a little sad face, as if she regretted the prospect of giving up some good juicy mental secret.

"Well... maybe," Isabel said, stretching her legs out on the couch. "What do you think, Max?? It's probably better if I volunteer for this, if only because..." She waved a hand vaguely, and I swallowed as I realized what she was getting at. If something went horribly wrong while Tess was touching her mind, then Max might be able to save things by trying to use his healing touch on her brains. We all hoped that it wouldn't come to that... but maybe she had a point.

"Well... if you want to go through with it, I'll support you in it," Max assured her. "It... it kind of makes sense. We really need to know what might be in that pod place... or at least, it would be really good to find out."

"Hmm..." Isabel thought about that. "What we *really* need is to get back that Orb that Nacero stole from us... or at least figure out what they're any good for." She looked piercingly over at Tess. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, now would you Tessie??"

"Umm... metal thing, about big enough to hold in one hand?" Tess asked. Max's head turned around to stare at her.

"Yeah... what do you know about it?"

"Umm... it's very important to him... something that he associates with his resentment of the three of you. I... I'm not quite sure why." Tess was stammering slightly, obviously nervous at this turn in the conversation.

"Just... just because Topolsky gave it to us, or something more fundamental than that??"

"Ummm..." Tess closed her eyes and concentrated. "Yes, something deeper. The one he took... even though he still has it, it's a source of frustration. He... he knows how to use that one, but the knowing how doesn't do him any good, because... because of who he is."

"Really?" Isabel blinked. "Would it... would it have done us any good if we learned how? And that's why he took it away??"

"Yeah, something like that," Tess agreed. "And that... if you got the orb to work, it'd somehow be everything he's most worried about."

"Okay..." I tried a question. "What about the second orb - the one that he doesn't have yet? Do you think he knows about it? Does he have any particular feelings about it?"

"Umm... okay, yeah. He knows there's another... I don't think he knows if you've got it or not. He..." Tess sighed, her eyes still closed, looking somehow intently relaxed, almost as if she was slipping into a self-hypnotic trance state. Her voice was getting a little slow and dreamy too. "The second one, he could probably use if he had it... if he thought there was a need. But there's still some outrage -- outrage over the fact that you guys might have it, and more... maybe the fact that it was MEANT for the three, and not for him. On another level, he's a little glad that you've got it, because it might help you out of a tight spot. His feelings about you are conflicted... even though there's anger or resentment, he also feels an undercurrent of sympathy and protectiveness. He..." Tess gasped, and opened her eyes. "He doesn't want anybody to hurt any of you, except possibly himself."

"Oh-kay..." Max mumbled. I could tell from the look on his face, as he sat there in one of my mom's dinner chairs, that this scene was definitely starting to freak him out. "Any notion what either of them actually DO? Where he might have hidden the one he has?"

Tess closed her eyes again and was silent for a long time. "The second one... I get an impression of power there. Energies... energies that could be used in combat, or for defense. Against... against the interlopers... that might be the Special Unit he's talking about. And the first orb - the one that he already has... it's to connect, to make contact..." She sighed and opened her eyes again. "He won't let me any nearer than that. It seems to be terribly close to his anger, his resentment of the three of you. That's the only thing he fights me on so much... he doesn't seem to want to give up that secret to anybody, yet."

"Wait a second!" I said, concerned. "You mean... he can tell that you were in his head, just now?" That didn't really seem good.

"Yeah. I'm sorry - I was trying to avoid that at first, but... well, you guys seemed to insistent, and I lost sight of caution and just kept pushing and pushing." She sighed and turned to Max. "I have some notions of where he might have hidden the Orb - some of the places that he spends his time on, though I don't know precisely where any of them are to be found. On the other hand... if it's so important to him to not let any of you get the contact Orb, and he knows that I've been trying to find more out about it - he may take it and hide it somewhere much more carefully now. Again, I'm really sorry."

"It... it's okay," Isabel told her. "We know a lot more about both the orbs and Nacero when we started, and I think that's worth it." She sighed. "One thing that I don't get, though, is that if he didn't want us to have the first orb... how did Max and Liz find it in the first place? I thought that it was Nacero who led them there."

"Well... maybe he changed his mind," I suggested. "He certainly seems to be unstable enough for it. Maybe there's some other motivation, something that ties into protecting the three of you, that made him think that us having it would be a good idea. Then resentment rose up and swamped protectiveness, and he stole it away again. Or maybe he was just using us to get it, because there was some reason he couldn't dig it up directly himself."

"Or... or maybe it wasn't Nacero at all, but something else that led us there that night," Max said quietly.

"Something else?" Isabel and I asked at the same time, and she added "Like what??"

"I...I'd rather not say just yet, until I get a few things sorted out in my head." I was staring at him so hard that I'm not sure what he saw in my face, or Isabel's, but he added after a moment, "Just trust me for a little while, okay??"

"Alright I guess," Isabel turned her head back towards Tess. "The memory retrieval thing. We'd probably better do that now, before we forget entirely."

"Okay." Tess got up from the armchair she was sitting in and gestured that Isabel should sit up on the couch so that she could take the place next to her. Isabel seemed a little bit reluctant to draw up her legs, which had been streteched out on the sofa this whole time, and put her feet back on the floor.

I'm not quite sure how to describe the retrieval session, because there's not that much that visibly happened. Tess reached around Isabel's head to lay her hand on the far side of her head. with her palm mostly over Isabel's ear, with hair in between. Isabel's eyes closed, while Tess' stayed half open, and Izzie seemed to cycle between very calm, slow breathing, and a more shallow, faster breathing pattern, on what seemed to be a sine wave with a period of maybe forty-five seconds. It was about six minutes before Tess took her hand away and shuffled slightly to the side in order to give Isabel her space. "Did... did it work?" she asked nervously.

"Yes." Isabel opened her eyes and looked at Max. "Or at least it worked quite a bit. The memories are definitely clearer... as if they happened sometime yesterday, maybe. I'm still not sure it'll be simple to find the place, but now I think it'll be possible."

Max smiled. "Do you want to get started now? The Special Unit might not have arranged another tail for us, and I doubt they'll still want to use the boys in blue."

"Yeah, maybe," I agreed, wanting to get in on this. "We could grab Maria too - she had that flash about the pods yesterday, and we didn't really have a chance to try out what SHE saw. That could be a good counterpoint to your new memories Isabel."

"Yeah," Isabel said softly. "But first... Liz, do you mind if I use your phone to call Alex's place?? I'm a little... well, a little worried. It seems unusual, them calling for him at the cafe like that, right??"

"Not entirely," I said. "It's happened before - not when you were hanging around with him, but it has." Isabel looked down slightly, as if embarassed... that she'd forgotten she hadn't really been spending time with Alex for very long, all things considered. "But if you want to call, by all means go ahead." I picked up a cordless phone and lightly tossed it to her.

She dialed, and I went over and spoke with Max about something unimportant - a homework assignment we'd been given in social studies, because I didn't want to feel like I was listening in. I caught little snippets of what Isabel was saying, pretty predictable stuff like asking if Alex was there yet. It didn't seem like long before she hund up the phone.

"Alex... Alex's grandfather in Kirtland had a... a seizure, possibly a stroke," Isabel breathed. "His parents are getting ready to leave, to head up there and... and make sure that he's okay. They... well, they want him to come with them, obviously."

"Oh, no," Tess whispered, and we all turned to look at her. "I... I don't think this is a coincidence, guys. They're trying to seperate you from your friends and allies, one by one. Alex had a weakness... a relative in a suitably distant location, probably with a medical history that fit in. They *want* to get him out of town, long enough to... to make a difference somehow."

Max looked ashen, but he had a resolve face. "If th-- they want Alex to leave, then we want to find a way for him to stay, right?? As long as it could be done without attracting too much attention?"

"But... if this doesn't work, will they keep at it?" Isabel jumped. "Mom's sister - aunt Laney. She's had diabetes for years and years now. If somebody managed to... if they were able to replace her meds with sugar pills, she could go into a coma. It wouldn't even look too..." She broke off, not able to continue any further.

"I don't know how great a danger that is," Tess said softly. "This looks surgical, a carefully planned move to create a very specific response. If it looks like we're on guard and won't react the obvious way they were hoping... they may put it aside and try something completely different. Hurting your loved ones just to torture you psychologically would be escalating things in a manner that doesn't sound at all like Pierce... at least, not at this point."

"Oh... okay," I started. "I know Alex's parents pretty well, what kind of arguments they'd be receptive to." Pause to think just a little. "There's school - that seems the most obvious one. They're proud of Alex -- he got his brains from his father, mostly, and school and academics are important to them. Finals aren't that far away, and if he made the pitch that he wanted to stay in classes, instead of driving all the way across the state..."

"Yeah, alright," Max said. "If they want to find someone he can stay with while they're away, then maybe Izzie and I can talk to our folks." He stopped a little, maybe realizing how that would sound if his parents had heard that Alex and Isabel were dating. "Or maybe Maria's mom."

"How did you leave things with Alex?" Tess asked.

"He... he said he's not sure if he wants to go," Isabel said. "He might have guessed about some of this stuff himself. One of us should probably call back soon, or maybe a couple of us could go straight over there."

"How long are Michael and Maria still on shift today?" Max asked me, frowning slightly as he tried to work out the right thing to do. "Do you have to go on?"

"Umm... Maria's only short-shifting," I said. "Covering for Katie Wilson, because she had to be late. Michael's on until... oh, eight or nine, I can't remember which. Ketie's supposed to be here at five-thirty. And no, I don't have to work myself." My parents had been looking for other people to take on more in the diner, because they said they didn't want to take time away from studies for me or any of my friends. Schoolwork wasn't as big a priority for me now as it was for them, but I was glad that they had arranged the time off anyway.

"Gut check time," Max said, addressing Isabel and I. "Which is more important - the Alex crisis, or the pod chamber?"

"Alex," I said immediately, without even thinking about it.

"Umm... yeah," Isabel agreed after a moment. "Tess... if my memories start to fade again, can you do this trick again?"

"Uhh... I, I think so," Tess replied, clearly startled by the question. "I guess I didn't expect that they would fade particularly quickly, but..." She hesitated. "Now that we've been through it once, I think I can quickly teach you a refresher technique to make the memories more vivid again, without even having to go into contact with you again."

"Okay, that sounds good," Isabel agreed. "Max, let's head home and try to sound Mom and Dad out about Alex... I have to admit, I'd kind of like having him around. Liz, maybe you could bring Maria up to speed, so that when Katie arrives she can do whatever she needs to as soon as possible."

"Yeah," I told her. "Bye and good luck."

"Umm... I guess I'll get going too," Tess said. "Should check in with my Dad and stuff."

"See-ya, Tess," I said, smiling at her. "Come around again soon."

-----------

"So, what do you think??" I said, sitting down next to Alex on his lawn. It was hours later, evening was falling across Roswell. Maria and I had eaten dinner at the Whitman's house, with Max and Isabel 'just happening' to drop by afterwards to pass on their sympathy about Alex's grandfather.

"I think the Special Unit had better watch out, 'cause I'm pissed now," he answered, in much too soft and mild a voice to make the threat anything other than comical. But nothing was particularly funny at this point, so I didn't laugh.

"About where you're going to stay," I prompted. "The Evanses have offered, and so has Maria's mom. Neither Isabel's parents or yours seem to think that there'd be anything wrong with the two of you being under the same roof for a week or so."

"I don't think my folks even realize that I'm seeing anybody," Alex admitted. "If 'seeing each other' is the right term for what's going on between Isabel and I." He smiled at the thought. "I admit I think I'm more impressed by that idea. Not just getting to see more of Izzy... but being closer, I'd be better able to keep an eye on both of them. Things are going to get messy very soon, and they're likely to be in the thick of it."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I really am sorry about Grampa Lou." I still remembered, very vividly, (or at least with the semblance of vividness,) a March break trip up to Bloomfield, not far from Kirtland... Alex's father had been called there to consult with a research team at a biological institute there, and Alex and I had come up because we didn't have school and watched a change of scenery. Alex's grandfather had driven over one afternoon and given Alex an advance birthday present, saying it would be easier than shipping it a month later. He was a slightly grumpy guy, as I remembered him, but full of a hard-to-describe lively spirit, and still in pretty good health for seventy-something. And that had been only about a year or so ago. Didn't like to think about him maybe having a stroke... like my own Grandma had had. "I... I know it's crazy, but I feel responsible."

"Why?" Alex asked, and then guessed it. "Because of the confrontation plan? Liz, that's really stupid. Things had already happened in Kirtland by the time Max parked the Jeep this afternoon. And... well, we don't know what anybody might have done to my grandpa, but if there was anything, it probably took some time to arrange. A day or two."

"Yeah, yeah, I know it all in my head," I admitted. "But still... I convinced Max and everybody to do something risky, something maybe a little stupid, and then something bad happens to someone you care a lot about. It's no so easy to convince my stomach that there wasn't any connection."

"Your stomach will figure it out eventually," Alex quipped. "It's a pretty smart bag of organic tissue." For some reason, that made me laugh quite a bit.

After a little while, we went back in, and Alex told his parents that he was really sorry he wouldn't be able to go up and make sure that Grampa would be okay, but his classes had to be a priority, and he'd decided that he wanted to accept the offer to move in with the Evanses and share Max's room. His mother made a bit of a fuss, and then he and Max and Isabel headed off in the Jeep, to meet Max's parents and work out some of the details.

"I'd probably better go too, tell my mom that unless there's some big problem with the Evanses, she won't need to make room for a houseguest herself," Maria said. "Liz, do you want a ride?" I told her sure, of course.

"Oh, I nearly forgot, I meant to offer my sympathies to Isabel, I heard about what happened to her at the school the other day," Alex's dad said. "Could you tell her that I'm glad she seems to be doing well."

"Right, yes," I said. "It looked really bad at the time, but she wasn't hurt seriously. Just lost a little blood - that was the worst of it I guess."

We said goodbye to Alex's mom and headed down to where Maria had parked the Jetta. "Okay, that's one crisis dealt with sucessfully, or at least so it seemed," she whispered once the motor was on. "What about the pod chamber thing? Can we pick Isabel up and get anything done on that tonight??"

I groaned... today had already been much too full of plans and schemes. "Umm... it might be better to leave that for tomorrow." I sighed.

"Gotcha." We were getting close to the Crashdown already. "I feel kinda tired too, actually. How about I go in with you, we go behind the counter, and make ourselves a couple of cherry-coke, rocky road ice cream floats? That sound good?"

"GOD yes!!" I exclaimed. Maria looked over at me, and we both started howling with laughter.

----------

ALEX:

"Okay, I guess this is it," Isabel said, getting behind the wheel of her mother's car and pulling out into the street. "I hope you enjoy your stay at Evans house." After she finished speaking, she shot one of those 300-watt (or so) grins over at me.

"I fully expect to," I told her. "Not that enjoyment was the reason for any of this, but... well, I guess you know what I mean." My parents had been interested in getting started as quickly as possible, even though it was a long drive to Kirtland... they could get a motel room for the night somewhere between Ramon and Vaughn, and be at least an hour ahead in the morning, compared to sleeping here in Roswell. That was why Isabel had rushed me back home, to quickly pack up a bag of overnight stuff, to settle in at their house for tonight -- and to say a quick goodbye to my mom and dad before they roared out of town.

"I... I feel bad that you got dragged into all of this danger," Isabel blurted out. "It... it's bad enough that Max and Michael and I have to live with the threat of government UFO hunters and what-all else, but now you're in as much danger as we are. You and Maria and Liz. Sometimes I think you should never have been involved."

I sighed. "We've been over this, and we'll probably go over it again, heheh. No, in a perfect world none of our lives should be in danger just because you are what you are. But... I wouldn't have given up what I've been through... knowing all of you, caring the way I do about you Isabel, helping Max out when he was in the hospital -- just to save myself from the danger. Not ever."

She smiled slightly. "Mind if I pull over so we can kiss a little??"

"Isn't that kind of a stupid question?" I shot back, and she laughed. "On the other hand, if we won't be able to find ways to kiss when we're living under the same roof without your parents catching us, I may explode or something."

"That would get really messy," she said, slowing down and maneuvering the car into a parking lot. "I'd better start to get creative."

And then we were parked, and Isabel shuffled over slightly. It was a good thing that the car was too old to have captain's chairs in the front, it was just a big bench, with the automatic gearshift attached to the steering column. We put our arms around each other at the same time, (luckily, she went high and I went low, otherwise it coulda been awkward,) and our lips met.

I'll say this. I don't have that much experience with kissing before Izzy, but she has got to be a naturally *amazing* kisser. Well, either that, or somehow we just happen to be great together. It was more than fifteen minutes later before we got ourselves sorted out and back onto the road safely. Fifteen EXCEPTIONALLY great minutes.

Isabel walked with me as I carried my bag up to Max's room, where a pretty comfy looking inflatable bed had already been set up. Max had some news to pass along to both of us as I settled in.

"Maria and Liz called. Isabel, they didn't say what the wanted straight out, but Maria asked if you wanted to cut class tomorrow to go exploring out in the desert."

Isabel smiled. "Yeah, I think that'd be good."

----------

Liz Parker's diary:

No dreams that I can specifically remember last night, which counts as a good thing I think. Maria and Izzy and I met for breakfast together - not at the Crashdown, but a little coffee shop in the north end of town.

"Are you sure you wanna ditch and tag along with us, Liz?" Maria asked with a slightly teasing tone. "I got the flash from Michael - Isabel had the memory retrieval thing done with Tess. But, well, you don't have any specific info or skills to contribute."

"Maybe not, but I wanna come anyway," I insisted. "Not quite sure why. And there's no particular reason I need to show up at classes today, no scheduled tests or assignments due."

"Well, that's all well and good, Liz..." Isabel sighed. "But I'm not convinced that this should be a girl's club deal. For one thing, I'd like to drop in on Michael and ask him along. He's probably done more crawling around in the desert looking for hidden secrets than any of the rest of us. That could be valuable."

"Okay, he can come along too," I said, not sure I liked where this was headed.

"And Liz..." Isabel sighed. "Four kinda seems like too many. Big enough number to seem odd if somebody spots us out there. Enough people ditching to DEFINITELY form a pattern."

"Michael ditching doesn't add to a pattern," Maria said supportively. "It's the times he actually shows up at school that seem unusual."

I focused my attention on Isabel. "Are you saying that I *can't* come with??"

"No." Izzie took a deep breath. "It's your choice. But I don't think it's a good idea." She sighed. "Go to school, hang out with Max and Alex."

I frowned, upset at how upset I was that Isabel didn't agree with my own plan. But I decided not to make an issue of it. Isabel was kind of the informal team leader here, because Isabel had enhanced her memories. I didn't want to contradict her, and anyway what she was saying made sense.

So I went to my morning classes, and after third period convinced Max and Alex that we should all at least go off campus for lunch. (All three of us had a fourth period lunch.) We drove out to the barbecue stand, and I had a burger with double tomato slices, and some tangy lemonade to drink.

Alex got a grilled chicken breast and an enormous pile of hashed browns, and Max had some kind of mexican steak and cheese wrap. We spread ourselves out over on of the picnic tables and generally had a nice time.

"Umm, excuse me?" I jumped and looked around - a woman had spoken right behind me. She was on the short side - maybe five-four or five-four and a half, and looked about my mom's age, with a soft cloud of dark blond hair hanging around her head, pale highlights running through it.

"Who are..." Alex started.

"I realize this must seem strange," she practically whispered. "By any chance are you friends of Tess Harding?"

Was this some strange new Special Unit gambit?? "Umm... you might say that," Max mumbled. "I've known her for a few weeks now. Say hi to her in the halls when I see her, but..."

The woman didn't seem to be paying much attention to wha Max was saying after registering that it was a qualified affirmative. She was staring very intently at me, and suddenly asked, "Liz? Are you Liz Parker??"

Seriously freaked now, I barked, "What's it to you? What is going on here?"

So softly that I almost couldn't hear the words, the woman whispered, "I'm Tess' mother."

Oh. "Tess' mother... who's been *working* up in Albuquerque and didn't get a chance to visit Roswell?" Alex said.

She nodded. "Call me Evelyn. I, umm... I was able to get 'out of the office' early this morning, unexpectedly."

I looked at her, still not quite sure what to make of this development. Tess had said that she and her father had been pressured into working with the Special Unit because they had her mother as a hostage. So just what was Evelyn doing here in Roswell??

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:03 pm

Hi there. Gonna try doing the fb-response thing, which I never seem to remember or do, for ages now at least.

Zanity: Here's more, is it soon enough for you?

And Izzie isn't the only one who can check for electronics by now.

Trude: I guess you won't have too long to wonder. And sorry I didn't get more Alex/Isabel stuff in on this part. *sighs*

Karen: See my comment about Alex/Isabel stuff for Trude.

Grace: Thanks for replying!!

Part 4e

MICHAEL:

"Are you ladies anywhere near finished??" I knew it wasn't a good thing to say about when it was halfway out of my mouth, but by then it was really too late to change to anything else and sound less impatient. "S--ssory." Isn't easy to say the word, though I've been trying to practice.

For something like eight or nine minutes, as far as I could tell, Maria and Isabel had been wandering up to a particular point in the desert and turning to face a particular direction. Then they'd make some sort of facial expression, possibly talk briefly to each other about it, and then go back and try again from a different direction or in a different way... maybe almost the same as before, maybe radically different. I understood the point of the exercise, at least I did in theory. Getting to that particular point in the landscape, where two irregular rocky hills appeared not far away, was the closest thing to the incubation pods that Isabel's memory and Maria's flash had come up with yet... they both recognized it immediately. We were pretty certain of that one spot, because it was the one spot where those two hills appeared to be the same size and so similar in shape that they could nearly be mirror reflections of each other... going just a few feet away destroyed the effect. So now the girls were trying to figure out from which direction little Isabel and little Michael (and little Max too,) had gotten to here from.

But they hadn't figured out anything before that no matter how hard they tried, and I guess I wasn't the only person it was making irritable. "I don't KNOW how long it's gonna take, Michael," Maria snapped as she strode past. "We work it here until we find someplace new. You know that."

Predictably, Isabel stepped in as the peacemaker. "Okay, chill. I think we're all tired and cranky... and hungry. Therefore I declare we should go back to the car and have lunch." Of course, Isabel is exactly the kind of person who'd remember to pack plenty of food before leaving to explore the desert for the hiding place of a set of alien incubation pods.

"Aww." Maria whined slightly, and Izzie shot her a sharply disciplined look. "Sorry. It's a good idea - I *am* hungry, but it seems like it'll be a long walk back."

"Do everything you can to remember this spot so we can find it without too much trouble later," I suggested.

Isabel looked all about her, moving around slightly, and then nodded to herself, well satisfied. "Don't think that'll be a problem. And Maria, I can probably go on ahead and drive part of the way back. Makes sense if we're going to be following the trail further."

"It would have been smart," she continued wistfully, "to switch cars with Max, since the Jeep is better for off-roading it. Didn't even think of that until too late."

"Something to remember, if there's ever a next time, I guess," Maria said. "C'mon, spaceboy, amble along with me."

I smiled. It looked like any resentment that Maria was holding towards me had flown right out the window when the subject of food came up, and that was just fine by me. "Do we have to amble? I'm kinduv in a shuffling mood myself." And as if to demonstrate, I made a big show of scuffing my feet in the dusty sand as I walked.

"Nah, i'skool. I can shuffle, ferr shore." And Maria mimicked my scuffing shuffle, as Isabel rolled her eyes and hurried on ahead. "Sorry that I gave you the snap, before."

I blinked and had to concentrate on disentangling her lingo for a few seconds before I got it all. 'Gave me the snap...' that sounded like a Buffy-istic way of talking about snapping at someone, as in speaking sharply. So I tried a colorful figure of speech for myself. "Water. Bridge. Long way under." Maria laughed pretty loud, which made the entire thing worth it.

"So, umm... any idea what you think you might find when we get to these incubation pods?" she asked me after some more shuffling. "I mean... it'd be nice to know where you came from, on a direct level... but do you really think anything there will be particularly helpful in the current crisis?"

"It's hard to say, before we get there," I admitted. "I wouldn't bet against it entirely. There might be some kind of weapon or tool around, something that'd be easier to figure out than the Orbs. Or even just a message might be helpful."

"Either of those, Nacero could have taken away," she pointed out. "Assuming that Tess' right, and he's found the place, been there recently. It doesn't sound like he really has any particularly strong impulse to help you guys, at the moment."

"No, I guess not," Michael admitted. "And that brings up something else. As far as we've been able to work out, Nacero is the only other alien kickin' around, right?" She nodded. "So... well, I was wondering just who took us from whatever spaceship we landed in to the place where we came out of the pods. Was Nacero in the same ship as us? Or was '47 just for him, and we came later, without being noticed... I think Topolsky said something about that once."

"I... I don't know the answers to any of those question, obviously," Maria said. "Maybe he did take your pods somewhere safe, and then whatever made him resent the three of you happened later. After you'd come out, and gotten found by people, say." I nodded. "Speaking of which, I was wondering something. Were you placed with Hank as quickly as Max and Isabel ended up with their folks??"

"Umm... not quite," I admitted. "I was in the westlake orphanage for a while, and then somebody decided that Hank was a better 'situation' for me." I frowned, trying to remember. "Yeah, I was in the orphanage for about a year and a half, and then they placed me with Hank early in the summer after I finished grade two. *That* was a fun school break." The chuckles that came out sounded hollow and bitter even to myself. "And the first day of school the next year, I met Isabel, and through her, Max. It was a few months after that that we really realized about our early memories, seeing the other kids in the desert, and that we'd been together back then."

"Wow," Maria said softly, shuffling along in silence for a while. Then she started talking about Chester, the dog she'd had when she was in grade two. Yeah, the one that I'd seen flashes of when I kissed her, around the same time that Max and Liz found the first alien orb. It didn't seem too long before Isabel drove up in the car, and she parked and got out the food and spread out an old blanket on the sand, like it was an impromptu picnic.

I was halfway through one of those tiny little (but tasty) packaged pudding cups when I thought of it. "The height!! Is it possible that that's what was throwing you guys off back there?"

Maria frowned. "The height of what??"

But Isabel saw it right away. "The height of us! You know... maybe it was." She turned to Isabel, who was staring in disbelief. "You may not be as tall as, well, as either of us, Maria, but even you are a lot taller than we USED to be, way back then. That changes the perspective, the view, slightly. We didn't notice it with the rocks so much because they're pretty big and impressively striking... but, well, maybe if we tried to allow for being, ehh, three foot nine or so, it could help."

"And just how do you intend to do that?" Maria asked. Isabel looked at her. "That's a whole lot of hunching over, especially for you Iz."

"Yeah," Isabel agreed with a sigh, taking out an apple and biting into it. "Better finish lunch quick so we can get it over with as soon as possible."

----------

Liz Parker's diary:

Max considered this woman who had approached us at the barbecue joint for just a second, looking intently into her eyes, and then jumped into action. First, he waved one hand around her with a gesture I recognized -- he was scanning Evelyn's body for spy devices, or anything else that might be dangerous.

A little decorative marble on her sweater shot away and exploded in mid-air between the picnic tables and the parking lot. A bunch of kids and other diners looked up and stared at the space where the bug had gone off - it sounded pretty much just like a loud firecracker, but somehow I thought it could have been more dangerous if it had been close to a person. Some jocks had managed to see where the 'cracker' had come from and evaluating the tables that were likely sources, which had them looking definitely in our direction.

Max didn't seem to care overmuch about that though. He had snatched away a few other suspicious items from around Evelyn's person, and then took her hand and led the way to the Jeep at a full-tilt dash. Alex followed, and I took up the rear, wondering if this was a bad idea.

Alex watched behind us as the Jeep screamed out down the road, until the parking lot and the picnic tables were just a blur of vague dots in the distance. No-one had followed us out, or come down the highway at all behind us, which seemed unusual, but might have been just a coincidence. Max turned to address Evelyn without taking his attention entirely away from driving. "That was just so that we could speak privately. I thought jumping into the unexpected might give us an edge."

"Thanks, it's appreciated," she muttered. "Nice trick getting rid of that booby-trapped conversation bulb. Especially since you didn't even touch it, and it was solidly fastened to my sweater with a pretty sturdy strand. I bent forward to hear their conversation better and realized that Evelyn was fiddling idly with the place where that strand of wooly fabric had been instantly and cleanly cut.

"Well, I have my talents," Max muttered softly. I realized what he was doing, or at least, what I thought he was doing. If this woman was really Tess' mother, she was a psionic, and probably knew that some of my friends were aliens, so a demonstration of unusual powers would probably tend to confirm that Max was one of them. But how she would react would tell us a lot about her, and if we could trust her.

"So, I'm guessing you're the infamous Max Evans," was the first thing she said. "And I'm sensing... that you're not sure whether to trust me."

"Can... what makes you say that?" I blurted out.

"Just ordinary human social judgement. My psionic talents don't run in that particular direction. Am I right about it?" at you're Tess' mother."

"I suppose that's true," she admitted. "Well... she's been keeping me apprised of her own doings here in Roswell. Maybe none of the facts are ones that the Special Unit couldn't have gotten their hands on if they'd tried... but hopefully the way I tell them will remind you enough of Tess that you'll believe we're close... and just possibly that'll tell you it's okay to have confidence in me." Again, I wasn't quite sure of that reasoning... but there had to be some way to forge a bridge of trust even in these paranoid times, I guessed.

"Okay, let's see... when Tess first arrived in Roswell, the first members of the gang she approached were your sister Isabel, Max, and..." she turned around to face into the back seat at an angle. "And Alex Whitman. That's you, right??" Alex nodded. "She upset a few special unit agents by walking up to the two of you, Max, Liz, and giving you a warning when you were in the middle of a fancy dinner at a French restaurant, and helped Liz and Michael Guerin, escape from the Bandzfest with Agent Topolsky by running interference with the bluecoats that were following you and sending them the wrong way. How am I doing so far??"

"Umm, not bad," I admitted softly. Evelyn smiled slightly and kept talking, contributing plenty of details about the housewarming pool party that Tess had been pressured into throwing, with the six of us as guests of honor, the carefully contrived meeting that Tess and her father arranged with me in the woods, without the Unit's knowledge, and more recent events. All of it seemed to ring true with Tess' own perspective of the events, and even occasionally the very words and descriptions that she would use.

"Okay, okay," Max mumbled finally. "Let's say for the moment we believe that you're really Evelyn Harding, Tess' mother, and that we should help you. What do you want? I assume that just showing up at Tess' house, or the arcade where Mister Harding is working, would be very bad ideas."

"Yeah, that's an understatement," Evelyn agreed. "I... I have to admit I'm not sure I really planned ahead this far. Had a very brief window of opportunity to get out of protective custody at FBI Divisional and I jumped at it. Took a roundabout way of getting to Roswell, just in case they had people watching the main road... but they've probably guessed that I got here anyway, considering that it's just about the only place I would have gone." Deep breath. "What I need, I guess, is some place safe to hide out, someplace that THEY wouldn't particularly think to look for me, until you can get a message to Tess - and to Tony. If I know him, he'll have a plan up his sleeve for what to do if I were free. It's the way he works."

"Umm..." Alex muttered.

"The northview mall," I suggested. "It's small, it's run-down, but she could probably spend most of the rest of the day there without attracting much attention."

Max considered. "Yeah, that'll work. Umm... I'm going to pull over here, and Alex... could you take over as wheel man? I want to concentrate on what's going on around us."

"Um, sure," Alex said. The switch was carried off pretty quickly. Max went into the shotgun seat, and Evelyn came into the back, where Alex had been sitting, so that I was the only one who didn't move.

"Thanks for giving a hand," she whispered to me softly. "You don't know how much it means."

"I... I think I might be able to guess," I said, and meant it. If I'd been in her situation, feeling so alone and desperate, any friendly faces, even those of strangers would be a welcome boost.

"I can't detect any sign of the Special Unit at all," Max muttered, "which is almost starting to worry me. The little trick that we played on them yesterday can't have had that much effect."

"Yeah," Alex muttered. "But remember the other night. We can drive outselves crazy looking for government ops where there aren't any. Just take our best look and plan accordingly - that's the best that any of us can do." Max nodded, a little unhappily.

It wasn't too long after that that we dropped Evelyn off at the mall, promising to let Tess know discretely, as soon as possible, that she was in town. She asked to have a copy of our cell phone numbers, and after hesitating a moment Max wrote several sets of digits out from memory onto an old fast-food receipt. That wasn't information that the government didn't already have, after all - even if the worst came to pass.

Then it was time to boot back over to the school. "Things are happening so quickly," Alex muttered. "And I can't see where all of it is going to lead."

"Just hang on until the ride comes to a complete stop I guess," Max agreed. "And get out as quickly as we can when there's an opportunity."

"Stop the world," I joked. "I wanna get off."

"Uh-oh," Alex muttered, and both of us looked at him. "Oh, it's not more conspiracy danger or anything like that," he insisted quickly. "Just... I'm pretty sure there's going to be a pop quiz this afternoon in english Lit and I didn't study for it."

"Isn't part of the deal about a pop quiz that it's a surprise?" Max asked.

"Yeah... you have Nander for Lit, same as me," I said, "Those pop quizzes are killers. Have you known when they're scheduled for and held out on me?"

"Umm... I only figured out the pattern a few weeks ago, and it hasn't come up since then," he protested. "There's a staggered numerical pattern to the number of school days between quizzes... three days, then five, then three, then four, and repeat. If he has an announced, major test, it usually falls on a quiz day and replaces the surprise short-form quiz."

"Hmm... well, I got most of the reading done last night, after Maria dropped me off," I said. "We can drill each other in study hall."

-----------

I shot a questioning look at Tess as she came into math class, and gestured her over next to me. She came, a little surprised but not making too big a deal of it. Miz Levanson doesn't insist on a fixed seating chart or anything like that... "just as long as everyone shows up," she usually says. On this day, I knew that she wouldn't be particularly pleased, since Maria and Isabel were both in this class too, and as far as I knew neither of them had made it back to campus.

"So, Tess, how're you doing today?" I asked, trying not to let any other tone of meaning that 'friendly query' creep very obviously into my voice. We'd scared away direct Special Unit observation, as in the boys in blue following us, but then they'd rarely entered the school premises anyway. But the Special Unit had shown a lot of talent for dressing Tess up with little observation devices and so on, and I was very worried that that might be the case today. We hadn't figured out a way to get Max to screen her with his powers, like he had yesterday before we pulled Tess into the utility closet, but I guessed that she would know what was what, though there'd be something to keep her from ditching the bug herself.

Sure enough, right after she replied "okay I guess" in a perfectly 'bored teenager' tone, Tess pointed at something that looked like a long and wiry thread going through the fabric of her skintight jeans, only a slightly different shade of blue from the rest. Very quickly, she made the gesture of a blabbing mouth with the thumb and fingers of one hand, then passed her spread-out hand in front of her eyes. I got the message - her pants could pick up sound, either to transmit or store, but picked up no visual input. What must it be like getting dressed in her house, I wondered... if she could tell which clothes were bugged and how before she put them on? Presumably if it was physically possible for her to assemble an outfit with no observation devices, presumably someone would make her go and get dressed 'properly' before she left for school.

Well, I knew what to do about this situation, or thought I did. If you can't talk without being overheard... write a note. It was simple enough to open up my binder to a fresh page of lined three-ring and start writing. I didn't even bother tearing the paper out, since that might call attention to the fact that Tess and I were 'passing notes.' Wrote down: 'we saw your mom today... she was able to get away from work and come down to see you and your dad... but she's not sure how to get in touch.' Then I angled the binder so that Tess could see it pretty easily and tapped the message.

She gasped so loud that some of the other students looked at us, and that was just when the teacher came in and started taking the roll. She even asked me if I knew where Maria was, and I was only just able to mumble "not exactly." Mallamar Smythe said, loud enough for half the class to hear, that she was probably off crawling around with Michael Guerin somewhere, and that was actually pretty close to the truth as I understood it. What with all of that, it was a while before Tess got a chance to write a note of her own into my book.

'Mom? How did she get loose? Are you sure that it was her??'

Ummm... I pretended to pay attention to the class for a long while as I thought about that question. 'Not sure. I never met your mom. Can you tell me a little more of what she's like?'

Tess also seemed a little thrown by the question, which I could understand... I'm not sure what I'd say if someone asked me to quickly sum up MY mom under similar circumstances. And the teacher started taking up some of the assigned homework questions from yesterday, so we both had to get our answers out and review them a little so that we might be able to explain something if called on. She wrote the next bit in a bunch of little bits. 'She's great... drives me crazy, in the way that all moms do, and possibly a little more because she can sometimes guess what I'm not telling her. Funny in a slightly teenager-in-the-seventies kinda way... And absolutely devoted to me and Dad. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't be so surprised that she found her way here.'

'Yeah, that sounds like her,' I wrote back. 'Let your dad know when you can. She doesn't want to go anywhere *they'll* be looking for her, but somehow we'll find a way.'

'Thanks.' "Umm... the line is, err, 13.41 inches long," Tess said aloud to the teacher, "and we find that by applying the tangent of 63 degrees to the known adjacent side."

----------

MARIA:

"Oh, no, it's three twenty!" I practically jumped in surprise. "We've got to head back into town. I've got shift."

Isabel looked up, startled, and then stood. We'd been crawling along, trying to get the six-year-old's eye view of the desert landscape. "You're kidding." I didn't say anything right away. "Come on -- we're almost there! At this rate, what, it'll be three minutes more."

"It might be," Michael said softly. "Or... well, it could just as easily be fifteen or more. Hard to say about this kind of stuff. And then once we find it, nobody'll want to leave right away..." he sighed. "I'm with Maria. We've been gone for long enough anyway, and we won't lose the progress we've made today. Both of us have to show up for work on time, or as close as is possible, so that no new people start asking questions."

Isabel sighed, apparently deciding it wasn't worth the effort to keep arguing with both of us. "Alright, then, let's hurry back as quickly as we can. I groaned as she turned about and hurried back the way we'd come, setting the pace at a brisk jog. I did my best to keep up.

Got a really bad leg cramp halfway to the car, and felt bad about holding the others up, when I'd been the first to say that we had to go. Michael very sweetly walked beside me for a bunch of the way, letting me lean on his arm so that I wouldn't need to put much weight on the leg. Isabel kept telling me that I didn't really need to push myself so hard, but I didn't really mind... I *did* want to get to the cafe before too much of my shift had gone by, and knew that during the drive, there'd be time for my leg to recover. Sure enough, it was almost totally fine by the time we got to the Crashdown parking lot.

Max and Alex were hanging around in the dining room, and Isabel rushed forward and practically threw herself into Alex's lap, which was more of a public display of affection than I'm really used to seeing from her. "Where's Liz?" I asked Max as I limped through, heading for the back to change into my uniform.

"Oh... she's upstairs, said she had to get working right away on some trig assignment."

"Eh, okay." There was plenty for Michael and I to do for a while after that... orders to be taken, cooked, delivered, paid for... you know - the usual. I saw Isabel and Max and Alex chatting for a long time, really whispering about something, and wished that I could go over and whisper too, but I really didn't have a chance for a long time... long enough that they stopped the whispering and were chatting more casually. Finally, once Brenda showed up and the early-dinner rush ebbed a little, I was able to take a quick break and ask them all what it was about.

"We... we got an unexpected visitor at lunch today," Alex murmured. "Tess' mom."

"What? Really!?" Quickly, in very hushed tones, Max and Alex told me a little more of the story, while Isabel looked from one to another of them with a serious face... presumably this was the second time she was hearing it.

"So many weird things that we're not sure what to do about," I whispered softly. "I... I have to say, I'm so tired of all this. Is there ever going to be an end to it?"

"Yes, and it's going to be soon," Max said, with a quiet certainty that surprised me. "Not... not to say that things won't always be a little unusual for us... and for you guys too, if you keep hanging out with us. But this murderously intense chess game with the special unit is going to end, and it won't be long." He cracked a little grin. "Don't be too worried. We'll beat them at their own game - somehow."

I smiled and got up to serve some coffee.

----------

Liz Parker's diary:

I had just moved on from today's math assignment to an english lit term paper when my cell phone rang. "Umm, err, hello?" I said once I'd managed to hit the right button.

"Liz?? It's Evelyn. I'm still at the mall."

"Uhh, okay..." I checked the clock... it was only a little bit past six. "That's, um, that's nice."

"Sorry, I'll get right to the point. I've found out that one of Tony's old friends is also here in Roswell, secretly. I have an address and a time when I'm supposed to meet with him, but I'm not sure if I can find my way there by the buses and... well, I'm a little worried about calling a cab. One of the Special Unit's favorite tricks is to get someone into the local taxi dispatching office, just looking for any calls that seem even slightly unusual..."

"It's okay, Evelyn. I, um, I'd love to help, but I don't have a car to offer you a ride."

"Can't you get ahold of one, quickly?? I'm sorry, but this is important, and I didn't know who else to come to."

"Ummm..." I thought about it. "Yeah, I'll be in the south parking lot in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Thanks. See you then." I hung up, and slipped downstairs. Maria and Michael were busy, and Max, Isabel, and Alex were still talking out in their booth up front. (I spotted them through the door, just a glimpse.) Not really wanting to bug any of THEM about this, I slipped into Maria's locker, got the Jetta keys, and wrote a quick message for her. I was in the parking lot before it occured to me to wonder why Maria even had the Jetta keys in the first place - or why the Jetta was here, since Maria had presumably come with Isabel and Michael. Had she left the car here this morning? No, Isabel had picked both of us up for breakfast at our homes.

Well, maybe Maria's mom had dropped the car off for Maria to use, to get home when her shift was done, and walked home herself. Yeah, that made a little sense. I got behind the driver's seat, took a second to get familiar since it was a few weeks ago the last time I drove a car, and pulled out to head for the mall.

I found a parking spot not too far from the south entrance to the mall, and by the time I got around and started looking, Evelyn Harding was already heading towards me. "Where to?" I asked.

"Umm... it's four seven eight South Elm avenue, near west chisum," she replied. "Know where that is?"

"More or less -- shouldn't be too difficult to find." It was more than halfway across town, though. I didn't say much to her for the first few minutes of driving.

"There was another reason I called you instead of calling a cab," Evelyn whispered. "Did you... did you manage to talk to Tess at school today?"

My sour mood melted mostly away. Of course that was what she was most concerned about. "Yeah, yeah I did. She's glad you're in town, and proud that you managed to get here. Can't wait to see you."

Evelyn smiled. "Thanks. I needed to hear that."

It wasn't too long before we pulled up in front of number four seven eight, which was a converted storefront. "Okay, here you go."

"Yes, here I am. Liz, would you like to come in for a moment to meet Ryan? He might have a few questions for you - it could really help."

I hesitated, then pulled the key out of the ignition. "Alright, but I can't stay long."

----------

MAX:

"Hey, that's weird," Maria said, heading out of the kitchen and quickly hurrying over. The Crashdown was quite empty for a weeknight -- everyone who had been in here earlier had finished their dinners and left... well, almost everyone. There were a few people still eating, or drinking a soft drink and reading, near the front door, but that was all. Alex and Izzie and I had moved to a table near the kitchen, to take greater advantage of the relative privacy.

"What's weird?" Alex asked.

"Um... Liz left this note for me," Maria whispered, putting it on the table. The writing was clear, if a little less neat than Liz's usual script, which suggested she'd been in a hurry. 'Hey Maria, borrowing the wheels. I had to go back to the mall and pick something up real quick. LP'

"Back to the mall?" I muttered. Liz wasn't really a mallwalker type, but given that we'd been to Northview today and she said 'go back'... this had something to do with Evelyn Harding.

"Why would she just go and not tell us, except for this vague reference?" Alex muttered, puzzled.

"I don't know," I said, getting up. "But I intend to find out. Something seems... I dunno, I just want to find out what's going on as quickly as possible."

Something happened then, and I didn't even realize what I was doing before I'd done it. Somehow I was mentally sweeping an area for blocks around, maybe a circle a quarter-mile in radius, for Liz's... her mind? Liz's soul?? I hadn't realized that I could do that, but in retrospect I realized that I'd been in contact with her on a subconscious level, whenever we'd been close enough to each other, since... since the pool party? Maybe even longer??

Well... that was an idea. A quarter-mile range 'scanner' wasn't enough to cover, umm... less that a percent of town at a time, but it was better than trying to cruise around and recognize her by sight. "We'll start at the mall and work outwards from there."

"Uhh... we will?" Isabel asked. "I'm... I'm all for finding out what happened to Liz, Max, but are you sure that there isn't a better way?"

"Like what?" I asked, a little too loudly. "We don't know how to get in touch with Evelyn..."

"But we know how Evelyn got in touch with Liz," Alex put in. "Her cell phone. She'd have taken it with her, right??"

"Maybe," Michael said. He'd come out of the kitchen to join into the conversation. "Someone should go upstairs into the Parker's place and call from there. That way, if Liz left her phone up there, it shouldn't be hard to hear it ringing.

The three of us who weren't still on the clock rushed upstairs. Alex called, and Isabel and I went to different places in the apartment listening. We couldn't hear anything, and Isabel checked Liz's desk and didn't see the phone, but nobody picked up except the answering message service.

"Maybe she accidentally turned it off when she took it," Alex muttered. "Dammit."

"Or there's a weird cell-phone thing," I said. "Well, I'm going in the Jeep. Either of you want to come along??"

"Oh, I'm totally there," Alex insisted. Isabel paused a moment, and then nodded.

We went downstairs, told Michael and Maria that we were leaving, and headed out to the Jeep. Isabel left the keys to mom's car with Michael, so that they would have some wheels when their shift was up. Tore out to the mall, parked, and even though I was pretty sure that Liz was nowhere around here anymore, we split up to quickly search through the mall premises itself. No sign of Liz, no trace of Ms Harding.

"What next??" Isabel asked.

"Sshhh," I told her, and started walking towards the nearest entrance... then out the door, and to a parking lot not far from the mall. It might have been just imagination, but I felt like I could sense Liz, very faintly... as if she had been right here, not long ago. Close enough to touch, though she wasn't nearly as close now.

"Are you... are you getting anything useful, Max?" Alex asked. I thought about that for a second.

"Maybe." Tossed my keyring to Isabel. "Can you bring the Jeep over, right here? I'd rather not lose this fix until I have wheels." She shrugged and ran over.

My idea was to try and follow Liz's trail, until I could sense her directly. For a while it looked like it was working... south three blocks, then east for at least half a mile along fourteenth street. But I wasn't sure where the sense just kind of gradually faded away, and I pulled off to the side of the street and parked as soon as I was sure I was just going based on wishful thinking and inertia. Desperate, I turned to Isabel, sitting next to me in the passenger seat, and asked, "Give me your hand."

"Umm... why?" But then, without waiting for an answer, she put her hand into mine... we'd practiced a little stuff about working together and combining our powers, before all of this stuff with the Special Unit really started, and I was counting on it now. Based on what I knew already, I was guessing that Liz and Evelyn had gone somewhere east-south-east or maybe south-east of here. Drawing on Isabel's own energy, I tried to throw a thought out in that general direction, hoping that the natural resonance between Liz and I would guide it to her.

My mental energy hit something, but it pretty clearly wasn't Liz. There was a response, a kind of mental contact, and words coming back through. *Max?? What on earth are you doing?*

*Umm... Evelyn? Is that you??* I hadn't realized that she had this kind of mental communication power... or was the power mine, and she'd just managed to substitute herself for Liz, the way I'd been hoping to communicate with her.

*Yes! The Special Unit has psionics here in Roswell. If I could intercept your transmission, they can too. You DON'T want that to happen.*

Okay, But before I let her terminate the link, there was one question I had to ask. *I'm trying to find Liz. Where is she?*

*Umm... she must be nearly back home by now. She dropped me off about fifteen minutes ago. But something's come up since then... can we meet??*

Everything was changing too fast. I wanted to consult with the others, but I wasn't sure if I could talk to them without losing contact. That seemed to suggest that I should give her an answer quickly, and even though I was uncertain about all this, I didn't want to risk upsetting her by saying a quick 'no'. Evelyn might be an important ally, and I wanted to stay on her good side. So. *Yeah, alright. Where??*

*West Chisum and South Garden. Are you alone??*

*No... Isabel and Alex are with me. We'll be there soon.*

*Okay. And for goodness sake, Max - don't try contacting Liz like this again!!*

I sighed, dropped the link, and quickly explained to the others about what had happened. "I'm calling Maria," Alex said instantly. "Ask them if Liz came back yet."

"Do that," Isabel agreed, and I nodded. Alex dialed, and it didn't take too long for him to get an answer apparently.

"Hey, is Liz there?? No? Okay, Max apparently talked to Evelyn, and she said Liz was heading back home... oh, really??" Alex turned to talk to Isabel and me. "Tess just showed up in the Crashdown."

I smiled. "Okay... we're gonna arrange a little surprise reunion. Tell them to come now. Close up if they have... no, maybe Maria should stay there, just in case Liz shows up and worries about all of us being gone. But... tell Michael that we'll meet them at McGaffey and Garden."

"You don't want to go ahead and meet Evelyn right away, let her know that Tess is coming?" Isabel asked, looking a little confused.

"No. Not sure why... maybe that we can all help protect each other, just in case the special unit goons are about." Isabel nodded.

So I got to McGovern, a few blocks away from the rendezvous co-ordinates, and it wasn't too many minutes later that another car arrived with Michael and Tess in it. We said some hellos... I did a passive 'sense' for Liz just one more time, hoping against hope, and then convoyed south.

There was a car parked a few lengths from the corner, on Chisum, a muted red four-door sedan, and two people standing on the sidewalk... Evelyn and a man of about her age... not Tony Harding, but a short guy with a bright, clever face and a short mess of dark hair. I parked next to them, and realized that Michael and Tess seemed to be yelling at us as they came close. It wasn't until they were nearly behind us, and the two grown-ups were walking close, that I realized Tess was yelling -- "Max!! THAT ISN'T MY MOTHER!!!"

A wave of cold dread flowed through my veins. I made sure that the ignition of the car was still engaged, and brought my left hand, wondering what I would be able to do with it. Evelyn... no, the mystery woman who was NOT Evelyn Harding, and her friend were only a few feet away from the front left bumper of the Jeep now. Michael had pulled up beside us in the middle of the street, Tess practically leaning over him to glare daggers at the impostor.

Well then... "Who are you *really*?" I asked the woman who had convinced us all she was Tess' mother. Convinced Liz... and gotten Liz to go somewhere with her. "Where is Liz?"

"Agent Pierce, I presume," Tess called out. "Danielle Pierce - the true head of the Special Unit." Danielle turned to look at Tess, and nodded, just slightly.

My heart turned to ice. What had she done to my soulmate??

-----------

(Liz Parker's diary.)

I'm keeping this diary entry in my head, because they won't give me something to write on, and I'm not sure I'd use pen and paper even if they did, for fear that they'd try to take it and use it against me.

I was stupid, obviously. I trusted Evelyn... or whoever she really is, without any real evidence. Of course she was able to act enough like Tess' real mother to satisfy her based of vague descriptions... but the Special Unit must have tons of information on Tess' whole family. They'd be able to prep an impostor to do a very careful mimicry, especially for someone who didn't actually know the real Ms Harding.

Max and I, all of us, we were so careful and so cynical, except when it came to the real person who we should have been more skeptical about. Did she get into our heads, just a little bit, to make us trust her? That's a question that I'm not sure how to answer.

I don't really remember much about what happened after I got out of the Jetta. We probably went into the building... and then I guess somebody knocked me out... with gas, or a physical blow, or maybe just with a psionic attack. That part doesn't really matter.

And I woke up here, in a gray, dimly lit, featureless prison cell. No bars, no doors that I can really identify given the lighting level. One piece of the wall seems to be mirrored. The light comes from glowing greenish spots, high up on the wall. My wrists are cuffed together, and secured to the floor underneath the bed with a heavy, thick cable that's obviously indestructible as far as anything I could do to it with my bare hands. It's probably titanium covered with smooth black plastic, or something like that.

All I can do is sit, or lie down, and wait. I don't know what they have planned for me, if my friends, if Max, will ever be able to rescue me from here. I just sit here and think about how I let them all down, how I got stupid and caught.

I can hardly even bear to think about my immediate future.

TO BE CONTINUED... IN SECTION FIVE!!

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:57 am

Part 5a

Section Five: Caught in a box

TESS:

"Pierce!" Max shouted, looking daggers at the woman who had tricked him. I thought of trying to pretend that we weren't onto her, but that seemed especially futile now. Better to let my friends play this out as they thought best, for the time being at least. I felt horribly guilty for how everything had played out... maybe if I'd given Liz more details about my mother, she'd have been able to see through the deception, even with Pierce trying to cloud her mind, and not been foolish enough to let herself get caught.

"Hello, Max," Danielle Pierce replied sunnily, her voice completely calm and level. She was projecting loudly enough to be heard over the distance that seperated us, but without shouting or even seeming like she was raising her voice. "Beautiful day here in Roswell, hm?"

Max seemed enraged by the casual attempt at small talk - which might be why Pierce had made it. "What did you do to Liz?"

"She's fine, Max. She's enjoying the hospitality of a few of my FBI friends... but then, you guessed as much already, didn't you? No -- don't try to use your powers to attack me here, not if you want to see her alive again. I've taken care of that much." Max shook his head in frustration.

"We'll agree to a short truce if you do," Isabel called out. "Once threatening move, though, and all bets are off."

"Understood." Danielle nodded agreement as readily as if Isabel had proposed a restaurant for a meal out.

I stepped up between Max and Isabel at this point, hoping to help them maintain a united front. "Max, I think I'll be able to sense it if she tries to use Psionic power. Give you warning."

"Don't think," Max advised with a bitter, tortured laugh. "Just do it." I nodded, hoping and praying that I was up to the task of matching wits against Pierce, if she wanted to try using the Power in some subtle way that I might not be looking for automatically.

But right now, all Danielle seemed to be doing was speaking again. "I had hoped to catch both of you at a single stroke, Max, as an F.Y.I. But... well, you can never anticipate how a chaotic situation will behave, and you were with your sister and your friends the whole time. Liz was alone, and vulnerable, and I made my move. That's life for you."

Max had to struggle not to spit in disgust, revolted at the casual way Pierce was talking about kidnappings. I was pretty offended too, come to think of it. "So... we know that you've got Liz, we know that you're really the ultimate Maestro of the Special Unit. What happens next? Do you want to deliver some kind of demand or ultimatum? Do we just leave and go our seperate ways until next meeting?"

"Hmm..." Danielle considered, whispered a few words with her unnamed confederate, and stepped just a bit closer... not trying to be threatening, I wanted, just hoping to say this next bit in a hushed and dramatic voice without being completely unheard. "Little from column A and B, I think. Yes, we can both go our seperate ways, I think. You'll want to try to find Liz and rescue her... and I might get a good opportunity when you do. Meanwhile, there are other projects in my Master Plan that I should be checking in on. And I'll do better than extending an offer or an ultimatum... I'll make an offer that you're free to take me up on, or not, as you choose. If you really want to free Liz from the tender mercies of my friends, then one way to do it is simple. One of the three of you, Max, Michael -- or Isabel. Any of you can volunteer to exchange places with her, under a few conditions that I'll insist on to guard against trickery." There was no reply. "No takers yet? Well, that's okay. Tess will know how to get in touch with me without letting my tech boys track your location, I think." And with that, Special Agent Danielle Pierce turned to walk down the sidewalk, away from the five of us.

WHAMM! So suddenly that I could hardly tell what was happening... there was a bright flash of light streaking towards Pierce, and the sound of an explosion. Dirt and grass spouted into the sky and began to fall at differing rates. Danielle, untouched by the blast no more than a foot away from her feet, half turned to look back, and saw Max with his hand stretched out. A little clump of dirt landed on her nose, and she wiped it off, blushing slightly, and resumed walking.

"That was... not the brightest thing I've ever seen you do, Max," Isabel pointed out. "But maybe the ballsiest, actually."

"Considering what she did to Liz, I'm a little surprised you waited so long, Maxwell," Michael chimed in approvingly from behind us. "You agreed not to hurt her, but firing a warning shot isn't the same thing. She'd be stupid to hurt Liz over something that simple, and it keeps a bit of the power on our side."

"Not enough of it, though," Max muttered darkly. "We need to move, move fast, and see if somehow we can get one step ahead of Pierce. What's our first move?"

"Back out into the desert," Isabel said. "We were *almost* at the alien cave. Maria and I can find it this time, I'm sure... and maybe we'll find something there that can help."

"We need every edge that we can get," I said. "I... I want to get in touch with my father, though - ASAP. Partly because he still thinks that Mom is running around free, somewhere here in Roswell, and he *needs* to know that it's actually Pierce who's come to town. Also, he might be able to help, a bit more directly."

"How can he help?" Michael muttered suspiciously. Clearly he didn't want either me or my father getting close to their secrets, no matter what. "Isn't he still being blackmailed into helping the Special Unit? Won't your mom - your real mom, be hurt if he doesn't toe the line?"

"Maybe... maybe the rules of that have changed, slightly," Max said, softly, to himself. "After all... he's had credible evidence that Evelyn Harding is here in Roswell... evidence that traces back to Pierce herself, so she can't really punish him for acting on it."

"She could punish him - or Evelyn - for his disloyalty," Isabel put in. "It's not like you don't arrest someone for stealing because he thought nobody was minding the store."

"I... I'm not sure of the details," I said. "But I think that the rules really *have* changed as far as Dad and me obviously getting involved, even if the reason why might be buried inside Pierce's head. After all, she didn't show any signs of being upset at me blowing her cover."

"Maybe she just thinks it'd be easier to tell what you're up to, if you feel like you can openly associate with us," Alex put in. "Rather than trying to sort out your fake shows of loyalty from your true motivations."

"Certainly you should call him," Max told me. "And, speaking of alien secrets... we need to fetch Topolsky's orb. It's got power... power that might help us defend ourselves, or rescue Liz."

"But we still don't know how to use it," Michael pointed out.

"I know," Isabel said. "But we need that power now. And necessity is the mother of great discoveries."

----------

We waited for my Dad at an abandoned quarry that the rest of the kids all knew about. For a while, all five of them just hung around silently, several of them shooting black or uncomfortable expressions at me, and then Max broke the quiet. "As a hypothetical question, Tess... if you had to send a message to Nacero, do you think you'd be able to make him understand something simple? I realize that whether he'd be willing to listen and do anything we ask him for is a crap shoot, but does the connection you have work that way too?"

"Umm... I'm not sure," I admitted. "I've never tried, obviously... didn't want him to get upset with me speaking inside his head. I think I'd have a pretty good shot, though... I know that other telepaths can project thoughts when they've got a good strong connection, and I've always had a stronger like with mister N than with any of the three of you." Sighed. "What about you, Isabel? Do you think you'd be able to dreamwalk our alien friend?"

Isabel jumped slightly. "I... I don't think so. Leaving aside the question of whether he sleeps and dreams like regular people -- I always need to have a clear picture of the face of whoever I'm dreamwalking. Usually a physical image, a photograph or whatever, though I think I might be able to do it off a mental image for anyone I know well. Nacero, though... if he has a true face, none of us have seen it. Without that, I can't forge the link."

"Fair enough," I replied. "Just wanted to ask." Looked around. "Is... is there something that I should know? All of you seem to be acting a little weird."

"We... the last few times we came up here," Maria pointed out, "It was the five of us and Liz. I guess I'm just a little wigged at how you seem to have taken her place."

"Oh, god... okay, yeah, I get how that could be weird," I replied. "You... you know that I'd never have wanted that, right? I'm here to help you get her back... nothing else matters."

"Getting your mom, your real mom, to safety matters too," Alex said softly. "But yeah... Liz is uppermost in our minds I think."

"Do you have any idea what Pierce's people might be doing to Liz?" Max asked me. "How strong are her psionic powers? Just meeting the three of us briefly, Me, Liz, and Alex... she was able to throw us all off balance, mentally, I think... and plant the seeds for trapping both Liz and I. I was lucky to escape. Now that she's got Liz all by herself..." He couldn't even seem to manage to finish his thought.

"Well... first, they're going to want to examine her physically," I said slowly. "To see if they can find any residual trace of her healing, that might tell them about your healing powers..."

----------

LIZ:

"Hello, hello in there??" I'm not sure if I had nodded off or just zoned out staring at the wall. There wasn't really anything else to do in that depressing room, and sitting and thinking had gotten me way too depressed. But it sounded like something new was happening. My eyes had to adjust to the dim light all over again, but then I saw that there was a door, or maybe just a square opening in the wall, and two armed guards, holding small rifles or something, were stepping through and standing at each side of the opening.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm in here, of course," I grumped. "Where the hell else would I be?" Actually, come to think of it, my body might need to stay stuck here in FBI central, but if I could zone out completely, so easily, then maybe I could just lose myself in some kind of a daydream... about Max, thinking about him. Like Westley in 'The princess bride', the book version, when he was in the Zoo of death, and could just picture Buttercup's face to withstand torture... until he got put in the Sucking Machine. Okay, Liz, stop thinking about torture and stuff - THAT'S not helpful in this situation.

"Yes, miss. Please do not attempt to hurt facility personnel, leave any particular area without explicit permission, or hide in a small space. It might be best if you do not move or touch anything before being instructed to." Oh lordy... like I couldn't guess that they didn't want me to do any of that stuff. But it kind of fits with government thinking, that they felt they had to warn me specifically.

"Please stand back," the other guard advised, and while the first one covered me with his gun, this guy went over, unlocked the other end of my cable, and then locked it up to his own waist. Okay, that made some sense... now I'd be able to leave the room, but not to get very far away from the guard unless I could undo the connection it made between us somehow, which of course, wouldn't be easy. (Could I just leave the cable locked to his belt, undo the belt, and take that? No, it didn't seem to have a typical belt buckle of course. Plus, even if I ran away, how could I really get out of this complex??

It seemed better to play along until I had a much better opening. Without saying a word, the strong dutiful guardsmen led me down the hall to another room, some kind of a doctor's laboratory or examination room. I was plugged into the wall here, and one of the guards left. Oh, along the way, I noticed that the door to my room had apparently been pulled out of the wall and pulled up into the hallway (the ceiling of which was maybe twenty-five feet high.) "Up on the examining table," the other one said, feeling it necessary to make a slight pointing gesture with his gun. I hopped up as casually as I could... wishing that I had some gum so I could blow a bubble insouciantly or something. But none.

"Should I strip off?" I asked him, fiddling very obviously at the sleeve of my shirt, just trying to provoke some kind of reaction.

"That is not required yet."

Well, that was kind of a reaction, if not a very interesting one. I dangled my feet off the edge of the table for a little while longer. Of course, I wouldn't have been able to get very far taking my shirt off anyway... well, I could probably get it so that it was all bundled around my hands and forearms, but no further, given that my wrists were shackled to that darn cable.

Soon new people showed up... a woman in a doctor's white coat, and another guard, also a woman. That seemed to fit with what I was expecting to come next. The guy guard left, the door closed behind him, and the doctor turned to me. "Hello, Miss Parker. I understand if you're upset about being here, anywhere in the complex I mean, but I would suggest that you come to terms as well and quickly as you can. Venting your displeasure against me will not improve your situation at all... rather the reverse, if you choose to express yourself too vehemently."

I chuckled wryly, even though some part of me had decided that I liked this doctor woman better than anyone else I'd met in the special unit so far. (Which still wasn't very much, as you might imagine.) "It'd feel good, for a little bit, though."

"I suppose that's true enough, and nothing I can say will take away the prospect of that small satisfaction," she agreed. "Up to you if you want to avail yourself, though as I've said, there could be consequences." She held up a small metal device, only about as big as a pencil eraser. "This will deactivate your restraints, for here and now, if I can insert into the appropriate spot. The door has been locked from the outside, and if you become unruly or take an unallowed for action, the entire examining room will be flooded with knockout gas before they open it up again."

"So, that suggests that someone else is going to be watching us while you work," I said.

"Yes. Another woman, though I realize that may not be a tremendous comfort to your sensibilities. We are doing the best we can to accomodate your likely objections, but there's a job to do, and I intend to do it without giving you an opportunity to escape. I regret the necessity, but..."

"Okay..." I sighed. "I'll play nice, for now - on one condition. Tell me your name." Doctor-lady's eyes widened... I had obviously caught her by suprise with that. "Doesn't have to be your first name, I realize that all doctors don't like giving that out and letting patients address them too familiarly. I suppose I'm some sort of a patient now. But right now you're just some kind of anonymous authority figure in a lab coat, and that's even worse than being doctor so-and-so. You probably know quite a bit about me, so I'm asking for one name."

She smiled a bit. "My name is Enid Richards, and I'd appreciate it if you called me Doctor Richards." With that, she stepped forward slightly, and slipped her little gizmo into my left wrist shackle. There was a humming noise for a second and a half, and then both shackles popped open and fell down onto the floor. "Okay, could you please take off all your clothes now please?"

I have to admit, even at that point I was still expecting something horrible and terrifying to be part of the examination, considering that it was coming courtesy of the dreaded Special Unit. Something so unspeakable that I couldn't even tell you what I was expecting. But there wasn't anything. It was a very thorough physical, and a few samples were taken out of places that I wouldn't have expected in Doctor Barnhart's family practice office, but aside from that the experience seemed much the same. Things seemed to drag out some, and I'm not quite sure how long before the whole thing was over... maybe an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes. Richards unplugged the other end of my cable from her office wall, and got it attached to a dealie in the lady guard's belt. "You're going to have to put these on," she said, handing over a pile of folded yellow linen. For a second, upset, I looked around for the street clothes that I had taken off -- one of my favorite pair of blue jeans, that I know Max really liked to see me in, and a black t-shirt that I was relatively indifferent to. Getting upset about losing the jeans was pretty crazy, I knew, under the circumstances, but it was a craziness that buffered me from the pain and loneliness and worry, and I cherished it.

There was no sign of my stuff anywhere, not even a shoe. Obviously they wouldn't have slipped it out of the room... that would be a security risk, especially while I was unrestrained. But there were locked cabinet doors under the examining table, and Richards could have snuck my clothes in there while I wasn't looking. Groaning, I unfolded the new threads... a thick yellow button shirt, with long sleeves, and yellow pants, big enough to be a little baggy on me, I guessed. They looked a little like prison uniform, but not quite. "This is all I get?" I asked quietly. Not even underwear, but I supposed that that made sense. They'd want it to be as unlikely as possible that I'd go without wearing these clothes... and as noticeable as possible if I did.

"Yep." Richards nodded slowly, a slightly regretful look on her face, and I slipped into the ugly clothes. Expected them to fit quite badly, as they looked like one-size-misfits-all, and I wasn't a particularly common body type. However, the match was close enough that they might have been specially made... not cut to the same requirements as stuff that I'd buy for school, of course, but... just how much had the Special Unit known about my measurements, I wondered. How much did they know about the little details of my friends' lives that they'd never have even thought of?

I submitted with uneasy grace as Richards re-fastened my wrist shackles, and the guard led me out the door, there meeting up with one of my original guardsmen, and marched me back into the same confinement cell. Cable was transferred back into... actually, there's a small but important detail about the restraint cable that I almost forgot to mention. Guy-guard handed girl-guard another little metal device that she put into her belt, but it didn't work at popping the cable out of her belt so she could plug it back in under my bed, and they had to call another guard to bring over some kind of technician to sort us all out. I didn't pick up exactly what the problem had been, but my mind was racing. It wasn't enough, if I wanted to escape, to just find a metal eraser-head dealie - I had to find the right one that was programmed to undo the right locks for wherever I was and whenever it was happening, and I wasn't sure how I'd be able to tell that beforehand. Still, it was better to know the difficulty beforehand I supposed... though it was probably also better for the Special Unit, since they might be able to scare me out of making an escape attempt that wouldn't work out and would just cause both of us a lot of pain.

And eventually they got me plugged into the cell, and I lay there on my bed, daydreaming of Max... of making out with him in his room, with sunlight streaming in through his window... Max's eyes looking down at me with such love and tenderness...

I did my best to get lost in those eyes, to fall into my own mind and drown in them.

----------

ISABEL:

I'd had my arm around Alex ever since we left that Chisum sidewalk where Agent Pierce had been exposed. I felt like I could hardly have seperated from him even for a moment. (Well, maybe just a split second, when we were getting out of the car.) Everything was getting much too real, too dangerous and scary. The notion that Liz, of all people, would be the one to fall into such dire straits, had been the one who was paying for Pierce's obsession with aliens, had thrown my mind into a tailspin. She *didn't* deserve that - any of this... and she had had more than her share of bad luck just getting herself shot in the first place. She loved Max so much, and he her, and they made each other happy... that, more than anything else, colored my thoughts about her and made me feel protective. And there was not a single thing that I could think of doing to help her.

For a second, I struggled with an urge to try dreamwalking Liz, but it was hard to avoid the fact that that wouldn't be the trick that saved her this time. The fact that Liz probably wasn't dreaming right now was incidental... much more serious was the notion that we were going up against other telepaths, who must by now have a notion of our powers. Pierce had intercepted the probe that Max had used to try finding Liz, had been able to keep him from getting through and talk to him, planting the seeds of a trap that had almost let her capture more of us as well. What kind of precaution would she be able to take against a dreamwalk? Might Pierce, or one of the Special Unit psionics working with her, be able to trap me in a nightmare that I couldn't get out of? In any event, as long as contacting Liz with our powers was something that Pierce would be expecting us to do, we couldn't do any such thing.

"I know it's scary," Alex whispered, close to me ear. I turned my head up slightly to look at him. "But you're stronger than you think, or than Pierce thinks. All of you. You'll find some way to get Liz back, to make Pierce sorry she ever set foot in Roswell. I'm sure of that."

I smiled just a bit. "If we're strong, then we're strong together... *all* of us. I know you might feel like you're a weak link, but you're really not. You may not have fancy alien powers, but you contribute in other ways. You've got a brilliant mind that sees solutions where the rest of us only see problems -- and also, you're my inner strength Alex. When I feel like I don't have the courage to go on further, you walk by my side, and just holding your hand I don't notice the miles." Pause. "Okay, I'm freaked out and getting more than a little sappy."

"I think I like you sappy," Alex whispered, smiling, and turning me around so that our faces were only a few inches away from each other. "Never got much of a chance to see it before, but I'd like to see more."

I grinned back at him. "Go ahead."

Alex blinked. "Go ahead and what?"

"Umm... weren't you thinking of kissing me?" At first I said it teasingly... and then I started to wonder if maybe he HADN'T been thinking along those lines at all. But after a moment Alex smiled and brought his lips in to meet with mine. It wasn't a fancy fireworks and hot passion kiss... probably both of us were too worried to get those kinds of results, but he kissed me strongly and sweetly, and the impact of it made my knees weak and forced me to lean into him even harder to avoid sending both of us sprawling on the rocks. For a moment I was very aware of my breasts pressing firmly up against his chest, through all of our relevant clothing, and that awakened a little bit of the hot passion. But now really wasn't the time, and... and we heard the approaching car at around the same moment, and reluctantly seperated. (Well, we kept holding hands, but that was it for a little bit.)

For a second I was afraid, worried that the special unit had shown up to hassle us again or worse, but it was Tess' dad, and when he got out of the car the first thing he did was run over to Tess and hug her. Then, keeping an arm around his daughter's shoulders, he went over to Max. "I... I know we've met before, but that was just once, and not under the best of circumstances. Hello, Max."

Max stepped up to him and waved a hand around just as an automatic gesture, though somehow I think Tony Harding might be better at finding and surreptitiously getting rid of bugs than all three of us with our alien powers put together. "Hi, Mister Harding. First question - do you think you can afford to help us more openly now?"

"Max!" Tess exclaimed. "I... I haven't even told him what's going on now... just that Mom isn't really here and that he should come up and meet us."

"But I suspect I may know more about what's going on than you'd think," Tony replied with a small smile. "The Unit hasn't been able to completely hide their activities from me. I don't know all the details, but a very highly placed undercover operative has been here most of the day... possibly posing as my wife, or at least telling you kids that that was her identity, am I right?" My mouth dropped open. "Also, confinement facilities have been arranged, rather hastily, for a some prisoner, and a Special Unit psionic agent, maybe the same undercover operative, has visited the Sheriff's office and spent quite a while there. I think we have to consider that the local law enforcement hierarchy has been compromised, at least in part."

"Oh, so she got to Valenti?" Michael muttered. I realized that he was holding Maria pretty closely too, and I pulled Alex's arm back around my waist. "That's just great."

"Dad, it's Danielle Pierce herself!" Tess put in, her voice halfway to 'wail.'

"SHIT!!" The vehement obscenity caught me slightly by surprise, though it was a perfectly good description of the situation. "And..." Tony's eyes swept over the gathering, as if it had suddenly occured to do an informal head count. "Who's... where's Liz... oh, no, don't tell me..."

"She's the prisoner," Maria nearly spat at him. "Pierce got to her, and fiddled with her brain enough that she went off like a lamb to be locked up."

"We need to get her back, as soon as possible," Max said. "Before Pierce can do anything more to her."

"Yeah, I won't argue with that," Tony replied. "But... well, that leaves open the question of just when 'as soon as possible' will be. Pierce will expect you to come charging foolishly in, and will have a counter-plan to foil such a rescue attempt -- and capture some of you at the same time. That, obviously, won't do Liz any good."

"We can wait a while, plan it out, try to do the unexpected," I said. "But eventually, I think we'll have to go where angels fear to tread to get Liz back." Tess looked at me a little oddly. "The place that fools rush in."

"Okay, first things first," Michael butted in, (not quite literally, but psychologically.) "Tony... you said that you knew they were holding somebody captive. Do you know WHERE??"

"Not... not precisely," he admitted. "I've seen surveillance coverage of the inside, and can identify an area from traffic patterns, but couldn't give you a specific street address... yet."

"So it's within the Roswell city limits?" Max pressed. "Not far from where we met Pierce, maybe... Chisum at cross South Garden??"

"Yeah... but east of there," Tony agreed. "If you've got a map in your car, that's probably easier than trying to describe it out loud. Ohh... and to get back to your question that I didn't answer, Max... yes, I think I can afford to help you openly without risking my wife's immediate safety now. It's hard to explain why, since the reasons are intensely psychological, and Danielle Pierce's psychology isn't by any means a very normal one."

"At the moment, I don't really much care about the reasons why," Max said. "I'll just get you that map, and we can start to make our plans."

"What... what about T-- T--- Topolsky, Max?" Maria managed to choke out.

Max considered that a moment, then whirled on Alex. "Call her. Get her here in Roswell. She's waited out there in safety long enough... and I think that she's not the one that Pierce wants anymore. We might be able to use her."

I thought about the way he'd phrased that, as he headed off to the Jeep. *Use* her. We'd done a good thing, helping Topolsky... and getting her to assist in rescuing Liz might cancel that out, or even more. But I wasn't sure that Max wasn't right, if he thought that risking her for Liz's sake was something we should be prepared to do.

----------

"Okay..." Michael groaned. "Let's try it this way. What are our assets?"

Max smiled, but a little grimly. "We have three alien teenagers with, erm, mediocre control over our powers. One power orb that we don't know what to do with. An ex-green beret Special Ops soldier, his psionic daughter who can read alien thoughts and make water boil cold. A frightened turncoat FBI agent, the local electronics whiz and a spunky waitress. Oh, and about half a dozen weird healing stones, for whatever good they are."

"Right. And our liabilities??"

"The special unit has moved into Roswell in full force, with Pierce and three or four other highly skilled psionics... exact powers uncertain. Also a doctor and one or two other officers with specialized training, half a dozen tech boys, and twenty to thirty armed guards and operatives. Danielle has presumably recruited sheriff Valenti, which means that his deputies might also be put on surveillance duty on behalf of the Special Unit. Liz is probably being held in a building on South Elm street, between Chisum and Buena Vista... a place that started out as an office building but was refitted four years ago as a high-security tech lab for a military contractor."

"As much as I'd love to 'have fun storming the castle'," Maria grumbled, "we can't just charge into that place. Not without some hell of an ace up our sleeves."

"Then we'd better find ourselves an ace of trumps," Max said simply. "Probably two, just in case."

"What... what about that cave you were talking about?" Alex put in nervously. "Is... Isabel, do you really think that there might be something there that would tip the balance?"

"There has to be," I told him, squeezing his hand with desperation. This wasn't fair, and the planet just had to cut us some kind of break!!

"Nacero!" Tess exclaimed, and several of us turned to stare at her. It seemed quite likely that she was having one of her semi-psychic moments. "I... I can lead him there to meet with you, I think. He'll *come* there... he spends some time there pretty often -- did I tell you that earlier? And, if you meet him there, he... he might be more willing to listen, and to talk, than anywhere else. He wouldn't hurt you there. I -- I'm not sure why, but..."

"Well, what do you guys think?" Max asked tiredly, looking at Michael and me. "Up for another reunion with cousin shapeshifter?"

"Considering that the last time any of us saw him, he stuck a switchblade into my side... no, not really looking forward to it," I grumbled. "Even considering Tess' opinion about him attacking us there. But if you guys want to do it, then I'll come along."

Michael seemed unable to decide for a long moment. "I... I'm worried about it," he confessed. "But we need to do SOMETHING, and this seems like the best idea anyone else has had, so I'm in." He looked over at Max, putting the ball back in his court.

"Yeah... I agree. We'd better do it." He looked at Tess. "Do you want to actually come to the cave yourself?"

"No, I'd better not," Tess said, and didn't elaborate further. "I'll hang around in the area, to draw him in, but that's it. So just the three of you?"

"I... I think that Maria should come along," Michael blurted out. "That is... if you're up for it, baby. I... I know that you were a little weirded out when you ran into Nacero last time... well, when you realized that you'd run into him, when he'd impersonated me to steal the first Orb. But... well, first off, we might still need your help from that flash, to find the stupid cave. And also... I don't know why, but I feel like this is right even if it weren't for that."

Maria looked surprised... and a little touched that Michael had asked him along. "I... yeah, I'll come."

"What... what about Alex," I blurted out. "I..." I wasn't sure what to say. It didn't quite seem fair to Alex that Michael had asked Maria to come and I wasn't asking him... but I didn't feel whatever 'rightness' Michael felt about it. Going to meet Nacero was dangerous, and I wanted to keep Alex safe if I possibly could. "Do... do you, umm, mind??"

Alex smiled at me, and gave me a hug. "No, go ahead. Best of luck." Then he stepped back a bit and addressed the whole group. "I... I have some things I'd like to go over with Mister Harding, actually."

"Okay, be careful," I whispered at him. Leaving him alone with the mysterious government operative... was that really any safer than taking Alex along to meet a wild alien? But... well, Max seemed to trust Tony Harding, and he had probably proved that we could trust him a little.

"Alright," Max muttered. "Who goes in which car?"

----------

MICHAEL:

"Yeah, yeah, this is it," Isabel said as we came up to an ugly gash in the rocky-sandy ground. Maria nodded too, looking back slightly.

"Aww, this is all we rated?" I complained, trying to lighten the mood slightly. "Some kind of awkward desert chasm? We've seen dozens of them just getting here. I thought that we'd rate something a little bit cooler and more alien-ey. Maybe with a secret door that shifts aside when one of us presses a stone in just the right spot, that no human could set off."

I looked around and realized that Max and Isabel were giving me *those* looks again. "It makes a lot of sense, actually," Max muttered. "As you said, these little desert caves are everywhere. Thus, people almost never notice them."

"Some people make a hobby out of exploring them," Maria put in. "Wouldn't there have to be some kind of defense system to keep the wrong person from blundering in?"

"Prob-probably," I agreed. "Whoever goes in first should be very, VERY careful. Anybody else volunteering?" Max shrugged, Isabel didn't seem to react much -- and there was no way in hell that I'd let Maria break the trail for us. "Alright, well... get ready to try pulling me out or something in case everything goes VERY wrong." I walked around the fissure, decided on what looked like the most promising way of climbing down into it, and started on that route... which involved turning around so that I was backing down into the hole, my front pointed towards the rock wall so that I could stick my toes into the narrow places instead of trying to jam my heels in, and so that I could use my hands a bit more easily. That also meant that I could see three worried faces before I sank down far enough to break the line of sight between me and them.

It didn't take terribly long, though, before I was down at the base of the chasm, and blinking furiously, trying to adjust to the gritty dust that I'd churned up in the close air, and the much dimmer light that was available down there, in order to be able to look around and actually see anything. Hmm... okay, there was one rock wall down at the bottom that seemed unusually flat and amooth. I put my hand up against it, and after a moment, where it felt like the stone was examining me in some way that I couldn't hardly understand, my arm was suddenly stuck in the rock up past the wrist. It... it was the queerest sensation - there was a layer several inches thick that seemed like water... no, not like water, like some kind of pliable jelly... I could see and feel it moving out of the way of my arm whem I tried moving it around a bit. On the other side of that layer was definitely air. I called this discovery up to the others, trying not to get too loud or to use too many truly strange words just in case someone else was within earshot.

"Just a sec, I'm coming down before you do anything else," Max insisted. "When the first person goes through that wall, someone else should be here at the chasm base... just in case."

"Sure," I told him, as Max was already starting to scramble down. Oooch, more sand flying through the air - that's nasty stuff, and I blinked and blinked and blinked. "So... do you want to fight me for the chance to go in first? I was the one who volunteered to lead the way." I think Max was suprised at first, and then he saw that I had my hand stretched out in our old thumb-war challenge from when we were nine. Grinning, he took me up on the challenge, but I'm not sure he was trying very hard, and I kicked his butt.

"Okay... anything you need to do to get ready?" I asked him, after shaking my hand out to make sure that it wouldn't cramp up.

"Umm..." Max thought a moment, then shrugged and tried to assume a generic 'ready for anything' pose. "Go ahead."

I charged through the wall, opening my eyes as soon as I was through, and trying to catch a glimpse of any bit of the jelly-rock that I might have knocked loose out of the wall. But I couldn't see anything at first - it was completely dark. I raised my hand and was about to use my powers to make a light, when something else beat me to it. An unearthly yellow-green radiance bloomed high on the... the walls? Were they walls??

No... well, not quite walls in the way I'd usually think of it. The chamber, er, the space that I found myself in was obviously artificial, but it was constructed as a hollowed out spheroid... ehh, make that multiple spheroids, rather than multiple cuboids as a traditional cave passageway would be, with well defined walls, floor, and ceilings. Here, among all the smooth curves, it was hard to tell where the walls became the ceiling, except that it wasn't QUITE where the yellow green light was coming from. Still, between the odd color makeup of the lighting, the strangeness of the surroundings, and the subtly nervous feeling deep down in my chest, it was hard to make out anything more clearly about the cave, especially considering...

"Michael!" Max's voice was faint and muffled from behind me. "Are you... did you get in okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm in, and there doesn't seem to be anything immediately dange--RRAH!" I normally don't shout in shock like that I think, but my eyes had been continuing to sweep over the cave, evaluating anything I could see according to whether it was possibly a source of danger, and I'd just got to a... well, at first it looked like a giant insect, six and a half or seven feet tall, somewhat grasshopper-ey or mantislike in general shape. The bug hadn't moved since the lights came on, which was why it had taken so long for me to notice it, but once I'd recognized its general nature that didn't reassure me a bit. Couldn't bugs like that stay perfectly still for hours at a time, and then suddenly leap to bite somebody's head off??

I... I had to investigate it before letting anyone else come in... but I wasn't sure how to do that without possibly spooking it. Why the heck was there a bug here, anyway? That wasn't what our alien parents looked like when they weren't in human form, were they? Max had had that flash of the formless goopy aliens, which was disturbing enough, but being a bug was worse I thought. Maybe the goopy aliens kept bugs as pets... or the other way around, I suppose that was equally possible.

"Don't... don't come in yet, or let Isabel and Maria go down into the trench," I called to Max. "There's something I need to figure out in here first."

I REALLY didn't want to get any closer to the bug until I'd figured out more. So, very carefully, I extended my newly trained alien senses towards it... and got a number of surprises.

The thing wasn't a living bug... it was constructed out of metal plating and some kind of unearthl circuits and motors. A robot or droid. It wasn't even build that closely on a bug model, except for the general shape... its limbs ended in claws with double opposable digits, for instance. Oh, and whatever power source the bugbot had originally had, it was long discharged. The bot was completely dead -- *that* was the real reason that it hadn't moved. It couldn't.

Just about the time that I figured this out, there was another sound behind me, and I turned to see a feminine shape emerge from the rock jelly... Isabel. Not a drop of the jelly spilled - every bit that was pushed aside simply flowed back in after she had gone through. "Hey... I said for nobody else to come in yet," I complained.

"Well, you're not the boss of me," Isabel snapped back. "You were taking too log and hogging all the fu--- FRICKIN' HELL!!"

For a second I was worried tat Isabel had spotted some *new* bit of scaryness, but after a second it was clear that she'd only seen the bug. "It's dead," I assured her, "and plus, it's a robot."

"Michael," Maria's voice came from outside the rock wall, "I can't get in by myself. However you and Isabel were able to walk straight through the wall, it's not working for me."

Okay, too much was going on... I still wasn't sure about having everyone else come through into the cave before I'd had a chance to thoroughly explore it... possibly with Isabel's help. But objecting at this point didn't seem likely to get me very far. Secondly, I'd suspected that Maria would have problems... remembering how the wall had seemed to 'sense' me. Maybe it had detected that I was an alien, and that she wasn't. Okay.

I stepped back next to the wall, and stuck my arm in as deep as it would go. "Hang on," I instructed, hoping this would work. After a second I felt Maria's hand grabbing hold of my own, and I started to slowly pull it through. For a little bit it worked... up until my fingers had left the rock, and Maria's hand was poking through a little past her wrist. "It's stuck!" she complained. Oh, great. I tried putting my other palm against the wall, to see if that would let her through anymore... but no go.

I could tell that Maria would be getting scared by this point, so I did something maybe a bit foolish. I stepped back through the jelly, wrapped my arms around her, and pulled her through staying as close to every part as I could, twisting around in the middle to make sure that she would come out of the wall first. Things could have gotten very tricky if something had gone wrong in the middle of that maneuver I guess, but it worked and we both got through okay. Max followed after a few seconds.

"Cheer, cheer, the gang's all here," I whispered under my breath, and waited to see if Maria would freak at the bug. She didn't, actually... she saw it, and peered at it for a moment. Then she might have seen some clue that it wasn't really a danger, shrugged, and started to look around elsewhere. It might have occured to her, actually, that I wouldn't have brought her inside while there was something dangerous within.

We were standing at the end of a fairly long egg-shaped cave, with what looked like two smaller oval chambers splitting off from it from a little further down, but on this side of the halfway point. On the other side, past the robot insect, I could see three great big blocky things, each considerably bigger than a stand-up fridge-freezer, and with round open hatches around waist high, or a little higher. "Those must be the incubation pods," Isabel breathed, stunned.

"Sure doesn't look like there's anything else here that could be," Max agreed. "And I don't think Nacero's here yet... unless he's disguised as something."

Ooh... I hadn't even thought of that possibility. Hrmm... could Nacero's shapeshifting powers work well enough to fool our molecular sensing trick? The robot bug, for instance... Could Nacero have turned himself into that? I thought it was unlikely, considering how much robotic detail I'd seen in that brief flash, but then I didn't know anything about the limits of his power really. Better to be on guard just in case.

"I think Tess was expecting it'd take longer than this for her 'call' to work," Maria pointed out. "We should keep an eye on the wall."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "How about Isabel and I stick near here, and the two of you can go exploring a little?" Maria looked nervously at me.

"Makes sense," I said softly, holding her tighter for a second and then letting go. If Nacero showed up in a bad mood, having two aliens to face him down at the get go might help, and for Maria to *not* be there from the start might help put him in not such a bad mood.

"Okay," Maria said, taking my hand, and stepping forward carefully, wanting to be sure of her footing with the curving floor. (Which wasn't quite a floor as in seperate from the walls... but we've been through all that already.) After moving only a few yards, something caught both Maria's attention and mine at once... a rectangular section of wall-curve that was... well, not quite flat, but noticeably flatter than the wall around it. More than the shape, though, what caught our attention was the colors... patterns and shifting swirls of light that seemed endlessly fascinating in their complexity. Staring at it for a second, I realized something a bit unusual was going on in my mind... and then I gasped out loud in utter shock!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:25 am

Part Five B

ALEX:

"Okay, so what was it you wanted to ask me?"

I looked at Tess' dad, who really did seem tough enough to be a secret agent, green beret and all that, and tried not to feel too imtimidated to speak. "I... I'm not sure exactly," I admitted. "Just... any information you have about the special unit that might be helpful... who they are, where they came from, that whole thing. We thought they were just a team of alien hunters in the FBI, until Tess started saying all this stuff about psionic powers."

Tony smiled at me kindly. We were sitting near a rock out in the desert... it was very warm, hot even, but somehow getting under cover felt like it would be easier for someone else to spy on us there, even though that might be a foolish fear. "Well, I don't know that much myself... Evie's the one you'd want to be talking to, I guess, but she isn't here obviously, so: as far as I know, the Special Unit is a wing of a very old secret society, known as Orbis Manuum."

"'The encircling hands,'" I muttered, and Tony looked up in surprise. "I took Intermediate latin last term." He nodded.

"So... I... I'm not sure if Orbis Manuum had the Special Unit, or any noticeable presence in the FBI, before 1947. Probably they hadn't ignored it entirely. I know that they had people in the Air Force, which is how they got involved in the Roswell incident. Evie's told me that they must have realized that whoever sent that ship down had paranormal powers far beyond their own... but I don't think that they ever captured a genuine alien. They've got bunches of salvage from the wreck, though. Trying to find the secret of alien powers is kind of like a holy grail for them, but that's not the only thing they're interested in. The special unit does just about anything they can with the FBI's powers to look out for OM interests."

"And OM is all psionics?" I asked. "Do they, like, run the whole planet behind the scenes or something?"

"I couldn't tell you of my own knowledge," Tony sighed. "I know that there's a lot of shit that goes on around the world that never hits the papers, and that would make some of the conspiracy theories out there look like kiddie stories. But... well, let's just say you don't want to go up against all of Orbis, no matter what they've got their fingers in. Trying to confuse or distract the Special Unit will be tough enough."

"Makes sense. So what strategies will Pierce tend to use?"

"As you've seen, she's fond of laying traps and misdirection... now that she's got Liz, she'll probably try to interrogate her and get information about Max and the others." Harding sighed. "She won't try a frontal move until she has no other choice... but you don't want to push her that far, because her assault will probably be nothing short of devastating."

"Alright. Now... I have a bit of an idea. It might be stupid, but... well, tell me if you think we can get this thing put together..."

----------

MARIA:

"Michael!!" Worried, I shook him slightly, and he suddenly snapped his head away from the shifting colors as if he were afraid of them. "What? What did you see??"

"Umm... I, I can't remember," he admitted worriedly. "What... what's happening? We're -- we're in the alien underground cave, right?"

"Yeah... are you sure you feel alright?" I took his hands in mine, and we sat down on the curving floor - I was careful to arrange things so that he was still facing away from the kaleidescope wall, or whatever it was, and his body blocked my view of it for the moment. "What's the last thing you remember before I was shaking you?"

He grinned that trademark Michael grin at me. "We were exploring Nacero's cave, or whatever we want to call it... down by the fissuer in the desert floor. I looked into a rectangular section of wall with glowing colors... and I guess it confused me for a second. Didn't... didn't mean to freak you out or make you think that I had amnesia, anything like that."

I smiled with relief that he'd described the situation accurately, but still. "It wasn't just confusing. You gasped like... like you saw something in there, or realized something, or like you were being attacked. Something..." It took a few moments, or a moment and a half anyway, to come up with the right word. "Something that was *important*, for better or worse. You don't remember what it was??"

For a second Michael just looked blank, and then an odd expression started to come over his face. "It... it sounds a bit familiar, maybe. But as for the details... no, I think whatever it was was something that I couldn't grasp, though as you said, it IS important. And not, I think, dangerous. Getting jogged out of trying to comprehend it was probably what made me forget where I was for a second,"

I considered *that*. "Okay, then if it isn't dangerous... how about I try to look into it for a few seconds? Would that..." I wasn't sure how to finish the question, but it hardly needed to be said. If Michael had objections to the idea, he would be sure to express them once I'd formulated it as a plan.

But he didn't object, at least, not at first. "Umm... I'm not sure. It was a weird sensation... but if you're sure you're up to it, then we can go ahead. I'm going to turn you away from it after a few seconds, though."

"Umm... wait and give me a chance to turn away on my own first, kay?" I asked him. "If it doesn't affect us the same way, then there's no need to go to heroics I think."

"Alright," Michael agreed. I shuffled a little ways to the side, and looked into the colors. "One steamboat, two steamboat, three steamboat..."

"I'm turning away," I announced, and scrambled over so that I was sitting beside him, both of us facing away now. "I -- I didn't see anything at all unusual or experience anything weird as far as I can tell. It was a little annoying to stare directly at it somehow, like a TV where the picture is just a bit out of whack, but that effect didn't seem like it was going to make me go blind or anything."

"Hmm... maybe it's just because you're human and I'm not?" Michael suggested.

"Could be," I agreed, trying hard to supress the little disappointed reaction that I always get when something drives home the point of just how different we are. "Or maybe..."

Nobody got to find out just what I was about to suggest at that moment, though, because Max suddenly called out "Michael! We've got something!" We hurried to our feet and backdown to the mouth of the cafe, (Michael making sure to stay ahead of me,) just in time to see a man walk through the jelly wall. He was tall, taller than Max, maybe about the same height as Alex, (who's six foot one,) and looked... well, he looked a bit like 'Angel', from the tv show. Right down the the intimidating 'I'm a vampire don't mess with me' attitude that the actor presumably doesn't have in real life.

"Nacero, I presume?" Michael asked, calmly and with about as much confidence as he could muster. "Are you going to run away from us again, or attack somebody? Or will you talk to us like equals??"

The new guy's mouth opened and mouthed several things before an appreciable amount of sound came out. He didn't speak in regular sentences, of course... it HAD to be Nacero, and all the signs pointed to Nacero being a few pieces short of a chess set, in terms of actually being able to deal with the human world and talk with people. "Why... came... you here?" he muttered a little disjointedly, but clearly enough. "Ultimate objective - mission that those above sent you on? Or beat -- the bitch on her own game??" This was starting to get positively lucid, for Nacero.

"My only objective at the moment is helping Liz," Max told him, projecting with a bit more volume than necessary, which made his words ring and echo slightly off the cave walls. "If 'the bitch' is Danielle Pierce, then -- well, I don't intend to let her toy with my life or the lives of those that I care about, no. As far as whatever mission the other aliens wanted when they sent us to Earth, I don't care about that. Liz and my friends are the ones that matter."

Nacero looked at Max... and laughed, a laugh that started hearty and just slightly secretive, (as if Max was the butt of the joke in a way none of us understood,) and ended with overtones of whack-job craziness. "Already reacting properly with the prediction. They'll be pleased... if you get far enough to let them know."

"Enough of this enigmatic shit," Isabel declared, taking her turn. "Can... can you help us or not? Are you here in Roswell to do anything useful, or just to be yet another pain in my SIDE? Because I don't think Danielle Pierce would mind catching you and slicing you open, buddy."

I wanted to join in, but wasn't sure of the reaction it would elicit from Nacero if I spoke to him - he seemed definitely unbalanced, but was treating the aliens as if... as if they were nearly his own kind at least. "We really need a pointer at least, if not active assistance -- buddy," Michael muttered. Why hadn't... ohh!! Nacero meant 'visitor', or maybe 'outsider.' And he had to know that, from when River Dog had given him that name so long ago. From a human he probably didn't mind, but if other aliens called him 'outsider' to his face, the effect could be disastrous, in terms of their effort to win his trust if in no other way. "What do you say??"

Nacero was silent for a long time, turning away to stare at the cave wall next to the jelly door, then whirling back towards Michael. "Can't... can't cope against the clever little snakes," he muttered. "Got the power, yeah, but not the... I haven't adapted. It's another system, an ecology so vast that, couldn't hope to examine all of it. And - and so dangerous."

"WE've adapted!" Max said, looking like he had an imaginary lightbulb going on over his head. "That... that's the difference between us. We were raised human, so we understand about human ways, and can even guess how someone like Pierce will act and react, even though we didn't grow up in the same kind of circumstances as she did. But we don't know as much about our powers as you do... were you raised among aliens? With 'those above'??"

"Or maybe you grew up caught between the two worlds," Isabel breathed, seeing it too. "Or... or didn't even have a childhood - because aliens like them don't."
She cocked her head. "But if they don't have childhoods, then how did we?"

"Um, because we were found by humans, who treated us like children because that's what we looked like?" Michael ventured.

"No, that doesn't quite fly, Michael," Max argued. "Unless we underestimated how much we were adapting to human expectations. We *acted* like kids, or we'd never have been accpted as children." He shook his head, focusing on Nacero again. "As fascinating as this speculation is, we're straying wide of the point. We can work on the strategy, if that's your weak point man, and let you be the heavy duty firepower. Or just teach us how to use our own firepower. Wanna help us kick the bitch, and get my friend back?"

"I... I can't tell it to you," Nacero mumbled, shaking his head slightly and not meeting Max's eyes. "Too big a gulf to cross yet. Even a running leap wouldn't do it - go splat at the bottom, squish." Eww, that's an image I didn't need to have in my mind. Was he talking about the cultural or linguistic gulf between us?? "Don't need me, though. It's in here, all that you need. Just see the light."

"You mean the wall with the colored lights?" I blurted out before I thought... dammit. But Nacero didn't even seem to hear or pay attention. My friends were quiet for a few seconds, and then Michael repeated the question, slower and in a little more detail, including pointing back up the cave to where the wall had been. "Is that there to teach us how to use our powers?"

We all stared at the enigmatic shapeshifter for a long moment, wondering what his reply would be, or if he'd make one. Then, finally... "The setting sun teach Van Gogh about beauty?" Wow... that was almost a human sentiment, and kinda Zen to boot. "Couldn't. Can't teach someone if you don't even know that they're there."

"Okay, so 'teach' is the wrong term," Max said, his face glowing with hope. "But it's a learning aid?" The shifter didn't reply, aside from a nodlike jerk of his head that mightn't have signified anything at all, but Max seemed satisfied with his answer. Nacero didn't seem to like replying to yes-or-no-am-I-right questions... maybe he realized that it would take away from his air of mystery to answer them straight out, and he was probably saving cryptic replies for more interesting questions.

"Enough about teaching, then?" Isabel asked in a loud voice. "Will you help us directly? Will you come into battle with the Special Unit by our side?"

Nacero's mood turned on a dime and he practically snarled at her. "If I go into battle, you might regret it, Usurper!! Have no love for the hunters, but they aren't the ones who STOLE MY RIGHTS!"

"We... we don't know what you think we stole from you," Max blurted out desperately. "We'd give it back it we can."

That dark, intense gaze finally settled on Max's own. "It's not that easy." And all of a sudden, Nacero charged back through the jelly wall. "Do we go after him??" Michael yelled.

"Umm... no," Isabel grumped. "He might find a weapon and attack us if we try. Let him cool off for now - we've learned a lot this time." She sighed. "I'm sorry I pushed him too far - but things seemed to be going... well, good except for the communication issues. He seemed like he honestly wanted to help us."

"Maybe Tess will have additional insights when we see her next," I said. "Seems to me like there's something almost human about the way he loves you guys and hates you at the same time."

Michael's eyes went wide. "Well, that's one theory I guess - or maybe half of one."

"Back to the wall of color," Max suggested. "Does what he said fit in with what you experienced? I didn't really hear all of what you guys said after you looked into it."

"Hmm." Michael mulled that over. "Maybe, yeah. If it's a kind of meditation aid or something like that - then maybe I got just a trace of some insight that I couldn't even hold onto well enough to remember that I touched it." He sighed. "Should I look into it again, for longer this time?"

"Be really careful, Michael," Isabel opined. "Remember, he has conflicted feelings towards us at least. Maybe looking into there is dangerous, and he was trying to trick you into doing it again."

"Ermm," Max muttered, and I looked over at him - we all did. Wasn't hard to see that Liz's plight was weighing heavier and heavier on his mind. If looking into the color wall stood a good chance of helping him learn what he needed, to save her - then he was probably going to look inside. But I think he also didn't want to just brush off Isabel's warning. So...

"How about this," I volunteered. "We finish searching the rest of this chamber first. If we haven't found anything better, or any good reason not to, then one of you looks into the wall - and maybe if you can work out a way that someone else can try to protect that person from any booby trap effect, then you do that too."

"Sounds good to me," Michael said, reaching out to hold my hand. "Why don't we start going further back - we know where the color wall is and I can avoid looking at in as I pass. Max, Isabel, you guys stick together and try the side passages?"

Max nodded, and after a second so did Izzy. And we started to look through the rest of the alien hideout, as quickly as we could while still being careful.

------------

After passing the wall of colors, Michael strode confidently forward towards the back of the main chamber. "You wanna take a closer look at those pod dealies??" I asked him.

"Sure, why not?? Seems weird to think that we came from there." He thought about it. "Do you suppose we were CONCEIVED in those things... or in some kind of lab like test tube babies maybe, and then grown in the washing machines as if we were something out of a science fiction movie."

"I hate to break it to you," I explained, "but as aliens living undetected amidst humans, you already qualify for science fiction in just about any medium."

"Hmm... okay, I have to admit you have a point," Michael admitted. "But somehow alien isn't on the same level of weirdness as 'genetically engineered alien born out of a strange machine.'" He considered that a moment. "Maybe it's just that I've had more time to get used to the alien thing."

By this time we were at the strange machines, standing in front of the left-most to be exact. The three of them were arranged in, well, more like an arc than a line... about forty degrees of angle seperating the way that they were each facing. Each were well over seven feet high, and maybe... erm, a few inches over four feet deep, and at least four and a half feet wide. It was hard to see much detail in that strange light, but there didn't seem to be any designs or controls or power feeds anywhere around the blocks - just one hole in each. Michael reached forward and felt the edge of it. "Ewww, is it gucky??" I asked.

"Nah - give it a try yourself," he urged me. Nervously I stretched my own arm out and ran my fingers up to the cavity. The front face of the machine was perfectly smooth and somehow felt like it might have been polished only a few minutes before... like when my Mom took me to Dallas when I was a little girl and we rode the monorail there. Inside the hole... no, it definitely wasn't gucky or sticky... at least, not the way I'd expected it to be sticky, like ooze or anything. There was... it felt like there was some kind of trace powder inside, some of which clung to my fingertips, and since I didn't know what it was I snatched my hand back and brushed it away.

After examining the three big boxes a little further and not finding anything particularly interesting in any of them, we started to move back along the wall. After maybe ten paces Michael nearly bumped his knees into a kind of a low shelf, sticking out of the wall. He reached out and picked something up from the shelf. "What... what is it?" I asked him, feeling a little jumpy.

"Umm... maybe a kind of alien book??" He asked. The thing was probably six inches square and maybe an inch and a half thick, and when I reached out to touch it the front seemed papery, a kind of rough-grained paper, but definitely paper. Michael did something, and unfolded it out into two square halves.

"Okay, a book sounds like a good guess," I agreed. "Can you read anything written on it?"

"Ermm... not in this light," he said. "Can just about make out something that's either a drawing, or... well, it's definitely not English."

We examined a few other things, not able to make much out of most of them, and finally got back to Max and Isabel. Michael told them about the incubation machines, and showed them the book, which turned out to fold out the other way too - it was one long strip of paper folded up almost like an accordian, and writing on both sides too. "Did you guys find anything of note?"

"Well, this," Isabel said, holding something out. It was a little tapered tube of metal, closed at one end, just about long enough to fit on a finger - in fact, it fit my middle finger or Isabel's perfectly, while for the guys the middle finger was too long and too big around, but they could put it on their index fingers or ring fingers nicely. Nobody had any clue what it did other than fit on a finger - if anything.

"Okay, well, we tried," Max said. "I'm gonna try looking into the freaky color wall. Isabel - I assume you want to try keeping a watch over me?"

"You bet," she insisted. "Umm, Maria, do you want to guide me towards the pane without letting me look at it?" I sighed and smiled at the same time - it seemed just a bit ridiculous how paranoid she was being about this thing, but then again it never really hurts to be sure I suppose. I held Isabel's hands and walked her backwards through the cave, so that she ended up about a yard before the color wall and a little bit to the side of it, angled so that her gaze crossed its path, so to speak, at maybe a thirty degree angle. Then Max walked up towards us, keeping his own attention focused on the pod machines until he was only about five feet away from Isabel. "Closer," she insisted, and Max stepped closer. "Okay, I think you're good. I've got a vague sensation of your brain operations and your mind now, Max. Hopefully, it's detailed enough that I'll be able to sense something going wrong, but not a deep enough rapport that anything that effects you will easily spread to me." She took a deep breath. "You can look now."

Max turned to stare into the shifting colors, and he immediately seemed to zone out just like Michael had. He didn't gasp... he got a very pensive look on his face, like Liz when she's trying to figure out something tough about math or physics that I'd never be able to get no matter how many times she explains it to me. (The thought of Liz made my stomach clench - we HAD to get her out, and soon!!) His expression didn't change much over a minute or so, but there seemed to be slight nuances... like he was struggling with something that was puzzling and wonderful at the same time.

Isabel, meanwhile, was getting more and more antsy. "Is... is something wrong?"

"How am I supposed to know??" she wailed, frustration simply dripping out of his voice. "There's... there's nothing going on that I can pin down as specifically harmful, but a very subtle and pervasive change is beginning to spread through his subconscious mind. If there's something there that makes him unfriendly to us, that makes him not the Max that I know and love..."

"Okay, let's just give him a moment longer, okay??" I suggested. "Maybe it just means that he's starting to learn what you guys need to know, right??" Isabel nodded, but she looked thoroughly miserable at the idea. "Max, max, can you hear me?"

"Maria?" Max whispered softly. "Maria, don't bug me, this is important."

Well hrmphh. Obviously he wasn't completely tranced out, and could pay attention when he had to - maybe just when somebody said his name. But that kind of reaction didn't seem especially Max-like. I waited for longer, as Isabel jittered more and more in place, and even Michael started to fidget. Finally, about thirty seconds after he'd said to not bug him, I couldn't take it any more, and reached out to shake him again. "Sorry, Max, but -- umm, better safe than sorry, right?"

Max looked at me and smiled just a bit. "Ehh... I'd have rather had a bit more time in there, but I understand you being worried about safety." He stepped casually away from the color pane, towards Michael, and Isabel followed him, keeping her eyes firmly trained on her brother. "I feel like I was on the edge of learning what I needed... but maybe that's something that we shouldn't put too much trust in. Alex and the others will be worried, with us gone this long."

"Yeah," Michael put in. "If Tess called Nacero here, then maybe she was able to tell that he split, too. Let's head out." Isabel nodded, and we all hurried back to the wall of jelly-stone. (Hmm... like Yogi Bear's jellystone park?) Max and Isabel went through first, and Michael shot me a look. I smiled and stood straight in the middle of the passageway, waiting for him to wrap his arms around me and carry me through again, since that seemed like the best way of getting a human being through. He did, embracing me from behind and pushing through. Soon all four of us were out in the desert sunlight and walking back to where Max had parked the Jeep.

"Well," Isabel said a bit sourly, "the chamber was 'interesting,' but we don't really care about interesting. We don't have Nacero working with us, and we don't have any new weapons or new insights about our powers. We don't really have anything much to show for the time we've spent in there but a weird alien book, that we can't read. And Liz is still waiting to get rescued."

Max groaned... obviously he hadn't really needed that reminder.

-----------

LIZ:

Just keeping somebody waiting in a little room can be a form of torture. Maybe that's the worst thing about going to prison, I don't know. Sure, there are meals and exercise in the yard and whatever to break up the days, but basically you're waiting in a little room for however many months and years are up and you're eligible for parole, right??

I'm pretty sure that the Special Unit doesn't think much of parole. They don't seem to have a very favorable policy on exercise or frequent meals for their prisoners either.

So I was trying to kill time by staring at the wall and daydreaming... picturing various ways that my friends could rescue me, then deciding that those were too passive. I tried imagining daring and completely impractical escape plans, and they were fun for a while, but then I decided that I wanted my imagination to completely fly free of this place, and thought of days spent with Max and the others on a florida beach, trips up into the mountains for skiing and hot chocolate, camping out at the state park near Fort Sumner. I was in the middle of a particularly fun fantasy with Max kissing me at the top of the Sears tower when the door opened once again. I looked up, and my blood went cold.

Evelyn Hardi-- no, NOT-Evelyn-Harding was standing confidently in the doorway to my cell, smiling slightly. Okay, well, might as well try to be bold with my words if nothing else. "Hi there. Mind if you tell me who you really are now, since I'm pretty damn sure that you're not really Tess' Mom?"

She smiled slightly. "Oh, my. I suppose I managed to forget that you couldn't know yet -- because your friends found out, I mean. And - well, so much else has been happening that... I pride myself on being a 'little details' person, but I guess none of us are completely beyond losing track. Danielle Pierce." Her voice was still friendly, and she almost stuck out her hand for me to shake before visibly 'realizing' that it would be difficult or impossible for me, manacled as I was.

"Pierce... Daniel Pierce's daughter? Hmm, I wouldn't have thought he would be young enough to have a child your age, but... it's past co-incidence that he would have a wife with so similar a name."

Danielle cocked her head. "No, no, I'm not buying that routine, Miss Parker - try again. Tess would *certainly* have told you the truth by now - that Special Agent Daniel Pierce is a man who does not exist. An actor, occasionally, plays the role when I require him to. But the only Pierce that you need to worry about is standing right in front of you."

I remembered... remembered my confusion when Tess had told me about that, told me that Pierce had kept up the charade not because of male chauvinism, but simply because presenting a fake target, any kind of fake identity, would draw attacks away from her personally. Somehow that was starting to make a little bit more sense than it had at the time. "Alright, what happens now - do you torture me? Try to get information about my friends??"

"Well, no, I don't believe in torture," Pierce said softly. "Physical pain and mistreatment can strengthen the mind, galvanize the will, and make even fairly honest people into the most egregious kind of liars. But... well, I suppose you could call this an interrogation." She smiled, a smile I found profoundly unpleasant somehow. Was it just because the smile indicated that she felt completely in control of the situation? Or was there something worse?? "I have my own interrogation methods - not exactly unique, but I doubt you'd have heard of their like before."

She called guards in and had my manacles taken off - I tried to struggle a little at that point, but there was no use, the guards had me more tightly in their grip than the stupid cord had been. Soon a chair had been brought into the cell, and I was strapped and restrained into the chair, those little things put on my eyelids so that I couldn't close them or even blink. I could speak if I wanted to, but not move an inch of my body otherwise. About eight or nine feet away from my chair was the wall, a section of the wall that I'd never particularly noticed before, possibly because it was far away from my bed and it had been dimly lit until now. A special overhead lamp shone on the institutional paint job now, and I could see that in the middle of the horribly bland yellow-cream color, right at eye level, were a row of four blue circles.

"How many circles do you see on the wall?" Danielle asked conversationally.

"Four circles," I muttered shortly, a nervous feeling rising in my stomach.

"Really, four circles, not five?? I could have sworn someone told me that five blue circles were painted there." She didn't turn around to look at them herself. "You wouldn't be playing a little joke on me, would you, Liz??"

So this was it. She wasn't going to ask me any really important questions to start with - just this test routine, and maybe others like that. Once I was broken enough that I really did see five circles on the wall, just because she wanted me to, then she could ask me anything else and I'd probably tell her what she wanted to know. I thought briefly about trying to fake it, just saying 'sorry my mistake there are five' right now to throw her off track, but it didn't seem like too great a gambit - obvious enough that she'd have a counter-strategy for that, and once I started telling her what she wanted to hear, that might be a very slippery slope easy to slide down. So I played it straight. "Nope, four circles. Look for yourself."

Danielle bent down and brushed her hand across my hair... I think she'd have wanted to tuck it behind my ear, but with the head restraints that would have been very awkward. "Are you *sure* Miss Parker??"

And a wave of something made my vision swim and my thoughts explode in confusion. I held onto one thing alone - I couldn't let her win. Pierce was trying to break through my mental defences and own me. I could NOT let that happen.

-----------

MAX:

"Hey, what's the word?" I asked as we pulled up near the other cars sitting about fifty feet away from route 285 north.

"Not too much," Tony Harding replied. "Waiting for you mostly. Young Mister Whitman has a few ideas for diversions, but nothing that'll really help you go up against Pierce and live to tell about it. And you?"

"Nacero has big issues," Isabel replied, hurrying forward to grab onto Alex's hand like she was drowning and he was reaching out to her from the deck of a boat. (Maybe she was, in a way.) "There's a freaky kaleidescope thing that might help us get power-ups, but... well, it's really complicated. Nothing much else to report."

"What... what did he tell you guys?" Tess asked. "Nacero I mean. I - I was able to lead him there, but once he got inside wherever that was, he... it's like he was able to completely close his mind off from me. And I wasn't getting much from the rest of you either."

That disturbed me - it always does actually, when Tess refers to being able to sense our thoughts. "Umm... this and that." Most of what we'd talked about wasn't really Tess' business - she might be helping out as much as she could, but that still didn't make her one of the gang. "Priorities. Strategy and firepower. This mysterious whatever that he's convinced the three of us stole from him. Which, apparently, we couldn't give back even if we wanted to."

"Alright," Alex said. Possibly he caught my evasive tone and was trying to divert Tess from the subject. "Well, Topolsky is on her way. We, umm, we didn't leave her wheels way out at the safehouse - so she used her FBI tricks and 'acquired' some."

"Ohh." I hadn't thought about that aspect. But maybe it was for the best this way - Time was short and we couldn't wait for someone to drive out to the motel in the middle of the desert. We could hardly wait for Topolsky to drive *here.* "What's her ETA?"

"Little over half an hour," Alex replied. "Any idea what you want her to do, once she gets here??"

"She'll be perfect for creating a diversion," Michael said.

"Now wait," Maria protested. "I... I'm not Kathleen Topolsky's biggest fan, but we kinduv agreed to do what we could to protect her. Giving her up in exchange for a chance to get Liz back doesn't seem at all fair."

"I don't expect to have to give her up," I said evenly. "Pierce w0on't risk anything just to get her back, Especially if one or more of *us* happen to be nearby when she makes her move." I thought about that. "Maybe Valenti is the key. She said that they talked, in the fall when she was working as the guidance counselor, and that she came to him again before Isabel, umm, 'made sure' of her two weeks ago." No point in talking too much about dreamwalking in front of Tess and Tony, even if they knew that it was theoretically possible.

"Right, and afterwards, when we were trying to figure out how to spring Miss T, Valenti came to the crashdown and asked about her," Maria chimed in. "Said that they'd been spotted together at Senor Chao's. He was interested in her - isn't a stretch to suppose that he still would be."

"So... so she walks straight into the Sheriff's station?" Alex asked.

Several of us exchanged glances. "Well, it has the advantage of being bold and unexpected," Michael decided.

"And what then?" Tess asked.

"Then we take advantage of any opportunities that come up, if any," Isabel said.

"What... like trying to break Liz out then?" Tony replied. "Pierce won't fall for that easily. She'll guess that you're trying to make a move for Liz as soon as Kathleen appears on the scene, as it were. She'll double security at her base camp."

"Really?" I asked, turning to look at Tony. "Then... I want to watch that. Might... might just tell me something I need to know."

"Yeah," Michael chimed in. "And if they're concentrating on security, then they're not trying an offensive move on us. Let's do it." He stepped a bit closer to me. "You want Izzy and me keeping an eye on Topolsky?"

"Yeah, that sounds good man," I said. "Tony, you're with me on observation lookout, if that's alright."

"Umm,,, okay, but I still don't see what this is going to accomplish."

"Neither do I, yet," I admitted. "But let's just try it and see."

---------

We talked about other kinds of plans and preparations while waiting for Kathleen to arrive, then ran out of plans and just talked about distant, happy times to make ourselves feel better. Finally an olive green two-door car pulled in off the highway and a familiar blonde woman got out to meet us. "Max, I'm so sorry about Liz. What can I do?"

Well... that was likely to be the best opening that I'd get. "This might sound strange, but I'll do my best to keep you safe. The plan, for now -- is for you to go to the sheriff's station, if possible get in to talk with Valenti on your own, and... well, do whatever you can to distract him or try and complicate the situation, without endangering yourself."

"Like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter?" Topolsky said, quirking up one eyebrow and smiling in a way that hopefully said she didn't really believe the worst of my motives.

"More... like the red herring, I'm afraid," I replied. Topolsky considered this, and nodded. Everybody else seemed to be remaining quiet, letting me handle the situation by myself.

"And while I'll be doing the herring thing, rubbing myself all over the trail I suppose because I gather that's what herrings do, what will YOU be up to?" she asked. "Will you tell me that much?" Somehow something in her voice implied that she wouldn't be too surprised (or too upset, maybe,) if I chose to reserve that part.

"Umm... mostly just surveillance, I'm afraid. A very good source - " pause, and I didn't look or gesture with my head towards Tony Harding, but somehow I thought Kathleen would be both clever enough to work out who of the crowd nearby was new, and discrete enough not to freak out about us associating with the people she'd seen on the Special Unit base, "- has informed me that if you show up so suddenly, Pierce will consolidate his defences, preparing for us to mount a rescue mission and break Liz out of captivity. As much as I'd like to, I need to know as much as possible about those defences first, so this time I'm just going to watch as they get consolidated."

"Not a bad strategy, if somewhat cautious," Kath agreed. "How much passive maneuvering do you have the patience for, with Liz in Pierce's hands??"

"Maybe not enough," I admitted. "But charging blindly into a trap - or just plan into superior numbers and forces - isn't going to help Liz any either."

"She might be let go entirely if Pierce catches the rest of you," Topolsky said, softly, and I looked up at her in shock. "I'm sorry - that was too sharp a needle for the situation, I suppose. But it's true."

"That still wouldn't really be much better for Liz," Maria said softly. "To be free, and know that some of the people she loves most are enjoying Pierce's tender mercies, with no hope of rescue... No, not ever."

"Yeah," Michael said. "It's not gonna happen. And speaking of not having much patience, let's go put the plan into action." He turned to Alex and Maria. "Are you guys okay for hanging out with Tess while we do this?"

"Yes," Maria said quickly. "Let's all go chill at my house. Tess - I know that this must be the tenth or twelfth time one of us has said this, but I have some more things that I'd like to ask you about."

"My fault for being so incredibly intriguing, I suppose," Tess said, though her voice was less playful than her words. "Okay, let's go."

"Actually... can I go with you, Max?" Alex asked. "I... I don't know if I'll be able to help, but..."

"Sure," I said quickly. "Another pair of eyes sounds good."

"Might as well synchronize our watches," Kathleen said. "Might not matter so much, but... heck, it's kind of a tradition for me before a caper like this."

"Allow me," Isabel said, and waved her hand. I looked down at my digital watch just in time to see it jump about thirty seconds ahead. Topolsky gasped slightly, and I guessed that her own, more old-fashioned, wristwatch had also been adjusted.

We split up into different cars and drove back into town.

----------

"Okay, if she stuck to her timetable, then Kathleen should be walking through the front door of the station just about now," I muttered, looking at my watch, and then back through Tony's binoculars. The three of us were set up on a rooftop across the street and several numbers down from 'Pierce HQ' - far enough that we might not be easily noticed, yet in a good position to get a decent view, especially with binos like these. "Any idea how soon we'll see a reaction?"

"Hmmm." Tony considered the question. "As soon as any of the deputies recognize Kathleen, he'll use a closed-network digital comm to contact someone over here," he said slowly. "It'll take a little while to sort out the context of the situation, and longer to issue orders and follow them. Let's see... fifteen, fourteen..." He kept counting down slowly, and broke off at 'two' when the nearest door opened an two more sentries came out to join the one who had been there already."

"Okay, more men on all the exits," Alex replied softly. "Is that going to be it?"

"I suspect not," I muttered, feeling an odd pricking sensation running through the muscles of my neck and at the base of my skull. After maybe twenty seconds, the door opened again - one of the guards swung his weapon to cover the newcomer, but relented after checking the ID badge against her face. (Had he recognized her too, or would we be able to get past the guards by obtaining fake badges to match our faces? Surely it couldn't be that simple.)

"Those are some big-ass automatic rifles the guards are carrying," Alex whispered. "And they're within sight of the street - a fairly ordinary Roswell residential neighborhood. Isn't somebody going to notice?"

"Too bad there don't seem to be any ordinary residents around," Tony drawled. I shushed them slightly, my attention still on the newcomer, trying to figure out why she was just standing there with her eyes closed.

PSIONIC POWER! It burst on my mind, not just as an idea or a possibility, but cold hard certainty. The woman was a psychic, some kind of perceptive, and she was looking for - well, looking for me, was what it came down to. Any aliens in the vicinity, anybody else who might be acting suspiciously or hanging around to help us out.

It was like an incredible quantum leap had taken away my old view of how the world around me worked, and left something dizzying, scary - something that might be big enough to eat up my sanity if I let it. But I held tightly to one single thread of will - *Liz.* She had to be saved from Pierce's tender mercies, and if this strange new world had even a possibility of giving me the tools that I needed to have to do that, then I would charge into it eagerly. Somehow, that resolve kept me centered enough to not lose myself.

Awareness. Awareness of the space around me, the space between the building and this rooftop, between the psychic and my own body, that I was suddenly completely familiar with in a way that was much more immediate than just a view over a rooftop, diagonally across a street, to a brick wall with a few trees growing up against it, a door with a ten-inch stoop and brassy D-shaped door handles. I probably couldn't even have memorized all of that much to tell you by sight alone, and the other normal human senses - hearing, smell, touch, would have been even less use in mapping the field of battle. Yes, it was a battle of minds that was about to take place, though not much like the battles of paranormal powers that I would have imagined even a day ago.

I spoke of awareness about a paragraph ago, right? That was where it started - alien senses telling me about every cubic centimeter of the space around me - what, if anything was filling it, how fluids in its vicinity were moving, exactly how the radiance of the sunlight was shining through that space - though the sunlight was shining in much the same way every place it WAS shining, of course. Some places it had been interrupted, obviously. This - this was an aspect of the power that we'd touched on before, when checking out our friends for government transmitters or preparing to use molecular transmutation powers - but I had never realized that it could go so far beyond. I wondered how far the psionics of the special unit could...

Oh, right, the psionic lady. She - she wasn't as aware of the surroundings as I was, I could tell that somehow. Maybe she had the same kind of detailed awareness as I had for around thirty feet around her, but no further. Otherwise she wouldn't have spent so much energy constructing a kind of... a probe ray, I guess it was, a giant cone-shaped construct that would send out psionic energy, and tell her what it hit by the reflections, kind of like a paranormal radar dish.

This seemed almost too easy. I waited and was incredibly ready by the time the cone was sweeping toward us. Alex and Tony were remaining perfectly silent, which helped. I had observed the way the 'radar' portion of the woman's psionic powers worked, and was able to divert almost all of the radar echoes bouncing off of us before they got back to her. I was worried that she'd get suspcicious, that too little was bouncing off the rooftop itself, but she swept back and started over in the other direction, down the street in the other direction. Straining my new power awareness, I constructed insubstantial 'radar dummies' and left them there for her to sense - mockups of myself, Isabel, Michael, Tess - and Danielle Pierce, just for the heck of it, all leaking out traces of energy. She found them, sure enough, and brought up a radio to her mouth, talking into it quickly. Soon she rushed off, taking two of the guards from that door, and meeting up with other people down the street, heading off to investigate. I smiled at the lone sentry left behind, wondering how hard it would be to incapacitate him with alien powers, and then urged Alex and Tony back well away from the edge of the roof.

"I... I learned what I needed to know for now," I told them smiling. "Know what I need to know for now, but time is still going to be short."

"What... what do you mean, Max?" Alex asked as we hurried in through the roof access and started making our way down a staircase. I was still maintaining awareness of the surroundings, just in case. "What happens next?"

"Michael, Isabel, and I go back into the cave," I said. "We all have to look into that color wall again. And we'll need the Orb too, the one that Topolsky gave us." Deep breath. "And then we walk straight through the front door of Pierce's stronghold."

"WHAT?" Tony burst out, a second before Alex could. "Max, are you crazy?"

"Umm... I might be," I admitted. "Wouldn't rule out that possibility entirely. But that won't stop me from getting Liz back."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 5:10 am

Part 5c

Isabel:

"Max, slow down," I said. "You're not making much sense."

"He's kinda been like that ever since it started," Alex whispered, a worried look on his face, as he stepped close and we each looped an arm around each other. "Rambling about how the colors are the key to getting Liz back and none of them will be able to stop you once you all pick up the key."

"Oh, boy," I groaned. Between the alien whatever in the cave and the strain of Liz's continued hostage status, had my dear brother started to break down? Then another question occured to me. "Since WHAT happened, exactly??"

"I'm not sure of that exactly," Tony said. "There was activity inside the building - a speial agent, psionic, came out to check for anything suspicious. And Max was... was somehow able to divert her and have her lead the guards off in entirely the wrong direction. Any more than that... is probably something that only Max experienced. Inside his mind."

"MAX!!" Michael shouted, grabbing Max's shoulders with both his hands and looking deep into his eyes. "We want to help you save Liz, of course we do." He was speaking very slowly and clearly, as if Max were a... well, I'm not going to bother making a simile, so fill in with one of your own. "But first... you're going to have to explain your plan... enough to convince us that it's sane."

That seemed to get through to Max. "R-right. Sorry, man, I didn't mean to go off into whatever, I'm just trying to sort out a lot of hectic stuff, and it's tempting to get overexcited about..." He shook his head quickly again, just a bit. "Um, maybe we'd better get somewhere a bit more private."

He had a point there, I realized. All six of us were just standing around on the sidewalk near where our cars had met, nearly halfway between Pierce's building and the sheriff's station. "Umm, okay. Where?" I asked.

"How about you kids go to one of your parent's houses," Tony suggested. "It'll probably be reassuring - they'll be worried about you."

"Parents would try to make us go to bed," Max said, a little ominously. "We don't have time for that." Again, he had some of the truth on his side... it was getting pretty late. I was having a hard time believing that so much had happened in, what, about three and a half hours since we discovered that Liz was taken.

"Then we can all go back to my place," Tony suggested.

"What about Tess and Maria?" Michael asked. They weren't here with the rest of us... Maria had driven Tess to her place to ask her a few more questions. Hmm... how was Maria's mom reacting to the lateness of the hour? Were the two of them even safe there? Would Maria be able to sneak out again?

"Call her," Max suggested to me, without suggesting anything that I should say or ask.

"What happened with you guys, anyway?" Alex asked. "Kathleen??"

I pulled out my cell phone, doing my best to tune out the rest of the conversation, but Topolsky had already briefed Michael and me on her surprise visit to the Sheriff's station. She'd been waiting a while, and then finally spoke to Jim Valenti 'as confusingly as she could' for a minute and a half, then beat it out of the building, hoping that no-one would try to stop her. The young eager deputy, Hanson, had blocked her way for a second, but Jim had told him to step a--

"Hello? Who is it?"

I chuckled softly. "Maria, it's Isabel. Umm... how's your mom doing?"

That particular question obviously shocked her. "Good I hope - she's out of town this weekend."

I let out a breath of relief. "So it's just you and Tess there?" That could make things easier. I covered the mouthpiece of my phone and turned to Mister Harding. "Excuse me, but wasn't your house lousy with Special Unit bugs?"

Tony grinned a little sadly. "It was... but I fried most of them - about when I thought Evelyn was back in town. Still, might have missed a few key indicators. I thought you kids could take care of them."

"Maybe... but I'd feel better going back to Maria's," I said. "No parents to worry about there."

"Alright," Kathleen said. "Lead the way."

----------

"To get back to the main point," Max said in the very moment that he stepped into the DeLuca's front hall, "as soon as that special unit lady started using her powers in front of me, (a long way in front, admitted,) a bunch of stuff started to fall into place. About energy, and matter, and something deeper that ties them both together. About a kind of perception that has nothing to do with eyes or ears... something that we've been tapping into the surface of every time we look for bugs. It's the fundamental nature of the power that the Special Unit is trying to hoard for itself on this whole planet, and that whoever sent us to Earth was able to use better than they can. That power is ours to claim... and the color wall in the cave is the first step. Like Nasedo said, it doesn't directly teach us, but we can learn from it - like an artist learns about beauty from watching a sunrise or a sunset. Maybe it's designed to help our sense of human limitations fade away or something like that."

We all sat down, trying to digest that much. I sighed softly, and Max turned to me. "I know that you're frightened, but... it didn't hurt Michael. It hasn't hurt me - quite the opposite, though I know I'm acting a bit erratically and that might bother you. Liz is counting on us." I looked to Michael, and then at the others. Alex was looking very uncomfortable about something.

"Back on the roof, Max," he blurted out, "you said something about maybe being crazy." I blinked at that.

"I'm pretty sure now that I'm not crazy, yet," Max started off, and Michael interrupted him.

"You can probably imagine how much of a comfort that's *not.*"

"Well..." Max sighed. "The power is dangerous, yes, and part of the danger is mental. Maybe that's part of what drove Nacero crazy - he had too much contact with the power, before he could deal with it." He breathed deeply. "The thing is, compared to the Special unit, who has a pretty good grasp of the power already, and superior numbers, financial backing, weaponry etcetera, I think madness is the lesser risk. We can navigate around the danger."

"That's a heck of a thing to trust you on, Max," Maria said, sighing. "Okay, let's break it down. You say that all three of you need to go back to the cave and get this dangerous power. How long will that take? Do you need to all power-up at the same time?"

"And what are you going to do when you get all that power?" Tess asked.

Max turned to face Tess as if remembering her for the first time, and his face fell in frustration. He swivelledhis head all around and noticed Tony and Kathleen, standing in the dining room doorway, speaking among themselves but clearly close enough to listen anyway - if they wanted to. "Damn it," he swore with more feeling than I've ever heard him curse before.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Tess exclaimed. "Are you afraid that I'm going to try to double cross all of you and get this power for myself??"

"Yes," Max admitted. "Not that it's terribly personal - I do appreciate everything you've done to try to help, but I don't know you well enough to say how you'd react to that particular temptation. I'm not even a hundred percent sure that the three of us can be trusted with this much power, but I trust us a lot more than I do you, especially under the circumstances." His deep brown eyes locked on Tess' blue ones with as much dangerous energy as... as a phaser rifle or something. "Know this, Tess Harding - even if you could get inside that cave, what is inside is more likely to hurt you than to help you. You're not one of us."

A bluff, probably, but I stayed silent, supporting the bluff. The color wall had shown no indication of either helping or hurting Maria - it had just been a pointless kaleidescope effect to her. And why was Max acting so... so possesive, or so suspicious about it? Tess had never shown a hint that she wanted to do anything other than help us, and get her mom back safe. Then again, what Max said about not knowing her enough to trust her when huge power was up for grabs kind of hit a resonating note with me.

"I... I think I agree with Max," Alex announced. "I think you guys should all go back and do it tonight. And this time, I want to come with."

I smiled slightly and reached out my hand to hold Alex's. If I had to surrender myself to that alien artifact, then knowing that Alex would be there and watching out for me made the prospect a lot more bearable... not to mention the idea of holding him tight to take him through the jelly wall, the way that Michael had done with Maria. (Would the fact that Alex was a little taller than me cause a problem? Heck, he was taller than Max was, or Michael, though not quite so much.)

"Wait a second," Michael said. "Maria posed a question, or maybe two, and I want to hear some answers before I go anywhere near the cave again."

Max nodded, and started to glare at Tess again. She groaned loudly and got up. "Okay, okay, I get the hint, sheesh. Dad, Miss Toposlky, wanna go take a walk? I don't think any of us are exactly welcome in the inner sanctum here."

"Should Kathleen really just go out in public for a walk like that?" Maria asked. "I mean... we spent all of this careful time keeping her out of sight."

"Like Max said, the rules have changed. Nobody's really after her anymore," I pointed out. Tess volunteered that she and her father would protect Topolsky, as far as they could.

None of us said a word as the three of them got ready to go outside, until the front door had closed behind Topolsky. Somehow, oddly, them leaving did make me feel better. We were back to... most of the original six - only Liz herself still not accounted for. I moved myself a little closer to Alex, pressing the edge of my thigh against his and moving my hand from his hand to his knee.

"Okay. Maybe I didn't need to be so obvious about that, but no sense taking chances." Max sighed. "No, we don't have to look into infinity all together - and we can do it in whatever order makes you guys feel more comfortable. As far as time... how long did I get last time?"

"Umm... something like two minutes," Maria said.

"Okay." Max considered that. "I think I'm gonna need another three, and four at a stretch for you guys. That should be enough that you'll be able to tell if you need more."

"You get three minutes thirty-five, for them," Alex bargained, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

"Come off it," Max groaned. "This isn't some kind of game..."

"No, it isn't," I insisted. "But Alex is right, at least for me. You get ninety percent of what you asked for, because that's about how much I trust you at the moment." That hurt Max a little bit, I could tell it in his eyes, and I was sorry about it... but still intended to stick to my guns.

"Yeah!" Michael replied. "Is... is ninety percent of four minutes really three and thirty five seconds?"

"Actually thirty-six," Max replied absently.

"Well, I guess we'd better go now, or at least might as well," Maria said. "Umm... do you want me coming with too? Might get a little crowded with all five of us there."

I wanted to tell her it'd be okay, but figured that Michael should speak first on the question. "Nah, that won't be a problem," he said, and I grinned. "It was five of us inside the cave when Nacero was there, right? Didn't seem too bad at all."

"Plus, being with the rest of us is probably the best place for you," Max said softly. "As in the safest, I mean." He stood up and took a deep sigh. "I'll go and tell the others that we're leaving, just so that they don't worry."

"I'll come with," I said, squeezing Alex's leg softly once as a reassurance before leaving him. It didn't take us long to find Tony, Tess, and Kathleen, who had nearly walked around in a big circle in the time that we'd been talking. Tony thought about it for a moment, then said alright, and that he and Tess were going home, and invited Topolsky to come along. (Hmm... Tony, Tess, and Topolsky. I realize that I have to mix first and last name to make them the three T's, but maybe that's significant in an odd way.)

"Alright, I guess, and thanks," Kathleen said, before turning to Max and I. "Good luck."

"Thank you," I said, and they hurried into Tess' dad's car and drove off. I couldn't remember at the moment what had happened to Tess' car, or the wheels that Topolsky had stolen, but none of them were here. We had the Jeep though, and the Jetta, and that would certainly be enough to get the five of us back into the vicinity of the cave.

----------

Alex ran a hand slowly over the 'jelly wall', which was obviously completely rock solid for him, as it had been for Maria, and looked like he could hardly believe what I'd told him about it. "All... all you need to do is come near this, and it becomes permeable for you?"

"Well, not quite 'just come near,'" I told him softly, "Otherwise it would probably be reacting already. It takes something like half a second after I touch it. Watch." I reached past Alex's arm to lay my fingertips against the wall, and there was that momentary pause - maybe more like a second this time. Possibly the fact that Alex was touching it too was 'confusing' the wall slightly. And then - shlurp, it had sucked my fingers through. "Want to try going through all the way?" I asked as I drew my hand back outside. As fluid as the jelly seemed while I was inside it, there was no sensation of wetness afterward, nothing clinging to my skin after the contact was broken. Probably that was a good thing.

"Umm... yeah, sure," Alex said with a smile. "Except... somehow it would reassure me if we weren't the first to go through."

Somehow that disappointed me, but I tried not to let the letdown show. Things were tense enough without adding to each other's emotional disarray on purpose. "Okay... Michael, Maria?" Alex and I crowded out of the way as the other couple climbed down, and with a smile and an expression on their faces that this was starting to become slightly more routine, Michael wrapped his arms around Maria from behind and they moved through. "Do you want Max to go through too?"

"Nah, he can be on this side, just in case for some reason it seems appropriate to pull me out from the direction," Alex said. "Though I hope that wouldn't be as painful as it sounds, now that I've said it." I agreed with a nod, and let Max climb down and wait before assuming a similar position to how Michael and Maria had gone through. Of course, this had a few implications that it didn't with the two of them, especially the fact that my chest was pressing very tightly against Alex's back, a suddenly intimate contact intense enough to take my breath away. The girls started to feel a little warm and itchy, and the muscles in my legs twitched very softly in sympathy. If we had any more time, I'd have held the pose for longer just for the fun of it, and maybe to tease Alex and see if it was affecting him as much. But Max was glaring, so I nudged Alex's leg with mine, and we stepped up to the wall. Alex was starting to go through, and then... "Hey!!"

"Umm... what is it?" I asked, aware of the oddness of the pose that we were in.

"My arms are going through, possibly because yours are on top of them, but neither my head or my legs will pass," Alex muttered, more or less. His face was probably squished up against the wall a little bit, but I didn't quite want to back away yet. Moving my legs past his would deal with HIS legs, I hoped, but how about the head? Of course, I could twist around so that I was backing into the wall, and then try swinging him through while I was in mid-wall, but this was starting to get crazy.

"You stupid thing!" I ranted at the wall, without even realizing what I was doing. "This is *my* guy - when he's with me, you let him through!!" And... and even though I hadn't expected the thing to be listening to me, it... well, what happened right away was that we both kind of fell through... Alex had been leaning against the surface, and I'd been pressing up behind him, and neither of us were prepared when all the resistance went away, reacting quickly enough to step forward with our feet. When I say that all the resistance went away, I don't mean that quite literally, but it seemed less jelly-like than it had before, even - more like regular water perhaps.

Something broke our fall before Alex hit the floor - I felt his body slowing down quickly enough that it knocked my breath away... I was still pressing up against him pretty firmly. After a second, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the inside, I realized that Alex had managed to stick one foot out in front of himself, and that Michael had caught his arm - the two of them working together had been what let him more or less stop his fall. We staggered a few steps together, my arms still around Alex, and straightened up, turning the formation into a face to face hug. Once I was ready to stop hugging him, Max was standing inside the cave too.

"Isabel, I think you really did something to the wall, yelling at it like that," he grumbled. "It was different stepping through, like there wasn't as much there. I... I'm worried that you might have turned the security off entirely."

"Hey? Let me see," Maria said, stepping back up to the wall. It made sense that she should be the one to test it, and when Michael made a step to follow her, I shook my head, and he caught the hint and hung back. Maria stroked her hands over the wall and pushed against it - it was obviously still as solid as ever, for her alone.

"Okay," I suggested. "Now, Michael, take her hand, but don't try to lead the way through the wall for her. Just maintain contact, and we'll see what that does." Shrugging, Michael did so, and as soon as he touched Maria's left hand, her right suddenly sunk into the wall up to her wrist. Alex and I repeated a similar test... Alex could still not pass through himself, but as long as he was touching me - or even Max, the wall reacted to him as much as it did to any of us. Also, the 'water instead of jelly' effect seemed to be a constant now.

"We... we'll need to try it with someone else, maybe," Max said. "See if someone else would be able to get access by holding one of us hostage."

"Great," Michael sighed. "And just who, aside from Maria and Alex, and Liz once we get her back, do you want to show this cave to?" He had a point. I certainly wasn't wild about letting Tess or her father know about any of this stuff... it was a secret for us alone. Even Topolsky didn't belong here.

"Let's not worry about that right now," I said with a sigh. "I... I think it doesn't apply to anyone else - just Alex, because I specifically mentioned him to the wall, and Maria, because you brought her through a few times the hard way, Michael." Sigh. "Right now, we have another kind of wall to deal with."

"Yeah," Michael muttered a bit darkly. "Any ideas as far as the order?"

Right... Max had mentioned that, and I hadn't had much time to think about it. Did I want Max to go stare into his alien sunset again, and either get even weirder, or maybe learn enough to find some kind of balance, and reassure us? Or -- well, the only alternative was for Michael or I to go first, and I didn't really feel any comfier with that kind of pattern.

"Somewhat offhandedly, just to settle the issue," Maria blurted out, "Max, Michael, and Isabel last. Any serious objections to that?" No-one could think of any, and I stepped close to Max as he got into position for staring again, determined to monitor his mind like I had last time, for all the good it had done. Nobody said much, and when I started to feel Max's mind changing again, it seemed... a little less radical than last time. More balanced and healthy, maybe, though I might have just been desperately enough wanting to sense that that I subconsciously convinced myself.

"That's three minutes," Alex said softly, in what didn't seem like it had been nearly enough time. I looked up and realized that he was holding his wristwatch between his fingers. "Max, can you hear me?"

"Yes," Max said softly. For a second I was worried that he wouldn't want to come out of it completely, that we'd have to jog him away like last time, and he'd still be irritable and weird. But he shook himself and deliberately jerked his head so that his gaze was no longer tracking to the color wall, and we stepped away from it a little bit. "Oh- okay, I think I got most of what I need, if not all. Do you want me to talk about it, or wait until you guys have taken their turns?"

"Umm... that depends on whether what you say is going to be reassuring," I said after a few seconds.

Max smiled. "Well, it's definitely a comfort to me, especially since I don't feel that tiny bit of craziness inside my head anymore... though it might still be a danger if I need to really do something complicated with the power. Umm... Thought." He nodded, almost like a benevolent professor. "Thought is something that is real in the universe, as real as matter and energy, and as different from either as they are from each other. That is the basis of our powers... we think, and the thought creates and manipulates energy according to what it needs to do, and the energy manipulates matter. What human psionics can do..." He sighed softly. "I'm not sure that it has as much to do with specific gene patterns as much as they think - psionics are just people who have learned to create specific thought patterns. That explains why psionics run in families - a trained Psi will look for powers in their children and will train them to think in similar ways - with some variations, which is why Tess' powers don't work in quite the same way as her mother's do."

My mouth fell open. "So... how does this help us?" I asked after a long moment.

"Well, I'm not sure about humans, but we... the four of us, including Nacero, and whatever aliens whose society we came from..." Max took a deep breath. "We're more tuned into the powers of unchained Thought than any humans are, even the most powerful Psis. We'd have to be, considering the kinds of things we could do before we even understood about any of this stuff. I... I think that we'd be able to learn any Psi power and use it ourselves. And that may be just the beginning."

"Then let's test that," Michael suggested. "Pierce used her powers on you, she was able to *lean* on you and Liz, get you to react in the way she wanted... at least somewhat. Can you do the same?"

"Shouldn't you be taking your turn, first, sweetie?" Maria said, an oddly wistful look on her face. "We don't have oodles of time, and Liz is still in trouble."

"Yeah, and let's *not* test it by leaning on people's minds, please," Alex said as Michael started to move towards the color wall. "At least, not people here. How about this, Max?" He pulled out a little water bottle from his pants pocket and tossed it to my brother. "Can you make this cold-boil, like Tess did?"

Max smiled. I had Alex toss his watch to Maria, to time Michael's tour at the wall, while we watched Max concentrate on the bottle. Very quickly it started to bubble and froth, and I reached out to touch the bottle - it was just as cool as everything else here in the cave. "I think I can hot-boil it too, but that might not be good for the bottle."

"It's rated for temperatures up to three-hundred f I think... for heating things in the microwave," Alex told him. "So unless you think the plastic will get hotter than that..."

"Nope." Something changed in the boiling water, hard to tell for a moment, and then I realized that it was now breathing a small cloud of steam through the opened mouth. Again I touched the bottle, and it was definitely starting to warm up. "Okay, so now, you've not only replicated a power that was demonstrated to you, but you've also created an effect that Tess wasn't able to demonstrate to us."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "So... I realize this might be a tough question to answer, but what powers are we going to need to go into that building and take Liz back?" He thought for a moment. "I... I think I can probably paralyze everybody on the building grounds, so that they can't move, or even speak unless I allow it. Except for us, that is. That... that'll be a strain, expecially since I'm new with this kind of power, but I think I can keep it up for long enough... eight minutes, at least."

I whistled. "Damn, you don't think small, do you? But you're right... that's the kind of thing that we'll need, to go right in the front door and get her back." A pause. "That won't stop Pierce and the other psis from trying to attack us mentally, will it?"

"Not as such, no."

"Then... then maybe I should work on that element. Anti-psi measures." Thought about that a long time. "I... I probably won't be able to keep them from using their powers completely, right??"

"No," Max agreed. "That would take a lot of expertise, and probably run up against the Indeterminacy principle, too."

"Indeterminacy??" Alex repeated. "Like Heisenberg and quantum mechanics and all of that stuff?"

Max nodded. "Yep. Even though a lot of stuff that is quantum-indeterminate about the universe as far as science can tell is subject to the influence of unchained thought, there are still limits... and the workings of the human brain are fundamentally pretty indeterminate. Probably the aliens, too, and any creature in the universe that can actually think instead of just calculating draw on quantum uncertainty in their minds. That's a restriction that goes both ways... it's probably the reason why Pierce could only lean on our minds, Alex - yours, mine, and Liz's, and not simply command us to give ourselves up for capture."

"But... but what about Valenti and his deputies?" Isabel asked. "Hasn't she controlled their minds??"

"It's a little more blatant manipulation than she did with us," Max allowed, "but still probably not an overwhelming takeover, just the kind of persuasion and recruitment that anybody can do, with her power backing them up. Valenti... as much as he distrusted the FBI alien hunters, the chance to work with them was probably a strong temptation... and Pierce might have tried to vamp him, as well." I had to admit that that made some sense. I hadn't had a good look at Danielle Pierce, but she was an attractive woman, and probably had a dangerous appeal for a man of her own age.

"I get it," Alex said slowly. "The deputies just need a bit of leaning to make sure that they don't question any slightly unusual orders... they're already trained to follow the sheriff." Max nodded.

"Okay, that's time," I heard Maria say behind me, and soon she and Michael had joined the circle. "Umm... can we just get a little further in this before I take my turn?" I asked.

"Are you nervous?" Michael asked... in a surprisingly empathetic tone.

"Umm, no," I muttered, but that was a half-truth at best. "Just want to finish some planning that we were doing." And that part wa quite true enough. "So... I can't supress Pierce's powers totally, but I need to keep her from hurting us... or Liz, or leaning on us heavily enough that we can't complete the mission." Pause. "Or summoning overwhelming help from outside her headquarters, or trying to do anything that would make it impossible for us to escape..."

"Yeah, that sounds about like it," Max admitted. "If you take this on, it'll probably be the hardest job, but I think you'll be up to it." A pause. "If you can use the orb to increase your powers and your ability to multitask, though, you should definitely be the one to hold it."

"Right, you mentioned the orb before," Michael said. "Any idea what it can do? Whatever I got from the color wall, there wasn't anything about it in there."

"I... I'm still guessing, and probably getting nowhere close to its real purpose," Max admitted. "But even way back when, we could tell from holding that it had an active power, something defensive. I think that that orb was sent along to help protect us from earth natives who might want to harm us... like the special unit. That's really as much as I've worked out, but maybe when we pick it up again, things will get clearer."

"Alright." I nodded. "One more thing, and then I go to face the wall. Michael: Max is going to try to paralyze everybody in the special unit complex, and I'm on counter-psi duty." Michael thought about that, and then signalled his agreement. "As far as I can tell, what that leaves you with is barrier nullification... opening up doors, making holes through walls, blasting out any automated weapons that don't need humans operating them to fire on us. Do you think you're up for that?"

Michael grinned. "Just watch me. I'll probably be able to stay on my toes just in case something unexpected comes up - or if you or Max need any help with your own assignments."

"Great," Max said, and I definitely agreed with that sentiment.

"Okay... so Maria and I should probably wait behind somewhere safe while you do this," Alex said softly, and I turned to face him. "Not that I really look forward to getting left behind - but even with your new powers, this is going to be heavily risky, and everybody coming along without huge amounts of power available kind of increases the danger for everybody, it seems to me."

"Umm... yeah, I think you're right there," I said sadly. "Wish it wasn't so, but..."

"What... what do you think, babe?" Michael asked Maria, his gruff voice doing a bad job of hiding the affection he felt for her and the nervousness in his heart... probably at the thought that she might insist on coming along.

"We... we shouldn't go inside, I'm down with that much?" Maria agreed softly. "But howabout you need two getaway drivers, huh??"

"We can't just wait outside, Maria," Alex argued. "That'd be a dead giveaway."

"If it's timed well enough in advance, we don't need to," Maria shot back. "Just drive down the street at the appropriate time."

"They won't be able to plan everything that well," Alex countered. "Something unexpected might go wrong. What if they're delayed and we have to sit outside, a perfect target? What if they have to come out early and we're not there??"

"We... we can discuss this more later," Max said. "If Maria's plan has merit, more than just leaving a car or two somewhere that we can get to it easily and driving off, then we'll use it. But meanwhile... I think Isabel has an appoitment with her power-up."

"Yeah." I sighed, shook out my legs, and went over towards the creepy wall. Alex stayed near, just holding onto my hand - and when he didn't take the watch back, Maria followed to time me out herself. Max came along too, standing opposite me, his back to the colors. I wasn't sure if he intended to monitor my mind, as I had done for him, or was just coming along for moral support, but either way I appreciated the gesture, When I looked back to Michael one time before turning my gaze straight ahead, he seemed to be looking at the folding book again. Hmm... I wondered if he was able to make any sense of it now.

After the first fraction of a second of looking at the colors, I wasn't aware of seeing them in any conscious sense, or of my friends standing around me, though I could hear them faintly speaking, and felt a trace of my feet standing on the ground, and a stronger sensation of Alex's hand in my own, though that still wasn't quite like a real touch usually is. I... I'm not sure I can explain what happened for those few minutes in any more detail.

All I know is that when Maria's voice reached out to me and told me it was time to come back out, my perceptions of reality had changed.

MICHAEL:

"I... I hate to say this, Max... but what if - what if Pierce has already gotten to Liz, at least a little? She, um, she might..." I felt horrible saying it, but somebody kinduv had to.

"We take her out of there, no matter what," Max said in his low, dangerous, no-alternatives voice. "As much as it kills me to say this, we probably shouldn't trust her completely... you're right, Danielle or one of the other psis might have conditioned her to help them in some respect. But leaving her inside isn't an answer to that - they'll only have more time to take her brain apart that way. Once she's out, maybe we can find a way to reverse anything that's been done to her mind."

"Alright," I said, a little reassured, but not much. "What if they hang subtlety and just have her struggle and resist being rescued?" I thought about that for a moment. "I guess if you... you could paralyze her too, without hurting her, and then I can probably carry her over my shoulder. Liz isn't a heavy girl."

"Hmm... yeah, or I could," Max agreed, though he seemed, understandably, a little disquieted by the thought. "You're going to need your hands free to get us out I think."

"Alright." We were driving back in from the cave, and I was looking for the first left turn that would take us off the main highway, so that we could skirt the edge of town and get to Max's that way, instead of going through the city center. Maria, Isabel, and Alex were following behind in Maria's car. :So, once we've got the orb... what next? Do you want to talk to Katy and the Hardings??"

"Yeah, I think so." Max sighed. "For one thing, I don't expect that we're going to need getaway drivers, which means that Alex and Maria are probably safer off staying with them when we go."

"Right." I'd been starting to think the same thing. Admittedly, all three of us were probably going to be tired and confused as we made our exit from Pierces' building... (when we exited, not if, but WHEN...) but the simple fact was that with Max, Isabel, myself, and Liz, we were four, and thus could fit easily into the Jeep. Having one extra driver either meant an uncomfortable level of cramming, or two different vehicles - both complications that I didn't think would be helpful.

"Any... any idea where this might be leading us, Maxwell?" I blurted out. "I mean... looking heyond the time when we rescue Liz, and make sure that Pierce hasn't done anything to hurt her or turn her against us." Max smiled slightly at that thought, which made me feel a bit less nervous and opressed too. "Do we keep pushing against the special unit, trying to... to destroy them or at least cripple them?"

"I... I don't think they're going to stop coming after us just because we take Liz back," Max pointed out. "I'm not sure how much damage we'll be able to do to them, but we have to try."

"No way to... I dunno, negotiate a truce, declare peace??" I asked, somewhat surprised at myself for suggesting the notion, but somehow felt that it had to be said.

"Hmm... not now. Even after we get Liz back, I doubt that they'd respect us enough to keep their word. Maybe after we demonstrate that we can get as good as we give."

"Or... maybe that might just make them more determined," I pointed out. "They look at us and see aliens, remember. Even if their major motivation is greed, wanting to somehow get our powers for their own, there has to be an element of fear there too. The more we act aggressively, like evil aliens trying to take over a beachhead on earth, the more that fear is going to grow."

"Uggh." Max groaned, and I wondered if that meant I had persuaded him of my point. "The thing is - what's the alternative then?"

"I... I'm not sure," I admitted. "Maybe we get Liz back and worry about the rest later."

"Doesn't suck by me," Max replied.

Soon, we were driving down Max's street and parking quietly across the street. The familiar huddle of five formed easily on the sidewalk and part of somebody's lawn. "Okay, I'll go in and get it," Izzie suggested. "You guys just try and be as inconspicuous as possible. If it isn't possible to avoid waking up my parents, I'm probably the best to smooth talk them and get back out quickly."

Max smiled. "Okay, good luck." She hurried across the road, and I turned to Maria, to distract myself from worrying, as much as possible. "Max and I talked it over on the way - we think we can handle the driving thing among ourselves."

Maria thought about that for a long moment. "Okay, well, it was worth volunteering." And all of a sudden, she flung herself at me in a hug so tight it was seriously restricting my breathing. "Be careful, spaceboy, and know that I love you. At least once, after you go through those doors, there's going to arise an urge to do something pretty stupid, and I want you to be extra strong and refuse to give in. Get Liz - get out, as simply and straightforwardly as you can. Make sense?"

She relaxed her hold somewhat to look deep into my eyes - since there was a streetlight shining on my face, presumably she could make them out better than I could see hers. "Yeah... yeah, I got it," I muttered. "Vote no on stupid." And oddly, my eyes were starting to tear up. "Keep... keep Tess and the grownups in line, and we'll be back soon - with Liz."

"Yeah," she agreed, and though I couldn't see her eyes well enough to say if they had any tears in them, but her voice seemed to be quavering noticeably. "I... I really believe that you will." I wrapped her up in my arms again.

"You got it?" Max asked, and I looked up, I hadn't thought there'd been time for Isabel to go into the house and back out, but here she was, and she held the orb up so that we could all see it.

"Piece of cake. Think they were both asleep the whole time."

"Hmm... guess they aren't too worried about any of the three of us," Max mused. "Well, okay, I think that the three T's are going to be at Harding house. That's our next stop."

----------

""Alright, Max," Tony Harding said softly. "Good luck, and yes, we'll be happy to stay with Alex and Maria while you do your thing. There's one detail I have that might help you out, though."

"Oh, what's that?" Isabel asked, her voice none too friendly to him.

"I've managed to reverse the video feeds and get security footage from the building where Liz is being held, routed to the bigscreen TV in the lounge." Tony smiled a very private smile. "Or at least, I *did* manage it. The feed is cut now, but I managed to sketch out a pretty good schematic I think." He hurried into another room, and we followed until he picked up a roll of plain white paper, eight or nine inches wide and hard to say how long, pressing it into Max's hand. "You shouldn't have much trouble figuring out my notations I think."

Max blinked, unrolled the paper a bit and looked at it, shot sidelong glances at Isabel and I, and then focused his attention back on Tony. So did I, and just as a test of my new powers, I considered him in several different ways other than visually... extending my awareness to pick up muscle twitches and tiny changes in skin condition, even attempting to fathom the surface of his mind, what he thought about the topic of conversation. All of this, as it happened, was just in place for about a second before Max asked, "Tony, are you sure that this isn't some kind of trick, that the Special Unit mightn't have fed you false information deliberately?"

"That... that's always a possibility, but I really don't think it's very likely in this particular case, Max," he said. "Maybe one chance in a hundred thousand." He was sincere, as far as my senses could detect, and this was something that he was competent to judge about. I could detect some of his emotional reactions, his nervousness about Tess being mixed up in the power struggle, worry for his wife... but there was no deceptiveness about how he was relating to us. He honestly thought his best chance at a happy ending was for us to get one too.

"Alright," Isabel said. "Well, if they cut off your signal, maybe they're guessing at what kind of use you might want to make of it. To me, that sounds like we should get going, before they can prepare any more."

"Alright," Tess said. "Good luck!" Alex hurried up to hug Isabel goodbye, and Topolsky shook Max's hand, and then the three of us headed back out to the Jeep. The rest of them were getting ready to drive back to Maria's house. We'd rendezvous with them there.

----------

Max parked just around the corner, so that his car wouldn't be visible from the building, or passed by anybody making a patrol of the city block it inhabited... but also not too far away from the front door. Getting out of the car, we sort of naturally fell into a loose formation, Max leading the way, me just a little behind and to his right, and Isabel taking up the left flank. We didn't jog or dawdle, but strode confidently in step up the sidewalk, diagonally across the street (which had no traffic this late at night,) and towards the Special Unit building. If anybody could have watched us coming, I'm pretty sure we would have looked DAMN cool. A little bit like one of those 'power shots' on Buffy the Vampire slayer that makes it into the opening credits the next year, if not sooner.

At the nearest entrance, which was in fact the 'front door' if there could be said to be one for the facility, four guards with weapons stood at attention, quite visible from the sidewalk. They spotted us and I think at least one shouted when he recognized Max's face in a patch of streetlight... and then Max waved, and all of them turned as still as statues. One, who had been about to run toward us, couldn't keep his balance without moving his feet, toppled over, and collapsed into a heap as he hit the turf. Another guard sort of wilted from his frozen position and fell also. I guessed that the paralyzation tactic Max was using was sort of a blended tactic... it initially locked up muscles and limbs into a state of rigidity, but if the position being held was hard for muscles to maintain a rigid pose, then they would relax completely.

We walked casually up between the helpless guards, never breaking stride, and I unlocked the door. Max must have been extending his paralyzer effect, because the only motion from inside was someone slumping off a chair. Isabel gasped and held the orb up in her hands a little higher.

"What... what is it?" Max asked her.

"It... it's Pierce!!" She exclaimed. "Max, she's trying to... I'm not sure, to block your paralysis field or something!!"

"Can... can you block her blockers?" I asked.

"I - I dunno!!" That word came out slightly squeaky. "It... it wasn't something that I was prepared for!!"

I looked up, at Max, who looked like he was concentrating really hard, and more than a little bit scared. At the other end of the lobby, a big, brawny guy took a tentative step toward us.

All of a sudden my hand reached out to cover Isabel's on the orb. I wasn't sure what would happen, I just acted out of instinct.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:06 pm

Part Five D

LIZ:

I shook my head, and realized with a little faint surprise that it was lying on the pillow of my bunk. Not a bad pillow, really, certainly I've laid my head on lumpier rests. Slightly stiff, which kinduv fit for the Special Unit.

Okay, enough about the pillow. What had happened? I tried to remember what had happened. Pierce's calm, assured voice hit me instantly. Pierce had been asking me about Max... about what he could do, where he came from, and how many other aliens he knew. I... I hadn't told her anything - at least, I don't remember telling her anything out loud. Had she been able to find things out the same way she got me to come to her, with her psi powers? Or had I babbled helplessly about everything, without remembering saying a word?

And... why was I just lying here? My arms were shackled again, not together but spread a few feet apart. But more than the physical restaints, I felt chained up by a foggy feeling inside my head, like there was no point in struggling or being restless. Was this part of Pierce's plan for me? Had she conquered me, turned my mind into her pawn already?

I couldn't bring myself to care.

Soon, a deep voice inside was telling me, Max would come to the door. I wasn't looking forward to that with excitement, pinning all of my hopes on it, as I had when I first came here. I wasn't even terribly sure what would happen once Max stepped into the room. I just knew that there was no need to do anything but lie here until he arrived. It wouldn't be long.

----------

MAX:

I watched, straining with all of my mind, as Michael and Isabel's fingers touched. There was a... it was like a flash, except not in terms of visible light. A similar kind of sensation for my new paranormal senses, or something like that. Isabel shook slightly, as if she just might collapse, but that was only for a second. And the big guy who I hadn't been able to completely paralyze toppled over like his bones had been made of straw. "Good enough," Michael muttered. "Any other trouble spots, Maximum overdrive?"

Hmm... that was about the wildest and weirdest ending to my name that Michael had dreamed up yet... did that mean he was really nervous? "Umm... no, at least not for now," I promised. "But we need to find the right way to Liz's room RIGHT now, before Pierce or her parapsychic crew can come up with many more surprises for us." I looked around, trying to align the reality of the Special Unit headquarters with the schematic that Tony had given me. The roll of paper was still stuck in the back of my pants pocket, but somehow I didn't want to consult that, as if looking at it directly would distract my concentration more than trying to remember it.

"This way," Michael said, waving at a door. He was about to put his fingers on the knob when he suddenly froze. Had someone managed to paralyze *him?* No, he was apparently just being really cautious about something. Stepped back a little and frowned at the door - it blew open with a loud bang and stayed stuck, firmly open, the edge of the door possibly fused to the side of a big reception desk. "These guys are really tricky," Michael muttered. "The doorknob was rigged to deliver a high-voltage charge. Probably wouldn't have killed me, but I'd have been hurt and unable to use my powers for a bit."

Right. And if I'd tried to use my powers to heal Michael... then probably some of the psionics would have been freed of the paralysis. The conflict going on here in this building was like a deadly chess game... move and countermove, all threat and counterthreat. So far, no important pieces had been captured... not since Liz had literally been taken away from me - but how long would that go on? Michael led the way down the hallway, Isabel followed, and I brought up the rear.

Suddenly Isabel screamed. I whirled around, worried that she'd been hurt, but it was just a scream of fright, as far as I could tell. Another guard had moved - not quite as big as the one in the lobby, but certainly strong and heavy enough to take down Michael or I, possibly even take both of us on together. And there was more movement further down the corridor. "What... is someone trying to block you again, Max?" Michael muttered. "I... I can't detect any psionic power being used like that, but maybe..."

"No - no, it's not the same thing this time," I growled. "They're... they're not normal somehow... their minds, their brains are different from everybody else here. Maybe... maybe Pierce did something to them, something so that they'd be hard for any to control or nullify. Anybody but her." There was something mechanical about the minds of the guards - something sealed off, like a computer that's password locked and anti-virused and had all of the other usual security exploits blocked off. Usual human minds are full of security holes... that's part of what makes them so versatile and creative... and most of the time, being vulnerable doesn't hurt them too much. But these guys... well, if I had a whole bunch of time and was better with my powers, I might have been able to power through those defenses.

Luckily, I realized that there was another way to tackle the situation. Running up to one of the doors along the corridor, I grabbed a door handle and seperated it from the door using the power. It wasn't like the doorknob that Michael had refused to touch - it was at least eight inches, long, and straight. Concentrating, I shot the handle like an arrow - WHIZZ, WHAMMM!! Yes. My projectile had smashed into his shoulder, shattering at least two bones, and he collapsed, bleeding steadily. I wasn't sure if he was in real danger or not, but didn't worry about much... it didn't seem like he had much of a life, just serving as a weapon on Pierce's behalf, and breaking her toys didn't seem like a very bad idea.

A fraction of a second later, a wave of dizzyness hit me, and I had to concentrate as much as I possibly could to keep the paralysis field up. If it collapsed entirely, I knew, this whole building would come alive like a rattled beehive, full of angry drones, (sorry, I should way workers to keep up the beehive analogy, right, since drone bees are the playboys who never fight or work or do anything but lie around thinking about having sex. It's annoying that the non-bee sense of 'drone' has come to imply something much more like worker bees... sorry, I got off track there. Back to the scene.)

Right, if I let the paralysis field, the Special Unit worker bees would buzz into activity, defending their home from the intruders. Which meant that I probably shouldn't have tried to do that door handle trick myself. Michael or even Isabel could have spared the power more easily. I could hear Michael's voice as I crouched, desperate to maintain that power feed even if it meant losing my balance. "Max!! You okay man?"

So we were full circle now, so nervous that there weren't any nicknames? Or maybe he just wanted to keep things brief. "I... I'll be okay," I assured him somewhat optimistically. "Take care of the other one... same way - unless you've got a much better idea."

I couldn't pay much attention to the sounds that followed. What was clearer were familiar arms and hands helping to support me - pulling me gently up straight. There was another flash and I realized that, whether she meant to or not, Isabel was supporting my powers by touching me, just like Michael had supported her back in the lobby. Maybe the orb was helping me too... though it somehow felt... like the Orb was frustrated or balked at the situation. Was that right?? Could this gizmo really have enough awareness and personality to feel anything?

No, it didn't, I decided a second later. That was my own awareness and personality, anthropomorphizing the orb or something. I could tell that it wasn't doing what it had been built for, that was all. But what *had* it been built for?

I opened my eyes and looked at Isabel in the dim light of the corridor. For an odd moment it seemed to me that she should have dressed up a little for covert ops... her best leather pants and a badass crop top or something like that. Instead, she was still wearing her school clothes from today - a casual sundress, little bit flouncy with blue-purple print flowers on a white background, little black shoes, and her hair all the way down. All three of us looked a little out of place for this mission, actually... Michael wasn't too bad in his grunge-rock t-shirt and blue-black jeans... and here I was in a dressy green shirt and dockers.

"Come on, we're on the clock right?" Michael urged, and I followed Isabel up the hallway. The second guard had a door handle sticking closer to the center of his chest, and he looked very pale already. I didn't look at him much.

I'm not going to describe every step of the way to Liz's cell. It went pretty smoothly, except for an actual motion-detecting pulse laser that got Isabel on the neck, (just a blister, really, but it'd had been worse if she hadn't been dodging,) and Michael eventually had to blow it up, much as I'd have loved to disconnect it and take it back for Alex to look at. But anyway. We came up to a door, Michael pointed at the panel of buttons and lights next to the sliding reinforced door, and sparks jumped from it in every direction. The door slid open about halfway and then ground to a halt... sounding like it would take more energy than was available on the whole block to get them to move in either direction now.

But they were open enough for anyone who wasn't superhumanly broad across the shoulders to walk straight through, and I could see inside, to where Liz lay on a narrow institutional bed, her wrists shackled to the sides of the bed. "Max!" she exclaimed. "Is it really you?"

I couldn't help but chuckle and grin. "One hundred percent genuine, my love. Not reconstituted." As I said the words, though, a nagging voice inside me was wondering. Was I quite the same Max that Liz had known before she was taken? After staring into that color wall and taming this incredible power? Had I made a deal with the devil to get her back that had forever changed the Max that she fell in love with? Well, there was no time for that now.

As desperately as I wanted to rush into the cell and free Liz myself, take her into my arms, we had to stick by the division of labor, especially now. It was Michael's job to take on minor tasks involving the use of alien powers, such as seperating the cords of Liz's shackled.

And it was my job to paralyze anyone who threatened our attempt to take Liz outside... including Liz herself, if that was necessary. And how, exactly, would I know?

Well, asking sounded like it wasn't a completely stupid idea for where to start. "Liz," I called as Michael walked into the cell. "Are you okay? Did Pierce hurt you??"

"Umm..." She hesitated until Michael leaned over her to unfasten the far shackle. I noticed suddenly that Liz was dressed in some kind of unflattering yellow hospital gown. "I... I think I'm okay. They... there was a doctor, gave me a full physical, and then Pierce asked a lot of questions. Right now, I wanna get out, as soon as possible. How did you get past the guards?"

"Just walked," Michael said. "They didn't lift a finger to stop us... thanks to Max's paralysis field."

Liz smiled as she sat up, her wrists free of restraints now, and her smile was a huge relief to see. She stood up, the gown revealing bare feet and a stretch of leg up past one knee, and hurried out of the cell after Michael. I stretched out a hand to touch her as soon as I could, and when we connected, it was like a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning.

But not in the good, poetical way. The stream of energy that shot into my body was nothing like the healthy, scary, invigorating charge I've always got when it was me and Liz. This was painful, subtly malignant... and before it, my grasp of the powers of Unchained thought collapsed like a little house of cards. I couldn't detect anything except with my absolutely human five senses, but there was suddenly a lot of background noise, and I knew that the paralysis field had come crashing down too. Special unit headquarters was humming back to life.

----------

ALEX:

"Okay, I'll bet seventy-five," I said, putting three quarters into the pot on the strength of my pair of queens, one of which was hidden from the others, face down on the carpet in front of me. When I looked up, I was just in time to see Tess shudder. "What...." I almost said 'what's wrong', but felt that might be a jinx. "What's happening?"

"I... I think that they're going in, or getting ready to." Tess sighed. "One of them... I think Isabel, is trying to prevent other psis from influencing them... it's masking my sense of them. I think I might not get any more info until the whole thing is over."

"That... that's okay," Maria said, keeping up a brave front in total tough cookie mode. "They'll come here when it's all done. Umm... Alex, I'll see your seventy-five and raise you a dollar twenty five." She pushed two one dollar bills into the center. I considered Maria's cards... the jack, ten, and eight of hearts were her uppers. What mysteries her hole card held were impossible to say... but she couldn't hold a better pair than I did. If she had four cards to a straight flush so far, then she might have a good chance to get dealt a fifth card that would complete at least one or the other. Still, my position was good. I decided to call, when the bet came back around to me.

"Way too rich for these cards," Tony laughed, tossing a collection of low-ranked odds and ends in. There was a long pause. "Um, honey..."

Tess's face was a perfect picture of deep concentration that focused somewhere far beyond the poker game. "Tess, if you can't get anything from our three musketeers, then don't worry about it. Just play your cards," Maria advised.

"No... no, it's not them this time," she whispered. "It's... it's *him.* He's coming. He's coming here."

"Who?" Maria asked, but suddenly I knew... or at least, I could guess. There were only four beings that Tess could dial into like that, as far as we knew, and she'd just ruled three out.

"Nacero? Nacero is coming near to Maria's house?" Tess nodded. "Do... can you tell what he wants?"

"Umm... no, not yet," Tess admitted. "His mind is agitated, but more focused than he usually is."

"Maybe... maybe he changed his mind about helping them," Tony said softly.

"But... but then why isn't he going to them?" Tess asked. Nobody could answer that one.

"Any notion on an ETA?" Maria asked her.

"Umm... if he keeps moving at this rate... something slightly less than three minutes."

"Until he knocks on the door?" I asked.

"Not sure, but he'd be able to reach the house, whichever part of it he chooses to, within that time."

This was getting pretty damn serious somehow. I stood up, the card game forgotten. "Do you have a bearing??"

"Umm..." Tess concentrated, and pointed off towards the desert landscape painting on the Deluca's living room wall. (Painted by one of Amy's 'discoveries', about nine years ago, and given to her as a thank-you for launching his career.) That direction, I realized, would be north up Montana avenue. If he was coming down the street, we'd probably be able to see him out the living room windows before he got to the door... though likely nobody but Tess could recognize him.

I brought out my watch and counted along in my head as the seconds ticked by silently. All of a sudden Maria gasped and took several deep and heavy breaths. "Umm, sorry."

"Hehe, that's okay," I insisted. Maria has always had this tendency to hold her breath for too long when things get really tense, though she's never really had as much reason to feel so before we started hanging around with aliens. It was maybe forty-five seconds after Maria had caught her breath when she pointed at someone walking up the street.

"Mister Valenti!"

"No." Tess chuckled. "Not the real Sheriff Valenti." Maria and I turned to stare at her.

"You mean that's... well, you've gotta give Nacero props for chutzpah." I mumbled. Certainly it was a disguise that few would suspect unless they knew that the real Valenti was elsewhere. As Non-Valenti came up the front walk and climbed the porch steps, Maria and Tess led the way to the front door.

"Hello," Tess said softly when Maria opened the door. "I... I think this is the first time that we've really met."

"What brings you?" I asked.

"They're in danger," Nacero said bluntly, taking off his cowboy hat. (It looked just like Valenti's usual hat, though I suppose that he had probably made it out of whatever other clothes he had had on, by molecular manipultion.

"Yeah, they're in danger!!" Maria said. "They walked into the Special Unit headquarters, because you refused to go with them! You were ranting in the cave about them being thieves, and now suddenly you come here like you're all concerned about them?"

"Keep a lid on it, girl," I said softly, putting a hand on Maria's arm. If Nacero was suddenly more worried about our friends and more inclined to help them, that was a good thing, and getting all angry about his inconsistency wouldn't help with anything.

"They... they don't understand the full risk," he muttered.

"All right, then. What can we do?"

"Come along, quickly. Chores for everyone." And Nacero turned and walked out the front door.

"So - do we follow?" Kathleen asked. I turned around - had forgotten her, she'd been lying down in Maria's room while the rest of us were playing poker.

"I... I don't think he's going to wait," Maria said. "So I'm going. I... I have to do something to help Michael. What about you, Alex?"

I thought about Isabel, and even though this might not be the rationally smartest strategy for protecting her, I agreed with Maria. "Let's roll."

Without a word the other three fell in behind us.

ISABEL:

"Max - Max, what happened?" I blurted out, though I really knew a lot of what had happened. First, the paralysis field had come crashing down, just as Max and Liz touched hand. Then, my sense of Max's own power disappeared - I was still aware of him as a living person, but - well, with no more special energy than Liz had. Considering how much we needed that energy, that was deeply worrying. And what I didn't understand was how.

"Umm..." Max seemed too confused by the situation to answer, which really shouldn't have been a big surprise. I whirled on Michael, trying to keep priorities straight. "Can you re-establish the paralysis field, at least locally?"

Michael gulped. "Guess I'm gonna have to try." Michael concentrated for a long moment. "Okay... that's something. I think I've actually got most of the building, except where psis have managed to wall out my influence." He sighed. "But are we capable of getting Liz out of here, with only your powers and mine, Iz? What the hell did Liz do?"

"It wasn't her fault," Max muttered, and I turned around, (carefully,) to see that Max was holding Liz in his arms, and she seemed to have passed out. "Pierce, the bitch. She must have figured out some way to give Liz a booby-trap, tuned to our connection."

"Alright," I said. "No-- nobody's blaming her. But..." And then it was all I could do not to shriek. Some sort of heavy mental force was driving into my protective field... like attacking a window with a big screwdriver. The pain was horrible. More things started to run silently through my mind between the blows. Pierce and the other people in the special unit WANTED us to get this far and retrieve Liz - so that the trap could be sprung and Max, (arguably the most powerful of us all, though Danielle Pierce probably didn't know that,) could be nullified while we were already in the lion's den. Thus... they hadn't really been trying hard to impede our progress or hurt us until this point... just throwing up enough barriers that we weren't entirely suspicious. Like Andre the giant in 'the Princess Bride', they'd wanted us to feel like we were doing well! And now that the moment had come, Pierce and the other psis were really pulling out the stops... doing whatever they could to catch us, trap us and put us in little cells like Liz's.

"Aaahh!" Again the screwdriver... no, it felt like an ice pick now - an ice pick literally driving itself into my brain. I couldn't form the words to explain to Max and Michael what was going, though they could probably guess if they were smart enough... and anyway, what could they do? Max was nearly helpless now, and Michael was straining his powers to the utmost just to keep us from getting mobbed by guards and agents with weapons. But - but there was something that could help, if I could only realize it. Something... something that I was touching. Something that was touching my hand.

And then it came clear. The orb! I'd been holding it, but not really drawing on it when the attack struck, and as much as it might want to protect me, (or not,) it couldn't do anything unless I made the required effort. This time, when I concentrated, I felt as if I was coming closer to understanding the enigmatic thing... there was an energy inside it, but also... also something like the Thought that Max had spoken of, but not exactly the same as thought the way we understood it, because the orb wasn't like a computer or anything like that. It couldn't THINK of its own volition, but it could... I lost the rest. It could provide mental power patterns that we could use more easily, though, and there was something within it that could help me to Think actively, to use my alien heritage. I drew on one of those patterns, to refine my shield and help proof it against the attacks that were coming in. That worked... but the psis just retreated slightly once they realized that I had improved my defenses, not battering their brains out against it. And keeping this mental wall up was tiring me, just as much as maintaining the paralysis field on his own must be exhausting for Michael. We HAD to make our way out, or we might tire too quickly and be defenseless before Max regained his own abilities. "Come on," I muttered.

The nearest exit to Liz's cell was actually further on in the way that we'd been going, not back the way that we'd come. I'm not sure why Max had led us through the front door in the first place, if not because he thought that it was the most unlikely and unexpected spot to make an insertion. But now, probably the special unit would send whatever forces they could to both places, and it'd be easier to get reinforcements to the front lobby because it was near the middle of the building. As I walked, I felt something psionic - a confusion field that one of the younger mentalics was trying to drop around me and the others, but it dropped away burning from my defenses, not even causing a second of hesitation. Max moved into the middle, still carrying Liz - that made sense, because they were now both vulnerable and couldn't bring up the rear, so Michael would have to protect them. Damn it!!

A metal door slammed down from over my head, catching a few of my fingers and scraping off skin, blocking our way. Hmm... was that entirely automatic or had somebody set it off, one of the psis using their powers to interact with computer circuits, or an operative that was too far away for Michael to paralyze? The why didn't exactly matter... it was one more thing that we'd need to expend energy on, and a delaying tactic to slow us down while they tried to come up with other ideas. That was the problem with having come in openly... everybody in the building had to know that we were here, and if they could throw enough crap at us, we wouldn't be able to power through it. Maybe it would have been better to wait, to see if there was any way to sneak in - but considering that Pierce had to be waiting for just such an attempt, maybe it was a foolish thought.

At least I could think of a smart way to get past this door without spending too much of my power reserves on it, though. Moving it aside through brute force or melting a hole in it big enough to crawl through seemed like they weren't particularly good propositions. Instead, I spent a few moments finding the circuits that controlled the door, and overrode them myself, tricking it into coming back up. Then the four of us hurried through quickly, (or maybe three, considering that Liz wasn't moving under her own power.) And, on the other side of the door, maybe twenty feet away, were another four guards... not moving, but blocking the way. Even if Michael had paralyzed them, that wouldn't be enough to get us through.

"Whatcha think?" Michael asked, frowning tiredly.

"No help for it - push them aside," Max suggested, and that made a bunch of sense to me. Waving, I moved the men this way and that, to whichever wall they were closer to. More than one of them lost their balance and fell, but there was a clear path that we could move through.

I stepped forward, when Michael suddenly yelled out "NO!!"

Something pushed me back and to the side, and there was a loud explosive sound, and a breeze with an oddly burnt smell to it. Something clattered along the floor, and I realized that it was a pistol. "One of them was... was bent like the ones we ran into earlier," Michael muttered. "Just smart enough to play frozen like the others until he had a good shot." I shuddered, realizing that only a few inches, and Michael's quick reaction, had saved me from getting shot. That would have been game over for all of us - the psis would have taken care of Michael once I was unable to keep the mental defense field up. And something else occured to me - last time we'd run into 'bent' guards, Max and Michael had dealt with them by using ordinary objects as projectiles. Now, one of them had used a projectile against me.

"Is... could he still try to hurt us as we pass, even without the gun?" I asked. I wasn't even sure which of the four guards had been the one who fired at me, now that Michael had taken the gun away. Everything had happened too quickly to make out details.

"No, he won't be hurting anyone for a while," Michael muttered, indicating one of the men, slumped against the wall with his eyes closed. I wasn't sure what Michael had done to knock him out and didn't care - I just trusted his judgement. We stepped past the four of them. Now, there should only be one more room to make it through - the vestibule between this hallway and the door to outside - the same door where Max had led the guards astray while Michael and I were keeping an eye on Miss Topolsky at the sheriff's station. It was an obvious place to put guards... and other surprises. And right when we were busiest with that sort of thing and closest to getting out, would be the perfect moment for the psis to redouble their mental attack against my defenses, trying to catch me distracted or overwhelm my resources.

But as I waited in the corridor, trying to prepare for what we might be up against next, to spare a bit of thought to probe into what was waiting for us past the door, what happens? (You might well be able to guess.) Off Michael goes, brushing past Max, Liz, (I wouldn't have thought there was room for him to fit past, given that Max was still carrying her, but there you go,) and also right by me, into the door. A guard screamed and shot something... not a regular gun, but something that coughed like my Dad when he's got a bad winter cold and buried a squishy slug only far enough into the wall to make it stick out. Probably they were meant to incapacitate us without killing, so that Pierce could take us apart at her leisure. That thought definitely didn't reassure me.

Wait a second... what was going on here? How did the soldier react so quickly - was Michael's paralysis field working on him at all?? He probably couldn't have gotten the shot off so quickly if he were 'bent.' I explored the channels of power in the vicinity, and realized that somebody had blocked off part of Michael's paralysis field without either of us knowing, because there was too much else going on. I drew on the Orb, sent out a sharp blast of power against the anti-paralysis field - actually, several sharp blasts, like iron spikes. (It was getting hard to keep track of the counter-counter-counter measures going on around here.) I felt the soldiers go rigid and smiled slightly. We moved into the vestibule, not lingering. Almost there!!

Of course, it couldn't be quite THAT easy. When Michael touched the bar that would unlatch the exterior door so he could push it open, it exploded with a hail of bright purple electrical sparks, sending him across the room. At nearly the same moment, a crushing blow of insubstantial psionic power landed on my defenses, like one of those construction machines with the double-jointed claw - have you ever seen one of those things just banging the back of its claw against concrete or asphalt to break it up into loose pieces that can get scooped up? That was what it was like, with the claw pounding down on my head. I saw Max trying to rush over to help Michael, but there was no way that either of them could help me. All that I could do was wait... wait for Michael to get the door open, and then run, until I was out of reach of the special unit psis' power... if I could run that far with it pounding at me. As the impacts started to speed up, each of them was hitting harder... and it felt like little things were exploding in my head each time. Gray cells going splatter, blood cells rupturing and leaking. Was that real, or just in my imagination, or maybe something that they were trying to get me to believe in? If there was really even one blood hemmorage in my brain, then I probably didn't have long to live. And--- and the thought hit me yet again. Once my shields came crashing down...

A hand grabbed my own, and a little strength seemed to flow through that contact, not enough, but a little. The effect of that seemed to spur the Orb on to greater efficiency, and I could concentrate on something other than the battering mental offensive, even though it was getting more frantic. The hand was pulling me, and I hurried along with it, stepping out into sunlight before I'd realized I was going through the door. We were outside!

But not home free - that immediately became clear. Not only were the Special Unit fiends keeping up their mental attack - though they did seem to be tiring a little, but I was mentally aware of the world outside the building for the first time... and realized that other masked or uniformed operatives were out there too. Had Pierce managed to call for reinforcements after Max lost his powers? Or had these agents been starting to cast their net even before we walked inside??

There was no way to answer... and no sense in which it really mattered this moment. The three of us just ran - Liz was starting to stir in Max's arms, it looked like, and her eyes fluttered open occasionally, but he was evidently not about to let her walk on her own two feet. Michael led the way across the street... and then stifferened as a pulse of energy ran through his body. I saw a minute, almost insubstantially thin taser thread running from the side of his back into a nearby bush, where the head of a crouching sniper could just be seen.

END OF SECTION 5...

Thanks everybody who's following this fic. Section 6 will be the last one, and hopefully it won't drag out so long in the posting.

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:46 am

Section 6: The Reason

Part 6a

(Maria):

"Okay, why did you need us to come and run right into the path of danger with you?" I muttered at Valenti's back, which was really Nacero, as he led the way towards Special Unit HQ. Almost as if he heard me, the shapeshifter slowed, cocked his head this way and that (still jogging at a pretty good clip,) and pulled a fairly tight left turn down a side street. I was about to try asking him why when I noticed a man in a dark green cap getting out of a two-door sedan a little ways away... and pulling a case out behind him that was big enough to hold a mean-looking rifle. Suddenly and silently Valenti/Nacero leapt like no creature native to earth could possibly have leapt... bounding into the sky and forward as if he'd been launched with some sort of elastic catapult. There was one instant where the Special Agent saw the shape descending out of the sky right towards him and tried to react, to dodge back into the car - but he didn't have nearly enough time to. Nacero was on him and I looked away, not wanting to see what happened next. What was left of the agent, (looking pretty horribly limp,) was tossed into the back seat of his car, and then, so quickly that it seemed to happen in the blink of an eye... Nacero looked just like the other agent. Of course.

"Very nifty," Alex muttered, though his voice didn't sound terribly impressed. "I don't suppose you can pull that trick with the rest of us too, huh?" Again Nacero didn't particularly pay attention to him - just head out across the street, this time not even gesturing for us to follow... or to stay put, for that matter. In the absence of any indicator, I chose to stick relatively close to the enigmatic alien outsider... after all, there had to be some reason that he'd brought all of us along, hadn't there?? He'd said 'chores for everybody' -- but hadn't asked any of us to do that. And why was the phrase so familiar?? Suddenly I realized that it was something that Buffy the vampire slayer had said in the season finale last year... right before leading the graduating seniors to their commencement ceremony armed with pole axes and crossbows, and blowing up the school... that was the sequence that the network had pushed back until July because they were worried about somebody pulling a copycat stunt at their own graduation. Right...

So I followed Nacero as he started to take a footpath between two houses, that would lead through to a position opposite the special unit building I realized - an approach that might be low-key enough that the guards wouldn't be expecting it, anticipating that we'd arrive on a road or along a more typical sidewalk. Just as I crossed the sidewalk and was about to step on the footpath myself, I realized that another guy who looked like he could be a special unit agent was approaching from down the street, opposite to the way that we'd come. Great - was the whole neighborhood lousy with them? What could we do?

But I hurried along, and by the time we got out to the other end of the footpath, it was clear that if Nacero and the rest of us were the cavalry, we weren't showing up any too early for our cue. Isabel was glaring at another agent as his body was slammed by an invisible fist into the wall of one of the houses the footpath wound past here, the impact rattling siding again and again. I guessed that Isabel was the one who was punishing him. All four of them were here - but Liz was semi-unconscious, Michael's face showed incredible pain, Isabel was in the midst of an exhausted fury, and Max looked... worried more than anything, even after his face brightened a bit from spotting Alex and me. Another special unit agent was running up and trying to throw a net around Max or Liz, and Max charged him with a yell, punching the guy in the chin and then trying to drive his knee between the man's legs. Why was Max fighting back physically instead of using his powers? Was that part of why he looked so afraid?

Just then, I was distracted by a cry of 'No!' from Alex. Isabel had turned, noticed Nacero... and immediately taken him at face value, as another enemy agent, even though we were running behind him.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Don't hurt him, it's... it's the visitor." Not sure why I used the english euphemism instead of the Nacero translation, (which has almost assumed the status of a proper name,) but Isabel caught the point. She still glared at the figure a little suspiciously, (not too surprising, between getting stabbed, and the fact that he'd refused to help them retrieve Liz beforehand,) but held her fire.

Suddenly several things happened at once. A gunshot rang out, and Michael fell forward -- with limitless horror I realized that he'd been shot in the lower back... a wound that probably wasn't immediately fatal, but messy, and he'd be losing blood quick... either inside or outside. Liz straightened up a little and looked around, just in time to see the guy Max had been beating on pull out a small black canister and spray him in the face... Max and Liz screamed nearly in unison. And Isabel shuddered in resignation as something that I couldn't see hit her hard. Something painful, and suddenly she was very scared and worried too. She looked back and forth, saw that the others were in trouble too, and swallowed.

Then she brought out the alien orb, and quickly enough that I couldn't say anything first, (though I'm not sure what I'd have wanted to say,) she tossed it underhand to Nacero. He caught it carefully and competently, and just a fraction of a second before his fingers closed around the small, heavy thing, an unseen, irresistable force knocked Isabel to the ground.

And then, suddenly, the situation changed completely. When Nacero started to use his powers, I'm convinced that for an instant I could perceive the forces he was using directly, even though I'm only human. (Hmm... wonder if I'd have an outside chance of learning psionics??) I couldn't tell what he was trying to do like that, but I could feel the energy as it flowed.

The real special agents in sight, the one who had pepper-sprayed Max, the one who had shot Michael, and one across the street who hadn't really done anything yet, all groaned and fell down, lying perfectly still where they hit whatever they hit. (The one that Isabel had been pounding on was already down for the count I think.) Isabel got up, and she looked very relieved, almost happy at something that wasn't just Nacero taking out the agents. She went to check on Max and Liz, while I pulled Nacero towards Michael. "He's hurt. Can you help him?"

The wound wasn't as bad as it had looked at first -- more glancing, more superficial, though there was still an awful lot of nasty stuff showing, and blood oozing and leaking over everything. It got a little better as Nacero looked disinterestedly at the gunshot, closing up partially, but no more. Was this the best that he could do? Or was he still ambivalent, wanting Michael to suffer, like Isabel had suffered? Well... if he didn't let Michael die, then that was the most important thing. Actually, for none of us to die was the most important thing, and though Nacero seemed to have salvaged the situation for now, we were still all in a very dangerous place, and relying on him to keep us all safe here seemed like a bad idea.

The others seemed to have come to the same conclusion... Alex came over to help me support Michael, and Tess was leading Isabel, Max, and Liz back the way that we had come. "Wait a second, the jeep," Isabel mumbled.

"Forget it," Alex advised. "We've got enough cars to take everybody." After a second, Isabel reluctantly accepted that advice. Kathleen and Tony seemed to be bemused at how quickly things were happening, but they followed along too. "Where do we go?" Alex asked.

On that, surprisingly enough, I had a few ideas. "We stay together and we leave Roswell. Umm... back to the Mesaliko reservation, if River Dog will take us in??"

"Yeah, sounds decent," Michael muttered, which surprised me - in that I hadn't realized that he was awake or able to speak. Very pleased, though.

"What about you?" Isabel asked, staring very pointedly at Nacero, as if hoping that the intensity of her gaze could penetrate the disconnection that he sometimes drew about him like a cloak. "Are you coming with us?"

He looked very clearly back at her. "I wouldn't miss what happens next for all the tea in India."

"Umm... okay," Max muttered. Like Isabel and me, he didn't seem to be sure what to make of that. "Maybe we can chat about orbs, too."

----------

MICHAEL:

"Okay, just trying to keep things straight," I heard a woman's voice saying. A familiar voice. "The orb that Isabel threw him... that's orb two, right? The one that I brought to town, and gave you when you got me to River Dog's cave?"

"Yep," Maria replied. I guess the first voice must have been Kathleen's. "That's the one he hasn't been able to get his hands on, for over fifty years. Somehow I suspect that if he had, there wouldn't have been much of a Special Unit left."

"Then maybe there won't be one anymore," I muttered, and opened my eyes. I was sitting, (well, parly sitting and partly slumped,) in the rear seat of a fairly large vehicle... something on the border of a minivan and a full-size van. Whose wheels was it? (Or whose wheels were... oh, never mind.) Maria was next to me, and I could see a bit of Topolsky's hair from the next row forward.

"How... how are you feeling?" Maria reached out a hand to touch mine. "You got shot, and that bastard wouldn't heal you all the way."

"Maybe he couldn't," I pointed out in Nacero's defence, though I wasn't terribly worried about defending him at the moment... my back hurt like hell. "Who... who's with us, in this van, and whose van is it?"

"Isabel, Kathleen, Tess, and Tony - it's Tony's van," she explained. "I gave the Jetta keys to Alex... it seemed better to get you in here, and I - I just couldn't l..."

"Yeah, that's okay," I assured her, more than a little touched that she had chosen to stay by my side. "How are Max and Isabel?"

"Max is doing fine, as far as I can tell," Tess' voice called back. I wasn't sure if Tess could see him in the Jetta out a car window, or if she was drawing on her powers to sense his mind, but I was glad for the reassurance. He hadn't looked very good when I last saw him, after that SOB gave him a snootful of mace or whatever.

"And I'm feeling much better," Isabel said from right behind me, and that really made me smile. Isabel might not have gotten much dramatic punishment during the raid and its aftermath the way that Max and I had, but she'd possibly been bearing up under the most torturous conditions... straining and struggling to protect us all, especially from whatever nonphysical attacks the psionics of the special unit had been able to cook up. Even with the orb, she'd been straining her powers, and I was really really glad that she wasn't lying there in a cocoon, the way I was after going into the sweat lodge, or anything like that.

"Did... did something happen to Max's powers?" Maria blurted out. "I... I noticed that he didn't seem to be using them... that's one reason I didn't insist that he take a look at Michael before we left."

"Yeah, he... we don't know all the details," I mumbled. "When he touched Liz for the first time, they just kind of went away. He thinks that it won't be permanent or anything. Um, Tony, Tess? Do you guys have any idea what that could have been about? We think it's something that Pierce managed to arrange."

"Wow," Tess muttered. "No, that's a new one on me."

"I... I'm not sure," Tony muttered. "Reminds me vaguely of something that Evelyn once said, but... but I can't remember anything more about it than that vague sense of familiarity. Sorry."

"Hmm." I muttered. Too bad that the real Mrs Harding was still presumably locked up in Special Unit detention quarters in Albuquerque... and considering that Liz had been freed and the Hardings were still helping us, Pierce's remaining hostage was seemingly in more real danger. But we couldn't really worry about that right now. "Umm, any sign of pursuit by the way?"

"Nope," Tony reported.

"Probably whatever our alien friend did with the Orb back there, it was enough to make them think twice about an immediate chase," Topolsky said. "But I'm worried. Tony, would Pierce be able to track the aliens by their minds? Or the orb itself??"

"Umm... I'm not sure," Tony muttered. I felt a little bad for the poor guy, he was completely out of his depth with this stuff, especially considering that he didn't have any psy potential of his own. "Detection and avoidance between human psis can be an especially complicated thing... generally the more skilled psi can hide or find as they choose, though raw power can help a bit too. Our guys have power to spare, but the three of them are still lagging behind a bit in terms of skills, and I'm not sure about the wild card."

"As far as the orb, it doesn't radiate anything directly," Isabel said. "I'm pretty sure of that... not when it isn't being used offensively at least."

I sighed. We'd got Liz back, but very little else had been resolved - and there were a few other questions to worry about now. Would Max really get his powers back? Would my back be okay where I got shot? And Liz... considering that Pierce had been able to 'booby trap' her for Max, were there other surprises lurking deep inside her mind? I hated to even think of the possibility... but being ignorant of the possibility that she might be a sleeper, mentally conditioned to act as Pierce's pawn at the worst possible moment for us, would only be turning our backs on the possibility of danger.

"Say," I asked Isabel. "Why did you and Alex split up, anyway? In different cars, I mean."

I couldn't see Isabel's face, but I could tell that she was blushing something fierce... part of these alien senses I guess. "It... it just happened that way. Max was trying to get Liz sitting down as soon as he could, and Nacero went for that car too. It made sense to have an alien who was able to use their powers in each car, and Alex was the best choice for the Jetta driver since Maria was staying with you." Isabel shrugged. "Just the way things go."

All right. "How far have we come already?"

"Maybe fifteen miles," Maria guessed, and I blinked in surprise at that. "Yeah, you were kinduv out of it babe," she reminded me. "That puts us, what, about halfway to the cave?"

"Not quite I think," Kathleen ventured. "But a little over forty percent."

"Whatever," Maria said, and giggled.

"What's so funny?" Kathleen demanded.

"Oh, just... maybe if you know your fractions better than your plane geometry, Liz wouldn't have gotten suspicious that first day you subbed as a geometry teacher. If we'd been covering percentages, that is."

"That's kind of basic for sophomore math, isn't it?" Isabel asked in a superior way.

"Ehh," I mumbled, because Maria had put me on what I felt was a more interesting track. "What was the deal with the substitute teaching those first few days, anyway?" I asked Kathleen. "Was it all part of the plan?"

"Umm, not as far as I knew," Kathleen admitted. "My cover identity was as the guidance counselor from the beginning, but the first time I met your principal, he had three crises to deal with, one of which was a math teacher out sick and no-one available to cover. I offered to give it a try, as a way to earn some good graces with him. Agent Stevens might have made sure that he got sick, to give me an opportunity to meet some of you right away... I tried to ask him about that once, but he refused to say. And of course, now he's dead, so he never will tell."

"So... so Stevens was your superior officer, or whatever? The one who assigned you to Roswell?"

"Yep," Kathleen agreed. "Pulled me halfway across the country and out of a desk job, though I'd done one field assignment before. Because I'd had some teachers college before the bureau, was rated high for loyalty creative problem solving and so on. And, as you can imagine... finding out that it was aliens I was hunting was quite an eye opener. I mean, actual alien aliens, not Mexicans who didn't have immigration visas."

"Wow," Maria sighed. "Okay, wait, I have a question too. Do you know why Stevens sent you in when he did? Did he really hear about the shooting in the cafe?"

"Yep," Kathleeen ageed. "Valenti brought him a waitress' dress... Liz's uniform I assume - with a bullet hole and an interesting collection of stains."

"And that's why... Oh, hey!" Michael exclaimed. "Stevens - Did he have a big, thick but short-trimmed beard and mustache, nearly black??"

"Umm, yeah," Kathleen agreed. "How... how did you guess that?"

"Saw him once," I said. "I think. Right around the time you showed up... in fact, that was part of the reason I was ditching geometry class." Maria and Isabel chuckled - I guess both of them have realized that I can come up with a nearly endless list of reasons to skip just about any class. "I was staking out Valenti's office, and Stevens and a few other agents took away his files." Isabel made an 'ohh' sound of recognition. Thus had started the sequence of events that led me to steal a mysterious key, that had brought the five of us to a geodesic dome in Marathon, and led Max and Liz to meet River Dog. "So, wait a second. If Stevens was special unit, was he a Psi too?"

"Umm... if he's the John Stevens that I know of, no," Tony Harding said. "Career FBI, someone that Pierce brought aboard because he's very, very good at his job. Whoops, I guess I should say that he WAS good at it." Kathleen whined softly at the reminder. "They butted heads more than a little about Pierce's policies, which probably has to do with the reasons why Pierce had him eliminated."

"But he was 'inside' far enough to know the real Pierce?" Tess asked her father. "Not just the proxy guy that other people know - that debriefed Kathleen, for instance?" I didn't hear Tony's answer - maybe he just nodded.

"Okay, wait a second," I said, reminded of something new. "Kathleen, all those papers from the geodesic dome basement. Were you the one who took them? What happened to them?"

"I led the operation, yeah," she said, sighing. "With some crack professionals... the FBI's own burglars. Stevens took it all away nearly as soon as I had it... I didn't get a chance to see much, and what little I looked at didn't make much sense."

"Oh, well," I sighed.

And there was silence for a long moment as we drove on into Frazier woods.

-----------

The Dog was waiting as we drove up to the cave again... somehow he always seems to know when to show up. Either that, or he hangs out there a lot of the time. He greeted Kathleen like she was a long-lost friend - well, I guess they'd spent a lot of time together while she was hiding out here last time, and neither really got a chance to say goodbye. What with one thing and another, all of us ended up sitting outside the cave like we had been on the day that Tess came up to talk to Liz... except that Tess and Tony hadn't been sitting down then. There were still quite a few deck chairs around, sitting folded up inside the cave entrance while nobody had been using them, and when the chairs ran out people just sat on the ground or on flat rocks.

Nacero didn't sit, however. He walked over to Tess... towering over her in a slightly formidable way. "The pool party," he announced, still looking like some special unit agent. Did he forget to take off certain shapes, the same way I forget to take off a dirty t-shirt?

"Umm... whatt?" Tess asked, a little frightened.

"You... you said that you hadn't... not met me before," he mumbled. "You didn't realize it was... but we got well acquainted at the pool party."

"Oh, right," Tess said, realizing what he meant and blushing. I wasn't sure what Nacero had meant about Tess saying that she hadn't met him before, but maybe that had something to do with how come Nacero and the rest of them had happened to come running up just when we needed our asses saved, across the street from the Special Unit building. "Umm... yeah, I don't exactly remember what happened that day terribly well, because of all the drugs in the punch and what have you..." The expression on Mister Harding's face was hard to describe exactly, but I was suddenly certain that he knew quite a lot more than he wanted to about what had happened between Nacero and Tess that day, and he didn't like a bit of it. (If I was in his position, I guess I might not be pleased that my seventeen-year old teenage daughter had been drugged and started making out with a shapeshifting, slightly homicidal alien.) "Why... why did you come that day? Just trying to keep an eye on the other aliens?" Tess asked. "And why disguise yourself as the football player?"

"What happened to the real Casey Irvine anyway?" Alex asked. "You... you didn't kill him or anything?"

"No, I heard him and some of the other guests talking about it a few days later," I said. "He was trying to convince Kyle, Nathan, and Kayla that somebody had hit him on the head and locked him up in his mother's trunk for eight hours until his dad found him there. Kyle said that he probably just got wasted like everyone else at the party and imagined it all." Maria snickered slightly at that, probably because it was just so completely Kyle-like.

"I... I was there for *you*," Nacero said, looking straight at Tess, and his shape started to change in front of our eyes, morphing and shifting like a compuer effects imaging program. For an instant, he was Casey again, and then tweaked that image slightly, making the hair lighter, the face slightly different - as if Casey had a brother, though I didn't think he did.

"M... m-me?" Tess squeaked, sounding more than a little unnerved at this.

"You... you were inside my head," Nacero mumbled. "Inside all of us, trying to find out our secrets, and you were trafficking with Pierce.

"Not willingly," Tony insisted fiercely, and Nacero smiled silently at him for a moment, as if acknowledging the truth of what he was saying.

"And then you... you invited all six of them, so I wanted to find out why. The athlete seemed like the least likely one to be suspected." Nacero sighed. "I... I lost most of my judgement after drinking - like the rest of you, but I remembered trying to get close to you. Figured it might help me to understand better... understand many things. Like why you let the others in." He turned to sweep his gaze meaningfully over each of us in the original six.

"To understand why we told Alex and Maria what was going on... you started kissing Tess?" Isabel snickered. "That... that's not exactly how it happened."

"She told her friends," Nacero agreed, nodding at Liz and then looking at Isabel. "That didn't mean you had to... to let them into your existence."

I thought about that... but got distracted by Max. "Hey!" he exclaimed, and when I looked over at him, I realized that he was floating a small stone perfectly steady a few feet ahead of where he was sitting. "Michael, buddy, need me to take a look at that back??"

"Umm... yeah, that'd be good, if you're sure you're up for it," I said, but that immediately reminded me of how Max had lost his powers in the first place. "What about..." I looked around and this was the first time I clued in that Liz's eyes were closed, and her head resting at an angle against the back of her folding lawn chair, which I would have thought were impossible to sleep on without falling out of. Apparently she was managing it.

"Fixing up gunshots first," Max said, with a sigh. "Then I... I want to see if there's any way to go inside her head and see if Pierce has messed her up even more."

"Mind... is very delicate, even with our powers," Nacero said softly. "Uncertainty reigns. Only the greatest level of skill allows for even the vaguest perception directly into mind. I'm not sure that you're ready for it."

"Maybe... maybe I can help, with a power that I've had for years," Isabel suggested. "If Liz starts to dream, I can try to go in, and maybe that'll tell us something."

Max smiled. "I'd appreciate it."

"Wait a second," Alex protested. "If there IS something wrong with Liz, do we know that dreamwalking her is safe?" He and Isabel were sitting side by side, she on a rock, he on a stump, and he reached out to take her hand in a very deliberate gesture."

There wasn't any answer, until Maria suggested 'first things first', and I ended up stretched out, stomach down, on the mattress where Kathleen had slept while she was hiding out here, so that Max could see and work on my gunshot. It didn't take too long - he was able to connect with me via touch, since I was awake and willing to let him in, and all of the damage that Nacero had left was cleaned up pretty easily. And that gave me an idea. "Why... why don't you start by touching Liz again?" I asked. "Try to connect with her, see if you can tell whether it'd be safe for Isabel to go in her way. Since you've already been zapped once that way, and you've been touching since, I don't think it's terribly likely that it would hurt you again."

Max smiled. "Alright." It kind of helped that the one person who would be most upset about Max putting himself in danger.... was the one who was out cold and who we were all trying to find out about. Max smiled as he leaned down next to her, touched her hand with his own, took a deep breath, and let it out in slight exasperation - obviously he wasn't making it in. After a second's hesitation, he leaned down and kissed his sleeping beauty - and though she didn't awaken, the smile on Max's face afterwards told me two things. One, even with Liz not responding, he'd appreciated the experience for what it was. Two, he'd managed to get enough flashes from her to find out what he needed to know.

"I... I'm pretty sure that it'll be safe for you to go in and doublecheck me, Isabel," he said confidently. "Pierce... she didn't get as much time as she wanted with Liz before we made our move. If we'd waited for full morning, it would've been another thing entirely." The way he put that startled me again. What time of day WAS it now? It must... it had been late in the night when we'd gone into the building, and later when we'd come out and fought with the special unit agents, and twilight had been starting as we drove out of town. The sun must have just risen while we'd been talking out here by the cave... the morning after Liz got taken.

But Max was still talking. "Aside from whatever it was that took out my powers - definitely a one-shot booby trap by the way, I think she's done something subtle to Liz's reactions and attitudes, but not nearly as much as she meant to. Laying the groundwork, as much as anything, maybe. Hopefully... if we can get a bead on exactly what changes she made, we won't even need to change them back, just let Liz know and she should be able to sort it out herself."

"That kind of matches up with what I know about conditioning best practice," Tony said softly. "Both in terms of what you think was done, and the remedy." Kathleen was nodding too, though I wasn't sure how much experience she really had with that sort of thing. Then again, she'd probably been conditioned at least a bit by the fake Pierce and other special unit people, because they wanted to make sure that she'd do a good job as bait for us, and she'd managed to shake that off and become free.

"So, the question is, can *I* figure out exactly what changes Pierce made?" Isabel asked, and Max nodded. Izzie looked at Alex, and he smiled bravely. "Okay, well, I think that she's in REM sleep now."

"Yeah, I kinda nudged her that way," Mad admitted. "Since we don't have buckets of time."

"Picture please?" Max seemed surprised by the question, but pulled out his wallet, extracted a tiny little color photograph, and handed it over to Isabel. I went up to take a look, out of curiosity as much as anything. Isabel did her little routine and slumped over, and Alex held her to him protectively. Once Isabel wasn't holding her finger up in front of it, I could see that the picture was one of those photobooth ones... and something about it made me think that it was taken last winter. Probably sometime in that little stretch of time that Max and Liz were a couple after the heatwave, and before -- before I snuck into a sweatlodge here on the Indian reservation, probably just two or three miles down the road from this cave, and nearly died from it. Once they group had saved my life, Max had decided that he had to stop seeing Liz. The doofus.

But I hadn't realized that they'd gone hanging out somewhere that there'd be photo booths. Then again... yeah, maybe it had been, umm. Well, it didn't really matter. Cute pic, though, anyway, with Liz trying to make a silly face and not really showing much imagination with it.

The tension started to get thick, as Isabel and Liz both slept on, (or nearly, I know that Isabel isn't actually asleep when she's dream walking, but it looks very close.) "Alright," Max announced. "Once Liz is attended to - what's our next step vis-a-vis the special unit? I have to admit, I really haven't been thinking any further ahead than getting Liz back ever since we found out she was taken... but Pierce is obviously not going to leave it at that. She's going to try anything she can to come after us all now, I think, especially if she was scared at what we just showed her." There was an awkward silence. "Nacero. You and the second orb, the 'power orb' I guess we can call it - between the two of you you seem to make up a pretty decent secret weapon? What can the two of you do together?"

"Might... might be a shorter list to ask what I can't do with this," Nacero muttered, looking at the orb in his hand and weighing it appreciatively, "though not by that much."

"Tricky problem," Alex agreed. "How to represent the division of a very large set into nearly equal halves." Tony and Kathleen laughed under their breath, but I didn't see what the joke was.

"Pierce," Max clarified. "The special unit. Can you..." he hesitated, and swallowed. "Can you 'take care' of them with that??"

Nacero's new face twisted slightly into an unusual pensive cast. "Most of the... the people with powers in the special unit--"

"Psionics," Tess supplied helpfully.

"They can't stand in my way, with the power of the orb. But Pierce herself is tricky. She might be able to figure out a defense... and if she does, she can escape and teach it to others."

"So it's a bit of a stalemate," I said. "Pierce won't leave Roswell... she wants us to come after her with the Orb, so that she can disarm it. We want to take her out... but we can't try until our offensive is perfect."

"Umm.. yeah, I guess so," Tess sighed. "I just wish that all of this was over." There were a lot of agreeing sounds to this remark.

"Okay, another big ugly question that no-one really wants to hear," I said. "If... if it comes down to it - how many, if any, people at the Special Unit are we willing to kill to beat them? Pierce for instance. Do we fry the bitch??"

"I'd be hard-pressed to say that we shouldn't," Max said softly. "She started this war against us. In a way, it would be a killing in self-defense."

"But will that really defend any of us?" Alex asked softly. "If we kill Pierce, that won't eliminate the Special Unit. If it's national or even world wide, then she's sure to have trained a successor, someone far enough away from Roswell that we'd hardly even be able to find him or her. And that successor will be determined to hunt you guys down even more, considering that you killed his predecessor."

"Yeah, it won't solve anything immediately," Maria argued. "But... but maybe there'd be a way to convince someone else that all you guys want is to live and let live, and that they'd really be best off to negotiate a truce." She sighed. "I really don't think, from what you've said about Pierce, that she's rational enough for that."

"Maybe it would be better to--" I started, but was sudenly startled out of what I was saying by a loud gasp from Isabel. For an instant I was terrified, but then remembered that the one time she'd dreamwalked anyone in front of me, (she'd agreed to spy on the junior high principal's dreams in the hopes of finding something that I could use to play a payback prank on him... but that's a long story,) she'd breathed loudly just when she was coming out of it that time too. Maybe it was just something about crossing the barrier from a dream world back into reality. Max and Maria hurried over to her, and I wandered close too. Alex wrapped his arms around Isabel again.

"I... I think that Liz will be okay, Max," she choked out quickly. "Like you said, a few attitude shifts that will probably be confusing for her and a little difficult to work through while the crisis is still upon us, but nothing that she won't be able to sort out given time." Isabel breathed deeply again. "Until then, she should probably stay up here, with River dog and Kathleen to look after her, if that's okay with them." Max nodded uncomfortably - he didn't look pleased that she thought this sort of precaution was important, but it was hard to argue against it.

"But what I saw in her dream about Pierce... we need to get her, Max," she continued, completely unaware that we'd been talking about that very thing before she woke up. "We need to get her good, before she finds a way to get us, something that even Nacero's talents and the power of the Orb can't stop. She's still freaky powerful and... and chillingly smart." Isabel shuddered. "But I think I might know a way to... the end of a plan, anyway. We just need to work out the beginning and the middle of it."

"Is the end of the plan, 'Step 3: profit!'" Alex asked her. Isabel looked up, her brown eyes staring blankly into his face. "Sorry... probably the wrong time for a south park joke."

"Yeah," I agreed sadly. "Okay, let's get to it!"

---------

(Objective.)

James Valenti sighed as he parked in the driveway. "Who'd a thunk it?" He could hardly believe how much things had changed in the last twelve hours or so. The mysteries about Roswell had been mounting for months... mysteries that Jim had been convinced had aliens at the bottom of them. An alien who went to the high school named Max Evans, for one. And, even through his suspicions, Jim had slowly grown sympathetic to Max and to some of his friends... starting to put himself in what he guessed their shoes were like... believing that Max was not some inhuman monster with a dastardly plan to take over the earth, but a truly scared kid of whatever species or planetary origin, not sure who to trust or what the shifting forces around him truly meant.

And Jim had tried to reach out to Max, tried to look out for him, even if Max and his friends wouldn't trust 'the law.' But his perspectives had been turned onto their side when she walked into his office. Agent Pierce. Definitely not what Jim had expected - for instance, he'd been pretty certain that Pierce was a man. Even before Kathleen Topolsky had told him her story of being inducted into the Special Unit, Jim had heard vague stories of a Daniel Pierce, a man highly placed in the FBI alien hunting division. And Miss Pierce had definitely not taken long to convince him that Daniel was an imaginary man that she had constructed, that she was in control of the Special Unit, and in charge of considerably more than alien hunting. Convincing Valenti to sincerely work on her behalf had been a longer thing, but Danielle had not seemed to lack confidence in her persuasive powers. In addition to the inducements of information and influence that she'd been able to offer, there was a charisma, a presence to her that Valenti had somehow been very ill equipped to resist.

After that... well, first, there was Kathleen showing up out of the blue at his office, which had been a surprise... and quite likely a gambit of some sort. He'd meant to call Danielle and let her know about it, but Hanson managed to beat him too it... young and enthusiastic, Timothy Hanson was often too quick off the starter blocks, but apparently he hadn't jumped the gun this time. And then, the message that Max and his friends had forcibly broken into Danielle's office... and had gotten away with something important that she couldn't tell him about yet. That seemed almost unbelievable... that three teenaged kids, even with Max's alien powers, had been able to defy the resources the Special Unit had at its disposal so cavalierly, but the security footage had been hard to argue. It had also seemed to indicate that there was more than one person in the party with unearthly powers... possibly both Isabel, Max's sister, and Michael, their long-time best friend. Valenti had done a little quick telephone research, and was nearly kicking himself for not connecting the dots earlier. All three of them shared mysterious orphan origin stories, after all, and apparently there had been an unusual incident at Michael Guerin's foster home when he was very young.

Sighing, he got out of the car, headed up the walk, and through the front door. When he got inside the house, he realized that Kyle was sitting, half-lying, actually, on the couch, watching something on the television, with a worried and tired expression on his face. "Hey, son," Jim said, stepping into the living room.

Kyle looked up at him immediately. "Busy night?"

"Umm, yeah, actaully."

"Did... did something bad happen?" Kyle blurted out. For a long moment, Jim was entirely not sure how to reply to that question, and to buy time, he wandered slowly into the room and sat down in the small spot on the couch that wasn't taken up by Kyle's awkward recline. Kyle quickly sat up straighter. He looked at the television and decided that it seemed to be playing one of those really low-budget teenage sitcoms, with most of the characters being players or hangers-on of a varsity sports team.

"Umm... yeah, actually, there was, but I'm not sure how much I can tell you about it yet." The image of a Special unit field support agent getting loaded onto a stretcher flashed before his eyes. When Jim had asked, he'd been told that the man's back had been violently broken by alien powers. He would probably never walk again - his only hope for a normal life again was if the Special Unit psychic healers could strain the limits of what they knew how to accomplish. Jim had been about to call a city Ambulance, but they hadn't wanted to call that much attention to the disturbance. 'We have enough facilities to treat the worst of our wounded right here,' Pierce had told him.

"It... it didn't have anything to do with Liz, did it?" Kyle blurted out, rousing Jim from his musings. "What you had to deal with?"

Jim looked up, startled. Pierce hadn't said a word to him about Liz Parker. "No, at least, I don't think so." He leveled an intent, curious look at his only child. "Why do you mention Liz?"

"I... I dunno, it was like I had a bad dream about her," Kyle mumbled, apparently slightly embarasses to say such a thing, but not nearly shy enough that he had delayed with his answer. "That... that she was locked up somewhere, maybe in a jail cell. That's why I thought to ask you about her. And... and not just locked up, but there was a woman who came into the room..." Kyle's eyes closed as he concentrated for a moment.

"She had greenish eyes, green with a slight hint of brown to them, but not enough to call hazel... very intense eyes that almost looked through me, even though I wasn't there. Short, dark blonde hair, and a pretty face... a little older than Mom was when she left." Jim's breath caught at that particular comparison. "Liz was very afraid of the woman."

Jim felt as if the room was suddenly spinning around him. The description was Dani Pierce, nearly dead on. And if she had taken custody of Liz Parker for some reason, why should she have hidden that from him? He wasn't sure what to make of Pierce's motives in this, but one thing was clear. Kyle still liked Liz, and was very worried about her.

He stood up from the couch. "Dad?? Dad, why did you get up?"

For a long moment Jim wasn't sure himself. And then the answer came to him.

"I need to call the Parkers, and ask them something."

TO BE CONTINUED...