Roswell Fanatics

Thank you to everybody still reading! I'm having a blast editing the last episodes, so I should be posting about two chapters a week until it's done.

xmag, well, Danny is not exactly a traitor. He thought he could play McKay, get the info he needed, and leave. Because if he was betraying Dave, then chances were he would never meet Max. He thinks of himself as some sort of double agent, I'd say.




 
Part 31: Threats From Afar
November 2nd, 2011 - New York


1 : Kyle

Sometimes, there were no right words to express frustration.

Jesse’s mind was broodingly going in circles about what to say to shake Isabel out of her self-inflicted imprisonment. And Isabel remained stubbornly silent because no one—not Max, not Michael, certainly not Jesse—understood the severity of her actions.

And that left Kyle with two stormy minds trying to break his mental barriers. Yet here he was.

Out of all the pod people, Isabel had always been his favorite. He’d known for years now that guilt was eating her up, guilt that was always at the edge of her mind, nibbling at her self-confidence and taking a piece of herself each and every day.

In all honestly, Kyle had thought it had to do with what Isabel knew about Vilandra, not that Vilandra sort of lived rent free in her mind.

They seldom saw each other, Kyle and the alien-trio. And even when they were in the same room, the pod squad was very good at redirecting their thoughts. Kyle was grateful for that, since theirs were practically unavoidable. Still, Kyle had been aware something was eating Isabel up, and he’d chosen to remain silent.

“I wish I had said something,” Kyle said, sitting against the wall closest to Isabel’s cell.

“You knew?” she asked, more curious than surprised.

“I knew something was wrong. I just thought that you would tell Max or Michael first. I mean, if you weren’t confiding in Jesse, it had to be serious. I was certainly not the first one in that list.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” she whispered, sitting on the floor with her knees up. Her fabulous clothing looked out of place in a situation like this. “You’re a good friend, Kyle. It’s just that some things cannot be spoken.”

Jesse was about to open his mouth, and Kyle shook his head no. If he was going to get through Isabel, he needed the husband to remain silent. Jesse sighed in frustration.

“Just for the sake of argument, what would be an adequate punishment for Vilandra? Besides dying, of course.”

“There’s no adequate punishment for what I did.”

“She did. She. Let’s not get things all mixed up, here.”

“Kyle—”

“No, Max just told us that you’re pretending to be them for the sake of this charade and us getting out of here alive. So stick to that script.”

“There’s no punishment that would feel right, that’s what matters. Hundreds of thousands have already died, millions of lives were torn apart when Antar fell. You know how they say ‘one person can change the world’? That same person can change the world for the worst. I’m that one person. I wanted that change. I didn’t know the cost, but I still wanted it to happen.”

Jesse was really close to say something there, and Kyle furiously shook his head.

“Well, when you put it that way…” Kyle muttered. “So, you want them to jail you for life?”

“It’s probably the least harsh sentence I could ask for.”

“The harshest being—them executing you?”

“Kyle!” Jesse yelled this time.

“I’m just asking,” Kyle said, silently telling Jesse to shut up on his side of the cell.

“I—she—Vilandra never deserved Antar. She never embraced her duties. She was far more preoccupied with the glamorous side of things than actually ruling. That was Zan’s job. Rath’s job, too.”

“I wish I could get rid of my power,” Kyle said out of the blue. “I bet you wish you had never remembered her.”

“Life would be far easier if all I knew was echoes of what she did… Instead I have first-hand knowledge of every single thought she had leading to that—to that day…”

“She did get executed, though,” Kyle pointed out. “You would think one execution is enough…” he trailed off, hoping Isabel would see the error in her logic.

“She was sent with her brother here. They all thought I died a martyr.”

“Well, for what Jade said—that’s Liz’s bodyguard—they got the story straight a decade ago. That’s why they want you to pay. Even if you have already paid… I guess they just want you to repay once they realized you could be reexecuted.”

“That makes no sense—” Jesse started to say.

“It doesn’t have to,” Kyle said, shrugging. “They want revenge, that never needs to make sense.”

“They want justice,” Isabel whispered. “I want that, too.”

“Justice is not about executing people twice, you know?” Kyle said, hearing the door to the holding area opening. “If anything, I would be looking for ways for Vilandra to be redeemed instead of being executed, but what do I know?”

A guy Kyle did not know and could not mind read came through. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but His Majesty wants everyone in the War Room.”

“He wants Isabel in?” Kyle asked, getting up and hopeful.

“Just you,” the shifter said, apologetic.

“Right, right. Just do me a favor, okay?” he said, now standing in front of Isabel’s holding cell. “I know you’re really aiming for life in prison here, but if there was one single thing that could make up for what your former self did, what would that be? Just one single thing, however improbable that would be—and hold that thought.”


2 : McKay

The sonar mapped an underground compound that was a few dozen feet buried right in front of the US most populous city. When had this place been built was anyone’s guess, but the intrinsic pattern below meant it would take hours to fully scout.

He didn’t want to wait hours, of course, so he instructed the skilled technician doing the preliminary surveillance to look for any other exits first. He could siege the darn place indefinitely, after all.

Almost an hour had passed since they had chased them inside, and McKay did not want to hear they had escaped by a backdoor. And wasn’t that ironic? Daniel had been big on giving him virtual backdoors, after all, but nowhere had this place been on the map.

“There is a huge chamber here,” the technician said as he did a few more sweeps, looking for any obvious exit to the aboveground. “Looks like some sort of warehouse, housing a round object.”

No… McKay thought, could it really be? Between losing twenty-three agents—all veterans, all dying in suspicious non-natural causes—and taking control of the Unit, the actual ’47 crash spaceship had been lost. Stolen, really, when it had been shuffled between locations that could house it somewhere else and never arriving to destination. Of course, one could not let Uncle Sam know an actual alien vessel had been misplaced, and so McKay had dust it under the rug.

It had been clear decades ago that the ship’s technology was too alien to understand. They had never been able to enter it, lacking some sort of mechanism to open the main door. And even when they had tried to force entrance, the walls had never yielded.

This was an unexpected prize and McKay’s eyes shone with anticipation.

“Find a way to reach that spot once you’ve located any other entry points,” he instructed. With a little luck, this night he would go home with a few alien bodies, a few alien subjects, and whatever other alien technology was hidden beneath the ground.


3 : Michael

The war room was appropriately designed with a crisis in mind. Several monitors showed the outside perimeter while on the opposite wall, six showed the inner halls. This was a control room, and Michael liked having control, especially when it was Maria and the others who were in the line of fire.

Max entered the room first—though Michael knew his own bodyguards had probably imperceptibly entered a few seconds before—followed by Van and Jake. Everybody else was already in this room, except for Isabel and Jesse.

They had subconsciously arranged themselves into two groups: on his right, all humans sat, which was Maria, Liz, Kyle, Ray, Dave, Jake and some twenty-something guy who looked like trouble.

On his left, Luke and Rose, the two main shapeshifters who ran things, looked positively grim. As if they had predicted everything was going to go down the drain and where now one wrong word of saying, I told you so. Van, of course, sat with them a moment later.

The other three remaining shifters who weren’t either Max or Liz’s guards were somewhere else making sure no one would be able to bridge their little base.

Yet seeing Max entering the room, commanding everybody’s attention, brought back memories of Zan walking to his many conference rooms. Zan had never been in love with the idea of a throne room, so except for ceremonial purposes, he always met people in spaces like this—though usually those had had windows and not screens as decoration.

It was Zan who was entering then, Michael knew, the same way he knew that Rath was the one who wanted to be in control of this situation. Michael had learned how to handle escapes, but not to manage people and shelter down. Rath, on the other hand, had a plethora of options that had been gained through experience and military command.

Neither Max nor Michael could deal with a situation of this scale. Zan or Rath? Hell, yes.

“We are surrounded by the Special Unit,” Max said as he took the chair at the end of the table, leaving Michael at the other end. They were not asking if they could take control; they just took it.

“Langley decided to go hunting on his own, so that might be why we’re seeing sudden explosions outside,” Michael said.

“Yet this is not our main problem,” Max added, all eyes on him. “I’ve been having fainting spells all day long. I strongly believe that Khivar has found a way of possessing me in the same way the emissary and the leaders of all planets possessed other humans eleven years ago.”

“For real?” Michael asked, in a very ungeneral way.

“We’ve just confirmed that Khivar has been playing with his mind-linking technology today, but that does not prove anything,” Luke said. “For one, he cannot possess His Majesty. The Seal would never allow for such a thing to happen.” Luke had already heard about this, so at least he’d had time to think this through. Michael wasn’t sure how would Max even know.

“Is it?” Max asked. “The Seal was never meant to be a wall for this kind of technology. It certifies the true ruler, and it enables me to do certain things. But all Khivar would need is a way to pinpoint my brain signals and that would be it. In any case, he doesn’t need to possess me—he just needs to execute me.”

Van looked at Rose, their chief medical officer. “Could it be done, Rose?”

She pressed her lips, not liking being the center of attention. “His Majesty is correct in the fact that the Royal Seal of Antar wouldn’t really work as a protection against it, especially since his biology is alien in nature. But Khivar figuring out what Zan’s exact brain waves are by sheer luck is next to impossible.”

Michael looked at Max. If Khivar could kill him remotely, then Max was right, this was far more pressing than the FBI Unit pounding on their door.

Beside him, Jake cleared his throat. “We do have Max’s medical records. Those definitely include his brain waves patterns.”

Van’s eyes became daggers at the implication. Luke tensed beside him, ready to attack a perceived traitor. Dave put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “But nobody ever saw them but you. You didn’t even know Khivar existed till today. Hell, you didn’t even know Van existed till a week ago,” he said, turning to look at Van. “We might have the information, but it doesn’t mean we betrayed you.”

“It was most likely leaked,” Ray said, turning to look a suddenly shy figure on his right. The kid that had rescued Dave. “Wouldn’t you have access to those records as well, Daniel?”

The kid froze, everybody did for a moment, before Max regained the room’s attention. “It doesn’t matter right now what he did or did not do. There’s a clear path of how Khivar is doing this, and the truth is, he might succeed any moment now.”

“We didn’t come this far to see you fall right in front of me,” Van said, though it paled in comparison to what Michael was feeling. Not you, Max, not like that, not from that man!

“I have no idea how to stop this,” Max said, “but I do know we need to be prepared for it. It’s reasonable to believe Khivar knew you were coming. He might have timed it like this. Still, the Seal needs to be properly transferred, plans need to be made.”

“No,” Van said. “I refuse to hear this. This is your moment, Zan. This is the time when you have to come back to Antar and lead us. We’ve waited more than seventy years for this day. A generation has come who doesn’t know you but still claims your name. Zan…he can’t win.”

“We can lose this battle but not the war,” Max said with a finality that Rath had seldom seen in Zan back in their other life. One that Michael didn’t like when it sounded so final.

“Wait a moment here,” Jake said, cutting through the tension like a knife through butter. “What exactly does Khivar want?”

“To kill Zan,” Luke answered.

“How does he prove he’s dead? I mean, Zan is all the way across the galaxy. Who says Zan is actually dead?”

There was a momentary pause of confusion among the shifters. “We cannot hide the fact that Zan died when he doesn’t come back,” Rose answered.

“Humor me here for a moment. Let’s say Zan does die, and you cover it up. Would you be able to keep perpetuating his name?”

“Don’t you dare to even joke about this,” Van said, too serious for Michael’s liking.

“It’s not a joke. But as I see it, Khivar is somehow able to access Max’s brain waves to take over his body, and so, he must know when those brain waves are no longer active. He will proclaim Zan is dead, but he will need you to corroborate it.”

Van frowned. “I guess so. It would be proof enough when Zan doesn’t come home. The Rebellion will demand answers—proof that Zan is still alive.”

“So, how about we do kill Zan?”

All eyes in that room turned to look at Jake as if he were either insane or dragging a death wish over his head.

“Jake…” Dave hissed, clearly understanding the quick sands his friend was threading in.

“You don’t—you don’t mean to literally kill him…do you?” Liz asked, voicing pretty much everyone’s question.

“He needs to be dead for Khivar to leave him alone. But he doesn’t have to stay dead for the plan to work.”

Max perked at that, clearly the only one in that room who either wanted or understood what Jake was talking about. “Let’s hear what you have in mind, then.”

Okay, what is the plan, then? Killing Zan, aka Max, even if it's temporary, the seal goes to Michael, right? But if Khivar has Max's brain waves patterns, doesn't he have Michael's, too, curtesy of Daniel? Yes, it might take him a long time to find the correct waves but it's still a risk, maybe Khivar has found a new technology allowing him to find those brain waves patterns quickly?

xmag, what is the plan? So far, a very convoluted one Alas, you won't get to see it till next chapter, but other things need to happen first. Also, some details you're still missing won't come to light for a long while, but hang in there I love how you always keep me on my toes!




Part 32: Unsavory Plans
November 2nd, 2011 - New York


1 : Liz

No one, absolutely no one was happy with Jake’s plan.

“You cannot just suggest declaring Antar’s King dead one minute and that he’s alive the next,” Luke vehemently argued while Michael shook his head.

“This is not a plan, Maxwell. It’s a death wish. We don’t even know if Khivar is truly capable of doing this.”

By her side, Kyle discreetly moved back, clearly having a hard time with everyone’s thoughts in the air.

“Here, let’s head out,” Liz said, extending a hand to her ex-boyfriend and standing up. Max’s eyes searched for hers, and for the longest moment, they held each other’s gaze.

He had made his decision about this, she knew, even if he didn’t like it any more than anyone else here. She just couldn’t stay there, agreeing to Jake’s idea of saving her husband by killing him first. She just couldn’t.

Max nodded and continued their discussion as she and Kyle exited the room.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Kyle said as they walked out of the War Room, searching for as much distance as they could. “Maybe I should ask Jake to put me under a coma…”

“Kyle!” Liz admonished.

“Yeah, you just say that because you’re not the one with the headache.”

“I—I guess. It’s still not right…” she answered, looking back at the closed door.

“Thanks… I mean, for coming out of the room with me and not making me look like the odd man out.”

“Sure… I needed to get out, too…” she whispered as Kyle rested the back of his head against the wall, closing his eyes to the ceiling.

“Max wants nothing more than to take your hand and run away from here, never to come back to this place, you know that, right? Some place with a nice chimney and a lake. I mean, I’m not going to tell you all the sexy details I wish I had been spared ten minutes ago, but you get the gist.”

She chuckled, blushing. “He wasn’t really thinking that…”

“He wasn’t not thinking about fleeing this place, that much I can tell you. Michael is thinking that, too, at the back of his mind. Isabel is the only one who wants to remain.”

“That’s—that’s just wrong.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

They remained silent for a moment, now both looking at the closed door.

“Can you read Van’s mind?” she asked out of the blue.

“Not a bleep. I can’t hear the shifters either. I would have known they were there years ago otherwise. Now that I think about it, I could totally go live in that world. Being a telepath is not all that’s cracked up to be, you know?”

“Would you even go?”

“Yes, in a heartbeat. It’s an alien world that is thousands of years ahead of us. I’d be friends with the freaking King. I’m pretty sure I’d get a sweet deal out of it all.”

“Oh…” Liz said, nodding.

“But Sybelle is here, so,” Kyle added, shrugging. “Can’t leave the love of my life behind, you know.”

She smiled at that. Kyle Valenti had truly become a great guy. She fleetingly wondered if Future Max had met this version of Kyle, too.

The door opened then, an exodus of everyone but Max and Van coming out. Maria was the last one to get out, narrowing her eyes as she quietly closed the door.

“They asked us to leave the room,” she explained, her mind clearly somewhere else.

“Tell him he’s being an idiot,” Michael told Liz, though there was not that much fire behind his words.

“If he’s right, though,” Liz said. “I mean, you felt it, Michael. He just completely faded out of our connection. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we have to be practical here.”

“General, if you don’t mind,” Luke said. “While they discuss this delicate matter, we still have a compound to defend.”

“You have another War Room?” Michael asked as they started walking down the hall, Ray automatically attaching to them.

“We also need to get ready if we’re going to follow my plan,” Jake said, looking at Liz and then at Rose. “I believe our own War Room must be the medical bay?”

“Are you going to be okay?” Liz asked both Kyle and Maria as Jake and Rose walked behind Michael and Luke.

“Yeah, I’m better now that you people are not mentally shouting at each other. In fact—I have something to discuss with Dave,” Kyle said, hurrying to catch up with Dave and Daniel as they left on the opposite direction.

“Oh, I’m staying right here,” Maria said, smirking. “You go do your science thing, girl. I have a project of my own.”


2 : Kyle

“Mr. Valenti,” Dave politely said once he realized Kyle was walking right behind him. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

The tone was neutral, but Kyle could almost, almost detect a geek disdain there, as if Dave had geek genes that naturally sneered at Kyle’s jock ones.

“It’s about Sybelle.”

Dave faltered, but didn’t stop. “What about my goddaughter?” he asked, with a slightly dangerous undertone this time.

In the great scheme of things, having Dave as a potential father-in-law should be a scary proposition. In reality though, after the things Kyle had lived through and knew about the universe, he thought it was a small price to pay. Granted, Sybelle idolized Dave to the highest degree, but Kyle also knew she loved him. A compromise would have to be reached at some point.

“I haven’t been able to contact her since we arrived in New York this morning.”

“Since the Network was down you wouldn’t have been able to contact her at all,” the kid walking beside Dave said, Dante-Dandy-Danny or something said, frowning at the logic Kyle hadn’t seen.

“I know my phone was out of order, and I suspect you didn’t have one either,” he said, looking at Dave while studiously ignoring the brat. “Look, all I want is for you to tell me she’s okay and I’ll be okay. Like, you talked to her before this whole day became a mess.”

“I talked to her two days ago,” Dave answered, frowning even deeper.

“Is there any way we both can know if she’s okay right now?”

A thousand answers crossed Dave’s mind, all flashing without really sticking in his mind so all Kyle got was a train of thought that was going at light speed.

“There should be a way by now,” Dave said, a plan consolidating in his mind. “The Network is back in much of Asia, and Europe must have done some progress by this point.”

“Yeah, that’s what I had in mind,” Kyle said, as they both walked faster towards Dave’s computer, making the brat scramble to keep up with them. “I don’t even need her to know we’re in this place—”

Dave turned so fast on him, Kyle almost collided with the man. “Never. You hear me, never put her in a position that she has to worry about you because you’re on an underground base somewhere, dreading that armed FBI agents and shapeshifting aliens might kill each other any minute now.”

In Dave’s mind, Sybelle’s adorable six-year-old self was smiling at him, as if he was the best thing in the universe. She really was a daughter to him.

Kyle raised his hands in a sign of never. Dave’s worries flashed in his eyes again, and then he just started running towards his codes, his network and, hopefully, his daughter’s current location.


3 : Jake

While Max and Van argued over the fine points of letting Max die and come back, Jake and Liz had followed Rose, the resident medic, into her clinic. It was impressively well stocked for a place that usually had no humans around.

“We always knew this day would come,” she said as Liz’s eyes went to the equipment and Jake’s to the drug cabinet. “So we prepared in case Zan or his company would be treated here.”

“I can imagine a life as a rebel has made you incredibly resourceful,” Liz said.

“For what I’ve heard,” Rose said as she eyed Jake, “His Majesty and you have learned to live with that kind of fear as well. The fear of the what ifs.”

By the corner, Jake opened the cabinet doors and inspected each drug label with the ease of someone used to be around needles, scalpels, and aliens.

“You honestly will risk his life?” Rose asked. The shapeshifter was a puzzling one. Not only had she chosen to be female, but an old female at that. He wondered if her aim was to put people at ease in rooms like this.

“You honestly think he will survive on his own?” Jake asked back, finding what he wanted.

“Khivar is clearly working with an incomplete set of his brain waves, or he would have killed Zan already. It might take him days, weeks, even months before he’s got the exact pattern. We might be able to find a different solution to this problem.”

“Or he might be just toying with Zan,” Jake said, and then turned to look at a very concerned Liz. “You’ve worked with his biology for the better part of a decade. Do you think we might be able to induce a deep enough coma? We’ll have to take him as close to the edge as we can.”

Liz opened her mouth and then closed it. It was clear to him that her mind wanted to say ‘yes’ while her heart ‘no’. Jake had worked closely with their biology as well, yet Liz had gone to the cellular level along with her boss. It was just a safety check, and they both knew it.

“He’s going to metabolize the drugs way faster than a regular person. How long are you planning on keeping him under?”

“How long do you think it would take Khivar to be satisfied?” Jake asked Rose, who pressed her lips into a thin line.

“We’ll have to wait until the Rebellion destroys the last machine. Khivar will claim victory as soon as he can, but they’ll be monitoring to make sure is not a fluke. Zan will not survive for long if Khivar finds out he came to life—again.”

There’s a thought, Jake fleetingly noted. It had to suck to be Khivar, never being able to shake Zan’s commitment to stick to the living, in whatever form he could find. Even on an alien planet, inside an alien body.

Letting the thought go, Jake did a quick calculation as he looked at the tiny bottles in his hand. Liz was right, Max was going to metabolize this way faster than a human body would. “We might have about four hours. Do you think that might be enough?”

“Only time will tell,” Rose said.

And that’s assuming Max will survive as well. By the way Liz’s eyes shone with unshed tears, he knew she was thinking about that as well.

“We do have more practical matters to resolve,” Jake pointed out as he looked around the clinic. “We need to keep Max’s lungs breathing and his heart beating while we turned off his brain for a little while.”

In a hospital setting, inducing a coma was a last resort to treat traumatic brain injuries, allowing the body time to rest without worrying about anything else. But that also meant intubating and other dangerous procedures, besides the drugs themselves.

“What do you need?” Rose asked, knowing full well her clinic was not an ICU but was well stocked.

“I need Isabel.”

“What? Why?” Rose asked, looking at him and then at Liz, suddenly suspicious of their motives.

“She has the skill and the finesse to keep her brother breathing. All three of us want to avoid putting Zan’s body under any more pressure than it already is. She’s as safe as if he were breathing himself.”

“She’s the reason they all died,” Rose whispered in anger, as if they should understand some deeper truth as to why Isabel was not to be trusted.

“She might be the reason why your Rebellion survives,” Liz said, knowing full well that Isabel was a far better choice than any machine—and than Michael himself.

“No.”

“Look,” Liz said, “Max is going to agree to do this whether you like it or not. But you want him to survive, right? She’s the safest choice you’ll ever find. Let her help him go through this. Let her dreamwalk Max if he’s uncapable of finding his way home. She’s the only one capable to do all of this and so much more.”

She looked unmoved.

“You can walk her back to her jail afterwards,” Jake offered.

“If she fails him,” Rose said in the coldest voice ever, “I’ll kill you.”

He had absolutely no doubt she would.


4 : McKay

The thing about the word alien was that in law enforcement, no one ever thought about them being space aliens. Good thing that the word terrorist meant the same, no matter the context.

And make no mistake, these beings are here to instill terror in us.

The story as far as the NYPD and FBI non-Unit agents knew was that the terrorists that had blown up a car in the middle of Manhattan had taken refuge in the warehouse. They were not aware of the complex compound housed inside, and only knew the FBI Unit that had uncovered it were doing terrain surveillance right now.

Everybody wanted to go in and shoot some aliens, even if they thought these were of the human variety.

In truth, McKay needed the cover. The SWAT team could be helpful, but against alien technology and alien capabilities, there was a good chance they were outmatched if not outnumbered. And if he could level the field by throwing numbers at the problem, so be it.

“Sir! I’ve pinpointed a secondary exit,” his tech savvy agent Andrews said, looking ready to blaze into the whole thing.

“Chances are someone’s already used it,” McKay said, looking at the sonar readings and a digital render of what the compound might actually look like. A SWAT team was already trying to breach the main entrance and were about to use some heavy caliber explosives any minute now. Anything to blow that thing open.

Jake’s down there, and most likely Dave. But these two little rats are smart ones. Where would I go if I were in a hurry to get far, far away from here.

“We cannot penetrate the structure with thermal reading,” Andrews said, eager to be more useful than he already was.

The explosion echoed a moment later, slightly shaking the van. When McKay looked at the monitor, gasped could be heard all around from the NYPD.

The depilated, broken warehouse with the steel stains and one-inch dust cover had vanished, like a spell suddenly broken by the ire of the bomb, and in its place, a pristine, white warehouse stood. All windows were intact, all spiderwebs gone. It wouldn’t look misplaced in any university campus.

It had been an illusion, in the same way McKay thought he could deal with aliens by mere force. Not that he would ever acknowledge that, not even to himself.

“What kind of terrorists are these?” a police officer asked, still looking at the sudden new building he had in front.

“Well-funded ones,” one of the Unit Agents answered, as the SWAT leader came out.

“There’s a vertical ladder leading all the way down, some six feet. No one seems to be around, sir,” he reported to McKay, the de facto leader of the operation. Up in the air, a news helicopter passed, trying to sniff where all the action was.

“Let’s bring the cameras,” McKay said, knowing he would have a bigger mess to cover if the News suddenly found itself in the middle of this operation. New York City was already in high alert from the car explosion earlier. He didn’t need trigger-happy cops dying on prime TV. “Let’s see what’s down there.”

And while the technical team got its gear in place, McKay looked back at the dazzling city in front of him. If Jake and Dave are going to escape, that’s where they’re going.

And to catch rats, all they needed was good bait.

I don't envy Kyle's powers. Those are the worst powers to have. I mean, telepathy..., it's like never being alone in your own head. That's the worst kind of invasion. And considering that there are almost 10 billions people on the planet, someone like Kyle would need to live somewhere in the mountains to escape humans.

Maybe this last plot is Isabel's redemption, at least in the eyes of the rebels. They sure hate her so much that they would like to see her dead right now. I think she is only alive because they wouldn't dare face Zan and Rath's rage if they killed her.

I hope MacKay will meet his fate soon, the guy needs to die. Period.

xmag, indeed, of all the powers Kyle could get, he got stuck with listening to everybody else... but who knows? It might come in handy still! Also, Isabel might still get a chance with the rebels, but she has to move past this first, that's the real problem here




Part 33: The Price of Freedom
November 2nd, 2011 - New York


1 : Max

“You cannot be serious about this,” Van said as soon as the door closed. In this room, no one was allowed, not even their own guards.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my entire life,” he answered, looking Van straight in the eye. In here, they were equals.

“If this doesn’t work, you will die.”

“If this doesn’t work, I’m already dead. Khivar’s plan is flawless, Van. He will kill me. He will use my death to undermine the Rebellion—to undermine you.”

“What’s the difference between you dying and just pretending to die? For all intents and purposes, he will do the same.”

“Because this way I choose how I die, and you choose the narrative.”

“Don’t even joke about it.”

Max paused. This was his last chance, his last shot at a normal life. It had to be perfect.

“I died, Van. More than seventy years ago, the Palace was breached, my general fell, my own sister opened the gates before falling herself. I couldn’t even save my wife. And before the sun rose in the horizon, I died too. My reign has been over for a long time. It’s not me Antar needs anymore.”

“You died and then came back from beyond. You are the reason the Rebellion even exists.”

“No, you exist because I failed. Our Mother knew this. And with her wisdom she chose to let me go and look for the future. She chose you, Van. I was always a long shot.”

“Nonsense. You stand here with me, now. I have no reason to want your throne, no reason to be okay with this whole thing. You are Zan, rightful ruler of Antar. Leader of the interplanetary alliance. King—”

Max placed a hand on Van’s shoulder. This was not going to work.

“Van. I used to be Zan. I’m not him any longer. Not in this lifetime. Not since the moment I emerged from the pod chamber, tucked away in a cave on this small planet, so far away from our own sun. I can tell you anything Zan thought, felt, did. I know him. I was there at his father’s funeral and at his own coronation. I was there when he fell in love with Ava. Zan lived, but he no longer lives.”

Van stepped back, rejecting the hand that had been placed on him.

“Zan lives inside of you,” he said instead, looking at the floor for a moment as he collected his thoughts for another round of arguments.

“We’re losing valuable time,” Max said. “Khivar will kill me. I won’t see the sun rising tomorrow, of that much I’m certain. At the very least, Jake’s plan has a chance of saving my life.”

“Then we’ll continue this discussion once you’re safely on the other side.”

“No,” Max said, with all the authority his crown gave him.

Van frowned, clearly not used to being denied.

“If you’re not Zan, then you have no authority to demand anything.”

“If I have the seal, by law, I’m King. I told you, I know everything Zan knew, even if I don’t consider myself him. But that’s not the point. The seal is too powerful to be left unguided. Michael will get it, except it will manifest itself as a ruthless, emotional version of him. You don’t want that—he doesn’t want that. There’s also the chance that my son will get it, even if he’s too human. I cannot risk it. It has to go to you Van. I order it.”

“This is treason. I will not—I cannot—how could you talk about this, you of all people?”

“Because I do care about Antar. Not only as a principle, but because I know what it meant to Zan. This seal needs to be used for good. You need it to reclaim the throne.”

“Everyone will think I killed you for it.”

“No, I will die by Khivar’s hand, and with my dying breath I will give you the seal. The story will be yours to tell as you please.”

Van shook his head as Max moved forward.

“Van. Be reasonable. I might survive, but there’s a good chance I won’t. This is the only answer that makes sense to the Rebellion. Your shapeshifters love you. Antar is rooting for you.”

“They all fight in your name.”

“They all fight for your version of my name. And you’re the only one who can embody that.”

Max swayed for a moment, feeling that intrusive fog fighting to take his mind. “We’re really running out of time, Van. What’s it gonna be? Does the seal go wherever it wants to, or do you keep it where you can use it for the best?”

Van moved forward to help Max sit down. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” he said, hurt. Lost. “I need you—I need Zan. You, who know all there is to know about him, are the closest I have to that dream. How can I take this from you?”

“It is mine to give, Van. That’s why I can transfer it—and why I can take it back.”

Van eyes shone with the possibility. A way to solve this dilemma from his perspective. “When you wake up, I will offer it back.”

Max nodded once. He was relieved that Van had chosen offer instead of give it, because there was a good chance that Van was finally realizing the huge problem the seal could present.

“I will have to touch you,” Max said, tentatively hovering over Van’s forehead. He had no idea how an Antarian-hybrid connection would work, but he had to try. This was the last step to free himself from the chains of destiny.

“Will it hurt you?” Van asked.

“No, but you might get some flashes—glimpses of my life as I might see glimpses of yours.”

Or at least I hope that’s the worst that can happen. Last time he’d taken it back from Michael, they’d been in the middle of fighting each other with some creative uses of their powers.

“Just remember,” Max warned, “everything you say after this will be law to your shifter friends. Make sure to wield this power wisely.”


2 : Van

The plan was simple: take the Royal Seal of Antar, carefully wrap it inside of him until Zan woke up out of Khivar’s trap, and then give it back. Surely, reason would prevail. Surely, Zan would understand once the threat to his life was over.

There would be plenty of time to do the convincing once this day from hell was over.

So when Zan touched him, all Van was thinking about was how much he needed Zan to be back with them.

Images started filtering into his mind, too brief and too alien for him to make any context out of them. Max as a child, healing a pigeon, the energy surging through his chest all the way to the tips of his fingers and into the bird.

Teenager Max watching from afar at the love of his life, his heart madly in love while his mind restrained him with the warning of what he was.

Liz shot. Liz crying. Liz laughing. Max running. Max terrified. Max singing.

No wonder he calls these flashes, Van thought with amusement as Max’s human life went by in seconds, a life of hiding both from the world and from himself.

Everything went dark then. He didn’t know if he had his eyes open or not, but in this space, where Max’s mind and his were linked, everything was silent for a moment. In the darkness, a moon suddenly shone, illuminating a skyline full of blue and silver banners—Zan’s colors. It was the first day of Zan’s reign, and when the second moon filled the horizon, Van breathed as Zan breathed, a taste of the new life that was to begin.

As Zan, Van mourned his father and felt the literal weight of the crown on his head. He met Rath and was annoyed at his sister. He fell in love with Ava and pondered the differences between his life and everybody else’s. Antar grew far more than anybody gave Zan credit for, a golden age just out of reach for a couple of years more.

The day that Khivar entered the Palace had been a bright day with a clear sky, though Zan would always wonder why he hadn’t ordered it to rain. Those who bring down lives seldom present themselves as such, a slightly older Zan thought, as if he knew Van was listening to his every word.

Speeches, dinners, diplomat invitations, it all went in the blink of an eye. Zan ruling at his best, at his worst, though most of the time it was just Zan trying to hold it together in peace.

A searing pain blinded Van for a moment, and then it was gone, and with it, so was Zan, and the Antar that once was but never more.

“It is yours, now,” Zan said, a shine of sweat on his face. “I—”

Van stopped him, his eyes wide at the secrets he’d seen. Zan’s life, all there to be witnessed, was more than Van had ever hoped for. It was the second-best thing besides having the real Zan here.

“You know all of this, and you still choose to ignore it?”

“I would only do a disservice to you and Antar by pretending knowing this makes me Zan.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I see now, how different Max is from Zan, I saw what it felt like to be you and him. But you still carry this knowledge inside of you. You can still carry it out in the world.”

“I will always be here to answer all your questions, Van. Whatever you want to know about Zan, I will never deny that insight from you. It’s the least I can do for the world that gave me life.”


3 : Langley

The thing about calling for reinforcements was that it put groups of people who didn’t know each other together, and by default, everyone trusted everybody else around them, thinking as long as they wore a uniform, they were part of the other group.

This was the stuff of dreams for shapeshifters. Wearing any uniform, Langley had to change some colors here, some badges there, and he had instant access everywhere. And though shifters were exceedingly good at executing people, their value really laid on gathering intelligence. Crossing enemy lines was only worth it to either sabotage or learn the enemy’s plans, and luckily for him, he could do both.

He'd laid on top of the warehouse for the first hour, watching as first the NYPD and then the FBI branch, arrived to do a perimeter. Langley knew the compound’s layout well enough to remember where the emergency exits were, so when cops and official vehicles started parking dangerously close to them, Langley had moved silently but surely through their ranks.

A few telekinetic moves later, he made sure that if any of these cars move to give chase, all of them would lose their tires one way or another. As he worked on it, he listened to the confused chain of command around them. Most cops had been told to come here and help with either crowd control or to make a perimeter, but they had no idea who was here, how many they were, or what was the plan.

McKay might run a tight ship when it came to the Unit, but since he’d proclaimed this a terrorist attack, at least three high ranking officers wanted the merit of running the operation themselves, so McKay had made a point of not sharing a thing, pissing everyone off.

That meant Langley’s next step was to play with everyone’s confusion and add to the chaos. And boy, did Langley love to play the part.

“I heard there’s another cell of terrorists down the road,” he said to a couple of wide-eyed rookies. “What we’re doing here is just waiting for these ones to call the other ones and I’m telling you, we’re going to get stuck in the middle.”

He shifted into a policewoman and confidently walked to two other women, “Can you believe this? Those FBI idiots just asked me if I was bringing them coffee!”

Their faces of dismay and repulsion were glorious. Six minutes later, every woman in a thirty feet radius was furious.

My work here is done, he thought after the sixth exchange on this venue. He’d stocked enough animosity between the cops and the FBI—an easy thing, really, when everybody was so ready to play that game—so he started moving on to the inner circles of the operation.

Gone was the police uniform and in was the smart suit with the bored face. Of all the people he’d shifted into his whole life, FBI agent was probably his least favorite yet his most useful. He took a cigarette pack from a loose pocket, and walked closer to where he wanted to be, pretending he was looking for a place to take a smoke.

Nothing attracted an eager crowd better than a lighter and the promise of free cigarettes, so he soon had three other white men asking to join the circle while they waited for some clarity on what the hell where they supposed to be doing here.

“I don’t know, man. I was going home and I’m suddenly called here,” Langley said, exasperated. “I don’t even know where the hell I am, it’s the freaking middle of nowhere and I’m freezing!”

“Well, I’ve been asking for an hour now what terrorist group we’re dealing with, but the unit assigned to this operation is completely lip tied. If you ask me, this is domestic terrorism. No one on the other side of the world has claimed this afternoon’s car explosion.”

“Oh, that would make so much sense,” another one of them said, nodding. “It wouldn’t surprise me if some senator’s son is in there. The level of scrutiny and secrecy going around—”

An explosion inside the warehouse made them all duck for cover momentarily, even if the warehouse was some fifty feet away.

“Jesus Christ! Why didn’t they warn us!” one of them said as all three of them reached for their weapons. When the holographic camouflage came down two seconds later, two of them dropped their cigarettes without even noticing and the third one almost choked on it.

Langley was already moving in McKay’s direction.


4 : Maria

She studiously waited for Max to open the door, and grinned one of her manic grins at him.

“What?” he asked, frowning, clearly confused at her overwhelming enthusiasm.

“May I borrow your brother, Your Majesty?”

His confusion turned into a glare.

“What?” she innocently asked, “You gotta admit that being friends with a king sounds too cool to pass.”

“It’s not as if this is news to you,” Max said as he moved aside to let her enter.

“It is when everybody else acknowledges it, Your Majesty,” she answered innocently again as he chuckled and left.

“Your Highness,” she said to Van. She’d never met an alien before who wasn’t a hybrid, shapeshifter or a murderous Skin, so she had to be careful how she would approach this man.

Van looked straight at her, motionless standing in the middle of the room, clearly measuring her up. They recognized each other as the rebels they were, she knew, as he nodded once so she could proceed.

She smiled, one of her smart smiles, as Dave called them. “I’m Maria. I’m Zan’s best friend,” she said, respectfully standing some six feet apart. “But most importantly to you, I’m the one who tells stories.”

Van frowned at that, slightly inclining his head as if he were listening to something. “What kind of stories?” he carefully asked. This is a smart cookie, Maria thought. Good.

Also, he has hair to die for, she noted as Van’s jet-black simple ponytail undulated behind him all the way to his waist. Human men could just not pull off that vibe.

“Let me summarize this for you: you have a PR problem right now. Zan is the prize everybody wants, but Khivar is about to execute him. We both hope Zan survives this induced coma drama, but this is irrelevant right now. Zan is about to die and your Rebellion might as well die with him if Khivar has any saying on this.”

“Not if Zan survives and reclaims the throne,” Van said, looking both uncomfortable yet offended by her words.

“Yeah, but you’re turning a PR problem into a PR nightmare. What I’m here to tell you is how you have a third option: turn this into a PR opportunity.”

Van looked at her for a good thirty seconds of oppressive silence as Maria stood there. In any other occasion, she would have just launched into Maria mode, but Van was different. He thought and made decisions on a whole other level. She had to guide him to what she was offering, or he would just dismiss her as a fraud.

“No one had ever called me Your Highness before,” he said as he finally sat down, an invitation to continue. “No one in Antar besides the closest to me know Zan has a brother. We didn’t want to create unnecessary attention to myself, yes, but also that there would never be malicious talk.”

“Oh, this makes things much more interesting then,” Maria said, taking a seat in front of him. “As I see it, Khivar is going to proclaim he’s executed Zan, correct?”

“He’s probably gathering ways to prove his claim as we speak, yes.”

“So you have to preemptively attack. Talk to your people before Khivar gets a chance. You have to let them know that Zan is sacrificing himself in this gamble to thwart Khivar’s claim to the throne. That Zan has chosen to do this, for Antar, as the only resort he has while stranded here on Earth. Prove to them that Zan’s being the hero they’ve been waiting for, and it won’t matter what Khivar does or doesn’t do afterwards. Don’t settle for making Zan a martyr here. Make him a legend.”

Van froze for a moment, seemingly not even breathing. Then he slowly but surely smiled, a mirror of her smart smiles. “Tell me more.”

Okay, I love Langley's plan! Good to know that all those decades on Earth allowed him to know humanity well. Sowing division, men-women, poor-rich (with the theory that there was a senator's son inside), between various agencies (CIA/FBI/The police) while incapaciting their vehicules... the alien is brillant.

And I hope he will succeed in his last mission and get out of here alive. Because now he is getting close to MacKay. I keep my fingers crossed and hope he will eliminate him. Our aliens have enough on their shoulders between Khivar and killing Max.

Gotta love Maria's plan.

xmag, I love Maria's plan, too!

I'm reaching the part of the story where I have gaps between scenes, so I might slow down a bit in the upcoming days... but I am so happy you guys finally get to see all of this!





Part 34: Hidden Paths
November 2nd, 2011 - New York


1 : Max

Leaving Maria with Van was one of the strangest things he’d done this day—and that was saying something. He knew through his connection where to find Liz. His wife needed to hear from him why dying was the right thing to do, and they both needed to plan on what would happen next if he didn’t make it.

He was oddly pragmatic about his impending death. As if dying was an item on his to-do list, one that had several things happening just after that.

This better work, he absently thought. He went as far as opening his mouth to call his Invisible Guard and give orders when a man younger than him popped up from the nearest door some six feet ahead.

His Guards didn’t wait. Violet had him pin by the throat with her arm while Ash’s considerably wide frame became a wall between the two of them.

“I just—need a min—ute of—your—" the guy said as Violet pressed harder.

“You would not speak to His Majesty without him addressing you first,” she fiercely said. She wasn’t happy to be taken by surprise, Max knew.

“Aren’t you with Dave?” Max asked, as Ash moved out of the line of sight.

The man somewhat nodded.

“Violet, let him breathe,” Max said, which in Violet’s mind translated to ease her arm, period. She was still very much pinning him against the wall.

“I helped Dave escaped this morning. I’ve been working against the Unit for years. I’ve been your shadow man inside the Special Unit, feeding them misinformation, planting malware, doing all sorts—” Violet pressed him back, unimpressed with the barrage of accomplishments.

“Get to the point…” Violet warned.

“I need your help,” the man said, looking straight at Max. “I’ve been helping you all this time without you knowing it—”

“In the hopes I would help you—how?” Max asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Healing me.”

In twenty-eight years of life, Max had healed eight people. Three of gunshots and five of cancer. All of them had drained him, all of them had been worth it, but at least two of them had developed powers. Till this day, he had no idea if the Phoenix kids had developed their own. And that wasn’t even counting Brody.

“I do not just heal anybody,” Max carefully said. The narrative he’d told Dave and Jake was he would not heal, under any circumstance, and Jake had never put him to the test. It was the one area where Max had never really found his limits or biologically understood his power. And he was perfectly fine with it.

The man’s eyes grew in desperation.

“But you do heal! It’s nothing but a wave of the hand for you yet the gift of life for me. I honestly have nothing to do with anyone getting your brainwaves, I swear! I never touched those files. I—I can help you to bring down the Unit for real this time. Think about it: if you survive today and the rebellion goes away, Dave has no more reason to protect you. You will need the Unit off your back starting tomorrow.”

“They’re pretty much on my back right now,” Max pointed out.

Here was this man who knew entirely too much about Max, throwing everything at Max to see what would stick, and Max didn’t even know his name.

“I’ll make you a deal!” he shouted as Max was about to resume walking. He was running out of time, and he had no energy to waste.

“Of course, you work for Dave…” Max said as he stared at him.

“I do—I do,” he said, glancing at Violet and trying to wiggle out of her arm. No chance. “If I can help drive the Unit away tonight, and we’re both alive tomorrow, I can give you the keys to end them once and for all. Would that be reason enough to grant a dying man his wish?”

“What exactly is wrong with you?”

“Brain cancer. Too deep for surgery. I’ll be dead in six months.”

“Even if we’re both alive tomorrow, you don’t know what you’re asking of me,” nor what might happen to you.

“Please—Please! I can take Dave off your back!”

“The Unit and Dave?” Max asked, skeptically.

“How do you think I know what you can do? Why am I even here if I wasn’t privy to all the information both the Unit and Dave have collected on you?”

“That’s a good question. Who are you, exactly?” Max asked, now seeing this man as a potential threat to his future self.

“I’m Daniel—I’m—I’m no one, really. It will only be a minute for you.”

“I will see every secret you have, every thought, every intention…” Max warned. That wasn’t entirely true, but he wanted to scare this man into showing his true colors.

“I don’t care. I’m tired of being the outcast, of being the one who—Maybe you can’t really understand this, but all my life has been about fighting for what I want, for what I need. This is no different. Either I reach for you or I die, so I reach for you—Your Majesty,” he added, more a desperate plea than any real respect for his title.

Something about those words, though, reached deep inside Max. About being different. About fighting for the right to be alive.

“Okay…” Max whispered.

“Your Majesty, are you sure?” Violet asked, her arm ramming into the man’s throat at the same time she looked back at him.

“He’s willing to let me see,” he whispered as Violet finally moved, allowing Daniel room to breathe.

Max moved closer, and Daniel’s eyes shone with a strange mix of hope and fear.

“I will have to touch you,” Max said, looking straight into his eyes. Something about this man who was not five years younger than himself, made him uneasy.

Despite everything, Daniel gave an unvoluntary step back. He’s just realized I will definitely see his mind, Max knew with amusement. What kind of price are you paying for this?

Still, Max finally reached Daniel’s body, placing one hand on his neck, and then the other one, right below Daniel’s ear.

Fear made connecting exponentially harder. The last time he’d connected to a hostile mind, it had been Kyle. He’d been in absolute pain and had no idea what Max Evans was doing but he’d wanted no part of it. Daniel, though, Daniel knew exactly what Max was, and he wanted to avoid thinking about anything and everything at once.

What are you hiding? Max thought as his energy went looking for the corrupted cells inside Daniel’s brain.

The first flash was of meeting Dave. The excitement, the rush, the absolutely awe of meeting his hero and proving himself worthy. The next was of programming lines. Hacking could be so boring at times. Then Daniel’s life started to flash faster. Flying to exotic locations alongside Dave. Fighting him, yelling at him. Offers, contracts, millions of dollars. In Max went following Daniel’s rabbit down into the Network’s hole.

Through Daniel’s eyes, Max saw a different side of Dave. He almost laughed at the absurd realization that Jake of all people could hardly stand him. And then the flashes turned darker, miserable. McKay became a frequent face in the kaleidoscope of images that Max was seeing. He would probably be still deciphering these flashes days after this. Daniel’s mind was so clear, everything organized, ordered, like a computer with neatly arranged folders. The mind of an engineer, indeed.

Level six codes became a recurrent theme. And in the disjointed and loosely connected flashes, one thing became obvious: the moment Daniel had been diagnosed, he had searched for Max obsessively.

Daniel contacting McKay. Daniel planting the backdoor. Daniel knowing aliens were coming.

This whole day was such a nightmare in great part because Daniel had wanted it this way. To place Max in danger and then save him. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stand between Daniel and these healing hands.

And yet—

“Did it work?” Daniel barely whispered as Max opened his eyes, taking his hands off Daniel’s body as if he’d been burned.

“It was you…” Max whispered, feeling betrayed by the man in front of him. Daniel creating the backdoor for McKay to track them down was the last memory fresh in Max’s mind.

“It was…me?” Daniel nervously asked, hoping against hope those words didn’t mean what he knew they meant.

“Get him out of my sight,” Max almost growled, “Throw him in a cell, now,” Ash lost not a second on placing his hands on him. “We’ll discuss what to do with you once this is over.”

Max turned to walk down the hall.

“Wait! Did it work? Did you heal me?” Daniel pleaded as Ash moved him out of Max’s sight.

“There was nothing to heal,” Max said. Daniel would not even get a handprint.

“What?”

“You were never sick, Daniel. If I have to guess, someone set you up to believe you were sick so you would come after me. And they succeeded wonderfully.”


2 : Langley

They kept launching drones, and Langley kept bringing them down, so the Unit now believed there was some sort of electrical force field that was doing the job. Making one’s enemy believe they had more tools at their disposition was a good way to slow them down.

The compound’s two emergency exits were their only hope of not being boxed in, and Langley was doing everything he could to keep them secret.

It crossed his mind, just for a second, that he was actually the only one who could walk away without anyone being the wiser. All shapeshifter in the compound could essentially leave without trouble. It was the one Antarian, the three hybrids, and the eight humans that were the problem here.

When the time came, he would need to create a distraction big enough for them to get out and merge with traffic out there. He just didn’t know what…

…until the man in front of him radioed that the explosives were on their way.

Of course, they must have run out of them trying to open the main entrance. Antarian technology was superb in every aspect, especially when it came to building safe houses. The Rebels used the best materials they could put their hands on, and Dave had built this place to the last of their specifications.

He became a faceless man behind a SWAT mask and waited. Nothing attracted attention more than one big, fiery explosion. It was only a matter of timing.


3 : Michael

In the dimly lit room, the headquarter holographic blueprint floated between Ray, Luke, and himself. The underground compound was big enough to be an advantage, but no matter how long they could withstand a siege, sooner or later, they had to abandon this place for good.

And sooner was the objective here.

“There are three entrances to the compound,” Luke explained, used to his second-in-command duties. Rath used to do this for Zan, he fleetingly thought with a pang of nostalgia. The places Luke was referring turned red. “The main one, which is currently being bridged, and these two emergency ones.”

The main entrance had three more doors before it led to the actual compound, and they were counting on those to hold as long as they had to.

“This one is too close to the main one,” Michael said. “This one might work; it leads directly to the bridge. Once we’re on the move, we’ll need a means to leave New York.”

Michael turned to look at his right for a moment. Whatever his wife was doing, she was darn happy doing it. Her happy vibes were distracting him from the harsh reality he was looking at right now.

“At least we’re not boxed in just yet,” Ray said.

“No, but our window to escape is getting narrower,” Luke said. Michael turned to look at the blueprint. A vibration passed through the floor and the table, a clear sign that someone was using some sort of explosive out there. They had been feeling that for the past ten minutes.

“If it comes down to it, Isabel and I can improvise an emergency exit with our powers anywhere along this hall.”

“We’re ten feet deep and all entries are reinforced with depleted uranium,” Luke pointed out, “All walls are concrete reinforced to prevent anyone from entering. We’re a fortress, General. It would take you the better part of a week to get through that.”

“It’s still an option,” Ray said, but Michael shook his head.

“I’d rather not have the entire US military waiting on us after a week of being holed down, you know. We need to disappear.”

“What’s in this place?” Ray asked, signaling the largest room of them all.

“The General’s ship,” Luke answered.

“My ship?” I have a ship now?

“The one that brought you here,” Luke clarified.

“The crashed ship, then. Wait, that thing is here?”

“Very much, sir. It may never fly again, but its communication system is intact. It’s what we currently use to talk to Antar.”

“How did you even get that ship inside this place?” Ray asked, genuinely confused.

“We used a dimensional shifting portal.”

Ray blinked, clearly having no clue about what Luke had just said. Michael didn’t look any better.

“Does it have anything we could use to get out of here?” Ray slowly asked. Luke thought for a moment.

“The ship has its energy cells fully functional. That’s a lot of raw power sitting there.”

“What about the portal part?” Ray pressed.

“It doesn’t really work with organic matter,” Luke said, frowning, but the discussion brought a new angle to Michael.

“What about the wormholes? The technology you use to physically come to Earth?” he clarified at Luke’s lost look. “Can you open a portal here and open the other end in the Bahamas or something?”

A loud beep interrupted Michael’s question. “General, Luke,” Lance’s disembodied voice said, coming from a communication system, “We’ve just received confirmation that all mind-linking machines have been stopped except for Khivar’s. They’re aiming for the energy source some 50 miles away. It wouldn’t look out of place for our people to target it and it will get the job done all the same.”

“No, wait! We need Khivar to confirm Max is dead before we shut it down,” Michael said. “It all depends on Khivar believing he won.”

The door to the room opened, and in came Van, looking like a man on a mission. Maria remained by the doorframe, clearly proud of her work—whatever that was.

“Let’s start spreading the news that Zan has just died,” Van said with a slightly hungry look in his eyes.

Beside Michael, Luke stiffed, his eyes going round at something only he knew. “He gave you the Seal,” Luke whispered.

“He did, against my wishes,” Van confirmed. “Right now, though, your wife has come up with a very interesting strategy. It needs for us to confirm Zan has died as soon as possible.”

“And Khivar won? Why?” Michael asked.

“On a practical level, we need Max to wake up as soon as we can—and for Khivar to feel confident enough to stop using the machine. It will look like the Rebellion targeting the link-mind machine was too little, too late. A last attempt that didn’t work.”

“What’s the news I’m transmitting, then?” Lance asked over the intercom.

“A preliminary message: Zan has sacrificed himself for Antar. In the face of Khivar’s ambitious plan to get him, Zan has just given his life for the Rebellion to continue.”


4 : Dave

The door to his makeshift office opened suddenly. He was expecting to see Kyle dragging along their missing Daniel—where did that kid go?—because Dave needed him to navigate the Network. Two hackers were faster than one, especially when those hackers were Dave and Daniel, and the fact that Sybelle was still missing did nothing good to his mind.

He did not expect to see one of Max’s Guards entering, inspecting, and approving the room so His Majesty could come. And came Max did, indeed.

“I’ve just met Daniel in the hall,” he said without preamble.

For all the times Dave had met Max, he’d never even considered that Max could be Zan, and yet here he was, as imposing as any monarch anywhere, to the point that Dave felt compelled to stand up in front of His Majesty.

“He was eager to ask you a favor,” Dave said, knowing Max wouldn’t walk in here with this opening line if Danny hadn’t pissed him off. Danny had that kind of effect on people—with Dave being the receiving end of those encounters.

“Healing him, yes,” Max said. “I’ve thrown him in jail after what I saw.”

Dave swallowed at that. He was sure Max had come to throw him in jail alongside the kid.

“I haven’t processed everything I got from connecting with him, but you should know two things as I know them now,” Max continued, standing in front of Dave’s desk as if he were giving a proclamation. “He allowed McKay access to several of your files, including Sybelle’s existence and current location.”

“He what?” Dave said, feeling his legs going stiff and then threatening to become jello in the span of a heartbeat.

“And he wasn’t sick at all. I suspect he was led to believe he was so he would sell you out in order to get to me. I hate to say this, but he did get to me in the end. This place won’t be safe for much longer, but whatever other places you might think of, they might all be compromised.”

Dave looked at him, understanding perfectly why Max was angry yet thinking ahead. “Wherever we go, I’ll make sure it’s clean—Your Majesty,” he added. Max lost a bit of his majestic aura at the reminder, looking far more Max than Zan.

“When this is over, you will answer my questions,” Max said, “all of them.” He was about to leave, when Dave finally asked the one thing that had been in his mind for eight years now.

“Did you pass?”

Max turned to face him again, clearly not understanding the question.

“Van’s test. Did he accept you as his brother?”

“Yes…and no…” he answered, thoughtful. “But it was never about me passing as Zan, or Van accepting if I measured up. It’s always been about Antar, and on that we both agree. Van has the Royal Seal now. If I survive Khivar’s upcoming attempts, it won’t matter. Antar has a new king—they just don’t know it yet.”

Max nodded once before departing and left Dave there, still standing, wondering when had Max become king—and why did he think he wasn’t anymore.

Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, look where all this story led you to!

But I have a question: Daniel was living, traveling with Dave, right? So that means that McKay had found Dave. Why didn't he kidnap him, then? Why this long game with Daniel? And how did he manage to make him believe he had cancer? Sure, faking scanners results is easy but Daniel had to have symptoms on a regular basis to be sure that he had brain cancer.

I mean, if Daniel was living in Dave's organisation, that's hard to get to him and make him believe he is sick. Unless there's someone else inside Dave's little world who is a traitor? It is Daniel who contacted MacKay. Meaning that at this point, someone had to get close enough to him to make him think something was off with him (various symptoms, headaches, pain), that he might be sick, to go through tests, faking the results, how could someone achieve that without being close to him, aka close to Dave or his organisation?

Still loving Langley, by the way.

Max being casual about death... well, he does remember dying as Zan, after all. That could explain his "been there, done that" attitude.

xmag, sometimes I'm so sure you hacked into my computer and read what's ahead You're not the only one wondering about what the hell, Daniel? but you'll have to wait a couple of chapters before we reach that point. Also, by 2011, Dave and Daniel had a fallout at least a couple of years ago. I can't remember how long, but this is why it was such a surprise for Dave that he was being rescued by Danny.

Daniel thought that all Dave wanted was to control him and then disappeared. Michael then tracks down his sister in book 2, but by this point, I don't expect you to remember all that Just know that Daniel and David were not on speaking terms when McKay and Daniel met.

And on a last note, Max doesn't remember the exact point when Zan died (that's a plot point later on) just that he did...







Part 35: Promises
November 2nd, 2011 - New York


1 : Isabel

The despair she’d felt for herself and facing the consequences of what Vilandra had done a lifetime ago paled in comparison with knowing what Jake was planning to do to Max.

“You can’t—you can’t just expect me to keep his heart going,” she said, her eyes wide with fear.

“He’s certain Khivar will kill him, probably in the next couple of hours. He needs to play dead before that.”

“But he won’t be just playing dead, he might end up dying!” she said, the barrier between them preventing her from turning around and walking out of that room to knock some sense into her brother. “He can’t possibly know if this is Khivar’s doing or not.”

“They certainly think it’s possible. In any case, this won’t work without you. They don’t have the machines, nor do I the expertise to clinically induce a coma deep enough to fool an alien machine while keeping him alive.”

“How long would he be out?” Jesse asked from the other side of the cell.

“Four hours is all we can give him. Once he’s down, the rebels expect to hear Khivar’s announcement. That’s our sign to bring him back. If we don’t get any signs, then four hours is the limit.”

“You can keep your brother alive for four hours,” Jesse confidently said.

“The last time his life was in my hands I ended up opening the door to his enemies,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

Jesse shook his head, standing as close to the energy barrier as he dared. “You found him when he was captured by the Unit. You found him when he was in peril in New York. You’re his sister, Isabel, you mean the world to him. This doesn’t even have anything to do with you as Vilandra and everything with you as Isabel Evans,” he pressed.

“You honestly think there’s a difference?” Isabel asked, astonished.

“Yes!” Jesse answered, “And I also think you desperately need to do something to redeem yourself. This is it. You will be literally holding his life in your hands. We both know Michael doesn’t have the finesse. If you say no, this whole thing, the rebels, Khivar, the Unit, Max’s life, it’s all over. You would become the villain of this story by virtue of doing nothing.”

That scared her to the bottom of her soul. She remembered Alex, holding her as she dreamwalked Max into the horrors of the Special Unit and the white walls that held him prisoner. She still dreamed about that sometimes. That it could be her had always been a possibility. That it could always be her hung like a knife over her head.

Even Vilandra was rattled by Jesse’s words. To be the villain again, to be the reason Max would die. Like the icy feeling of fear before, the warm fire of courage sprung from her heart to her body. She nodded twice.

“Okay… What exactly do you need me to do?”


2 : Max

For a moment, the hall in the compound became the hall in the palace and then became the compound again. Max placed a hand on the wall, more to steady reality than to steady himself, but his Guards were there for him, all except Ash, who was taking Daniel to his makeshift jail.

“Your Majesty!” Violet said, alarmed.

“I’m okay, I’m…okay…” Max said, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath.

“Are you sure?” Jet asked, looking anxious.

“No…” Max honestly answered, with a slight smile. It did little to calm their nerves. “You know this is already over, right? I mean, for you four… I no longer have the Seal; you don’t need to protect me anymore.”

“You have Zan’s memories, Seal or no Seal,” Shade said, all four of them standing in the middle of the deserted hall. “We guard his essence.”

Max shook his head. “You’re no longer tied to me. Van is your current king however reluctant he might be about it. If the Unit enters, if Khivar succeeds… promise me you will fight for yourselves and not for me.”

“Zan—” Violet started.

“There’s only one thing I can give you, and that’s your freedom. Your future. You’ve stayed this long because you needed to hear what Van decided. Well, Van decided I’m not Zan, just a recipient of Zan's memories. That’s why he accepted the Seal.”

“The only one who can give us a future is Van,” Shade said, looking fierce and on edge, longing to attack something, anything, that would come his way. “He has the Seal. He can command us to do his will. You, on the other hand, lost that power. You can’t order us to go.”

Max barked a laugh. Leave it to his guards to mutiny the moment he wanted them gone.

“You can’t stay with me, either. The Rebellion, Antar, Van needs you to be somewhere else.”

“But we choose to be by your side,” Violet said. “It’s a long journey the one you must still walk, Max. As Zan, as Max—whoever you want to be, you still have to survive today. We won’t leave your side, not until you’re safe. We owe you that much.”

Max looked down the hall and shook his head. “What did I ever do to deserve your protection?”

“In the face of death itself, you’re still thinking about us,” Shade gruffly said. He looked mighty uncomfortable being in human form. “Who should have the Seal was your priority, and as we walk down to the place you will most likely die by Khivar’s phantom hands, you’re still thinking about us, shapeshifters. No Antarian ever does that.”

“Shade…” Max said. How could the decent thing to do—the right thing to do—be the one thing no one ever did for these people?

“I wish you had said yes,” Jet said as Shade melted into the wall before Max could say anything else. “You would have been a great king.”

“I would have been a king divided,” Max answered, picking up pace. He was running out of time, even if he couldn’t see the clock ticking. “Half my heart here, half my mind there, but never whole.”

“I would take half a king over Khivar any given day,” Jet said, shrugging.

“I still want you all to get a future after whatever happens today. You deserve to have a life, to see the world, whichever world that is.”

“We did, Your Majesty,” Violet said, “We did it by guarding you all these years. And while we dreamed of a future and worried about your answer to Van, it is now time to face reality. We are the Rebellion. Until Khivar is gone, we have no choice but to fight.”

Violet stopped in front of the door to the medical bay and signaled for him and Jet to wait as she went in, checking that it was safe.

“If I don’t survive,” Max told Jet, “Please know that this life and the life before, I always felt honored that you and your kin would spend your life guarding me. Zan never took it lightly, and I wouldn’t be alive right now if it wasn’t for you all.”

Violet opened the door then, indicating he could come.

“I really wish you had said yes,” was Jet’s answer.


3 : McKay

It had been hell to go through the first door, and everybody silently cheered when they finally broke through. McKay was already on the phone, fielding questions from the Mayor, even if technically McKay didn’t exist. Some idiotic police captain had asked for who was overseeing the operation and then had handed his phone to McKay.

“This is way over your head, Mayor,” McKay said with a steely voice, as the aliens were still nowhere to be seen. “Who is in that warehouse is top classified information and all you need to know is that no one is coming out of this hole alive.”

The Mayor did not like that answer, not that McKay gave a damn. He simply hung up and gave the phone back to the captain. “Don’t do this again.”

The captain also didn’t like that answer, but as his phone started ringing again, he saw something in McKay that warned him to turn around and walk away.

“There’s a tunnel that seems to lead to another closed door,” the man leading the team responsible for getting through said, sounding exhausted. “How long is this thing, anyway?”

“At the end of that corridor, the hall divides in two,” Agent Andrews said, following the blueprints gained from the sonar. “That’s where we might find the hostiles. There are rooms here, here, and here. Now, at the end of each direction, you will find several long corridors that lead to larger rooms. We have no idea what they might be housing there, from a small arsenal to multiple hostiles we don’t know about. This needs to be done with caution and precision.”

“Let the locals handle the first line,” McKay said, calculating the risks. “Once those aliens start shooting back, they’ll get everybody here more than happy to stamp them out.”

“Some of them might see too much, sir,” one of his agents pointed out.

“Let’s see how well these invaders can hold their own before we cross that bridge.” In the end, in an intense crossfire like the one he was anticipating, casualties were expected. After all, they didn’t say that curiosity killed the cat just because.

“Agent Andrews,” he called his hacker, signaling for a private talk outside their command center.

“Yes, sir?” the man asked, eager to be of help. None of these newer recruits had ever crossed paths with an alien until they had captured Van this afternoon, and the motivation to recapture that one and the others was palpable.

“I need you to send a confirmation for me. I know for a fact that David is going to be monitoring what we’re doing. Let the man see what we’re sending, just not be obvious about it.”

“We’re setting a trap for that traitor?” Andrews asked. Since the moment McKay had taken control over the Unit, he’d made it everybody’s business to find that waste of brains that was David. He had never believed he was dead, and to his own surprise, finding him tangled with aliens had felt as if the Universe itself had placed McKay in the interception to tackle the most dangerous alliance ever made.

“Oh yes. Let him know a little birdy has told us that his goddaughter was taking her finals at Cambridge today. That Interpol has already agreed to get her under custody in the next hour when she tries to board her plane to the States…. Imply we’re willing to negotiate the aliens for her. Let’s see what we get in return.”

“Yes, sir!”

Now that the bait was set, it was going to be interesting what kind of fish he got. It was only a matter of time.


4 : Liz

“It’s done. He has it now,” Max said, slightly swaying as he was sitting down. The medical bay was small, and besides the gurney, there were four plastic chairs. So much for royalty, Liz had thought when she’d first come here. Seeing Max now brought home how close she was to losing him.

“How do you feel?”

“Lightheaded?” he said, though it sounded more like a question. “I don’t feel any different, though I know Khivar is trying to take over again. What did Jake say?”

“They’re pretty well stocked in here. We think we can give you four hours, tops. We’ve never tried this before, you know? He’s asking Isabel right now to be your heart and lungs while you…while…” she swallowed her tears as best as she could. “Max…I don’t like this plan,” she finally said, placing a hand over his as she sat on the plastic chair next to his.

“I cannot pretend to be dead if this is going to work, you know?”

“There’s a good chance you might not wake up.”

Max leaned closer, clasping her hand in his.

“We always knew we were living on borrowed time,” he whispered with a small smile. Liz shook her head.

“Not, not borrowed. Earned. I should have died at the Crashdown that day. You should never have come to this planet. And all the narrow escapes? All the impossible choices? Max, not even the future could keep us apart.”

“The more reason to believe this is going to work.”

“If this works, do you honestly think Dave and Van will let you go? All of us?”

“Not entirely, no,” Max said, for a moment eying Rose as she got everything ready on her corner. “I do possess Zan’s knowledge. So does Michael and Isabel. We do have royal genes. But once Van takes control over Antar…once Khivar is gone, then I think we’ll have a mostly normal life.” He winced, his forehead touching hers. “You can always go and have the life you were meant to have…” he whispered, his eyes sad. An old wound that had never really disappeared.

“Max, you are the life I was always meant to have. Just—you come back to me, okay?”

“I will.”


5 : Dave

For the first time in a long time, Dave froze in front of the keyboard, unable to make a decision. Sybelle’s location was known to McKay. In a not-so-subtle manner, he was offering to trade her off for useful information on bringing down Antar’s monarchy.

In the span of twenty-four hours, Dave had brought down his Network, been apprehended, encountered his worst enemy, escaped from his makeshift prison, been rescued by no other than his ex-protégé, arrived at a secret compound run by aliens, and faced the very possibility that all his work to bring Max to the table was for nothing if the alien lord in another planet was going to remotely kill him anyway.

Somewhere, in those same twenty-four hours, McKay had got hold not only of Sybelle’s existence but also of her location. Because the Network was down, her phone wasn’t working yet, so he couldn’t warn her. And even if he could contact her, what was he going to say?

Run?

But run where? If the threat that Interpol was going to arrest her came through, maybe that would be the safest place for her to be—but he didn’t believe that. Dave had way too many enemies to let Sybelle be put in the spotlight like that.

No, he had to cut the snake’s head off if he wanted everyone he loved to be free. He was way too deep into his own dark world to have any hopes of walking away. He’d made too many deals with too many people, and favors could only get him so far. But Sybelle and Jake? They were worth fighting for.

He also needed to find places they could run to. Max’s timely information had prevented Dave from sending everyone to a secondary trap. Van’s shapeshifters had needed several safe houses through the years, and all of them had been kept out of Level 6 codes. He was looking for something near Sybelle, though getting to Europe at this point was rather laughable.

First, we get out of here. Then the airport. Then England.

He started moving the pieces then. He had no idea how Ray and the shapeshifters would get them out, but he was certain they would. He also knew taking everyone currently in this base to England was laughable. He had to divide them, so he had to work with multiple locations and multiple logistics.

On his secondary monitor, McKay’s offer still taunted him.

Two can play this game, Dave thought, narrowing his eyes. The internet worked both ways, and it had been a long while since Dave had been playing with authority figures. Sure, the Special Unit took painstaking care about firewalling their own network, but everyone else out there? Not so much.

He had a disturbingly large menu to choose from. FBI, NYPD, and even news stations were all for the taking. He just had to play it cool and to their advantage.

You wanted to bait me? Let’s see how long you can stay here…

Isabel has one hell of a job to do. But as I said in a previous post, it could be her redemption.

Oh, oh, did I guess right, there's another traitor? Oh, that's not good. I hope I'm wrong, though.

Where's Langley? I thought he was close to MacKay and ready to eliminate him. Cut the head and the entire operation can fall to pieces.

At least, Dave is ready to fight. Good thing.