Roswell Fanatics

RIP my old DD thread.

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section 1: Dreamstruck

(Liz Parker's diary...)

March 25th, 2000:

We met up at the Quarry again this morning. Alex was approached by a mysterious someone outside the Crashdown last night. Apparently, he claimed to be a friend of Topolsky. Personally, I think if she had any friends here in Roswell, she'd have mentioned them. Could that guy from the Crashdown be an *enemy* of hers?

Also, Alex met up with the sheriff, who kinda got rid of scary car-guy. Alex and Max got into a bit of a difference of opinion about whether anyone else could be trusted. I tried to cool things down, pointing out to Alex that we had no idea what part of Topolsky's story might be true. He agreed, and the meeting pretty much broke up then. Max and I were in the middle, between Alex and Isabel, who had left first, and Michael and Maria, who were hanging back.

Until Alex came running back, waving Isabel to return too, calling out, "But we could, Liz! We could know what's going on in her head!"

That caused a bit of an uproar. It was a few minutes before Alex could explain his idea. "What we n-need, is to understand Topolsky's part in this. If she's trying to trap us, we need to know that for sure."

"Even if she wants to help us, she could get us killed," Michael warned. "If she's not lying, she's scared - scared of people that are probably our enemies too. If we try to help her, we could end up leading them right to us."

"Yes, Michael," Alex agreed. "But if we know what Topolsky knows, we might be able to find a way around that danger too."

"Know what she knows..." I repeated. "Alex, what are you thinking ab--" I trailed off.

"Isabel knows, doesn't she?" Alex turned to look at her. Isabel was as pale as a ghost. "You *know.*"

"You... you can't be serious..." she murmured quietly.

"I am," Alex said confidently.

"Isabel is right, Alex," Max said, stepping between the two of them. "There's no way that... that we could do that, right now, to Topolsky of all people. If she *is* still an FBI spy, it would mean confessing everything we need to keep hidden."

"No!!" Alex was almost shouting now. I looked around to make sure that nobody else was anywhere near. "Did you forget that she used it on me? I know what it's like... she won't suspect anything more than an ordinary dream at first. And if she does..." Alex scoffed. "God, what does it matter?? They can't take this to a court... I mean, if anything, it would just frighten them."

"Wait a second," I broke in again. "What... Alex, what the heck are you talking about?"

"Don't you know, Liz?" That was Maria... I hadn't even realized that she had circled around and was standing behind me. "Didn't... didn't I tell you before?"

"Tell me what?" I was really confused by this point.

"Isabel can... can go into people's dreams!!" Maria explained. "She did it to me, way back when the sherriff was nosing around and trying to find out about Max from me... and to Alex, when he was so mad at you about the blood thing." Maria paused a moment, adding things up in her mind. "Hey, Isabel, how come you never visited Liz Parker dreamland?? She never freak you out enough??"

Isabel shrugged, her face a study in mortification by now. "It... it never came up," she said diplomatically.

"Well," Max said, trying to get things back on track, "I believe the proposal on the table is that Isabel try to dreamwalk Topolsky and find out more. Thoughts?" He sighed. "I don't know... I agree with Alex that it wouldn't be as dangerous as going up to her in person and demonstrating our powers..."

"No," Michael scoffed. "Because nothing *could* be."

"It's a good plan," Alex argued. "You're in the dark - so you need information. And the potential benefits outweigh the risks."

"I think I agree," I put in. "I still think Topolsky wants to help us. If this could be a way to persuade you guys of that, to let us help her, without endangering ourselves, I'm for it."

"I can understand that," Max said, stepping next to me. All over, it seemed like my hair stood on end as he got near. "But the big question... is for you, Isabel." He turned to his sister, and I could see the worry and concern in his eyes. "Do you think you can do this? Do you even *want* to??"

"I... I'm not sure." Isabel was looking from Max to Michael... the one of her brothers encouraging, the other frowning. "God, how do I decide??"

"Come on, Isabel," Alex said, stepping up to her, and dropping his voice to give the illusion of privacy, though I could hear what he was saying, and I think some of the others could, too. "I meant what I said, back in the Cafe yesterday. The only thing... that matters to me here, is keeping you safe. I know this might be hard, but I think it's the best way for you to protect yourself. Can you trust me on that?"

"No," Isabel said, and Alex's face fell. "I can't take that on trust alone, but I think I agree with you, Alex. I'll do it." And half of Alex's smile came back.

Michael stood in Isabel's way as she started to head back to her car. "You sure I can't argue you out of this?"

Isabel looked back at us - me, Max, and Alex. The implication was clear... according to the voting precedent we set yesterday afternoon, it was four to one... with one vote as yet uncast. Even if Maria threw her vote behind Michael, like she had yesterday, Alex's motion had carried. "No... I'm sorry Michael, but I'm convinced."

"Then you had better hurry," Michael said, sighing. "I think Topolsky will be doing her sleeping this afternoon, not tonight."

You could have heard a pin drop on the rocks after Michael said that... if anybody had brought a pin to drop. "And... and how do you know this, Michael?" Max said after a lot of seconds.

Michael groaned. "She was at my apartment last night, okay? When I got home after Senor Chows, she had found the orb, but she didn't try to take it out of the room. Yattered some nonsense about it being a communicator, or part of one, that she'd be waiting for us at Buckley point, but it'd be the last chance to make contact with her." A roar of backtalk was growing by now, but Michael drowned it out. "The *reason* I didn't say anything before now was that it didn't matter - we had decided not to fall for her mind games. But if you're going to do this dream thing, I thought you needed to know."

Isabel stepped up to Michael, smiling. "You're right." She reached up and wiped a little smudge off his cheek with her thumb. "Thank you, Michael."

* * * * *

ISABEL:

I looked around my room. My friends, all five of them, were *hovering.* I mean, I appreciate a little support, but this is getting ridiculous.

It's a good thing that Dad had to work this weekend and Mom has her Canasta game on Saturday afternoons. The six of us, coming into their house and immediately bustling up to my bedroom... it would've looked as if we were getting ready for an orgy or something. Oh my god, I can't believe I just thought that...

"Okay," I said aloud to everybody, trying to forget about that stray thought. "A lot of you are gonna have to leave - I'm never even gonna get to sleep myself with all of ya hanging around and watching me."

"Sure," Maria said. We've never been best of galpals close, and I think she was feeling as awkward about all this as I was. "Who do you want to go?"

"Um..." I tried to think. Was this tough choices day or something? "Two of you staying should be enough... Max and -" I *really* expected to hear myself say 'Michael' here, but... "And Alex."

Alex grinned so cutely when I mentioned his name. I'm not sure why I did it... well, I guess I have some ideas. This whole 'dreamwalk Topolsky' brainstorm was his in the first place, and...

And there's something so reassuring about having Alex around when things are getting sticky. I'd rather die than admit that to him, because Alex being Alex, he'd take it the wrong way. Sometimes I think the poor guy is so hot for me that he can't see straight.

Not that I don't like Alex. I've had a lot of guys drool over me in the past year and a half - the evidence is pretty conclusive that I'm a babe. No matter whether it's a macho jock, (mental shudder,) or a shy bookworm, nobody has ever approached me with the same combination of sensitivity and quiet intensity as Alex Charles Whitman. I don't feel the urge to leap into his arms with a great show of passion... (that kiss a few weeks ago notwithstanding,) but Alex... piques me. In a subtle but lasting way.

"Hey, Is? Is??" Max was almost shaking me, and I realized that I had really zoned out, just sitting on my bed and staring off into space like a zombie.

"Sorry." I shuffled up the bed so I was half lying down and half propped up by the pillows. "Give me the picture."

Liz, Maria and Michael had left already, I noticed with some surprise. I had been so lost in thought I hadn't even heard the bedroom door's creaky hinges groan. Alex was sitting over next to my desk, and Max was leaning against my hope chest, right next to the bed.

"Here it is," Max said, passing me an old sheet of glossy paper. Liz had managed to dig up a copy of the school newsletter that announced Miss Topolsky as the new guidance counselor, which was good. Without a decent color photo of her, this whole plan might have never gotten off the ground. I don't know why I need the picture to dreamwalk... I just do, somehow. I can't make the connection without that reinforcing image of who I want to make contact with, no matter how well I know them. That's why I keep last year's high school yearbook under my bed.

"Don't you need to..." Alex started, then trailed off, blushing.

I looked over at him. "What, change into my pj's?" Alex blushed harder, and I think I may have flushed a little harder myself. "It's not necessary. Come a little closer, Alex." I waved at the side of my bed that Max wasn't hovering near. Alex pulled the chair closer, sitting near enough to reach out and grab my hand. If he got up the nerve.

"So..." Alex said, clearing his throat. "What *is* necessary, Isabel? What do you have to do?"

I smiled at him dramatically. "I just touch the picture," I suited action to word, wondering if Alex could see the tingle I always noticed as my powers interacted with the photograph, "And drift off to dreamland..."

We waited. Nothing happened.

"What went wrong??" Max asked, a nervous tone in his voice.

"Relax," I told him. "No connection. She's not asleep yet."

"Are you sure?" Alex asked. He didn't sound like he was doubting me, just curious about the whole procedure.

"Positive," I assured him. "I've done this enough to recognize the busy signal. I can't tell what Miss T. is up to, but dreaming she definitely ain't."

That got a laugh from both of the boys. "So, what next?" Alex asked.

"It is not to worry, I have dream-walker auto redial," I announced. "As long as I stay here, relaxed and at least vaguely aware of the picture, as soon as Kathleen goes to sleep, I will too."

"Cool," Max opined. For a little while, silence swallowed my bedroom whole. "Should we stay quiet, or would it be better to talk?" my brother finally asked.

I laughed. "We can chat, as long as it doesn't turn into a shouting match or anything. So..." Another pause. "Anyone have a topic?"

Everyone thought for a second. "Well, there's, umm..." Max muttered.

"We could... no, that's no good," Alex whispered.

What had he been about to say? "How about that substitute teacher in English Lit??" Max tried vainly.

I was about to ask Alex what he had been thinking of, when it started to happen. A wave of exhaustion hit me, and I knew that Topolsky had fallen asleep... or started to dream, whichever it was. "Wait..." I managed to gasp, and then the bedroom faded into blackness.

* * * *

I 'arrived' in a long dark hallway. It's weird how the dreamwalking often works that way, introducing me out of sight of the dreamer. I mean, if Topolsky isn't in this hallway, why is she dreaming it?

Because it's connected to where her dream self is, I guess. Once, when I was dreamwalking my mom, I went the wrong way, trying to find her dream self, and almost fell out of the dream into blackness. There are limits to this thing, and I can't help the feeling that those limits are dangerous.

Luckily, there were no such problems this time. The second doorway I came to was Topolsky's, I could see part of her face through the little glass window.

I tried the doorknob, fully expecting the door to be locked. It was, but on this side it was just a knob, which I twisted and the door pushed in. I went through, holding the door open.

"Come on, Kathleen," I told her. "I'm here to take you out."

Topolsky looked at me with wild eyes surrounded by dark circles. I hadn't seen her myself since she came back to Roswell, but I remembered what everybody had said about how hurt and scared she looked. I had to agree. "You can't, Isabel," she said suddenly, surprising me when she said my name. I figured she might recognize me, but I hadn't expected it so soon. "The door isn't open for me."

"It isn't?" I asked, confused. As if to demonstrate, Kathleen stood up, walked towards the door, and the door jumped! No, not jumped, but *blinked* - one second it was in my hand, the next second the door was solidly closed again. I rushed to open it again, but there wasn't even a doorknob on this side, much less a way to unlock it again. I was trapped in here with Ms. T.

I turned to her, feeling the first pangs of fear myself. "What happens now?"

"*HE* comes to interrogate us," Topolsky said. Sure enough, the door was opening again, by a dark-haired, tall, broad man in a navy three-piece suit. The way he was holding the door made it absolutely clear that neither of us were getting out. Actually, he didn't give any signs of noticing me, but I still didn't think I could get out of the cell. Not that leaving Topolsky was the point - learning about her through this dream was.

Still, I couldn't fight all of the fear I felt inside me. "Agent Topolsky," the interrogator roared. "We know that you're hiding something from us about Roswell. You know that we're not afraid to kill you!! Why the fuck aren't you getting with the program?"

Topolsky blanched with obvious fear, but she recovered enough to smile a tight-lipped little smile back. I realized that this part of the dream was either a memory or a fear-induced nightmare. So far, it seemed to back up Topolsky's story - and Michael's sensible worries. "Why haven't you put me out of my misery already, Agent Pierce?" she bit back caustically. "Maybe because, for all your bluster, you *don't* dare kill me - until you know what I know, at least."

The Pierce figure stopped to consider that. "And what do you suppose we do once we realize that you're not going to tell us what you know?"

"You still won't kill me," Kathleen continued. "You'll deal first. It's a hell of a trump I've got up my sleeve."

"There are other ways, Kathleen," Pierce remarked with dangerous mildness. He made a quick gesture, and Topolsky gasped in horror. I didn't see it at first - I was looking at Topolsky myself, so I didn't see what she saw. And then there they were - masked and uniformed figures hurrying into the cell, holding Ms. T down, one of them getting a hypodermic out, restraining her arm so that it would be perfectly motionless while the needle broke through her skin...

Suddenly the scene changed. I jumped a little, though this sort of thing wasn't totally unexpected. At first it was just scattered imagery - Topolsky leaving an run-down apartment building in the south side of Roswell, noticing as suspicious characters started to tail her. Then forests surrounded the two of us, and Ms T was scurrying from tree to shrub, doing a great half-drowned rat impression, and talking out loud as she stalked along. I hurried over to walk next to her. "They *knew* what they were doing. No accidental escape. They want me to go find Max... see if I can spook him into blowing cover. But how can I not? If Pierce realizes that I'm really not going to play ball, he'll just have one of his flunkies shoot me in the head, and I'll be dead, and that'll be that."

"Okay, Kathy," I grumbled under my breath as I narrowly missed tripping over an ugly tree root. (Nature is *so* annoying.) "Not really encouraging me about your sanity here."

Suddenly there was a crash, not incredibly loud but easily heard from the woods not that far behind us. "It's *them!!*" Topolsky groaned, grabbing my arm and hurrying me along. "I think I can find a way to outplay them. Warn Max. Maybe... maybe he can protect me. It's my only hope."

Suddenly a face-painted figure in khaki fatigues stepped out of the trees ahead and to the side of us, grabbing for Ms. T. She yelped and ran away, and the guy ended up with a grip around my neck. "Hey, what have we here?" Suddenly there were others like him all around me. "Isabel Evans. Wonder if it's possible to break an aliens' arm??"

I screamed.

* * * * *

MAX:

I watched Alex watch as Isabel slept restlessly, caught in the grip of this dreamwalking thing she did. I didn't really understand the dream walk, and I didn't like that. Who could tell what the dangers might be?

Perhaps aware of my relentless stare, Alex looked up at me. "Do you think she's okay, Max?" He gestured at Isabel, as she tossed and turned, fear on her face. It was easy to see that Alex was as worried as I was.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I've never been here while Isabel did this, so I don't have any basis for comparison. From what I saw of Topolsky the other night though, I'd guess that her dreams will not be fun to visit." Alex's face fell further - this had all been his idea, and apparently he hadn't given enough attention to that detail. "So I'd assume that everything is going about as well as can be expected, until we get a new signal." Almost as if on cue, Isabel shuddered and gave out a wordless cry, which was followed by "Help, help! Let me go!!" Call it a signal to me.

Alex put a hand on Isabel's shoulder closest to him, and I took the shoulder closest to me, and we shook her gently, then not quite as gently, until sis opened her eyes. "Get your hands off me, you... oh, it's you guys."

"What was happening in there?" I asked severely.

"Topolsky's nightmare picked on me a little too," she said quickly. "Nothing to worry about. The point is... I got the dirt."

"Don't worry about that now," I grumbled. "Rest now, we'll talk about it later."

"No, we'll talk about it now," Isabel countered. "We may not have much time." She turned to look at Alex, who was staring at her with radiant interest, and began. "Topolsky's telling the truth. She wants to help us, and the FBI is watching her, trying to get the dirt on us when she makes contact. But I think I might know a way to make contact with *her* and the FBI couldn't watch."

* * * * *

I waited nervously in the dark hallway, too keyed up even to count the seconds as they passed by. How had my darling devil of a sister managed to talk me into *this*?! Well, she had kept riding on that time limit, for one thing. And Alex had been quick to take up the cause. Between the two of them and the ticking clock, I had agreed to play out my role here even though it seemed far from a foolproof plan...

My cell phone vibrated once softly and no more - that was the signal. Taking a deep breath, I stepped over to the door and opened it. At first I couldn't see anything but the bright sunlight. Then things became clear - Topolsky, wearing the ridiculous hat, heading straight past me, no more than six feet away. The menacing men in the dark navy suits were more than a block away. I smiled quickly in the direction of Alex's hideout across the street and waved Topolsky in towards the door.

She was obviously quite startled, but Kathleen didn't hesitate. She hurried quickly past me and into the dark of the abandoned playhouse. I followed, rearranging the molecules of the door unobtrusively as soon as it was shut. By the time I caught up with Katy, she was standing near the middle of the old stage.

"This isn't the plan," she snarked with the twist of an upper lip. "I told your brother Michael - Buckley point. I was just heading there..."

"Right now," I finished for her. "We know, and we were worried that Buckley Point isn't safe - for either of us. So I arranged the meeting here."

"Okay, I guess," Katy muttered in response to that, shrugging carelessly. I waited for her to start talking again, but she didn't.

"Why did you call Michael my brother? He isn't, you know. Just a good friend."

"He's a lot more than that," Katy replied quickly. "You and your sister pretend that your relationship with Michael Guerin is purely casual, but we know better. The people I used to work for and I, that is."

In the silence after she had finished talking, a gunshot rang out!! After only a second and a half, it was followed by another. Then a loud thud - it was from the door that I had let Topolsky in through. Both of us kinduv froze, and you could faintly make out bits of speech from the agents outside.

"...I'm *giving* it the shoulder grease, I'm telling you, this thing won't budge."

"Well, it just opened a minute ago - he must have slid a bar across or something..." A few more gunshots rang out, and I couldn't help but snicker. If they had enough bullets to actually shoot open a hole in the wall, they might get somewhere. I didn't think they'd go that far.

"C'mon... there's gotta be another way into this place," the first voice said again, and I looked around quickly. The front door of the theater was locked, but not 'secured,' and the goons might be able to get in. Once through the foyer, they would be able to see us immediately if we stayed on the stage. Quickly I pointed Topolsky over to the ladder and started climbing up to the catwalk myself.

From that height, it wasn't easy to hear out of the building anymore, so I turned back to Katy. "That's... that's what I wanted to talk to you about," I stuttered, trying to get back to the old thread of conversation. "The people you used to work for. We've decided to help you against them, but I have to say that we -- don't know if some... ship is going to come and save us in the nick of time."

"One way to find out." Katy reached into a bulky pocket and pulled out a heavy metallic orb - obviously the mate of the one Liz and I had found underneath that radio tower, out in the desert. (God, remembering that night still seemed to make my blood flow warmer.) "Where's yours?"

"Umm... I didn't bring mine," I admitted. "Can I look at that one?"

She snatched the orb away. "You can't take it away from me," she snapped. "This may be the only leverage I have, and I'm not going to give it away. Not until you save me."

I thought about that a second. "Save you?"

"I'm under Pierce's magnifying glass right now," she clarified. "I can't get out from underneath it by myself no matter what I do, and one of these days he just might decide to fry me like an ant. If you and your friends can spring me, lose me, get me somewhere safe that his goons can't find me, then the orb is yours."

"Okay," I agreed. "That was the plan anyway. But we can't do it yet. Are you going to be okay, for a few days?"

This time it was Topolsky's turn to consider. "Yeah. They'll know I've made contact with you, and nobody's going to kill the lead - not until Pierce's paranoia gets pretty big, and that shouldn't be for four or five days. But you better not leave me in here to fry, Max Evans."

"I won't," I promised her. "Now, if making it clear that I found you will help..."

I watched as Katy climbed down a different ladder - trying not to be aware that the goons were just around the corner - until they stepped into plain sight, everybody spotted each other, and they pulled her down off of the wooden slats. "Where is he?"

Katy shook her head at first, playing the part.

"Don't make me hurt you, bitch!" As the large, strong man lifted up his fist to strike her, Katy let go a cry of fear and started to babble.

"He... he was so arrogant. He's headed back the way we came in - he knows how to open that door again.

The agents looked at each other, and then by unspoken agreement one of them stayed with Katy and the other hurried over to the side stage door.

Neither of them was watching as I slipped down the small staircase into the foyer and out the front door of the playhouse.

* * * * *

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

March 26th, 2000. Just after midnight now.

Well, everything worked out for the best, it seemed. Isabel got into Topolsky's dream, learned what she needed to know, and got out without Ms. Topolsky even realizing she was more than a dream figure herself. Max seems to be none the worse for his meeting with Topolsky plus two special guests, though somehow I felt... worried in retrospect, once I heard about it. Isn't that crazy? I mean, he was fine and everything was done by the time he called me to check in, yet my mind can't help but crank out scenarios of what might have gone wrong. What if those agents had caught him? What if he'd tripped off one of those catwalks and broken his foolish neck? Well, I guess I'm being completely crazy now.

The six of us had a pleasant evening of 'staying under cover.' Nobody really felt like going out and 'pretending we had nothing to hide' again, so we all stayed in at my place. Pizza for dinner and a classic video double feature - "Monty Python and the holy grail" and "Return of the jedi."

By the time the credits had rolled up on the big victory celebration on Endor, Alex and Isabel were sitting *very* close next to each other on the floor between the couch and the tv in the living room. Maria and Michael were sitting on the couch, a little space between them like they weren't sure where they stood with each other yet, but I noticed that they'd each let a hand fall down next to the other one's hand in the space between them. As far as Max and I, he was sitting in the armchair, and I was sitting on one of the arms, with my legs crossing over his and he had wrapped one arm around my waist.

Isabel kind of stretched a little and noticed Michael's hand - the one that *wasn't* next to Maria's. "Why do you have that here Michael? We said we were going to be keeping it at your place."

Michael kinda shrugged a little. "Why the big deal, Iz? It's safer here with me and all of us than it would be in my apartment when nobody's there."

"But if you're carrying that thing with you wherever you go, Michael, somebody's going to notice and start to get curious," Maria pointed out.

"I know that," he replied with a touch of acid in his voice. "I'm not gonna 'take it with me wherever I go.' I just... didn't want to leave it there, tonight okay? Not after what Topolsky said to Max..."

"You still don't trust her, do you?" I put in.

"No, it's not that. If Isabel says she's good, I'm willing to go along with that. It's just... how the hell does she know what these things do when *we* don't?"

"Maybe she's just guessing," Alex said. "These FBI types, they've probably been theorizing a lot about aliens, maybe even going back to the '47 crash, but if they knew all that much, wouldn't it have been easier for them to find you?"

"Thanks so much for *that* comforting thought, Alex," Isabel grumped.

"No, no, I get what he's saying," Max said. "These kinds of alien hypotheses probably get passed from person to person, but when they pass through enough people, sometimes they assume the status of 'facts.' We don't really know *anything* about the orbs, except that the two of them are related. Whether they're meant to work seperately or together, as a communicator, a tool, a weapon - that's for us to figure out."

"Well, have you tried *doing* anything with the one you've got?" Maria pointed out. "I mean -- start figuring, Maxxy boy. Hey Michael." She dug her elbow into Michael's ribs with a grin and a giggle. "Hand it over, spaceboy."

The orb was passed from Michael to Maria to me to Max. Max kind of held it dubiously for a few seconds. "What do I *do* to it?"

Maria sighed loudly. "I dunno, Max, this is your department. Try to connect with it. Use your czechoslovakian powers."

Max concentrated, then closed his eyes and his face somehow assumed an expression of deep meditation for almost a minute. Finally he opened his eyes and was back to his usual self. "I... I couldn't make it do anything," he admitted. "But I *felt* something - like a metaphysical dialtone almost. This thing *is* a link to soneone or something else, and I don't think it needs the other orb to work. We just need to figure out how the hell to use it."

"Hey, let me try," Isabel said, and Max handed the orb over. A lot of playing around with the thing followed. Isabel said she thought she could feel what Max was talking about, but she wasn't sure. Michael couldn't get any of it, (which he was pissed about,) and of course the rest of us couldn't either.

Everyone has gone home now. I should be going to bed. But I can't stop thinking about it all - about the orb, about Topolsky. I know I wanted to believe her from the beginning, to help her out, because she sounded so very frightened. But now that the decision's been made, I can't help but feel afraid myself. She's a dangerous friend to have, especially with this 'Pierce' person watching her.

I'd die if anybody took Max away from me now.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section two: Liberation, confusion, and her

(LPD - Liz Parker's diary.)

Sunday, April 16, 2001. 10:33 pm.

Been pretty dull today. Mostly just trying to pretend that nothing unusual is going on lately, like an FBI agent turned guidance counselor turned renegade waiting for us to save her from the alien hunter. Plus all the usual weirdness.

Michael is insisting that it's his turn next to find a way to contact Topolsky. 'Stubborn' is a word I tend to think of often to describe Michael, but he's capable of some remarkable swings of attitude too. Once it was clear that Max and Isabel had committed everybody to this plan, Michael's only worry was making sure that it worked. He's been working on 'escape plans' for our favorite substitute geometry teacher too. (That's Ms. Topolsky too, by the way, just in case I wasn't being clear. The first time I met her, she was subbing in Mister Singer's class, before she'd even established her cover as the guidance counsellor. And 'favorite' might be sarcasm, I'm not quite sure.)

One kinda scary thing did happen tonight at the cafe. I was on shift alone, there isn't really a need for more than one person since Sunday evenings are dead for business. Max, Isabel, and Michael were all hanging around, and I was kinduv play-flirting with Max while giving him a refill - I mean, we're really past the flirting stage, but it's still fun. Isabel grumbled something about us giving her the creeps, and that's when it happened.

Sheriff Valenti walked in - he had his coffee thermos, which he sometimes gets refilled here, but I'm pretty sure he didn't come for the coffee. He asked me about Topolsky - right out of the blue. Said "I've seen her around town, and since her disappearance last November is still on file as a missing persons case, I'd like to be able to ask our Miss Topolsky a few questions. Do you know if she's gone back to counselling at the high school?"

Of course, that was an easy one, I could tell Valenti that I was pretty sure I hadn't heard anything about Topolsky working at the high school again, and that I hadn't seen her there. Then he asked me if I've seen her at all in the past month - and I wasn't sure what to say. I mean, it was a pretty clear thing that I didn't want Valenti to know all that we know about Kathleen Topolsky's return to Roswell, but I know that I'm not a good liar. So I blurted out a half-truth, that I think I remember seeing her within the past week, but she didn't talk to me. He asked me where, and I said Senor Chao's, just because I couldn't think of any other place.

"Well, at least that's a place to start," he told me. "I guess I'll go ask over at the Senor's, then. Been too long since I caught up with him anyway."

"You mean there really is a Senor Chao?" I asked like an idiot.

Valenti smiled at me, and in that second I could swear that his eyes were seeing right through me. "Oh, yeah." He put on a showy grin. "Helluva guy." And then Jim Valenti was gone, coffee thermos in hand.

Max said that I handled it fine. I'm pretty sure that Michael doesn't think so, and I'd have to agree. Even if Valenti doesn't have any suspicions right now, if he asks around at Senor Chao's he might find out that Topolsky was seen at my table, talking to me, which means that he'd know I lied right there.

A little later, that Tess girl was hanging around the Crashdown. I don't know what to make of her. Isabel says that she's a new friend, but there's something about the way she looks at Max and me - and Michael, even Isabel when she thinks nobody's looking. Could it be possible that the flawless blonde teen queen is just the mask of another player in this crazy game?

Fortunately, I didn't have much time to worry about Tess. Soon after she showed up, Max got me alone in the kitchen, and as you might have noticed, he has some very effective ways of keeping me from thinking too much. I had a flash while we were making out; I didn't mention it to him yet...

* * * * *

ISABEL:

I walked up to my locker and worked the combination. Normal, Isabel. Concentrate on normal. Just act as if you aren't an accessory to conspiracy, effectively harboring a fugitive from the FBI...

"Hey, Isabel," Maria said. I jumped - I hadn't realized she was standing right next to my locker until the girl spoke. "I, uh, I gotta have a little talk with you, I think."

I sighed a little as I went over my morning schedule mentally and took the big thick geometry text out of my locker. "So... talk?"

"It's.... um... it's about Alex."

Now *that* registered. I closed the locker door and looked over at the other girl. "Alex?? Do you really think that Alex is someone that you and I need to discuss?"

"Well, in general I'd say no." Maria paused for a long moment. "But Alex... well, he isn't your average adolescent male. As I'm sure you've noticed."

I fought back a smile and nodded. "Go on."

"And, well... the current circumstances being what they are between you and our bassist friend, I was thinking that, all cliches aside, it would be prudent to..."

Enough of this. "Are you trying to ask," I interrupted, "what my intentions are towards Alex?"

Maria pouted. "Actually, I was trying very hard *not* to ask you in those words, but that's the gist nevertheless. So??"

I took a moment. "Well, I have to admit - a little bit caught off guard here, not sure what to say," I babbled. "I like Alex, I really do. But... well, you remember how it was with you and Michael, back last fall. How would you have..."

"Oh, whoops!" Maria interrupted me. In the sudden silence, I could hear rhythmic chanting coming from down the hall:

"...U!! Gimme an 'M'! M!! Gimme an 'A'! A!! Gimme an 'N'..."

"...The pep rally's started and I'm not in uniform!" Maria complained.

"But...." It took a minute to decide what the appropriate objection is. "But you're not a cheerleader or anything, Maria."

"Oh, that's just what I *wanted* you to believe!!"

I was still trying to figure that one out when Maria ran off towards the dopey chanting. That's when Max came marching down the hall, pounding one of those giant strap-on-in-front drums. The drum had a big picture of an ostrich on it, and...

And that's when I woke up, in my bed at home. It had all been just a kinda weird dream. Well... weirder than the usual, if less than full nightmare status. Groan. Looked over at the clock on my bedside table. 4:52 am.

Well, since I'm awake, might as well check in on Ms. T-sley. I pulled out the picture from inside the ol' yearbook under my bed, centered my energy, and tapped it.

Quick fade to black and up goes the curtain to Topolsky's dreamworld. The first thing I noticed was that I was in black and white - in fact, everything around me was. I'd never really seen the pre-technicolor effect in dreams before, so that was interesting.

The second thing I noticed was that I wasn't in my pajamas. I was wearing an old-fashioned dress and sitting behind a desk in an empty office. That meant that I wasn't just an observer this time - I had been instantly drafted by Topolsky's subconsious to appear as a supporting character in her dream. That DID happen occasionally. Soon enough, Topolsky would be entering this room.

Well, might as well use the time getting familiar with the setting. A quick survey of my surroundings made it clear that I wasn't actually back in the heyday of shades-of-gray. This room seemed to be circa 1990, including the pre-Windows computer on the desk, and the clothes I was wearing seemed to be fasionable yet businesslike for that time period. I guess the lack of color was a film noir effect or whatever.

And then the office door opened. I looked up, expecting it to be Topolsky, but it was another of Topolsky's drafted-from-life dream characters. (Though this one hadn't been dreamwalking her, at least to god I hoped not.) It was Jim Valenti, wearing a conservative dark suit. Then Topolsky followed him through the door, also dressed in the people-in-black style. Hmm... did our Miz Topolsky have a thing for the sheriff?? Either way, she had probably drawn Valenti's face out of her subconscious to play whatever role in this dream.

"I'm telling you, Agent Tully..." Valenti's character was saying. "there are aliens living in the woods outside that small Wisconsin town!"

"And if I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, Valder," Topolsky bantered back. "There's *no* such thing as aliens. Becky, any messages for me?"

"Then how do you explain all of the strange things that we've seen over the years?" 'Valder' pressed. Okay... so Topolsky's dreaming a very bad X-files ripoff. It's better than the Special Unit nightmares at any rate... and kinda funny actually.

"It's all right there in the case files, Valder... I'll admit we've been assigned to our share of unusual assignments with the Z patrol, but there's a reasonable explanation for each and every one of them... Becky?!" Topolsky turned to face me with a sever expression. "Did you hear me??"

Whoops. Obviously I was Becky, the receptionist. "Umm... no, nobody's called for you, Miz Tully," I ad-libbed back, then noticed something on the desk in front of me with the name 'Tully' on it. "Mail's come, though." I passed the envelope over towards her.

Valenti-Valder seemed to have hardly paid attention to that whole exchange - the secretary was beneath his notice I guess. "Well, we're flying out to Wisconsin this morning anyways," he told Topolsky. "This poor girl..." he was pulling a photograph out of his jacket, "the 'Cheese queen' of Arlington, was found dead her brain fluid drained." He passed the photo to Agent Tully, who looked at it. "Now, if this isn't a case for..."

"Just wait one second!!" I burst out. Valenti glared at me as I hurried out of my seat at the dest, and even Topolsky/Tully seemed confused, but I was past that now. I'd caught a glimpse of the photo when Topolsky took it, and... "Could I have a look at that picture, please??"

"Umm... sure, Becky," Agent Tully seemed quite confused as she handed the photograph over to me, and Valenti was quickly getting annoyed. (Sorry, I know I'm not even making an effort to keep the dream names and real names straight.) I took one look at the image and then I was sure.

"This is Tess! What is she doing in this picture?"

"Her *name* is Emily Martin, and I'll thank you not to spread speculation into our investi--" Valder started to rant.

"You're Kathleen Topolsky, and you're dreaming," I told Miss T, cutting him off. "Could you do something about *him* so we can talk??"

Topolsky blinked in that way that people tended to while making the transition to lucid dreaming. (I just hoped that she wouldn't be one of those people who wake up when they realize that they're dreaming.) She glanced over at the Valenti figure and he froze motionless, like he had been caught in a field of paused time.

"You -- you're Max's sister!" Topolsky said, making the connection for the first time. "And you... you were in my dream before, too. Were you the one who told him where to find me?"

"You can thank me later," I joked, and held the photo back up in her line of vision. "This is Tess Harding - a new girl at school. Did you see her there on campus, or at her home?? There has to be some reason why she showed up in your dream."

"Her??" Topolsky squinted as she tried to remember. (She was still in her costume for the dream, as was I, and I noticed idly that at least she hadn't turned her hair red for the Gillian Anderson role. Even in black and white, red hair wouldn't be quite as bright as hers was.) "No... no, I've neer seen this girl in Roswell."

"Then where have you seen her??" I demanded, starting to dread the answer.

"She... she was in the Special Unit headquarters in Albuquerque while I was being debriefed there. That girl... and an older man, could have been her father. Talking to Pierce and some of the other high-ups. Didn't seem like they were in trouble..."

"You mean, she's working with them??" I jumped to conclude. "Of course, it all makes sense. Why would she choose me, out of the whole school, to instantly befriend? Because that's her mission."

"Be careful..." Topolsky warned me as the office started to dissolve - she was waking up. "All of our lives are at risk..."

* * * * *

ALEX:

"The first step is that we need a communications system that doesn't incriminate us," Michael Guerin mused.

I looked up from my plateful of pancakes and took a thoughtful bite. "Sure."

"I mean, look at the situation for a moment. Where do we know to look for Topolsky? Onlt that old apartment building. The FBI has to have the premises under physical surveillance. Any of us so much as go near the place... BAM!" Michael clapped his hands loudly near my face, and I swatted him away with an (I think,) justified annoyance. "Same thing for the telephone line - wiretaps. There's no obvious way to make contact that isn't trapped. Now, I'm clever enough to work around the obvious, but we need to set up some channels so that..."

"Blueberry m--" I burst out, starting to use the look-out phrase we had agreed on, but "Oh, it's just Isabel." Like I ever thought I'd catch myself saying that! A lot of words sprang to mind thinking about Isabel Evans, but 'just'??

I can see how other people might think it. Isabel Evans. 'Just another stuck- up teen queen.' 'Just another pretty face.' 'Just my sister.' 'Just a friend.'

I never thought I bought into it, though. Even before I knew about the alien thing, I always felt that I could sense this incredibly passionate and caring spirit in Isabel - a true heart that she never let anyone else see clearly, behind her walls. Now I guess I know why she builds up the walls.

"Some kind of open signal might make sense," Michael wondered out loud, since he obviously wasn't aware of my wandering thoughts. "A pounding drum or something, which everyone in the area would hear but only Topolsky would understand the meaning of. Problem with that is that the FBI would make the connection soon enough too, and track the drum or whatever we were using."

"What's across the street from Topolsky's window, anyways" I asked, getting into it. "We might be able to do something with..."

"Hey, heckle and jeckel?!" Isabel burst out in a fierce hiss, cutting me off. "Could you keep quiet for just a moment?? We've got bigger problems here."

I decided not to point out that Isabel had to have joined us several moments before Michael started the conversation up again. "Yeah? What is it??" I prompted, and let Isabel take the time to sort out what she wanted to say.

"I think Tess Harding is an undercover agent for the Special Unit," she whispered. "Just like Topolsky was when she first showed up here."

"Who is Tess Harding??" Michael muttered, unable to hide his scowl.

Fortunately, (or was it?) I had a little information on that. "Tess 'your- new-best-girlfriend' Harding??" The girl who managed to twice get in the way of what I ever-optimistically hoped were 'moments' with Isabel, within the past four days or so?

"Don't remind me - I'm beating up on myself for that enough for all tree of us," Isabel sighed. "I know better than to trust a stranger right out of the blue." She sighed sadly.

"Okay, okay, let's not get bent out of shape here," I interjected. "First off, what makes you think she's FBI, or 'Special Unit' or whatever??"

"Topolsky I.D.'d her," Iz explained. "I saw Tess' face in one of her dreams, and asked her about it. She remembered seeing Tess in special unit headquarters two weeks ago. Didn't even know she was in Roswell until I told her."

"It makes some sense," Michael muttered pensively. "Whoever sent Topolsky already knew to look for aliens at the high school, or why else give her a cover as a guidance counselor?? And the most obvious reason she failed was that she couldn't get Liz or Alex to trust her. Because she was older. So this time they're sending in a teenager."

"Thanks for that summary, Sherlock," Isabel told Michael wryly. "But now that we know, none of us will trust her. We know better. Or her father - Topolsky said she was with an older man at the Special unit, so that could have been her father, or someone who was supposed to PLAY her father. Spread the word."

"Umm... uh, okay," Michael muttered, somewhat put out by Isabel's attitude. "Max will be in english lit right now. I can drop by to crash the end of class and fill him in."

"Wait a second," I burted out. "Aren't you in that class too? What were you doing out here all this time?!"

Michael shot me a withering glance from two paces away from the table. "Do you know me at all?" he asked, and then continued on his way.

"Umm." Awkward silence here, and it didn't help to realize that I was now alone with Isabel. (If you ignored the other high school students that surrounded us at a distance.) "So...." Lame attempt to inspire a new topic of conversation, I know.

Isabel kind of half-smiled at me. "So?"

"So... you went into Miss Topolsky's dreams again??" I asked, trying to keep the tone of my voice casual.

"Yeah... just woke up and decided on a check-in. Wasn't so bad this time - an X-files fantasy starring Valenti, until I spotted the picture of Tess that is. You know, I think Topolsky has something of a crush on Jimmy V. the second."

Alex couldn't resist a chuckle at the thought of that pairing. "No offense, I hope they don't hook up because of the sheer complication it would introduce in *our* lives."

Isabel laughed at that. "Yeah." Then, as the laugh died down, she kind of cocked her head, like a thought was occuring to her, and *blushed.* I've never seen Isabel blush before, but it was unmistakeable. A rosy pink covered her smooth cheeks, and traces of color spread out over half of the rest of her face.

I couldn't resist asking. "What... what is it, Isabel?"

"I, umm..." I think Iz was trying to fight off the blush, but without much success - she might have even *lost* ground. "I was just thinking of *my* dream." She probably caught my look of surprise about that. "I... I had a dream last night too. When I woke up from it... well, that's what gave me the idea to pop in on Katy."

"Uh, okay," I said. "So, this dream..." I took a wild guess. "Was I in the dream, by any chance??"

"Well, not as such," Isabel confessed with a shy smile. "But... well, you were mentioned."

"'Mentioned'??" I repeated. Now this was getting intriguing. "Mentioned by whom, might I ask," grinning back at her.

"Um... Maria." The blush got even more intense, (surprising but possible, it seemed.) "She asked me, in the dream that is, Maria asked me what my intentions were towards you. Or something along those lines." Isabel was looking down at the table furiously.

"Oh!!" I'm sure I blinked at least three times after that. "Umm... what did you tell her??"

"Well, I didn't really have a chance to say much..." Isabel waffled, "Maria had to run off to cheerleading practice and Max came by beating this big ostrich drums..." She looked up at me, a priceless look on her face. "The dream wasn't that weird until the very end, by the way."

"Got it." I sighed, then decided to try once more. "If you *had* had a chance to say something, do you know what it would have been??"

"Well, no!" Isabel replied. "I mean... I like you, Alex. But things are so complicated in my life to start with, and every time I even think about... well, you know, letting someone new in *like that,* a new reason pops up why it would be a bad idea."

My spirits fell like a quarter plummeting into a wishing well. "Right." I nodded, trying not to let my numbing sadness show. "Bad idea."

"Alex." Isabel's hand touched my knee gently, and I looked up to see that she was shaking her head at me and smiling. "But I think I've realized something lately - that I can't keep stopping from living my life because I'm scared."

Wow. "Umm... does that... does that mean -- what I think it does??" Not the best rejoinder in the world, but hey.

"Er-- yeah, yeah, I think it does," Isabel agreed, and then she kissed me. Quick, but soft and very good, on the lips.

"Oh, wow," was all that I could say. But from the way Iz was smiling at me, somehow I could tell that she knew how I felt. There wouldn't be a big enough website in the world to tell everybody how happy I was at that moment.

* * * * *

"So..." Liz said, coming over to her seat beside mine for art history, third period. "Rumor has it that you and Isabel Evans were spotted in 'Smoochville, the quad' this morning. Should I offer my congratulations?" Maria took her seat behind me.

"Actually, the tactful thing would be not to mention it," I joked. "A respectful silence is all the congratulations I need."

"Oh, come on, Alex," Maria chided me. "Is something wrong??"

"No," I sighed. "Just... well, things between me and Isabel are still up in the air a little... we're giving things a try, but I'd rather not make a big deal out of it and get my hopes up. Okay?" Liz nodded, and Maria murmured her understanding. "Oh, and you know Isabel's quote unquote friend, Tess Harding?"

"I'm... familiar with her work," Maria teased.

Alex looked around to make sure no one was paying attention before he continued, softly. "She's FBI. Topolsky ID'd her in a dream conference with Isabel this morning. Spread the... well, I guess now that you girls know, the only one who might not know... is Max." Yeah, I remembered that Michael had gone to tell Max. Just be patient.

"Ohh??" Liz said, perking up and getting that smile she always does when young Mister Evans' name is mentioned. "Well... I can fix that... he had study hall this period, yes?" She put up her hand and turned earnestly to the front of the class. "Miz Copperton? May I have a hall pass, please?" The teacher looked up from filling out attendance and didn't even give Liz the second degree before filling out the pass.

Maria tapped me on the shoulder as the lecture on the influence of Picasso on the art world during the last twenty years before his death began. "Alex, Max already knows, doesn't he??"

"Unless Michael was distracted by a white elephant on the way to English Lit then yeah, Max knows." I whispered back. "Hey... I like to spread a little happiness around."

We didn't talk during most of the rest of the lecture, and then Miz Copperton gave us some time for working on the answers to the questions at the end of the chapter and discussing them amongst ourselves. Liz had managed to drag herself back to class by this point, with fresh Max-Evans- glow (metaphorically) spread all over her face.

"So," Maria said after a little while, possibly groping for a topic that didn't involve aliens, "either of you interested in going to that 'Bandz festival' thing this weekend??"

"Hmm..." I muttered. "I've been thinking about it." Wonder if Isabel would like to go to something like that.

"I've seen a few signs, but... well, what exactly is the deal there?" Liz asked. "I don't think I get it."

"It's like a cross between a music festival and a big 'Battle of the bands' contest, over in Phillips park," I explained helpfully. "Wannabe music groups come around from all over to play a few songs each and compete for a cash prize. They'll probably have food vendors and games and a few rides set up too, like a miniature carnival."

"Hmmm... sounds cool. Maybe I'll ask Max to take me." Liz giggled, and I couldn't help but smile. Things seemed finally to be getting together for our odd love connections, if only we could keep from getting caught by the FBI or anything. "Hmm... how about this for number ten, Maria?" Liz passed Maria a note paper filled with with six long paragraphs, all under the number ten heading.

"Hmmm..." Maria scanned Liz's answer. "Yeah, that sounds about right." I couldn't help noticing that on Maria's worksheet, she had exactly two sentences for number ten.

* * * * *

MICHAEL:

We all met up at a lunch table out near the edge of the quad, where no-one tended to hang out. If anyone came near enough to listen in, we'd be sure to see them first.

"I think we should start taking a closer look at this Tess girl," Maria suggested. "Find out what she knews, What she's trying to find out about us."

"Good, go snooping around," Isabel cracked. "Give her a chance to catch on that we've made her."

"Easy, okay??" Max recommended. "Tess Harding is not the problem. If we stay clear of her, she won't have a chance to find out *anything* about us."

"Yeah, 'cause that worked SO well with Topolsky," Maria muttered. Alex blushed. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean..."

"Max is right," Liz commented. Oh, big surprise where. "Anyone sent here by the Special Unit is dangerous. We avoid her as much as we can."

"Meanwhile," I suggested, "what *is* the problem at hand is making the next rendezvous with Topolsky and figuring out how to get her away from the Special Unit for good." That queasy feeling was getting harder and harder to push down. If Isabel said we could trust Topolsky, then I had to have faith in that. "I have a plan."

Alex smiled. "Really?"

"Yeah. This is how it's gonna break down. Maria, you and I are gonna have to drive down to Hondo in the Jetta tomorrow afternoon. Isabel, Alex... I think you guys should make the meet. Topolsky will trust both of you. Max, Liz, the two of you are both too high profile. Go out, have dinner somewhere in a public place and get yourselves alibis. Oh, and Isabel, you'll probably have to dreamwalk Miz T sometime between now and tomorrow. It's the most secure way we have of communicating to her what she has to do. Now..."

"Blueberry muffins," Alex said out of thin air. What the...?? Oh, he was re- using the signal from this morning, which meant... someone was approaching the table, and not just any someone. I recognized the pretty blonde girl from the descriptions that had been flying everywhere since this morning. Tess Harding. FBI Mole girl.

"Uh, hey..." Tess said with inly a trace of embarassment, "I didn't mean to interrupt your talk, but... Isabel? My dad got some tickets to an acoustic set down at the radio station with a mystery guest artist, and I was wondering if you wanted to..."

"I'm busy tonight, Tess." Isabel snapped.

"It... the set isn't until Th-thursday night," Tess stammered out. "I just thought I should let you know as soon as,"

"I'm b..." Isabel started, but Max kicked her under the table. If Isabel cut ties with Tess too abruptly, she could start to get suspicious. After a second, Isabel realized the danger. "I'm gonna have to get back to you about that, okay, Tess?"

"Sure. Nice to see you again, Alex, Liz, Michael, Isabel... Bye, all." She waved cutely and left.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section two: Liberation, confusion, and her (continued.)

Maria rolled the Jetta to a stop next to the curb, power-downed the window, and straightened her ray-bans. "Well, it's time. Let's go."

I smiled a little, walked suavely around the front of the car, and climbed into the shotgun seat. "Yo." As an afterthought I pulled the seat belt around myself and shoved the buckle in, since Maria's been known to get on my case and refuse to start driving until everyone's 'buckled up.'

She put the manual transmission down into first gear and pulled away. "So... Hondo, huh? What does that have to do with the plan?"

I looked around self-consciously. "I think it'd be better to wait until we get there to say any more. Just in case."

"Just in case what??" Maria shot back. I shrugged, and Maria let that drop.

The highway passed by in silence, and the silence became awkward, and then stifling. I groped for a topic of conversation, but couldn't seem to find anything.

"If it hadn't been for the fifty-third bicycle, he would never have died," Maria blurted out. I stared at her.

"Who the heck are you talking about??"

She shot a glance at me as best she could without losing control of the car. "It's a party game, stupid. One person starts with a cryptic statement or a mystery - that would be me - and everyone else has to ask yes-no questions until they can solve the mystery. You up for it??"

I considered a moment. It all seemed a little lame, but there was nothing else offering to relieve the boredom of this trip. "Okay, sure. Was he run over or hit by the bicycle?"

Maria paused only a second. "No."

"Was he killed by someone who was trying to steal the bicycle?" "No." "Was he killed becayse *he* was trying to steal the bicycle?" "No." "Was the fifty-third bicycle stolen by an... Did anyone try to steal the fifty-third bicycle?" "No."

I took stock for a second. "Is the fact that it was the fifty-third bicycle important?" "Yes." "Would his death be considered a murder?" "Yes." "Was he strangled with something?" "No." "Was he shot to death?" "Yes."

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. But the facts still didn't seem to fit together. "Was the fifty-third bicycle part of the motive for the shooting?" "Yes." "Did the shooter want the bicycle?" "Umm... I'm gonna say no." "Was he angry about something to do with the bicycle?" "Yes."

"Did the dead guy own the bicycle?" "Yeah, I guess so." "Was... was the bicycle the getaway vehicle for a robbery?" "No." "Did anyone ride the bicycle..." "No."

Whoa! Now this just got interesting. I'd been about to put on a time frame, but Maria answered while I was hesitating. "Just to clarify... this bicycle has never, *ever* been ridden?" "No, it hasn't," Maria agreed, and let a little giggle slip.

"Was it a showpiece?" "No." "Was it... used in some way that didn't involve being ridden?" "Yes." Okay, this was weird. And the shooter didn't want the bicycle but was angry with it for some reason...

Then it hit me. "Does the 'bicycle' refer to something other than a riding device with two tires?" "Oh yes!" "Does it refer to a playing card??" Hank was something of a gambler, so I did vaguely know that 'bicycle' was a brand of playing cards, though I had taken a while to clue in about that. "Is the fifty-third bicycle the joker?" Made sense, fifty-two cards in the regular deck...

"No." Darnit. "Does what card it is matter?" "No, not really." "Is it..." I racked my brain. "Was it a cheating card, slipped into the game from another identical deck?" "Yes!" "And the 'owner' of the fifty-third bicycle was shot because he was caught in the middle of his cheating!!"

"Yeah!!" Maria confirmed. "Not bad, spaceboy! That's... that was twenty-two questions, right?"

"I dunno," I admitted. "I wasn't counting. But I've heard a few of these, wanna switch places?"

"Sure," Maria agreed, smiling. "Gimme what you got, Guerin."

I thought a second. "Peter and Jane are lying dead, on the floor in a p--"

"Oh, c'mon, give me a little credit," Maria interrupted. "Heard that one so many times it's not funny."

I frowned and considered. "When the lights went out, he knew she was dead."

"Heard it."

Rack my brain a third time. "When the music stopped, he was doomed to die."

Maria blinked a few times. "Haven't heard it. Is this a real one, or are you just making up a variation on that last one?"

"I heard it from a girl at West Lake orphanage years ago," I assured her. "Are you scared to really take me on?"

"You wish!" Maria laughed. "Let's see... was it a murder?"

"Hmm... I'll say yes." "Was the music a signal to the killer?" Hehe. "No." "Umm... did the music..."

"Wait a second," I interrupted, "this is..."

"Are you gonna go and change one of your answers, spaceboy??" Maria counter- interrupted me.

"No!" I told her witheringly, and waved to a road leading off from the small highway. "That was our exit."

"Oh." For a second, Maria seemed properly humble, and then she retorted, "Well, you could have given me more warning! Well, I'll get off at the next exit - will we need to take the highway back the other way, or is there another way around?"

"Um... lemme see," I muttered, getting out the map I'd prepared while planning Maria's and my part of the mission. Thank god that Hondo actually *had* two exits on route 70 - it didn't seem big enough to deserve even one. (Except maybe by comparison to the desert.) "Yeah, head south on Riley street after we get off."

Maria drove on in silence for a few more moments. "Okay, so where were we?"

"'Did the music'... and that's as far as you got," I quoted. "Remember where you were going to go with that??"

"No." Maria pouted cutely as she drove up the exit. "I dunno, can I call this off without conceding defeat? You shook me out of my *zone* back there."

"Okay, I guess, all right. Probably not a good idea for you to be trying to solve brain teasers and drive at the same time anyway," I teased her. Maria shot me a glare, but couldn't keep it up for long and broke into a wide smile.

"Keeping score is really important to you, isn't it?" I said as Maria turned onto Riley street.

"Well... huh." Maria got another one of her expressions. "I dunno, sometimes I guess. And what about to you??"

I thought about it for a second. "I'm not sure. Winning or losing can be important. Keeping the score is just a means to an end. Or something like that."

"Typical."

"What?"

"Oh, that it's all about winning and losing."

"I didn't say it was 'all about' that. I said that whether you win or you lose CAN be important."

"Well, here we are." Maria pulled into a parking lot.

I looked around. "How do you know? I didn't tell you where we were going?"

"It wasn't hard to figure out." Maria laughed softly. "Especially since I snuck a peek while you were looking at the map, after I missed the turn- off. Hondo train station. How does this fit into your big master plan??"

I grinned at her, took her hand as she shut off the gas, then opened my door. "You'll have to come with me to find out."

* * * * *

MAX:

The cell phone rang on the table three times, and both of us turned to look at it. After the third ring it stopped... or maybe in the middle of the third ring, I'm not sure. Isabel crossed over and looked at the caller ID.

"Michael," she confirmed. "That's the signal. He and Maria are in position. We'd better go rendezvous with our partners."

"Remember, you and Alex can't move too early," I told her. "God knows what Michael has planned, but he seemed quite insistent about that."

"I know, I know." Isabel leaned over to kiss me sweetly on the cheek, and smiled. "Have a nice romantic dinner with Liz, and remember your *poor* poor sister, mucking around in the woods with a crazy woman."

I just sighed a little, having had ten years to build up a resistance to Isabel's melodrama. "Tell Alex I said good luck." I sprinted out into the driveway to the Jeep,

I pulled in to park next to the back door of the Crashdown and when I poked my head in, Liz was waiting for me, looking sexy and adorable all at once in a simple green dress. We beat a quick retreat back out to my wheels. Liz's parents haven't been wild about me ever since that night we snuck off to find the orb - they know we're dating again, but neither of us really wanted to have a scene with them tonight.

We were halfway to the French restaurant when Liz casually said, "Michael was right. We *are* being followed."

"What??"

"Do you see that dark gray sedan one lane over to the left, two cars back?"

I tried to pick it out in the rearview mirrors, but couldn't. "No."

"It pulled out a block down the street when you left the Crashdown, and it's been keeping with us ever since. Not very obviously, but it's been there. Lucky thing that I happened to notice it way back then, or I'd never have guessed."

I didn't say anything, but I could feel an anger starting to build inside of me. How dare these people intrude on our lives? What if they weren't going to just follow quietly? Maybe their orders included hurting Liz... She must have noticed how I was clenching the steering wheel.

"Relax," Liz's soft voice urged me. "Remember the plan - we're decoys, which means we can't do anything suspicious, which includes letting on that we've spotted them. They're not going to hurt anyone tonight."

I sighed. "As always, the voice of reason."

"Hey, somebody's gotta do it," Liz wise-cracked. "So, what say you and I go enjoy a fancy dinner that we really can't afford, indulge public displays of affection, and generally make a spectacle out of ourselves?" She had on the goofiest grin I'd ever seen.

"I hope they enjoy the show," I whispered as I pulled into a parking spot, then whipped off my seat belt and leaned over to steal a kiss.

Dinner was great. I had a leak soup, chicken strips in roquefort sauce, potatoes and spinach. Liz had onion tartlets, escargots... (yeah, snails, believe it or not...) and a side salad. We each sampled bits from the other's plates... and I have to admit that the snails tasted great.

'Making a spectacle out of ourselves' turned out to be harder than one would have imagined. I'd never been to "Le coin sombre" before. (We'd decided not to go to Chez Pierre, the other french-themed restaurant in town, because it had been a stop on Liz's valentine blind dream date, and that was still an awkward memory for both of us.)

'Le coin,' on the other hand... well, the food was great, but it seemed to be getting as much mileage as it could out of being a "romantic French restaurant"... if you know what I mean. There's something deeply uncomfortable about sitting in the middle of a restaurant full of couples... some of them in their twenties, thirties, or... (mental shudder,) even older, making out like... well, like horny teenagers.

And then, of course, there were the guys from the special unit, watching us. They tried to be unobtrusive about it, but after Liz called my attention to the car she saw on the way over here, it was impossible to miss them. For one thing... they *were* guys. About the only three people in the entire restaurant that didn't have dates, they were spread out in a loose circle around our table, and every so often one of them was watching us. Oh, and all three of them wearing the snazzy dark blue suits. I had to fight off the urge to wave hello at them.

"Umm..." Liz said as she took what looked like it would be her third-to- last spoonful of the escargots. "D'you think we should... dunno, I mean... kiss or something??"

I looked around, as if this would really give me any new information. The FBI guys and Liz and I weren't exactly the only ones not taking advantage of the dim lighting and sexy ambience, but we were in the distinct minority. And we didn't want it to be totally obvious to our Bureau friends that we'd just come here to lead them astray, did we?? "Umm... it seems like the thing to do," I muttered, feeling embarassed about our little audience.

Then Liz shoved her chair partway around the table, and leaned towards me, looking into my eyes, and suddenly all the rest of the bistro melted away, and as far as I knew it was just the two of us. I brought one hand gently to the back of Liz's neck and brought my face forward to meet hers, and soon enough our lips we were sharing the perfect kiss. Her lips were so soft and so fragrant, and her soft hair fell down and brushed my cheeks and my shoulders as we embraced, and...

Flash. Something vague, and amorphous... shapeless, and a human figure talking to it. To *them*. An orb changing hands... I didn't know if it was ours or Topolsky's, who was giving it or who was giving it. Except... it was a girls' or a woman's hands giving, and a man or young man's hands taking. Topolsky handing over her orb to me, after we saved her?? And one last image... Isabel and Michael and me, there on the desert road, as children. When I was reaching out my hand to Michael, and he would be too scared to take it.

I only realized the experience was over when I heard Liz's voice whispering softly in my ear. "How was it for you, lover?"

I looked up and smiled at her. "Great. I'll tell you later."

"Me too." Was that her way of telling me that she'd had a flash too? I couldn't wait to hear what it might have been of.

We ordered dessert not long after that... cheesecake for me, raspberry sorbet for her. We got involved in talking about safe, ordinary things like school and our parents - things that it didn't matter if the FBI guys overheard us, and I was so engrossed that I didn't even notice until it was happening. Neither did Liz, apparently.

"This is a dangerous game you're playing, Parker." The words were voiced low, but not a whisper. We looked up, startled, to see Tess Harding standing only a few feet from our table, wearing a little black dress with halter straps. She continued to stare at Liz for a few seconds, then turned and walked out of 'Le Coin sombre' without another word. It might have been my imagination, but I think she was trying too hard not to look at the FBI agents.

MARIA:

"Okay..." I took a deep breath. "We've slipped aboard a freight train in the Hondo train station. Care to fill me in on how the heck this is part of a plan?"

Michael grinned in that annoying way. "This train is going past Roswell. Hopefully, it'll provide the barrier that Isabel and Alex need to get Topolsky alone."

I thought about that. "A problem and a question. Problem: these special unit agent seem the uber-be-prepared type. They'll have the train schedules memorized and wouldn't let Topolsky get out of arm's reach near a train track when a freight train is scheduled. Question: why are *we* here? This train could serve as a barrier just fine without us being aboard."

Michael smiled again. "The answer to that question," he pointed out smugly, "is the solution to the problem. We've snuck aboard to try to find some way to speed this train up by six minutes in arriving at Roswell. Hopefully that'll be enough to throw our schedule-happy friends off."

I thought about it. "Could work. Any idea how we're gonna speed this baby up that much?"

Michael paused a minute. "Not completely sure, no. I admit I had a notion of just pushing it ahead with my powers, but that doesn't seem to be working at all. Never really appreciated how heavy a train is."

I smiled - it wasn't often that Michael admitted he was capable of making a mistake. "Well, then the solution is up at the engine or nothing."

"Yeah, I'd figured that out too," Michael agreed, and led the way up the train. We had to crawl along the side of a basket car full of what seemed like hot ashes, a heart-jolting experience if I've ever had one. But soon we were inside another freight car, peering at the two train-operator guys in the engine through tiny peepholes courtesy of Michael's molecular mojo.

"So, now what??" I asked aloud. "We've got to assume that that diesel motor has a fair bit more oomph that it isn't using, or we don't have a shot. How best to tap into it?"

Michael considered the question, then stretched out a hand towards the engine in a dramatic Czechoslovakian gesture. I waited for a good thirty seconds, but the results of his Herculean efforts didn't seem to be apparent. "What are you trying to do?" I asked in a soft whisper.

"Just wait," Spaceboy grunted. I waited. Just when I was going to give up on waiting again, the chief engineer hmmed at something on his control panel and adjusted a lever. The engine strained hard and our car started to pick up speed.

"Hey... whatd'you do that for Phil?" the assistant engineer asked, taking the words right out of my silent mouth.

"Take a look," Phil said, tapping that something on the panel. "We must be a minute and a half behind schedule."

The co-engineer looked where Phil was pointing, which must have been a clock. "That's impossible," he pointed out petulantly. "We were okay the last time I checked, and we were doing fifty before you gunned the engine. That can't have been five minutes ago -- more like three!"

"Check your watch, Andy." Andy did, but Michael had apparently taken care of that too. Andy looked none too convinced, but didn't speak again... until a few minutes later, when Phil cranked the engine to full. "Hey!"

"Well, what can I do?"

"I'm calling in," Andy declared, picking up a radio mike/speaker. "Central, this is two one three six nine. Can I get a confirm on the local time?"

"Copy that, three six nine, the time here in Las Vegas, New Mexico is..." At the last moment, the radio died in a shower of sparks. Andy yelped.

"You're right, something weird is going on here," Phil commented. "I'm going to slow down, maybe stop when we get to the outskirts of Roswell."

Thanks for the warning, buddy, I thought silently, as if I were really contributing here. Sure enough, by the time Phil actually tried pulling back on the engine lever, it was stuck fast and not budging an inch. So was the brake when Andy tried that.

"Is there some kind of emergency override on the engine?" I whispered to Michael in a sudden panic.

"Dunno," he muttered. "If you spot it, gimme a heads-up."

I scanned the engine compartment as well as I could from our limited vantage point. "Got it! High and to the right... Phil's going for it."

"Get back." I didn't understand why Michael was saying that, but I pushed away from the wall and stumbled away from it. As the train went over a small bump, the motion sent me sprawling. When I looked back up, Michael was looking through *my* peephole and making his czechoslovakian gesture. Oh, right. He probably couldn't see what he needed to from his position, so he needed to use mine. Can't use alien powers on something you don't know exactly where it is I guess.

"How're we doing?" I mumbled, picking myself back up and lurching forward unsteadily to Michael's peephole.

"Pretty good." Michael was right. As I'd guessed, from this position I couldn't get too good a look at the emergency override, but now Andy was trying to get to it, and he yelped in horror after touching something that was obviously incredibly hot.

"Uh-oh... look out." Since there was nothing much to be done in the engine, Phil was heading down into the rest of the train... presumably to look for the saboteurs that had hijacked his ride... us!! "Where do we hide?"

Michael turned around and scanned the compartment. "Up there." He pointed to a particular pile of metal boxes. I hurried over to it, but couldn't find any way to get started climbing. The first ledge was almost as high as I could reach with my hands above my head... I tried to pull myself up to it, but I had no leverage.

"Right here." Michael brought his hands together to give me a boost up. I scrambled up to the ledge, then reached back to help pull Michael up... he would never have asked for it, but he'd have had trouble with that first step by himself too. We both scrambled into a hidden tunnel behind some of the higher boxes, just as Phil climbed into the car. While he was poking around, I noticed Michael checking his watch.

"Got another appointment, spaceboy?" I whispered.

He snorted softly at me. "I'm not sure how fast we're going, but we should be getting near Roswell by now. Maybe even approaching the rendezvous point."

I nodded. "Should we get out? Take a closer look?" I pointed up to a trap door in the ceiling that was pretty near the highest peak of this mountain of metal boxes... that may have been why Michael chose it.

"Yeah. But that door is in plain sight, and the engineer looks like a stubborn cuss." Sure enough, he was still searching this car, and would spot us in a second if we went for the trap.

"Leave it to me." I picked up a screwdriver that was sitting nearby, judged the angles right, and tossed it across the freight car. Sure enough, Phil went for the diversion. "Go, go!!" From the direction I'd chucked it, Phil would *not* have a clear view of us going for the door. Michael isn't the only one who can be canny.

Soon enough, we were in the open air, just in time to see things play out. Isabel, Alex, and Miss Topolsky were skipping ahead of the train as it passed through the edge of Frazier woods. Topolsky's FBI handlers were stuck on the other side of the tracks, and Isabel waved discretely, making them fall down, (a neat trick in a moment of crisis, I had to admit.) And then the engine rushed between them.

"That's my cue," Michael muttered. He waved, and the brakes suddenly came on full... I struggled to keep from falling off the train at the sudden shift in momentum. Andy took the hint and shut the engine off, and now that worked too. The train started coasting to a stop, which would only increase the amount of time before the FBI guys could give chase. Our homeys (Alex, Iz, and Ms T,) were already high-tailing it deeper into the woods.

It was a few minutes before the train finally came to a stop, and Michael gave me a hand down the ladder on the side of the train. Without a word, he waved a hand in either direction -- into Frazier woods too, or back to where we could hopefully catch a ride into town. I led the way into the forest.

As we left the train behind and started following a footpath down into a small ravine, (me trying hard not to think of how hard it might be to find Isabel, Alex, and Topolsky in here and how likely it was thet the FBI guys would find us,) something fell into place. "He was a blindfold tightrope walker, right??"

I looked back, and Michael was blinking in confusion. "WHO was??"

"I'm talking about your mystery riddle," I explained. "'When the music stopped, he was doomed to die', right? 'He' was a blindfold tightrope walker, and the music was supposed to be a cue that it was safe to step off of the tightrope, that he had gotten all the way to the platform on the far side. But someone stopped the music too early, and so he fell to his death. Am I right??"

"Have you heard that before, and you're just remembering it now?" Michael asked.

"Actually, no. The answer just kinduv occured to me."

* * * * *

ISABEL:

"So, um..." I muttered as we hurried deeper into the woods, all too aware that the FBI-guys might be back on our trail by now. Alex pointed out a small, overgrown side path that led through a dark thicket, and I sighed and followed him through. "How are you doing??" It was weird to actually be face to face with Topolsky, so to speak. I'd dreamwalked her three times now since she'd come back to Roswell, but this was the first time I'd actually met her directly since last fall.

"Nicely executed with the diversion there," Topolsky mentioned with what sounded like professional appreciation. "What I can't figure out was how you managed to speed up the 4:20 freight train to Las Cruces by six minutes."

"Our friends have our ways," I said as mysteriously as I could. Michael hadn't even told me about the train, but I was sure that I had seen him and Maria as it came past. Certainly *I* didn't know what he could possibly have done to mess around with its schedule, but apparently they had done something. "Is the special unit giving you any trouble?"

"Haven't even talked to me since that time I met with your brother," Katy muttered, puffing a little as she followed me up a rise. "I'm getting nervous, though. Something's coming."

"We're still working on a way to get you out," I assured you. "Not quite sure what to do with you then, though. Springing you won't do a heck of a lot of good if we can't hide you someplace that Pierce and his cronies won't think to look."

"I was thinking that I give you the orb and hop on the next bus for Tijuana," Katy put in. "Not much that can go wrong with that plan."

Wait a second... what happened to waiting for the aliens with us? Then again, Max had told her that we didn't know whether to expect a mothership any time soon, so maybe Katy had changed her plans. Getting out of Roswell seemed like a smart thing for her. But I had hoped to have her experience on our side when it came time to the final showdown with the Special Unit... this Pierce wouldn't be forgetting about us anytime soon. And then...

"You disappear, and won't Pierce have every bus leaving Roswell monitored?" Alex pointed out softly.

"Hmmm.... Good point," Topolsky sighed. "I'll leave it up to your capable judgement. Don't think my brain is working too well these days, some of the time."

Which didn't help me in the reason I had brought this up, feeling Katy out to see if she had any ideas about a safe hiding place. Oh well.

"Ssshh!!" Alex said suddenly, turning around to face us with a finger to his lips. I stopped still and stayed quiet, listening, and Katy did too. Loud, tramping running footsteps were heading in our direction.

Alex looked around quickly. "In here," he whispered, pushing a shrub halfway aside on the edge of the path. "Hide under the brush." I hurried in, Katy following and Alex bringing up the rear, each of us trying to find as inconspicuous a hiding place as possible among the green growth.

I could only just see a figure dressed in black charge up the path, but he obviously wasn't searching to the sides, just trying to catch up with a quarry he still believed was in front of him. As his footsteps died away again, I turned to look at Alex questioningly.

"Not yet," he suggested. "This seems as good a place as any to lie low."

THUMP. Following the source of the sound, I eventually found the orb that Topolsky had set upon the ground, still holding it firmly in her hand. I guess the sound hadn't been that loud, I just felt the vibrations through the ground because I was so close to it. "Did you remember to bring yours this time??"

"Yes." Max had warned me that Topolsky had seemed offended by his failure to do that last time, so I'd been lugging the heavy little thing around in my purse. Quickly I brought it out. "Umm... how do you want to do this?"

"Do you know how to use them??" Katy asked warily, and I had to shake my head no. "Then I'll show you mine if you let me hold yours."

Sounded like a fair trade to me, all double entendre aside. We traded orbs, and I could immediately tell that there was indeed a difference between them. While the orb that Max and Liz had found in the desert gave off 'an alien dial tone,' as Max so quaintly put it -- an unmistakeable sense of the potential for communication... this one almost hummed with barely suppressed power. It wasn't a communicator, I was somehow sure of that. It was a weapon... or at the very least a potent tool. Which suggested that they weren't meant to be used together... or not jointly, at least. A matched set they almost undeniably were, but each had its specific purpose.

"Say, where did you get the stuff you told Michael about these orbs??" Alex asked softly. For a second I thought he was talking to me, but the question obviously made more sense addressed to Topolsky. "That they're communicators and only work when they're together??"

"I...." Topolsky's face twisted sideways slightly. "I don't remember. Did I really say that??"

"Yeah," I assured her. "Don't worry, it doesn't matter."

"Maybe we should get moving again," Alex suggested. I was only to happy to agree. Lying down in the underbrush is never anybody's idea of a good time.

"So..." I tried to think of another conversation of conversation as we switched the orbs back and put them away. "Where did you live before you came to Roswell the first time, Katy??"

"Maryland," Katy answered in a faraway voice. "I was a data processor in one of the FBI office complexes, taking agent training courses on the side. Then they tapped me for this mission - maybe because I took teacher's ed courses before joining the bureau. I'm still not really sure why I was picked. I thought it was my lucky break. But that mission ruined my life."

"Not for long," Alex muttered. "We'll get you your life back, don't worry."

"Thanks, Alex," she told him. "You were always so sweet." Katy shot me a side-long glance. "I guess that someone else finally clued into that, huh??"

Huh. Okay, try not to think about that too much right now... oh, that reminded me. "Those career evaluations," I blurted out. "The ones you did when you were under cover as the guidance counselor... were they on the level??"

"What??" It took a little time for Katy to place my reference. "What do you mean, were they on the level??"

"The results... were they really backed up by some sort of authority or were you saying things trying to get us off balance??"

Topolsky turned and looked at me. "Of course they were 'on the level.' I chose a survey that I hoped might yield some deeper and more meaningful results than a typical career aptitude profile... and I was watching some of the results carefully. Yours, Michael's, Max's, Liz's, Maria's. Well, I was looking forward to Michael's, but he was cutting class again that week. But still... what I told you was the truth. And watching how each of you reacted to it... that told me other things."

I stayed silent, wondering how to reply to that, when suddenly I heard something. Footsteps moving closer to us again. Two sets of them, much slower than last time... as if someone was picking their way carefully or looking for something. They were coming from the way we had been going, and on an intercept course. I turned to Alex to see what he thought.

We were all about to dive for cover again when a soft voice called out "Blueberry muffins!!" Damnit, how long is that stupid phrase going to be a code word?

But it got the point across. We hurried up to rendezvous with Michael and Maria, and needlessly introduced them to Katy. By this time, it was starting to get dark.

"So, ummm... not meaning to sound rude, but is there anything else we need to cover?" I asked nervously.

"Yeah, something I wanted to ask Ms. T," Michael volunteered. "Alex, remember when we were talking about open code systems??"

"Don't push her," I whispered to Michael. "I don't think she's at her best, spy-wise."

"It can't hurt to ask," he growled back under his breath. "I was hoping you could think of an easier way to reach you without being found out by the special unit - one that doesn't depend on you being asleep. Something where the actual message is... well, you know. Out there in public, but the meaning is only known to you and us."

"Hmmm..." Topolsky thought. "Open communique. It could work... but I have to admit I don't have any notion, and I don't think we can afford to stay and work it out right now. If I don't turn up soon they're gonna call in backup to comb these woods."

"How do we do this, the same way as before?" Alex asked. "If you go alone to those guys who were following you, you think they'll take you home and leave us alone?"

"I'm sure of it," Katy agreed. "Anyone have any idea where they are?"

"We saw someone heading thataway," Maria said, pointing off in a particular direction.

"Then I'd better get going," Katy decided. "Good luck, and remember... get me out!!"

"We will," I assured her. "So... I guess we wait until she's been picked up, and then hike back to where we left Alex's car?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Gonna be a tight fit," Alex pointed out. "And where the heck did you leave the Jetta, Michael??"

"Hondo!!" Maria exclaimed, as if she was only now realizing that.

"Don't worry," Michael told her. "Max can drive us out there tomorrow afternoon to pick it up. We'll discuss strategies for getting Topolsky out.

"I wonder how Max and Liz's dinner went," I commented.

"Compared with ours, must have been a pretty dull time," Alex laughed.

TBC...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section two: Liberation, confusion, and her (continued.)

LPD:

This time we all met up at Michael's place. I was glad to hear that everyone was safe, and that they had managed to make contact with Topolsky, even though the Special Unit net around us seemed to be growing ever tighter and tighter. Michael's plan seemed nothing short of incredible... speeding up a TRAIN!! But between him and Maria, they had made it work.

The four of them were surprised and intrigued to hear about Tess' visit to the restaurant. A little bit of fear, too, though nobody exactly panicked.

"What did she say, exactly, Liz?" Isabel asked nervously.

I checked and rechecked my memory before I spoke. "'This is a dangerous game you're playing, Parker.' Just that. Eight words."

"A dangerous game," Alex repeated. "We were playing games with the special unit tonight... sending the two of you out in public as decoys, distracting and diverting them. Do you think she knew?"

"If she knows, the Unit probably does too," Michael pointed out. "Which suggests that maybe they're playing along... that maybe they *wanted* us to get some time alone with Topolsky... Isabel? Did you think to check her for listening devices?"

Iz blinked. "I was actually thinking of tracking devices, but her person was entirely free of electronic devices as far as I could tell."

"How did you check?" Maria asked. Isabel waved a hand mysteriously. "Oh right."

"I've been experimenting with that," Iz explained. "Scanning molecular structures."

"That sounds interesting," I pointed out. "What can you tell me about myself??" It didn't make much sense to take her word about Topolsky without testing this new power out.

"Are you sure you want to do this in front of the whole gang?" Isabel grinned evilly as she got up and sat on the coffee table in front of me.

I blinked. "Not really, but what the heck. Censor anything truly mortifying that you find out."

"Will do." Isabel waved vaguely. "One radio source... that'd be your cell phone I imagine. Something else in your left front jeans pocket..." (I'd changed out of my fancy duds after leaving the restaurant and before coming over to Michael's...) "Electronics and quartz crystal... a digital watch?" I showed it. "Why don't you have it on your wrist?"

"The strap irritates my skin," I explained, and Isabel returned to her scan.

"Nothing else electronic... let's see... You use some kind of leave-in conditioner on your hair with fruit extracts... little package of cookies in your shirt pocket... and -- oh, no, I'm *not* going to say anything about that."

I blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Trust me, NO-ONE wants me to mention this out loud. Probably you least of all."

I still wasn't sure what she was talking about, and then it hit me. Could she have been able to tell that it was almost my, em, 'time of the month'?? No real reason why not, I guess, there were certain changes to the body that went with it, the stuff we learned about in health class. Still, it was a very creepy feeling that Isabel could sense something that was so personal and private.

"Well, I think I'm satisfied," I mumbled once I'd regained my composure. I could feel a hot flush in my cheeks and hoped that none of the guys, in particular, had tumbled to what all of the fuss was about. "So... what next?" Nothing like a nice big change of subject.

"We have to go get the Jetta back tomorrow," Maria pointed out. "I have no idea what I'm gonna say about it if my Mom asks about it in the morning."

"You'll think of something," Michael told her unhelpfully.

"We need to spring Topolsky, and soon," Alex added. "Before she ends up on the Special Unit grill."

"And we need to figure out what Tess' role in this is," Isabel said. Quite a few people shot her looks for that. "What? She's obviously not leaving us alone, so we can't afford to leave her alone. If we can't leave her alone, we need to understand her - understand how she fits into this game of cat and mouse that we're playing with the Special Unit. Last fall, when Topolsky was around the first time, hiding from her never got us anywhere. But when Alex and Liz broke her cover, she wasn't a danger to us anymore."

"Until now," Max put in. Isabel glared at him. "Hey, I'm not saying she wished any of this on us. But it seems pretty clear that when Kathleen Topolsky left Roswell, she made a report to the Special Unit, willingly or not, and that report is a big part of the reason why we hav bigger worries now."

"He's right," Michael pointed out. "But that doesn't nullify Isabel's point, that we need to know more about Tess Harding."

That was about all for the 'Czechoslovakian business.' We listened to music, and Michael, Isabel, Alex, and Maria had some Mexican food delivered, since they hadn't gone out for a fancy dinner.

Oh - when Max was driving me home, we finally got a chance to compare flash notes about that first kiss we shared in the French restaurant. I told him about what I'd seen... of Max climbing a *huge* tree in Frazier woods when he was maybe eleven or twelve, and Michael smiling an entirely creepy and somewhat nasty-looking smile... and even the one of the two of us, in bed, and Max slowly taking off my top. And he told me about the ones he had - of a human figure talking with blobbish fuzzy aliens, the orb changing hands, and of he, Isabel and Michael at the side of the road just as the Evanses were pulling over. We talked a bit about them, but no real conclusions about what any of them mean yet.

Gotta polish up a bit of geometry homework before I go to bed. Back tomorrow.

* * * * *

Not much to report. School today was quiet, something of a relief. Apparently Isabel agreed to go to the Bandfest preview that Tess was bugging her about... first stage in her undercover work to figure out what part miss Harding plays in this little show, or something. I hope she knows what she's doing.

The four of us drove over to Hondo to retrieve the DeLuca family Jetta right after school... Max and I to drive back in the Jeep, and Michael and Maria for the Jetta. We played this fun and frustrating car game on the way over, with each person having to name a city somewhere in the country that starts with the same letter as the previous one ends on, without repeating. I would have thought that I would have kicked butt in something like that, but as it happened I ended up right after Micael in the play order, and he demonstrated not only a very good memory but a killer instinct for returning play to the letters that had aleady been played from frequently, so that I kept having to come up with yet one more city name that began with 'N', say, or whatever. As I said, fun and very frustrating.

Once the vehicle switch had been made, I found myself, of course, once more alone in a vehicle with Max. (Which I know was the plan all along, but somehow I hadn't realized that it might be awkward until it was.)

"One of us had probably better start talking about something," Max said with a nervous chuckle.

"Max, those aliens from your flash last night... you said they were all shapeless and protean, right?"

"Yeah, that's what I saw," Max agreed, "and I can only assume that they were aliens." He paused, guessing where I was driving at. "Are you wondering if those were... were my species, or whatever? Whether Michael, Isabel and I would look like that, if we only knew how to resume our 'natural form?'"

"Well, yeah, I guess I am wondering that," I admitted. "I can't help it."

"And if we were... would it change anything?"

"I think maybe it would have to," I whispered. "I don't want to think of myself as prejudiced, but I'm not sure I could relate to... to a being like that the way I relate to you. I mean... what about when I got the impulse to do --- this??" And I leaned over and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

"I guess I'd have to learn how to re-take human form for that," Max replied with a grin. "How about that, if I could assume human form to interact, but also knew how to be... different shapes. Would you be able to relate to that better?"

This was easier. "Yeah, I think so. I mean... I've always known that you're different, Max Evans. If you became a blob every now and then, I don't think that would really change anything much... as long as you're a man when you come to me."

Max smiled. "Okay, quitting this conversation while I'm ahead. Let's see... probably my turn, huh?" I nodded, and Max thought. "What do you think about this whole Tess situation? Any impressions??"

"She was freaking me out even before Isabel reported seeing her in Topolsky's dream," I said slowly, "but that was just because subconsciously I had figured out that she was hiding something from us." I paused.

"And now??" Max prompted.

"I dunno... but my intuition is telling me that she's not really a bad person. Not like the rest of these Special Unit people, I mean. She wants to help us, but maybe she isn't sure how."

Max laughed slightly. "First Kathleen Topolsky, and now Tess Harding. I think you just want to believe the best of people, Liz."

I smiled. "And where do you think we'd be right now if we hadn't taken a chance on Topolsky? Looks to me like that gamble is paying off."

"Not yet it isn't," Max sighed. We started talking about school and our parents after that.

* * * * *

ISABEL:

"Are you sure about this?" Alex called softly from the hall just outside my bedroom.

"Yeah, I think so. And you can come in - I'm dressed."

He came in, and his eyes grew wide. "Not much, you're not." I smiled a little bit. Tess had said to come 'dressed to rock', so I had gone through my dresser and found a few things that I'd bought last winter when I was trying to impress Jase Rontin. (And freak out my mom, that had been another motivation at the time.) I stood up and checked myself in the mirror... hair pinned up with stray wisps escaping here and there to make their way down my neck, low-cut black sleeveless spandex top, red silk miniskirt, and black boots. I turned to shake my head at Alex - I was showing some skin, yeah, but I wasn't indecent.

After shaking his head a bit to keep his eyes from bugging out, Alex got back to business, holding up a tiny little object between his thumb and forefinger. "Are you sure you want to do this??"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm not comfortable going in there all alone. This way, you'll be able to... I'm sorry, just how small is that thing?"

Alex passed it over, and I peered at it carefully, keeping it in the palm of my hand. It was about as long as a pencil eraser, and noticeably smaller in cross-section. "And this goes..." I waved at my head vaguely.

"Into your ear, yes." Alex pointed at his own ear helpfully. "It's entirely un-noticeable in there, and gives the needed proximity for the microspeaker. As well as theoretically allowing me to pick up your voice at a whisper or subvocal level."

For no particular reason, I realized that I had copied Alex's pointing motion. "Umm... one little question. When this is all done how do we get it back out??"

"Ummm..." Alex blushed a little. "There's this adhesive stuff you can put on a q-tip, and with some careful aiming you can use that to pull the transceiver back out. The less said about what happens when your aim is bad, the better." He grimaced.

I didn't need *that* mental picture. "Okay... should I let you do the honors?" I offered the gizmo back to him.

"Probably better if you do it," he told me, so I brought it up to my ear and poof!! It slipped inside so easily, I was afraid it would slide out if I tipped my head... but I tried and it didn't. Oh, that reminded me... I needed earrings, the look just didn't seem complete without them.

"What do you think, hoops or dangles??" I turned around to show the final choices to Alex... except he wasn't there. "Alex?"

"You don't need to shout like that," Alex's voice complained in my ear. "I was just thinking. Go with the hoops. Definitely."

Uh, okay. I put the hoop earrings on, and then set off to find Alex. As I had expected, he was sitting in the middle of the electronic equipment that he had set up in the upstairs den - headphones on, one hand on a bank of miniature dials, watching one of those funky green electrical wave readout screens.

"So, how're we doing, spanner?" I joked. "All systems condition green?

"Justa sec." I heard that one phrase both directly and through the earpiece, which was definitely weird. Then Alex took off the headphones, which I noticed had a miniature microphone boom about half an inch from the skin of his right cheek, right down to the corner of his mouth. "Okay, let's try the subvocals. Try to whisper something under your breath, as quietly as you can."

"I feel really stupid doing this," I mumbled softly.

"Hmm..." Alex cocked his head thoughtfully. "Come closer. And again."

I did, so I was almost wedged between the tables Alex had set his equipment up on. "I can almost make that out, but we can start from there," he decided with an encouraging smile. "Again, from back out in the hall?" He slipped the headphones on.

I tramped out of the room in my high heels, shaking the booty just a little to tease Alex, and repeated the mumble a third time, trying to keep my volume constantly. "I feel really stupid doing this."

"Don't worry, sweety, you're doing great," Alex's voice replied in my ear.

I blinked to myself. "You could really hear that? What did you hear me say?"

"'I feel really stupid doing this,'" Alex repeated. "It came through loud and clear. Let's try going quieter."

I sighed. (This was getting to at least be good practice in getting used to talking with Alex through my ear.) "I'm not sure I can *go* quieter, Alex!!"

"It's easy. Just close your mouth most of the way and try to keep all the sound inside. Okay??"

"I love you, Alex, and I hope this works," I subvocalized. Or tried to.

"I love you too," Alex replied. "In case you're curious, your side came out sounding like 'Iruv-yuulexx,' but I got the idea. Try it from inside."

I strutted confidently back in, wedged myself into position next to Alex, and repeated. (He had taken the headphones back off as I entered, of course.) "Incredible! I could hardly even tell that you were doing anything, and I knew what to look for."

"Good thing too, because I need to motor if I'm going to make my meet with mole-girl..." I picked up my purse, then had a sudden thought. "How'm I gonna get to the station?! Max and Liz aren't back with the Jeep yet, and my mom's got her car."

"Take mine," Alex said, stretching out to hand me some car keys. "I'm not gonna be going anywhere for a little while, am I?" He laughed softly.

"Uhh... okay, I guess." I shrugged and took the keys. "Just curious, Alex... what are you gonna say to my dad if he comes in and finds you here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Alex grinned. "Working on the science project I've been assigned to with Max." He waved around at his gear... I noticed for the first time that there was a palm-pilot sitting next to his left hand, plugged into the antenna machine. I couldn't help but smile too.

"Yeah, that should work. By the way... thanks, Alex." I blew him a kiss across the table.

Alex beamed "Trust me, the pleasure's mine."

I hurried down the stairs, out the front door, found Alex's car and got in. Once the Taurus and I were underway, I started to get a funny feeling. "Alex, are you there??"

"Yeah, I'm here," the answering voice came in my head.

"I kinda thought you'd have piped up on your own by now."

"I didn't want to bother you when you were running late," he said, and I laughed.

"If you were physically inside this car, and giving me the silent treatment like that, it'd be rude, wouldn't it?" I pointed out.

"Well, you were giving me the silent treatment too!" Alex pointed out.

"I wasn't sure you had your headphones on, and I would have felt stupid talking with no-one on the line. But you had to know I had my earpiece in." Alex didn't answer that, which I took as confirmation of the irrefutability of my point.

"So..." I continued as I drove, not wanting to let the conversation die out. (It also occured to me that this was a good test to make sure that the earpiece really would work all the way to the radio station... if the range would be too much for it, I'd certainly rather find out along the way rather than when I'm face to face with Tess Harding.) "How did you get so into all this spy-gadget gizmo stuff, Alex??"

"I dunno." Pause. "I guess it started before we moved to Roswell... my cousin Davis would come over with kits that he'd bought at the electronics store, and we'd make a battery powered speaker, or an LED set that would spell out my name or something."

"And you were what, six years old back then?" I wasn't sure exactly when Alex's family had moved to Roswell, but since he'd been friends with Liz and Maria for so long I knew it had to be a while back.

"Seven or eight. Davis was six years older than me, so he was in his early teens."

"I've never heard you mention a cousin before. Have you talked to him recently?"

It was the wrong thing to ask. There was silence for long enough that I was wondering if I was out of range after all, and then Alex's voice again. "He died. About four years ago. Car accident."

"Oh, man." I didn't know what else to say.

But Alex was already moving the conversation along, probably even less eager than I to linger over that unfortunate memory. "A few years ago, I stumbled upon the high-tech clearinghouses that were popping up on the internet. It's amazing the compactness of stuff you can get if you know who to send the right instant message to, to get the wheels moving." He laughed.

I almost drove right by the station, but caught myself in time and snapped up what seemed like the last parking spot. "Stand by. I'm going in."

* * * * *

"Isabel!!" Tess called at me over the hubbub of rowdy fans waiting for the main event. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

"I told you I would, didn't I?" I yelled back, not *too* loud. Tess had taken the excuse to dress up a bit on the trashy side too, apparently. Sheer, sky-blue blouse that wasn't short enough to cover more than a bit of her stomach and see-through enough to show her bra in any event, tight dark blue leather pants, and strappy heels to match. Her curly blonde hair was puffed out slightly more than usual, so it hovered like a cloud around the back of her hair and her neck, and she was wearing pretty sapphire earings that matched the rest of her outfit and drew attention to the color of her eyes.

Almost instinctively I let my new alien sense probe her, and almost stiffened in shock. "Oh, shit."

"What's wrong?" Tess and Alex asked almost in unison, an unnerving effect.

"Umm..." I focused on Tess first and tried to come up with an excuse. "Umm... need to use the bathroom. Do you..."

"I saw a sign pointing down that way," Tess pointed back the way I had entered and left. "Hurry. They may be starting any minute!!"

"I will," I assured her, and as soon as I had left her vicinity I subvocalized. "Lx?!"

"I couldn't quite get that," Alex told me regretfully, "Too much background noise."

I switched to mumble mode. "Tess is wired too."

Gasp from Alex. "Are you sure??"

"Pretty sure. Two-piece system. There's a concealed network of microphones in her bra, and a transmitter. Her right earring includes a receiver relay, and the speaker seems to be inside her head... either it's something that she's keeping up in the very corner of her mouth or it's been surgically implanted into her jaw."

"Nice system," Alex commented. "So, what's the problem? Be careful to watch what you say around her... which you were going to do anyway, right?"

"What if she, or the people working with her, can pick up on our frequency??"

"I doubt that," he said reassuringly. I was loitering around in the hall near the washrooms sign right now, since I didn't really need to go. "I've got a decent set of scramblers and frequency shifters in play in that little mini-unit."

I took a relaxing breath. "And I assume there'd be no easy way to do the reverse, to find out what the people at the other end of Tess' connection are telling her??"

"Well, not from my end," Alex admitted. "If you can somehow... tap into the radio waves with your power, it's possible. Depending on the kinds of safeguards they've bothered to use. And how well your powers can work. They've probably got much more expensive equipment than we do, but we've got an advantage here - you can monitor her equipment while it's in use and see how it's working. In fact, maybe you should forget about the radio waves and try to 'sense' the sound waves coming out of her hidden speaker."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I had to protest. "Thanks for the votes of confidence, but I have no clue if I can do *any* of that. Detecting molecular clusters and transmission sources is one thing, tuning in on waves of any kind..."

"Watch your volume," Alex interrupted. I guess I had been whispering a little loudly. "I know there's no guarantee, I just wanted to suggest things you might try. So... maybe you should get back in there."

"Right." Inside the large room that had been hastily converted into a small performance hall, the energy levels were even higher than when I had first arrived. "Isabel, I'd like you to meet my Dad," Tess said, cornering me as soon as I got in. "Isabel Evans, Tony Harding, my father. Dad, this is Isabel."

I took a close look, remembering that Topolsky had said Tess' dad, or a man who could be playing the role of her father, was also involved in the same special unit plot.

My first thought, I have to admit, was 'Hoo, daddy!!' Tony was tall, undeniably handsome with a charming smile, short blond hair, and a strong figure hidden under his casual clothes. If he was really old enough to have a daughter my age, then 'well-preserved' was an understatement. Not that I was interested or anything, but he could easily have passed for thirty and I'm only hu-- well, I guess I'm not really, so never mind. The point is, still capable of appreciating a good-looking guy at any age.

Okay, this was getting to be less recon than barely disguised staring. "Umm... nice to meet you, Mister Harding!" I reached out to shake his hand. "What brings you and Tess to Roswell right now, anyway?" Yeah, that's a good question. Even if his answer is just a cover, it gives us a place to start looking.

"An incredible opportunity," Mister Harding said mysteriously, in a rich tenor voice.

"Dad's going to be the manager of Terahertz," Tess filled in. She must have caught my blank expression. "The electronic gaming center? C'mon, you must have seen all the construction, they've been working on the site since February. Diego street??"

"Umm... I never really asked what it was about," I admitted. "So... we're talking about a video arcade, right?"

"A state-of-the-art premium video arcade, yes," Harding agreed with a smile.

"By the time Dad's done with Terahertz, kids will be coming to Roswell from all across New Mexico and the west half of Texas just to play," Tess bragged.

"The center is one of the sponsors of the Bandzfest," Harding said, shooting a glance at his excitable daughter. "That's how I got the three of us in here."

"Umm... cool," I managed. Never been very much of a gaming fan; I was wondering how this 'Terahertz center' fit in with the Special unit's plans in Roswell.

Just then, on some unspoken cue, the din quietened to a restless hubbub. "Hi!!" a twentysomething woman called from a makeshift stage at the front of the room. "I'm rockin' Rena..." scattered cheers from those who were so inclined. "And we all know why we're here, right!?" Deafening yells resulted.

"It's my pleasure to introduce the final act and celebrity MC's of Roswell Bandzfest... performing a special sneak peek for us tonight..." More cheers were starting to gather as a curtain lifted up behind Rena. "RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS!!!"

The volume in that room quickly became deafening.

To be continued.

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??
Section two: Liberation, confusion, and her (continued.)

MICHAEL:

"Okay, you can breathe again," I told her as we approached the Roswell City Limits sign. "Almost there. Do we have to drop the car off as soon as we get back?"

Maria shot a not-too-friendly look over at me. "Well, since my mom's been without her ride all day, yeah, I think it's the thing to do. She's got places she needs to go."

"Oh," I muttered, a little bit punctured. "Okay. Well, do you want to hang out on foot a little, then?"

Another look, this one a little intrigued, maybe. "What kind of hanging out did you have in mind??"

"I dunno," I groaned. Somehow Maria always seemed to make the simplest things difficult. "Neither of have to work tonight. I've got no plans, and I don't really feel like going back to my crummy little apartment." Another sigh. "Don't really feel like hanging out at your place or the Crash either, come to that. Maybe go for a big long walk??"

Maria looked searchingly into my face while the Jetta was stuck at a stoplight. "What?"

The light went green, and she turned left. While still facing away from me, she obseved "You know, the men in black are not going to catch you tonight if you don't keep on the move, one step ahead of them."

"It's not that," I snapped, even though a funny feeling deep inside of me wondered if that could be a part of it. When did Maria suddenly get insightful about the demons I did my best to keep locked away?? "Humor me. You wanna go for a walk?"

She smiled a little bit, and turned onto the street her mom's house was on. "Anything for you, spaceboy."

She parked in the driveway, and the keys to the Jetta were handed over to Ms. Amy DeLuca with all due ceremony, excuses, and apologetic looks from yours truly. (Maria told her mom that the whole thing was all my fault, which I guess it was. And in any event, I guess I didn't really mind being made into a scapegoat - I wasn't the one who had to live with her for another two years.)

But soon enough all of that was over, and soon enough we were walking away, side by side down Maple street. Not holding hands or something sappy like that, because it wasn't that kinda walk, but I knew that I was glad it was Maria who I was with, and I hoped she felt the same way too. And maybe later if there was some touching, that would be okay... to be honest I was having trouble understanding how *any* contact with Maria, even just my hand to hers, could be 'sappy.' Was this girl starting to get to me? Was I losing my edge??

"So... we're not heading anywhere in particular," Maria reiterated. Oh, boy. Short attention-span girl strikes again. Maria was starting to get bored. This could lead to no good.

"No," I admitted, trying to think of something to divert her.

"We're just walking?"

"We can talk or play a game or something as we go," I suggested. "Your mystery riddle thing from yesterday?"

"Nah... I think I'll quit that one while I'm ahead," she sighed. "Straight twenty questions?"

"What do you mean, 'while you're ahead??'" I demanded.

"Well, you took twenty-something questions to get yours yesterday," she said. "I asked like five questions or something before we got to the train station, and then the next guess I made after that was exactly right. I whomped your butt!"

"If we go only by questions," I argued back. "You took much more time total than I did. And I'm still not convinced that you didn't suddenly remember that you'd already played that riddle."

"Michael," Maria sighed, and then took a pause. "Look, we can probably spend an hour or so arguing about this, but that's not my idea of fun. Twenty questions? Going twce."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Okay. Just to be clear, the argument has only been postponed to a later time - like the next time I hear you say you won that game. Do you want to be the asker or the answerer for twenty questions??"

She considered that for a second. "I'll go asker first this time, I guess. Pick your secret. Remember, it has to be an animal, vegetable, or mineral."

I looked at her. "According to whom?"

"House rules, mister."

I looked around as if I needed to double-check what I was about to say. "Hate to break it to you, babe, but we're not in a house."

"Figure of speech, Guerin," she explained. "I suggested this game, so I get to pick house rules." She pouted, just a cute little. "Humor me."

I sighed. Never could resist the pout. "Okay, let's see. Hmm..." I held the pause for a few seconds longer than really necessary. "Got one. Go ahead."

Maria considered her plan of attack. "Is it bigger than the ever-cliche breadbox?"

"No." Not by a long shot.

"Humm. Is it a mineral?"

"No, it is not."

"Is it... taller than it is wide?"

"A third time I tell you, no. Seventeen guesses left."

"Is it animal?" Maria sighed.

"Why yes it is."

"Do people... american people... keep it as a pet?"

"No, no, no." I smiled slightly to myself. Fifteen left.

"Is it normally black?"

Um. Hesitation is the path to defeat in twenty questions. "Yes."

Maria pondered a while, but I guess hesitation doesn't matter as much when you're on that side of the question. We swung around onto Union, and I realized suddenly that the sun had finished setting and the twilight was starting to close in. "Is it an insect??" Maria gave a little shudder of distaste at the sheer prospect.

"Nope."

"A vertebrate?? You *do* know what a vertebrate is, right??"

"It is," I informed her frostily. "I'm not a total idiot, you don't have to worry every time you use some sixty-cent word or whatever. It has a segmented backbone made up out of interlocking segments. That's a vertebrate."

"Does it have fur??" "Nope." Maria considered that for a bit. "Is it a bird??"

"No it is not a bird, and that leaves you with ten questions left. How ya feeling??" I grinned -- I had been lucky, and she hadn't really made that much progress. At least, I didn't think so - it could be hard to tell. With twenty questions, but more importantly - it could be hard to tell with Maria.

"Pretty confident, Guerin," she muttered, as if to underscore my uncertainty. She considered her next question for a long moment again. "Does it spend much time in the water??"

"No."

"Is it a reptile?"

"Yes."

"Can you find it near Roswell?" "Yes" This was starting to look not so good. "Seven questions left," I muttered, without much hope that it would psych her out.

"Is it active at night??"

"Yep."

"Does it eat meat?"

"Um -- yeah."

"Does it feed on insects??"

"Isabel!!"

Maria glared at me and I could tell that she was about to complain that that wasn't a yes or no answer, but I pointed up at the street and she saw Isabel and Tess Harding coming the other way, both dressed up really sleazy. I guess the special performance at the radio station had finished. Isabel didn't seem to have spotted us yet. "Yes, it feeds on insects," I muttered to Maria as I walked up to them.

"Michael, hi!!" Tess called out.

"Hey, Tess, hey, Isabel."

"A western banded gecko!!" Maria exclaimed.

Isabel and Tess stared at her. "Where??" Isabel asked somewhat doubtfully.

"I - I wasn't pointing one out," Maria explained. "Michael and I had been playing twenty questions, and that's my guess. Is it a western banded gecko, Michael??"

Big sigh. "Yes, it is."

"That's guessed in seventeen, then, and I didn't want to forget about it and let you come up with some excuse that I'd had too much time to think about it," Maria pointed out. "Nice to see you again, Tess." You might almost miss the fact that Maria was lying through her teeth.

Certainly Tess Harding seemed to miss it. "Always a blast, Maria." She was smiling broadly.

"I met Tess' *father* down at the radio station," Isabel mentioned with a peculiar emphasis. "He's the one who scored us the tickets." Ah, right, Tess' dad was supposedly in on the special unit thing too. "Quite a guy. He's going to be running this fancy video arcade down on Diego street, have you heard about it??"

"Oh, yeah, Terahertz," I had heard about it, heard a lot about it in fact, though of course I didn't know about the connection to Mister Harding until just now. "Been meaning to check out the grand opening."

"I think we should definitely check it out," Isabel said. "Once it's opened, of course." Ahh, got that. Isabel's not much for great and sublime subtlety, but hopefully Tess wasn't catching on, quite.

"Well, if we're going to finish our chocolate sodas before I have to head home, we'd better get moving again," Tess said. "Do you guys want to join us?"

"No, no, I think we're headed the other way," Maria reminded her. "But it was great running into you!!"

"You sure??" Isabel asked.

"Yeah, I've got to give Michael his laughable chance to beat seventeen questions, remember?" Maria pointed out. Isabel and Tess passed by and waved to us as they moved off. "Okay, I've got a good one. Ask away."

I thought just a second. "Is it a vegetable."

"Grr, yes." Come to think of it, it was pretty remarkable how Maria zeroed in on exactly the right thing at the end there. She does seem to have a very spooky intuition about her sometimes. "Is it a tree?"

"No."

* * * * *

ALEX:

I skulked carefully through the parking lot - nearly deserted though the brightness of morning was now underway. Where to now?? Ah yes - there was a narrow space between those two portables that would be a perfect hiding place.

Obviously I wasn't the only one who thought so. A figure in a dark trenchcoat was crouched in the darkness, watching the building not far away, and even though I thought I was moving very quietly, he spun around as I approached and hissed "Don't move a mus-- Alex?!" It was Michael. "What are you doing here??"

"Probably the same thing you are," I muttered quietly. "Following up on Isabel's lead, spying on what's going on at the Terahertz building and maybe breaking inside if I can manage it. I guess you figured out that Isabel was suspicious when she ran and Tess ran into you and Maria last night??"

Michael's eyes narrowed as he half-turned back and put his rear against one of the portable walls. "How did you know about that? Did Iz say so??"

"Actually, I was listening at the time," I explained. "Isabel wanted to go in wired to the meeting with Tess at the radio station. Apparently, so did Tess."

Michael considered that. "I hope whoever was listening on Tess' side didn't realize that she was trying to drop us a hint about this place, or there might be somebody waiting for us."

"Yeah, I thought of that too," I mentioned, "but everything seems really quiet - not fake quiet, just quiet. Do you want to try and get a closer look?"

"Sure," Michael grunted, and we crept out of the shelter of the portable, taking what cover the scattered few cars offered.

"What's Alex doing here??"

Michael and I whirled to identify the new arrival. Liz Parker.

"What are *you* doing here??" Michael hissed, taking the words out of my mouth. "For that matter, why aren't you asking what I'm doing here?"

"Maria called me to say that you'd probably be 'casing the joint', and that I should tag along to make sure you don't get into trouble," Liz explained. "She'd have come herself, but her mom would go nuclear if she didn't catch up on her chores this morning."

"Alex had the same idea as me," Michael explained.

"Ah," Liz nodded. "I saw you watching from here, and then went on a circuit around the premises. Nothing much seems to be doing out here. Can we go home or do we have to do anything more??"

"I want to at least try to make it inside," I explained. "If anyone catches us, we're just curious kids trying to sneak a peek before the grand opening."

"If anyone but special unit personnel catch us," Liz countered. "*They* would make sure to identify us, and all of us are already on a suspects list - remember what Topolsky said."

"Well, I can take care of that, at least partly," Michael said. "Wallets please." Liz and I handed over our IDs, and Michael quickly used his molecular-manipulation routine on our driver's licenses and other important cards, changing our names and other personal info. Then he did himself.

"Okay," Liz mumbled, only partly mollified. "Is there any way I can convince you guys that sneaking into that building is still an express ticket to a major headache? I mean, there's probably a super-sophisticated security system and everything."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure that that's not installed yet," Michael told her.

"Oh, yeah? And how would you know??"

"Because I saw the security system, or at least the guts of it, sitting in a big truck, on my way in." That shut Liz up.

"Let's go," I said.

Michael used his powers to open the back door and let us in. Sure enough, the secuity system was very obviously missing, though none of us let down our guards, still aware that this could be some sort of subtle trap. No danger signs presented themselves though. We crept through the gaming floor, filled with all kinds of state-of-the-art arcade booths and interactive stations, none of them yet hooked up to power. The snack bars. The ticket office.

"Hey, where do you suppose a staircase like this would lead to?" Michael whispered with a fierce grin on his face. We crept downwards and carefully opened the door.

"Jack pot," Liz muttered to herself. The first room was full of high-tech electronics and computer gear - security cameras and voice pickups that seemed to tie into places all over town, especially the school. They had a camera in the front room of the Crashdown, to all of our surprise, especially Liz's. Some of the equipment had very obvious FBI logos on it, even.

Suddenly, we heard sounds at the other door leading into this room, and hurried back to the stairway, hoping that we hadn't obviously disturbed anything. "We sure about this?" once voice could plainly be heard as we waited down there.

"One hundred percent. All necessary approvals have been countersigned."

"It doesn't make any sense!"

"It makes perfect sense!! That bitch has been *fucking* with us, and when she fucks with us, she fucks with Pierce. We wait until tonight just in case Topolsky gives us a shot at the kids, and if not, at midnight, we take her back in. Pierce wants to liquidate her himself."

That was enough. We ran, and we didn't stop running until we were out of the building again, through the parking lot, and on the other side of the portables. After a quick stop to catch his breath, Michael hurried us on until we got to his apartment. Nobody said a word.

We stayed silent as Michael turned the place upside down, using his powers slightly but relying more on sheer physical effort to check for watching or listening devices. Finally he was done. The search hadn't turned up anything.

"Bring everybody in," he barked. "If Maria can't get here immediately, leave word that she's to come as soon as she can."

I nodded. "We're going to have to spring Topolsky today, aren't we??"

* * * * *

"Okay, we have to be missing the obvious," Michael muttered. Max and Isabel had been called over to his apartment, and Maria had been given the message. We'd been going over strategy for over an hour - or, perhaps more accurate: We'd been trying to come up with a plan, and failing, for over an hour. "Is there any way we could just go into the apartment building and take her out??"

Everyone stared at him like he was crazy. "No, I think that would probably lead to some of us dying, or Topolsky dying, or both of the above," Isabel said slowly.

"Maybe a little *too* obvious," Michael muttered unapologetically.

"Okay, come on, let's break it down," Liz muttered. "How to get Topolsky away from the special unit is one problem. Where to put her where they won't find her again is another. And how to get her from point A to point B might be a third, depending."

"Okay, yeah, let's think about the far end for a minute," Max agreed. "The Crashdown is out - the school, any of our houses, here at Michael's apartment. What's left??"

There was a long pause. "Maybe we're worrying about this too hard," I muttered. "Maybe we should take a break?? Get something to eat and drink, or something??"

People started to consider this. "Well, the cupboards are pretty much bare here," Michael grumped. "Sorry, had to scrounge up to pay the rent and didn't expect having to host a war council."

"We could order in," Isabel suggested in.

"Works for me." Soon enough, a huge batch of Tex-Mex and sodas was on its way from a local delivery place, and Liz was searching through Michael's kitchen for clean plates and utensils.

"There has to be *someplace* that we can hide Kathleen away," Isabel said as she drizzled tobasco all over her empanada. "It's nagging at me - somewhere our adventures this year has taken us, but I can't put my finger on it."

"Atherton's place??" Max wondered aloud. "There's a lot of marks against that one - pretty damn far away, across a state line, and I *think* the Special Unit knows where it is and that we've been there. Topolsky was following us herself - she's probably the one who took out Valenti. That's the explanation for how all of Valenti's papers got stolen practically the first time we left them alone."

"Yeah, it's not that," Isabel muttered.

"Hmm, what else??" I thought about that. "The UFO center's a no - Milton would have way too many questions of course." I thought about everything that I'd seen and that I'd been told, and absent-mindedly took a bite of a mild burrito. "That radio tower where you guys found the first orb??"

"No, there's nowhere nearby for shelter," Liz decided. "Unless there's a native camp nearby..."

"THAT'S IT!!" Isabel exclaimed. "Not the radio tower. The cave!!" Michael's mouth dropped open. "Up in the Meskaliko reservation, where River Dog showed us the map. There's no way the Unit could know about it."

"And that was where Nacero hid out after the Meskaliko tribe was convinced that he was a demon," Max agreed. "It fits. Except for..."

"Nacero," Michael announced flatly. "HE knows where it is. He left us the message there, not long ago. What if he isn't wild about Topolsky - who's still special unit herself, technically - taking over his hideout."

A long pause. "We may have to take that chance," Isabel muttered under her breath. "We've promised to keep Topolsky safe from the special unit - who are the ones we *know* want to kill her. If the cave is our best shot to protect her from them... well, we're guessing about what Nacero's reactions could be anyway."

"Okay, so we'll pencil that in as our hideout of choice, pending any better revelation??" I said.

"Nacero - I wonder what he's up to," Max muttered speculatively. "We haven't gotten any clue from him since the woods sighting. We still really don't know what he's like, or what he wants."

"Except that he doesn't seem to have any problem with killing people," Liz added. Finding out about the death of Sheila Hubble had been hard on her, I know. Maybe partly because when we'd found the newspaper account, Everett Hubble's wife looked a little bit like her - pretty, short, dark hair. It might have been all too easy to see herself in the shoes of that young woman from a long past generation - killed by an alien instead of saved by one.

"Okay, come on, let's clean up here," Michael announced. "We've only got one side of this solved, still. We have at least an idea of where to take Topolsky. How do we get her out??"

"Try the same trick you set up so that we could talk to her alone?" Isabel suggested.

"I think they'll be watching for trains this time," Michael shot back.

"I didn't mean a train specifically. Just - some kind of barrier, I dunno..." Her face scrunched up in thought. "Maybe nothing, I dunno."

Another awkward silence. "Yeah, I know, I know," Michael grumped, "maybe I should have saved the train trick for when we knew where to take Miz T."

"No-one's thinking that," I said. "It was a good plan, Michael. You couldn't have known."

"Mmmm." Michael looked around, and seemed to realize that there were only four of us around his rickety old excuse for a coffee table. "Who... Liz??"

"Oh, sorry, Michael," She was standing at the window, and looking out. "I had gone to throw my disposables out, and I guess I got caught up in looking at the Bandzfest stuff. They're just about finished setting everything up. I guess we're not gonna get to go after all, huh??"

The realization hit us like a wave of water. "Of course!!!" Michael muttered under his breath. "How did we manage to miss that??"

"All kinds of crowds - plenty of diversions..." Isabel muttered.

"Against which your typical FBI agent will stand out like a sore thumb," I agreed. "Somehow we'll be able to arrange an opportunity for Kathleen Topolsky to disappear."

"The only problem is -- how do we get her there??" Max asked.

"Can you dreamwalk her??" Michael asked Isabel instantly.

"Umm..." Isabel shook her head, then steadied herself. "I can try, but I've gotten to know her schedule pretty well. She won't be asleep - she'll have gotten up by now, and won't be going to bed until too late."

"Open code!!" Liz blurted out, and we all turned to look at her. "We find somebody, pretend to be helpers with the fair, give them a bunch of Bandzfest flyers and pay them to plaster them all over Topolsky's building - on every door and opposite every door, and to make a bunch of noise and attract attention to it. The FBI watching the building won't realize that it isn't real publicity for the testival, but I think Kathleen will - since you gave her the hint to expect an open code message."

Michael and Max shared a glance. "Okay - get on that..." Max agreed, and suddenly a knock rang out on the door. Every one of us froze, and I was sure for a second that it was the Special Unit come to take us away - though it didn't really seem like them to knock.

But Michael recovered his composure, and went to check through the peephole, and sure enough it was just Maria. We caught her up to speed as quickly as we could.

"Okay, what can I do to help??"

"I'd like you to stay here," Michael told her. "As a contact point where anybody can check in in case of a problem, and to make sure that the Orb's okay. Can you do that for me?"

Maria looked a little disappointed, but she nodded. "Glad to be part of the team."

* * * * *

Objective:

From the balcony above, he looked down at the apartment. He was not using any power to tap into its premises, though he could have, but he might have been detected in the process. These replacements were becoming more adept in the ways of the other side.

However, any form that the Stranger assumed had senses far beyond the 'human' norm - he had learned how to do that long ago, and he could hear some of what had transpired within. He couldn't be sure if it was the limits of his super-hearing of the limits of his command of the human language that kept him from understanding the whole, but that didn't matter. He knew enough.

Let the replacements and their human friends play games with the human hunters, and the human woman who had turned their backs on the hunters, if they wished. It didn't matter. None of that mattered.

These foolish little children, the ones who had been conceived of to remedy the inadequacies of the original Stranger, could not be allowed to succeed where he had failed. He couldn't let them speak with the Parents.

And, fortunately, he had a plan to prevent that.

As the stranger turned to climb up the fire escape, he felt a nagging presence in his vicinity. No, not in his physical vicinity -- inside himself, inside his awareness. He paused, trying to identify it. He couldn't do that, but he was able to ascertain that it did not originate from the replacements - not an attempt by them to monitor him, as he had refrained from monitoring them. He shrugged it off.

As he reached the roof, he found a small utility closet, and used his powers to unlcok it and step inside. Light flashed as he reconfigured his shell, from the indian man he often appeared as to be inconspicuous. He stepped outside and smiled.

Not even the replacements would see through his impersonation of one of their number.

To be continued...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section two: Liberation, confusion, and her (continued.)
Part 2e

MAX:

I watched carefully from my hideout, hidden behind the brush and shrubbery along the side of Montana drive. This was the only obvious route from Topolsky's place to the Bandzfest grounds, although Alex was watching on West eighth. I'd been waiting here for almost half an hour, and...

Ohh, was that... yes, our prodigal guidance counselor indeed. She had taken some care to get dressed up neatly, I noticed, her straight light hair undisguised by any wig, wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and what seemed to be a tie-dye T-shirt. (Don't judge her too harshly, she grew up in a different era, I reminded myself. I mean, she probably even *remembers* the seventies!)

It wasn't hard, either, to notice the agents that were trailing her - they were a fair distance down the street, but that was the only discrete thing about it. Just like at the restaurant - fairly tall guys, slightly beefy, wearing those ridiculous dark blue suits. Two of them. I shrank back a little further out of sight, and then a thought occured to me. Why not a little more diversion??

So, as Topolsky was passing by on the other side of the street, I stepped out into full view, pointing ahead and to the side, towards the Fest grounds proper, even though they were unmistakeable just from following the rest of the people flowing in. Topolsky nodded just a little bit.

After a second or two, the agents noticed me. Now was the moment of truth. Would they go for me instead?? I doubted it - watching Kathleen was their objective, and they weren't sure about me yet. Plus, there was the fact that Liz and I had obviously gone out to dinner the night before last to lead other agents like them on a diversion. Still, if even one of them had moved in my direction, I was going to lead him or them calmly away for about a block or two and then run like hell.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. They were scared of me, I could tell it in their eyes, and did their best to ignore me, though I was sure that the fact of my presence never left their minds. Well, instilling a little fear was good. It could help us out.

Once the two of them had followed Topolsky down the street, I brought up the rear myself, staying out of sight - not really seeing any of them, but knowing the way that they must have gone. As I made my way through the gate into the fest grounds Michael appeared out of nowhere and stepped up to me. "Isabel's watching blue suit number two and has what she describes as a 'sensor lock' on Kathleen's palmPilot. Liz has gone to fetch Whitman in. Did they spot you??"

"Um, yeah -- I stepped out," I mumbled to him. Michael shot a hostile look sidelong at me.

"Did you just lose your mind, Maximegallon??"

"Relax," I told him. "It went just fine - they practically freaked out at the sight of me. Didn't give me any trouble - it was like they were..." I struggled for an apt comparison. "Two frightened monkeys, trying to lope along and pretend that they don't see the lion standing there."

"Well, don't worry that these damn dirty apes are dangerous," Michael quipped. "And they're hot on the trail of a doe-eyed deer that we've promised to protect. You remember the plan??"

"Of course I remember it, Michael."

"Then don't give me any more improv, brother." And with that, he was gone.

Michael's plan was supposed to start when the eighth performing band, "Running with Flies." R.W.F, as I'm gonna call them for short, were from El Paso; some guys from the football team had gone up to Albuquerque to sneak into a club when they were playing, and they'd been raving about the group ever since, so there was a lot of buzz about the group and they were considered fairly strong contenders. Hopefully, that meant that there would be a lot of excitement that could distract the FBI goons at the right moment.

Of course, we couldn't convey that particular detail, the moment we were going to act, to Topolsky, at least not without risking the agents' overhearing or provoking them into doing something dangerous. So Kathleen wandered through the fest grounds, watching some of the early-to-mid performers, got herself a corn dog and then some cotton candy, played a few games, and all the while the FBI goons watched her very obviously and we watched all three of them as circumspectly as we could. The FBI agents were starting to attract some attention from the other fest attendees, and some of them seemed to have put together that they were watching Topolsky, but none of them really came up to them and asked them what they were doing or anything - it's that mask of hostility I think. On the other hand, some people did come up and start talking to Topolsky - she had been the guidance counselor for a few months, after all, and her disappearance was wildly talked about. She made excuses as best she could and tried not to let anyone engage her in conversation for too long.

I was starting to wonder how this would affect our plan. A few people from the high school stepping up and talking to her seemed harmless, but what if Valenti found out?? He'd asked about Topolsky earlier this week - what if he came down into the festival to find her? That could complicate everything. Not to mention, if people were paying particular attention to Topolsky, would they notice when we made our move?? And if so, would they try to help or to stop us??

I could tell that the FBI guys were getting very uncomfortable about this situation. But there wasn't really anything that they could do about it - they couldn't really kill her now, when the orders had been to wait until night and she wasn't causing any immdeiate danger. Plus, she was in a crowd situation the whole time and they couldn't really just shoot her in front of witnesses - or take her away when she'd be perfectly capable of raising a scene and calling for the festival security. So they just watched, getting antsier and antsier about it.

Then Running with Flies took the stage and started their first song. That was the signal.

Alex stepped out into full view and gestured Kathleen towards the crowded stands before the stage. Luckily, the FBI guys didn't even recognize him or notice him at all. She made her way in, not really sure what to expect, and made her move.

Liz grabbed Topolsky's hand and urged her away on an oblique angle - at which Michael was ahead of her, clearing a path through the crazy teenagers and college students.

Meanwhile, Isabel had stepped in to fill the vacancy in Kathleen's original position - she had changed into identical clothing (with the help of a little molecular manipulation,) and looked a little similar from behind.

The lead FBI agent following her stopped when he saw Isabel, now apparently not trying to move any further out of his sight, but the second one was more suspicious. He reached out, grabbed her by the shoulder and swung her around - and gasped when he saw that it really wasn't Topolsky.

"Hi guys," I muttered, stepping out of the crowd beside Isabel. "Walk away." I grinned, feeling very much like the lion, facing down the monkeys once more. Sure enough, they started backing away.

"Ahhh!!!" Knowing almost exactly where to look, I turned and saw Michael, Liz, and Topolsky, who had just left the crowd area and started climbing up a steep embankment. Facing them were three more FBI goons!!

* * * * *

Liz Parker's Diary...

Okay, let's see -- I want to explain this as well as I can, so you're going to have to bear with me. The three of us had started scrambling up the slope, which we knew was perhaps the most dangerous part, since we were once again in full view from the watching crowds. If Max and Isabel hadn't distracted the FBI agents well enough, we knew that they might take a shot at Miss Topolsky, or even one of us.

But we hadn't been expecting three *more* FBI goons to be meeting us right there!!

I'm sure I let out more than a bit of a yelp, and one of the new agents, a tall, thin, dangerous guy with a squint in his left eye, chuckled nastily. He reached out to seize my shoulder in a painful grip, but before he could finish the motion, his right side was knocked back by some kind of invisible force. The guy next to him was buffeted a bit by it too. I stole a hurried look back and saw Max hurriedly hiding a gesture in our direction - he had obviously used that 'pushing' trick to save me. I filed a note of thanks mentally, to deliver later, in person.

Meanwhile, someone yelped, and I quickly turned back to the situation. Luckily, it was the third FBI agent, who Topolsky had just hit in the head with some kind of spinning crescent kick. Michael began a dash for our estape route - the shrubbery path that would lead us back towards town - when he noticed that more blue-suited figures were coming UP that path. What the hell??

There was no help for it - we'd have to try a different way out of the Fest grounds and hope that they hadn't surrounded the whole area with a net. Suddenly seized by inspiration, before we ran off in the other direction I hung back, grabbed Squinty's gun from his belt holster, and pushed him down. By that time I had to rush to catch up with Michael and Kathleen, but I felt it was worth it.

Fortunately, there was no other net - at least, not yet. How had they managed to be waiting for us in force at exactly the places we had been planning to use to take Kathleen out?? That bothered me, but I had to put it out of my mind as we hurried to try to find a way out. There was another blue suit at the main entrance, and I panted to Michael, "try to get past him, or find another way??"

"We go past him," Michael confirmed impulsively. "If he causes trouble, you scare him away with the gun. Shoot to miss him if you have to."

So we hurried through, and when the FBI guard at the gate tried to intercept Kathleen, I pointed the gun at him, and when that didn't scare him, I aimed well above and to the right of his right shoulder, up into the air, and fired. ***BAANG***!!!

I almost dropped the gun, the explosion was so loud and unpleasant. But it had the effect of at least distracting FBI-boy while we ran through. I drew up alongside Michael and handed him the gun. "Here, you can take it, I couldn't do that again." It felt hot under my fingers, and the thought kept running through my minds that there was a police test that they could do on your fingers, wasn't there, to tell if you'd discharged a firearm? Did whatever traces they were testing for get cleaned off when you washed your hands?? Probably not, or it wouldn't be much good in all those mystery shows - I think most people would wash their hands after they'd shot someone.

I also couldn't help wondering how far that bullet had gone, and if there was any chance it had hurt somebody on the way down, out of our sight.

"Look out!!" Kathleen called out. Yet more FBI blue-coats -- no, these were probably the same batch we had seen coming up the shrubbery path, now having turned around and gone back down and looking for us here on Montana drive. They probably assumed that we would be moving towards a getaway car here, and they were right - there was no way we could get to Max's jeep without them seeing us. Michael led the way on a path between some houses that would hopefully take us to Ohio street.

It did, but by that time it was clear that somebody was still on our tail. We hightailed it down Ohio towards eighth street. "Where are we going??" Kathleen asked under her breath.

"Maria's place, I guess," Michael muttered. "We need to have a car to get you out of town, and that seems closest." I didn't bring up whether Michael had a key for Maria's mom's Jetta - it didn't seem really the point at that moment.

I don't remember too much about the next few blocks, except getting more tired with every step I ran, and the sounds of pursuit getting closer behind us.

It happened when we got to the corner of Delaware, Highland, and Riverside. Now, Delaware ends in a T-insersection with Highland street, while Riverside curves in from a different direction, so that it's hard to see very far at all down that street unless you actually follow it for quite a ways.

Tess was standing there, right at the sidewalk where Riverside began, and as we hurried past I suddenly yelled "What the hell are you doing here??" I'd had it up to here with her mysterious routine, especially when we all knew what she was up to.

Or so I thought. "Come on," she said, pointing down Riverside. "I'll cover for you."

I shared a doubtful look with Topolsky and Michael. Topolsky didn't seem to like the idea much either, (she was the one who had ID'd Tess as an agent first, hadn't she??) but Michael shrugged acceptingly.

"It's really a shortcut, and even if she tells them we went that way, how are we worse off??"

"I guess so, unless..." I nodded down the street at Michael meaningfully, hoping that he'd get what I didn't want to say. Were there special unit agents waiting for us down that street??

Michael nodded, and concentrated for a moment. I was looking at Tess in that moment, and I could swear that there was a flash of recognition on her face, that she KNEW what Michael was doing - that he was extending his senses looking for such an ambush. And then the look on Tess' face was gone, and I wondered if it had been there in the first place.

"Let's go," Michael said, hurrying Kathleen all and we went. I heard some dialog hehind us once we had fully rounded the turn, and muttered to Michael. "Can you tell which way they're going??"

He focused again. "Doubling back up Highland to the east." That was taking them almost directly away from us and away from the direction they would have to go to easily intercept us. Had Tess really covered for us, then?? Apparently so, but I didn't know what that meant.

Apparently the net was being cast wider, though. About halfway from there to the DeLuca house, we got caught between two search parties in a dingy alley, hiding until there was a chance to move on again.

"Hey, your apartment is right over there, isn't it??" I said to Michael, pointing across a yard to his new building.

"Hmm, yeah. Just a second, wait here for me. I'll be careful." And Michael scaled the fence to the yard without another word.

* * * * *

MARIA:

I wandered around Michael's apartment, just like I'd been doing for the past I don't know how many hours. Four now??

I mean, I understand that in any team somebody has to get the boring jobs that aren't any fun. But it seems to me that some of us get picked for jobs like this more often and some less often. Oh well.

And to top it all off, I don't even get to GO to the bandzfest, and I was really looking forward to it! No, I get stuck here, babysitting some alien hunk of metal.

I sat down on the couch, turned on the TV, started flipping around - and there was some outdoor concert on. Hey -- that was the bandzfest!! THe local cable access station must be broadcasting it - geez, I wish I'd known that a few hours ago. I sat down and started watching, pretending that I was really there.

It was only a few minutes before a knock on the door. "Go away, we aren't buying any!!" I yelled.

"Maria, it's me!" The voice was unmistakeable. I hurried over to take a look through the peephole -- sure enough, "Spaceboy??"

He seemed a bit amused by being called that, which Michael has never been before. "Can you let me in, it's urgent."

"What about your key??"

"I, uh... I must have dropped it somewhere." I sighed and opened the door.

"What's up??"

"I... I need the resonance stone," he said quickly. "Things are getting sticky and it could really help us out."

"Umm... you mean the orb??" Had Michael found out something about it? "The one that Max and Liz found out in the desert??"

"Yes!!" He hissed out the word, almost as if he was angry about it, but I guess he was just excited.

"Well, come on, it's right here, where you left it." I led the way into the living room - he seemed very distracted, so I gestured towards the squat bookcase, designated hiding spot of the week, and when Michael hesitated I picked the orb up myself. The thing really did look like a kooky paperweight. "Do you know more about it now??"

"I have a hunch." He took the orb when I offered it to him. "Sorry to have to leave so fast, but... they might be in danger. I need to get back."

"Just one second." I quickly threw my arms around him and laid one on. He seemed very surprised, and didn't kiss back very well, but I wrote that off to distraction too. Soon he'd headed off again.

I was tempted to go down to the Fest grounds at that point, but I'd been given a second job too, of being a contact point here at Michael's place, so I sat back on the couch, waited for the phone to ring and started deciding if I liked the next act.

* * * * *

MICHAEL:

Things went pretty easily once I got back to the girls. Both of the search parties had moved on by then, and we made our way to Maria's mom's place without much further incident, though a few scary moments.

Things were quiet enough when we got there, actually, that I considered actually going in and asking Amy DeLuca if we could borrow the car, but a few warning alarms scotched that idea. First, there was the possibility she might say no, either because she happened to have a legitimate reason for it or because she was still holding a grudge from last time. Also, if either of us went up to talk to her, she might see Miss Topolsky with us, and that could only complicate things for her, and all of us.

So I stole it the hybrid way, popping the locks and starting the ignition with my powers only. I pulled out quickly but quietly, trying to keep her from hearing us, and headed out to Union Ave, turning north. And an unmarked car fell in right behind us, turning on one of those emergency services cherries. "PULL OVER!!"

"Not a chance in hell," I growled, tossing the pistol to Topolsky. "Can you shoot out one of his tires??"

Kathleen Topolsky smirked. "They gave me a class on that." She leaned out the window, aimed back, and fired. No effect. "Just a sec, it's been a while," she groaned. Another shot.

It wasn't the tire this time, but as near as I can figure, the bullet ricocheted off the hood of the car and slammed into the windshield, fracturing it. The car seemed to swerve a little.

"Well, that works, kinda," I muttered. Visibility couldn't be good at all. I took a quick turn onto Sixteenth street, trying to lose the pursuit. Surprisingly, he managed to spot us, probably out of the side window instead of the front, but he fish-hooked his way onto the same street as us -- and his front right tire blew out as Kathleen's third shot hit the target perfectly. He knocked over a hydrant and water started spraying everywhere.

From there on, the getaway was clean - no operatives on wheels north of us, I guess - and things got very quiet for a bit. "Umm, by the way -- where are you taking me??" Topolsky mentioned as we sped along.

"Uh, somewhere you'll be safe," Liz said a little awkwardly.

"With a friend of yours??" Kathleen asked with a twinkle in her eye.

"Umm... something like that, kinda - but not really," I mumbled. Would River Dog be around the cave, come to think of it?? We didn't know how often he hung out there, maybe not very often. Maybe all the time.

"Well, wherever it is I'm going, thank you," Kathleen told us sincerely. "I asked you to get me away from the special Unit, and it looks like you delivered. Whatever I can do to help you -- any of you, in return, I'll be happy to try."

I looked at Liz, where she sat in the back seat. It looked like freedom was definitely having a healthful effect on Topolsky -- she certainly didn't seem like the raving nut she had been when we met in the woods - well, only raving a little, I guess. Then again, she seemed pretty good as soon as she got to the Bandzfest grounds... maybe this was just a good day for her. Or maybe even the prospect of freedom had been good for her.

"Let's make sure you're safe before we worry about undying gratitude," I muttered gruffly.

"Of course," Topolsky agreed, nodding. "Can I just ask you one question??"

I thought about that a second. "Ask." I carefully didn't promise to answer.

"Do you even know where you came from??"

I blinked in surprise. "As far as that goes, no. Not a clue. How did you..."

"A few clues you've dropped since I got back to town," Kathleen said softly. "Well, I hope that you can find some answers."

"Thanks."

The sun had just set by the time we had to park the car and make the rest of the way through an isolated corner of the reservation in Frazier woods to the cave. "I think we've got a welcoming committee," Liz muttered as we drew close.

Sure enough, there was an unmistakeable figure standing near the mouth of the cave. "River dog, how's it hanging?? What are you doing here? I hope we didn't disturb some intense native american meditation thing or anything."

River dog shook his head. "I somehow knew that you would be returning to this place: Michael Guerin, Liz Parker. Do not ask me how. And... that you would bring an outsider, yet again." He stared at Topolsky pointedly.

"Um, yeah," I mumbled. "Sorry about that, but this is Kathleen. She's in a lot of trouble, needs a place to lay low for a little while, and this was the only place that we could think of that would be safe enough. Do you... mind, horribly??"

River Dog continued to stare at Topolsky. "Indeed, you have seen much hardship over the past several moons, have you not, my child??" Startled, she nodded. "Then you are welcome to stay here, as my guest, for as long as you need. Long has this place been a sanctuary and last refuge for those with no other safety in this world."

"Yeah, about that," I added. "You... you haven't seen 'the man' around here lately?? Nacero or whatever it is you call him??"

River dog blinked. "Not for many tens of years."

"I was just wondering - we're assuming he was the one who left the symbol for us... right -- " I whirled around, getting my bearings. "There." I pointed off across the clearing a bit.

"As far as I know, it could be none other," River Dog confirmed. "However, I did not see him that night, and have seen no sign of him since."

"Okay, well, just a heads up. If he does show up, he might not be too happy about Kathleen crashing in his pad. Not that she's his enemy, but he might not distinguish between her and the people who are after her..."

"You have renounced them??" River dog asked Topolsky. "That is why they seek you out??"

"Re-what??" I mumbled.

"Renounce," Liz stage-whispered to me. "To declare against a group membership."

"Yes," Topolsky agreed.

"Come," River Dog continued, leading her towards the cave. "You are tired, and hungry, and thirsty."

Liz looked at me. "I guess that's our cue to head back??"

Kathleen turned back. "Ohh, I almost forgot. I said I'd give this to you guys once you got me out from Special Unit observation." She reached under her baggy T-shirt and produced the second orb, the 'Power orb' as Isabel called it after she got a dose of its vibe in the woods. "Good luck."

"Thanks." I took it and headed back to the Jetta. Liz followed.

Once we hit the main highway, I called Max's cell. "Hey, anything of note at the festival??"

"Not since you guys left, man. Oh, the FBI guys were still sniffing around - one of them tried to give Alex a hard time but Isabel stopped that pretty quickly. Oh, and we've had a Tess Harding sighting, too."

"Really?" Liz called into the car phone. "When??"

"Umm... about quarter to six, maybe??"

"She must have come right over after running into us," I told him. "I'll tell you about it later."

"Are you guys okay??"

"Yeah, fine. Topolsky's having a meet and greet with River dog, they'll get along fine. And no-one followed us up."

"Hmm." Max thought about that. "River dog??"

"Yeah, he was waiting for us at the cave, said he had a feeling we would be there. Look, why don't you guys head over to my place, I'm sure Maria's a little lonely, and we'll get there as soon as we've dropped the Jetta off. Actually, if you or Isabel could be waiting at Maria's mom's place to pick us up, that would help a lot I think."

Once we finally got back to my apartment, the first thing I did was head over to the low shelves. "Okay, Maria, where did you move the Orb to??" I asked.

"Oh, very funny," she said, shaking her head at me.

"Umm, actually, no, it isn't." I sighed. "You were here to guard it, it isn't where it was this morning, so you should be able to say where it is."

Maria was just staring at me now. "What, did the special unit bust in here and take it??"

"YOU DID!" she blurted out. "Well, not bust in, but you showed up, said you might need it because things were getting hairy, and you took it."

Now it was my turn to stare. "Maria, I haven't been back here since we all left to get the operation rolling..." A horrible notion was beginning to dawn.

"Are you sure, Michael??" Liz asked. "I mean, you did leave Topolsky and I, just when we were passing through this area."

"No, I went up to a rooftop to scout on the search parties," I told her. "Then I came right back to you guys." I turned back to Maria. "When was it that *I* came??"

"Umm, around six."

"That was after we were in the Jetta, heading out of town," Liz confirmed. "So, someone else came in here, and took the first orb??"

"Nacero has left the building," Alex muttered ominously.

"Oh, my god, I should have realized something was wrong," Maria muttered. "He said he had lost his keys, he didn't know where to find the stone, he didn't kiss well. Sheez, he didn't even use my name!!" She perked up, considering something. "He called it a resonance stone, too."

"What the heck does Nacero want with the orb??" Isabel asked.

"I don't know," Max muttered. "But he's got it now."

"And we've got this one," I said, holding up the one I'd got from Topolsky.

"Yes, but do we have any idea what to *do* with it??" Alex countered, pointing at the thing.

I didn't really have an answer to that one - none of us did.

END OF SECTION 2... TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section three: Tri-gon
Part 3a


Liz Parker's Diary:

Thursday, April the 6th, 2000.

It's been five days now. Five days since we helped Kathleen Topolsky escape from Special Unit surveillance and brought her up to the cave in the reservation. Five days since an imposter pretending to be Michael... (who we can only assume was Nacero,) took one of the Orbs from Maria.

I don't know what to think about all that, still. I think we did the right thing by Kathleen - I'm glad that we could help her. And the special unit crew seems to be keeping a low profile, though we still catch a glimpse of something suspicious every now and then. It seems like every time we win a symbolic victory, the people behind the hunt for Max and the others duck and cover. Nobody on our side is letting their guard down, though -- that may be just what THEY are waiting for.

Tess Harding, on the other hand, is definitely *not* staying out of sight. In fact, she seems to be everywhere, another fact that falls into the 'I don't know what it means' category. One line of reasoning would have it that if her behavior is radically different from that of the Special Unit, then they aren't working together.

But Topolsky saw Tess and Anthony Harding inside th Special Unit headquarters. (I managed to remember to ask her the description of the man she saw with Tess, and it fits Isabel's description of Tess' dad very well.) Tony Harding, I feel compelled to add, who's the manager of the Kilohertz arcade, the basement of which is stuffed with FBI surveillance equipment, set up to spy all over town. Another reason that we're not letting our guard down.

Speaking of the FBI surveillance, there's something I should probably mention about that. When Michael, Alex, and I snuck into Kilohertz, we saw a scene of the Crashdown's dining room on one of the monitors, right?? So, I've been thinking about it, and I finally worked out where the camera had to be - a wooden, carved alien that's been sitting on the seat between two of the booths for a week or two. I'm not sure where it came from - before I started suspecting it I assumed that my parents had bought it from Amy DeLuca or some local artisan.

Anyway, the critter has four tentacled paws, one of them raised playfully; a coiled spiral tail, scaly yellowish-brown 'skin,' and one huge deep black eye. It's pretty cute, actually, but to me there was a cinch that the big eye could hide a camera lens.

I didn't want to get too close to the thing myself - it would be suspicious. But I managed to prod Nicky, the main chef in the Cafe kitchen-- (Michael's just helping him out and picking up the slack on Nicky's off shift,) into taking a closer look at the little alien, and he noticed it making weird sounds and unscrewed it and took it to my Dad. Dad managed to take its head off and boom, found some very suspicious looking wires inside. He's going to take it to Sheriff Valenti today, and I don't know what's going to happen there. Sometimes I'm too smart for my own good - if I knew that all this was going to happen, I'd have probably kept my big mouth shut. But who knows... maybe something good will come of it.

* * * * *

Max:

I had a dream.

When it started, I was driving the Jeep through the air. Michael and Isabel were riding with me... but we ran out of gas and smacked into the desert floor - the car exploded into parts that mostly disappeared, and the three of us were thrown in different directions.

I felt a hand helping me up - it was Liz, and as I got to my feet she kissed me - a serious, no-kidding-around french kiss. When I could come up for air I looked around, and noticed that Michael, Isabel, and I were standing at the points of an equilateral triangle, whose lines were drawn in dark sand. Michael's arms were around Maria, and Isabel kissed Alex on the cheek as I watched, but it was clear that the triangle was picking on us, the pod squad, and not our human sweeties.

There were other lines drawn in the dark sand too - one directly from each corner of the triangle into the center. And as I watched, there was a puff of smoke, and a figure cloaked and hooded in black appeared at the center of the figure. "Who's that?" I asked out loud. I think those were the first words in the dream.

"Can't you guess?" a new voice asked. I turned around, and saw Tess Harding standing a little way away from the rest of us. "Little slow on the uptake, aren't ya, hotshot??"

"One way to find out," I muttered, and turned to walk up the line towards the figure in black. With a mighty roar he waved one hand in a sudden gesture - and I was flying through the air, and landed with a thump, and there was the taste of sand in my mouth, and then... I was wide awake, sitting up in my bed.

"Wow." That had been a heck of a dream, so detailed, as if I had really been there. Wish there had been more of the Liz-kissing, and less of... well, I guess the mysterious alien stuff was okay too, though the ending had been uncomfortable. I wonder if some part of it was real, like the flashes - if the dream was trying to tell me something.

Then I caught sight of the clock, and had to rush into action getting ready for the day. I'd told Liz that I'd pick her up for school, and I had to be there in twenty minutes.

A quick shower, clothes, one of those horrible granola breakfast bars, and seven blocks later, (which unfortunately added up to almost twenty-five minutes,) I was pulling up in the cafe, and sure enough Liz was waiting for me, though the impatient look on her face that I kind of expected, (and would have deserved,) was nowhere to be seen. That's one of the things I secretly love about Liz - she almost never makes me feel bad about doing something wrong, even when she maybe should.

"Sorry I'm late," I said as she got in, and she just smiled that hundred-watt smile at me. "What's up??"

Quickly Liz was telling me how this little decorative alien with the special unit surveillance camera had come to the attention of her parents, and how they would be taking it to show Valenti today. Personally, I wasn't too worried about it. So Valenti finds out that the special unit is spying on his town - with any luck, maybe they'll start spying on each other and nobod will pay any attention to us anymore. I know, I know... wishful thinking, huh? Still, it might be a useful diversion at any rate.

From the school parking lot, Liz walked with me to my locker as we chatted about harmless stuff - teachers and student gossip and what have you. I unlocked my locker and had grabbed a few books before I realized something was different from the way I left it.

"Hmmm... a card." It was one of those little dealies you can make in a computer printer from a piece of ordinary-size paper, on one side only, and then you fold it into quarters to get a miniature greeting card, with different content on the front, back, and both halves of the inside. "I wonder who this could be from," I announced out loud, watching out of the corner of my eye for Liz's reaction.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the one I was hoping for. "Don't look at me," she quickly disclaimed. "If I wanted to slip something sweet and thoughtful into your locker, I think I could've done better than that. Which means sometime I'm gonna, when you least expect it."

I laughed. "Okay, I'll be waiting for the unexpected." I turned back and examined the card in detail. "You are cordially invited... to my sweet sixteen slash housewarming pool party." There was a handwritten message. "Sorry for the short notice, Max, hope you can make it. Tess Harding." There were directions and a time included.

"We all got one too." I looked up to see Isabel, (who just said that,) Alex, Maria, and Michael walking towards us in a loose line. "What about you, Parker?"

Liz shrugged awkwardly. "Wouldn't know - I haven't gotten to my locker yet. Probably I've got one too."

"Unless she wanted to cut you out for some reason," Michael suggested.

"So... what do we do?" Maria asked. "Do we RSVP??"

"She's an FBI cover agent!!" Isabel hissed in an intense whisper - we'd established that this area was clear of listening devices. "We tell her we already made plans. And we don't have anything to do with her than we can help."

"I'm not sure," Alex muttered back. "She saved Michael, Liz, and Kathleen. Why should she have done that if she's the enemy??"

"To make us trust her," Isabel shot back.

"I don't trust her - I just think we're assuming a lot because Topolsky saw her one time."

"Maybe the FBI wasn't ready to catch anyone at Bandzfest," Maria pointed out. "They weren't sure what Michael could do if he was cornered. So they sent Tess in there to help them save face and keep us from realizing that we have the upper hand - for the time being."

"Maybe," Michael agreed. "Bottom line is, Tess is a player in this game, and I'm starting to think an important one. I don't know if she's on the special unit's side, I don't know if she thinks she's on our side, I don't know if she's only out for herself. But she's a player, and we can't just ignore her and hope she goes away. We've got to figure out what her angle is, and taking her gambit might be the best way to do just that."

"Hmmm." Liz ummed. "Max, what do... Max??"

"Hey, it's okay, I'm right here," I assured her, shaking myself to a greater stage of alertness. I had heard every word that everyone said, but part of my attention was focused on something else. The invitation -- there was something familiar about it. Suddenly it popped into focus. "My dream!!"

There was a bit of an awkward silence. Then Isabel whispered, "Max, speaking on behalf of the group... what the heck are you talking about??"

"This symbol," I said, pointing at the inside right of Tess' card, which showed an equilateral triangle segmented into three oblique sections by lines runnning between the corners and the center. "It was in my dream -- a spooky Czechoslovakian dream I had this morning... all of us were in it, and Tess too."

Another pause, shorter this time. "You didn't mention you had a special dream," Liz said in a tiny little voice.

*NOW* I felt bad. "I'm sorry - I'd gotten distracted and forgotten it until just this moment." I wrapped an arm around Liz and kissed her hair softly.

"You know, that design does seem familiar," Isabel agreed, taking the invite from me and looking at it a bit. "I didn't notice that when I got mine - at least, not consciously." She handed it back.

"I think this qualifies as another reason we should probably be going to this party," Alex muttered. "She knows something, and she's using it as part of the gambit."

I was examining the card more closely myself. "Copy 2 of 11?" I read out in small print that was upside down on the back page.

"Yeah, I was 5," Michael muttered. "Did anyone else notice that?"

No-one had. "Wait a second," Liz muttered. "If Tess printed out eleven invites, then who did the other five go to?"

"We'll find out," I assured her.

We had to break things up around that point, each going to our seperate classes. Liz, Isabel and I had chemistry first period. "So, what else happened in your dream??" Liz whispered into my ear as we walked.

"Umm... I'll tell you later," I muttered. "There's a fair bit of it to be getting into here."

* * * * *

ISABEL:

"No, really, I loved it," I assured Alex as we walked away from his history classroom. "It was a great idea."

"You could have fooled me from the immensely bored look on your face two thirds of the way through the movie," he teased.

"Well... the storyline was lagging there for a bit," I admitted. "But it picked up. And -- no matter what the movie, I just love being with you." For a second, I couldn't believe what I'd just said.

"You'd better watch yourself," Alex said, looking into my eyes with concern.

"What??"

"For an Ice Queen, you're getting positively mushy. That can't be healthy."

"Oh my god... is that still how you think of me??" I looked over at Alex, and then belatedly realized he had been mostly joking. "Well... if I'm the Ice Queen, then you make me melt."

"Oooh, now that is just not an attractive mental picture," he complained.

I sighed. "So... wait a second. If you were looking at me, then... were you bored by the movie at that point too?"

"Just a little," he allowed.

Alex had opened his mouth to say something else, but I had no idea what it was because we were interrupted at that point. "Guest list - where do we stand??" Michael whispered hoarsely.

I blinked a little and turned around, almost bumping into Michael's face, since he had been leaning almost in between Alex and I from behind. Maria, Max, and Liz were there too. "Errr... Valerie Morgan. Cheerleading squad, prom committee. She's already RSVP-ed, I think she wants Tess to join her little clique."

"Didn't you use to be part of Valerie Morgan's clique??" Max asked softly.

"Not a part of it," I shot back. "I hung out with her and her friends for a few years, yeah, until events deprived me of any kind of a social life outside this circle." I nudged Alex softly to make sure he realized that no insult was meant there.

"Nathan Williams," Alex contributed next. "He's the keyboard player in the band I'm in. Definitely intending to attend, he didn't really know why Tess invited him. I think this is probably the first time a cute girl has asked him to go to a party." He shot a glance and a smile over at me, and I wondered if he was thinking me asking him to the soap factory rave. If so, I was glad that his memories of that night had reached the 'fond' stage... he had told me off pretty thoroughly the last time I saw him at that party. Of course...

"Nathan..." Max muttered. "I think I know him too. Was he in the math club last year, and in junior high??"

"Probably," Alex agreed. "Sounds like his sort of deal."

"Kayla Strassguetl," Liz pronounced carefully, though I couldn't quite catch the foreign-sounding series of sounds in the last name at the time. "Was a friend of Maria and mine in junior high... she got upset when we started to let Alex into the things we were doing and ended up cutting us all out. No idea if she's going to accept the invite or not."

"Casey Irvine," Michael continued. "Varsity football and hockey teams. I know him vaguely; he used to live about half a block away from the trailer park. Nice guy, we'd throw around some kind of ball or something. Probably accepting the invite as we speak - I think he's got the hots for Miss Harding."

"The football team's always on the lookout for quote 'talent' un-quote," Maria muttered under her breath."

"And that brings us to our last name," Max sighed. "Mister Kyle Valenti. I don't suppose anyone needs to hear a review of *his* record, or doubts that he'll be showing up with bells on."

"Not once he hears that all of us are invited too," I mumbled.

"So... are we still going??" Liz asked. "I mean... there seems to be a pattern here, and unfortunately it's pointing inwards at us."

"Yeah," Alex confirmed. "All of them know at least one or two of us."

"So??" Michael said. "In a town this small, the chances... no, come to think of it I guess I see what you mean," he allowed in a sudden reversal. "They've been picked out."

"But I don't think that necessarily changes anything," Max said. "We need to find out what Tess is up to - we need to play her game, and not let down our guard for an instant."

"Okay," Maria agreed. "God, I hope we don't regret this."

"So..." I said, eager to change the subject. "What's going on tonight??"

"Well, we're heading up to the reservation to check in on... our guess," Michael mumbled, indicating Maria along with himself. "You said someone else would be coming up, right??"

"Yeah." Alex and I had been up there to visit with Topolsky two or three days ago. "Just be sure and double-check, okay?? Abort the run if there's even a chance that the unit is following you. And check the Jetta for homing devices or anything like that, okay??"

"I will, MOM," he joked, and even I laughed at that one.

"I was thinking that the four of us should go out," Max said. He didn't gesture, but apparently the 'four' were those that were left without Michael and Maria - he, Liz, Alex, and I.

"Okay, I guess," I mumbled. "Senor Chao's again??"

"Nah," Alex said with a secretive smile on his face. "Leave it to us."

* * * * *

When the Jeep, (in which the four of us were riding,) pulled over and stopped, I had to peer between Alex and the back of Max's seat to see what our destination was. Once I had, I wished I still didn't know. "Terahertz."

"You're taking us to the arcade??" Liz chimed in.

"Hush." Max leaned over and kissed her quickly. "Just give us fifteen minutes before you start complaining."

And I have to admit, it wasn't bad at all. Tess' dad had called the Terahertz center 'premium,' and surprisingly that description wasn't limited to the arcade games, at least not in my opinion. First we ate, in a restaurant up on the third level where the food choices ranged from casual dining to 'anything but.' I had a filet mignon with mixed vegetables, and Alex paid for me without even mentioning it.

"What's next," Liz said as we rode the elevator back downwards. "Does this place have a hip-hop dance hall too?"

"Afraid not," Max told her. "But don't worry - if you wanna get down, we'll get down." Surprisingly, he was actually able to pull that line off.

We rode down to the main level and activated the hour-and-a-half cards that the guys had bought in advance. Max took Liz over to try some footwork game where your virtual characters move the same way you move - except when they get knocked down and you have to stamp in place over and over again to get them to stand up.

Alex and I ran around the floor trying some slightly more conventional arcade games - a 'Reboot' game where you played the mainframe characters as they rebooted to play *other* computer games, which seemed a little too meta-referential for me.

There were other games based on movies and TV shows too - Buffy the vampire Slayer, Princess Bride, Phantom Menace, Star Trek. Other titles I didn't recognize and were probably established video game brands - Escape from Mysteria, Kirilian Crusade, and Starfighter 6.

Plus all the 'race' and 'chase' games... in model cars, motorcycles, planes, even boats - the plastic mockups rigged up to the game computer seeming to come alive in full digital color within the virtual simulation. I had lost track of time, and said a pretty foul word when the boat racer refused to give me a continue on the grounds that my card had expired.

"Can we get an extrension, sweetie?" I asked Alex with what I'm sure was a pretty convincing pout.

"Naw, it's better this way. Getting too crowded." Sure enough the floor, which had been nearly empty when we stepped off the elevator, was now crowded with other gamers. We had come over right after classes, only stopping off long enough to get changed. Someone else was waiting to use my boat, and I got out with a little bit of a sour expression on my face.

"We can come back another time," Alex reminded me, kissing me on the cheek. "In the meantime, Max and I arranged one more surprise. C'mon, let's go find them."

Max and Liz were still escaping from Mysteria when we found them, but it was only a few minutes before a squad of dark monks wiped them out beyond any hope of recovery, now that their power cards were dead. Max and Alex led us, (Liz and I,) over to a large dark doorway where a short queue of people had already formed.

An attendant took tickets (which Alex already had, of course,) and led us through a dim corridor to a room where there was... well, it looked like a big amusement park carriage, three rows from front to back, maybe twelve seats across. I secured myself into a seat with the torso restraint, between Alex and Max.

The lights dimmed, pictures appeared on the front wall, and the carriage began to vibrate softly. The effect was as if all of us were actually moving, especially because you couldn't move your head to look to the sides... or up or down.

Voices came over the loudspeaker. "Perception: that our day-in, day-out world is real..." "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself..."

* * * * *

MICHAEL:

"Well, thanks for coming up here," Kathleen told us. We were sitting out in front of the cave on some chairs that I guess River Dog had had some younger Native kids bring in from the reservation. We had a good view of the road so that we could spot someone coming before they could identify any of us, but there was no sign of any other visitor. Kathleen, Maria and I were drinking some sodas that the two of us had brought up from town, while the Dog sipped at some kind of root tea.

"As far as Miss Harding..." Kathleen continued, "you may have something with that idea that she's playing her own agenda. I don't really know what she was doing there in the special unit - after all, I was there too, and I wasn't chained up or anything at that exact moment. But there has to be some connection there..."

"Yeah," Maria agreed. "I'm coming to accept the fact that we'll have to figure that out." She sighed and took a long swig. "So, what else is up with you??"

"Not much - no offense to my good host, but there isn't much to do here."

"None taken," River Dog said quietly.

"I've been working on writing down as much of the past few months as I can remember," Topolsky mentioned, waving at some big notebooks sitting nearby. "Say... did you figure anything out with that orb??"

"No," I told her, "but then we had the other one for more than a month and didn't really figure out how to use it. Will come in time, at least I hope so."

"Oh, hey!!" Maria broke in. "While we're here, can we look for that symbol that Max was talking about?? On the big map, you know??" She pointed into the cave.

"What symbol??" Topolsky asked.

"Umm... some dream thing," I said, not quite sure how else to explain. "Do you mind? After all, it's kinda your cave, for the time being."

"Oh, sure, be my guest." All of us got up, including the silent Indian, and filed inside. There was some of Kathleen's stuff strewn around - mostly stuff that we'd given her - some camping gear that had happened to be in the Jetta when Liz and I 'borrowed' it to sneak Kathleen out of town, and other essentials that Alex and Isabel had brought when they'd been visiting her earlier. A knapsack full of clothes, sleeping bag on an roll-up matress spread out on a reasonably flat stretch of cavern floor. Maria grabbed a flashlight to better illuminate the map, which was placed in a part of the cave that not much natural light got to, especially this late in the day.

"Yeah, there it is," she said, quickly. "Fairly centrally located, too. The Tri-gon." She shrugged, not quite sure what to do next. I was wondering if I'd ever be able to figure out the map again, like I'd done on blind date night. Then again, I really had no way to tell if I'd got it right that night.

We headed back soon after, talking about... you know, come to think of it, I can't really even remember what we talked about on the drive back. A little about this pool party thing, and then I think Maria started rambling on about junior high and this Kayla girl. Yeah, that sounds about right.

* * * * *

Later that night, after putting in a half-shift at the Crash, I showed up at chez Evans. I actually came to the front door, just for a change. Mister Evans answered it, but Isabel was there by the time I was stepping into the front hall. "Hey."

"Oh, hey, Michael. I wanted to talk to you about the... um, the sociology project."

"I'll let you kids get to this," her dad said, beating a quick retreat. Isabel led me to the upstairs lounge.

"So... what's the what??" I asked. "You looked like you had something to bring up."

"Yeah. Umm... did you know where the guys were taking us tonight??"

I smiled. "Yeah. Wouldn't have had the courage myself, but then... look at who I'm dating. I don't think either of you are as much the picture of 'high maintenance."

"Well, thanks... I think." Quickly Isabel told me about this Matrix IMAX ride that they had gone on. "Anyway... right in the middle of one of the big action sequences with Neo against the agents, I heard something else."

"What... what do you mean??"

"I don't know. It was... like some other conversation got embedded in the speaker system and came out on a frequency that only I could hear. At least Alex didn't hear it."

"Okay..." I thought about this. Considering the fact that the Kilohertz building was chock full of special unit surveillance gear, and that Isabel had been working on picking up things beyond the usual human sensory limits, it didn't seem impossible. "What was it about??"

"It was hard to make it out, for obvious reasons. But let's see... 'she invited them all to WHAT??' With a huge emphasis on the what. Talking about somebody going with the program or not. Saying that it might be a good time to make the move anyway. I think that's about it."

"Huh." I considered that. "Do you think it might be about the pool party?"

"Kinda sounds like it might be. Oh, hey Maxwell!!" Max had passed the doorway without noticing that we were there, but he came back and poked his head back in. "How did Liz like the arcade??"

"Ummm... all right, but I have a very strong suspicion I have to take her out dancing sometime soon."

"Oooh, I'll get in with that," I said. "With Maria, of course. Iz??"

Isabel smiled. "I'll get back to you guys. A triple-date might be just too confusing. Uh... Max??"

"Yeah??"

"During the Matrix ride... did you hear anything weird?? Did Liz mention anything??"

Max frowned in thought. "You know, now that you mention it, I picked up on some kind of buzzing or feedback. Liz didn't mention it. Why??"

"Ummm..." Isabel yawned. "I'll tell you tomorrow, okay??"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Part 3b

Liz Parker's Diary:

(Evening.)

I'm not sure what to think about this pool party stuff. I know that I can't afford to take it at face value, that Tess Harding has an angle on all this Czechoslovakian stuff, but on some deep level I can't keep myself from hoping that face value is exactly what I get. At least a little bit of face value. I mean, we could all do with a bit of perfectly normal high school fun after all that we've bee through recently.

I've got my outfit picked out already, and I hope Max likes it. I really don't think he would have seen me in this suit last summer, though I'm not sure... I wasn't paying so much attention to him then

It'll be weird to talk to Kayla again after so long, if she does take the invite, and if she actually talks to me.

On another note, after the whole thing at Max's locker this morning, I really do want to slip him a surprise, and as soon as possible. He won't be expecting me to be able to put anything together so soon, I don't think...

-----

Okay, ummm... I just got off the phone with Maria -- she called while I was in the middle of the last sentence above. Wanted to vent about her and Michael... she's really not sure where they are, and she doesn't feel comfortable talking with him about it. I mean, when you look at it... they weren't in the greatest place when all this Topolsky stuff started, but, well, it's like this protective urge kicked in inside Michael.

So now, the two of them are hanging out a lot, and he's being really nice to her, but Maria's worried -- about all kinds of stuff. If all of this is just protectiveness on Michael's part, then what happens if a time comes when he doesn't think that she's in danger? She's not sure how he really feels about her, and what he's ready for. There wasn't that much that I could tell her, aside from to hold on to what she could, and to ask him about it if she could possibly get up the nerve. Well, it's late, and I'd better be signing off.

* * * * *

Objective:

"I still say that it's Evans, Guerin, and Evans," Agent Shaw insisted, groaning and fumbling for a particular piece of paper under the mass of files that spread out over the entire conference table, scanned it in frustration, and tossed in back onto the top of the heap.

"Not sure about the second Evans," his partner, Ludeka, countered. "Not entirely convinced about Guerin, come to think of it. And I still say there's a chance that Parker and even DeLuca are aliens."

"*DeLuca*??" Shaw repeated in disbelief. "Now come on, I..." Once again he was fumbling for a report -- he knew that he'd just seen it, and... "Yep. October 6th, 1999." He read from Kathleen Topolsky's daily report. "The 'career counseling' exercises are proving a great insight into the attitudes of the players on stage. Maria DeLuca is intensely worried and frightened... probably about something to do with Miss Evans and the local Sheriff, James Valenti the second.

"Given that the profile of our suspects are individuals who have known that they were different for a long time and have gotten used to hiding in the human culture, DeLuca's lack of control over her emotions indicates that she is not one of them. My theory is that she has learned the secret recently, probably after the Crashdown incident, and is not acclimatizing herself to the rigors of an ironclad conspiracy especially well."

"That's far from open and shut," Ludeka argued back. He was tall, fairly thin, in his mid twenties with sandy blond hair. "First of all, it's psychological; it's completely subjective. You or I might have had a completely different impression if we'd been on the scene instead of Topolsky. Secondly, that 'profile' that you're talking about is pretty much pure speculation anyway. We don't know how long these aliens have known what about themselves... even if they're adults who were in the crash or second-generation children."

"Well, at least you're not going to bring up Whitman again... are you??" Shaw looked the other young man in the eye. "The blood test that was retrieved after dosing Whitman with oral heparin to cause a nose-bleed was clearly pure human..."

"No-one actually SAW his nose bleed onto that particular piece of toilet paper... but yeah, I won't argue the point."

"...And the blood type exactly matches the samples taken from Evans at the hospital," Shaw continued, brushing a lock of dark chesnut hair out of his eyes. He had just turned thirty-one, stood five four three, knew that he was a little overweight for his height and that he worked too hard. "Down to the basic SNP marker genes, even. That pretty much proves that Whitman's blood was swapped for Evans'... and why not Guerin's?? He was there, at the scene, a lot earlier, while Whitman had to get called in. The only possible explanation is that Guerin's blood would have been as incriminating as..."

The door suddenly flew open and Special Agent Neumann was glaring at the two of them, an imposing figure with his dark crew cut and the muscletone that scuttlebutt had it he had developed as an officer in the Marines. "What the hell are you two doing back here??" They had taken over one of the conference rooms built into the facilities under the Terahertz video arcade.

"Working on the assignment," Dennis Ludeka shot back.

"Compiling the information we have on the aliens??" Neumann growled. "What, are you writing up your notes by hand?? Why the hell aren't you out front and using one of the workstations??"

"Before getting to the compiling stage," Jeremy Shaw clarified, since it had been his idea in the first place, "we thought we'd spend some time sorting exactly who the aliens were."

Now Neumann's baleful stare focused on Agent Shaw. "What, are you *trying* to be some kind of wise guy??" he snapped. "Just get out there and compile for Evans, Guerin, Evans, and Parker! Let Pierce and his buddies worry about who's actually an alien and who isn't."

Shaw shrugged, and started to assemble the reports and logs into a few piles that could be easily carried out of the conference room. Special Agent Neumann got on his nerves.

* * * * *

MAX:

I headed up the hallway, opened up my locker, tossed my jacket in and took my binder and chemistry text in without really paying attention. I'd almost slammed the door shut again before I realized that something wasn't quite how I left it.

It was a book, a fairly thick paperback, sitting on the top shelf just exactly as if it thought it belonged there. I took a look. 'The Osgoode Station Incident.' A story of danger, modern-day adventure, and passion set in the business district of Toronto, Canada. Hmmm. A bookmark advertising Jameson's down on Atkinson had a more personal message scrawled on it with a black pen. "Just thinking of you. L." Awwww.

I caught up with Liz outside Maria's locker, and whispered a quick "thanks," in her ear as I wrapped my arms around her, and her face lit up in such a beautiful smile. The four of us, (including Alex,) walked to the science lab together.

Tess was waiting across the hallway from the door. "Oh, hey... sorry to bug, but I haven't heard from you or Max about the thing tomorrow," she said to Liz. "You're the only ones who haven't RSVP-ed in the affirmative -- I really hope you can make it."

"Uh, well..." Liz shot a look at me, possibly experiencing some last-second nervousness, and I nodded at her encouragingly. "Yeah, we'll be there with bells on. Can't wait."

"Cool. I know that I'm a stranger, that I've kind of been taking advantage of your kindness, but it's so weird moving to a new town, and you've been so great about making me feel welcome." She turned my way at that point, and stared into my eyes with kind of a creepy look for just a second.

And the second bell rang then, and we all hurried in for a lecture about the kind of large organic molecules that could be found to contain a benzene ring formation.

The day passed quickly... classes, study hall, lunch out on the lawn with the whole gang. Isabel and Liz got into the mother of all grudge matches in something that they called "Super Tic-tac-toe." Isabel just managed to eke out a win, and I think that Liz was shocked at the possibility that she could lose. Well, I love Liz, but... that'll teach her to underestimate my sister, hehe!

There was a huge pop quiz in Trig that afternoon... a surprise test on a Friday afternoon... is there any more heinous concept that the teaching profession has ever come up with? (Sigh.) Ah well, I think I did okay on it at least.

Liz and I, Michael and Maria all headed to the cafe after school was over. Liz's mom and Dad were waiting for her in a booth near the front of the dining room as soon as she got in.

"Hey, honey. There's someone in the back who wants to talk to you," her father said softly.

What was going on? Then I suddenly realized... there had been a cruiser from the sheriff's office in the parking lot while we were on our way in. I hadn't noticed it consciously at the time, but somehow in retrospect it stood out like a sore thumb. I looked around the dining room, hoping to see Owen Blackwood or Deputy Hansen enjoying a late lunch... or even Valenti. Just as long as he wasn't waiting to interrogate Liz in back. No luck with that, of course. I could see that Liz had made the connection too, and that she was a little scared.

I gave her a little nod, hoping to reassure her. I believed in Liz. There's nothing that Valenti can do to you, with your parents waiting out here, I tried to tell her mentally. There isn't even anything that he can do to Michael or me, not in public like this. I hope.

Liz nodded, almost as if she'd heard me, and took a deep breath. "Okay," she said softly, and headed back through the doors that led into the kitchen.

* * * * *

LIZ:

I nodded back at Max, just a little, then turned to look at my parents. Did they have any notion what they were doing to me??

My mom smiled back a little, or tried to at least. It wasn't much of a smile. My dad's face was serious. No, they didn't, I decided. They trusted Jim Valenti... they believed that whatever he asked, he wouldn't have if he didn't have my best interests at heart. I wish I could feel that much confidence in Valenti's value judgements, but of course I can't.

I stepped forward quickly until I'd passed through the doors to the kitchen area, and then looked around the area. I caught sight of a leg and a hand through the doorway to the little office that my Dad kept back there at just the same time that a voice called out from within: "Miss Parker? I'm in here."

I headed in, trying to cover the break in my stride so that he wouldn't notice it. Sure enough... Jim Valenti. "What's all this about, Sheriff?" I asked as calmly as I could, sitting down in the single chair that remained against the wall opposite my dad's desk. Valenti was sitting behind the desk, of course, in my Dad's chair, and he'd apparently taken the time to remove one of the other chairs that was usually kept in here, so that there was no other place for me to go.

For a long moment, Valenti didn't say anything. Slowly, he reached down, into his pocket or one of the drawers, or maybe just getting something that had been sitting in his lap. And then he brought it up, holding it aloft in the air, pointing at me, and then set it down on the edge of the desk. It was the little carved model alien - the bugged one, and its eye was still glaring at me balefully. I kinda jumped in the chair before I could stop myself.

"Don't worry, Miss Parker," Valenti drawled. "The camera and microphone have been deactivated... it isn't transmitting anything any more. Now, looks to me like you were the one who first spotted this charming little guy, though I think you've taken pains to make sure that your parents wouldn't find that out... that I wouldn't find out, maybe, if it came to that."

"I... I don't know what you're taking about," I told him as firmly as I could. "I noticed it, yes, and I mentioned it to Nicky. But he was the one who discovered that it was... whatever it was. More than just a little decorative alien. I just thought it was a kinda *cute* decorative alien."

"Or maybe you just wanted Mister Gonzales to discover that for himself, so that no-one would remember that you were a part of the chain of events??" Valenti guessed out loud, then abruptly took another tack. "Max Evans, he still comes into the cafe a lot, huh?? And his sister Isabel?"

I froze in panic for a second. "Well, yeah... a lot of the kids from my grade do. The crash is a popular hangout."

"Not that popular," the Sheriff countered. "Much as I might wish it was, for your parents' sake. I remember that I saw them in here when I came in a little while ago. The time I asked you about Kathleen, you remember??"

"Umm... yeah," I mumbled. "Kinda. I didn't really notice that Max was there, but..."

"You're pretty friendly with young men that you don't notice, then," he mumbled, just loud enough for me to hear, and I could feel my cheeks start to get hot. Yeah, I'd been flirting with Max when Valenti showed up, hadn't I?? I'd forgotten about that part.

"By the way, did you mention to Kathleen that I had been looking for her?" Valenti asked conversationally. I must have frozen awkwardly. "I've spoken with any number of people who saw our prodigal counselor putting an unusual appearance at the Bandzfest, and they tell me that you left with her."

"I... I..." Come on, Liz, at this point you have to tell him SOMETHING. "I talked with her for a bit... and no, I didn't pass on your message, it didn't occur to me." Brief pause. "We might have walked off the grounds together, I can't remember."

"More like ran for cover," he corrected. "If you're not going to tell me who was watching Kathleen, who was chasing you, then I think I can guess. And with you also was... Michael Guerin." Valenti stared probingly into my face. "He's started cooking here, right?? Michael. Your dad gave him a job after he got emancipated."

"Yeah... yeah, he did," I agreed.

"On your recommendation??"

"Umm... well, not really. I'd heard that Michael would need a job if he wanted to get emancipated and get out of the foster care system... there was a job opening here at the cafe, I told him about it. My dad knew that he was a friend of mine, but I didn't ask him straight out to give the position to Michael."

"Right." Valenti seemed to take a moment digesting that. "You know, Hank Whitmore came to see me in my office later in the day that Michael got emancipated. He hadn't heard about it, of course... he'd been off on a drinking and carousing binge out of town." Valenti rolled his eyes a little.

"Aside from wanting to establish that he wasn't a missing person, Hank told me that he was ending his stint as Michael's guardian. Said that he had had a new job offer and was rolling out of town, asked if he needed to sign any papers. Of course, that was all moot already, so I told him no. Didn't think any more about it for a month and a half."

"But something jogged my memory, and I've been spending the past few days trying to track him down. No trace." Valenti leaned over the desk, staring me hard in the eye. "No trace of him. Ol' Hank might not have looked like it, but he was a fine hand with a pneumatic die press, and that pays pretty well." The surprise must have showed on my face. "Yep. He was a tightwad, too... stashed everything that he didn't spend on the liquor and the ladies. The point is, there's only a few places in the Las Cruces area that do that kind of work, and it didn't take long to call them all. None of them offered a job recently to any Mister Whitmore."

"So, the conclusion is pretty clear... Hank lied to me. He two-stepped out of town and sold me a cock and bull story to make sure that I'd be looking in the wrong way until too late. The question is... *why?*" That stare never let up once. "Does it make any sense to you, Liz?? I know you're a very bright girl."

I shook my head, furiously. "No... no, I can't say that it does, Mister Valenti." And even though I wanted that to be true, very much, things were starting to connect in my mind... about Mister Whitmore's disappearance, and about the fact that there was a powerful alien in the mix who could look like anyone he wanted to. Maybe Hank hadn't been the one to talk to Valenti, maybe it had been Nacero, posing as Hank... to cover up the fact that he'd killed Hank??

"I've kept you from your shift too long," Valenti said suddenly, getting up and putting the alien in his pocket as he stood. "Got on a bit of a ramble there, I'm afraid. Think I'll head out front and try the Galaxy melt."

"Ummm... I'm, I'm not on shift 'til later," I managed to blurt out. "Think I'll... I'll head upstairs. Want to get that chem homework polished up quick." Max and the gang were waiting for me out front... but I didn't want to head back to him while Valenti was watching. Max would understand... at least, I hoped he would.

* * * * *

MICHAEL:

As we waited at the counter, Max couldn't seem to sit still, or act relaxed in any way. I felt for him -- I know how much he cares about Liz, but we were in a public place, and he was starting to look a little suspicious. I tried to think of some way of calming him down, at least for a moment... some idea that would take his mind off what was going on in back.

"Ummm... counter-top football??" I tried weakly. That just got me a sour look from Maximillian. Oh well, it had been the best I could come up with on short notice.

"Hey," Maria said, as she came up from behind me and got in between the two of us, so she could whisper. She was in her Crashdown waitress' uniform... she was on shift in a few minutes, so had taken the excuse of going in back to get dressed for work, and scoping out the situation.

"It's Valenti all right. I heard him say something about your foster dad, Michael."

That caught me by surprise. "Who, Hank?? Are you sure??"

"Yep, Hank Whitmore. Couldn't have been more clea--" She broke off suddenly when Max made the cut-it-out gesture across his throat. Maria and I both turned around to see Jim Valenti coming out of the back... and as we watched, he sat down in a booth exactly as if nothing were wrong. One of the waitresses came over to take his order... Tania, who was in her mid-twenties and fixated on saving up enough money to leave Roswell forever and go to New York and make it as a Broadway dancer. No, I didn't make that up, she'll babble about it to anyone who'll pretend to listen.

But as the three of us waited, Liz didn't come out of the same door. Max was looking like he was about to explode, and even I had to admit it looked a little suspicious. Finally, after about two minutes had passed, both of us got up and headed into the back, just as Maria was having to actually start working and take orders herself.

There was no-one in back, well, unless you count the cook. Max rushed to investigate the back entrance. I stopped at the stairway that led up into the Parker apartments. "Liz??"

"Yeah?" There was a long pause, and then I could hear scampering little Liz feet. Finally she appeared on the landing about halfway up, and sat down, her feet resting on the second stair down. "Hey," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Hey. Just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"What, you thought Valenti had zapped me with his disintegration ray?" she quipped in a low mumble. "I would think..." And then she broke off, which was good -- the way things were, better not to express a thought like that even in a whisper, even in a place you thought was probably safe.

"Or he could have hustled you off into a waiting squad car," I joked back.

"I'm fine," she assured me. "We'll... we'll talk about it later, okay??"

"Fine."

"Is Max there too??" I looked over at the door; he had just come in.

"He is now."

"Max??" Max didn't seem to hear her voice from where he was, so I gestured him over, and his face broke into a relieved smile as he saw Liz sitting there.

"Wanna come up for a little chemistry homework, study buddy??" she asked him, just a little teasingly. I shook my head and headed back out to the dining room as Max hustled up the stairs.

The cafe got busy, and soon it was obvious that Maria would have no time to hang out. I'd expected that -- I didn't go on shift until seven this evening, same as Liz, and I'd been planning to hang out with Max and Liz until then. That didn't seem likely at the moment though... it was quite clear who the third wheel was.

After about half an hour, I said g'bye to Maria and took off for a walk. Without knowing quite why, I realized that I was heading down town in the direction of the trailer park. Maybe it was because Maria had mentioned Hank's name, had said that Valenti was talking about him.

Which made it a very good idea that I DIDN'T actually go all the way to the trailer park, especially if one of Valenti's deputies might be following me. I swung onto East Hobbs and ducked into the path that led between two of the old houses in the middle of the block. Hid in a corner between one of those houses and the toolshed and waited to see if anyone came by. No-one.

I crept out again, looked around carefully, and then booted it down the path further. Just before rounding a turn I looked back... no-one in sight. Headed along at a good clip to the next bend in the path... by which time I was well into the little patch of woods, and repeated the whole routine by hiding behind a tree for two minutes. Still nothing.

Well, looked like no-one was tailing me at that. Still, now that I was on my way after a fashion, might as well head to the old hideout. I walked down the path until it started to look very dark and surprisingly far from civilization, angled back on a much rougher trail between the trees and bushes... rougher than it had been the last time I had gone this way by a considerable margin. I guess no kids were hanging out here any more.

Jumped down the four and a half foot high stone wall, headed towards the little nook formed by an overhanging tree and a concealing boulder... and stopped dead. Leaning against the boulder, chewing her bottom lip as she pondered something was... "Isabel?? What the hell are you doing here?"

She looked up and seemed just as surprised to see me as I her. "Hey, Michael. Just came her to check out something on our old wall of weird." She waved at the rock face here, and I remembered... the three of us, Max and Isabel and I, had spent days and days drawing on that rock... designs that we thought were cool, and treasure maps and secret messages and what have you. This had been one of the places I took off to when Hank was giving me grief, and it became a sort of unofficial clubhouse once all three of us discovered each other... though much less fun in the rain than a real clubhouse with a roof would have been, of course. Maybe a treehouse...

I looked up at the sheer stone face myself. Most of our masterpieces had been done in chalk, of course, or rocks we found in the area that made a mark when drawn against the stone, and they were long gone by now. Even the ones made with paint were fading or cracking away. But some had been carved into the stone itself, usually through a combination of hard work with a pocket knife and just a little usage of alien power, and it was to one of these that Isabel pointed. Sure enough, the weird-ass design of the week was right there. "Tri-gon," I muttered, none too happy to see it.

"I wonder what it means," Isabel muttered thoughtfully.

"Well, from what Max remembers of his dream, the three of us were at the points of the triangle," I said thoughtfully, touching them one by one. "Maybe that part does represent the three of us - that would make a little sense, at least."

"And the figure in the center??" Isabel asked. "Nacero??"

"Could be, I guess," I shrugged. "If so... well, what does that mean? Is he our leader?? The center of us?"

"On the other hand... if you look at it differently," Iz traced the outer triangle with a finger... from point to point to point and back to the start. "Maybe we're enclosing him. Imprisoning him??"

"I dunno." I sighed loudly. "All of this alien heritage stuff... symbols and freaky dreams and what not... we can't begin to figure it out without a heck of a lot more to go on."

"Hence why we're going to Tess' place tomorrow," Isabel reminded me. "Figure out how she knows the trigon symbol, what else she might know."

"Don't suppose she's just going to tell us if we ask her," I sighed. Though, come to think of it, we'd never tried... stranger things have happened. "So... this thing tomorrow... any idea what the plan is??"

"What do you mean??"

"Well... who's gonna drive there with who?"

Isabel considered this a moment. "Better not to make it clear how tight a group we are... for the benefit of anyone who doesn't already know at least. Maybe go by couples??"

I sighed. "Okay, fine by me."

Iz smiled. "You wanna swing by the pizza place, pump a few quarters in the ol' Space Invaders machine??" She laughed at that, couldn't ever help but laugh when she even saw the game.

"Sure." I led the way back out. "Say, where's the old ball and chain, anyway??"

"What, Alex?? Family dinner night." I helped her up the ledge. "And Maria??"

"Early shift at the crash," I sighed.

* * * * *

MARIA:

"Okay... that is nine-thirty in three, two, one, NOW," I called out, looking over my shoulder at the big clock on the wall, "and I am outta here." Suiting action to word, I untied my apron and slapped it down onto the counter. "Catch you losers tomorrow... just kidding, hehe, and Liz??" She looked up at me, her eyes all serious.

"Try to keep your hands off him. I know you're only human." I jerked my head towards the kitchen and giggled.

"Heh heh heh, very funny." Liz swatted good-naturedly at the little lock of hair that always falls down over my forehead since I started to let it grow out. "G'wan outta here, you cute little rat."

I picked the apron up, headed back behind the dining room to say my goodbyes to Michael in a slightly more, um, affectionate way, and decided not to bother changing until I had gotten home.

Mom hadn't come back to our place yet... another late night for her... too bad, but, well, at least I had the whole house to myself. I was about five minutes into my bubble bath when the phone started to ring... well, okay, maybe ten. Still, I was only just started. That's the point.

I ignored it through four rings without even a pang of indecision. And then that's when the doubts started to hit. What if something horrible had happened?? Worse, what if something horrible was only just about to happen, maybe, and they needed my help for some reason to make sure that it didn't?!

I'd lost count of the rings when I finally got to the phone, and yeah... was still pretty wet and totally in the buff. "What is it??" I pretty much shrieked into the mouthpiece.

"umm, uh, nothing... important -- I guess," Alex said, clearly startled by my intensity. Oh, good one, Maria. Way to overreact, let your hyper imagination get the best of you. That really helps.

"Umm... Alex," I muttered.

"Yep?"

"I'm... well, I'm kinda in the middle of something... literally. Can I call you back in -- twenty minutes??"

"Yeah, sure. You okay, Maria?"

I had to laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine, really."

About twenty-three minutes later, all bubbled out, dry, and all dressed up in an old t-shirt and my comfy bathrobe, I called Alex b... well, yeah, and the underthings too - what, have you got a dirty mind all of a sudden just because I had to talk about being, y'know, naked?? Fer gawd's sake...

Where was I? Right, calling Alex. We chatted for a bit about school and stuff, and then I asked him why he'd called me before.

"Umm, well, this is a little awkward, but..."

"Yeah, spit it out Whitman." Not said without friendly affection, I hasten to note for the record.

"Well, I've never really been invited to a pool party before..."

"I'm not exactly used to them either, but is that a problem? Embrace the new experience, little grasshopper."

Alex sighed at me, and I took the hint and let him finish. "Just this... as a guy..."

I couldn't resist. "Oh, thanks for clearing that up by the way, I was meaning to ask, but really wasn't sure how... okay, okay. Really shutting up now."

"What do I wear to something like this??"

I paused long enough to make sure that there wasn't anything more, then thought. "Well, nothing fancy, of course. A shirt of some kind, I'd tend to think a button-off but there's no good reason why it couldn't be a T I guess. As far as the rest... if you've got swim trunks that can do double duty as shorts, then you could just go like that... but I'd suggest you go with carrying the swim stuff there in a little duffel bag or something."

Another short pause. "Thanks... I think that helps."

"Say nothing of it. Oh, did you hear about the plan??"

"Ummm... no, what plan??"

"Just a showing up thing." Quickly I laid out how we were going to be arriving in pairs... Michael and I, Alex and Isabel, Max with Liz; so as to not seem to be suspiciously bunching together.

"Makes sense. And then what... are we poking around her place, or just waiting to let her play whatever she's got planned??"

"I'm not sure, but I think the second. We're doing the gambit thing, right?? I think that's what it means." Suddenly I had to chew on my tongue to keep from cursing... shouldn't really have said that kind of thing on the phone, should I? Well, I guess it's not really that incriminating, and what Alex had asked had been a little suspicious too. Was there some way to check for phone taps??

We chatted a bit more about stuff that didn't matter, and then Alex had to hang up suddenly, and I ignored my homework and spent a little time drawing color patterns with little triangles coming together to make squares and diamonds and what have you. When the phone rang again I wasn't sure what to expect. "Hello??"

"Answer me this, why the hell did I schedule myself in for the late shift on a Friday night??"

"Because you're a secret masochist," I told Liz. "And because it gave you plenty of time to hang out with your Maxxie-Waxxie before you had to clock in."

Liz laughed. "Hey, I hate to say this, but could you come by?? I feel the need to take a walk."

Ooh, that was code. She wanted to share about the Valenti thing and thought she had a plan to avoid being overheard. "Meet you in the usual place??"

"Got it. Ten minutes." And the line clicked off. Damnit, now I had to get dressed again.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was more completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section three: Tri-gon
Part 3c

Maria, cont'd:

Well, Michael and I got the short straw... literally. (It was Liz's idea to actually draw straws to sort out who would arrive for the party when - the notion that spreading ourselves out was a good idea, on the low-key front. Even though the 'short straw' was designated to mean arriving earliest, I didn't really mind.

I picked him up in the Jetta and headed off towards the address that had been on the invitation. "You..." I started, and then common sense asserted itself. "Never mind."

"We might as well get to it right away," Michael said with a laugh. "Otherwise you're probably going to stew, and wonder if you should have said something or not all day, and..."

"You'll get upset," I insisted. "It falls under the 'telling you how to live your life' category, which I've realized is a no-no."

"Well, then I won't take it seriously," he shot back. "Therefore, I won't get upset. C'mon, I'm curious what you were going to say - spit it out."

I took another turn, down a side street. "Okay, I was going to mention that you needed some wheels of your own." Michael laughed. "I know, I know, you don't really have much spare moolah, what with the whole independence thing and trying to pay all the bills on an after-school chef's job, but..."

"I wasn't laughing because of that," he assured me. "It's just so funny -- I've been thinking the very same thing myself lately."

Okay, that was a little too weird. "Seriously??"

"Yeah. Been wondering how to swing it - with the money thing, you know. Might fins something that I can fix up cheap. I'm not bad with motors, though I'm not what you'd call a gearhead."

I smiled. "You have other talents." Right about then, I pulled up in front of 1872 Wyoming Avenue. It was one of these brand-new houses: I think the whole place was a pretty new development. Soon after I'd parked and we got out, the door opened and Tess came running out to meet us.

"Oh gawd, everybody's showing up early," she said. Tess was definitely looking the part for hostess of a pool party... her hair all long and loose and golden blonde and curly and kinda windswept, a green bikini top with a light blue vest overtop as a cover-up (well kinda,) cut-off jean shorts and strappy sandals, the whole nine yards. "Well not everybody, and don't worry about it, it's okay. Nathan and Casey are here already, and now you too. Come on in, come in." She hardly gave us a choice, grabbing Michael and me by our arms and firmly leading the way.

Inside, the house was pretty impressive - large, well-lit rooms decorated first with reserved good taste and what looked like small objet's 'dart from faraway places, and also with some muted party decorations. Sure enough, two guys were in the dining room, eating snacks and drinking some kind of florescent green punch out of little clear plastic glasses. I assumed that the thin boy with dark rimmed glasses and the dockers that didn't quite fit right was Nathan the math club geek, and that the blond hunk with the hawaiian shirt unbuttoned all the way and the nice biceps was Casey, the jock from the wrong side of the tracks.

"Casey, man," Michael said, confirming the last part as he nodded to Casey, then went over to help himself to some punch out of a big clear plastic bowl. "And you must be Nathan Williams, right??" The little guy nodded, and smiled a bit, and it was a nice smile. I revised my mental label of 'total nerd' as majorly unfair and harsh: he seemed like a nice guy, pretty shy and totally overshadowed by guys like Casey. I knew how that felt.

Both guys seemed to be attracted to Tess, but as the second girl to show up, I felt a little attention too, which was weird, especially since I had come with Michael. (For the record, I wasn't dressed nearly as pool-party chic as Miss Harding - I was wearing a t-shirt and an almost knee-length skirt over my tank suit, and a light jacket on top of the shirt. You could probably catch a glimpse of a swimsuit strap through the t-shirt, but you'd have to be looking hard -- if you catch my drift.

"Theresa??" The call was clear from more than one room away, putting a long EE pronunciation into the second e sound in Theresa... (not like the hispanic pronunciation.) "Come here please!!"

"Oops, that's my dad," Tess said quickly. "Excuse me."

All of a sudden, my hand reached out to catch her arm just below the wrist. "Oh, hey!" I said, trying to be bright and cheery about it. "Introduce me??" It wasn't like I was *interested*... but Isabel's description of Tess' handsome father had definitely piqued my curiosity; I wanted to see Mister Tony Harding for myself.

Tess YANKED her arm away from me like my touch had burned her. "I... I don't th-think that would be a good idea right now," she stuttered, and then gave me an apologetic smile. "I think he's mad at me, and when he's mad at me it is NOT a good time to have him meet new people. Maybe later??"

"Okay," I said, a little disappointed, and suspicious at the vehemence of her response. As Tess beat a quick retreat, I shuffled over to Michael and tapped on his arm, one touch followed by a pause and then two quick light stroked. I hoped that he'd get the message without seeming to.

He certainly did the right thing. "Hey, hey..." he said, gesturing with his hands and diverting both of the other guys' attention. "I have to ask... did either of you see Angel this week??"

"Oh, with the stake-mobile that guy was driving??" Nathan chimed in immediately. "And having to turn his own SISTER when he realized that she'd been turned??"

"I... well, I haven't tuned in in a few weeks," I heard Casey say as I hurried away. "What have I miss..."

I stopped paying attention as I got close to the landing. Okay, there was Tess, and there was a guy who looked like he could be her father... yeah, he's kinda cute, not really living up to all of the build-up, telling her off about some sort of papers or something, I can't really follow what's being seen, and -- WHOA. Guys in blue suits there on the stairs. What's going on here? Is the FBI here to spy on all of us at the party? Or... or even to TRY something, something more active than just watching??

I hurried back, and pulled Michael halfway out of the heated discussion on the Faith plot arc and Buffy the vampire slayer's surprise crossover appearance. "Feds," I whispered in his ear. "Be careful of EVERYTHING."

He nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Come on," he said out loud. "You've gotta try this punch."

* * * * *

About half an hour later, the poolfest was in full swing. Most of the guest list had shown up, except for Max and Liz who were long straw and weren't due for about ten minutes more. Even Kyle Valenti had finally shown his face, walking in rather surprisingly with Kayla S... as in that the two of them seemed to be attending as dates. That threw me... even if Kyle had wanted to ask one of the single girls invited to the party to go with him instead of arriving stag and playing the field, I would think Valerie would be more his type... or at least, the type he would be interested in. Was this another aspect of his attempt to dig into our secret? No, still... Valerie's connection is with Isabel, and she's Max's sister, and it's Max that Kyle is obsessed with, or was obsessed with at least. Kayla's just an old friend of Liz and I, and Kyle already knows us kinda well. Ergh... who knows, maybe Valerie turned him down!

Speaking of Valerie, as soon as Isabel came in, the two of them started doing this totally freaky long-lost cheerleader thing, complete with the "oh my gawd"'s. If Isabel was just playing along, then she was playing it more than a little over the top -- then again, for all I know, maybe she was really enjoying hanging out with an old friend again. Meanwhile, Valerie was totally trying to impress Tess and bring her into everything, and Isabel was trying to hide how awkward that was for her. The three of them stripped down to their bikinis, and it was like that was some sort of pre-arranged cue for the rest of us to head out to the pool area and get changed, if necessary.

The pool was impressive. Set into the back deck, it had to be sixteen feet wide by thirty long, four and a half feet deep and one end and descending to eight and a half at the other. The water was somehow cool enough to especially refreshing against the desert heat that had started to settle on the town yesterday, but wasn't cold enough to be a shock. Soon Michael, Alex, Nathan and I were playing tag in the deep end, while the other girls were lounging in the shallower water and Kyle and Casey tossed a football back and forth on the deck next to them, apparently enjoying the view.

I was backing carefully away from Nathan (who was 'it' at the time,) when all of a sudden... well, I'm not going to try to describe it in sequence. The first thing I'm really clear on was trying to breathe a mouthful of water, which should give you the idea. I'm pretty sure that Michael and Alex hauled me out of the pool and Michael was about to give me mouth to mouth when I sprayed the pool water back into his face and started coughing violently, which kinda made it obviously unnecessary. (If I'd only known... but that isn't the point. Plus, I get to kiss Michael often enough and I've been through enough first aid classes to know that mouth to mouth really isn't the same.)

"What... what happened??" Alex breathed in my ear, and that's when I started to piece it together myself. It hadn't been a flash... at least, not based on any of the descriptions that I'd heard from those lucky enough to get them, but it had definitely been a seriously weird moment. I'd had... well, kind of a premonition, not specific on TV like where they see something that's going to happen, just more of an unsettling sensation. Like... like there was some sort of subtle, but very real, danger lurking over all of us, over this place. And as well as that, there had been the very distinct impression that someone right here in this room wasn't what they seemed to be.

Well, duh... all of us knew that Tess wasn't what she seemed to be... nor were Michael or Isabel, come to think of it. But it hadn't felt like that was what I was sensing. Just great, someone else with a secret game plan lurking about.

"Ohmigawd Maria, what's wrong, what happened??" I looked up, conscious of how much a drowned rat I must look, to see Liz, looking frankly dynamite in a red tankini suit that I remember her wearing late last summer, but she'd grown into it since then.

"Ummm..." I didn't really feel like having to deliver another vague warning, especially since everybody already knew to be careful and ready for anything. "Just had a little leg cramp, no big deal. You look gorgeous!!"

"Max! Liz!!" Tess ran up behind them... (Max was there too, of course, though I don't think I'd noticed him until that second,) looking so gorgeous with her hair wet that I wanted to stab her for a second. "Come on, you've gotta try this lime punch."

"Yeah, I'd recommend it," Alex chimed in. "There's something that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's definitely great. Can I grab some seconds too??"

"Of course," Tess laughed. "We can mix up some more when that bowl is done." The four of them headed back towards the kitchen.

"Come on," Michael said, suddenly, (or so it seemed, maybe I was still a little disoriented,) putting his arms around me from behind. "I'll feel better if I know that you're on dry ground for a little bit." I suffered myself to be led away to a lounge chair a little ways from the pool, and Michael took the next seat. Soon we were playing with this odd little board game that had been left nearby, placing marbles into spots on a large diagonal board and trying to form a path between the sides -- and each blocking the other.

"Watch out, gotta protect that corner," Isabel commented, walking up and indicating a particular region of the board."

"Hey, did I *ask* for your help??" I shot back. But because it was what I had been about to do anyway, I put down a white marble in what seemed like a strong defensive position and motioned for Michael to take his turn. "Having fun with your long lost sorority sisters??"

Isabel shot me a dark look. "Hey, I'm just playing the game here. Trying to keep Val from suspecting anything, trying to get Tess to let her guard down without really letting down mine. What have YOU done for us lately??"

I didn't want to get into the boys in dark blue, or the presentiment I'd had in the pool, so I just muttered "I'll tell you later," under my breath.

"Come on, no snide potshots," Michael warned both of us. "If you're going to fight, you're gonna have to REALLY do the chick fight thing and pull each other's hair and one of you is going to end up throwing the other, and herself, into the water." We both stared at him. "What, isn't that a pool party rule??"

* * * * *

MAX:

Kayla threw the round red ball in my direction and up, clearly meaning for it to pass straight over my head. If it got to its intended receiver, our strategic position would be tricky indeed. So...

Kicking up out of the water with all the power I could manage, I reached up high and just managed to brush the ball in mid-flight. I wasn't able to actually catch it, but I was able to affect its course, diverting it downwards and to the one side.

I fell back into the water, my head briefly going under, but once I'd surfaced again I could see Casey (who Kayla had been trying to throw the ball to,) and Liz converging on the precious projectile. Or rather, by the time I was watching, they had already converged, Liz had the ball, and was trying to throw it to one of our teammates.

I called out "Here!" and when Casey overcompensated to keep Liz from throwing in my direction, Liz got a good pass off to Valerie. I grinned at Liz and swam off towards the other side of the deep and to help press the attack against the blue team's defense, which consisted of Kayla and Kyle. (Liz stayed behind, she was part of our Red defense, ever watchful for the moment when the tides of water polo would shift against us.)

After our side had scored the next goal, Casey called a refreshments break and jumped out of the water, only drying himself off quickly before heading towards the kitchen.

"If you're after punch, Case," Michael called out after him, raising a glass in mock salute, "this is the last of it."

Casey reappeared an instant later. "Okay, then hand it over Guerin." He was about half kidding, as far as I could tell.

"Okay, come on, come on," Tess said, climbing up the ladder out of the pool herself. "No need for you boys to get violent, although you should have told me that you'd finished it Michael. I said that there was a second batch all ready to mix up, didn't I??"

"You seemed a litte busy," Michael said, pointing to the pool, where until a minute ago Tess had been as intense as anybody else about the water polo game.

"Touche. Well, I'm not now. Punch should be ready in a few minutes." And she turned to head towards the kitchen herself.

"We'll come with," Liz announced, taking my arm in her hand from behind me. "That is, unless the punch recipe is top secret??"

Tess laughed. "No secrets hiding in this house, Liz." Yeah, right. Soon enough the three of us were in the kitchen, and I watched what Tess did to mix up the punch, while Liz engaged her in casual chitchat about school and what Tess thought of Roswell so far. A can from the freezer, which when opened and shook sufficiently hard, disgorged a big cylindrical lump of sticky green slush into the punch bowl.

A bottle of spring water that had been sitting on the kitchen counter got emptied into the bowl next, and suddenly I had to try and force myself to neither pay too much attention, turn away, or blush hard enough to be visible. Tess was stirring at the mixture vigorously, hacking off pieces of the green frozen punch mix with a wooden spoon, and with her skimpy two-piece suit, there were... parts of her a little too prone to jiggle and quiver. I closed my eyes about halfway, assumed as much of an air of nonchalance as I could, and focused very hard on what Liz was saying.

"...well, there's the crash festival in late summer, of course, that's pretty much a must, and the Convention. I never paid much attention to that one before, except noticing when the convention crowd would pack the cafe, but last time I went and listened to some of the panel discussions. Because of Max's job at the center... you know..."

I opened my eyes at that point and verified that the danger of dying of embarassment seemed to have passed. I smiled over at Liz, and watched casually as Tess gathered more ingredients to go into her crystal cauldron. A single can of Sprite... (funny, I hadn't noticed any fizz in the punch, but that wasn't much carbonation spread around a full punch bowl I guess.) More bottled water, this time straight from the fridge. A little bit of honey, maybe a teaspoon and a half, squeezed from the bottle straight into the punch and mixed in thoroughly.

"This may not be a secret recipe," I mentioned at a pause in the conversation, "but it certainly seems fancier than anything we do for punch at my place."

Tess spun around in surprise, as if she'd forgotten that I was there, and smiled. "Yeah... this is the way my Mom always makes it... um, let's see." She concentrated as if finding her place again. "A tablespoon of concentrated lemon juice..." She went to the fridge to fetch that.

"Your mom?" Liz repeated, picking up on the reference. "Um, what's the deal with your mom anyway?? I kinda got the impression that it was just you and your father, here in Roswell."

"It is," Tess assured her, "for now at least. But they're not divorced or anything, it's just... her work. She was able to get a transfer to Albuquerque, that's as close to us as she can get for now, but the bad part is that they've got her so... busy that I haven't even been able to talk to her." She paused a moment. "I really miss her."

"Hey, maybe soon you can go up to the big city or something, and visit her there," I suggested.

"I asked her about that, but she's so busy she wouldn't hardly be able to see me. It really sucks." With that, Tess added the final touches to the punch - about four drops of vanilla extract and a little bit of raspberry syrup, and poured a little into a glass to taste. "Mmmm... perfect!"

"I have a thought," Liz announced. "Why don't we bring the punch bowl out by the pool instead of having everyone traipsing in here all the time? There's that little table by the window... and I'm sure everybody would be careful with the bowl."

Tess considered a moment. "Okay, cool." Soon Michael and I had carried the bowl in, and all twelve of us gathered around to toast the Harding family's move to Roswell.

As I raised the little plastic glass to my lips, it was like an explosion of pleasure in my mouth. Whatever that indefinable something had been about the first batch, there seemed to be about five times as much of it this time!!

"Oooh, that's great," I heard someone say. "Even better than the other glass," Isabel chimed in, and most of us made vague sounds of agreement.

I became aware of something... Liz was rubbing part of my back, near my left shoulder. (She was standing to my right.) The touch of her hand on my bare skin, somehow all of my attention was fixated on that single feeling. I lifted up my right hand and started running it through her damp, but perfect hair.

Liz cooed softly in response and turned up to grin impishly at me. "Come on." And she dashed away, turning a somersault as she jumped into the pool, and turned around to face me again. "The water's FINE!!!"

And I hurried in after her, wrapping my arms around her in the cool water and bringing her lips to mine.

* * * * *

ISABEL:

"Okay," I muttered, stealing one last kiss from Alex, which turned into two, and three, and a heavy frenching session for several minutes before I was able to exert some willpower. "Come on, we don't have TIME for this now!! We're lost and we've got to find our way back."

Agreeably enough, Alex scanned our surroundings. "Well... what about if we head south..." and he pointed towards the setting moon, clearly visible against the pale purple sky, "past the ruined temple, and then bear east past the chocolate milk river?? If there's a way we can double back to the southwest along that path, maybe..."

"Maybe we'll find the station house that the cuddly little rabbit told us about," I finished. "Do you think that will help??"

"It will if the enchanted train goes from here back to Roswell," Alex assured me seriously. He took my hand and led the way.

(Now, in case you hadn't realized, it's vitally important that I didn't notice anything odd about the above conversation, or anything else really, at the time. I know that that might sound unlikely, but just... go with it. Things will eventually be at least a little clearer than they probably are now.)

We headed downstream along the banks of the chocolate milk river, and eventually did find a path, although it was leading more south than southwest. "What do you think??" Alex asked me.

"It's worth a shot -- if it's dangerous and worst comes to worst, we can always *revert* back here." As we headed down the path, though... something strange happened. Walls sprang up out of nowhere, and suddenly I realized that I wasn't quite sure of the way that we had come. "It's a maze," I muttered, frustrated.

"Do you want to blip back?" Alex asked.

I stole a quick kiss from him, which became a long, drawn out one, and threatened to sidetrack both of us again. "Umm, no," I muttered after a moment. "We can always do that - might as well see what we can make of this place."

"Okay, ummm..." Alex considered a moment, took his punch glass and laid it down on the ground. "We'll start by following this wall," he said, waving to a particular barrier on his left, "and will be able to tell if we're following a loop because we'll come to the cup again."

"Hmm." That seemed reasonable enough, except... "What if there's someone else in here with us, and he moves the cup somewhere else??"

Alex shrugged. "We'll have to worry about that if it looks like it's happened. Nothing is foolproof."

I shrugged back, and we headed off. "So, do you think that the special unit is working for Krill??"

"Hmmm." Alex considered this weightily. "It wouldn't be the first time the dark warlock used ugly goons to do his dirty work for him. But... I dunno, somehow I don't think so. Doesn't smell like his style, if you catch my meaning."

"No, I suppose not," I conceded. "Just didn't want to have to accept the notion that we have two such powerful enemies to worry about."

"Yeah, I know." We walked along in silence for a few moments. "By the way, have I mentioned how much I like that bikini?"

I laughed loud. "No, not in so many words. Oh, hey!!" Ahead and to the right the maze seemed to lead out into a dark chamber.

"Are you sure we should move away from the left wall??" Alex asked me softly.

"It's a way that looks like it's going somewhere different," I told him. "We're following it." And we did, and found ourselves in a dark study lit by candles, with windows looking out over a forbidding moor on a stormy night, and already occupied by a number of colorful characters.

"But if Miss Fairfax had an alibi at the time of the murder," a bald man wearing a tweed suit announced to no-one in particular, "then who DID stab Benchley through the heart??"

"Who indeed?" Alex shot back without more than a few seconds' pause. "Maybe we'd better think about who else had motive and opportunity." He turned towards a handsome guy in his mid-twenties lying stretched out on a couch. "Now... you were involved in business with the deceased, were you not, Mister Thompson??"

"I... I was," Thompson agreed. "But if... if you're implying that that connection can be stretched into a motive for murder, you're crazy!! Our concern was doing well, and I don't stand to profit a cent from Jack's death. I'll have to share the profits -- and controlling interest -- with his daughter..." he glanced angrily across the room at a young girl, maybe fourteen, with dark curly hair and wearing a long white dress, "and take on all of the work myself!!"

"Are you implying something??" an older woman replied. "That Juliette is the one who is profiting from this ghastly disaster?? The poor dear has just lost her only living relative!!"

"Now... I hate to say it," I mentioned, "but that's a point. If Juliette stands to inherit everything," I nodded at the girl sympathetically, "and she's not yet of age, then who will be her legal guardian until she's twenty-one?? Whoever that is, will control the estate for seven years, wouldn't he? Or she??"

"Why, that'd be a matter for the circuit justice to decide, wouldn't it??" the bald guy muttered. "I suppose you could hazard a guess, though, couldn't you, Lynche? Being a barrister and all, that is." He nodded towards another man, tall and somehow magnetic, who had been standing in the shadows.

"Um, er, well..." Lynche (presumably the shadowed man was he,) jumped slightly and thought. "I don't know, but I suppose the next of kin might well me... Missus Banley." Someone gasped, but I couldn't quite tell who. "The dead man's divorced second wife."

All eyes turned to stare at someone behind me, another woman of motherly age. "But... surely you aren't accusing ME of killing Jack. I was with my daughter all afternoon." She indicated another girl, younger, only five or six, with light hair.

I was thinking of a reply to that when Alex went up to the man in the shadows. "Wait a second... you aren't barrister Lynche at all, are you??" he demanded, and ripped at the man's face. It came off, leaving a scarred visage behind. "You're an impostor!!"

The scarred man hissed in astonishment at having been found out and covered his face partly with his hands. "Yes, I am, I am... but I'm not the murdered. I only came here and took Lynche's place to watch over the girl."

"Which girl??" I called out. "Why should we believe you, if you've been hiding your identity from everyone here all along. Who, not to put too fine a point on it, ARE you??"

"And who are you, harlot??" Juliette cried out, charging forward and looking at my clothing... or rather, the substantial lack of it, pointedly.

"Umm... well, uh, my name is Isabel Evans," I muttered, suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry that I'm not dressed suitably, I was at a pool party... been trying to get back to it, actually." Something about that started to nag at me. How exactly had we left the pool party and gotten embroiled in these strange puzzles?? It hadn't seemed unuaual at the time, but...

"Don't worry, Iz," Alex said, taking a sip of his punch. "We'll get back there."

The punch. Alex had set his punch glass down in the maze, empty, but now he was clearly drinking from an almost brimming plastic glass of vibrant green punch. Something was very wrong here, and it was starting to dawn on me what it was.

"We never... we never left the party," I mumbled, disbelieving, and the candlelit study began to swim before my eyes. I blinked furiously, and reality started to reassemble again. At least, SOMETHING started to reassemble again -- I told myself that I wouldn't take it on faith or at face value.

But what I saw didn't seem too unlikely. It was a room, a den of some sort, and Alex and I were sitting on a couch. Alex was drinking punch, his glass almost empty, rubbing the small of my back with one hand, and mumbling something that I couldn't really make out under his breath... something about the cultural significance of donkey kong, if I made it out at all, which I couldn't be sure about. Just a few steps away was a computer, still on, its screen mostly full of lines of text. Okay, was this reality?? And if so, what was the connection between it and everything that I dimly remembered that was definitely NOT reality??

"The punch..." I whispered. There were two more punch glasses in the room, and empty one set on the floor, next to the base of the couch, between us, and one about a quarter full, on an end table just past my end of the sofa. I remembered how everybody had been so wild about the first batch of punch, and how that hadn't even seemed remarkable at the time. I realized that it was about the time that we'd started on the SECOND batch that everything had gotten vague.

"It's drugged." As I said the words, cold fear ran through my body and reality threatened to swim away again. I wasn't sure if the fear was affecting my state of mind, making me more vulnerable to the drug or if it was the concept of losing my tenuous grasp on what was real that was causing the fear. I looked at Alex, clearly much less coherent than I was. I had no idea where anybody else was or what was happening to them, or even where we were beyond the presumption that we were still in Tess Harding's house.

"What do I do now??"

As the words hung in the air, I looked around, and noticed something new. A man, standing at the door... a man in a somber blue suit.

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Title: A different kind of destiny
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Of *course* I don't own them!
Spoilers: Up to about two thirds of the way into Crazy.
Feedback: Would be nice. No -- would be *really* great.
Content: Very alternate universe, traditional canon couples. (That's right, CC. I won't be pulling any tricks in this one, I promise!! Well no, I'll be pulling a lot of tricks. But not on the canon couples hehe.)
Summary: What if the gang found a way to trust Topolsky? What if the new faces and changing roles of late season one changed, yet again? What if destiny was so completely, amazingly different than you could possibly imagine??

Section three: Tri-gon
Part 3d

MICHAEL:

"Okay, gotta think, gotta concentrate on what's really going on," I muttered to myself, swaying slightly. "Gotta concentrate on not falling on my ass as well."

I wasn't really sure what I could remember. A lot of hazy stuff was sitting there in my memory that pretty much had to be imaginary, or hallucinatory, or some kind of trick... or whatever. Extended lord of the rings' fight sequences, a ride on a Saturn rocket, an extended journey across the Mexican plains running ahead of revenge-crazed smugglers. Also a lot of pretty steamy stuff with Maria that I wasn't sure if it was real at its core or not, once the fantastic settings were stripped away. I think that the more X-rated stuff was probably hallucination, but we had almost certainly been kissing and making out while drugged up.

That was it!! We had to be both drugged or under the influence of something. Right now Maria and I were both in some sort of garden or terrace -- probably the Harding's back yard, though it was impossible to be sure. She was still sitting on the loveseat that I had just got up from.

Okay, what was the last thing that I I was reasonably sure was real?? The pool party... Maria and I had been watching the water polo game, and then... the second batch of punch. That must have been where it started -- we had fallen into the pool, kissing, and... at some point had washed up on the shores of the Grey havens. So that was definitely fantasy.

I was still feeling disoriented and dizzy, (and a few other d words as well maybe, but no need to get into them right now...) but I wanted to try and tackle the situation immediately. "Come on," I muttered, turning to Maria, and flailing wildly for the armrest of the love seat to keep from losing my balance.

"But the depth charges are looking for us, Guerin!!" she exclaimed, grabbing my other wrist with her right hand. "We've got to stay below two hundred feet... and WAIT them out!!"

"Submarines," I muttered. "That's probably a fun one. Well -- we can stay two hundred feet below, but let's be two hundred feet below over there, okay??" I pointed towards the porch, which wasn't far away, but which I somehow still couldn't see too clearly... I think that whatever drug it was and the bright sunlight were combining to do a number on my eyes... things were a little fuzzy and odd colors obscured he real things that I knew were there - that was probably a lingering trace of the hallucinatory effect - I was lucid enough that it couldn't make full scenes and visions for me, just faint traces of color. "Wonder how long that's going to last," I muttered.

We made it about a third of the way down the yard without much incident. The first incident was that Maria all of a sudden gets REALLY affectionate. Normally a good thing, but these were not normal circumstances. I'd already come to the conclusion that one of the effects of this mystery drug was a de-inhibitant, or whatever the correct term is. If we got back into a major makeout session, I could be distracted for who knows how much longer. (Maria was obviously not coherent at all, herself -- maybe the drug didn't affect me as much as an alien.)

So, well, I kissed her back for about ten seconds just because, and then tried to keep her wandering hands off me, wishing very much that I could return the favor. After a few minutes she started rambling on about finding the mountain fortress of the Hawk people, and that seemed to distract her from the smoochey gropey.

Everything seemed to be a huge challenge for me now, and not just because I was helping along a beautiful girl who was absolutely zonked out of her gourd. The muscles of my legs and arms, which had acclimated reasonably well to walking across the more or less level ground of the yard, seemed now to be completely at a loss when faced with the two steps up to the back deck.

I ended up falling down at this point, and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to try scrambling up the stairs on all fours, which worked reasonably well, and encouraging Maria to follow me up, which she did with something of a lithe slither. For many long seconds I think I was lost in the way the contours of her cleavage moved, revealed by her simple swimsuit, but I shook myself and rose back to my feet, and spent about two minutes trying to figure out how to brace myself to exert enough force to push the patio door open. (I didn't think it was locked, but was just hard to arrange myself for a sufficiently effective shove without losing my balance first.)

Finally I got the door open, but I *did* lose my balance at the same time, and for a second thought that I was back in a hallucination, facing a killer plant, but it was a perfectly ordinary plastic tree that was sitting on the deck. I helped Maria up and together we stepped through the door into the house. "I hope this really is the Harding house," I mumbled to myself worriedly.

That particular concern was unfounded, at least... after stumbling through a small media room, we were back at the indoor pool. Even if there could possibly be two pool rooms furnished in exactly the same way, I could see Kyle Valenti and Kayla kissing in the water -- and more than kissing, indulging second base with a remarkable intensity. Yeah, this stuff definitely lowers inhibitions.

"Michael!!" I spun around, and had to squat down slightly to keep from knocking my head against the type. It was Valerie, with an intoxicated look on her face and a glass of punch in each hand, one half full and the other brimming. "Come on, you don't have a drink!!" She extended the full cup towards me.

I didn't make a move to take it. Unfortunately, Maria did. Since I was working - well, trying to work - on the assumption that the punch was the source of the drug... **If Maria drinks any of that, she's going to get even higher.** Which was not what either of us needed at this point.

I tried to block the two of them from coming together, Maria and glass, but she was eager and neither of us were too well co-ordinated, and somewhat predictably the sticky green liquid ended up all over both of us. "Now look what you did!!" I wasn't sure if the active chemical could be absorbed through skin at all, but there was an easy solution to THAT. I pushed Maria into the pool and dived in myself, (we were both still in our swimwear,) and cleaned the spill off my chest, then did a little of the same for Maria. Not letting my hands wander too far down, of course, if only because we couldn't afford the distraction that would lead to.

After a minute, I climbed up out of the pool, leaving Maria there for the moment - she seemed to be floating around happily, and for this I might need all of my attention. I hurried over to the still half-full punch bowl and, trying very hard not to let it spill, carried it back into the kitchen and dumped all of it down the sink. As it swirled down the drain, I realized that I felt a little thirsty, so I found a glass, filled it up with cold tap water, and drained it in one long swallow. Hey, that felt good. More than that, it seemed to clear my mind a little bit.

"Come on, Maria," I said a minute later, helping her up out of the pool, the water running in rivulets over her smooth skin and dripping down to the the ground. (Down boy!!) I led her into the kitchen and gave her water to drink too, two full glasses until she wouldn't drink any more. I had a glass and three-quarters more myself.

"Okay, where to now??" Maria asked. I blinked in surprise, at a question that seemed to almost make sense. After a second, though, she answered her own question. "The pacific heights club, I think... pretty sure I can get us in, and Sarah will be there." Now, who the heck was Sarah??

"More to the point, where are Max and Isabel, and the rest??" I asked myself. All of a sudden, I had an image of Isabel and Alex disappearing up the stairs, laughing and kissing. Was that a real memory or just my imagination??

Well, it was a place to start, at any rate. I struggled to remember where the stairs were, and it wasn't too long before we found them. Along the way, I made the discovery that Maria was starting to get better at the manual co-ordination thing than me, though she still didn't have any clue what was really going on. I just had to tell her to go up the stairs and off she went like nothing was at all unusual. It took me a little longer to perfect a sustainable lumber, but finally I got to the top.

When I got there, I realized that Maria was being confronted by a somewhat severe-looking man in a suit. (Special unit?? He could very well be... but even if they were part of the unit, why did Tess and her father have so many blue-suit guys in their house?? They had to be on deep cover, and guys like this one tended to blow the cover.)

"What the hell are you two doing here??" he growled.

I looked to Maria, but she didn't seem too likely to come up with any burst of colorful imagery at the moment. It would be better if he thought we were under the influence, I realized suddenly. The whole drug thing seemed very much to smack of a strange special unit ploy and even if not, he'd deal with me differently if he thought I was intoxicated, which just might give me some kind of edge.

"We... we have to get to the crow's nest!!" I blurted out. "Do you want to come too??"

Blue-suit scowled. "No, thanks very much." He pushed past me and headed down the stairs. Maria shrugged at me and ran off, giggling.

It didn't take me long to search the second floor... large bathroom, master bedroom, an office full of odd diagrams on blackboards, whiteboards, and greenboards, at which Nathan was quietly staring, an expression of total awe on his face. One room was completely empty and unfurnished... next to it was a lounge or gaming room of some sort, with a computer. And a second bedroom, in which Tess and Casey were kissing. I didn't interrupt them - finding the rest of *our* peeps was the priority here, and I still wasn't sure what to expect from Tess.

I ran into Maria again in the hallway, and she stage-whispered and pointed. "What about there??" I looked, and realized that there was a very innocuous door in the hallway that I hadn't noticed. I tried the small switch -- locked.

"You've got to force the door and pick the lock," Maria urged me. I guess I would - in my own way. Checking to make sure that no-one else had come into the hallway, I put my hand over the lock and concentrated.

There was a burst of light, a pattern of soot appeared over the door, which swung open, knocking Maria and I to the floor. I stuck my leg out to make sure that the door didn't swing back shut, and helped Maria up. She headed through the door and up the stairs beyond, and I followed again. There was a short scream.

"Maria, wow, you made it up here too??" I hurried up after Maria, recognizing the voice. "Ahh. Hey, Michael," Isabel said, nodding slightly as my head came into view.

"We were going to go looking for you in a bit," Max mentioned. He and Isabel were sitting in the middle of a small, crowded attic, sorting through papers and other stuff out of boxes. Alex and Liz had been parked on nearby old armchairs. "As soon as we finished figuring out what's what here."

* * * * *

ISABEL:

I froze for a second at the sight of the obvious intruder. Obvious *Special Unit* intruder... let's not mince words, after all. It was becoming apparent that the blue-suit look was their official uniform - not that we could afford to expect that they would always show up in uniform for our easy identification.

I swayed in place a bit, my balance a little off from whatever had just happened to me. The guy in blue relaxed a little, watching me closely.

Well... I'd have to do something at this point. He didn't seem interested in anything beyond... watching us. Wait a second, did that make sense?? This stuff from the punch, it seemed to lower our inhibitions. Was that the point? To bring down our guard and see what happened next??

It sounded like it fit. And if so, what I had to do was obvious. Pretend to be as looped out as possible -- and give nothing away.

"What are *you* doing here, Binky??" I asked in my best little girl voice. And slowly, tentatively, I reached out and squeezed the guy's nose, as if it were a rubber horn that I expected to honk.

The look on his face was priceless, and I didn't even try to control the spasm of helpless giggling that went through me. That just made him frown further, and he turned and stormed away. I hurried back to Alex. "Come on, we've gotta find the others," I whispered to him.

"The 'others', no, we're not ready to meet the others," Alex mumbled. "Don't know enough about them, we don't know what they want. Gotta do more research first... the galactic archives. If we can just find out their secret identity..."

Okay, it sounded like he wasn't coherent enough to talk to this way. On impulse I leaned down and french-kissed him very emphatically, for about thirty seconds or more. "You want more?" I teased. "Come with."

That, somehow, got through to him, as I had guessed it would. I led the way out of the room and down the hall, looking around for Max or Michael... or Maria or Liz, as far as that went. The man in blue was standing further down the hall, but groaned and disappeared out of sight as if afraid that I'd beep his nose again. Most of the rooms here seemed to be empty, except for a study, in which Nathan was writing furiously on a whiteboard with a dry-erase marker, odd notations all around him on other boards of various types. "What are you up to?" I asked... it was meant to be a whisper, but I guess I either said it out loud or he had good hearing, because he turned to me.

"I've almost worked out the unified species theorem," he announced. "If you reduce the gene sequence patterns into numbers in the base four system, then all that you have to do is search for hybridizations that are compatible on a quadratic and multi-polynomial basis!!"

"Uh, all right," I muttered. Some of that sounded interesting, but we weren't in the correct state of mind to determine if there was anything real to it or just dope genius, so better not to get involved at the moment. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and took Alex and backed away. It was Tess and Casey... looking very affectionate, and not paying any attention to anybody else. I watched as they hit first and second base at the same time, standing there on the landing.

"I don't understand why I feel this way," Tess groaned, a puzzled look on her face. "And why you??"

We hurried away, Alex leading the way to a particular door in the hallway, and we rushed through. For no very good reason I could think of, I locked the door with my powers and sealed it shut. There were stairs there, and I led the way up.

Beyond was a cramped and full room. Max and Liz were lying on the carpeted floor, hands wandering, her hair falling across his head. "Max!!" I exclaimed.

Max looked up, shook his head a little in shock, and started to button up his big shirt. "How are you," I said, rushing over to him, "are you delirious, or are you with me??"

He shook his head again. "I'm... I'm feeling a little odd, but I don't think I'm delirious," he decided after a moment. "How can you tell?"

"You sound like you're doing about as well as I am," I said. "The punch was drugged... lowers inhibitions and makes you hallucinate. I think we're not as badly affected as... as our sweeties." I gestured to Liz and Alex, both of whom seemed pretty out of their gourds.

"Oh man," Max groaned, "this was it. This was what Tess was planning."

"I'm not sure about that," I put in. "Tess seemed to be pretty out of it herself. I think it's the special unit. They were talking, in Terahertz, about how the pool party would be the right time to make the move. I overheard them. But they were upset that she'd planned the whole thing too."

"Overheard them..." Max groaned. "Can you... do your little trick here? See if anyone might be listening in up here??"

Oh... I hadn't even thought of that - which was probably the drugs again. I focused, but using my powers as a detector seemed much more difficult than using them as a tool downstairs. "I... I'm not sure," I mumbled. "Don't think so."

"Well, we can try to be careful, but we need to plan," Max mumbled. "Did you see any sign of Michael or Maria?"

"No, but we haven't been downstairs," I admitted. "I was on the second floor when I snapped out of the fantasies... game room. Explored them a little, then came up here. There was a blue-coat guy watching, but I don't think he realized that I wasn't doped up to the gills. Your friend Nathan was working on weird math equations in the study... sounded like it might have something to do with us. Breaking the species gap. And Tess was making out with Casey."

"Hmmm," Max thought about that. "Ummm... okay, we might as well sit tight for now and see if this stuff starts to wear off."

"What about Michael and Maria?" I asked. Max frowned, and I knew that he didn't see any obvious solution to the whole situation.

"Tri-gon," he blurted out suddenly.

"What the hey??" I groaned. "I mean, I know about the tri-gon, but how does it relate here??"

"I'm not sure," Max admitted. "But it does... I can't say how I know that."

I frowned, and helped get Alex and Liz into chairs. "Man, why does this sort of thing keep happening to us??" I complained. Max shot me a look. "Oh, yeah... right. *That*."

"I know what you mean, though... we really do deserve a little uncomplicated fun," Max agreed. "Got any ideas??"

"Do you suppose they have FBI special agents at Six Flags??"

All of a sudden, the door rattled down the stairs. Max turned to stare at me. "I locked the door and sealed it," I muttered. All of a sudden there was a soft BAMM, and the sound of a door swinging open. Then the sound of someone, or more than someone, climbing up the stairs. Max held out his hand, ready to do something to defend us.

Maria popped into view, climbing up the stairs on all fours, and screamed. "Maria, wow, you made it up here too??" I asked. "Ahh. Hey, Michael."

"We were going to go looking for you in a bit," Max blurted out. "As soon as we finished figuring out what's what here."

* * * * *

MAX:

"More??"

"Come on, you gotta really chug it, Maxwell," Michael urged me, pointing to the old glass full of cool tap water I was holding. "It, like, it washes the drug out of your system or something, I dunno. The point is, it helps, but you gotta work it."

I sighed, downed the glass, and groaned. "Okay, now I still feel disoriented, and I have to piss."

"Well, at least you don't have to sit on that toilet seat," Isabel pointed out. "Just make sure you don't miss the bowl."

"Very funny," I muttered. I managed to use the facilities without incident, and by the time it was done I really did feel a little better. Maybe psychological, imagining that I was flushing the foreign agent out of my system.

"So... what's the next move??" I asked, walking out of the little bathroom all put back together.

"All six of us are together now," Isabel pointed out. "We get the hell out, together. None of us should really be driving in this state, but we can just walk away, and come back when we're coherent for the wheels."

"And the boys in blue will just let us leave?" Michael asked. "I doubt it... not unless we catch them some hell of off guard, at least."

"I don't want to leave without trying to learn something about the tri-gon," I put in. Reluctantly, Michael and Isabel nodded.

"That means that Tess is our only lead," Michael decided. "She put the tri-gon design on the invitations... and how the hell did she know anything about it?" He frowned. "Now, both Isabel and I saw Tess making out with Casey."

"We have to be careful with her," I warned. "She's implicated in the drugged punch - she was the one to mix it up after all."

"But it would be easy for the special agents to taint the ingredients without her knowing," Isabel pointed out. "The bottled water maybe. And she drank from the punch just like the rest of everybody. She seems more looped than we are."

"Which might be just an act," Michael muttered ominously.

"The prenomition!!" Maria blurted out suddenly.

We hurried over. "What... what are you talking about?" Isabel asked. "Can... can you follow what we're saying??"

Maria's face contorted into thought. "I... I'm standing here on the diving board," she said after a moment. Well, I guess that answered that. But... "When we were playing hide-and-seek in the lake," she continued, "I had a flasher. Someone... someone at the ball isn't who they smell like. Nasedo."

"Nasedo... do you mean Nacero?" I asked. It took a moment, but we got the matter sorted out as well as could possibly be expected.

"If Nacero is here at the party... he could be anybody," Isabel muttered. "We don't even know if he can assume female forms or not."

On that disturbing note, we headed back down the stairs. Having heard from Michael and Isabel about the difficulties in helping their sweeties along, I was glad that there didn't seem to be any problem getting Liz and the others to move... they'd all been given tap water to drink, and it seemed to be helping them too.

I led the way out of the door and around to Tess' bedroom. I was worried about what might be going inside... clothes off, heavy foreplay, all of that, but it wasn't the case. Tess and Casey weren't even kissing any more, just lying on her bed, his arms around her, a look of trance-like happiness on her face, both of them with their eyes closed. They were both clothed... well, as much as you'd expect for a pool party.

"Come on, wake up call!!" I bellowed, charging into the room, grabbing Tess' shoulder and yanking her roughly away from the teenage boy's embrace. I hadn't really meant to start like that, it just... occured to me, and all of a sudden I was doing it! I guess I wasn't really over the uninhibitive effects of the drug yet.

"What the..." Tess' eyes seemed to focus on me, but who knew what she thought she was staring at. "Aquaman! I'm not the one who put the spell on you!! I'm under the web myself, can't you see?"

"Don't bother about that now," I growled. "The trigon. The symbol. What does it mean? How do you know about it??" She looked at me blankly. In frustration I grabbed a sheet of paper and a tube of lipstick from her dresser. There was something written on pen in the paper, I couldn't make it out at a glance and didn't really want to, but I flipped it over to the other side, that was blank, and sketched out the tri-gon design on it, putting slight circles at the four points, each corner and the center. "What the hell is this??"

"Noblest purpose in the history of the land," she babbled incoherently. "First one was sent, but he had never been born. He couldn't speak the language, he couldn't vibe to the culture. So he was cast out by the shapeless ones, a failure. A criminal. Then three were bridged across the gap... foundlings. Elven childe. To --"

"This is getting us nowhere," Michael pointed out.

"Round up the supporting characters!!" Maria burst out. "We have to find HIM... the changing and changeless one, the killer for cars."

"How will gathering everybody help?" Isabel asked.

"I'll know!! At least... I think I might see. If all the usual suspects... in a police lineup, wouldn't anyone be able to see the odd one out?"

"But they're all different," I said.

"If Maria says she can do it, I say we give her her shot," Michael said, and he grabbed Casey from the bed. "Come on. Isabel, you take little miss FBI over there."

We moved on through the house, rounding up all the other invitees. Nathan was still in Tess' father's office, asleep. Valerie, Kyle, and Kayla seemed to be playing an odd form of hopscotch, or maybe Calvinball, out on the deck.

"Okay... who is it??" Isabel asked Maria, once we had the five of them more or less lined up. Maria frowned.

"I can't differentiate the quotient!!" she wailed.

"Now, what the fe-duck is this hall about??" Casey demanded, storming out of place. The three of us started to surround him. I noticed two boys in blue watching us from the doorway to the pool area. "You can't bold us here forever!!"

Suddenly Liz, standing right next to be, gasped. "Max!! It's your dream," she said, fairly sensibly.

I looked around, trying to figure out what she meant, and then it came together. The trigon formation... we were acting it out right now... Isabel, Michael, and me, at the points of a triangle. Casey was right in the very center of the triangle. Liz was standing near me, Maria near Michael, Alex near Isabel... and Tess stood outside the triangle.

"Little slow on the uptake, aren't you, hotshot??" Tess drawled, as if hypnotized.

How the hell... that was the line of dialog she had spoken in my dream... this made no sense. But most important...

"It's you!" I said, to Casey. "You're Nacero, the visitor!! Where did we come from??"

He turned slightly to look me in the face. And then he was gone, in a blur of motion, knocking the two FBI special agents over before they even knew he was coming. Michael and I raced out after him, right out the front door of the Harding house... by which point I was sure that he didn't even look like a man anymore.

Nacero jumped into a car parked right at the foot of the driveway, the motor gunning before his ass had landed in the seat, and streaked off. I didn't think it was a good idea for either of us to chase after him in cars at this point.

"What do we do now??" Maria asked, coming up to the front door behind us.

I sighed. "Anyone hungry? I think there's a Tex-Mex place right down the street."

END OF SECTION THREE -- TO BE CONTINUED...