Roswell Fanatics

It was actually just short of thirty minutes before they got the ignition system dry enough to fire up the engine and have it run smoothly. The thing to do next was obvious – again right out of Law Enforcement 101. The jeep over the desert had likely made no more than 15 miles an hour for the three miles or so until it got to a paved road. That would have used up 12 minutes. For the next 18 minutes the jeep had likely made an average of 45 miles per hour. That worked out to a little over 13 miles more – a total radius of 16 miles in which the jeep might be located. You could eliminate half of the circle – Isabel hadn't risked her life on the trestle to cross BACK to the eastern side of the river, so you really only had to consider the semicircle of area on this side – a mere 390 square miles. Both Jaime Sanchez and Jim Valenti knew that they had precisely NO chance to find Isabel Evans by searching those 390 square miles, because the radius continued to increase even if they did so. The game of police pursuit isn't a science but it is statistics, and the odds were overwhelmingly against them finding her by just chasing after her given with that much of a head start. They had already sent the patrol cars back to surveillance positions around the town of Roswell.

“Our best chance is to pick her up when she comes back to pick up the Whitman kid,” said Jim.

Jaime nodded in agreement.

“Yeah – you realize that we don't really have an ironclad case on her for anything, don't you?”

“Maybe she'll get careless and lweave something in the jeep, or maybe I can just intimidate her by telling her I'm going to charge her with vehicular assault against an officer.”

“Which might even work, unless her mother shows up and says that little Isabel was merely protecting herself against a couple of off-road racing fanatics who she thought were trying to sexually assault her – in which case...”

“In which case, she walks. I know, but dammit Jaime, these are MY people. I have to do something. If this thing blows up and her brother gets killed – Jeff Parker gets sent away – do you really think that even Isabel would rather have THAT happen then have us play fast and loose with her Miranda rights a little?”

“No, I suppose not. You do what you have to do, Jim. I'll support you.”

Thirty second later the Baja racer was heading downriver. Eight minutes later it was back on a paved road and heading for downtown Roswell.


Fifteen minutes later – and over twenty-five miles away – the black jeep turned off a small gravel road onto the Old Albuquerque road. Isabel was running late – and she knew it. She didn't think Max would leave his observation position – not for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes – but he'd be worried about his sister, and that was the last hing Isabel wanted. 'He's got enough worries, just worrying about Liz,' she thought grimly. She pushed the gas pedal harder – getting the jeep up to almost 75 miles per hour. There wasn't any traffic at this hour and she didn't want Max to worry any longer than she could avoid. At this rate she'd be to the drop-off place in another two or three minutes. Besides, every minute she was late was one fewer minute she would have to stargaze with Alex.

It had been almost forty minutes since Jeff had seen the last car go down the road and as he saw the distant lights he tried not to get his hopes too high. The last half-dozen cars he'd thought to himself that maybe this was the one – only to be disappointed.

“A watched pot never boils...” he muttered to himself. He tried the night vision goggles, but the headlights of the oncoming vehicle overpowered them. It had two headlights, but whether it was an elderly jeep or a Mack truck, he had no way of telling until it got abreast of him and he could get a look at it without having to look into the headlights.

But as the headlights passed him and he got a look from the side his resolve to not get his hopes up started to fail him. It sure LOOKED like the Evans' jeep. As he saw it pull over to the side of the road – probably a mile and a quarter away – and saw the slim figure struggling to take boxes out of the vehicle and hide them behind the bushes off to the side of the road – he knew that the first part of his wait had come to an end.


As she finished hiding the last of the supplies Isabel looked up and down the road. There was not a single headlight – no evidence of any traffic at all. It was time for her to get out of here. She'd done her job and – if the police wanted to try to make something of it – would fight that battle tomorrow. Right now her thoughts turned to a lanky young man who was no doubt already waiting for her in town. She was late to pick him up too, and she didn't want him to worry either. With a quick glance up the small canyon where she knew her brother must be already watching her, she said a quick prayer that Max somehow figure out those damn stasis units – preferably before Liz actually needed these IV solutions – even though she knew that might keep her from seeing either Max or Liz for decades.

They were both her family now – and she'd do anything she could to help them....

Jeff watched the jeep depart to the south, toward Roswell. Jeff was briefly in a quandary - should he get the car and move closer - the supplies were about a mile away from him - or just stay here and watch? If Max was in one of those deserted ranches he might see him moving up closer and just abandon the supplies altogether. But if the boy drove up in a car, he'd have to sprint quickly back to the car while the boy was loading the supplies in order to follow him or - more likely - confront him before he could get away. Either way there was some degree of risk. He looked again at the area where the supplies were hidden and shook his head.

In the end, Jeff chose to stay put until he actually saw the perverted bastard who had kidnapped his child. He shook his head in frustration - wishing that he'd brought a high-powered scoped rifle instead of the shotgun.

Six miles to the south the Old Albuquerque Road merged in to highway 285 southbound. Isabel hadn't seen a single vehicle. Of course, that would change in the next six or seven miles as she approached the town itself. For New Mexico, Roswell was a large town, almost 45,000 people but even so, there weren't many ordinary people on the road at this hour. The exception, of course, were long-haul truckers who took advantage of the lack of traffic to carry their cargoes a lot of miles in the wee small hours of the morning.

Highway 285 went from Denver Colorado to Sanderson Texas – almost 850 miles. While most people slept, these truckers were hard at work. Isabel knew that sort of intuitively, but didn't really think of it consciously. Jim Valenti, however, had thought about it consciously and been a little pro-active as well.

The driver's name was Billy-Bob Parker, and he was going south to pick up Interstate 10 enroute to his home in Ft. Stockton after delivering a load of steers to a feedlot in Fort Collins north of Denver. He was traveling home empty and making good time, but empty or not you still had to stop at the weigh stations and you still wanted to keep in the good graces of the New Mexico State Department of Transportation and the New Mexico State Police that enforced the commercial trucking laws. When they ask you to do a favor – particularly one that doesn't cost you a dime – you do it.

The citizen's band has 40 channels. Of those, most are used just for chatter. Channel nine, however, is reserved for emergencies, and monitored by the local sheriff's office and the state police. As Billy-Bob saw the black jeep pass him – and saw the young lady driving it – he turned the frequency selector to channel nine and hit the microphone.

“Chaves county mounties – this is the Ft. Stockton Stallion, Y'all got your ears on?”

A female voice came on. “Individual calling on channel nine, this is the New Mexico State Police – you are talking on a channel reserved for emergencies – do you have a problem?”

“Problem? Me? Hell, I ain't got no problem. Just that back at the weigh station in Vaughn I got asked to make a call if I saw some young filly in a black jeep. I just got passed by her and from the brief time she was in my headlights – whoooeeee – that little lass is a looker. I can understand why the county sheriff is tryin' to find her.”

“Mr. - uh – Stallion, could you give us your location, please?”

“Oh, sure thing, I'm on 285 about six miles north of Roswell goin' south – coming up on Knobbin road. That little gal just passed me up – going like she had a hot date or something – the lucky bastard.”

“Uh, thanks for your – uh – assistance Mr. Stallion. I'll pass your information on to the Chaves county sheriff's office.”

“No trouble, little darlin'. Anything I can do to help my friends the fuzz – glad to do it. The Ft. Stockton Stallion signin' off.”



Of course, seven miles north things were getting interesting as well.

Jeff had been alternating his attention between using the night vision goggles on the deserted ranches and abandoned mine on the west side of the road, alternating with quick glances with his unaided eyes to the north and south along the Old Albuquerque Road itself looking for oncoming headlights. It was almost an afterthought for him to use the night vision goggles to look once more at the bushes where the supplies had been cached by Isabel Evans. When he did, he almost dropped the night vision goggles in his surprise.

'Damn – there he is!' thought Jeff. 'Where in hell did he come from?'

Of course, the more immediate problem was even more troublesome – how on Earth was he going to get to the boy? Max Evans was a mile away. That was a long way to walk, but not nearly far enough to keep the little pervert from hearing the car in the quiet desert night., Even if Jeff used the NVGs and drove with the headlights out, Max Evans would certainly hear him coming. The kid would undoubtedly take off into the desert where he knew the terrain long before Jeff could get within shotgun range. Jeff cursed inn frustration – but then looked again through the NVGs.

Isabel had brought her brother a considerable amount of supplies. As he bundled them into a pack he'd brought with him it was obvious that he'd need to make multiple trips – probably three – maybe even four – from the side of the road to wherever his hideout was.

Jeff got slowly to his feet, carefully scanning the ground in front of him. It would take him at least twenty minutes to get where the boy was – possibly as much as thirty. But Max Evans would have to take at least two and a half round trips up that hill. If his hideout was over five minutes from the road Jeff thought he'd have a good chance to get there by the time Max was on his last trip, and if he stayed high – didn't go down all the way to the road as he moved toward the boy – he might even be able to get in front of him and meet him coming up the trail when the boy was heavily burdened and fatigued.

Jeff really didn't think it was at all likely that his daughter was still alive, but the torment of not knowing was tearing away at both him and Nancy. If he could follow Max Evans back to where his hideout was, he might find Liz';s remains – or at least some clue to where they were. And even if he didn't, if he were able to trap the boy – cut off his escape and actually capture him, Max would tell him what he'd done with Liz – he had no doubt about that.

'Before I put the little bastard out of his misery, he'll tell me anything I want to know,' Jeff swore grimly to himself.

As Max packed the last IV bag that could possibly fit into the pack he looked up the trail toward the podchamber anxiously - wanting to get back to Liz. Even before it had made him nervous to leave her all alone in the podchamber for these trips to get supplies. In her current condition he found it even more difficult. That's why he had been sort of late getting here to pick up the supplies. The fact that he'd been continuously awake for almost twenty hours didn't help either. He was tired and not moving all that fast.

But the supplies of food and water and Ensure were almost out, and the IV solutions - Michael, Maria and Isabel had managed to collect a surprising quantity of them that was greater than he had imagined - might be needed much sooner than he had thought, given Liz's current condition.

'If they are going to be needed at all...' he thought to himself.

What he really wanted was to be back in the podchamber with her right now - and just say 'to hell with the supplies.' Unfortunately that wasn't an option. He' needed to have them and he needed get the supplies up to the podchamber quickly in any event - dawn was coming and he didn't need to leave a clue for anyone that might direct the searchers to this area. Max knew as well that he'd stretched himself way too far - he desperately needed just a few hours of rest. Even so, he had a fair amount of work ahead of him before he could even think of resting.

The trip from the podchamber - downhill with an empty pack - had taken six or seven minutes, but the trip uphill with a full one would be at least eight or nine minutes. In the night on the rocky path he simply couldn't hurry all that much or - for that matter - carry an excessive load - particularly not as fatigued as he felt right now.
So nine minutes to get up - seven minutes to get back - repeat that once and then a final trip up.... about forty minutes all totaled. Then he could be back to the podchamber - and Liz.


Outside of a few trucks heading south on 285 that she'd quickly passed, she'd really seen no traffic, and Isabel was starting to anxiously look forward to seeing Alex. Perhaps what she should have been doing was too anxiously look for unmarked Crown Victorias parked alongside the access roads into town. With the heads-up from the trucker, Jim managed to get two of the vehicles in place and one of them spotted her as she turned off 285 to parallel it into the heart of the city. She was only about a block from the park where she had agreed to meet Alex - in an alley just a few blocks from the Crashdown.. She was creeping quietly down the alley when she was intercepted.

The bright driving lights blinded her and Baja racer roared out of the darkness as it raced across from the side street to block her path. Two men dressed in jumpsuts and wearing full-face helmets - and guns - jumped out of the vehicle and one of them reached in and turned off her ignition while the other one pulled her bodily from the vehicle. She heard Jim Valenti's voice come from the helmet holding her -

"Isabel Evans, you are under arrest fro vehicular assault on a police officer, trespass, speeding, accessory to kidnapping - hell, about a dozen violations altogether. You have one chance and that's cooperate - to talk and talk fast. Give us some reason to NOT lock you up for the rest of your life."


Back north, things were also progressing.

It was taking Jeff longer than he thought to traverse the hillside. Even with the night vision goggles, the terrain made travel difficult. But he was over a third of the way toward the cleft in the hill and the boy was still descending the small ravine to get back to his next load of supplies. He would need to take at least two more trips judging by the supplies remaining, and that should - Jeff figured - put him in a good position to intercept him. The shotgun's effective range - even with double ought buckshot - wasn't great, of course it was lethal to damn near anything within that range.

Back in town:

"Agent Sanchez, this is a local matter right now - why don't you take a short walk?"

"Uh - OK, Sheriff," said Jaime.

This might not be the best career move, Jaime knew that, and it certainly wasn't what Agent Phillips would have done. Phillips would have probably been delighted to have the case blow up - the prime suspect killed by the victim's father, the father in custody, a couple of kids - one perhaps just a lovesick dupe of the other to take the fall for the kidnapping charge. The notoriety and easy convictions would have given his career just the jumpstart that Phillips had always wanted. Except Jaime of course was NOT Agent Phillips and Jim Valenti had convinced him. The greater good was seeing that these two families - both of whom were now collateral damage in the failure of the justice system to keep one chronic drunk off the road - were stopped from being hurt even further.

No, it probably wasn't a smart career move to do an illegal coerced interrogation of a high school kid whose parents were BOTH lawyers, but Jim had convinced him it was the RIGHT thing to do - and Jaime intended to go through with it. Leaving his helmet in the vehicle, Jaime wandered down the alley. He'd come back later - in time to play the 'good cop'.


"Alright Evans - I don't want any excuses - any talk about you were only out cruising with your boyfriend - any of this 'Ice Princess' crap, I just want you to talk and talk NOW," said Valenti has he pushed her roughly up against the brick wall of the building. "Otherwise, you have no idea how unpleasant this is going to get...."

Isabel looked up into Jim Valenti's face, only inches from hers - and smiled. Most of her childhood she'd been frightened witless of the guy. He'd been the boogie-man, the face of authority that would one day grab her and Max and send them off to some laboratory where evil scientists would cut them apart - but not today. Today she wasn't afraid of Jim Valenti -not at all. If anything she was a little irritated at him. She was - after all - her parents daughter. Over the years she had lived with them she'd picked up enough legal stuff to know that he didn't have a thing on her. This was America - what the police knew didn't matter - it was what they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. She'd worked hard tonight and done her job and he'd lost - fair and square. Every minute he spent confronting her was sort of like sour grapes - and subtracted from the minutes she would have to stargaze with Alex.

Nor did the tough guy routine fool her - not anymore. She'd lived a lie with the Ice Princess routine long enough that she recognized someone putting on an act. Besides, the single parent who had raised Kyle Valenti alone to be the kind of kid he was - no Alex, certainly, but still a pretty nice guy - couldn't really be the hothead he was now pretending to be. And that was why Isabel was smiling.

"You do the Clint Eastwood thing pretty well, Sheriff," said Isabel, "...not REAL well, but pretty well. So what's the next act? Are you going to pull out your gun and point it at me and ask, 'You feeling lucky, punk?' If you have probable cause to arrest me.... go ahead and do it," she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking at him in obvious irritation, "......except you don't - and we both know it. So that being the case, it seems like all we are doing here is wasting time and - no offense - but there's a guy I'd much rather be spending my time with."

"Who you'll be spending time with is the Women's correctional facility at Grants - or the federal equivalent. Maybe both," said Jim, already having his doubts if this strategy would work. It was the one he had though and he seemed committed, so he pressed forward. "The way I see it the only way you have of staying out of jail is to cooperate - and to cooperate right now. That includes your co-conspirator Mr. Whitman as well. Even if you don't mind spending the rest of your teens and all of your twenties and thirties incarcerated, he might not feel the same way - assuming you care for him at all, of course."

Isabel didn't flinch. The sheriff didn't have anything on her he could prove, and he had far less against Alex.

"Hey, all I was doing was driving out on the desert. It was public land and I wasn't hurting a soul. Next thing I know these two crazy guys in racing suits and helmets are chasing after me. Heck, the idiots didn't have their lights on even when they tried to sneak up on me. Given that they didn't show a light at all – let alone a blue or red one – how was I to know it was a couple of law officers – out joy-riding in a hopped-up dune buggy? You have nothing on me – and much less on Alex.”

Jim Valenti knew she was right. He pounded his hand against the brick wall beside Isabel's head in frustration. No judge or jury in the county would even think of convicting her of anything – not even for the dangerous trespassing she did in going over the trestle on the Pecos with that story. In fact, the very fact that she HAD done something that dangerous would almost certainly give her story even more credibility. Frightening her this way was NOT going to work. He needed to come up with something else.



One of the problems with admitting that you love someone – even only to yourself – is that you start acting on that acknowledgment, even if you know for certain that you're not in her league and it's never going to happen. But even love you know will forever be unrequited is till love. You can't help thinking about the other person – worrying about the other person – especially when they are almost an hour late.

So for the last twenty minutes Alex had been making short forays in the direction he expected Isabel to come from – short because if she came some other way he didn't want to miss her – but forays because he was becoming increasingly concerned that something might have happened to her. It was on the second of these that he had seen – almost a block away – the Baja racer blocking the way of what MIGHT have been a black jeep in the poorly lit alley.

In fifth grade Alex Whitman had been in a youth basketball league. The smallest – but quickest – kid on the team, he'd played point-guard. He'd actually been quite good. Then came puberty. Alex wasn't an actual klutz anymore – not now that gangly and uncoordinated had turned to lanky and moderately coordinated – but the fast surges of acceleration he once had relative to his peers were gone forever. Basketball was no longer his sport, but he had lettered three years running in cross-country. Those lanky legs took longer to get up to speed, but were actually faster once they were up to speed. He'd never again lead a fast break, but in a two mile race he'd lead for most of the second mile, and he'd run you into the ground in a marathon.

He'd started in a slow jog – not really certain at all that he was seeing Isabel's jeep, but took it up a notch once he'd convinced himself that there was indeed a black jeep there and shifted gears again when he recognized Isabel pinned against the wall by some guy in a jumpsuit and helmet. When he saw the guy slam his hand into the wall next to that beautiful face in a threatening manner – something inside him changed altogether. Someone he cherished – however improbable it was that shed ever feel that strongly about him – was being threatened by some thug. Alex redoubled his exertion – taking caution not to make so much noise he'd be detected – going to defend his love. He was soon barreling through the darkness toward the helmeted man like a juggernaut – much like a determined defensive end about to blindside some unsuspecting quarterback.



Fourteen miles north....

Jeff knew that it wasn't that he'd made great time but the heavily laden boy had traveled even slower. That and the fact that the boy would need to make at least one more trip up the narrow ravine convinced Jeff that he had the option to wait. He didn't need to shoot the kid immediately. Max was tiring himself out – understandably since the climb was a difficult one and he was trying to take the entire cache of supplies in three loads rather than four. The fact that the boy didn't have night vision goggles to make things easier and needed instead to stumble over uncertain footing as he hauled what had to be half of his own body weight up the steep ravine had certainly slowed him as well.

Jeff was already half way up the hill -concealed in the bushes - and Max was going down for the final load. It would have been easy to take the boy out with the shotgun as he passed – but the boy was stumbling around in obvious fatigue - feeling his way through the brush since the surrounding hills blocked what little light a waning moon and sky full of stars provided in the darkness of the New Mexican desert without the considerable advantage of the night vision goggles and creating a fair amount of noise as he did so. Jeff let him go by – then climbed silently further up the trail. He reached the top before Max even got all the way to the bottom. He saw in the distance the first two loads supplies – dumped at the base of a rock cliff. Obviously the boy had stashed it here intending only to get it to the top of the hill out of sight of the road below. Once he had the third load up Max Evans would no doubt next carry the stuff to his hideout – wherever that was. Jeff could wait here and take the boy out when he came up the hill – exhausted from his climb – or he could hide in the bushes and try to follow the boy further to his hideout and perhaps find out what had happened to his daughter Elizabeth. Jeff Parker didn't actually expect to find his daughter alive after almost four months – even in a nursing home she might not have lasted that long according to her physicians – but if the hideout did not actually produce his daughters body it might at least produce the clues that would enable the police to find it. Jeff didn't care what happened to him once he had avenged his daughter – but Nancy would need closure.

Silently he slunk back into the bushes to wait for Max Evans' return.

"Look, Miss Evans," said Jim,admitting to himself finally that the 'good cop - bad cop' act just wasn't going to work, "...I'm trying to protect your brother - not hurt him. Jeff Parker has been tracking you - he knows where you've been. Right now he's out there with a shotgun and a bunch of military surplus stuff getting ready to kill your brother. We need to work together to stop that."

The look in his eyes stopped Isabel for a second - but only a second. Had he tried that first - telling her the truth - it might have worked. She might have been convinced at least enough to take the risk of quickly connecting with him despite what he might have read in her mind while she did so. But not now. He'd already lied to her - tried to scare her - she wasn't falling for this trick either.

"I don't think so, Sheriff. But even if it was true it would do him no good. I don't know where my brother is so there is no way I could lead someone to him in any event..." she lied.

It was frustration more than anger that made Jim Valenti lift his arms pound his hands in to the bricks as his mind fumbled for a way to convince Isabel that the threat against her brother was real, even while he realized guiltily that his previous ploy had rendered that almost impossible. It was just an act of frustration - not any real threat implied - but a charging Alex Whitman didn't interpret it that way. Besides - it lead to an even more serious problem.


Human intelligence is an over-rated capacity. For a start, it isn't very quick. It requires time to gather data - mull it over - form a model - compare that model with past experiences and analyze and predict an outcome - then spending more time deciding how to come up with a more desirable outcome. Sometimes there just isn't time for that process.

Sometimes blind animal instinct - hard-wired into the primitive brain - is much better. It's faster - avoiding all the decision steps - like a she-bear protecting her cubs no real thinking is involved. Thinking, in such circumstances, just gets in the way.

Humans try to offset this with training. The fencer does not really think when he parries to defend himself against the lunge of his opponent. Hundreds of hours of practice render the action almost instinctive. It's called facilitation. In physiology facilitation means the lowering of resistance in a neural pathway to an impulse, resulting from previous or simultaneous stimulation. Through intensive practice humans can do something 'without thinking,' by simply reacting to a preprogrammed set of stimuli.

Of course Alex had had plenty of time to formulate his course of action through the use of his brain - time enough to run almost a block. But the very act of running had now provided the time constraints in which he had to work. Specifically, it had to do with the laws of physics. One didn't need the Unified Field Theory that Max was beating his brains out trying to develop to understand this physics. Simple Newtonian physics was quite adequate.

The specific issues involved were Newton's First and Second Laws, but the short version without mathematics was that Alex had gotten up to his best speed as stealthily as he could with the object in mind of running in to Isabel's assailant to knock him away from her and in to the brick wall. Alex's momentum would still be partially conserved - despite the initial collision - and he'd wind up hitting the guy a second time - probably as he was rebounding from that brick wall. Now giving the elasticity of human bodies the plan was something like this;
Alex hits assailant result - both take a hit
Assailant hits wall result - assailant takes major hit
Alex hits assailant as he rebounds from wall result - both take minor hit
Assailant hits brick wall a second time result - Assailant takes medium hit while Alex grabs Isabel and runs like hell for safety.

The latter wasn't cowardice - just good judgment. Priority number one was to get Isabel to safety - not to be some hero macho guy and impress her.

The problem, of course, was that getting to the end of the block to save her had required a good deal of movement and he now had a good deal of momentum, that is, velocity times mass - not a bad thing necessarily, that was what he was going to use to knock the assailant in to the wall.
But linear momentum is what Newton's First Law conserves. Alex was now in motion - and would tend to stay in motion for another twenty-five feet before he hit that helmeted assailant. He could speed up or slow down and even change his course - within limits - although at this point he was sort of committed to being at least noticed by his target no matter what he did.

Unfortunately that was when the assailant - Jim Valenti - raised his arms to hit the wall in frustration and in doing so revealed to the oncoming Alex that he was wearing a rather large automatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his left arm. Going thirteen miles an hour he was doing 20 feet per second allowing him a scant 1.25 seconds to modify his plans. That simply wasn't enough time.

Oh, IN THEORY, it actually was enough time. Given adequate practice Alex could have slightly modified his course. He could have impacted Jim Valenti with his right forearm under his left upper arm, forcing the arm upwards while Alex's own left hand skillfully removed the service automatic from the holster only milliseconds before Alex's body drove Jim Valenti's body away from Isabel to impact on the bricks along side her. Alex could then rebound off the assailant and hold him at bay with his own gun. Given enough practice - thirty or forty attempts - Alex MIGHT have been able to pull that off. But it wasn't going to happen in 1.25 seconds after Alex had been on a dead run for a whole block.

Fortunately, the human mind knows it has limitations. When he saw the gun, Alex knew he couldn't avoid the upcoming confrontation not that he would have anyway, Isabel was far too important to him. Good human decision-making is fault tolerant. What that means is that the brain understands its inadequacies and starts paring down what it is asking to the essentials - essentials it CAN implement. In those last 25 feet Alex's mind had already set it's priorities;
Get the gun away from the assailant so he can't use it on Isabel if possible
Knock the guy away from Isabel
Impede the assailant so Isabel can get away
Do whatever you have to do to see that Isabel is safe.

You might notice that nowhere in that hierarchy of priorities did it say anything about Alex Whitman actually surviving this encounter.




Fourteen miles north....

Jeff slowly backed into the bushes as he heard the boy hauling the final load up the narrow trail in the darkness. It was obvious that the weight of the supplies was substantial, and the boy's decision to make it in three trips rather than four had pushed him to the limit. He finally reached the top of the trail and staggered to the pile of supplies already assembled and placed the pack on top of it, breathing heavily for several minutes. Through the greenish yellow images of the night vision goggles it was apparent that the boy was worn out. Obviously he had been trying to get the supplies away from the road as quickly as possible to avoid the possibility of their detection. When the boy had somewhat recovered he walked over to the face of the rock and put his hand against it, Jeff assuming he was simply resting until the light blasted forth beside him.

Night Vision Goggles amplify light. Low levels of light they amplify to give near normal vision. Bright or even normal levels of light overload them and they experience something called 'blooming'. When it happens, it's akin to having a flashbulb go off in your face. Swearing under his breath, Jeff pulled the NVGs off and put them quietly on the ground before him, blinking away the purplish after-images.

As the images started to clear he saw the boy picking up parts of the supplies and carrying them into some sort of an entryway in the cliff. Exactly how the boy had opened the door he wasn't sure and he was equally unsure of precisely what the chamber inside was. Most likely, Jeff assumed, it was an old bunker or chamber from some military installation. During WWII the Army Air Corps had had nine separate airstrips in the Roswell area, and many of them had bunkers and magazines associated with them – as well as guard shacks, ammunition bunkers for the surrounding antiaircraft artillery installations, and a variety of other underground secure areas. Or for that matter it might have been an old mine. It didn't really matter. As dimly lit as it was, it was too bright for the NVGs. But by the time the Evans boy had carried half the supplies inside, Jeff's vision had fully cleared. As he saw the boy pick up another load from the dwindling pile, he crept slowly forward – entering the opening a dozen feet behind him, shotgun at the ready.

As Jim Valenti struggled in his own mind to come up with SOME way to convince Isabel Evans to cooperate his attention was totally focused on persuading her. Perhaps that's why he was late to react to the footsteps coming from the darkness to his left.

But Jim Valenti couldn't fail to react to what happened next - a hundred and forty-five pounds of lanky teenager hitting him at 13 miles per hour - and then, in the confusion of what was happening, he felt his own gun being stripped from his holster as he was slammed in to the brick wall by the impact.

Alex's impromptu plan had only been partially successful. He'd had time to pull the service automatic out but not really control it. It fell – hitting his foot and clattering across the asphalt of the alley. Of course, by that time Alex had his own problem – striking his head and rebounding heavily off the brick wall next to Jim Valenti and tumbling headlong onto the ground.

Alex was momentarily dazed, then started looking for the lost firearm which would give him control of the situation but unfortunatelyt being too stunned to find it immediately among the stars that seemed to be spinning around him after his head had struck the bricks.

Physically, Jim Valenti was in slightly better shape. He'd taken a hit from his unknown assailant – and another from the brick wall - but at least his helmet had spared him the slight concussion that Alex had. Mentally, of course, it was a whole different thing.

Jim had been suddenly attacked – stripped of his weapon – and his assailant was even now trying to find his – Jim Valenti's – service automatic, undoubtedly to use it in an even more violent attack that would be lethal to him or Isabel Evans – possibly both. Police officers HATE to be unarmed and facing an armed opponent – and it's even worse when they are potentially going to be killed with their own gun. But that wasn't even the worst of it. He had a civilian – Isabel Evans – with him and it was his responsibility to protect her as well. The situation was grim and Jim needed desperately to do something quickly.

Law enforcement officers don't routinely practice what to do if an assailant takes their service weapon – it's a pretty rare event – but they do routinely practice what they do if their service weapon becomes nonfunctional. That's a rare – but not unheard of – circumstance, generally occurring due to either a feed or extraction problem of the semi-automatics.

Like most departments, the Roswell Sheriff's department had long ago converted from revolvers – the old 'wheel guns' – to higher power semi-automatic pistols chambered for rounds with far more stopping power and carrying magazines with far more shots than the 'six-shooters' of the old west or even the more modern wheel guns of fifty years ago. In fact the .40 caliber semi-automatic that his assailant was fumbling to find carried fifteen rounds in the magazine and chamber and could fire them as quickly as the trigger could be pulled.

Like most officers Jim Valenti had a back-up gun and like many of them it was an old-time 'wheel gun,' in this case a five shot Smith and Wesson Model 36 Chief's Special in 38 special caliber that had once belonged to his father. The 38 special cartridge had nowhere near the stopping power of the big .40 semi-automatic – especially coming from the diminutive 2 inch barrel - had a third the capacity, and took far longer to load. But it was absolutely reliable for those five shots and at close range even the relatively weak 38 Special round could be deadly. Also, like most officers, Jim Valenti routinely practiced on the range drawing the backup gun from the ankle holster in which he carried it.

In your entire career as a police officer you were likely to never need your back-up gun, but if you ever did need it, it meant that some situation had gone royally to hell and you would need it very badly. And in the end this incessant practice – understandable as it was – proved Jim's undoing. Hundreds of practice sessions over twenty years had facilitated his actions and his reflexes moved faster than his thought processes.

Still confused by the sudden attack and the impact he had taken – seeing his assailant fumbling on the ground to recover his own semi-automatic pistol, and wanting to protect both Isabel Evans and himself, he reached for his backup gun and inadvertently activated the whole sequence that years of practice had facilitated.

Jim Valenti's body did just what it had been taught to do by twenty years of practice. His hand pulled the snubnose pistol cleanly from the ankle holster and aligned the sights on the center of mass of the assailant in front of him and squeezed the trigger.

It was only as he felt the sear release that he totally realized what he had done – as he saw his assailant's face rise from the shadows and understood that it was only Alex Whitman – undoubtedly believing he'd been saving Isabel Evans from some street thugs attack – who was in the sights of that old revolver. Killing an innocent person is a cop's worst nightmare, and the horror and tragedy of what he had just done hit him even as the hammer fell and the cartridge fired and the bullet left the revolver's barrel – the barrel that was pointing straight at Alex Whitman's heart.

Back north......

The boy was moving slowly and Jeff followed him into the opening in the cliff shotgun at the ready. Jeff expected no more than a chance to confront the boy - perhaps scare some information from him before the shotgun put an end to him and to the misery he had caused Jeff and Nancy Parker. Jeff has steeled himself for what he might find - he'd had horrid thoughts of his daughter's decaying body being inside the boys hideout - but he wasn't altogether prepared for what he did see. As the boy stepped around the bed carrying the supplies toward a distant shelf Jeff got his first glimpse of Liz.

His daughter had lost weight - or more accurately lost muscle mass. The doctor had warned them it would happen, but the amount she had lost was still surprising to Jeff. It made her seem even younger than she was - like she was back to being twelve years old. She was deathly pale - not surprising perhaps - for it had been a year and a half since she had last walked in the sunshine of the outdoors - but even so it seemed to add to the impression of her vulnerability. Her beautiful hair that had been shaved off to treat her head injury had almost grown back - it was shorter than she'd normally worn it but not greatly so. And someone had obviously shampooed it and brushed it out and put it in a short ponytail and Jeff found himself grudgingly conceding that his daughter's appearance was probably as good as it would have been had she still been in the nursing home. Her head was on a pillow with a clean pillowcase - the sheets were clean. She was dressed in a hospital gown - the one she was wearing when she was kidnapped - or one very much like it - and even it appeared clean and fresh. She was simply laying there - as if she were twelve years old and asleep in her bed back at home.

It was obvious the boy had gone to a good deal of effort to care for his daughter and - just for a split second - Jeff Parker's opinion of Max Evans softened ever so slightly. In fact, as Jeff looked around he had to acknowledge - grudgingly - that the area where his daughter was being kept - and cared for - was probably nicer than the nursing home ever could have been. Then as his eyes continued down his daughter's body he saw it.

Had it not been for the loss of muscle mass - had she not been laying on her back - had she been covered by anything more than a hospital gown and a sheet - Jeff probably would have missed it. It, of course, was a small swelling of the lower abdomen - a distinctive swelling - a swelling that the movie magazines talked about frequently when assessing the maternal prospects of various starlets. It was what they called a 'baby-bump.'

• 11 weeks earlier
  
  It hadn't been supposed to be this way, Max thought as he crawled in beside her on the mattress. He'd thought - well he'd hoped at least - that someday Liz would wake up. Someday she would realize that every thing he and Isabel had told her in the abyss was the truth - that someday he could look her in the eyes and tell her it was all real and had always been real and that he loved her so much and that then she would know - know for sure. That's where the fantasy would begin - the part that he wanted but really didn't know would happen.
  
  In his fantasy Liz would look at him wide-eyed and decide the alien stuff mattered less than what they had - what they had found together in the abyss. His dream - of course - was that she'd tell him that it didn't make any difference that he was different. That she'd take his hand and pull him close and press her lips against his and say that - even knowing the truth - she still considered herself his wife. Only then had he ever thought he'd actually do what he was going to do now.
  
  He'd had every intention of giving her the option to just walk away - it wasn't like any court of law would hold her to a marriage contract made in the abyss - and if she had she would have walked away with her body untouched - despite the erotic times they'd shared in the abyss. Of course, the promise that she'd forced from him had changed all that.
  
  She had told him that she didn't want to just disappear from the Earth as if she'd never been there. She'd made him promise - by the love he had for her and by the vows that they had sworn that he'd do this - that he'd give her a child and - when her body started to fail - transfer it into one of the incubators. That technology he did understand and with a few electrolyte solutions that Isabel could probably come up with he could make it work. With his own ability to manipulate matter he could remove the fetus - if she did conceive one - and safely transfer it to where even after its mother died it would live and grow.
  
  Of course the 'if she could conceive one' part was the current issue. He had warned her that it was entirely possible he was so different... well, conception might not be possible in actuality, despite their obvious sexual compatibility in the abyss. But Liz wouldn't be deterred - she'd insisted - despite the fact that Max was almost certain that even at the last - as her damaged reticular activating system had finally been shut down forever by the death of those damaged neurons - he still wasn't altogether sure that she really believed that any of this was real.
  
  Of course Max was partly right - Liz hadn't really believed that Max Evans was really an alien-human hybrid dreamwalking her in the abyss - it was more like she was hedging her bet. If there really was a real Max Evans who loved her that much she didn't want to go to her grave knowing she'd destroyed that. Somehow she had sensed what he had yet to really admit to himself - that he had no intention of letting Liz go alone into the darkness when her body finally failed. She had known - somehow - that with nothing to hold him on Earth he would have gone with her in six months or eight or - however long her physical body lasted.
  
  Max was new at this male-female stuff. He really had no idea how devious women can be in their attempt to protect those they love. Perhaps Max didn't exist, she had reasoned, but if he did she had no confidence that a promise made six months previously would stop him from taking his own life in the grief of her passing, but her lab partner - Mr. Responsibility - if that really was him dreamwalking her in the abyss, would never leave a child - their child. No, Liz didn't know for sure dream-Max existed outside the dream world, but if he did Liz didn't want to take his life away. Even if she couldn't quite believe he really existed.
  
  It was more difficult - as it turned out - to keep the promise than he would have originally believed. It seemed like a desecration of something that he'd hoped and prayed would some day be a joy to both of them as he eased her out of her Depends and used the surgical lubricant from her feeding tube to prepare her. The harder part - he found - was preparing himself.
  
  He had to shut his mind to what he was actually doing, to remember her not as she was but as she had been in the abyss after their wedding when she had looked up at him and her eyes had told him she wanted him. He closed his own eyes and imagined that time - when there was still hope for her consciousness and their love for each other had known no bounds. Eventually the thoughts of that time at least brought him to the state where he could enter her.
  
  But he couldn't pretend it was making love - it was the loneliest time in his life as he pushed against her - pushed into her. Eventually the warmth of her body around his and the movements he made got the desired physical result, despite the despair that threatened to overwhelm him. Reflexes built by millenia of evolution overwhelmed his pain and sorrow and his body emptied itself into hers. Afterwards he rolled to the side - still crying at the loss of the only love he would ever have.
  
  If this worked - and he had his doubts - he would care for their child - raise it in memory of Liz as she'd asked him to do. But he knew the truth - but for his promise he'd have rather died with her. He sobbed himself to sleep.
  
  Max would repeat this act the next night - as unhappily as the first. Six hours after that act he would feel the new aura as another life became manifest in her uterus. He would resign himself to living as Liz would have wanted but he would not - could not - bring himself to touch her that way again.

As Jeff recognized the condition his daughter was in - realized just WHY the boy had kept Liz clean and attractive for himself - the anger returned in full measure. His finger found the safety stud and he pressed it - readying the 12 gauge. Whatever softening there had been in his determination to kill the boy had now disappeared completely.

Human intelligence is an over-rated commodity. Witness the situation with Alex – a rather bright young man with an IQ circa 120-130. Intelligence just takes too damn long. That's why he fumbled the snatching of the semi-automatic, in fact, that's why he bothered with the semi-automatic at all. Even a more primitive species of genus homo would have handled that situation better.

Running at full speed toward an assailant that was attacking someone he loved, a male Neanderthal wouldn't have been distracted by the semi-automatic pistol, in fact he wouldn't have realized what it was. The Neanderthal would have simply run up to the strangely garbed man and run in to him – then before he had recovered the Neanderthal would have grabbed the full-face helmet and used the extra leverage it provided to hyperextend and twist. There would have been a sudden 'crack' and the assailant would have ceased to be a problem except perhaps for deciding whther to have him well done or rare, and what side dishes might be appropriate. The point is that humans are easy to kill – and almost as easy to disable – if you aren't mentally conflicted about it or having to choose between a large number of options.

Of course that wasn't what Alex did. Alex avoided the hands-on physical violence route precisely because he WAS intelligent and well educated and civilized. And now as Alex was fumbling for the semi-automatic because – like the computers he loved – it was technologically superior to using surprise and brute force to break Jim Valenti's neck, not dissuaded by the fact the semi-automatic had both a thumb safety and a grip safety and Alex had next to no chance of figuring it out before Valenti put one or more bullets into organs that Alex could not live without.


Although not altogether human, Isabel's human intelligence was doing her no good either. In fact, had it not been for all the second-guessing that she was doing about her relationship with Alex she'd have told him the whole truth and he'd have been making the delivery with him and none of this would now be happening. In her defense, she'd had a sort of crappy childhood – not the time after the adoption, but rather the years before that when instead of closeness and humanity of a mother's love, she had been held only by an incubator pod that was itself devoid of any human feelings. It really wasn't any wonder that both she and Max had real issues when it came to feeling accepted into the human race, let alone into their adopted family.

Fortunately, evolution had been going on for a long time before human intelligence developed – on Antar even moreso than on Earth. Those primitive reflexes were still in her midbrain and if 99+% of her DNA was human that still left a tiny percentage that had evolved in a real rough neighborhood. That primitive part of her nervous system was even less conflicted than that of a Neanderthal. Over three thousand times she'd been held in his arms – dancing in the dream-orb. As far as her midbrain was concerned – Alex was her mate, and not in the Australian usage of the word either. Like a mother reflexively protecting her children, what happened was totally devoid of thought – it was simple reflex. That made sense sort of – since they hadn't yet mated it was essential to her midbrain – and to her Antarean DNA – that she do something quick. So while her brain was still as bewildered as Alex – trying to sort out just what was happening – her midbrain took over. Jim Valenti's actions were facilitated and practiced and he had a head start on her, but her actions were instinctual and occurred at the best speed Antarean DNA could give them which was very fast indeed. Antar was a tough neighborhood, and those with only good reflexes had been weeded out of the gene pool hundreds of thousands of years before.

As the revolver fired Jim was already feeling the mental pain of knowing he'd screwed up – that in his effort to protect Max and to keep Jeff Parker from ruining his life he'd managed to kill a perfectly innocent teenager. As soon as the revolver fired, he knew that nothing could undo the mistake he'd made. Of course, human intelligence can be wrong.

It seemed like the revolver had exploded as the air flared into incandescence at the end of the barrel. The shock wave blew him backwards and his helmeted head struck the wall – even as he saw Alex Whitman blown in the other direction and his body striking the building wall behind him.

Jim first thought the revolver had exploded when he had fired it and he looked at the barrel doubting if it would even be there. It was there alright – but caught in the edge of the powerblast, the barrel was glowing red and … drooping. Even with the Nomex gloves, the temperature of the pistol was blistering and had it not been for the Nomex jumpsuit – and the clothes underneath still wet from his dunking in the Pecos – he knew he would have been burned by whatever had just happened and he had NO idea whatever exactly what HAD happened. But then someone stepped between him and Alex Whitman – someone or some...thing.

To Jim Valenti it looked like a seventeen year old cheerleader if you didn't notice the eyes - or the fading gold glow in her right palm. The eyes were deadly serious and the way it - she - placed her body protectively between him and the unmoving Alex Whitman was a body language that was truly universal. He'd get at Alex Whitman only through her - and the eyes said that would be no easy task. Jim Valenti's intuition - born of two decades as a street cop - told him that he was facing as dangerous a situation as he had ever known - something with immense latent power - and he had thoroughly pissed her off. From the look on her face he was a dead man. Fact was he couldn't even blame her - he knew he'd thoroughly screwed this one up.

Jim Valenti was right. What was facing him was one of the three potentially most lethal creatures in Chaves county and he had definitely pushed the wrong button on it. Fortunately he soon ceased to be her major concern.

From behind what Isabel Evans had somehow become came a sound...."Unnhhh," as Alex got the wind back that the wall behind him had knocked from him as the shockwave of the powerblast vaporizing the lead slug had blown him backwards. He was alive.

As quickly as that whatever had possessed Isabel Evans fled.

"Alex..." she screamed as she whirled away from Jim Valenti to quickly kneel at the teenagers side, already seeming to forget that the sheriff even existed.

Jaime had heard the shot and wasted no time in running back into the alley, service automatic drawn and at the ready. Of course he had to undergo his own period of disorientation and confusion. His fellow officer - Jim Valenti - was sitting on the ground with his back to the brick wall, but at first glance seemed unhurt. Isabel Evans was bent over a lanky young man who was raised up on one elbow laying on the ground against the building on the other side of the alley - with a tearful Isabel Evans bringing her cheek down to caress his head. The two disconcerting things in his field of view, however, were Jim Valenti's service automatic laying on the ground in the middle of the alley and Jim Valenti staring at what appeared to have once been a 'wheel gun,' a Police Chief's special if Jaime's guess was correct. It was only a guess because Jaime had never seen a Chief's Special with quite that short a barrel - or a bent one either for that matter. The oddity of that distracted him for only a fraction of a second - but it was enough.

Isabel's midbrain was no longer in control but her upper brain wasn't exactly functioning well right now either - her heart racing wildly and her mind desperate to reassure herself that Alex wasn't seriously hurt. She certainly didn't have Max's anything like Max's skill or power when it came to healing but she'd do what she could if it came to that.

Of course her greatest fear was how Alex was going to handle this - it was hardly like he wouldn't notice. Once upon a time she would have been worried more about the two law enforcement officers would be thinking but those days were long past. The health of Alex - and how he would feel toward her now that he knew - were so high in her hierarchy of concerns that the officers - she noticed the other one now out of the corner of her eye - were little more than annoyances. At least - in this instance - it was only her conscious mind that was annoyed, luckily for Jaime.

As Jim Valenti saw Jaime's eyes linger momentarily on the glowing remains of his back-up pistol he saw Isabel Evans twirl, almost like one of her cheerleader routines, to face Jaime. Before he could react the FBI agent had some unseen force pull his firearm from his grasp and it went skittering across the alleyway to park itself next to Jim's own service automatic. But the look in Isabel's eyes was - on this occasion - a very human one. Her eyes as much as said 'don't annoy me right now, I'm doing something important,' as she turned back tearfully to Alex.

Jaime's eyes went wide with amazement and his hand started toward his own back-up gun until he saw Jim Valenti's face - the sheriff's eyes fixed on the FBI agent and his head slowly and carefully twisting on his neck warning him not to do it. Jaime looked again at the glowing remains of Valenti's revolver - took a deep breath - and decided maybe his back up gun ought to stay just where it was.

"Alex - tell me you are alright," begged Isabel, her cheek nuzzling his head softly in an attempt to both be close to him and to reassure herself that he was uninjured.

Alex's brain wasn't working that well either. He had almost managed to convince himself that he hadn't seen what he'd seen with the vaporizing bullet trick, but the telekinesis on the second pistol had been sort of hard to deny. Occam's razor was now overcoming doubt in Alex's mind. Suddenly the previously least likely option - the one he'd steadfastly refused to believe - was now the only one that satisfied all the observations. Except he couldn't bring himself to believe it.

"You really are part-alien? That really was you ... in my dreams?"

Isabel looked down at the absolute shock in his eyes and knew instantly and correctly that Alex was totally stunned. Much less correctly, she thought he was also pretty horrified by the idea as well - which again shows the limitations of human thought. It wasn't the 'I'm an alien' part of that dream that Alex was replaying in his mind that was causing his jaw to swing loosely from its temporal-mandibular joints, it was the 'I've loved you for years and if I could give you the children you want I'd want nothing better than to spend my life at your side' part. THAT was the part of the dream that he was having trouble getting his mind around. Unfortunately, that was not the way Isabel was interpreting his actions. Given her rather truncated childhood she didn't have those sorts of intuitive skills yet - at least not without actually connecting to him.

Worse yet, Alex wasn't picking up on the fact that Isabel was so totally apprehensive about him now just walking out of her life. In fairness, he'd been shaken up quite a bit physically and was processing an awful lot of information. Even then, he might have done better had a fair amount of his visual cortex not been tied up processing an extremely good view Isabel was giving him of her cleavage - bent over like that. While understandable perhaps, his doing that wasn't really all that time-critical. He was going to have many decades in the future to explore that landscape - full tactile as well as visual - of course neither of them knew that now.

Jim Valenti, on the other hand, had just about figured out what was going on. If he hadn't exactly been lucky in love himself, he at least knew it when he saw it. OK, Isabel wasn't entirely from around here - but there was no longer any doubt as to whether her feelings about Alex were real or feigned. Anybody who seriously threatened Alex Whitman was - Jim Valenti was pretty sure - going to have a very short life expectancy.

Isabel looked at Alex's beautiful eyes, still wide-eyed in shock or so she thought. She was obviously too preoccupied to realize just how good a view of her cleavage bending over like this was giving him.
She couldn't leave it like this. She had to explain - make apologies - try to salvage at least his friendship out of this situation. She couldn't bear the thought of him fearing her. Even having him hate her would be better than that. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet and turned to face the two law enforcement guys, her face a mask of sadness.

"Alex didn't know about this. My folks didn't either. It's not their fault and they aren't guilty of anything but being deceived by someone they trusted. Alex and I are going now - that isn't negotiable. I need to explain everything to him in private. I need to explain to my folks too. i need this morning to make my apologies and tell them good-bye. After I've done that if you want me I'll be home waiting for you. I won't put up a fight - I'll go quietly. But trust me, you don't want to make an issue of this right now," said one of the three most potentially lethal inhabitants of Chaves county.

Jaime looked at Jim and Jim looked at Jaime. Everything about the young lady's body language told them that if they picked this fight they were going to lose it, but they were still law enforcement people.

"This was never about you, Isabel," said Jim Valenti. "...maybe it still doesn't have to be. But it is about Elizabeth Parker.".

"There is no Elizabeth Parker," said Isabel as she helped a still-bewildered Alex into the passenger seat of the jeep, "... only an Elizabeth Evans whose husband is doing everything he possibly can to decipher technology that's thousands of years ahead of what he understands - hoping he can keep her alive long enough for someone to find a cure. I don't think he's going to succeed, but not you or anyone else is going to be able to stop him from giving it his best shot - certainly not at a price you are going to want to pay."

Jaime and Jim looked at each other. In the grand scheme of things - Isabel Evans had no reason to lie to them about that.

"What about Jeff Parker?"

Isabel thought for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders.

"Max would never hurt Liz's dad. As far as Jeff Parker hurting Max..? Max is a big boy - I guess he can look after himself."

With a worried look at the lanky young man in the passenger seat who was still sort of speechless, she started the engine and put the jeep in gear. Fifteen seconds later the two law officers were watching the taillights recede into the distance.

"Well, I guess we don't have to wonder if she really loves him or was putting on an act anymore," said Jaime as he picked up the two service automatics and handed one to Jim.

"No, we don't have to wonder about that. Damn I made a horrible mistake. I'd have killed that boy - just for trying to protect her from what he thought was a thug. I swear to God, Jaime, she made some sort of a bolt of lightning or something come from her hand that vaporized the slug as it left the barrel..."

"I believe you," said Jaime, picking up the remains of the little revolver. The barrel was both shortened and noticeably drooping. "...this little sucker looks like it could use some Viagra."

"Yeah, well possessive as that heartbroken young lady looked, I think she totally misread young Mr. Whitman if she thinks he's going to be all that upset with her. He may be needing some Viagra too before long."

"Not the way he was staring at her cleavage like that. I sort of doubt he's going to need any chemical assistance for a long long time," said a grinning FBI agent.

"That's assuming they are allowed to work out their own problems without a whole lot of help from the federal government," said Jim.

"Hey, I got nothing on her. If her brother really married the girl - well he'd be her guardian - wouldn't he? He couldn't be guilty of kidnapping his own wife - even if she was in a coma. Especially if she was in a coma. So the young lady there couldn't be an accessory to kidnapping if there was no kidnapping. Of course if some county sheriff wanted to get upset about her melting his backup gun...."

"And have to admit to the voters that I damn near killed some innocent kid? I have to stand for election every two years. I think I can do with nobody ever knowing that she did that. I don't suppose you'd like your coworkers to know how she disarmed you with a swish of her hand either?"

Jaime nodded in agreement. "You got that right. I'd be a laughing stock."

"Of course," said Jim, "...I'm not sure the rest of the federal government will let bygones by bygones on the alien thing...?"

"You know, if Diane Evans put in a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the government's dealing with aliens they would either somehow miss giving her the information about what the Special Unit did to avoid embarrassing the government or - even if they did obey he law - they'd put it in a data dump of so much Project Bluebook crap and old National Enquirer clippings that she'd spend her life reading all the material never find it. That's how they handle things that they really don't want made public. What the Special Unit did made Abu Graib look like fraternity hazing - and it went on for over a half century through all sorts of administrations, Republican and Democrat.. They won't ever want that known.

But if Diane Evans had that data and there was any issue about taking her daughter into custody she could threaten to expose the whole sordid story. Even just making a targeted FOIA request specifying the documents would let the politicians in the Bureau know that she was on to them. Instead of disappearing Isabel, they'd have to negotiate with Diane and Philip. That might give that young couple who just left a chance to have a normal life - well, not normal maybe, but a happy one."

"Agent Sanchez, you Latino types are such insufferable romantics..." said Jim Valenti with a smile.

"And you Italians aren't?" asked a chuckling Jaime Sanchez. "Think this hopped up dune buggy will get us to El Paso so I can get some copies of those files?"

"Hopefully it'll take us farther than that. I need to go to Las Cruces. There are some old files there that I was keeping on these kids. I think it would be just as well if they were all destroyed. We can get them on the same trip and probably be back by early afternoon."

"Sounds like a plan..." said the FBI agent.



Back in the podchamber. things weren't quite so happy.

The boy had his back to Jeff, and was stacking supplies on the shelf as Jeff moved by the bed. Jeff's anger increased with every step as he sneaked up on the unsuspecting teenager. He wanted to be close - he wanted to see the look in the boys eyes when he pulled that trigger - he wanted the boy to look at him and know what was coming.

"Evans...," he said through clenched teeth.

Max turned in surprise, seeing Jeff Parker behind him with a shotgun. Liz had loved her father her whole life. Max would never be able to bring himself to hurt Jeff, not even if Liz's pregnant body wasn't in the line of fire behind him - which it was. A powerblast was out of the question, and if he tried to pull the shotgun away telekinetically with Jeff's hand still on the trigger .... Max struggled in his mind with just how to explain what had happened to Jeff Parker - but was momentarily speechless.


As he saw the boy turn - saw the face of the evil person who had done this to his daughter - Jeff knew that nothing - nothing - would stop him from pulling the trigger and blotting the boy from existence. Of course, he was wrong. There was a lot of that going on this morning.


"Daddy..?" came the voice from behind him.

'Daddy..?'

The word seemed to echo in his mind and it stopped him – stopped him as nothing else could have. Not the word itself perhaps, but the voice that had spoken that word – a voice he had all but resigned himself to never hearing again. The voice was quavering and not very loud – as if the person speaking were quite weak, but their was no doubt in Jeff's mind as to the identity of the one speaking that word. It was his daughter.

Jeff looked over his shoulder and saw her then – and blinked back tears. Liz was awake – struggling to turn on her side and lift herself slightly by digging her right forearm into the mattress while reaching out toward him with the other arm. She was weak - obviously - but she was conscious.

He quickly brought the 12 gauge shotgun down to his hip and changed hands – keeping the barrel pointed at the boy as he grabbed the weapon with his left hand and found the trigger with his left index finger even as he stepped backwards and reached back to grasp his daughter's outstretched hand. He felt her squeeze his hand weakly before she herself fell back on the mattress her tearful eyes looking up at him.

“Daddy,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion, “... I've missed you so much. I was so frightened – it was like I was in this abyss – this horrible place - and time – time seemed to stand still. I thought I was dead or I was in purgatory or something. I thought I'd go insane. When Isabel and Max showed up I didn't believe they were real. They told me I was in a coma – I remembered the car accident happening – but I never thought they were actually with me – not really. Even when Max convinced me to let Isabel marry us – even then I didn't think it was real. I mean – who could really believe that they were really part alien – and that they'd been just embryos in these pods in suspended animation for all these years until their pods had failed and the incubators had gestated them. I mean – there was no way I could tell from the abyss. Who would have ever believed they were real? That this place was real?”

“It's OK, Liz,” said Jeff soothingly, “...Daddy's here now and it's going to be OK.”

But it was like his daughter didn't even hear him, lost in her own mind as she remembered.

“....and then this morning suddenly I was in a dream again – not the abyss – but a real dream – or at least that's what I thought. Here's this chamber and I can see the pods – and I saw Max with his back to me working on one of them..., and I said to myself, 'this can't be real...it can't be.' But that's when I felt...”

Jeff saw his daughter slide her slide her left hand back down her body – to rest it on the swelling on her lower abdomen – and she looked at him with wide eyes and finished,

“...and that's when I realized that this was ….real.”

To Jeff Liz seemed so wide-eyed – as if she still couldn't quite believe what had befallen her.

“It's OK, honey. It'll be alright.”

Jeff saw his daughter look up at him with a brave smile and he looked back at the boy, the rage flaring again. He'd failed her before, he realized, but he wasn't going to fail her again.

“Don't worry,” he said, looking back at the one who had used his daughter to satisfy his own perverse obsession, “...I'll take care of this – monster. And it's still early – we can get you to a clinic. They can take care of the pregnancy. You won't have to carry his child. Everything will be alright.”

Which of course is where it all came off the rails. His daughter pulled her hand out of his and with a voice that suddenly didn't seem at all weak, said

“Max, dear, would you please step outside for a moment? I need to have a few words alone with my father...”