Roswell Calling (CC [xo?], I/A MM, Teen) 18/18 Dec 21 2009

[Chrisken]

Part Eleven

Michael blinked and looked around himself, taking in the gleaming white and metal corridors with a somewhat sinking feeling. He recognized this place - Eagle Rock base - and he couldn't remember how he might have gotten here. However, he actually didn't feel as scared or upset as he probably should have, given those two starting facts. There was something else that was nagging at him.

"Well, things could be worse," he muttered under his breath. "I could have my hands cuffed, legs too I suppose, with tranquilizers shot into my system and four Army guards surrounding me..." Somehow rhyming all of that off wasn't expecially comforting - and if it was any particular comfort that there were no enemies or hostiles within sight at just that moment, it was equally true, and less reassuring, that he wasn't with any friends or allies either. "What about Max, or Maria, not that I really want her to get in trouble, or even Valenti?" Well, asking such things to nobody in particular was not exactly productive.

He needed to make some decision and get himself back into motion, instead of just standing at a hallway intersection, and as usual, Michael didn't have much trouble in coming to a snap judgement on very little information - no matter if he'd come in here on some mission, if he couldn't remember it, there was no point in trying to look for that particular target. He had to focus his attention on finding the way out of the base, one that wasn't guarded, at least until he figured out the rest of the story.

So based on that objective, he turned around by a half-circle and started back the way that he had possibly come, looking to see if he recognized any landmarks from his trip into the base a year ago to rescue Max. Nothing seemed quite the same at first, and...

Before he'd gotten more than twenty feet away from his starting point, a hoarse whisper sounded from the other direction. "Michael! Sheesh, for gawd's sake, come back here." He froze, and fought off an urge to hug the wall and try to make it look like he wasn't there at all. Turning back, he saw Isabel walking down the hallway towards him - in a tank-top undershirt and panties, bare feet landing confidently and quietly on the metal floor. For a second he was confused - and just a bit aroused by the sight of his good friend and pseudo-sister's attractive figure in such skimpy attire. And then, as he rushed back through the intersection, the little thing that had been bugging Michael finally slid into obvious place.

"This is a nightmare or something?" he asked. Isabel was still walking towards him, but not moving faster than a casual walk - possibly because she didn't want to start bouncing too much with a running or jogging pace. "You're dreamwalking me?"

"Yes to the second point, of course, and I'm not sure if I'd qualify it as a nightmare yet, though as dreams go it's definitely on the spooky side," she agreed as they got close to each other. "I guess - well, based on~~ what I was able to tell Max before we took off, I can understand why you'd be having bad dreams..."

"You don't understand the half of it," Michael said, and impulsively threw his arms around Isabel in a big hug.

She only tolerated that for a split second before pushing out. "It's nice to see you too, but - I dunno, sorry, not really appropriate."

Michael had to chuckle. "I meant to ask about the outfit."

"I bet. You have it easy, mister Dreamer man. I have to show up to these things in the same clothes I'm wearing in real life, it seems, and I didn't have time to pack my usual pajamas."

"None of us did," Michael insisted. "Bet Alex appreciates that look - well, if he's doing okay to..."

"Yeah, yeah, I think he's not that far gone," Isabel said. "So, I've been trying you all in rotation for nearly half an hour, and you're the first one who I've actually caught in a dream."

"Well, I did the best I could. It wasn't exactly easy to drift off - so, let's see, where do I start bringing you up to date? Um - Kyle and Sarah, they went to this rough bar, Corporal punishment, trying to find out what the Army guys were up to, and got in too deep. Sarah was taken prisoner, and Kyle would have too if there hadn't been some friendly jocks drinking there too who'd been willing to help out another West Roswell athlete."

"Who the heck is Sarah?" Isabel asked, poking Michael gently in the arm just above his elbow to get his attention at this point.

"Oh, umm - new friend of Kyle's - I think that they met at the dance, after Kyle parted ways with Tess. She doesn't really know about the alien stuff, but wanted to get involved in a mystery, and help Alex out."

"Well, I guess we can use all the help we can get," Isabel admitted, though she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and let out a 'forever put upon' sigh. "So is she still in enemy custody?"

"No, no - we did a rescue thing when they told Kyle to come to the Soap factory to talk about their demands - close call, but everybody got out okay. We also found out about one advantage that the Army's been ~~working on: freaky stun phaser gun things."

"Yeah, didn't I mention that to Max? There was something about them in Alex's dreams."

"Oh - um, maybe. We - we split up VERY quickly after the Soap factory scene went down. I haven't had a chance to do a thorough debrief with Maxwell."

"Splitting up - I mean, again?" Isabel said, considering that. "So who's with who?"

Just then, as it happened, two soldiers and a scary doctor, (either Army or Metachem,) showed up in the dream, and Michael just grinned at them. He'd always wanted to do this sort of thing. "Sorry, guys, but could you give us a minute? This is important?" And he turned them into tiny plastic toy soldiers and a much larger (but still small,) kid's doctor puppet

"You enjoyed that far too much," Isabel pointed out, "and you still haven't answered my question."

"Yeah, umm. I'm with Maria of course, and Valenti senior, and Hanson, who I think... it's like he rewinds in time, specifically to save somebody's life, so that's not really so useful in a serious crisis situation. I guess that leaves - Max and Liz and Tess, Kyle and Sarah are up at the silver mine. Hanson took us to this isolated cabin that he knew about."

"Alright, that sounds good enough so far," Isabel admitted. "What next? Do you have a plan for tomorrow?"

"Not really," Michael tossed back. "Talk to Max."

"I will, when I can." Isabel groaned. "And then, I guess I need to talk to you, or somebody else there, to let you KNOW about the plan. And I don't have a picture of Hanson, not that I'd really want to deal with his dreams at this point anyway, and..."

~~"Oh, right, that reminds me," Michael put in, and Isabel sighed slightly as her rant was interupted. "I got one really good picture of the Army old lady who seems to be running the show there, so I can email it to your cell phone or something - does the dreamwalking trick work with a picture on the phone?"

"Don't worry about the phone," Isabel sighed. "To my surprise, there's actually a business resources center in our crappy little motel, and a loaner laptop. I was able to find a picture of Meris Wheeler, the lady who appears to be in charge at Metachem, and print it out. She's on my dreamwalking list."

"So I should send the pic to your regular email if I can?"

"Yeah, I guess that's worth a shot," Isabel admitted. "Anything else really important?"

"Hmm." Michael thought about that. "No, not really. I'll let you head off on your rounds now."

"Thanks. Be safe, and be smart." Impulsively this time Isabel returned the hug that Michael had tried to give her before, squeezing him tight and affectionately. "See you again soon, one way or another."

"Right." Michael let her disengage and stand up straight. "Take good care of Alex."

"Of course." Isabel actually blinked, wriggled her nose, and clicked her heels, and vanished entirely out of the dreamscape. Michael wondered if there would be more soldiers for him to turn into toys at this point, but with a kind of a whooshing feel, the dream faded away, and he sailed back to the zipped-together sleeping bags, with Maria next to him. In the darkness he managed to grope out his cell phone and forward the picture on before falling back to sleep, and without waking her.

-----------

"I'm sorry, but Tess is pretty useless," Isabel grumped when she opened her eyes the next time after that, to see Alex still staring worriedly at her. "Well, not completely useless - she was able to describe the events of the evening for her side of the group, and some interesting stuff about using the Orbs with Liz to figure out how you died and what the Army guys are up to. But I think that she was just content to get someplace safe and not worry about any plan continuing on from there."

"Maybe Max or Liz will be able to help with that much," Alex said.

"Perhaps. Tess was also full of little details about Max and Liz, or herself and Max, and kept repeating that she was putting aside the triangle angst for the sake of helping you and keeping everybody safe, but I dunno. She still seems highly aware of what's going on."

"Wouldn't you be, in her place?"

Isabel tried to picture that - of having some rival for Alex's affections, and then decided not to get her head into that situation. "Well, anyway, who's next?"

"If you really do want to try Meris Wheeler - then now would be the time."

Isabel considered that - and chickened out. "No, umm - Michael said something about another lady, on the Army side. Maybe she's more important anyhow." Alex shrugged, seeming to accept that sentiment. "He was going to send us a picture - but he probably went back to sleep first."

"Alright, then what?" Alex smiled at her just slightly. "Do you want to get some rest yourself? Or maybe have some fun??"

Isabel immediately reached out for him to pull him near, and then hesitated, as she always seemed to be doing - as much fun as it might be for her to make out with Alex, or even more, and as much as he seemed to be up for such a session right now... he was still somewhat wounded, mentally speaking, from all that he'd been through, and she didn't want to expose him to something that might make that worse. Also, she didn't really want to risk him having an episode WHILE they were making out, as that would definitely be traumatic for her. So - what? Should she say that she did want to just sleep? She felt a little bit too wired to make that stick, unless...

"You can't rest by yourself, can you?" she said softly. "I mean, it's been a long day, and you'd probably have sacked out already if you could."

"Not while you were walking into people's dreams," he demurred. "I mean, I know that you say you can take care of yourself in the dream realm, but..."

Isabel wasn't sure that was all of it, but didn't see the point of calling him out on stretching the truth. "Okay, then I'll make you a deal. I'll rest if you will - and I want to use my powers to help us do just that. I can't adjust my own brain sufficiently to put myself to sleep, but I can do that to you - and if I stay open to the connection to you as I do it, then the sleepiness from you will probably flow back to me."

Alex's eyes narrowed cannily. "And we'll be connected as we sleep - so that if something happens to me, you'll be able to sense it and rouse yourself?"

"Yes, that's an added bonus of the plan," she said confidently. "You okay with it?"

Alex answered her by climbing all the way into the bed, arranging them so that she was spooning him from behind. "Is this okay, or do you need to be able to look into my eyes?"

"No, this is fine." She had practiced a bit at making connections without direct eye contact - practiced it for Max's sake, actually, so that he'd be able to heal someone who was too far gone to open their eyes, but it was useful for her now. "See you in a few hours."

And they slid into a dreamless sleep together.

-----------

~~Liz tossed and turned a few more times, and then slid up quietly off of her makeshift cot, slipped into her shoes and crept away from the other two girls, who were sleeping soundly. Her eyes were about as attuned to the dim gloom of the mine interior as they were likely to become, and she walked down the stone passageway, making as little noise as she could with each step, but still the echos came back to her in the stillness.

"I guess I'm not the only one who can't sleep." The words made her jump as they came from out of the darkness of a side corridor. She couldn't see faces as hard as she might try, but there was no way she could mistake a voice that seemed to have been ingrained in her soul.

"Max," she said, coming close, and got an 'uh-huh' back in response. "I, uh - maybe we shouldn't even talk. If Tess knew, if she gets up and catches us..."

"We can't base every decision on if it would piss Tess off, or if it upsets the strange parity deal that the two of you have settled on," Max said. "We still don't have a plan for what we do come morning. Staying here is NOT good enough. We need to fight for our lives, somehow... just like we did the last time that we were here."

Talking about that time sent a shiver through Liz - for so many reasons, for her secondhand memories of Max living through the white room, for how easily something could have gone wrong when they made their campaign against Agent Pierce - and for the message that they had seen from Max's mother the alien queen not so long after. "I - did I ever apologize for leaving you, last summer?" she blurted out.

"I - I'm not sure I realized that it was something that you needed to apologize for," he said softly.

"Well, maybe I think it is," she told him, stepping even closer. "Even given all of the four-square and destiny stuff - you'd been through so much, in the White Room, and if I was somebody who cared about you, then I should have stayed around, to help you process and work through that kind of thing..."

"You were deeply in love with me... I mean, weren't you?" Max said, his voice slightly astounded. "And you believed that you had to give me up, that it was in my best interests to do just that."

"Well, yeah, I guess so," Liz agreed, starting to thing of what he might be getting at, why he was telling her all of this.

"So why wouldn't your need to give yourself some space - to go through whatever you were going through at your own pace and without me - be just as important as what I had to heal from?" Max continued. "Why *shouldn't* you have gone to Florida? I had other people - my sister and a number of good friends - to take care of me. You were the only one who could take care of yourself - or at least, no matter how many friends you had helping you, you couldn't make that a priority if you stayed here in Roswell."

"That's - that's one of the reasons I love you so much," Liz admitted. "That doesn't mean that I entirely believe you, but the fact that you'd try so hard to make me believe..." She sighed. "Okay, end of side-track. Plans for tomorrow? I somehow doubt that we can lure the Army leaders into a trap in the UFO center."

"No, probably not," Max admitted. "For one thing, Brody would ask all of the awkward questions. Not that Milton wouldn't have asked questions if he'd shown up - but I could count on Milton to not be so present. Brody's nearly always around the building."

"Yeah," Liz said. "Well, location isn't quite so important. What about the basic plan of attack? Do we think that we can manage to... to convince them that one of our number is betraying the rest, and use that as the bait?"

"I... I'm not sure, but I don't think so," Max admitted. "That worked because we had Valenti, because he'd been an amateur alien hunter himself, and had ties to the Special Unit, if not to Pierce personally. But now - based on the amount of information they got from Alex, they HAVE to know that Valenti's our protector now."

"Could we have Hanson play that role? I wouldn't have expected him to join up with us before yesterday..."

"But they know he was asking questions, along with Valenti - and that Mister Whitman met up with them." Max sighed. "Even if they don't know just how closely he's been working with us, he doesn't have the credibility to pull that plan off." Max dismissed that, and took another walk out into the brainstorm. "There's the idea of falling into one of THEIR traps and then turning it around, but that's actually very close to how we rescued Sarah - that, and the idea of Kyle going in to meet them alone because it was the last thing that they would expect."

"Yeah, I - I can't think of anything else to plan just at the moment," Liz said. "Maybe I should try getting to sleep again."

But she didn't step away, and before Liz quite knew what had happened Max was kissing her, his arms wrapped tightly around her neck as if he never wanted to let her go. "I, I can't keep... keep showing equal favor in equal time to both of you," Max gasped in between pressing his lips onto hers. "It's driving me crazy, and -- and even though Tess is okay, it's not really the same. It couldn't be the same as..."

"No," Liz managed to gasp. "I... I appreciate the sentiment, Max, I really do. Especially that you think she's 'okay.'" A somewhat wild giggle escaped her. "But we can't - can't say such things, not now. It's not fair to her. I, I want to return to this - this topic with you." Liz was struggling with her own urge to kiss Max, and managed to settle for ruffling his hair. "But not yet. Not until I've found a way to broach the subject with her."

"You - you feel like you need to talk to her first?" Max gasped, also stepping back. "I mean, that's between her and me, I'm willing to..."

"No. Maybe before today it would have been okay like that, but - but we sort of had an agreement," Liz explained lamely. "And anyway, if I break the bad news first, it'll probably hurt less than if it comes straight from you." Something made her hesitate about that. "If I'm very nice about it and don't try to make it at all like an 'I win you lose' sort of speech."

"I... I guess I trust you to make that call," Max said. "I *will* do something if you want me to."

"I want you to go back to bed, right now," Liz said, a smile playing on her face. "Seriously."

"As you wish," Max quipped, heading off towards where his and Kyle's sleeping bags had been laid out, in a different chamber from the girls.

And Liz stood there for a while, trying to calm her racing heart, lest the sound of it beating wake Tess up when she went back to bed herself.

-----------

Isabel felt that something was different as soon as she touched the face of the grey-haired army lady.

She immediately tried to just jerk her finger back and break the link, but - but although one of her fingers, one of her arms, rocketed back, another was still stretched out and maintaining contact. She had NOT touched the picture with both arms, she never did. It was like...

It was like certain things that she'd read or seen in movies depicting astral projection, Isabel realized almost at once. She was still mostly overlapping her physical body, which was caught entranced in the action of dreamwalking, but - but her attention was on her astral body, moving it as if it were real. How had THAT happened? Was it an unusual reaction to some kind of defense the Army had mounted against her powers? Why would she react to a power blocker by astrally seperating, unless...

Unless she really DID visit people's dreams in something like an astral body, and had just never been aware of it before? This time, she seperated, but hadn't been able to enter the woman's dreams, so her Astral body was sitting around.

'The woman.' That suggested another explanation - that it was a missing element instead of an active defense. She had never really tried dreamwalking anybody without knowing their name before. Maybe, like the picture, this was a requirement.

"Okay, enough of the 'why', how about 'what next'? Isabel muttered astrally. "If I'm astrally seperated, why can't I rejoin myself, since I'm sitting right here? Maybe it's just the sudden-ness of doing something unexpected, or if it was an Army defense maybe they were able to prevent me from returning to myself..." Something else occured to her. "Why am I necessarily so eager to reverse this? If I learn how to use it right, it could be a great advantage for us..."

So Isabel stood her Astral body up, and poked around, walking through the walls into other rooms, (eww,) and putting her head into the dresser to inventory the few belongings that they had put inside. She also tried to wake Alex up - she'd let him sleep on, and now wished that she hadn't, because she couldn't shake him awake, and was wondering if he would be able to hear her if he were awake. She'd tried overlapping his body with hers and sending a thought - but that didn't work, and when she overlaid his head with her own she felt a worrying overload of mental activity affecting her mind and her senses.

"Okay, just one more experiment and then I'll try to re-integrate," she muttered. "Astral bodies are supposed to be able to blink from place to place instantly... but I don't want to do it too far, in case I can't figure out how to get back the same way. How about..." She concentrated, picturing herself in the motel office, and then there she was. Neither the desk clerk nor the ~~grungey twenty-something couple checking in noticed her.

When she blinked back to the room, (without any problems,) Alex was stirring - and noticed her pointing her finger at the semi-gloss printout, her eyes glassy and vacant. Isabel had never really before gotten a chance to see how spooky it was to watch her like this. Didn't her eyes usually at least slip closed of their own accord when she was dreamwalking? Or was this just one other way that this Astral business was not quite like normal dreamwalking?

Well, she could try something. Bringing her face close to Alex's ear and letting her hand slip into his shoulder... (that was a weird sensation, solid objects seemed initially as hard as rock, because she had no weight or force with which to move them, but if she pushed hard enough she would 'crack' that resistance and overlap the same space,) she said, "Don't worry honey, or at least I don't think there's any reason to hit the panic button yet. I'm here, I didn't make it into her head, but it's like I'm a living ghost."

"Or an astral self?" Alex muttered. She hadn't been sure if he would place that concept, but probably that had been foolishness. Alex was very smart with a good memory, and he'd been interested in fringe science and paranormal phenomena since before he'd found out their secret, just out of amusement, not believing any of it. That was part of why he'd reacted with such disbelief to the revelation, he'd told her at one point, because he'd seen so much of the skeptics side of the debates as well as the believers.

"Yeah, very much like that. I - I tried walking through walls, and teleported myself to the office and back. Anything else you can think of, before I go back into my body?" She didn't want to express her doubts about being able to just 'go back in' out loud, or in these not-quite-out-loud words.

"Make sure you can go back in," Alex said immediately. "Then, see if you can 'get out' on cue."

Rejoining this time was almost unbelievably easy. Isabel had been starting to feel a 'tug' from her entranced body as she spoke with Alex, and when she stopped fighting that pull, her astral self tumbled across the bed, and there was a 'faint' snapping sensation as both Isabels aligned into the same position. Her physical muscles suddenly relaxed, and the photo fell from her fingers.

"Hey, sweetie," she said, ruffling Alex's hair slightly again. "Okay, let me go through this first, my wonderings about just WHY I didn't dreamwalk the Army lady as usual." In as full detail as she could manage without wasting time, she laid out the two basic ideas, about some mysterious defense, or a lack of experience about the subject in everything but her physical appearance.

"Hmm... two reasonably sound hypotheses, yes," Alex agreed. "One obvious difference between them, at least, should be amenable to testing - does the same phenomenon register when you attempt to dreamwalk some other picture where you don't know the name of the person being illustrated?"

"Hmm -- okay, well, what other pictures do we have to experiment with?" Isabel asked.

Alex got up and searched the motel room for a brief moment. "How about him?" he said, holding up the pizza phone number card - which included the image of a handsome young man in a delivery uniform. "Is that enough to work with?"

"Sure, okay, I'll try anything at this point," Isabel agreed, and lay back again, her pointing finger at the ready. Alex bent to pick up the Army lady picture that Isabel had dropped, (probably wanting to make sure that it would be available for future testing,) and handed her the card. Isabel smiled slightly as she touched the face of the delivery guy, and once again got an unusual shock, but not of the same type. She dropped the card at once, and got convulsive shudders all over. Alex hurried over to see what was wrong, and did what he could to soothe her.

Isabel tried to calm herself enough to face the problem again this time, if there was anything that needed to be faced. "The guy, the model, he - he wasn't there," she muttered. "Not just that he wasn't asleep, or out of range. Alex - I think that he's dead."

"Okay," Alex said. "Probably something that we should have thought of, but... what, do you think that your powers might have brought you to him - outside this life?"

"I'm convinced that for a split second, they tried," she agreed, sick at the thought of it. "I... I don't want to experiment any more, Alex, okay? In fact - I'm not sure when I'll be ready to dreamwalk again, even somebody that we know, for a routine check-in."

"You don't have to try anything that might hurt you, of course," Alex said. "But I think that check-ins before morning would be a good idea. Sorry - this isn't a time for sugar-coating the truth. Is there anything I can do to make it better?"

"Well, I sort of feel ravenous," Isabel admitted. "But not for pizza."

"Maybe your powers have been getting an unusual workout, and that requires physical energy," Alex said, smiling just slightly. That did make her feel better. "Call in a different kind of delivery, go to grab take-out, or eat-in? And what ARE you in the mood for?"

"Buffalo strips and french fries," she immediately blurted out, and looked around the motel room. "Yeah, we don't really have to be in a big hurry to get back here I think. It hardly seems likely that they'll be combing this small town all night looking for us."

"Okay - do you want to get more dressed?" Alex asked. Isabel looked down at her sleeping outfit, reached for the clothes that she'd been wearing all day - and reshaped the fiber molecules from a familiar bundle in her hands to a completely new outfit worn against her body - a blue jean skirt that went nearly to her knees, and a blue and lemon yellow striped sweater. Checking her reflection in the mirror, she gathered up her blonde hair and mercilessly scrunchied it into a single ponytail.

"Stay close to me," she said, stepping right up to Alex.

"Absolutely. I still need you too much to risk losing you," he replied, which was somehow exactly what she most wanted and needed to hear.

-------------

Maria woke all alone in the doubled sleeping bags, as the grayness of twilight was starting to shine in through the cabin windows. After hitting the septic tank room and washing up somewhat with cold water and hard soap, she found herself in the kitchen. Probably she had been led by her nose, for Michael was in fine form on the little butane stove, flipping flapjacks onto a metal plate as they finished browning on each side. "Hi, honey, how did you dream?"

"Um, alright I guess." Maria pulled one of the dining room stools over and perched her butt upon it, feeling a bit uncertain about that question. "Oh - if you're asking about Isabel and dreamwalking, well, I don't really remember getting a message from her, or even seeing her. Then again, I often don't remember my dreams unless I wake up in the middle of them, and not so well even then, so maybe whatever she wanted to convey got lost."

"Well, that's part of it," Michael admitted. "More than that, it was a fairly generic version on 'how did you sleep' and - well, and vaguely wondering if you had an idea from a dream that suggested what we should do next about the Army and such. Never mind." Two more pancakes were added to the pile, and replaced with circles of batter from the bowl that Michael had apparently mixed it up in. "Come to think of it, I remember one dreamwalk from Isabel, early in the night, where I gave her some updates and we talked about dreamwalking photos - she said that she'd be dreamwalking someone else here at the cabin, to let us know if Max and the others came up with a battle plan of action. But - but that was it, as far as I can tell offhand, and so if she didn't come to you - would she dreamwalk Valenti? I mean, he's pretty reliable, and resourceful if it comes to that... well, maybe he'd be of more use in the planning if it comes to that."

Maria snaffled one of the fresh waffles in her bare hands, and looked for something sweet that she could top it with. "Do you really think that she'd prefer her own age group for this sort of thing, Michael? Or just that she'd naturally want to talk to other alien hybrids?"

"I - I don't know, I admit," Michael said. "Okay, we'll ask Valenti when he wakes up."

"You do it, and I'll take over breakfast duty," Maria joked, finding a container of honey that was 95% solid sugar crystals, but the remaining fraction was enough to use on her pancake. Walking back into the dining table area to eat it let her see Hanson laying fast asleep in a chair next to the fireplace. "Maybe we should be waking the old people up right now, actually. Getting an early start might help, even if we're not sure what we should be doing." Michael didn't object to that idea as she finished off the pancake in five eager bites, so she went over to Hanson and tried gently shaking him on the shoulder.

"Ahh!" The transition from somnolence to activity was dramatic, and even faintly frightening for just a moment. Hanson seemed to look all around him even before his eyes were completely open, and raised an arm as if to brush her away. Maria backed away slightly as the Sheriff clambered to his feet, breathing heavily.

"I - Maria, sorry. I'll - I'll never get used to the transition happening like that, I guess."

"What? What's going on?" Michael called, leaving his post at the stove for long enough to check that Maria was at least unharmed, and not even unduly alarmed. "WHAT transition?"

Hanson smiled grimly. "I've - I've travelled back in time again, and I'm reliving today as well as yesterday. Two pair."

"Wait a second," Maria said, thinking this over. "You said that the only way that you could rewind your days was when somebody - somebody died and asked you for your help. So - so who this time? Was it Alex again?"

"N-no. He might have perished again in the timeline that I just lived through. We were looking for him, and Isabel, and weren't sure what had happened to them. But - but the person who died, and asked me to help them - well, this might be a shock."

Somehow Maria knew what that meant. "It - it was me? You're on mission to save my life now, too?"

A half-cooked pancake sailed through the air and landed raw-batter side down on the wooden dining table. "THE HELL?" Michael yelled concisely.

"It - it'll take a lot of explanation," Hanson muttered lamely, heading closer to the kitchen so that he and Michael could see each other while Michael attended to the cooking - though that didn't seem to be a priority for him any more. Idly Maria wondered if she could convince him to let her take over. "One thing that I should probably mention, in the interest of full disclosure, Michael, is that I've learned the major details about your alien origin, and that of your friends."

"Whaat?" Michael called a bit less loudly, but Maria could tell how much that little detail shocked him, that so suddenly Hanson was in on the secret, without Michael even knowing who had told him or why. She hurried over into the kitchen to give him one of those sidewise half hugs that he liked because they let him draw support from her without making him look weak, or stopping him from facing the issue squarely.

"Okay, let's concentrate on the important stuff," Maria suggested, not that Michael's secret wasn't important, but it didn't seem to be the same kind of important deal. "If you need to save my life as well as Alex's, then I suspect that time is critical and we should be heading into action. What's our first step? Do we go on the move?"

Hanson only hesitated, thinking, for a moment. "Yes. We - we'll need to co-ordinate with Max and his team, and - and since they haven't had time to fashion the satellite phone yet, we can't just call them up with ours. Driving over to the silver mine is probably the simplest and quickest way."

"Satellite phone?" Michael asked, and Maria shook her head. Just then Jim Valenti showed up, wondering what all the ruckus was about, and Michael and Maria took turns explaining the new developments when they could, as all four of them quickly demolished Michael's little tower of pancakes. Then they worked in shifts, Michael and Hanson making some more quick breakfast stuff as Maria teamed up with Jim to gather all their stuff from the cabin and pack it back into the car.

When Maria hurried back into the kitchen after taking her last load out, one of the metal plates was already heaped high for her - bacon and hash browns and scrambled eggs - fattening, but she'd probably need her energy today. Plus, it was all stuff that wouldn't have travelled too well, so it did make sense to eat up now.

"How much can you tell of us of what you remember from yesterday?" Michael asked Hanson between his own bites, as Maria ate more hurriedly, with no time for any such thing as talking herself. Jim headed in for his own plateful as Hanson considered.

"First off, it's not like there's anything I *have* to keep secret, in general terms - but I'm not used to so many people knowing my secret, just like you must be about having me know yours so suddenly. Let's see - the most important detail, perhaps, is that the Army has some way of tracking Alex, or maybe Isabel. It's not immediate and foolproof, but they were able to orient on where the two of them were hiding - a little after noon, and things kept getting worse from there on in."

"Whew, I can imagine," Michael agreed. "We didn't find out exactly what?"

"Max said something about a metal pea being stuck up his nose, in a dream - but I didn't entirely follow that part, and wasn't sure if he was being serious."

"Eww - Max isn't usually one for the gross-out humor," Maria said, wrinkling her own nose and struggling against the instinct to spit out a mouthful of eggs.

"No, he generally isn't, which suggests that he might have been quite serious," Jim put in. "Didn't I hear something about Isabel - going into one of Alex's dreams to find out about his experiences with the Army..."

"Before Max left them in the woods, yeah," Michael put in more eagerly. "Yeah, it could have been associated with that - which meant that it was a memory that Alex repressed?"

"Or a memory from a movie that got mixed up with what happened to him?" Maria said. "I remember hating that scene when you rented it, Michael - the one with Ahnurld, and the fake memory people and Mars? Where he's hiding in the slums or whatever, and has the recording from himself before his memory got erased, and has to stick that thing up his nose to get the tracker implant out."

"Maybe somebody at Metachem saw the same movie," Michael pointed out with far too jaunty a shrug.

"Okay, well, that detail isn't the only important thing right now," Jim insisted. "The Army found Isabel and Alex - were they captured, or just surrounded in a siege situation? They found some way to call us for help?"

"It - it's a bit more complicated than that," Hanson said. "Come on, eat up, and I'll explain along the way." After a moment's pause, Jim decided to be satisfied with that, and shoveled food into his mouth with a will.

It was only a few minutes later that the four of them drove away, leaving realy no hints that it was them who had stayed the night, though there were enough clues that somebody had been in residence lately.

But when a young woman drove up to the cabin perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes after that, she had no doubts that she had only just missed Tim Hanson, and swore under her breath.

"No way I'll ever find that mine on time," she muttered to herself. "So what's the next stop?" After pondering that for a few more seconds, she got behind the wheel of her two-door japanese import, and drove off into the desert.

She might like them a lot if she met them, but Alex Whitman *and* Maria DeLuca would both have to die before the day was done. Alex, because that was what was meant to be, and Maria because it was the price that she had fairly paid for trying to help her friend fight fate.

This was HER calling.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Twelve

"I feel like I have the worst case of bed-head ever," Tess complained as she headed over to Kyle, where he sat watching the twilight from near the mine entrance. "Is there anything decent to eat for breakfast?"

"Let's see... I'm finishing this muffin, but I wouldn't rave about it," Kyle said, and offered her one of the bags full of quick-mart food that they had bought the night before. "Haven't found anything that seems obviously better, but you're free to take a look for yourself." Tess took the bag, poked through it for a moment, found a granola bar that seemed to meet her definition of 'decent', and started to unwrap it, sitting down next to Kyle.

"So, how are you doing about all this?" he asked her softly. "You know if there's anything that I can do to help I will."

"Don't worry about me - I've been chased by alien hunters before. It's no big deal."

"Well, good to hear that, but I was actually talking about the you-Max-Liz situation," Kyle said, and swallowed the last of his muffin in one big bite.

"See above re: 'no big deal'," Tess insisted. "And how about you and Sarah? I can only imagine what kind of toll it takes on a new love connection to get dragged into something like this together."

"Ehh, she's taking the 'on the run with teenage aliens' deal like a trooper, and as for me, I have to admit I'm really impressed with the qualities I've seen in her over the past day - the cleverness and the bravery." Kyle searched another bag, this one of plastic bottles, and held up a half-liter container of orange-grapefruit juice between his face and Tess'. "Would it be too much to ask for a quick flash-chill?"

"You know that I could really save my energies for more important things, Kyle," she told him, smiling and shaking her head. "It'll be just as refreshing and nutricious at room temperature, right?"

"Maybe it should, on paper, but I get more of a refreshing charge when it's chilled," he said, staring calmly into Tess' blue eyes. "If you can't come through for me in this, that's okay, I'll deal, but..."

"Okay, okay, I'll..." Tess grabbed the bottle and prepared to focus her powers on slowing down the molecules in the juice, when something distracted her.

"Don't do it, Tess. He just wants to know how far he can push you. If you give him this, he'll come up with something else, maybe ask you to toast him a muffin."

Tess looked up just as Kyle drawled, "Hello, *Sarah*," in a pretty good imitation of Jery Seinfeld's 'Newman, I hate you so much why won't you just go away' voice. Sarah cocked her head at Kyle, sat down next to Tess and started to look through the bag of snacks.

"Hi, Sarah," Tess said in a much more friendly tone as she passed the juice back to Kyle, who rolled his eyes. "Did, umm, did you notice if the others were..."

"Max was still asleep, as far as I could tell," Sarah reported with a level of cheeriness that was as high as appropriate for this early in the morning. "Liz was just getting up and getting ready to head off to the sanitary when I came over." That was one of the draws and drawbacks of the mine - it did have some kind of a bathroom, with running water and plumbing, (though nobody was exactly sure what the toilet led into, just that it was well out of sight of anywhere they needed to deal with,) but it was also in somewhat bad repair and very run-down.

"Alright, then. Maybe someone should - shake Max awake or something?" Tess suggested as innocently as she could manage.

"Maybe," Kyle said, drinking some of his juice, (it was already a third gone,) and standing up. "But that someone should probably be me. If Liz didn't, when she saw that she was the second-to-last, then that was probably because she thought you wouldn't like it if she did, Tess. Therefore, she probably wouldn't like it if you do, and I think that you should respect that." Kyle shook his head. "Did that make any sense?"

"Maybe a little, honey," Sarah reassured him. "Give me a kiss good morning before you go?"

"Well..." Kyle considered that. "Yeah, okay. Citrus juice breath is probably the best you're going to get for a little while."

So Sarah got up and put her arms around Kyle's neck for the quick kiss, and then he disappeared back down the passageway into the mine interior. "So," Tess said after a moment, "Kyle said that you're adapting okay to the general level of trauma?"

"Umm... yeah, I guess so, I'm not feeling any immediate need to freak out that I can tell or whatever, though I do sort of wish I was home and watching the Sunday morning cartoons," Sarah admitted. "I guess I'd feel better if I knew what our plan was for this today."

"Ahh, right, a plan," Tess said, and spent as much time as she could finishing her granola bar and pondering that question before answering. "Well, I - umm, Isabel made contact with me during the night. Liz did mention that she..."

"Isabel can walk into people's dreams," Sarah repeated immediately, and Tess wondered if the other girl had been reviewing or memorizing that entire conversation. "She didn't exactly explain what it means, though - but I suppose I can guess what it means, from your side. You were having a dream - and you saw her there, talked to her and she could talk back to you - the real Isabel, I mean, and not just a dream figure from your subconscious mind."

"Yeah, that's pretty much the cliff notes version," Tess admitted. "It's a bit like falling asleep from Isabel's side, or maybe more like a self-hypnotic trance. She has to have a picture to focus on, of the person she wants to reach, and she can tell if the person isn't asleep or isn't dreaming."

"Alright, I guess," Sarah said, nodding. "But if that person IS dreaming, then she can see everything in the dream, and talk to the dreamer?" Tess nodded. "That does sound useful. What does Tess have to say?"

"Not that much," Tess said, and sighed. "She and Alex are safe - they found a motel room near Albuquerque, and nobody seems to be on their tail yet so far. She checked in with Michael as well - they're doing okay, at that cabin that Mister Hanson knows about. But nobody yet seems to have a plan for BEATING these guys, not just running away from them."

"Well, maybe Max or Liz will have some kind of idea," Sarah offered. Tess growled and shot her a sour look. "Well, sorry, but they both do seem really smart - not that any of the rest of us are dumbos, but - you know what I mean. It doesn't mean that they should be... stop me before I finish that sentence and embarass us any more."

"That's okay," Tess said, and rooted through the bag again. "Alright, I'm badly enough in need of junk sugar that I'm going to say this. Do you want to split a twinkie package with me?"

"Sure," Sarah agreed, and grabbed a corner of the plastic package and tugged on it. Unfortunately, the plastic was strong enough to withstand such a crude attempt at opening it, and Sarah let go once she realized that they were just squashing the snack cake inside.

Tess had managed to apply her strong nails to the one weak spot of the package by the time Kyle returned - with Liz in tow, and reports that Max was taking his turn 'in the can.' Liz seemed very grumpy and antisocial, and none of the snack treats met with her immediate approval.~~ Sarah and Kyle tried to cheer her up, while Tess just sat there, finishing her Twinkie in silence and waiting for Max to arrive.

"Okay, dreamwalk check," Max said when he finally showed up. Tess briefly described her own experience with Isabel in a bit more detail, including the setting - it had been back at the Junior Prom actually, which she knew seemed a little suggestive, but whatever. After she'd finished explaining the details that they had conveyed back and forth, and how no plan had really been settled on, a quiet and moody silence settled on the mine entrance. "So - nobody else?" Tess muttered.

"Nothing I can remember," Liz explained under her breath, and Kyle shook his head.

"I don't have anything to report in that way either, and I have to say I'm a little worried about it. She did say that she was going to keep trying?"

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "Keep trying you, and Liz and Kyle - and Maria and Mister Valenti. Along with an attempt to figure out if she could get into any of - of our enemies."

"So - so is it possible that she got herself into serious trouble in one of the bad guys' dreams somehow?" Kyle asked. "She was all alone, except for Alex, and he - well, he doesn't have any powers, even at the best of times, and he wasn't really all there mentally - that was part of why Isabel felt that she needed to get him so far out of town, right?"

"Yes," Max agreed softly. "Along with the hints from Hanson about him being in danger of death, which we've learned more about since then. He took a deep breath. "I really hope that ISN'T it, not least because we have no real way to try to help her out without breaking cover. She didn't even mention specifically where they were staying, did she Tess?" Tess shook her head. "So - so probably it's best to assume that they're probably okay, but can't help us out without putting Alex at risk. That was the way that the original plan went, after all. If we hear from them, then we can revise our plans accordingly."

"What plans?" Kyle pointed out unhappily, and Max nodded uncertainly.

"You and Liz haven't worked anything out, have you Max?" Sarah asked, and Max immedately looked very uncomfortable, almost as if something was bugging him more than just being on the run from alien hunders. Liz shook her head.

"I, umm, I think that maybe we can resume scouting out the enemy operation today," Max said after a moment, taking a deep breath. "All - all nine of us, with the group that was over at the cabin, including Michael and your dad, Kyle."

"And Hanson and Maria," Tess chimed in.

"Yeah. It'll be a bit of an unwieldy group, but when we're all together, we can defend each other at maximum power. If there's any split remaining, then the Army could concentrate on just one side and try to overwhelm them first."

"Yeah," Liz said. "Starting with the weaker half first, if they possibly can."

"Okay - and just how do we find the others?" Sarah suggested practically. "Do we tear over to the cabin? What if they've broken camp already."

"Then they might have left us a note, or we might meet them on the way," Liz said. "If we do pack up and leave here, we should leave a message that Michael will understand, beyond that."

"Actually, do any of us even know HOW to get to that cabin?" Kyle put in. "I don't think that I do. But we KNOW that at least one of them knows the way here - my Dad, because this was his idea in the first place. We should wait for them to show up, or get some other word from them."

"Did your Dad get told that we were coming here?" Sarah countered. "I don't think that any of us had thought of it when we split up and went to meet Liz and Tess - and we don't know if Isabel talked to anyone there after she reached Tess."

"Oh, man, this is giving me a headache," Tess complained softly.

"Well, I'm going to try to find a way to make it simple," Max said with as much authority as he could. "First, we finish our breakfast without rushing it, and then we pack up and cover our tracks here - leave nothing to make it clear that anybody's been camping here if we can avoid that. By that point, if there's no sign of anybody - then we can vote on whether to stay waiting around, or head down the road to that truck-stop on Route two eighty five. It's on the main route to here from just about anywhere, and if they're coming, they'll see our cars there."

"Good idea, I guess," Liz told Max.

As it just so happened, it was just around the point that they'd finished packing up, covering their tracks, and had gathered near the cars to start the vote when they heard a vehicle appraching - and Max and Tess immediately co-ordinated to arrange a contingency defense, before it became clear that the newcomer was Hanson's County Sheriff's Office truck - with Michael, Maria, and Jim Valenti all riding aboard her as well as Hanson himself.

"Hey, it's good to see you," Max said as the four of them climbed out of the vehicle. "What's up? Heard any news from Isabel - after your dream, Michael, because we already got the skinny on that one. Any plans for the day?"

"Wow, what a big mouth you have, to ask so many questions," Michael joked to his best friend. "No, um, I think I was the only one who got a dream visit, and as you said, it was early on. What, did she take most of the night on and actually sleep for herself?"

That possibility suddenly made Max reconsider. How tiring might it have been for Isabel to wait in that motel room, as soon as the evening started to draw in, and wait for them to finally get to a dream state - probably burdened with her worries about Alex, as well as everything else that had been going on. He could still resent the absence of any further info from her in a vague way - but they were all together now, except for Isabel and Alex, and Isabel's first priority had to be Alex - she had told him so when they parted company. They'd figure things out without her - they had to, and they'd find a way to beat the whole Army and all of Metachem if that was what was required to stay safe.

"As far as other things 'up', there's quite a story to tell," Maria put in, as she rushed over to give Liz a hug - it had been most of a busy day and fretful night since those two friends had an opportunity to meet up, hadn't it? Well, no not quite, they'd been to Alex's house together, and had snacks after, before Max himself had gotten back from the woods, and before Liz and Tess had gone off to try that strange Orb ritual. He was having a slightly hard time keeping track of all of the comings and goings, especially the ones that he hadn't been around for directly. "Hanson has more info from the future, and apparently I'm next on his list of lives to save. But he hasn't even told us much about it - wanted to just explain once to the lot of us."

"Okay, umm - let's head back inside, under some cover," Max suggested, pointing back to the mine entrance. "Tess - Tess mentioned something from the dream grapevine, Mister Hanson, but would you mind explaining directly how what you do - works?"

"It's not really something that I do, so much as something that happens to me, Max," Hanson said, sounding very relaxed.

"Oh, and by the way, he knows about where we're from and what WE can do, now, Max," Michael put in. "Said that he found out in that day that he lived through."

"He knows?" Sarah exclaimed, looking stricken. "So I'm the only one who's still working on figuring it out?"

"We can tell you if you want to know, now," Tess said, surprising Max and Liz slightly. "You may need to know, if things get tougher today. I don't intend to let those sons of bitches get you either, Maria, just because you're working with us."

"Well, thanks," Maria said, sounding somewhat surprised to have elicited this reaction.

"In terms of how it works when it happens, Max," Hanson continued, with that sort of 'let me point this conversation back towards the original topic, please,' expression on his face. "Sometimes, when I'm around a - a dead body, either quite recently passed on, or a little bit longer since it happened - that person will seem to wake up and ask me for help, very briefly. 'Help me' or 'save my life' or some variant along those lines." There was a short pause, and Max nodded, wondering what this would lead to. "Very suddenly, before I could even say something in reply, I - the sensation is like my life is a videotape or DVD, put on a REALLY fast rewind for that day. I go back to the moment I woke up - whether that was in the morning, or whatever, and I remember everything that had happened - because it DID happen for me. But if the entire world really did rewind, then - then hardly anyone else remembers, only a few people who might have comparable or - or contrary experiences. I keep in touch with a few other people, my old mentor from back before I moved to Roswell and a few others she knows, who have the same experiences and try to save lives the same way. It hasn't happened to me much since I got here - I don't really run into that many dead bodies during an average month's work here, and they don't all ask for help."

"Contrary experiences," Jim prompted. They were inside the first mine tunnel now. "Tell Max about that part, too - there are people who work against those with your calling, right? Who remember rewound days too, and might even know more about what's going on than you do, if a bit more indirectly."

Max looked the question at Hanson. "That - that's about it," Hanson admitted. "I don't even know if I have an adversary like that, here in Roswell - I've never met one directly, but Mora told me about them. If there is such a person, the he or she - wouldn't be involved in the Army/Metachem conspiracy, or not before yesterday, just like I wasn't involved with you guys and your secrets. He or she might have joined forces with them, or might not. I don't really figure that those people would have been very accepting of a newcomer with strange information."

"Neither would we, normally," Michael pointed out.

"Yes, I guess so. And they'd - they'd want to see both Alex and Maria die, now - and be willing to do whatever was necessary to make sure that happened - up to a point. I don't think that an adversary would be too likely to risk their own life for a mission... I might not be, either, but at least I know that I'd be giving mine up to save another. And similarly, they'd be extraordinarly careful of anything that could get them into serious legal trouble or otherwise compromise their usefulness for other missions on other days."

"Why does it matter so much to them, though?" Liz asked. "Do you know anything about that? I mean, most people would struggle to save a life if they could, but not to end a life - not unless they had a terribly strong personal motive. Why would an - an adversary fight as hard as someone like you in the first place?"

Hanson was quiet for a long moment. "Because they think that they're fighting on the side of Destiny - that it's the cosmic plan that someone should die on that day, and it's for the greater good. Or - or at least that's what Mora said, I think."

There was a long silence after that, which all of Hanson, Sarah, and Jim Valenti seemed a bit surprised by - but none of them really had any way to know what a loaded word 'Destiny' was for the eight veteren kids of the 'I know an alien' club. "Okay," Tess said after a moment. "So what did you learn with this - this rewind day?"

"There's a lot, and I'm not sure what's really important enough to relay and what isn't." He sighed. "Would it be too confusing to everybody if I worked my way backwards through it, from what happened to Maria?"

There was an awkward moment. "You could give it a try, I guess," Max said. "I do see your point, that the stuff later on might be more critical, but - but let us ask questions to follow the plot, right?"

"Sure," Hanson agreed. "Well - it ended up in a Metachem warehouse on the south side of Albuquerque - we figured that the Army might have taken Isabel and Alex to a Metachem-owned building when they were captured. Liz, you searched on the internet for just a few minutes in a sleepy local library, and found a list of properties to investigate in order of distance from the motel. This had been the first and closest."

"We ~~found a way up onto the roof, and Michael - Michael used his powers to get us in through the skylight Jim, Michael, Tess, Kyle, and I went in ahead - with Max staying behind with Liz, Maria, and Sarah, to - well, to stand guard." Hanson took a deep breath. "I - I think that they realized that we'd made our move, but they didn't come to stop US. We wandered around, searching, trying to find Isabel and Alex, or any of the Army personnel that we recognized, but - but we couldn't find anything. Then Michael - Michael heard something back up on the roof, and Jim and I went back up to check." Once again, a long breathing pause.

"We, well, I guess we don't need to know all of the gory details," Liz said.

"No, it's not - well, that wasn't what I was thinking of. Just so disappointed in myself, that I let us all down, and hoping that I can do better this time," Hanson told her. "Maria had been shot, two or three times in the chest. No sign of you, Liz - or of Max. I suspect that you might have been already on your way to the experimentation rooms or whatever by then. They had moved DAMN fast."

"What - what about me?" Sarah asked in a small voice. "Did they take me again?"

"I - I don't think so, not really," Hanson said. "You - you were hanging on the edge of the building, your grip slipping and sort of screaming your head off. I - I was going to hurry down there and try to help you - before Maria woke up from the dead and asked for my help."

"Alright, I guess that covers that," Max said, trying to be businesslike and not even pay attention to the ghost of the White Room that had suddenly popped into the back of his mind. "Do you remember where the building was? Obviously we shouldn't approach it in the same way or probably at the same time - but if we need to, maybe we should move on it with more force and earlier in the day."

"Sort of a pre-emptive strike?" Michael said. "I kinda like that."

"How much force are you thinking of, Max?" Jim said, more uncertainly. "I understand the temptation, but - no matter how much we want to win this battle, if we accept too much collateral damage, are we any better than the alien hunters?"

"Yeah, and that gets us into enormously sticky moral ground," Tess pointed out. "Who's it okay to attack? Only the soldiers who are shooting guns at us? What about the Army and executive types giving the orders? The technicians and support staff making ready the weapons for them?"

"Yes, yes, and - maybe, depending on how much they know about what the weapons are being used for," Kyle answered. "Those who are living their lives in the service of an evil have made their own path, even if those choices have been based on deceptions. It is necessary to crush such lives, if they cannot reasonably be turned from their course."

"I, um, I think that we're wandering a bit far from the point," Liz said. "Let's move a bit further back in time, Mister Hanson? What about before I found that building for us?"

"Well - um, Isabel did her dreamwalking trick on Tess, while she was awake," Hanson said. "It took a while for Tess to realize that it was something deliberate, that she wasn't just having morbid and unpleasant dreams of the Army catching her and Alex - because of the way that Isabel's thoughts came deep in the back of Tess' mind, nearly subconsciously. Once she worked out that much - we started convoying in the direction of Isabel's motel, tried to figure out a course from there based on the images that Isabel had been able to send, but those were too fragmentary. Thus the internet search."

"And what about before that point? When was it in the day when we started driving up to Albuquerque?" Max asked.

"Maybe one-thirty in the afternoon. The Army might make their move on Isabel and Alex as early as noon, or as late as quarter to one," Hanson reported crisply. "Aside from that - we wasted some time, coming up with tricks and gadgets that don't really seem relevant, and searching Roswell for any trace of the Army operatives, which we didn't find."

"Because they were already moving up toward Albuquerque," Maria filled in, "based on the first very rough traces of Alex's implant there."

"That's what it seemed like to me, yes," Hanson agreed. "So now we have a bit of foreknowledge, and several hours' head start - but Isabel and Alex are the key figures, and we can't seem to get in touch with them immediately."

"Here's an idea," Michael said suddenly. "Forget about cell silence. If the Army already has a line on them, a net that'll be drawing tight in what - in six hours or less, then I vote that we call them and give them the warning. It might cost them a little of that time, yeah, but they'll be able to use what they have with the knowledge of what's coming."

Max sighed and brought out his cell phone. "Not a bad idea, but I have to point out one little thing - Isabel won't have her phone *turned on.* She was worried about them being able to trace her by the carrier signal, or whatever it's called. So - it's not a question of getting a message through to her whether she wants us to or not. It's a question of breaking OUR side of the cell silence to send her a voice mail, that she might get in five minutes if she checks, or never."

"Email," Michael suddenly said. "She said there was internet at the motel, and I emailed her a photo of the Army general to try dreamwalking. If I email her another message, she should get it."

"So you've already broken cell silence," Sarah pointed out.

"In a good cause, yeah."

"There's something else I'm thinking of," Tess put in. "Maria, guys - do you remember the night of Isabel's eighteenth birthday, last fall?"

"Umm, yeah," Maria agreed. Mister Valenti and Max nodded somberly.

"Ehh?" Sarah asked. Hanson also seemed confused by this reference.

"I was - was kidnapped that day," Tess explained. "Not by - by anyone like this motley crew, more like - well, by someone like us, except with her own agenda and different attitudes about..."

"An enemy alien?" Sarah guessed. Michael groaned. "You guys haven't been as careful as you think - you haven't referred to yourselves straight out, but the term 'alien hunter' has popped up a few times in relation to the bad guys during this conversation."

"Okay, yeah," Tess said. "Good enough. Congresswoman Whittaker was an evil alien." Hanson gasped. "Sorry, but really, she was. Part of an expedition to Earth that took over a ghost town over in Arizona and tried to blend in as best they could. Whittaker was probably one of their best field agents - infiltrating the US government by seducing a congressman, killing him at the right time without drawing any suspicion on herself, and then selflessly carrying on his legacy."

"You know, actually, that makes a scary amount of sense," Hanson said. "Wait a second - what was the deal with those bones that the geologist dug up, out in the desert at the end of the summer..."

"Another time, Hanson," Valenti snapped crossly, just like he used to when he'd been the sheriff. "Were you making your way towards a particular point, Tess?"

"Well - Whittaker had me restrained up in the power plant - hurt, bound with shackles that my powers couldn't loose, and anyway all the hallways sort of looked the same and I really didn't think that I could find my way out of the building on my own. The only thing that I could think of was calling for help - I tried using my powers at extreme range on Max and Michael, so that they would see me and understand that I was in trouble, showing them clues to help them find the plant - but the only one that trick worked on even partway was Isabel. Maybe that's because her specialty is subtle and sensitive as well, not like the guys with their flashy active powers. Seems like she turned the tables around on me in the timeline that Hanson remembers, using her powers to call me, and it didn't work so well."

"But you want to try sending to her, to warn her of the danger?" Liz said. "That - that could work. But aren't you even further from her than you were back then on her birthday?"

"Then we can get closer," Max pointed out. "Even if we don't know exactly where Isabel is, we know where Albuquerque is, and it's a good idea to get closer to the scene of the action early."

"Alright, yes," Hanson agreed. "We all head for the big city right now. Michael sends Isabel an email - telling her what?"

"Three things, as I see it," Michael said, getting up. "That Alex has a tracking implant in his head, that you say the Army is going to arrive within the noon to twelve forty-five time window if nothing moves that up - and that we think she should turn her phone on and call in. It wouldn't be productive to tell her that she HAS to do something like that; Isabel can be stubborn. A gentle nudge has the best chance of working."

"And even if she doesn't want to turn on the phone, she can email you back to let us know she got the message, and the warning?" Sarah suggested. "Maybe it would be better if someone less alien does it, actually?"

"We're all just about equally under suspicion now, even you and me," Hanson pointed out.

"But they haven't had as much time to research you - to find out your cell phone numbers, for instance, and hack the tracers into the system to monitor their activity," Liz pointed out. "I've researched a little about this stuff - it's not as easy as the TV shows make it seem."

"Okay, I'll do it," Sarah insisted. "Michael, give me the email address?"

"You can do that in the car," Maria said.

"Yeah - okay, who's with who?"

"I think I want to spend a bit of time with you, Miss Eliott," Jim said to Sarah. "And my son, of course. If you're going to be talking with Michael, then..." He stopped, considering the implications.

"Hey, I don't have to be joined at the hip to spaceboy," Maria said, forcing a smile. "Mister Hanson, I'll go with you if that's okay, maybe you can tell me some more about the lives you've saved, and any that you weren't able to help."

"Maria, don't freak out about this," Michael warned her. "You'll be fine, this time around."

"I hope so, but I still want to find out more," Maria said, her tone steely with resolve.

"I guess that leaves the three of us alone together at last," Tess pointed out to Max and Liz. "Feel that triangle-ey goodness."

"Oh, boy, I can hardly wait for this drive," Liz said, rolling her eyes.

-----------

Isabel woke up wrapped around in the embrace of the young man she loved, and the first thoughts that really made it through her sleepy brain were very lustful, especially since she could feel a long and stiff probe in his Alex's underpants. Of course, that was probably just 'morning wood' as it were - she knew that much about the quirks of male anatomy, especially since she'd been sharing a bathroom and hallway with Max during the years he went through puberty and since.

But surely it would last long enough for a bit of fun, if they both got into the spirit of things, as it were.

Isabel had already started to put that plan into action when she happened to open her eyes, notice the first rays of morning light coming in past the motel window, and suddenly a number of other serious thoughts hit her, temporarily crowding out the urges of private affection. "Dreamwalking," she muttered to herself. "I was supposed to - we overslept, oh god." Alex moaned sleepily, and she shook him, (making a point of moving one hand well up his body first.) "Come on, Alex, wake up, it's morning. How do you feel?"

"I, I... I feel like I need an orange soda," he muttered straight off, and Isabel's spirits sank even lower.

"Come on, snap out of it. That stuff's no good for you, you remember that. And we don't have any after all."

"Yeah, I do remember all that," Alex replied testily. "Just thought it was important that you should know I was feeling the urge for it." He moved his body closer up against hers. "Among others."

For a second Isabel was frozen by indecision. Would it be a good idea for both of them to indulge their mutual passion? Could that possibly substitute for the other craves Alex was feeling that she had no way to satisfy? But the advice that Max had given as he left them came back to her - he'd said that to keep Alex's mind as 'balanced' as possible, she had to apply a contrasting stimulus to any extreme emotion or impulse that Alex was showing. In terms of sex, then, just for example, Isabel supposed that she had to shut Alex down when he was feeling affectionate and aggressive, and then put the moves on him when he wasn't at all in the mood. (Possibly only to turn it off again once she swung him around to wanting her again.)

That was nasty, and promised to be frustrating for both of them, especially since Isabel couldn't allow her own desires to interfere with the program. It was also, in a strange way, terribly tempting...

But for now, she had to start on a different note. "No, come on, Alex, this is no time. We slept too late - I was supposed to try dreamwalking Max, and..."

"You were in no shape to do more dreamwalking, Isabel," Alex reminded her. "You just had two close calls - well, one experience that was like nothing you'd ever tried to do with your powers, and one that DID bring you to the clifftop of killing yourself with them, if only for a split instant. You were scared and unbalanced, and..."

"And I shouldn't have let fear stop me," Isabel insisted, not trying to keep the melodrama in check. (If Alex was being upbeat and reassuring, then she shouldn't.) "What's going on now is too important, for all of us..."

"There's a risk," Alex intoned suddenly, in a voice that wasn't quite like him. "The balance can pull you in. It's a force that can change both your body and your mind unless you navigate it properly. You're afraid of something else. Your fear runs deeper than you know. You fear for someone else, someone you care for a great deal. Take a step back. You cannot stop the flow."

By the time he'd finished the spiel, Isabel had placed it. "Big deal, so you remember what River Dog said to us, and to Liz, when we saved Michael's life. Are you serious about all that - that you think dreamwalking again could kill me?"

Alex shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe not. Just wanted to remind you that - that your powers run deeper than you probably know, and sometimes not pushing them is the wise move. Now - what do we do?"

Isabel looked around the room, and was surprised to find that she thought she knew. "Get dressed, and try getting a lot of coffee into you, just on the slim hope that caffeine can susbtitute for that stuff or help you fight the craving. We're - we're far enough away from Roswell for now, I think, no need to hit the road right away. We can revisit that when the time comes where we'll have to rebook the room or check out."

"Alright," Alex agreed, and climbed out of the bed in search of his pants. "You should hit the internet center on our way out, too - if you couldn't dreamwalk them, that seems like a reasonably safe way of staying in touch."

"Oh, right, good idea," Isabel agreed, reluctantly leaving the warm and safe feeling of the covers herself.

But there were no important new emails waiting for her after she'd dressed in her altered clothes and visited the little business room with the computers available for hire. A generous serving of spam, of course, and a notice about the scheduling of the graduation ceremony - and something sounding just a little worried from Dad, which was only to be expected considering how long it had been since they'd checked in. Nothing from her real friends, though, or any other name she recognized from this caper. (What would her reaction have been if she'd seen the name of Meris Wheeler on that list?)

So she and Alex left and drove around the neighborhood. Isabel sorted the establishments that she saw on two criteria - one, the likelihood of getting served that was vaguely like coffee, and two, the number of people, (other patrons, and staff,) who would be around to react, notice, and remember if Alex started acting oddly. It wasn't actually that long before she noticed a 'Donut Shop' whose parking lot seemed almost entirely deserted. For a moment she was actually worried that the place would turn out to be locked, despite the lit sign, but there was one girl around her own age behind the counter. Isabel ordered two a large coffee with double cream and one sugar for Alex, plus a few of the plain donuts, and got herself a carrot muffin and a medium green tea.

"So, what now?" Alex asked, after he'd taken a long swallow from his coffee and munched down a third of a donut in a single bite. "Do - do we just sit here all morning and try to keep me from freaking out because I want... want that stuff too bad to stay sane?"

"Well, keeping you sane is high on my priorities list," Isabel admitted. "Second only to keeping you alive and in good physical health, I guess. Though a little bit of freakiness can be good, but all in the right time and place." Alex laughed, a little dryly. "Beyond that, no, I don't really know what to do, in the absence of a cue from the rest of the gang - I have ideas in my head, and most of them contradict each other. Keep heading on, northward-ish through the suburban zone, until we can make the hop across to Santa Fe. Move deeper in towards the heart of the city. Just stay right in this area and attract as little attention as we can. Hang a right and drive back out into the middle of nowhere in the desert. Turn around back towards to Roswell to find our friends and back them up."

"Yeah, that would seem to cover the possibilities, at least in a geographical basis," Alex said dryly, and helped himself to another tidbit of donut. "I suspect that it's not so much about the lay of the land, though, as the more conceptual strategy and tactics of our situation. What's your strategic objective at the moment?"

Isabel took a moment to think of that, pleased with Alex's lucidity and the evidence that even struggling as he was, his mind could help them all out. "Okay - well, my own priority isn't to beat the Army's collective ass, at the moment. That's not why I came out here with you. I can trust in Max and Michael and the others to find some way to do that, even without my help. I need to keep you safe from them, no matter what, so..." She looked over at the counter, where the serving girl was loading up display trays with more freshly baked treats. "We can't stay here long, no matter how much we try to lay low. Somebody just might have noticed you already, or - or I don't know what might have happened, but we need to assume the worst. Staying in the same place might be waiting for them to come and get us."

"And moving might be driving right into a trap," Alex shot back, and his mouth quirked slightly. "Maybe we should just stay put."

"Yeah, you're right, I'm being foolish," Isabel said, laughing at herself. "So we move - and offhand, I'd rather move into the city, where the population density might help give us camoflage from any search..."

"No! No going anywhere," Alex nearly grunted. "We stay right around here."

"Huh?" Isabel looked up, very startled at this reaction. "But - but why? I mean, if you've got a reason, just calm down and explain. I'll always listen to you, Alex."

"I - I don't have a reason that sounds good," he admitted grumpily, after a second. "I just feel like - I've moved enough, come far enough, with you, yesterday. Do we really have to keep moving on?"

Looking into Alex's eyes, Isabel felt her heart sinking, because the rationality that had impressed her just one or two minutes ago was suddenly gone without a trace. And something about his attitude was reminding her of the way he had acted when she'd first showed up at his house, before she'd realized any of what was happening to him. Just what did that mean?

As Isabel pondered that, she noticed that a sudden crowd seemed to be getting out of cars in the parking lot and waiting in front of the door. Somehow that decided her. She didn't want to have an argument with an unbalanced Alex in front of that many witnesses. "Okay, so we stay. Do you want to stay right here, or can we go back to the motel?"

"Um, yes, the motel's okay."

"Good, let's go."

"What, right now? I've still got..." Alex's voice trailed off as he waved at the cardboard cup of coffee and two uneaten donuts.

"Pack 'em up. Come on, you can finish them in the car, or back in our room. I - I just want to be alone with you, no matter what we're doing, and we won't be alone here in less than a minute."

Alex hesitated, and then went along, stuffing his baked treats and her untouched muffin back into the paper bag that they had been handed over in. Isabel let him lead the way out past the queue of new people and into the parking lot, but she didn't feel at all reassured. Getting him back to the motel was a small victory, and relatively hollow if what she was suspecting about Alex's mental state was on target.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Thirteen

"Alright, convoy formation seems to be good," Tess said, craning her neck around to look behind her and make sure that she could see Sheriff Hanson's car before returning to a more usual position. "I suppose that I could try shooting some imagery over at Isabel at this point, but I'm not sure it would be anything other than a waste of mental energy. There'll be time for it later."

"Yeah, we can - can let that wait for a while, Tess," Liz agreed quietly. "There's something that I wanted to - actually, that we wanted to tell you about, I guess. Last night, in the mine, well, Max and I were both up in the middle of the night, and..."

"You kissed," Tess stated flatly. "Probably a pretty impressive make-out session, am I right?" Liz just gasped in surprised, but Tess took that much as a confirmation. "It wasn't hard to tell that something was on your minds at breakfast, or to sort out what sort of thing it might be. So, I guess the big question is - was that the big choice? Liz was up in the middle of the night, I was actually able to sleep, and so the big Max/Liz dream couple is back together? I... I won't raise a ruckus, Max, if you tell me that you're sure, that Liz is the one that you want."

Liz suffered another series of silent shocks, one at the relatively calm way that Tess was taking the news, (even considering that she'd already guessed it and had time to come up with a composed response,) and then, at the fact that Max was just quietly driving on and not answering the question. "Come ON, Max, show some backbone!" The words burst out of Liz before she'd had time to think of whether expressing her true thoughts was the wise thing to do. "You, you told me, last night, that..." She couldn't quite manage to rhyme it all out loud. That she was the only one he loved, that Tess would never compare, and so on.

"I... I did, last night," Max admitted quietly. "But, well - it was an emotional moment, and... and as much as I do still feel for you, Liz, things don't look exactly as clear in the morning sunshine." He sighed. "All three of us were doing so well with leaving the whole triangle on hold, until Alex was safe - before the two of us gave into temptation. Can't we just..."

"Maybe we can't," Liz said softly. Tess glared suspiciously at her, and even Max risked a dirty glance away from the road. "Not, not that I'm trying to be difficult - if the two of you want to try truce again, I'll do my very hardest. But - but this sort of detente is a risky balancing act, and hard enough to maintain even when starting from a relatively... symmetrical position. Now - now we've lost that initial symmetry - because you broke left, and then dodged back right, or something like that. Each of us - possibly has more to fear losing now, and also some justification for feeling like we have more chance to win your heart if we push the issue."

"We might all lose more than that," Max said softly. "Think of Alex - and Maria too, come to think of it. Her life is definitely on the scales now, if we believe what Hanson said, and all the rest of us are in harm's way too."

"Yeah, I guess that you're right," Liz agreed. "Eyes on the battle, not the love prize." There was a quiet moment. "So anything else for us to talk about?"

"Not just at the moment," Tess said with a wry laugh. "Let's just get where we're going. Actually, I feel like it's probably worth trying to send Isabel a message at this point, even though the range to find her is still extreme."

"Okay," Max agreed, and as if reminded of all the distance that they had yet to cover, he pressed just a bit harder on the accelerator, and the Jeep surged another five miles per hour above the speed limit.

-----------

"So, actual aliens in Roswell, huh?" Sarah said, breaking a silence that must have lasted for at least fifteen minutes. "The usual suspects, I'm guessing - you, Michael - and also Max, Tess, Isabel... possibly Ava."

"Who even told you about Ava?" Michael asked grumpily.

"Liz - or Tess, I can't remember who brought the name up first. In connection with whether Liz was - well, I guess if she was entirely human anymore herself, or if she was becoming alien after Max saved her life. Is it okay if I ask questions about that? How somebody could start to become alien by having alien powers exerted upon them?"

"We - we really don't know too much," Kyle told Sarah softly. "I'm - I'm possibly at risk of the same thing, though it's too early to tell because of the timing. Max saved my life from a gunshot wound too - last spring, when the FBI alien hunters came to Roswell in force. I trusted one of their agents and got mixed up into the final showdown."

"Oh," Sarah said, her face registering concern and a certain level of embarassment from worrying about something that had taken place so long ago.

"The closest anybody's been able to come to sorting out that mysterious pronouncement of Ava's, it's because Max didn't just heal Liz, but he saved her life when she was at the point of death," Michael added in. "To bring her back, maybe his alien DNA had to spread into Liz's cells and get them working again. Liz has tried to do some DNA experiments on herself, but the results haven't been conclusive so far."

"And I was at the point of death too," Kyle pointed out. "Maybe even further than Liz was. He saw her getting shot and rushed over to her as soon as he could, after all. I was behind one of those crazy partitions at the UFO Center and nobody even realized that I had been there until Dad - until you recognized that the gun Pierce was using was one of yours, Dad." He took in a rough breath, obviously shaken by remembering that day. "And figured out that SOMEBODY had to have brought him the pistol."

"Okay, would someone mind backing up and explaining this whole incident to me?" Sarah asked. "Who Pierce was, and who actually shot Kyle, and..."

"That's really a very long story," Michael pointed out, "and you need to send that email to Isabel from your phone, right? We forgot about that when we were first leaving the mine."

"Okay, sure." Sarah pulled out her phone. "What's the address?" Michael rhymed that off from memory, being quite familiar with Isabel's email, and having as he did a very sharp memory for details. "And what should I tell her?"

"Hmm..." Jim considered that, the first time he'd opened his mouth in a while. "Probably going into details about the new time rewind or Maria being in danger now too is better avoided in favor of a short message. 'Alex has a tracking implant, Army will arrive soon if you can't slip away.' That seems to be the most important thing first."

"Right," Michael said. "Mention noon to twelve forty five, especially since we're not sure just how soon she'll check email. And 'call in if you can' - leave her your number, Sarah, and keep your phone on, if it's the one we think the Army is least likely to be able to trace."

"All right," Sarah said, furiously tapping on the numeric keypad of her phone. "Anything else?"

There was no response for a few seconds. "I guess not," Kyle put in. "Send it."

"All right." Sarah pushed the 'OK' button with a flourish. "Now, Pierce details?"

"I'm not going to go back to the start right now," Michael warned her, "like just when he came to town, or how Max was captured and put into the White Room. This was after we got him back, really." Sarah let her strangled gasp fade out in some kind of relief. "Max was the one who came up with this plan for dealing with Pierce actually - he was the leader of the FBI Special Unit, which was this sort of elite alien hunting and recon agency. Tess was able to help us get rid of Pierce's two assistants with her special power..."

"Of projecting sights and sounds?" Sarah confirmed, eagerly trying to keep up.

"Yeah, that's the one," Kyle agreed. "She made them 'see and hear' Pierce, telling them to fall back and wait for him at this remote place well outside town." He paused for a moment. "Of course, I - well, I still wasn't on their side by that point, but I did see the effect for myself. Even sortof messed up the plan. One of the agents had been checking in on me, since I was the Sheriff's son and Dad had disappeared, joined forces with Max and co. I sortof clued the guy in that he was being fooled, because Tess hadn't included me in the illusion. Max had been watching to find out if things were going smoothly, and he ended up knocking the guy out and locking him in a closet. That was why I was upset enough to go and follow him later on - with a gun."

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "Anyway, for the next step, Mister Valenti went to Pierce, telling him that the agents had been 'disposed of', and volunteering to lead us into a trap. Gave Pierce a fairly good line, about how he'd learned too much about what we planned and was scared for everybody human, especially his son, now. But we knew where and when Valenti and Pierce would be coming, and we were able to use our powers, and a bit of ingenuity, to overwhelm them. Tied Pierce up until we could figure out what to do with him, and that's when Kyle came sneaking in. He untied Pierce, without making that obvious, gave him the gun, and then went off to hide and see what would happen next, right?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Kyle said, sounding just slightly mortified at this description of his actions.

"We were all taken by surprise when Pierce jumped up and started shooting," Jim Valenti said, his voice rough with the memory. "I just started shooting back by instinct, even after he ducked behind cover. Ran out of ammo, and I was trying to find another clip when he jumped back out and took aim - at all three of us, Michael, Max and myself. That was probably exactly what he'd planned, letting me waste my bullets so he could let his count."

"Oh, wow," Sarah said. "So - what happened to him then? I mean..."

"I happened to Pierce," Michael said dully. "Like Mister V, I was just acting on instinct, and more than a bit of rage. I knew that I couldn't let him fire again, so - all of the alien energy I could spare just sort of came out of me in one blast." He laughed very hollowly. "The handprint of death strike, my finishing move. Only one in the gang to use alien powers to kill - to kill a human, at least."

"There was nothing else you could have done, Michael," Jim told him. "It was self defense, not just for you but possibly everyone else who was there."

"He didn't have THAT many bullets," Michael muttered sourly.

"No, but he could have gotten Dad's," Kyle pointed out. "Anyway, this rampaging guilt is sort of stepping on the end of the story. Pierce went down, and that's when Dad started to wonder about where he'd gotten a gun in the first place."

"And he found you," Sarah guessed, softly, holding Kyle's hand firmly in hers. "You - He'd shot his own son accidentally, aiming at Pierce."

"Pretty much the size of it," Jim admitted. "They always tell us how a stray bullet could end an innocent life, but I never expected it to happen." He took a deep breath. "I'd been working with Max because he seemed much less deserving of the title of 'monster' than Pierce, because it seemed like the right thing to do, but since he gave me Kyle back... there's nothing I won't do for him or his extended family. Even if Kyle was only in danger because we'd taken sides in the whole Pierce business..." He let out a long breath. "I lost my job as Sheriff because I had to cover for Max and Isabel, and help save the life of Michael's sister, and couldn't explain any of it to the town council or Internal Affairs. I regret that things had to come to that point, but I would have done the same things if I'd had any opportunity to go back in time and change things."

"Actually, I hope that's not quite true," Kyle put in, and his father made a surprised sound. "You might have still worked to the same overall goal, but if you'd known what had caused problems, what had cast suspicion on yourself, you could have tried to achieve the same goals without the cost, right? You could have avoided putting out the APB on whatsername, the girl who wasn't really missing, because that cost you credibility when she just walked into the station, and maybe you could have kept Max and Isabel away the night you discovered Laurie out in the woods..."

"Max saved my life that night, with his shield," Jim insisted stubbornly. "Gra - the alien Queen was shooting at us with an assault rifle."

"Or you could have made sure that Max was out of sight by the time the ambulance showed up," Michael suggested. "There are ways and ways, not that it really matters, as I don't think we're going to get any do-overs on that stuff. And I appreciate all that you've done for us, Mister V. Feel like it's always a good time to repeat that."

"Okay, I need more explanations now," Sarah put in, laughing. "I heard of Laurie Dupree being found out in the woods - and possibly even the weird scandal over how Max and Isabel were there and you couldn't explain why, Mister Valenti. But - she's Michael's sister? Does that mean she's an alien too?"

"No, Laurie's human enough," Michael said, with a fond smile on his face. "It's one of those really complicated parts, but - we're not completely human, we have human DNA from people who were abducted many many years ago. My 'donor' was Laurie's grandfather. The real relationship is a lot harder to define, but 'sister' works as a convenience, especially as we're about the same effective age."

"Okay." Sarah considered all of this for a long moment. "Well, I think that you were hoping I'd be answering more questions, Mister Valenti, instead of asking them, but..."

"No, that's okay," Jim told her. "I think that I've actually learned a lot about you from what questions you've been asking, and how you've reacted to what you've heard."

"And just how can you tell the way I've been reacting?" Sarah asked. "Can you see me in the mirror?"

"Old sheriff trick," he said with a smile. "So, any other questions?"

"Let's see... what about this white room stuff?"

"Sorry, I'd rather not talk about that now," Michael insisted. "A bit too 'on the nose' considering everything else that's going on."

"Alright." Sarah considered. "Then, I dunno, I'm not sure what to ask. Maybe I *should* answer questions about myself for a while."

But nobody posed her any either. All of a sudden Sarah's cell phone rang.

"Is that Isabel?" Michael immediately asked.

"Umm." Sarah checked the display. "Nope, my Mom. What do I tell *her*?"

"Don't even answer," Kyle blurted out.

"No, come on, you have to tell her something or she'll really start freaking out. Trust me as a parent to know," Jim countered. Sarah looked between them, torn by indecision.

-------------

"So before yesterday, this had only happened to you fifteen or sixteen times?" Maria asked Mister Hanson.

"Yeah, unless I've badly lost count," Tim agreed. "I know a lot of people who've gotten more calls than that - and more saves than that, come to think of it. It was more frequent when I was living in the big city, but I don't regret moving to Roswell on that basis. Especially because there are people here in the small town, like you and Alex, who no-one else would have had a chance to help if I hadn't been here. In a place like Dallas, I suspect that it won't be so hard for - for whoever arranges this, to find someone else to take my place. Even if people who can... can do what I can are rare."

"Hmm, okay, let's see." Maria sighed. "First off, what do you mean, whoever arranges it?"

"Maybe 'who'-ever wasn't the right word," Hanson admitted it. "I... I guess I don't even know that there's a purpose, an intelligent entity behind the struggle, but it certainly seems so. The way this happens to certain people, with certain people who die and they have a chance to be near the bodies... and the Adversaries, it seems to point to a kind of organization, a competition or trial with set rules. I'm convinced that the prime mover, the one or ones who have given me this calling, are entirely supernatural, beyond this world, maybe somewhere in what we would consider the afterlife."

"Like God and the Devil, or something like that?" Maria asked, her eyes gone wide.

"Ooh - maybe, but that admittedly opens up the tricky question of which one I'm working for," Hanson admitted.

"Well, wouldn't God be the one who wants to save people's lives?" Maria asked.

"Possibly, but I'm not sure that it's that cut and dried. It's hard to be sure of the motives of either side, in terms of our little dance. We don't have that much information. Maybe it really isn't that important to them either way, just something like the Greek gods playing dice with the lives of men." Maria made a faintly disgusted sound deep in her throat. "Yeah, I don't think much of that possibility myself, and I don't think it's the leading explanation, though I might be biased by what I want to believe." He sighed. "The detail that's most troubling, in terms of conventional theology - is that the other side, the one who's willing to see the people my side try to save, dead -- that other entity seems to be satisfied with the way that the current world order is structured, the destiny that mankind is heading towards, whatever it is." He stopped at this point, wondering what Maria would make of that.

"Yes, I do see what you're saying. There's the conception of God being the one with the fate of humanity in his hands, and the Devil as the provocateur, who's trying to change the world a little piece at a time by messing with God's hands. Alternatively, we could say that the Devil has already established his sway over the mortal world - but that apparently forces God's role into that of the underdog, trying a slim chance to win the reins back, and that's awkward too." She sighed. "Maybe you're right that the traditional theology just gets us in trouble, or... no, I think maybe I have it. Maybe neither side is God, or the Devil. God is still all-powerful and in charge, but he has two great angels who have different ideals for the best destiny of mortals, and God is letting them play for it."

"Hmm." Hanson considered. "I might like that notion. Why wouldn't the Devil be getting involved, though?"

"He is, probably, but he's not on one side or the other, all the time," Maria suggested. "God doesn't allow him to enter this contest directly, but he manipulates the results as best he can, either way - trying to increase suffering in the struggle between the angels, killing people who neither side intended to die, that kind of thing."

"Alright, I'll buy that," Tim agreed. "Any other questions?"

"Well, let's see... have any of these sort of callings involved aliens, that you know of?"

"Nope, pretty sure I never heard of anything like that." He laughed. "Never even suspected that aliens were real before. And - well, I'm not sure if it's significant that I haven't actually been called by an alien, just by human kids who happen to be friends with aliens."

"Like maybe Michael - he wouldn't qualify to ask you for help, if he died?" Maria asked, feeling uncomfortable with that idea.

"Yeah, possibly. I don't know all the rules, but there might be something like that. Don't worry about it too much, though. How did you first find out about them?"

"Well, Liz told me," Maria admitted. "I sort of really freaked out - but Liz didn't let me stay that way for long. I... well, I even took part in a little scheme to distract Mister Valenti's attention away from Max. This was long before..."

"The Crash festival back in '99!" Hanson exclaimed, sounding surprised.

"What, were you there for that?" Maria knew that there had been deputies around, but couldn't remember who.

"No, actually, I was on duty across town," he told her, sounding a little disappointed. "But I heard about it the day after."

"Oh, okay..." Maria sighed, and looked outside, trying to figure out how much further it would be to Albuquerque.

-------------

Isabel stared at the computer screen in the motel business center, trying to keep the words from swimming around in front of her eyes. After all that she'd been through to save Alex, and all the worries that she'd had so far, would it come to nothing because of a few little details that she hadn't even thought of?

*No time for negative thoughts,* she insisted to herself. *Or for just wasting sitting around. Got to move, except - right, just in case.* Quickly Isabel printed off a copy of the fateful email sent from 'Sarah' - and then had to hunt through the bottom of her purse for change that would let the printer actually disgorge the page. Log off, step close to Alex. "Back to the room," she whispered, already firmly encouraging his body to move in the correct direction. "No matter what happens, remember that I love you."

"I... I love you too, but I'm worried now," Alex admitted as together the two of them maneuvered down the nearly-empty hallway. "What happened in there? Did you learn something new?"

"Message from - well, from the gang," she said. "I don't understand where all their information is coming from, but I recognize Michael's voice in the words that were sent, even if it's not his address. I trust him. We'll be getting a visit from the Army very soon, unless we're well gone before."

"So - so why back to the room?" Alex asked, and then thought about it. "We do have some stuff there, makes sense to gather it up, quickly. Is it any more than that?"

"A little." Isabel checked her watch. It was already within fifteen minutes of noon, the start of the dangerous time zone that had been given to her, but addressing the first point on the list seemed more important to her. "They're tracking you, and unless I can either take out the tracker, or at least mask it, then running isn't going to do us much good. Do - do you remember the dream of yours that I went into?"

For most of the way back to their room, that stumped Alex. And then - "The snake up my nose, of course! Straight out of 'total recall' -- do you think you're going to have to, eww, to drag it out the same way?" He put his hands up to his face by reflex as Isabel opened the door.

"Maybe," she admitted. "And - well, I'm not sure if I have time now. Do you think that there's any way to just mask the signal, until we can shake the Army somewhat?"

"In the movie, Arnold used a towel soaked with water," Alex admitted. "But I don't think any signal on the absorption spectrum of H20 is really going to be that useful as a long-range locator."

"Right, okay."

"Can you use your powers to block out the signal?" Alex asked. "I guess you'd need to find some way to sense it first."

"Hmm." Isabel considered, expanding her alien senses, trying to visualize radio or TV signals, (which she actually had tapped into with her alien powers before,) and 'scanning' for anything similar being emitted or transmitted from within Alex's cranium. Maybe it was just her heightened nervousness, but she came up completely empty. "I... I don't think I'll be able to work that in time. Gotta be the messy way out. Lie down on the bed, on your side."

"Ohh." Alex moaned, but he obediently got into position for her. "So, what, we don't actually have a metal snake. Are you just going to go in with your powers and nothing else?"

"Pretty much," Isabel said, sending a probing feeler of telekinetic energy up each of Alex's nostrils at the same time. Quickly she was exploring the segments of Alex's nasal cavity, and from there quickly checking the sinus cavities. Finally, after spending what seemed like too many seconds, she found the little metal sphere, embedded near Alex's left eye. Very gently she tugged upon it, but the implant didn't move, and the low-voiced exclamation of pain from Alex's throat tore at her heart. She would NOT be able to just rip it away, like Arnold S had in the movie, using the metal snake.

Okay, so what was holding it there? Isabel was terrified that the implant was clamped onto some kind of sensitive nerve using serrated metal teeth, but after a bit of mental exploration using her powers, it became relatively clear that it had simply been fastened to the lining of his sinus by some kind of glue or cement. A few seconds more of molecular alteration, and whatever the substance had once been, it wasn't acting terribly adhesive any longer.

And thus started the worst part - actually pulling the implant out. The first hard part was squeezing it through the narrow exit out of that sinus, (which reduced Alex to a kind of whimpering, through he tried to act as dignified and stoic as possible.) Maneuvering it through the nasal cavity segments wasn't so painful, though it was apparently oddly irritating to the delicate tissues there, and Alex almost sneezed, which would have thrown the implant around and out of Isabel's control at least for a moment. And then, one more tight squeeze - through the nostril itself.

"There, there," she cried, holding the little metal pea up. "Now what do I do with it?"

"Flush it," Alex suggested. "Since we don't have any friendly rats. They can try tracing its progress through the sewer."

"All right," Isabel agreed, and went off to the bathroom to attend to that little detail. "Come on, we've got to pack, can you gather your own stuff up?"

"Yeah, I - I guess so," Alex agreed, turning over to search for anything that might have been forgotten on the bed. "What - where do we go now?"

Isabel hesitated for only a moment. "Straight downtown. If we can't lose ourselves in all those people at the heart of the city..."

"...Then we are truly lost, with no hope of saving ourselves," Alex finished ominously.

It took only a few minutes to gather everything else and hurry out to the car. There was no time for an orderly check-out of the room, but the credit card was on file, and Isabel hoped that the motel staff would find out that the two of them had left in time to make up the room and rent it out again. Maybe she'd be able to call, once they'd driven a while, and...

CRASH! As Isabel was pulling out of the parking spot, a black pick-up truck had clipped her car near the back left wheel - not really a devastating crash, but an effective warning. It HAD to be the Army or someone with Metachem, letting her know that she wouldn't be able to get away.

Isabel acted without thinking, waving a hand and summoning the mightiest forces to her aid that she had ever conceived of. The truck just flew away from her car and the only way out of the parking lot that she could possibly drive - it spun through the air, just managing to clear over a sub-compact and crashed to the grass beyond, landing heavily on its two right tires. For a moment, nobody could tell whether it would topple down right side up or on its side, and Isabel didn't wait to find out. Putting the car into forward gear as firmly as she could, she whipped it around, denting the fender of another parked vehicle (and probably her own,) but making it to the road and turning in the direction that she was sure led towards a major street.

And then, the blowback seemed to hit her - arms and legs shaking as she tried to control the vehicle, vision growing dim. Instinctively, Isabel knew what it was that was hitting her - a reaction to the enormous force that would have been required to throw the pickup truck. That energy had to come from somewhere, from the metabolism of her body, and for a moment, at least, there wasn't left. Immediately a hand landed on top of hers, steadying the steering wheel, and also reviving her body in a small way. Alex. "Thank g... thank you so much," she whispered. "We - we just have to keep going on, no matter what..."

"Just tell me what I can do to help you," Alex's voice came back, softly, and so sweet to her ears. He didn't seem distracted or unstable at all in this moment - maybe that was another kind of polarity responding. Now that it was completely obvious that she needed him, that she couldn't make it without his support, he had no choice, deep down, but to be reliable enough for her.

"Is - are there still any sweet snacks in the car?" she asked. "Twinkies, non-diet pop, anything chocolate..."

"Let me see," Alex said. She remembered them still having quick-stop raidings along those lines when they'd arrived at the motel, and hadn't seen them since, so it made sense that neither of them had actually brought the booty in from the car, right? "Here, try this." Alex's left hand hadn't let go of her right one, but there was something else being held right in front of her face. Isabel considered letting go of the steering wheel with her own left hand, and then decided not to. She'd have to make a turn in a moment, as nearly as she could judge her surroundings. So she just opened her mouth wide, bobbed her head forward a bit, and took a definitive bite.

Rich, chocolatey pastry and sweet cream flowed over her teeth and her tongue - and a slippery piece of plastic jeered at her from between her lips. Oh, well, that didn't really matter. She swallowed as best she could without even chewing and drew her head back again, letting the wrapping emerge from her mouth again, fairly well cleaned of any trace of food. That must have been a Joe Louis cake or something of the sort - chocolate snack cake with the cream filling. It definitely hit the spot. She could almost feel the sugar and caffeine flowing into her bloodstream already, fighting off the fatigue. She was even alert enough to press her foot down on the brakes, (smoothly and without a tremor,) before crashing into another car waiting at the stoplights.

After a few more bites of the cake, and a few swallows of some kind of canned energy drink that Alex managed to find, Isabel's symptoms had nearly vanished entirely, and she was driving comfortably again. On some level, the quick recovery surprised her - didn't it take longer than a minute or two to digest even straight sugar? (Or maybe it didn't - what was that old bit about diabetics keeping a chocolate bar in their pockets? She didn't know how quickly they'd need to feel the effects of it. And the chocolate would get very melty with body heat, wouldn't it?) Maybe the effects were entirely in her mind, a sort of placebo effect, but there was no denying that she could see where she was going, and steer confidently. She even risked a look back after turning at the lights, to see if there was any pursuit. Nothing conclusive, at least.

"Alex, I'm not sure about something," she muttered. "That - that pickup was obviously after us, and though I haven't spotted it, there might be others. Would - would it be smarter to just keep charging down this main street, or take a more - more erratic route, in the hopes of being harder to follow, even if we don't cover as much ground?"

"Hmm." Alex considered that carefully. "Probably a mixed strategy would have some benefit. Most significant is the idea that taking a turn will not help if it doesn't seem likely that we'd actually lose someone in pursuit by doing so - that they wouldn't notice us turning off immediately and would just 'lose' the car, ideally. There might also be some value in taking a turn that a follower would likely see but be unable to follow, on the grounds that even if they know where we're going immediately, they might not know which turning we'd take next."

"Hmm... okay, yes," Isabel said, thinking this through. "Of course, guessing whether or not 'they' would be able to follow is tough, if we don't even know where they are in relation to us. But let's see - right turns can be made quickly more of the time, but if there's an opportunity to take a left through oncoming traffic, that window probably won't exist after a few seconds."

"You're starting to think it through," Alex said encouragingly. "Any value to using an actual randomizing device in order to determine if we should take any particular opportunity?"

"No, I don't... THINK so," Isabel grunted, immediately seizing an opportunity to swerve through a 'window' in the oncoming lanes and rocket down a side street to their left.

"Guess that settles the question, yeah," Alex agreed. "As long as this isn't a residential subdivision that'll mire us down in twists and curves and not let us get back out easily."

But it wasn't, quite. Surely enough, the houses were peaceful, the streets did have gentle arcs to them, and Isabel spotted one school, but it wasn't hard to cross the homey neighborhood and emerge onto another main street widely seperated from the one they had entered from.

She just hoped they were heading downtown. And images of herself checking a computer kept flashing behind her eyes, which she didn't really understand. She'd ALREADY checked her email, why was it haunting her? Did she need to find a net cafe and look again? They didn't have time.

-------------

"Hmm... I think that the message is getting through, but - but that's all," Tess said, groaning with frustration from the back seat. "She - she's not about to actually go and check the computer right away, and I can't quite tell why - she's aware of the idea."

"Well, don't strain yourself with repeating it," Max told her. "I know Isabel. She'll go to the business center when she's darned good and ready."

"Yeah, I guess so," Liz said, though she didn't sound favorably impressed. "What if she leaves it too long, though?"

"Then we'll have to be smart and strong, and rescue her," Tess said, her voice sounding appropriately steely and determined. "Failure is not an option when it comes to either of them."

"That sounds great as a slogan," Liz allowed. "How about making a few tentative contingency plans along the way? It helps to be smart if you've thought things through before."

"I don't know, Parker," Tess shot back. "We have no idea what we'll be facing, what kind of territory we'll be on when the showdown comes. Is there much value in going over possibilities that aren't so likely to come to pass..."

"I think that there is," Max put in. "It gets us used to thinking about the problems at least. The circumstances will change, but after a few hypotheticals we'll start to see what the most important circumstances are, how they'd affect our best strategy, and how different factors would interact."

"Alright, alright," Tess said. "Okay, well - this might be a bit morbid, but what if we start with the warehouse scenario that Hanson described? Just in case history repeats itself and we end up in a similar predicament?? What can we do to face that situation better, without risking any loss of life?"

"Hmm." Liz pondered that, trying to remember every detail Hanson had given them about the last few minutes of his 'rewind day.' "Well, first off, if we split up, it has to be more even teams. At least two strong people in each group - with Hanson and Mister Valenti counting as one together, aliens as strong on their own."

"Do you think that would help, Liz?" Max said. "Michael or Tess being with us up on the roof?"

"I'm not saying we have to stay up on the roof," Liz qualified. "But - well, as much as I tend to feel safe with you, Max, it seems like you don't have enough alien firepower to overwhelm whatever came for us yourself."

"That does make some sense, Liz," Tess admitted. "Actually, it seemed like sneaking around in the big warehouse quietly didn't accomplish much for us either. Perhaps we should just set fire to it and see what happens."

"That doesn't sound good to me," Max said. "The Army and Metachem people would have some possible plan for an escape, whether it's to slip away from us, or to come out fighting, but they'd let Isabel and Alex burn."

"Okay, yeah, good point," Liz admitted. "We need something that would give us a tactical advantage, and an opportunity to search the premises thoroughly, without putting them in danger."

"Divide and conquer," Tess suggested. "Draw Army or security guards off to somewhere that they can't sound the alarm, overwhelm them with superior numbers, don't stop until they're helpless to move at least. Repeat as needed until they're low on personnel."

"Could work," Max admitted. "Of course, in real life, somebody else will notice and sound the alarm if too many of the guards just go conveniently missing."

"Maybe sounding the alarm isn't such a bad thing," Liz decided. "It means everybody knows that they're under attack, but that'll probably just increase confusion and uncertainty, not suddenly turn them into an uber-fighting force that knows exactly where we are and how to take us down."

"Maybe not," Tess shot back. "But becoming a unified and coherent fighting force once they're attacking or under attack - that's what Army people train for every day of the year."

"And they'll still have guns, and those crazy stun rays," Max added morosely. "This hypothetical is starting to depress me a lot."

"Well, we still have advantages that they don't," Liz insisted doggedly. "Your mindwarp trick, Tess, that's a secret weapon that could get us out of a lot of trouble, if it's used right."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Tess agreed. "It's good for something, at least. But I'm not entirely sure how it could be used on an offensive basis, in a situation like that warehouse. I can create diversions and distractions when we come under attack, but..."

"Just how much can you tell about the people you're mindwarping, Tess?" Max asked. "I mean, can you sense that there are minds in a room that you can't see into directly, if nobody tells you about them? Can you sense what they're already seeing and hearing, before you push your own version of reality into their senses?"

"Yes, and yes, but it takes a long time," Tess admitted reluctantly. "Like back in Las Cruces last September, when we had to take care of those bones to get Michael out of jail. I could have counted up the people working the particle accelerator dater, but it was quicker and easier for you to give me a count over the cell phone, Max, and then I could get a lock on them much more easily. And - and I did need to tell what they were seeing, so that I could change it only enough that they wouldn't see you, or notice the space that you were in - but it was really tiring, because I was doing so much at once."

"So how long would it take you to do some preliminary scouting of a building with only your mind?" Liz pressed, interested in this possibility. "Enough to get a rough layout, figure out how many hostiles we have to deal with, if friends of ours are inside and where?"

"Hmm." Tess considered that "Depends on a lot of things. For a big building, and if I'm practically right up next to it - twenty minutes or more, I'd say, and it'd drain me for a little while after that."

"Ooh," Max said, making a face. "And it'd be even longer if you were further away, somewhere hard to spot?" Tess nodded. "Well, it's something that we can bear in mind as a possibility anyway, no matter the drawbacks."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Maybe the others will come up with good ideas too."

"We can only hope," Tess said with a bitter laugh.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Fourteen

"Yeah, Mom, Liz Parker - I'm sure that I've mentioned hanging out with her to you before," Sarah lied through her teeth to her mom. (Also through a cell phone connection.) "And Maria DeLuca. No, it wasn't really a smart idea to drive way out into the desert through the day and night, but - well, we've turned around, and we'll be back by this evening - umm, assuming that there's a gas station in the next fifteen miles. Okay, I think I'm running low on minutes, and I might need them, so for now I'm just gonna say goodbye, right? Bye." She hung up the phone and sighed. "That was - unpleasant."

"You did great," Kyle assured her, and got a dirty look from his father. "Not that it's a good thing in general to be lying to parents, but we'll all agree there are times when we have to take such measures, and if you have to lie, you might as well lie well. Right?"

"I'll go with that," Michael muttered. "It's actually a bit weird, that you're the only girl in the car right now, Sarah - well, we've split up along different lines I suppose. That was why you mentioned Liz and Maria to her, right? I mean, that they're girls, which I guess she'd think was less threatening than you heading off on a road trip with Kyle or some other guy."

"Yeah, something like that," Sarah said, and sighed pensively. "Thought about Tess, but - well, she already knows that Kyle took me home after the dance, and I wasn't sure if she'd heard about Tess staying with you guys, Mister Valenti."

"It does seem to have made a lot of the gossip rounds, well, last year when it was still 'news'," Jim agreed softly. "I guess I'm glad of that, in a way - Tess tried a few times to move out, or at least mentioned it to me, saying that she had enough money from - from her father's finances to rent a place of her own, and Max taking her to my doorstep was only a temporary solution, when we knew that there were enemy aliens in town, who had killed Ed Harding, ransacked their house looking for something, and might do who-knew what. But - but by the time that danger seemed to be over for her, enough people had 'heard' that I'd taken her in because her father was a missing person, and it would have drawn attention to have her move out without Ed making an appearance again."

There was a short pause. "And that was better for us all in the long run, that she couldn't go," Jim mused out loud. "You might be doing all right, living on your own, Michael, but you've been through the legal formalities, and they showed a certain amount of maturity in you. Tess - well, her situation is different, and I'm not sure if a judge would grant her emancipation while her father's case was still unsound, but she hasn't asked me about it."

"I didn't ask at first, myself," Michael said in a faraway voice of his own. "Isabel was the one who did all the research and made the pitch to me - when Hank was in a 'beating on me' week. And it took an afternoon in your jail, dinner with the Evanses, and hitchhiking a hundred miles out of town for me to realize that it was the answer." He sighed. "She'd better be okay - Isabel I mean. If they hurt her..."

"It's not the same answer for Tess," Kyle put in more firmly, and his words had the side effect of pulling Michael out of his worrying. "Tess is better off for staying with us, and it's better for us this way too, right Dad?" Mister Valenti nodded in instant agreement.

"We're not that far from Albuquerque outskirts now," Sarah noticed. "Just what's the plan when we get there?"

-----------

"We're low on gas now," Isabel muttered, only sparing her attention for the gauge for a moment as she maneuvered through traffic and tried to keep watch in three hundred and sixty degrees for army pursuit. "Fill up and continue on, or park here and run to ground?"

"Hmm." Alex considered the surroundings fairly alertly. "We don't have a particular hole in the ground that we're running for, so this seems like as good a place as any to get lost in the crowd for a while. If we're that low, then fill up first just in case, we need to take off again."

"I don't have that much cash to spare," Isabel pointed out, sounding worried. "Staying lost can be expensive, and - and we can't use the credit card or an ATM without a possibility of them tracking us, right?"

"Umm - use your judgement, but a bit of gas to make sure we won't be stuck anywhere sounds like a good idea," Alex said. "If we do need to hit the road, we can use an ATM - at a gas station, and then be gone before they close the net, right?"

"Sounds good," Isabel said. "We shouldn't be hard pressed to get to a gas station, if I park somewhere soon. Any ideas where?"

"There," Alex pronounced, pointing up at a sign with a big green P on it. A small multi-level car park - probably not cheaper, but it would take to find somewhere that they could leave the car for free in the downtown area, or even less expensively, and it might be worth the money in terms of safety and keeping the car lost amid so many others. As Isabel took her ticket and drove in, she looked over the arrangement on the exit side, and decided that if they were clever, there might be a worthwhile chance at leaving without paying their fare - if that was important enough to venture the risk.

"So, what is this place anyway?" Isabel asked Alex once she had found a place to park. "I mean, not the car park - or maybe. Is this JUST a car park, or attached to something else??"

"Oh, you didn't even notice it?" Alex clamped his mouth shut for a moment, eyes sparkling with amusement. Isabel shook her head, feeling frustrated. "The Coronado," he said judiciously, and waited.

And that was enough of a clue for her. "The big mall?" She'd been here a few times, along with her mother or as part of a back-to-school shopping trip with the 'cool' girls she used to hang out with. "Hmm - has possibilities, at least until it closes."

"With our resourcefulness, we can probably even find a way to stay inside after that," Alex added. "It always seems to work out so well on TV."

Isabel sighed, and rolled her eyes, suspecting that the truth would not be nearly so fun. But she took Alex's arm with both hands and walked with him, following the lighted signs for shoppers to exit the car park on foot. "Okay, what do you want to do first? There's a movie theater, right? That should be safe enough from Army guys, even if they track us that far."

"I think we could look at some showtimes," Alex agreed.

------------

"Yeah, I can definitely lead us to the motel that Isabel and Alex were in, last night," Tess said to Liz, who repeated that fact, in the third person, into her cell phone. "When Isabel dreamwalked me, she was pressing me for a plan for today, and I - I didn't have any ideas, so I kept turning it around and asking her questions." Liz didn't bother relaying that tidbit.

"Okay, we should definitely check it out," Max decided. Liz paused for a moment, then started her monkey in the middle routine with 'Max says...' "Hanson said that in the day he lived through, he thought that Isabel and Alex stayed there until the early afternoon, and then they got captured there. Hopefully we've managed to warn them enough to change that, but I want to see if we can tell for sure."

Liz was silent for just a moment, and then moved the mouthpiece away from her mouth. "Mister V says okay, they'll let us pass them and take the lead at the first opportunity," she relayed the other way around. "And he'll call Hanson, so he and Maria will get the news."

"Okay then, Tess, give me my directions," Max said. "Is it this turn coming up?"

"Umm -- yeah," Tess agreed confidently after looking for the street name printed on a big State roads sign. "Straight for about a mile and a half, then take a left."

It wasn't hard to follow Tess' directions - in fact, as soon as they'd left the highway, the motel's own signs would really have been enough for Max, but he showed every sign of paying more attention to her, not wanting to upset the temperamentally short blonde. Soon they were turning into the parking lot, and Liz let loose and "AHHY" of surprise, pointing out a heavy black pickup truck lying on its side, on the grass lawn next to the parked cars. About twenty feet away from the vehicle, a muscular young man wearing faded olive clothing could be seen, pacing back and forth, and talking animatedly into a cell phone.

"Uh-oh," Max muttered, feeling foolish now that he had been concentrating so much on Tess and the signage that he hadn't been sufficiently aware of the rest of his surroundings. His immediate instinct was to pull back out of the driveway in reverse, but Valenti, following right behind him in his van, had already pulled up close enough to block that exit. Max had no way to immediately catch Jim's attention except sounding the Jetta's horn - he was tempted to do just that, but it would probably mean attracting the attention of the man in green - the Army soldier. Had he been the one sent to catch Isabel and Alex? Then - how had his truck ended up like that? Had Isabel been able to... Max's brain boggled at the level of energy that would have been required.

After that moment of vehicular tableau, Jim backed up slightly and carried on down the road. Max noticed that Hanson's car was already passing the motel - he must have noticed something unusual about the scene and passed his old boss, trying to attract as little attention as possible by making it look like he had always been headed elsewhere.

Max was tempted to back out of the driveway, now that it was clear, but put the car into motion forward and turned away from the pickup truck instead. One car preparing to enter the lot and then backing out might not be that suspicious - two of them would definitely form a noticeable pattern. Plus, he still wanted SOMEBODY to examine the premises a little more closely, just in case there was in indication that Alex and Isabel had indeed been caught, and it looked like the three of them were nominated for the job.

Luckily, it was in the direction that Max had turned, left from the entrance, where the unassigned parking spots meant for new arriving customers to enter the office could be found. He parked and turned to the two girls. "Okay - we need to find out as much as we can about Isabel and Alex being here as we can without attracting the attention of mister Green. Any ideas?"

"We can't be interested in EVERYTHING," Tess pointed out. "What they had for dinner last night isn't worth the effort of finding out, for instance."

"We need to know how they left, and when," Liz suggested. "For that, it might help to find out what unit they were staying in."

"Okay, then I've got an idea," Tess said, and turned to Max. "You up for playing the role of my overprotective, slightly pugnacious brother?"

"Huh?" Max blinked - mostly just because that was a question he'd never expected Tess to ask him. "Umm, if you give me a lead I'll do my best to follow it."

Tess shook her head in a bit of frustration. Liz was just watching the two of them, totally bemused. "That's not going to cut it if we need to really be on the same page, Max. Okay, this is corny, I admit, but it was the only thing I could think of on short notice. I'm the irate, take-no-prisoners jilted girl, trying to find my worthless bum of a gentleman friend, who I think passed through here with the latest 'other woman.' Got it now?"

"Oh, umm, okay." Max considered. "If your overprotective brother is along, then are you pregnant or something, and I'm here to make sure that he..."

"That might be laying it on a touch thick," Tess said, and sighed. "He owes me money, and I'll get evicted if we can't scrape it up?"

"Okay, that should work." Max sighed, and looked around. "Liz?"

"Yeah, I guess I'm on lookout duty," Liz said. "Set your phones on vibrate - we can use that to send signals."

"And have the Army commanders in their headquarters pick us up from that?" Tess asked.

"Better than get caught right here," Max said. "Or you might try honking, Liz - but be ready to pull out in case he notices you because of that." He sighed. "I wish that you could wait outside the office door, but I don't think that would fly."

"I'll be okay," Liz assured him. "Break a leg." Soon Max and Tess were heading towards the office, (looking a bit the worse for having spent all night in the mine, but that wouldn't be too bad for the charade they were about to play through,) and Liz was settling behind the steering wheel, all safely buckled into the driver's seat. When she risked a look over at the green fatigues guy, he had moved over closer to the road, and was talking to somebody who had stopped at the curb in a dark red sedan.

----------

"What's going on?" Maria asked. "I thought we were all going to follow Max to the motel. So why..." As they passed, she noticed the man talking on the phone, and the pickup truck. "Ohh - because of that? What happened?"

"I'm not sure," Tim Hanson admitted. "I made the call to pass by because Max and Jim had stopped where they were, and for all three of us to be just waiting still would probably attract all kinds of people's attentions." He sighed. "So we're flying off the cuff now, and should probably start to think about where we stop driving, that the others will be able to find us. Splitting up in the big city is NOT according to the plan, not yet at least."

"I think Jim's started again, following us," Maria said, peering into the rear view mirror on her side of the car. "Which solves a few problems, but only a few." She did feel reassured that Hanson wasn't driving her far away from Michael, though, at least - but Liz was in with Max...

"Yeah, alright," Hanson said, and drove along in silence for a little while. Just as the road they were driving down was about to come to a junction, he turned off into a parking lot on the right - stretching up to a building that showed a donut chain sign on one side, and a burger franchise on the other. Maria had to wonder about that combination, and if both the brand names were actually under the same umbrella corporation.

The two cars parked with three empty spots in between them, and Maria hurried over to see Michael again. "Are we okay just waiting here?" Kyle asked irritably. Sarah shot him a stern look.

"I would think so," Jim Valenti said. "Good thinking, Hanson. Far enough that the bogey won't be able to see us, and if he or friends comes this way, we should be able to see them on the way. When Max and the girls are done with their looking around, they - well, they *should* see us here..."

"But they're back there, with the Army guy," Sarah pointed out. "What if..."

"I, well, I think that the three of them are going to be able to take care of themselves," Michael assured her. "Max and Tess - their powers are strong," he told Sarah obliquely, "and Liz is smarter than any two of us put together, except maybe Alex when his brain's not on drugs."

"Do I count as one of you for that?" Valenti kidded. Michael rolled his eyes and hugged Maria tight as a way to distract attention from his refusing to answer.

"I'm pretty hungry, actually," Maria said. "Should we actually all be standing out here in view of the road? I suppose it depends on who we actually expect to drive by first - friends or enemies."

"Friends will be more likely to recognize just the cars," Hanson pointed out, "as opposed to our faces."

"Okay," Michael said. "I can go for that. Who wants donuts and who wants the burgers?"

"How about one of each?" Sarah suggested.

-------------

Max and Tess hurried down the motel interior corridor, looking before and behind them for any sign of Army personnel - or Metachem employees, as far as that went. At the room number that Tess had managed to browbeat out of the desk clerk, Max waved his hand over the electronic door lock, and the light switched from red to green. He led the way in, getting ready to use the force field if necessary, like, if there were soldiers inside who tried to shoot them. But there didn't seem to be any obvious concern about that. In fact, if they hadn't been warned about one detail, he'd actually have been inclined to think that the guy had given him the wrong room number.

"Yeah, he was right, housekeeping's already been," Tess said, running a hand along the neatly placed bedspread. "I'm actually impressed with the job they did, at first sight."

"Hmmph," Max muttered. He was in no mood to be impressed with housekeeping efficiency. "What would the cleaning staff have done with anything that was left in the room? Toss it into the garbage cans here, or empty them and take it with them?"

Tess turned to stare at him and let loose with about a second's worth of fairly withering scorn before catching herself. "Sorry, I guess you don't have as much experience with hotels and motels as I got before I came to Roswell. Even a fleapit would empty the trash before letting someone new check in. It's easy enough to do, and would you really want to see somebody else's trash already in the can, in an ordinary situation? For that matter, would you really want to know that the people who use that room after you might be going through YOUR garbage?"

"Ahh, yes, I guess so," Max said. "Okay, one quick poke around the room, in unlikely places, to see if we can find anything that they missed. Then back out."

Tess nodded, and immediately dropped to a prostrate position, stomach down on the carpet, to peer and reach under the bed.

They didn't find too much. Tess recovered a pink scrunchy from under the bed, and told Max that it matched a style his sister wore. Max found that the top page of a sheet of sticky pads had a puzzling pattern of lines and dots on it, and peeled the paper away and stuck it to the inside of his pocket. And Tess just happened to notice that one of the dark spots on the carpet near the bed was still a slightly fresher stain than the others.

"Blood, I think," she said, worried. "But only one small spot - what do you think that means?"

"I don't know," Max muttered. "But we won't learn any more here, I think." He crossed over to the window and peeked carefully out through the vertical blinds. "I don't see our guy out there, near his truck."

"No?" Tess came up next to him, and Max felt her shoulder brushing against his arm, just gently. "Damn, that's creepy. Did he leave the area entirely, or is he--" She broke off, giggling. "Is he *inside the building*??"

"Cut it out, Tess, that isn't really funny," Max grunted at her. "Liz would have warned us if he was coming in - I've been listening for that honk." Then the obvious 'except' occured to him. "Uh-oh..."

Tess couldn't have stopped Max from opening the patio door to the parking lot and charging across, and oddly she didn't really want to. She just followed him as closely as she could, but couldn't keep up that well - she was energetic and fleet of foot, but couldn't match Max's stride when he was really running. As it happened, though, she was looking around, worried about whether the soldier would pop up from somewhere unexpected, when Max STOPPED really running, and so Tess dashed straight into him, making both teens stumble apart in different directions. By the time Tess regained her balance and stood up straight, panting heavily, Liz had already joined them. Obviously, Tess thought, Max had spotted her in the car, and decided that there was no great need to hurry as long as she was alright.

"Let's get out of here anyway," she suggested, and both of the others were happy enough to agree. Tess took the driver's seat, and nobody objected to that much.

"Soldier boy just went over to talk to somebody in this car, and then he got in the back," Liz informed them. "It didn't seem important enough to signal you about at the time." Max nodded. "They headed back the way we came, toward the road back to Roswell."

"Okay," Max said. "Well, let's see. First off, does this mean anything to you?" He pulled out the paper and handed it forward to Liz.

Liz smiled when she saw it. "Gale. It's a sort of a mathematical game you play with pencil and paper. Alex must have been teaching it to Isabel, I would guess."

"It doesn't mean anything else?" Tess asked. "Just a way to pass the time?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Liz agreed. "There are probably a few people in the world who get intensely competitive about it, but a Gale position doesn't mean anything as far as I know. This is a winning position for whoever was playing with the blue pen, but that's not surprising, since you tend to play out any particular board until it's won. Would have been more surprising to find an incomplete game."

"Okay," Max said. "Well, keep your eyes out for - dammit, I think we already passed them by."

"Where?" Liz asked, looking up from the paper, and Tess pointed off to the donut shop parking lot, her finger turning toward the back of the car as Max drove on. "Oh, um - turn right here, I think there's another way in without having to retrace our route or do a full circle."

----------

"Dammit, no movie theater in the whole place," Isabel exclaimed, disappointed, after rechecking the mall directory poster. "What's your next favorite?"

"Computer games?" Alex said with a slightly lopsided, (but endearing,) grin, pointing at a listing for an arcade.

"Oh, come on, really? We're not stuck in Vegas with nothing better to do because our fake IDs are too fake, are we now?"

Alex laughed a bit ruefully then, reminded of his all-too-brief stint as a blackjack high roller. "Come on, open mind. There'll be some cool stuff in there, I suspect, and after all - we're trying to stay lost, and who'd look for us in there? Eighteen years olds wouldn't be caught dead in an arcade."

"Depends on the eighteen year old," Isabel muttered, but she did see his point. Also - though Alex seemed a lot like himself at this point, she didn't want to risk him starting to act erratically in a public place like this. Going along with what he wanted, and overstimulating his senses with electronic entertainment, might well be a good idea for fending off another depressive cycle or round of intense withdrawal symptoms. (Though she'd probably need to keep a close eye on him just to make sure that he didn't get TOO manic. Always a delicate balancing act, being with a guy in Alex's situation.) "Okay, then, sure, let's give it a try."

So they went down to the 'entertainment center,' which wasn't exactly crowded but certainly full enough of a reasonable population of Albuquerque young people. (At least, Isabel assumed that most of them were locals and not visitors from elsewhere like they were.) And quite a lot of them were about Alex and Isabel's age, though there were many preteens as well and a few who were probably no older than seven or eight. Alex led her up to the machine to get a few bills changed into piles of quarters, and then scanned the area. "Let me pick something for you," he suggested. "No aliens, no shooting or hacking apart bad guys or martial arts fights - does that sound right?"

"Hmm." Ordinarily it would be a fairly good listing of the kind of video games that she would refuse to consider playing, but today, with the anger and adrenalin of the alien hunters chasing her not far away -- "Actually, I could get into some shooting or stabbing... of bad guys only, of course." Alex shot her a sidelong look that seemed to be equal parts surprise and concern. "But you can show me to a fluffy pink clouds and candy-canes game first if you like."

Alex laughed, which seemed to reassure them both. "Not sure if I know a game that's quite THAT girly, but - ooh, Clyde might be worth a try, and it's open." He led her off to a particular machine.

"Only one set of controls," Isabel pointed out as they drew near. "We can't play together." Maybe that was one reason that nobody else was giving 'Clyde' a try.

"Yeah, there's a multiplayer mode, but we have to take turns," Alex admitted. "Do you want to go first?"

"Nah, I'd probably just die quicker, if I don't have a chance to watch you show me how it's done." Alex considered this, and nodded after a moment. He put in a quarter for each of them, selected the two player mode, and let an introductory graphic go through, telling them about Clyde the treasure hunter, how he had discovered a series of strange castles n the clouds, and needed to find his way through them, collecting all the pretty gems and special artifacts found within. There were a few demonstrations of how Clyde could jump around, and use a little magic wand to make a certain kind of bricks temporarily vanish after he walked over them, or set off bombs that would blow away other sorts of blocks - and kill himself too, if he wasn't careful.

"Alright, castle one," Alex said, selecting it from a list, (though he didn't have any other options yet,) and beginning to play out the level. Isabel could see how the controls worked fairly easily - the joystick only really went left and right, with one button for the jumping action and another to use the wand. Soon Alex was wanding away a large structure of bricks to see what was underneath. "I think that there's actually less stuff you can use the wand for in this one as you go on to the later castles," Alex remarked offhandedly.

"Alright," Isabel said, filing that away, though she wasn't sure how far they'd get. It did seem like an interesting challenge though. "Ooh, gems!" Sure enough, as the last layer of bricks vanished, a row of a dozen sparkling green stones were revealed, each hanging in midair about Clyde-waist high.

"Yep," Alex remarked, walking Clyde through the row - each gem vanished as the little graphic character touched them, and a status line on the bottom of the screen - up from 0/200 to 12/200. Well, each one helped. "Ooh, better look out." The top row of bricks was suddenly starting to reappear, as the wand's effect ran out.

"Go to the side," Isabel prompted him, and with a smile, Alex got Clyde out of the area that would shortly be completely filled with bricks again. "Oh," she exclaimed, something new occurring to her as Alex moved onwards into the castle. "One of us should be keeping an eye out - just in case."

"If you think that's more important than learning the ropes, then sure," Alex laughed. "I don't really think they'll have tracked us down quite so quickly."

But Isabel did keep at least half an eye looking around, (or two eyes a quarter of the time,) while Alex played through the first Castle. He found the exit first, but couldn't use it without the gold crown artifact apparently, and then after he had completed the sequence of climbs and jumps necessary to claim the crown and get back out of the vault it was stored in, he remembered that it was important to find every last gem of the 200, or he'd just have to go back and try again. However, he missed a jump, and Clyde fell to his death.

So Isabel took her first turn, and immediately had a question that she hadn't wanted to bother Alex with while he was playing. "What's the third button for?"

"You know, I'm not sure," Alex said. "Try tapping it here, should be safe." So Isabel pressed it. The action froze momentarily, and a message read 'Tap button C again to abandon castle and your play.' A counter measured off five seconds while she stared at that idea, feeling perplexed, and then the action resumed.

"Why would they have an option like that?"

"Time saver, or maybe the only way to get out if you're stuck really badly," Alex suggested. "If you can't get out of the castle, or even find a way to kill Clyde." He smiled. "It also represents a five-second pause, which might be helpful in a really tough jump sequence or something like that."

Isabel smiled at the thought, filed it away for reference, and started to plan her turn, bearing in mind what she had learned about the first castle from watching Alex tackle it. When she could, she checked on Alex to make sure that he was paying attention to what was going on around them, not just watching her face. More than half the time when she met his eyes, he was staring right back at her, but she couldn't bring herself to scold him for it as long as he occasionally looked around.

-----------

"Okay, so what's the plan?" Max said quietly, as he settled down at a table with a badly needed bacon cheeseburger combo meal on his tray. "Isabel and Alex aren't here - it looks like they cleared out quick, and got into trouble with an Army guy in that truck, but did manage to escape the area." He paused and thought. for a moment. "Can we trace them ourselves? Or is it better not to try, lest we lead the Army to Alex ourselves?"

"I say we force the issue with the Army ourselves somehow," Michael muttered pensively. "Like going to that place that Mister Hanson - remembers. But we'll have to be smart about it."

"And just what would that entail?" Hanson asked, sipping from a black coffee, and then tearing a small piece off a chocolate dip donut to pop it into his mouth. "Being smart about going up against the Army, and..."

"For starters, we're not going up against the whole Army," Valenti pointed out. "We can't be, no matter what other conspiracies might eventually get proven true. You're not going to find THAT many army men willing to hunt an enemy that's living within the US borders. That's against posse comitatus."

"What the heck does that mean?" Michael asked him, wrinkling his nose at the big word.

"Basically, that the Army cannot hunt outlaws or fugitives within the states," Max explained. "It has to be up to police forces, FBI, SWAT, what have you. Which is probably why the main Special Unit established itself inside the FBI. That was the closest legitimate organization to share their mission statement. Led to less questions."

"And when the Special Unit was disbanded, some of its people might have moved into the Army and tried to still be aware of the old objectives," Valenti supposed. "Recruited a few new friends, perhaps. That has to be what we're up against. We're limited in their resources, but they must be too. Neither of us really know what the other is capable of, though they may know more than we do, because of - of what they managed to do with Alex. If we plan our strategy right, we can beat them."

"How about the old divide and conquer trick?" Michael started.

"That depends on being able to predict, and to some extend predicate, the other side's movements," Max pointed out. "Can we know enough about where they are to catch a few far from help?"

The other table had much less tactical discussion going on, and it was that one that Liz and Tess drifted to after getting their own meals up at the counter, to join Maria, Sarah - and Kyle. "So, did the two of you settle what happens to Max, on the drive up here?" Maria asked, picking up a few skinny french fries and waving them at her best friend and the traditional rival.

"Umm..." Liz swallowed, and looked over at Tess, who just shrugged. "No, umm, I guess we sort of decided that we couldn't afford to open up the angst kettle while things are still - dangerous. So it's back to the triangle, and pretending that everybody's fine with that for now."

"I - well, I'm sorry to hear that, I guess," Sarah said, putting her hand on the back of Kyle's for a moment. "And I hope that you don't have to keep it up for long. That sort of arrangement never lasts for long, on TV at least."

"I hope that we don't have to keep up the whole 'running for our lives, danger and uncertainty' thing for long," Tess pointed out in a tired mumble.

"Well, Max and the guys seem to be working on the plan for our next sortie," Liz said, pointing out their table. "Go ahead and put your two cents in, if you feel like it. I won't be stopping you."

"Hmm - really?" Tess didn't jump to take Liz up on her offer. "Why didn't you go to join them, anyway? You've got a good brain - couldn't face any more contingency scenarios?"

"It wasn't that, really," Liz admitted, taking a bite out of her burger as Tess dug in her purse for some hot sauce and sprayed it over a cruller. "Just - well, I guess I didn't want to barge in there, and make you feel like you had to come along to keep me from spending time with Max without you. For one thing, I don't think that table would be big enough for all six of us."

"Well, I'm happy enough over here, right now," Tess decided. "Would rather forget that we're in a war than plan out the next battle."

There was a kind of a silence after that. "Oh, incoming," Sarah said, pointing directly between Liz and Tess. The two girls turned toward each other and swept their gazes the other way - and both spotted Max coming towards them at just about the same moment.

"Well, my two favorite girls," Max said with a bit of a secretive smile on his face. As he got close to the table, he dropped down slightly, bending his knees so that his head was closer to their level as they sat, and putting one hand on a shoulder of each girl. "Something has occured to me that you said you were going to tell us all more about, and never really got around to it."

"What, what do you mean?" Liz asked, feeling puzzled.

"Oh, about - about what we learned up in the desert rocks?" Tess said, shaking herself slightly with the realization. "From the - the names?"

"That's it," Max agreed. "We were kind of distracted, but this might be the time that we need to follow up on any leads that you have, anywhere that we can go to..."

"Yes, right," Liz said, suddenly seeing it. "There - there were two places that - that they went, here in Albuquerque, the day before - day before yesterday, I guess." Max nodded. "One was - it must be the same place that Hanson described, the warehouse."

"Yes," Tess agreed. "I thought that something was familiar about it when he told the tale, but dismissed it as deja vu from the alternate future, even if he thought that nobody else could get a glimmer of their memories from what never was. It was busy then, with a lot of - I'm not sure what all the people were, some forces guards, and..."

"Okay," Max said, weighing this new information. "We - we probably figured that much out in the collapsed timeline, though we might not have told Hanson. He didn't really explain how else we found out that Isabel and Alex were being held there."

"He didn't explain how or when he found out about us, either, did he?" Tess asked, and Max shook his head. Liz sighed and looked thoughtful and a bit depressed.

"What about the second place that you mentioned..."

"That was a small house in an inner city neighborhood," Tess blurted out quickly, before Max could actually speak Liz's name out loud, though everybody felt it hanging in the air among them. "Actually half a house, a sort of a duplex, though you get to the other half through the back door. Probably built that way for more privacy."

"Okay, who did they meet there?" Max asked. "Did it look like it was anyone important?"

"There - there was an old man, lying in a bed with hospital-type equipment around, and nurses or somebody in attendance," Liz said. "I - I'm not sure what they talked about, but he MUST have been important, otherwise why would they have gone to see a sick guy? He might even be dying, come to think of it."

"Wait a second," Sarah said a bit excitedly. "You, umm - someone mentioned that Metachem was mixed up in all this, right?"

"Well, yeah," Maria agreed more quietly. "Kyle's Dad and Mister Hanson talked about that, when we were all up at the cabin. They interviewed Alex's father - he works at Metachem, and he passed Hanson a message, that he couldn't talk while on the premises, and met up with them later. Metachem provided him with the - the drugged soda, that was used to influence Alex, and I think they were the ones to interview him, and threaten the parents, at least part of the time."

"Why do you ask, Sarah?" Max asked her. "Did that ring a bell for you? Metachem and somebody who's terminally ill connected to the company?"

"Umm, yeah, maybe, but I couldn't say who," she admitted. "I don't even know that much about the company, really, so I might be thinking of something else."

"Well, we'll take it as a hypothesis anyway," Tess suggested. "They were meeting with the leader of the Metachem side of the operation. I'm not sure how much he could help us call off the Army, no matter what Max, but there weren't a lot of guards and what-have-you inside the rooms of that house."

"Anybody watching it from further away?" Max asked. Tess shrugged. "Okay, well, we'll give it a try. Come in through the back, maybe, and then make our way through to the other side of the house. But probably not all nine - we're too noticeable going around in convoy."

"Okay," Liz said. "But - but you have to be one of the ones who goes to that address, Max. I - I don't know why it's so important, but--"

"Maybe because Max has the healing - 'talent', right?" Sarah guessed. "If the old guy is sick or dying, that sounds like it's of key importance. If Max could - could help him, maybe that's what it'll take for him to call off Metachem and help us escape from the Army guys."

There was an impressed silence, which Max broke with a groan. "Just - just when did you find out about my - my talents?" he asked Sarah.

"Yesterday, driving up to the mine," Sarah told him with an irrepressible giggle. "I told Liz and Tess that I needed to know your capabilities, if we were all going to be working together."

"Well, she's got a point, anyway," Kyle said. "But I don't think that the two of us need to be on this squad. You, Tess, my Dad..." Kyle nearly jumped as he noticed Liz nearly staring a hole through his face. "... and Miss Parker, if you don't think that she's too precious to you to risk, your Majesty."

Sarah jumped slightly as Kyle pulled out that old taunt to Max, and Tess rolled her eyes - the royalty thing was one detail that they did NOT need to explain to anybody else. But Max was just nodding gravely. "She's eligible, according to her qualifications - but in this situation, I might want to have Mister Hanson backing us up, if he's willing."

"How are you going to keep Michael out of the action?" Maria asked Max.

"The obvious way," Max said, standing up straight again, and shaking out one knee slightly. "Pointing out that it's up to him to keep the defenceless safe - including you yourself, darling."

"Hey, I might not have - umm, unexplainable talents, but I'm far from helpless," Maria informed him.

Max nodded slightly, and then went over to the other table to fill them in on the plan.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Fifteen

Max felt a silence lurking in the Jetta as he drove down a run-down street and parked more or less between number 40, a small two-story house, and forty-four, a more spread-out building that seemed to be all on one level except for maybe attic crawlspace under the peaked roof. Number 44 also had a big closed garage on its grounds, which looked big enough to house an actual meth lab, but he had to admit in the absence of further evidence, probably didn't.

But neither of these were the objective at the moment. After sharing a look, he, Tess, and Liz all left the car in unison, locking and quietly but firmly closing their doors. Max tried to lead the way between the buildings at a brisk walk, but Tess ended up a few feet ahead of him because she hadn't had to circle around the car, and he let her go first, staying to the left so that he'd be able to see if something threatened and put up his shield in time. Though he didn't turn around to look at her, from the sound of sneaker steps behind him Max knew that Liz was bringing up the rear, and motor noise indicated that a second car was coming in to park, just in time.

A few minutes later, Jim Valenti made his way up next to Max as he and Tess waited, peeking occasionally around a corner of that big garage. "So what does it look like?"

"Clear and open, as far as I can tell," Max had to admit, though he couldn't hide the fact that it bothered him. "No signs that anybody's watching this side of the house, never mind guarding it."

"Obvious guards would draw attention anywhere," Jim pointed out with the voice of many years of experience. "Watchers, in one of these houses, say, would be much harder to watch themselves."

"It would take a lot of work to arrange for watchers in houses across the alleyway," Tess pointed out. "Possible, especially with money and/or military intimidation, but would they really think it was worth going to so much trouble?"

"Maybe, if this were a carefully arranged trap," Max mused. "But then, I think that they'd have made sure we got this address by a slightly more certain route. I find it really hard to believe that the Army was counting on us spying on them with alien Orbs."

"Yes, I'd tend to agree with that," Jim agreed. "There was one guy outside front, apparently just hanging out on the porch, and a few people sitting in parked cars without tinted windows. That's the level of care that's apparently being taken with this location, as far as I can tell. Fairly simple, low-profile private bodyguarding tricks, the sort of thing that an important executive might routinely take when he's travelling incognito. So, Max, any suggestions for our next move?"

Max hesitated for a second. "Wasting time scouting out further is no good - if somebody IS watching, it'll just make sure that they do see us, and have the chance to figure out what to do about us. You and I'll go first, Ji - Mister V, then Liz and Sheriff Hanson. Tess can bring up the rear."

"I could try to cover you with a..." Tess started, but Max shook his head at that, not turning to face her.

"You can't cover all five of us, not if we're spread out. Be ready with a good diversion in case anybody runs into real trouble, but aside from that I don't think we need to rely on any deceptions. Any other questions?"

"Can you tell if somebody's in the house?" Valenti asked mildly. "The back half - or the part that the back door connects to. Just where is the boundary, any way?"

"It's a floor, with no internal stairs breaking it," Tess said. "I do remember that much. The back door is sunk nearly two feet underground, as you can see, and the front porch is up a lot of steps."

"So we're going to need to find some way to lift us all up that level," Max muttered, not impressed by that detail. "Not sure I'd like to push that much with only my powers."

"We can make a ladder out of a wall, or something like that," Tess suggested. "That was what I was thinking of."

"But in terms of people home downstairs - no, I umm - I can't tell for sure," Max admitted. "There's a sort of a driveway there, and no car in it, but that doesn't really prove anything clearly."

"Do you want me to try to scan for minds inside?" Tess said reluctantly.

"Can you sense where electricity is running inside?" Liz suggested, stepping up to them.

"Or just listen for sounds that far?" Hanson put in.

"You didn't learn that much about the limits of our powers 'yesterday', did you?" Tess asked the lawman with a slight sarcastic roll of her eyes.

"I learned that you HAVE limits, that you can't do everything, or nothing would have happened to... anybody," Hanson muttered. Liz's face fell at the reference to the collapsed timeline where her best friend had died - both of her best friends, now, really, were on the line. "In terms of where the line is in any but a few particular directions, no, I don't know. And maybe this is a conceit, but just possibly I might suggest something that you've never even thought of trying to do."

"I'll try scanning for electricity and sounds from closer - just outside the house," Max decided. "That should be feasible - distance makes a lot of difference when it comes to working with energy. But no matter what I find out, we have to go in. It'll just change our strategy slightly."

"Tactics," Valenti remarked. "Our strategy is the same no matter what - go through the downstairs to the other side of the house, and confront the old man who Liz and Tess saw. The tactics, the specific choices we make to implement that strategy, is what might be affected by people downstairs."

Max shook his head slightly and led the way out across the alleyway.

-----------

As Isabel and Alex left the mall video arcade, arm in arm, she suddenly stopped still and made a very little worried 'ohh' sound. Alex immediately looked around for any sign of soldiers, (even in civillian clothes,) or doctor/scientist types, but noticed nothing. Nobody at all seemed to be paying any attention to the two of them. After a long moment spent scanning their surroundings in every direction, he turned back to Isabel. "What's wrong, honey?"

He was surprised to find that Isabel was digging furiously in her purse. "There was one other thing in that email I got from - well, from whoever, or Michael. The warning about the - the thing in your head, that I took out, and that the Army was going to take us in around noon. And then..." Finally Isabel withdrew a folded piece of paper from within one leather pocket, smoothed it flat, and read from it. "When you can, call in at such-and-such number. We think it's secure."

"Oh, okay," Alex said. Looking around, he saw a small bank of pay phones, more or less right in front of them, and realized what had prompted Isabel to remember that part of the message right now in the first place. None of the payphones were in use at the moment, and one had a crude 'out of order' sign stuck to it, but the other two seemed to be working well enough.

After Isabel punched in the number, a recorded voice told her how much change she'd have to enter to place the call for the first few minutes. Possibly the phone itself was already in Albuquerque, (the email had also mentioned that they were all heading in that direction,) but the exchange number was Roswell based, so the phone company insisted on the usual long distance rate. Fortunately they both still had a fair number of quarters left after the arcade.

Then it rang and rang and rang - Isabel counted up to seven before finally a familiar voice answered. "Hello?"

"Michael - it's Isabel. What's going on? Alex and I are safe for the time being, I think. I checked the email just in time, though something kept nagging me about it afterwards."

"Oh, that was probably Tess trying to make sure that the message got through," Michael said, and chuckled slightly. "Good to hear from you, but I think the plan is NOT to meet up yet - stay safe, and stay hidden. Got it?"

"Yeah, alright. I don't have long unless I want to feed the payphone more. Is Max there?"

"No, he went to confront some old man who's apparently important in the whole scheme somehow - with Liz, Tess, Jim, and Mister Hanson. I've got Maria here, and Kyle, and a young lady named Sarah who's lending the use of her phone."

"Thank Sarah for me, very much," Isabel told him. "And take care of everybody, especially Maria. Is there anything else that we particularly need to know?"

"I can't think of anything," Michael admitted. "Oh - but I think that somebody wants to talk to your friend..."

Isabel turned to Alex, and he was grinning and subtly holding his hand out as if to take something. "Yes, of course!" She stepped back a half step and handed the receiver over, guessing that Michael was passing the cell phone to Maria in a similar way.

But she was partly mistaken. "Hi, Kyle, to what do I owe the pleasure?" was the first thing that Alex said after a moment to recognize whoever had just told him hello.

-----------

Max poked his head out of the hole that had been made in the ceiling/floor and looked around for guards or anybody as well as he could, gripping firmly on the ladder that Tess had fashioned for him. No signs of anybody at all in this room - it was very small and dark though - a closet? He brought up one hand, making it glow slightly, and confirmed that impression - a large walk-in closet full of men's clothes. A promising place to make their entry, come to think of it. "It's safe, come on up," he whispered downward, and then did his best to clamber silently off the ladder and up out of the hole.

Nobody had been at home downstairs except for a fiercely disapproving cat, though there was quite a lot of clutter and signs of a family living there, so it was a bit of a mystery where they all were on this Saturday afternoon - off on a trip to the zoo or something fun like that, Liz had suggested hopefully.

"Hey there, handsome," Tess muttered as she climbed out after him and looked around in the dimness - Max had let his own light fade out, and Tess didn't try the same trick herself. "I think all five of us won't be able to stand in here unless we close the trap door again - and it might be better to leave the line of retreat open, just in case."

"Yeah, good thinking," Max allowed, though he was starting to get a notion of where this line of thought might lead, and he didn't particularly like it. He peered down through the trap, but couldn't really see who was down there. "Tess thinks that four should make our move together, while one stays behind to - umm, to watch the line of retreat I guess."

"Okay," Liz called back up (quietly) after a moment. "Do I have to stay down here after you make your move, or is it just an advantage of surprise thing?"

"It doesn't have to be..." Max started, then decided not to argue that point if Liz was resigned to it. Liz had a clever mind, but in a possible showdown with private security, he'd rather have the two lawmen (or lawman and ex-lawman,) backing him up. But that thought led him to the answer to the question that Liz had posed. "Yes, I will call you up as soon as things are relatively safe up here."

So Jim and Mister Hanson climbed up the ladder into the closet as well, and after a moment they all burst out the door nearly at once. The next room was a spacious bedroom, and Max kept running, dodging around chairs and some wheeled tower of medical machinery that apparently wasn't in use at the moment, racing for the old man lying in the adjustable bed. The old guy called out, gurgling slightly in his surprise, and the bedroom door opened, with a man in a suit poking his head in, concerned, but Max was at the bedside by then. "I think that it'd be a good idea if you told your friend to wait outside," he said in a low, clear, and just slightly threatening voice. (He'd been working on that one for a little while now.)

"Are you sure we want him to go, Max?" Tess countered. "He'll tell his co-workers, and we'll be stuck in a hostage situation here." This was accompanied by a meaningful look - she didn't want to mention the lower floor or the back entrance out loud just in case the guard wasn't smart enough to figure all that out by himself, but there was every reason to expect that route could be blocked off regardless.

Max could see her point, but he was riding high on instinct just at the moment and his instinct was pushing him in a slightly unexpected direction. "Yes, that's fine though. It won't be a hostage situation in a little while, because we're going to make friends with this charming gentleman very quickly." He shot a glance of his own over at Jim Valenti - Mister V could overrule him, because he had the experience and the calm objective basis for making a rational choice, but Valenti just nodded slowly - either he understood what Max was doing and agreed with it, or he had blind faith. Just great - it looked like the answer was all up to Max.

So he turned back to the old man - not a terribly old man, but fairly sick looking, with leads connecting to him a monitoring machine, and an IV drip. Max recognized a ventilator machine on the other side of the bed, but it wasn't in use, the tube that might lead down a human throat sitting carefully in a sterile sheath. There must be a nurse, if not a doctor, nearby, to check on all of this gear, he knew. But right now the man also looked reasonably healthy in certain ways, as he waved the guard out of the room. "I - I have to admit that I'm intrigued by that response, young man," he said. "If you cannot live up to your stated goal of winning me over quickly, this situation might get extremely dicey for you and your friends. But I'm willing to let you try - I have my suspicions about who you are, and why you have come, but it would be good if you make introductions on your own terms, instead of letting me state my guesses out loud."

Max hesitated, and then realized one thing. "I should call for..."

"No, you should stay there," Tess pointed out to him. "I'll get the last member of our merry troupe up here."

"There are more of you?" the old man asked with a bit of an eye-twinkle and an attempted wink that didn't work too well.

"Yes, there are," Max admitted. "And - well, as awkward as this might be considering that we've come looking for you, and gone to a lot of trouble to talk to you - but we don't really know who you are either, sir."

"Really? Fascinating. We must have many interesting things to tell each other then, I suppose."

Max looked over to Valenti and Hanson for help as he waited for Tess to bring Liz, but they were both standing against the wall - clearly they felt that this was up to him to handle, for their own reasons. "Let's see - I'm from Roswell - and my name is Max Evans, if that means anything to you." The old guy didn't give anything away to that. "Yesterday - well, my sister started to get worried about her friend, Alex Whitman. The more worried she got, the more she started to find out - about some very nasty stuff that has been going on to Alex lately - people drugging him, asking all sorts of weird questions, threatening his parents, even a possible plan to get him into a car accident." Max waited a second.

And in that moment, Liz walked into the room from the open closet, and delivered the big line that he'd been more or less leading up to. "And there are signs that all of this stuff could be traced back to a company called Metachem. Do you have anything to do with Metachem, sir?"

The old man let loose a chuckle that turned into a wet, hacking cough. "Very bold, aren't you, my dear, whoever you turn out to be? But yes - my name is Clayton Wheeler, and I'm the majority stockholder and chairman of the board of Metachem. And since I suspect this might be your next question - yes, I knew about your friend, young Mister Whitman, and the - the project, surrounding him. I did authorize certain... certain parts of that operation that would have to stay clandestine - but I did NOT sign his death warrant. Do you know if..." here Clayton coughed and wheezed a bit more. "Do you know if he's still alright?"

"That - that certainly wasn't what I expected you to say, Mister Wheeler," Max admitted honestly. "After all of this, do you really expect us to believe that - that you really care about Alex's well-being?"

"I'm not quite sure what you'll believe, but I maintain that yes, I don't have a... (glurk,) a heart of stone, and I'm terribly concerned about what a mess I might have gotten that young man into. I've been a father myself, in my own time, though I didn't do particularly well at it, but my conscience has indeed been gnawing at me about the danger I've created for the child of one of my employees. You may well indeed look upon me as the lowest of vermin - but bear in your minds, that my own need was great, and that I can help get Alex out of the fix that I've helped to fashion - and the rest of you as well, I think."

"Okay, now we're getting to the nub of things, and you might as well cut out the fancy, poetic speech," Tess suggested. "Since you mentioned your great need, can we assume that you won't lift one finger to help unless - unless we help you too?"

Clayton hesitated for a long moment, and Liz muttered. "We don't have time to wait for you to let your conscience gnaw that one down too, Mister Wheeler. What did you need from this whole scheme, anyway? Is it a health emergency or something, that modern medicine can't help you with anymore? You heard rumors about an alien with healing powers in Roswell, and figured it was your only chance to find him and pressure him into helping you?"

"Then you were approached by someone else - maybe he was rumored to have a lead already so you were asking for his help, or you were both following up the same lead," Tess continued, walking up the other side of the bed from Max and leaning close to Clayton. "Someone in the Army, maybe, who used to be inside or close to the FBI Special Unit before Congress shut it down. They promised that they could bring you the Healer, get him here standing in this room, guns pointed at him so that he would HAVE to save your life. All that they needed from you was a bit of high-tech research into special weapons that were already on the drawing board, and the opportunity to question a witness, who you already had access to, because John Whitman was working in your Roswell plant."

"A remarkably good guess," Wheeler said, and wheezed again. "At least, to the best of my knowledge. My wife, my merry Meris, was the one who was contacted by the Armed services gentlemen in the first place, and carried through a first round of negotiations. Meris is a - a remarkable woman, with more determination and steel in her than I, but for someone of such mettle, the lines between right and wrong are sometimes -- harder to see." Liz had to snort. "When I admitted my doubts to her, she said that I was just becoming so weak that I could not control my fear, and that she would see the plan through and save my life, despite my own qualms." As he mentioned that, Clayton seemed to realize something alarming. "The guards here - they were hand-picked by her - she was concerned that I might try to countermand her, and end Metachem support of the operation. They will probably be notifying her that unexpected visitors got past them, right now!"

That news electrified Max and his friends and companions. "Mister Wheeler, I am the healer that you were looking for," he admitted before he could think of whether it was really a good thing to admit, despite how friendly and reasonable the old man seemed. "I will help you if I can, but I don't think it would be a good idea to stay for that just now. We'll do our best to make sure that your wife, also, comes to no harm - but these 'Army gentlemen' are out for alien blood and won't stop until they get it all - and deal with Alex, anybody else who could expose what they've done. How much can you help us?"

"Give me pen, give me paper," Wheeler said, sounding just as anxious as Max felt now. Liz immediately dug into her purse. "Do everything that you can to deliver this to Toby Cagle, the manager of our Albuquerque office on White avenue. He'll start the wheels moving as far as he can, and help you out with anything you ask of him. That is as much as I can do for you now, Max Evans." Max jumped slightly, and only at that point did Wheeler pick up the pen and put it to the paper. "Yes, I know that much about you, and so do my wife and the Army alien hunters. They will not hesitate to use everything that they know to bring you in - and to kill your friends, if they must." Wheeler sighed. "Probably neither of us can know for sure, but I suspect that you have done much to confound and stimy them over the past day or so."

Max looked around at his friends. "Yeah, I hope so. It's certainly been the kind of weekend that I never planned on."

Liz reached out a hand to take the paper that Wheeler had written on, and get her pen back. "Is that it?" she asked him dubiously, showing the paper to Max and Tess - it showed an unusual geometric construction, and several lines of scribbles that none of them could make sense of.

"Yes, he'll know what it means."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Tess complained. "What if you're actually giving him instructions for how to best restrain us?"

"He knows that better than I do," Wheeler admitted. "But - but I wanted to use something that Toby will know came from me, and that nobody else - not even my darling wife - would understand if it fell into the wrong hands. The sign is simply an identification, and the characters are shorthand of a form that we used back in the old days - telling him how Meris went too far, that he's to pull Metachem out of this project - including as much of Meris' backup as he can get to without her countermanding directly. That those who bear this note to him are my friends, experienced in such situations, and that I'm trusting them to get Meris out safely, and he should assist them as much as he can."

"Okay, about Meris, what should we be expecting?" Tess asked. "This could be important."

"I'm not sure how to answer that quickly," Wheeler admitted. "In terms of how you recognize her - she's a striking blonde, much younger than me... people whispered that she was a gold-digger when we married, but recently I've had occasion to appreciate that she'd rather see me healthy and give up every worldly inheritance than enjoy all the power and wealth of what I've built. But that doesn't matter. She's brilliant and devious, and so I can't tell you simply what she might be planning or how to outmaneuver her."

"Alright," Max agreed. "Two things - how should we best get out of here without having to go directly up against security? And - and how long do you have before I'll need to do my best to resolve our unfinished business?"

"Don't worry too much about that last, yet," Wheeler assured him. "The cancer has spread from my stomach, but I'll have weeks or more, yet. In terms of your exit - I suggest the window over that way, for simplicity and unexpectedness."

"Yeah, right," Tess agreed, and looked around, trying to orient herself. "Back of the house is that way?" she asked, pointing back towards the closet. Wheeler thought a moment, then nodded gravely. "Then - okay..." Before Max could stop her, Tess took a run from a standing start in the middle of the room, charging straight into the middle pane of the wide window. "Geronimo!!" To everyone's surprise, she passed entirely through the thin curtain, (which fluttered slightly with the breeze of her motion,) and the window beyond. There was the sound of something falling onto grass. "Come on, we don't have much time. Max, I'll need that shield!"

Max and Liz shared a look, and then Liz followed in the direction that Tess had gone, but more carefully. The curtain and window seemed to be out of phase with her, though the wall around the base of the window was obviously still solid - she ended up dropping herself over while still holding onto the window edge and then letting go, instead of jumping like Tess had. Mystified at how Tess had managed to use her powers in this way, Max followed with a somewhat more confident hop, and left Hanson and Valenti to bring up the rear.

Just as they were coming out from the side of the house into the back yard area, the security guard who'd been assigned to watch the back door spotted them.

----------

"They're probably inside, talking to whoever it is by now," Maria said, looking at her watch. "Or fighting for their lives, it has to be one or the other."

"Well, if it's a fight, they'll kick butt," Sarah said as cheerfully as she could manage. "In the meantime - I think that I'm hungry again already. Is it too soon to go grab a bite?"

"We might as well, I guess," Kyle muttered. "I'm feeling like I could eat too, though that might just be nervousness, and if something - um, happens, then we might be too busy to grab food again for a little while."

"That'll work for me," Michael agreed, and looked over at Maria, but she just shrugged. So he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb where they'd been sitting for nearly half an hour, towards the main street that they'd left most recently.

"Is it really smart to double back on our trail?" Kyle said. "I'd think it would be smarter to continue on forward - just on the off chance that somebody IS chasing us."

"No, that way lies paranoia," Maria remarked absently. "It's just as possible that they were anticipating our course and had prepared a trap. But really - we were just sitting still for so long, which means that either we'd have gotten caught already..." Sarah's breath caught. "Well, that obviously didn't happen, so either they weren't chasing us, or they passed straight by, not noticing us because they were looking for somebody who was running. Either way, going back the way we came seems safe enough - for the time being."

"They won't have stopped looking entirely," Michael mentioned. "These army guys are way too determined for that - and I somehow don't think that we can count on just staying lost forever. But hopefully there'll be time to grab some food, yeah, and meet up with Maxwell again, find out what they've learned, if anything. Oh, hey, what do we think about chicken?"

"Tastes kinda like snake," Sarah said in a deep, oddly accented voice. Maria and Kyle both turned to give her incredulous stares. "Sorry, wrong time to be - just never mind," she added in a more usual tone.

"Chicken is alright, I guess," Maria said a moment later, looking around. "I don't see a chicken place, though - and are we talking about southern-fried or something a bit lower in the breaded fat?"

"It's fatty breading more than breaded fat," Kyle commented. "I could actually go for some deep-fried bird."

"I was thinking of that, actually," Michael said, pointing, and Maria followed his finger to spot the sign for a small statewide franchise that had a Mexican marinated grilled breast fillet as its signature dish, Maria remembered. "Suitable to all, speak now or shut yer trap?"

"Oooh, sounds nice," Sarah said, and Maria mm-hmmed encouragingly. Kyle hesitated, and then carefully grunted a neutral tone. "Well, sorry sweetie. You can take me out to KFC when we get back home to Roswell, and fatten me up to your heart's content."

"It was more fattening myself up that was the appealing part," Kyle admitted, but he couldn't keep a smile off his face, partly just from the certain way Sarah said *when* they got back home. "I'm not going to act like one of those super-sensitive types and say that I'd like you in just the same way no matter how heavy you get, but a bit more weight in the right places would NOT look bad on you."

"Ewww," Maria said as they pulled into the parking lot. Michael would have run the drive-through if there was one, so he parked and they all got out of the car.

"No, I know what you meant, and it's kinda sweet," Sarah allowed. "The thing is, I *don't* put weight on in the right places."

"We can help out with that, actually, maybe," Michael said, waving his hand mysteriously. "If you ask really nicely."

"Oh, come on, Michael, don't you sta..." Maria started, and then did a double-take, looking down at her own figure critically. "Hmm... I'm already plenty nice enough to you already."

"Oh, you think so?" Kyle asked her, and ducked back from the swat that Maria aimed in his direction.

The four of them were seated and got their orders fairly quickly, and Sarah's cell phone rang again before her plate had been half cleared off. "Yes, hello?" she said, picking it up immediately herself instead of going through the game of who's-going-to-talk again.

-------------

"Okay, so what next?" Isabel asked Alex after putting the refuse from their meal into the mall's food court garbage.

"Hmm - I'm not sure," Alex admitted. He seemed to be very much like himself since the phone call, but Isabel wasn't sure if she was reassured by that. He also wasn't exactly taking the matter of them hiding from the Army very seriously at the moment, but Isabel found it hard to be that strict about the whole thing herself. What could they possibly do to stay hidden better than act as if nothing at all was wrong, after all? "Hit a bookstore, maybe? Exchange some favorites, look for new finds together?"

"Well - I suspect that I'm not as much of a book person as you are," Isabel admitted, her face falling. "But I'd love an opportunity to learn more about you like that, so sure."

"Maybe I'm less of a book person than you think I am," Alex teased her. "We may have never talked favorite books, but I can't picture you entirely as an illiterate cretin who's more into tv and pop radio and never reads anything thicker than a magazine." He cocked his head slightly as they strolled out of the food court and towards one of the mall directory signs. Isabel took his hand in hers, and in his distraction he didn't immediately react to that contact. "Actually, that's not quite right. I can picture precisely that Isabel Evans, but even in my imagination, I know that she's - that she's not real. That she'd either be somebody I was making up in my head, or a facade that you were putting on to fool somebody or blend in."

"You did always think that you could see through my beautiful exterior, didn't you?" Isabel mused quietly. "Even before you found out my big secret."

"Yeah, I guess I did," Alex allowed, and then something struck him. "Underneath that beautiful exterior... why does that ring a bell? Did I write an atrocious poem about you last year? Did we talk about this before?"

"Umm - no, we didn't talk about it, not exactly," Isabel said, looking around at the crowds. "Never mind for now, I'll tell you a bit later, if there's a better opportunity."

"Okay," Alex agreed, though he still seemed somewhat mystified. They walked along in silence for a little while, and then when something new caught Isabel's eye amid the storefronts, Alex immediately noticed it. "Ahh - methinks I know where the lady would truly crave to do her window shopping." He reached up to point toward the small, only slightly pretentious jewelry store, and when Isabel's hand came up along with his, he blinked cutely as if only then realizing that they'd been holding hands. Isabel's heart melted a little bit inside her at that reaction.

"Alright, I won't complain about a little look-see," she allowed, "though since we don't have much money on hand, you absolutely cannot actually buy me anything, not even just a little cheap trinket."

"The heavens forfend," Alex agreed. "But it should still be fun - you can think of this as a taste test." Her face screwed up in some confusion for a moment. "I pick out something as if I WAS going to buy it for you, and you judge me on my taste and fashion sense."

"Oooh, this could be awkward," Isabel joked, but she let him pull her ahead into the store. (It wasn't as if she really didn't want to come, after all, and in any event it would take something much worse to make her actually let go of his hand with her own.) Alex blurted out that they were only wishful-dreaming and didn't have any money as soon as the salesgirl, (who looked like she might still be in high school herself,) came over, and salesgirl - actually Gillian by her nametag - Gillian said that it was a slow afternoon anyway, and she'd be pleased to help them wish, especially since it might plant the seeds for a sale on some future day when Alex had saved up enough cash. Isabel thought silently to herself that they'd be more likely to patronize an establishment back home in Roswell, like Sylvester's sparkles on third avenue, but didn't say that out loud, or indeed anything about them being from out of town.

Alex also joked around with her somewhat, picking out two of the most obviously - well, not quite hideous, because there wasn't actually anything for sale in the store that Isabel would quite weigh down with that label, but two horrendously inappropriate items that were not at all like her, or indeed like anybody that Isabel knew or shared an age group with. The first time she'd actually felt her heart sink a little before she became sure that he was indeed making bad choices on purpose to try to get a reaction out of her. But the third pick, which they both knew was for all the marbles, took her breath away - they weren't at all flashy or impressive on first sight, just stud earrings. But the tiny red gems set into the set were definitely beautiful, and the price tag made Isabel blink in astonishment. "That - that can't be right - or, well, I guess that it can, but - I could have SWORN that these were genuine rubies." Even though she wouldn't be wearing the earrings out of the store no matter what, and she was definitely pleased with Alex's sense of a bargain, finding something that was so beautiful for so little, she was a little disappointed at the loss of the ruby earrings that she had hoped they were.

"No, sorry. Good quality garnets, though. A little softer and more fragile than rubies, but nearly as pretty for special occasions," Gillian told her. "Do you need to see anything else this afternoon?"

Isabel brushed her finger over the red garnets and sighed slightly, hoping that Alex would remember to look for something like that when they got back home safe. (Not if - WHEN.) "No, I'm pretty sure that he's passed, and we should be moving on. Thank you for being so nice to us though, Gillian, and have a nice day!"

"Are you sure about that?" Alex asked her. "We can - well, you can try a few more things on."

"Hmm..." Isabel thought about that, considered the bookstore, and looked back at Gillian, who was grinning. "Well, if you twist my arm - how about that necklace?"

"Okay, but be very careful," Gillian said, and gestured slightly to someone behind them. Isabel looked around and noticed that a security guard was perking to attention slightly. "Those ARE real diamonds."

"Wow," Isabel breathed. "I hadn't expected that - would it blow my mind to know how much the piece costs?"

"Depends on how resilient your mind is, I suppose," Gillian said, handing the fine gold chain to Alex. "I suppose you should do the honors."

Alex grinned as he got ready to put the diamonds around her neck.

-----------

"Hi, Sarah," Max said as Mister Valenti drove off. "Is Michael there? I'm on Hanson's phone, and though it should be safe for a bit, I don't want to give anybody much time to close in."

"Yeah, just a moment," Sarah agreed. There was the sound of muffled conversation that he couldn't quite make out.

And the next voice to come on the line was obviously Michael's. "Yeah-lo?"

"Hi Michael. We - well, we met with the old man, and he was surprisingly helpful. Clayton Wheeler, the Chairman of metachem, and he's dying of cancer, but starting to regret the deal that he made to capture us and force me to save his life. He can't help us directly, that's a long story, but he's given us a contact at Metachem and a kind of letter of authority. But that won't work at all on the army guys, or on his wife, who's been the Metachem liason to the Army. I'm going to meet the Metachem contact, but I don't want to bring the whole gang in, just in case. And I'm inclined to put you in charge of everybody else. What would your next move be?"

There was a pause as Michael digested that. When he spoke, the words came slowly and carefully, as if Michael thought that he was being tested. (Maybe, to a certain extent, that was just what Max had intended, though he hadn't realized it.) "We have to be careful, but we can't wait. I think that it's time to move into position near the warehouse location and start scouting it out - CAREFULLY. You're going to send me some of your people before you go to Metachem?"

"Yeah, that was the idea," Max agreed. "Won't take all five of us, and we've got two cars worth here. Did you have any requests in mind?"

"Tess, definitely - for the distractions, stealth powers, and any chance she might be able to usefully sense minds inside," Michael rattled on confidently. Max suddenly clued in that they should be wrapping things up fast and closing down the cellular line now. "And - maybe Hanson, he seems dependable, and could use that mojo of his in case things really go bad and..."

"Alright, but we're running out of time," Max said. "Where should they meet you? Somewhere easy to find."

"We're at the Chevana Chicken on Silver street," Michael reported. "Just up the street from Tingley field, shouldn't be hard to find." And with that, he immediately clicked off the line.

So Max hung up his own phone. "Any sign of pursuit?" he asked the two lawmen.

"Not since Tess blew out the tire of the first two cars," Valenti reported. "Nice aim she's got, or focus or whatever it takes for you guys."

"Alright, then - they're behind us, right?" Max asked. and Hanson nodded. "Take two turns - a left and then a right two blocks later, and then pull over. Nothing too crazy, that Liz won't be able to follow - she's not that experienced a getaway driver. We'll have to switch some things around for next step." Max sighed. If only they could have gotten into the right cars and co-ordinated before leaving Clayton Wheeler's area - but with Metachem security chasing them then, there hadn't been enough time to talk, let alone time to think things through. But Tess had bought them all that time - and he supposed they were all better off this way.

Once the maneuvers had been completed, Max hopped out of the parked police car, and waited as Liz and Tess pulled up in the Jetta. Quickly, still feeling excitable, Max explained his notion of splitting up, about Michael's plan to scout out the likely location of the Army conspirators' headquarters in Albuquerque, and who he had requested to come join him. Once he had finished, Tess waited for another long few seconds, as if expecting that Max would say something, then prompted, "And what about Liz?"

Hoping that he didn't already guess what she meant, Max said, "What about Liz? She's coming with me to Metachem, along with Mister Valenti. They're the best two to figure out how they can best help us, once they figure out what they have and what they know."

"Like hell she's going with you," Tess swore. "We've been sticking to symmetry all through this, from the very first when you suggested bringing her into this. It - it's the only way that the three of us have been hanging in together. You're not going to get rid of me this easily, and go off with her to..."

"Get ahold of yourself, Tess - this is bigger than all three of us!" Max raged back. "Bigger than Alex, even - you're needed over at the warehouse, and I need to go to Metachem, and..."

"And do you REALLY need Liz to come with you?" Tess insisted, her voice almost a plea. "She could be on our team - that keeps up the symmetry. She's got good eyes, might spot something at the warehouse -- and if something goes wrong, she might be the next one to open her eyes and ask Hanson to..."

"No," Max said, his voice calm and even despite the flood of ice water that seemed to be running through his nerves at the thought of Liz being in danger of death, and him not being nearby to help her. "You don't bring that up like it's a good thing, Tess, not ever - and not for anybody."

"No," Hanson agreed. "It's not like it's something that any of us can count on, Tess - especially not now. Getting more than one rewind on the same day is - well, it would be extremely rare in and of itself, and considering that this is already the second objective calendar day that I've rewound, it's pretty much unprecedented. If I get another call, I'll follow it to the best of my ability, but I think that we're on our own now. No more second chances."

"It's your call, Max," Mister Valenti said softly, stepping over to put a fatherly, affectionate hand on Liz's shoulder. Tess glared over at him, as if he were trying to send Max a signal against her case. "Liz could serve well in either situation, but..."

"I'm sorry, Tess," Max told her as sensitively as he could. "She comes with Valenti and I. That's just the way it has to be."

"Bullshit," Tess muttered, but she got back into the Jetta, taking the driver's seat, and gestured for Hanson to join her. After a moment, Hanson shook hands with Valenti, with Max himself, and with Liz, as if he might not ever see any of them again, and went to take the other front seat.

"I - I'm not sure that you should have made such a fuss about me, Max," Liz said as the three of them got into the other car and watched Tess driveaway.

"That's why you're not in charge, Liz," Max said, with as much of a laugh as he could manage. "We all need you here for this - I'm not even sure why, but I wasn't about to back down on something like that just because Tess threw a hissy. She should know better by now, that some things are more important than the relationship angst."

"If you say so, Max," Valenti put in with a wry grin. "Okay, I think I know the way to the right area for this Metachem office, but somebody get out the map to doublecheck as I go." And he, too, drove away.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Sixteen

Tess strode confidently into Chevana Chicken, scanned around the dining area, and spotted the table where Michael and Maria, Kyle and Sarah were sitting. "Okay, come on, let's go, time's a wasting. Hanson's told me where this damn Army warehouse thing is, so - Kyle, Sarah, I'll come with you and navigate, Michael, Maria, you go with Hanson."

"Wait just a moment, Tess," Michael said softly, but as Hanson trailed along in Tess' wake, it wasn't too hard to see that his dander was slowly rising. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we don't need to charge off just this moment. For one thing - well, I'm not that sorry to have to make a point out of it. I'm the leader of this mission. Max - well, he didn't exactly put me in charge, but he didn't really object when I was promoting myself, so therefore..."

"Max, right," Tess scoffed. "Like he's..." She seemed to catch herself and trail off.

"Hello, Mister Hanson," Maria said into the brief silence at that point. "Is it just the two of you? What about Mister Valenti and Liz?"

"They, umm, they both went with Max to the Metachem branch," Hanson said as he fished around for a spare chare that wasn't bolted to the floor and could be dragged over to the table.

"So - so Liz broke symmetry?" Maria asked quietly.

"Symmetry?" Kyle and Michael asked nearly in unison, and even Sarah and Hanson seemed to be puzzled by that reference. Tess just sulked where she stood, silently.

"It's the way that Tess and Liz have been working together, while their whole love triangle thing with Max is still unsettled," Maria pointed out. "Either they're both near him, or neither are. I would have thought even guys could have picked that much up."

"Oh, okay, yeah, I get it," Sarah said encouragingly.

"Liz wasn't the one who made her move," Tess acknowledged grumpily. "She was willing to come with me, to keep up the mirror. But - but Max *INISISTED*. He said that he needed Liz and Mister Valenti with him, to figure out what to do with the Metachem-icals."

"Not - not that unreasonable a decision, actually," Kyle muttered. "Love triangles notwithstanding. She *did* get the best grade out of any of us in chemistry - and bio, and probably anything else that might be relevant."

"Okay, I see why you're a little bit on edge, Tess," Michael said in his turn. "And it's not that unreasonable a reaction. Hell - if the best plan that we had was to charge into an enemy base with guns and alien powers blazing, then I'd love to turn all of this tension to the offensive. Come to think of it, there are times when we probably only got through alive from the edge that can be gained off a relationship angst factor, hehe."

"But - but this isn't one of these moments, General Guerin?" Tess shot back. Just at this point, Hanson managed to pull two chairs over, and Tess slumped dejectedly into the one that was offered to her.

"Not really, Tess, no," Kyle told her. "We'll need to be smart, silent, and invisible when we get to the warehouse - and not push a confrontation until we're sure that we're ready for it - which will probably mean when Max, Liz, and Dad come back with whatever cavalry they can rustle up. Are you really ready to be that patient?"

Tess considered that for a moment, and then made a face. "Okay, okay - and come to think of it, grabbing some food might do wonders for my patience."

"Didn't you have two crullers and a jelly, with hot sauce sprinkled all over them, back at the burger and donut shop?" Sarah asked - and got knees shoved into her by both Kyle and Maria. "What, it was only, what, two and a half hours ago?"

"Still, that isn't polite to point out," Maria explained, after Tess had let loose a low-caliber glare and headed up to the counter to place an order. "Especially not if she's put her life in danger since then."

"Okay, okay, I'll remember that rule," Sarah agreed, rubbing her own knee where Maria had bumped into it. "Still catching on to the specifics of this hair-raising escapade stuff."

"So, once we calm Tess down," Hanson asked, "what's next on the hair-raising escapade list?"

"Nobody's hair gets raised with this next escapade, that's the point of calming Tess down," Michael repeated. "It needs to be a very calm, quiet escapade - but once everybody's ready, we go over to that warehouse address you have, Mister Hanson."

"Good," Hanson said, and smiled slightly.

"Do you want anything to eat or drink yourself?" Maria asked.

"Hmm - you know, I think I'll only decide that I do after Tess is almost finished with her own snack," Hanson put in with a little smile. Sarah giggled appreciatively, and Michael nodded with a smile on his own face.

"Sounds good," Kyle whispered to himself. "I just hope it's this easy."

It was a few minutes before Tess returned with a grilled chicken-burger, and a heaping paper sleeve of onion rings.

-------------

Isabel and Alex had left the jewelry store, and were enjoying cheap italian food on paper plates in the food court, (mushroom and pineapple pizza slices for him, spaghetti and cacciatora sauce for her,) when the lights went out. A few new spots of light emerged, casting weird and awkward shadows, while the warning sirens were immediately drowned out by the sudden furor of annoyed shoppers.

"Why didn't more of the emergency light fixtures come on?" somebody at the next table half-wondered and half-complained, which struck Isabel as a very good question. She hadn't really been paying much attention, but thought that she'd seen the familiar white boxes against the walls in the food court area itself - and certainly it didn't make that much sense to leave such an area completely without any blackout lighting. Of course, it seemed possible that insufficient maintenance was to blame - presumably if they weren't checked, the batteries in such units could fail - but that so many wouldn't even come on immediately after the power was cut? That didn't seem to make too much sense.

"They're coming for us," Alex whispered in an undertone, and instantly Isabel thought that he was quite possibly right. Cutting the lights made a lot of sense in terms of undermining her strategy of staying lost in a public space - but they wouldn't have known to target the Coronado if they hadn't traced Isabel and Alex to the building anyway, and wouldn't it have been easier to 'escort' them out of the mall in a more understated way? Isabel couldn't untangle all of that, but she knew deep down that it couldn't possibly be a coincidence that the blackout had struck in the locality that she and Alex were keeping themselves. Somehow, this was really all about the two of them.

"What do you think?" she asked. "Nearly everybody will be looking for an exit. Do we go too? It would seem natural."

"Hmm." From the sound, Isabel couldn't tell how well Alex's brain was adapting to the new circumstances. "Pros - it doesn't leave us stranded in the dark with army guys with guns and nightvision goggles. Cons - if they've planned this out so carefully, then the army guys will be watching the exits, and have memorized our pictures."

"Then - then I change our appearances," Isabel suggested.

"Are you sure that's the best approach?" Alex asked. "I don't think that you've practiced using your power that way before, and - well, no offense, I wouldn't want you to accidentally disfigure yourself and not be able to change back. The same goes for me, but with less vehemence."

"Even if that's the alternative to getting caught and killed or whatever?" Isabel hissed, but already her thoughts were moving down a new track. "They may be watching the usual exits, but they can't cover every possible way out of the building - not when I can open new doors in walls if I need to."

"Better," Alex admitted. "Careful with that trick, though - the last thing we need is for somebody in a public place to see clear evidence of alien powers."

"That might be bad," Isabel said, standing up from the table and grabbing Alex's hand, "but it's not the last thing we need, not by my order."

"Okay, okay. Remember, though - caution is the watchword. They're probably not going to come in looking for us that quickly, if they have to search crowds coming out at all of the usual access points," Alex reminded her. "What do we know about the vicinity? What's on each side of the building? Are there already connections in the basement??"

"That's tough," Isabel muttered. "You may be thinking of something different, but the Coronado is a sprawl mall, surrounded by streets and parking lots. The Macy's is northwest, the Search northeast, and the JC Penney south by southwest."

"Hmm - that does make it tough," Alex admitted. "Out of curiosity, do you know which direction we're heading now?"

"Yes, we're moving west on the upper level, just passing Sears now," Isabel admitted. "This is no good. Getting lost in the crowds leaving HAS to be our best shot. I can do something to create an increased moment of panic at the right moment, and -" She headed off to a small boutique store and laid her hand on a display stand that was just visible in the dimness. "And cover up our faces and hair in the old-fashioned way."

Alex grinned as he realized that she was taking hooded sweatshirts from the unguarded rack. "Yeah, you're right. They can't really have enough people to cover all the exits and check every person leaving - probably just enough to scare us, if we hadn't thought it through - and catch us doing something stupider or more obvious than walking out in the crowd."

Isabel tossed him a black hoody. "Here's to being smart."


It wasn't much more difficult to slip past the Army cordon. Both of them wore their hoods as low and draped as they possibly could, obscuring their faces without looking particularly like they had something to hide, (Isabel hoped,) and she did noticed the one guy in green, not holding a weapon but with a large box close within reach, actually try to peer into the face of somebody else well ahead of her who was dressed similarly. That was when she pulled off her master diversion.

The sound of a gunshot is mostly a miniature explosion of gunfire, along with the sound of the bullet whizzing through the air at high speeds - sometimes faster than the speed of sound in air, which means that it creates a tiny 'sonic boom' as it travels. Isabel had practiced simulating the effect with her powers just in case - both with and without the deadly effect of a gunshot wound. This time, she didn't need or want to hurt anybody, just trigger the panic of already frightened people who suddenly hear a gunshot behind them. Focus energy on a small pocket of air molecules, send some of them out in a particular direction at supersonic speed - easy as a fairly complicated kind of pie.

Isabel noticed that the resulting rush of panic actually knocked the soldier guard down, and smiled to herself. "Okay, do we stay on foot, or get the car?" Alex asked her.

"Umm - car," Isabel immediately decided, looking around at the north parking lot in the bright afternoon sun. "Did we park on this side of the mall, I very much hope?"

"Umm - yeah, but kinda close to that exit over there," Alex said, pointing to their left. "Do you think that any guards over there will pay attention to us, if we've obviously got outside already?"

"I dunno," Isabel admitted. "Keep your hoodie as low as you can."

-------------

"Well, here we are," Jim Valenti said as he parked at a moderate distance from the Metachem building address - close enough to see the sign with the logo on it and read the letters clearly. "How careful do you think that we have to be about going in?"

"Hmm - cautious, but not really wasting any time about it," Max decided. "Things are moving too quickly, and we need to settle things here soon." He looked back. "Liz..."

"Yeah?" There was no immediate answer to her question. "Do you want me to wait here, until a few seconds after the two of you go inside, and then follow?"

"Umm - that doesn't sound too bad," Max admitted, looking around just to try to reassure himself that there wasn't any other danger that might swoop in for Liz while his back was turned. "Jim - umm, do you have your gun ready, just in case? I realize that you shouldn't be..."

"...Holding it, no," Jim agreed with a nod. "And yes, it's within about as easy reach as it can be without being obvious, and ready to fire in a split second if need be, though safe for the moment." Max nodded. "And your own abilities?"

"Ready on the shield, or an energy discharge," Max decided. "Healing or molecular changes would take me a few seconds more concentration."

"That sounds good," Jim said, and opened his car door. Liz nodded to herself and watched as the two of them walked over to the front door and paused for a few seconds before opening it and going inside. So Liz waited a bit longer than she'd meant to, partly because it was just easier to keep hesitating instead of forcing herself to move, and then she locked up the car and hurried over to the door, figuring that there was no reason to dawdle over the distance between.

When she went inside the office, Max was smiling over at her from a door most of the way across the open plan of low cubicles and bright brand-name displays. "Come on, honey. It's alright, I think. Mister Cagle generously offered to meet with us right away."

"Glad to hear it," Liz said, moving around the empty corridor spaces on the edge of the cubicle floor, noticing the curious stares of the office drones who were probably wondering what this was about. It didn't take long for her to catch up to Max, and follow him and Valenti through an office admin's room, (complete with filing cabinets for old-fashioned paperwork, a multifunction printer-scanner-fax-copier, and a computer screen up on the wall displaying updates of a sort that Liz couldn't immediately interpret,) into an inner office. The man behind the desk here seemed to be a little short, but with broad shoulders and a broad face, and his manner seemed composed of equal parts friendliness and efficiency. Despite the graying tips of his dark brown hair, Liz didn't think that he was older than mid-thirties.

"It's nice to meet you - under the circumstances, Mister Cagle," Valenti said, getting to the point quickly. "We've - well, we just came from Clayton Wheeler's place, the duplex house downtown. Paid - well, an even more unexpected visit on him, but he was very nice about things, and gave me your name. Said that you were the man to talk to about stopping a joint venture of the company with some people from the Army - an enterprise that we all agree has gotten out of hand."

"Whoa - umm, first off, that's well outside my authority," Cagle quickly disclaimed. "Meris Wheeler is in charge of - those operations, and - well, really she's not listening to anybody at all. Theoretically Clayton could call his own wife off, but I think that she could give him the runaround with her own personal security if she didn't want to hear it - until... well, until it was too late..." Cagle trailed off, staring at Max and Liz. Obviously, some kind of realization was dawning.

"We do know that much, sir," Liz put in. "We're not under the illusion that - well, that your word alone will be enough to stop the wheels smoothly and certainly. But, as you said - Missus Wheeler is not listening for orders along the proper chain of command. We HAVE to stop her somehow, and Clayton thought that you could help."

"How - how can I believe that you really did speak to Mister Wheeler, that he told you any such thing!" Cagle nearly squeaked. "Why wouldn't he..."

"Why wouldn't he want his wife to commit murder and heinous vivisections on innocent beings, for his sake?" Valenti drawled. "No reason, unless he's a man of honor and conscience, deep down."

"As far as how you can believe, there's this," Max said, taking out the obscure note that Clayton had made. It was make or break time, really, and he'd verified everything that he could before laying it on the line. Cagle understood what was going on, and he seemed to be somewhat amenable to switching sides, if his superior had really authorized and blazed the trail for him - if completely freaked and frightened at the prospect of crossing Meris Wheeler. What was truly conveyed by the secret code between Clayton and Cagle was something that none of them could figure out for themselves.

Cagle took a long time to read the note, and even called up a file on his computer screen with similar markings and ordinary words - whether he was checking for authenticity or consulting a code dictionary for passages that he could no longer decipher himself none of them were sure. But when he answered, he seemed to be more composed. "You're all right, Clayton, the three of you - the other friends that he mentions. This travestous farce has gone on for much too long. But I'm not sure how much help I can actually offer you."

Max traded glances with his friends, going back and forth between them for a few seconds. "We didn't have a particular plan," Liz admitted. "We just came here because Clayton said that he thought that you could help. But - well, let's start with hopefully simple stuff. How much do you know about the key players, and where they are or might be at this point? There's Meris Wheeler, of course - we've heard some about her, but not that many details, except that she's dangerous."

"Well, let's see," Cagle muttered. Almost without thinking he reached for dry-erase pens and a handful of tissue paper, crossing to the whiteboard on the side of his office and wiping away an old diagram that seemed to be about a tree of different chemical processes that led to the synthesis of a particular saleable product. With deft motions, Cagle depicted a stick figure with a short skirt and visible straight hair on one side of the board. "Okay, Meris Wheeler. Yes, she's dangerous, she's brilliant, but she's not a superwoman. Cornell MBA, got her start in high finance before Clayton tempted her away to run one of his divisions. She's ruthless, and has a cruel streak, but isn't that imaginative a thinker and isn't particularly comfortable with direct violence. From our side, she has several people working on the project with her, but mostly they'd be back in Roswell, and I don't think that you're particularly concerned about them at the moment, would you?"

"Umm - no, not really," Max admitted, still staring at the little picture on the board. "Not if she wouldn't call them up here as backup for a showdown."

"No, she'd be more inclined to trust the people on the Army side of the wall," Cagle muttered. "I don't have full bios on them, as you can understand, but I'll do my best to tell you what I've picked up."

He was very good at conveying the important details quickly, Liz soon decided, and the visual aids helped more than she would have expected. The picture that emerged was one of a fairly small, but well-equipped and planned conspiracy. The men that Kyle and Sarah had first found over in the Crashdown Cafe, the day before, were the leaders from the Army side - Captain Mark Thomas was ex-Special Unit, and had managed to bring other specialists and experienced agents from that branch of the FBI over to his command after Whittaker's committee had disbanded the unit. Colonel Peter Corman hadn't had any experienced with organized alien hunting before meeting Thomas, but apparently he'd been something of a crank on the subject of aliens for many years, (like Valenti before he'd gotten to know Max and the others,) and it was probably he who'd hatched most of the details of the Alex Whitman plan, inspired by certain fragmentary copies of Kathleen Topolsky's first investigations into West Roswell High, and Agent Pierce's early attempts to fill in the blanks.

Most of Liz's conclusions about how Cagle's information fitted into her own experiences in Roswell, of course, Liz didn't share with the Metachem man.

Cagle knew about the warehouse location as well, it turned out, and was able to give them some good guesses about how well it would be guarded, both by Army corporals and private bodyguards like the ones that Meris had arranged to keep her husband incommunicado at his rented house.

After a lot more briefings like this, Jim Valenti turned to Max. "So, how do you figure that we move into their HQ?"

Max only thought about it for a second. "We DON'T. Michael may be disappointed - but their defenses there are much too strong - too many people with guns who'd shoot first and ask questions later. There has to be another way to settle things." He sighed. "Their biggest advantage when this started was the terror of anonymity - and we've beat that down. We know so much about them now. Isn't there some way that we could back them off with that?"

"A sort of 'if you hurt any one of us, we won't rest until we see you all dead with our alien powers' kind of thing?" Liz said. "That might work - if it doesn't just scare them into opening fire immediately."

"As long as they're all on one side of me, they can just go ahead and do that," Max said, smiling fiercely at the thought of it.

"Okay, let's think specifics," Valenti suggested. "If we want to confront the leadership - Corman, Thomas, and Meris - with how much we know about them, but aren't confident enough to go into the warehouse to see who's in charge there, then we'll need to draw them out into some kind of territory that's neutral or better. And we don't have direct lines of communication to them."

"Mister Cagle, would you be willing to set up a meeting on our behalf?" Max asked.

Cagle swallowed hard. "I - I'm not sure about that, sir. Remember, I'm going to have to deal with Missus Wheeler for a long time to come, if you don't - do anything more permanent to her. If I call any more attention to myself now, then she'll be very likely to figure out who gave you all this information to use as a weapon against her."

"That's a fair concern," Valenti said firmly, in a way that was clearly warning the younger people against pushing the issue with Cagle.

"But - but if what you need is Meris' cell phone number, then maybe I shouldn't have left my organizer over there on the desk," Cagle said slowly. After a moment of hesitation, Liz reached out to snatch the small dark grey binder and opened the contacts section to W.

"Alright, so that's one problem solved," Max muttered, as Liz brought her own phone out and started tapping letters and numbers into its address book. "So what do we tell her to get her to come?"

"Tell her that you're holding her husband hostage," Cagle suggested with a short laugh. "Even if she can verify that Clayton's safe at the duplex, that should intrigue her enough to risk a meeting."

Max and Valenti shared a look. "That could work," Valenti agreed. "Especially if they've heard some of the stories going around about - about aliens. The guards at the duplex will verify that unknown people visited and spoke with Clayton earlier today. Meris may start to wonder what you could have done without taking Clayton with you - if you could have given him a slow poison and be holding onto the antidote - or even if you could have shapechanged someone else into Clayton and actually taken the genuine article with you."

"Yeah, I suppose," Max admitted. "And even if all of that seems unlikely, the truth will probably dawn on her that I know I'm the only one who can save Clayton's life from his cancer - which is why they got into this plan in the first place."

"Alright," Liz chimed in, sticking the phone back in her pocket and tossing Cagle's organizer back onto his desk. "What about the meet? We want somewhere that they can't just bring in as many gunmen as they have available?"

"What's playing tonight at the Amphitheater?" Max asked.

"Nice thought, Max, but it's the wrong tack I think," Jim shot back. "Even if we can manage to sneak in or find tickets at the last minute, I don't think that we can count on Wheeler doing the same thing."

Just then, a cell phone rang, and Liz cocked her head, recognizing the tone. "That's me, sorry." She blinked as she brought the phone back out and noticed the name, answering it quickly. "Isabel, what's going on, where are you?"

"Why is she calling here?" Max asked, suddenly concerned. Liz held up a hand to keep him quiet.

"Sorry, Max was talking, could you say that again?"

"I'm with Alex, we just left the Coronado mall - they tracked us there, and were using a lot of manpower to try to catch us - cut the power, had somebody watching every exit as people evacuated."

Liz's mind whirled. "Did you try calling Michael, or anybody else?"

"Yes - Sarah, Michael, Tess, Maria, Kyle. None of them picked up."

"Must be too close to the warehouse already," Liz mumbled.

"What warehouse?"

Liz didn't bother answering that. Her mind seemed to be completely occupied slotting these new facts into their appropriate spots, and as that was happening, the details came to rest on a mental set of scales, tipping the decision that Max had just made back the other way. "Isabel, listen, are you sure about how many people the Army would have committed at Coronado, right now?"

"Umm - can't be entirely sure, but we really think it was nearly a dozen."

Liz took one quick breath. "Okay. Keep on driving - in fact, head back for Roswell now. I think that's the safest thing, the one that they won't be expecting now."

"But we thought that they couldn't find us at Coronado, and..."

"Trust me, Isabel," Liz insisted, hoping that Isabel really could. "Tell Alex that I love him, but I need to hang up now."

"But - okay. Good luck, Liz." She hit the button to disconnect the call and immediately scrolled through the menus.

"Liz, what's going on?" Max asked.

"Isabel and Alex Whitman..." She wasn't quite sure why she used the last name, except that somehow she wanted Cagle to recognize it, to follow at least that closely. "They just slipped a net at someplace called Coronado, and she said that the Army was putting a lot of people there."

"Must be the mall," Mister Cagle muttered. "But..."

"If that's true, then until those people come back to base, they must not have many guards at the HQ," Liz insisted. "We've got a window of opportunity to make a move, if we can get Michael and the others to realize it before their time is up. They must have turned off their cell phone ringers so that nobody would hear them, but... if I can blast out a text message, somebody should be checking soon. They might have already realized that they had a missed call."

"Wait a second, think about this before you blast anything," Max insisted. "We don't know what they'll be up against if they actually move into the warehouse, and they don't know what to do yet. They don't have the intel that we do, and we can't type it all down in a text message."

"We'll be there to back them up soon, and can tell them to call once they've secured the unholy trio," Liz insisted, wondering why it was nagging at the back of her head that the bad guys always came in threes. "Max - if you think that this isn't worth the risk, then I won't send the message. I trust your leadership - but I'm asking you to trust my judgement. That's why you insisted on bringing me here, isn't it? I have faith in our friends, that given this opportunity that isn't going to last for much longer, they can win, and win safely, without anybody getting hurt."

Max hesitated, and looked over to Valenti for his advice. "I - I'm worried about this," he admitted, "but Liz might have a point."

"I don't know," Valenti said. "They'd be short-handed as well, and I don't like the idea of Kyle and Tess being along for that sortie - even up against only two or three army guys with full weaponry, and a few other people with just sidearms."

Max nodded. "Yeah. It'd be different if I was down there myself, but wishes ain't horses."

"I do have one other idea, though," Valenti said. "Along Liz's lines, but it seems safer. An opportunity to get a certain tactical advantage, but exposing ourselves to less risk."

Liz smiled at that. "Talk to me."

-------------

As Michael stared out from a bench across the street where he hoped he was inconspicuous, he saw Sarah cross back towards him - jaywalking across the lanes in a carefree way that actually did seem to attract less attention than walking down to the crosslights would have. She sat down without looking at him, then lent over and showed him her cell phone.

"Got this text a few minutes ago - just after a dropped call from Isabel. Heard the vibrator go that time, but didn't want to pick up because I was close enough that somebody might have overheard me talking."

"Alright." Michael checked for his own cell phone just out of curiosity - and realized that the damn thing had run out of batteries. Oh well, at least that wasn't their only link. Then he focused his attention on the message on Sarah's screen.

Just heard from IE. She and A are fine, but just escaped many - so guards should be lite there. Max has a plan. Start fire in warehouse, then fall back. LP

"She must have been close to the limit," Sarah muttered. "Should I acknowledge? She might have further details."

"Yeah, do that," Michael said absently, but his thoughts were on other matters. Start a fire? He was surprised to hear Liz suggesting such a course of action, but it did make some sense. If it was managed correctly, they could deprive the enemy of their base of operations, without much risk to themselves - but only if everything was planned correctly. "Where is everybody else?"

"Umm - Kyle and Tess are circling around the back, which is actually the next street over, and - Maria and Mister Hanson are over kiddy-corner the intersection." Sarah waved out enthusiastically, and Michael saw Maria make an answering wave. After sending one sidelong look to Sarah, (she wasn't looking back at him,) Michael gave his girlfriend the 'come-here' gesture, and she and Hanson headed towards the crossroads.

Michael got up as Maria and Hanson were coming close to his bench, so that the four of them could fall in about as naturally as possible. "I got a text blast from Liz," Maria mentioned under her breath. "Good news about Isabel and Alex, but did she really mean it about the arson?"

"I'm taking it seriously as a heart attack," Michael shot back in a low voice. "Just need to meet up with Tess and Kyle, and get ready to make our escape quickly as soon as the deed is done."

"Just how close do you have to get to the building to set it on fire?" Hanson asked dubiously.

Michael risked one quick look over his shoulder. "I could do it from here."

"Well, that's good," Hanson muttered, but he didn't sound at all convinced.

"I guess people with alien powers are like walking incindiary grenade launchers?" Sarah said doubtfully.

"Yes, they're dangerous," Maria said after a moment. "You don't really want to meet one who's actually mean or seriously unfriendly. But that doesn't mean it's right what the Army or Meris Wheeler is trying to do."

"Oh, of course not," Sarah admitted.

"But still - if you guys are making the argument that you can't go public and let the government regulate the use of your powers the same way they keep an eye on other battle-grade weapons, then I'd say you've got an obligation to be very careful what uses you put your abilities to," Hanson suggested - and waved over Tess and Kyle, who had emerged from a nearby alley across the street. Tess hurried out into the street just as Sarah had, leaving Kyle to follow her more uncertainly.

"Hey, I'm up for great powers meaning great responsibilities," Michael argued. "Better than the Alien Registration act. Spiderman's a better comic than the X-men anyway."

"Hi there - did you get a text blast from Liz too?" Tess asked, and Michael couldn't interpret her expression, whether she was still upset about anything to do with Liz Parker, or the idea of doing a bit of violence to the Army alien hunters was making her feel better.

"Yeah, we got a few copies here. Eff Why I, my phone batteries are dead." Michael reached out a hand for Kyle to slap, but Kyle passed on by, and Michael turned around to look at the target. "So, we've got clean shots, and our cars are just down that way." He pointed down the street in the opposite way from the warehouse. "Anything else we need to sort out before committing a little arson?"

"Yeah, one question actually," Maria put in, "Where do we drive off to, aside from just 'away from here'?"

"Hmm." Michael considered. "That's really a very good question. Off to the Metachem office to join Max and Liz?"

"We don't know if they're still there, or if it'll still be safe place to stay," Hanson pointed out. "Better to drive off and just park somewhere, I'd say, and let them know where to meet us."

"Do we have to do this right now?" Kyle asked.

"Liz said something about a lot of the guards being off trying to catch Isabel," Maria pointed out. "So they might be heading back here any time, if Isabel and Alex got away clean."

"I sent back an acknowledge, so she might give us more details," Sarah said.

"Did you ask her where we should go?" Michael asked her. Sarah shook her head. "Okay, then we're not waiting. Tess?"

Tess turned around and considered the building. "There's an open window on the second floor, and near the main doors on this street - it's a sort of angled inset, should be easier to punch through than the normal wall that's at an acute angle to us. Which one do you want?"

Michael considered - as much as he'd like to be on point, Tess either had more experience with this sort of thing or had at least thought about it much more. "I'll go in through the window," he admitted.

"Alright." Tess considered again. "Try the ionized oxygen plasma stuff that we fooled around with between Christmas and New Year's - that should spread out nicely and set fire to whatever's around."

"You were practicing offensive powers after Christmas?" Maria asked Michael. "You said that you were doing reading for winter term classes." Kyle chuckled, and Sarah nudged him.

"What about you?" Michael asked Tess. "You're not using the plasma?"

"No, it doesn't have a good penetration. I think I'll try making a red-orange laser, that should do well. On three?"

Michael counted off one, two, and then let his plasma fly. (Literally speaking.) Tess grumbled under his breath about him not actually saying 'three' before going, and he saw a hot beam of radiation pulse out from a sort of tube that was floating between Tess' hands.

There was a faint explosion sound, and Michael saw some flames starting to spread, but it didn't look very impressive, and Tess seemed to still be trying to burn through to the ground level, so Michael shot some more plasma through.

"Are you quite through, Spaceboy?" Maria asked him. "I'm not sure, but I don't think that we want to kill anybody inside - just burn any evidence they have there, and inconvenience them.

"There are lots of possible degrees to which Liz's message could be taken," Michael argued, but he let Maria pull him away, and when he checked a few minutes later, Tess had also stopped her own heat beam and was letting Kyle rush her to the cars.

"Who goes in which car?" Michael asked, but once Maria and Kyle had made their choices, most of the others followed naturally - Sarah, Kyle, and Tess all wanted to stay together, and of course Michael was happy to remain with Maria. Hanson considered for just a moment, and then got in the back seat behind Michael. Quickly they peeled out, and Maria stuck close behind Kyle, wherever he should happen to drive.

"Any - any reply from Liz?" Hanson asked.

"Not on my phone, I think," Maria said. "Sarah might have heard something, but she didn't tell me."

"Great. I guess we'll find out when we stop," Michael muttered.

-------------

"I *told* you that we should have had armed personnel outside the front door, and damn you if I care what that would look like to the public passersby," Meris Wheeler roared, looking at the current state of her temporary headquarters as a small Albuqueque fire engine jetted a gush of water into the upper storey. "At least, then we'd have a hint of who really did this to us."

"I tell you, I *know* who did it," Captain Mark Thomas insisted. "Max Evans, or whoever's face he's using since he's come to town. THEY can do things like this - I have to admit, I didn't picture this attack, but - we need to bring in some kind of backup, call in the national guard."

"And tell them what, Mark?" Colonel Corman sneered at him. "Listen, I believe you, man - but the public won't. Your man Pierce told Congress what he was up to, and they laughed him out of their budget."

"In point of fact, no, Pierce didn't tell Congress what the Special Unit was really doing," Meris said in a calm, thoughtful voice. "He testified that it was a fake-up, an elaborate ruse to bilk the taxpayers out of money. Faced with that claim, the committee did the only thing that it could under the political reality - but that doesn't make our current tight squeeze any easier to deal with, I admit." Suddenly a little tune rang out from inside her purse, that she had grabbed handily before leaving the warehouse. Meris plunged a hand inside the bag and withdrew a small cell phone, flipping it open with the same gesture. "Yes, who is this?"

"Hello, Missus Wheeler." The voice sounded young, a high school girls' perhaps, but full of poise and confidence beyond its apparent years. "We know a good deal of what you've been doing, and want to meet. Be at the Frontier on Central Avenue South-east, by five thirty. Bring Peter and Mark. Say that it's a party of eight. We'll find your table."

"You did NOT answer my question," Meris insisted. "So you know something of what I've been up to - you should know that I've had a busy day, and don't have time for small-timers trying to get a piece of what I've got."

That made whoever was on the other end of the phone laugh. "You're not going to go back to the office to get more work done there - we both know it's not a fit place to be now." Meris spluttered, staring back at the smoked ruins. "If I tell you my name, will you agree to meet us?"

"No, of course, I can't promise such a thing!" Meris exclaimed. There was a long silence over the phone, and she was just starting to wonder if she actually might have made a mistake by not agreeing, when the girl laughed quietly.

"Then I'll tell you anyway, and let you make up your own mind. Meris Wheeler, this is Liz Parker. Nice to make your acquaintance. Goodbye."

"What is he saying?" Peter insisted, and that was when Meris realized that she still had the telephone clasped to the side of her face like she was listening to something terribly interesting, so she put it down and closed it.

"Gentlemen, I hope that you're hungry," she said in a tired, resigned voice. "It seems that we're going out for enchilladas."

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

A/N: I've actually written the conclusion to this, but I probably won't post it for another couple days. Thanks to everyone who's been following this story and feedbacked.

Part Seventeen

"Maybe I should try calling someone again," Alex said doubtfully as Isabel navigated the on-ramp for the 285 south that would take them back to Roswell. "How did you say that Liz sounded when you reached her?"

"Umm, I can't remember exactly the words that I used," Isabel admitted. "Hyper and focused on something else, maybe. She didn't say not to call anybody else, but I kind of got the impression that she'd be passing on news - and that it might not be the best thing to bother *her* again."

"But that doesn't help us figure out what's going on back there!" Alex complained.

"Alex, we've gone all day without knowing what was going on with our friends," Isabel pointed out. "Because that was best for everybody. Now I've made a contact, and Liz would have told me if somebody was really in bad trouble. But we can't push it. Best thing is just to keep our heads down and make it back to Roswell in one p--"

As Isabel merged into the interstate, disaster struck. This particular disaster was taking the shape of a large green van, that hit the smaller car with its strong side as it drove towards the right shoulder of the road. Isabel and Alex were shaken in their seats from the impact, and try as Isabel might, she couldn't think of anything appropriate to do except take her foot off the gas and push onto the brakes.

She saw a woman on the passenger side of the van point something long at her through both car windows, and the stunning force of a lightning bolt hitting her. Then her eyes slipped closed, and there was just the feel of her own body slumped in the driver's seat, and some sounds. She heard another car door opening, and voices.

"What the hell did you freaks do to her?"

"Man, he's a scrapper, isn't he? Just - unh, hold him steady a moment, yeah? Okay, that's got him."

"Where are you going? What about the girl? She's helpless, and she's one of THEM, isn't she?"

"Yes, and any of them is more trouble than you're really ready for. The events of the last two days should tell you that. You'll have another chance with Miss Pretty and her alien friends, after you've had more time to prepare. Our deal was that you take care of this gentleman. Being too greedy could ruin everything."

"Okay, okay, all right. Then let's go."

"Hey, Lance Murdock, buddy. We've got a problem over here."

"What do you mean? Everything went..."

"Front axel's snapped - we're not going anywhere."

"The hell we're not. Check her car - see if it's drivable."

"And just leave our wheels here with her?"

"The wheels you broke, buddy. We can take a few precautions, but time's a wasting. We need to be nowhere around when she starts to come around."

"Then why not just zap her again?"

Isabel didn't catch a reply to that question, but she braced herself for another barrage of what must be the Stun rifle that somebody had mentioned Kyle getting hit with at the Soap factory. (Had Tess ranted that much to her in a dreamwalk?)

But the second blast didn't come, and soon Isabel was able to wiggle her toes. She didn't want to try moving anything more obvious for fear of being spotted, until she heard a familiar car leaving the scene, and then she was able to open her eyes on the first try - and wish that she hadn't.

But, driven by concern for Alex, it wasn't long until she had forced herself to acclimatize to the fierce light of day, and the sporadic weakness in her limbs, to take stock of her situation. As she had expected, she had been moved from her mother's car to the back seat of the van that had struck it. In addition to the busted front axel that had been mentioned, (certainly incurred in driving her off the road,) all four tires had been shot out.

But Isabel smiled a fierce smile. They must not have realized how easily such mechanical difficulties could be fixed by the use of alien powers. And there was something better than she had expected in the console of the van, next to the driver's seat, if she understood what it was correctly.

"Hang on, Alex my love," she muttered. "I'm not going to let these bastards do anything to you."

------------

"Okay, here should be it - or something like that," Max said, pointing and shaking his head at himself. "I guess I'm too tired to put words into the proper order."

"Maybe you shouldn't be speaking for our behalf with Meris," Liz said. "Erg. Maybe I shouldn't be, either."

"You worry about nothing," Jim muttered as he pulled into the parking lot next to the larger green city park. "It's not fancy talking that's going to settle things with the Army, but grit, determination, and dirt. I can pitch in if you like, but somehow I think that the impact would be most from the two of you."

"How do you figure?" Max asked curiously.

"Well, I'm guessing about the kind of impressions that they might have about you, based on my own experience as an alien hunter somewhat closer to ground zero," Valenti admitted. "Max, you're pretty obviously prime suspect for anybody who's had the group of you on their radar. The facts that they'd have gotten their hands on recently from Alex would only have cemented the idea that you're dangerous, really. And Liz - you were *the* material witness, the girl who had nameless alien powers worked upon her. We all really need to tap into those archetypes to reinforce what we're doing here."

"Do the rest of the gang get archetypes, or are we just singled out?" Liz asked, sounding tired of being the material witness already.

"Not so much, no - not from their point of view. Of course, knowing you guys, I can rhyme off everybody's archetype, but they don't really matter. I suppose I might be an archetype of interest to them as well - the no-nonsense UFO hunting lawman who gave up his career rather than see Max exposed." He neatly pulled into a parking spot. "Now let's go break the news to the non-types."

Liz chuckled hollowly as she got out and headed over to the rough circle of people who they could see standing close by in the park - arranged so as to watch on every side, just in case. Max was completely silent. Neither of them were exactly eager to explain to Tess about anything that they had in common and left Tess Harding out.

But that didn't come up. There were a lot more details to explain in person that hadn't been mentioned over the phone, including exactly what message Liz had given to Meris Wheeler, and how serious the fire had looked before everybody fled from the vicinity of the warehouse.

"Okay - so not all of us can go and sit down with the three of them. I'm on board with that," Maria said after a moment. "What about - well, the rest of us? Do we stay elsewhere in the dining room of the same restaurant, to keep an eye on them, or further clear?"

"Hmm," Max said, looking over the group and trying to make a division in his head. "Probably in the restaurant is okay. We can have the first group go in, scope things out, and if our targets see them, they might get uneasy."

"Okay, so time for the big question," Michael put in. "Who's in which group? Do I have to stay back again?"

Max considered that question. "Yeah, I'm afraid so, general. I need you further behind from the lines, and keeping guard. Tess, Liz, and Mister Valenti are with me." Including Tess seemed to be the easiest way to keep her from complaining that Liz would be there too - restoring the symmetry that she'd spoken of. And whether she could keep a firm lid on her temper or not, her intensity might serve them in good stead, and she had the determination and grit that Valenti had spoken of in spades. "Who else? We have five spots, right?"

"If they leave us that many," Liz pointed out. "I suggested that only the three of them should come, but they have the opportunity to include others, like guards. Meris might even be able to pull doctors or scientists from Cagle's office, in the time that she has."

"I thought that Cagle was siding with us," Sarah complained doubtfully.

"Cagle sympathizes with us, and doesn't like what Meris is doing," Valenti said. "He's Clayton's man at heart. But he's also a company man, and at this point Meris is holding some of the company reins. Without a more obvious countermand from Clayton, Cagle won't be able to put Meris off entirely."

"Well, let's see how it goes at the Frontier," Max said. "If we get a fifth chair - hmm. Maria, Kyle, any interest in being there?"

The two of them looked at each other, surprised at being named. It was easy to see that neither of them really wanted to be seperated from their significant other for this, but each also had their own reasons for wanting to be there. "I'm thinking of a number from one to six," Maria announced. "If you guess it or a number next to it, then you go with Max, otherwise it's me. Sound fair?"

"Hey - not that I really think you'd play tricks, but how do I know that you'll really admit the number you already thought of once I say my guess?" Kyle complained with a weak smile.

"She can show that number of fingers behind her back," Michael said. "I'll check and hide my face. Nobody else look, just in case."

"Why should Kyle trust you more than Maria?" Sarah tried, but nobody else wanted to complicate the situation more.

"Okay - two," Kyle guessed after a second's pause. Maria brought her hand out from behind her back - showing only her first finger extended. "And that was the only hand with any fingers, Michael?" Kyle checked, and Michael nodded. "Okay, guess that's me then."

"And we head off?" Hanson asked.

"No, we've still got a little time," Liz said, checking her watch. "We don't want to be hanging around the restaurant first."

"Plus, there's one more thing that I want to talk to Michael and Tess about," Max muttered. "Something that I remembered to ask Cagle about before we left."

There was a short pause. "What's that?" Tess asked after a moment.

"The most obvious edge that we've seen the Army use against us yet," Max prompted.

"Those stun guns," Michael realized. "What about them?"

--------------

About twenty minutes later, Max, Liz, Tess, Kyle, and Mister Valenti watched as their friends entered the Frontier and waited for a table. "Damn it, I can't see anything in there," Kyle muttered. "Should we wait for them to send back a text about the layout or something?"

"They're not there as advance scouts, Kyle," Liz told him softly. "They're not supposed to do anything to attract attention to themselves until we get there - and texting somebody as soon as they sit down might qualify."

"Right," Tess agreed absently. "I'm sure that they're not waiting anymore - they must have been seated. Do we go?"

"Give it about - oh, no, never mind waiting. We move," Max agreed, and led the way towards the door. Liz and Tess immediately hurried to catch up and flank him on either side, and Liz wondered if the Valenti guys would move into position to complete a V wedge formation. But both of them seemed to gravitate to Tess' vicinity instead, so there was a V wedge in the end, but not the symmetrical one that she had planned on. Oh well.

The restaurant wasn't exactly what Liz had expected when she pulled the name out of a phone book, in the midst of preparing to call Meris. It was probably a good thing that she hadn't accidentally selected a takeout eatery that didn't have seating. This place didn't seem to be too far away from that - the 'takeout counter' to one side of the entrance seemed to be busier than the tables, with lots of people waiting in line to order or sitting in chairs as their food was bagged.

But at least there WERE dine-in tables, and wait staff that would apparently come up to the table, instead of diners having to get their order at a counter and taking it to the table themselves. That would have disrupted the rendezvous somewhat as well, Liz had to admit. There was no hostess waiting to direct people to particular tables, but in a central space across the floor, two different tables had been pulled together. Despite the fact that she hadn't met Meris Wheeler or the head Army alien hunters herself, Liz didn't have much trouble recognizing them - or the one brawny younger man sitting with them. Michael and the others were sitting in a large booth near the corner.

Max hesitated, and then made a small gesture in the direction of that corner. Liz turned her head to see if Kyle had caught the hint - and couldn't see him. Max was leading the way over to meet their party, before she realized that Kyle had either caught the gesture or figured it out long before Liz herself, and had reasoned that if he was to go and meet the others, it would be good if he entered a moment later than the four of them, so as to not obviously draw attention to any connections if that couldn't be helped.

For the same reason, she couldn't turn to look for him or towards the booth again. Already they were nearly at the point where Max would have to introduce himself, and Liz caught her breath, hoping that they were at least correct that this public setting would prevent obvious hostilities from the enemy.

"Hello, Miz Wheeler?" Max asked, with a calm composure that Liz could hardly believe. Hell with grit and determination, she wouldn't have been able to say a simple sentence at that point without sounding like she was doing a Porky pig impression.

"Well, hi yourself," the mature and very attractive blonde woman said, staring at Max in a way that made Liz feel oddly jealous. "Here to join us?" Max nodded. "Well, now, that's interesting. I was told to come here by a young woman on the phone, so I was expecting that she would be the first one to speak to me."

Max shrugged as he held out a seat, which Tess nearly jumped into. Without skipping a beat, Max returned the process at the foot of the table, where Liz sat, and then placed himself between the two girls, with Valenti making himself at home between the two of them. "Umm, that was me," Liz said, keeping her voice as level as she could, and surprised by how well she did with that. Hmm, could she try a dangerous edge next, or would that be pushing it? "My name's Liz Parker." Somehow she wasn't sure she managed to put any edge at all on that simple fact.

"How nice to meet you, Miss Parker," Meris replied as smoothly as anything in her turn. "I've come into the posession of something that used to belong to yours, though I'm not sure if you'd want it back after so long."

"Huh??" Her voice cracked in the middle of that non-word. So much for staying cool.

"A uniform that you wore at that Cafe downtown, in Roswell," Meris continued grandly, obviously loving the effect that she was having. "Kitchsy little spot, but I love the burgers. Do extra hours on the Stairmaster just to indulge in them. But this particular uniform has a bullet hole and bloodstains, covered in old Ketchup - from a shooting incident that apparently left you completely unharmed, Miss Parker."

Well, they were moving onto the subject, at least. "And what do you make of that?" Liz asked, managing to recapture most of her cool confidence, if not the dangerous edge.

"That somebody was there in the Crashdown that September day, who could save your life from a gunshot wound without leaving any traces." Meris affected no concern at this fact. "I'm interested in the possibilites that such individuals might present. In fact, interested enough that I nearly finished arranging a summer scholarship intern program, which you were supposed to be the beneficiary of, Liz - except that another, more promising opportunity for finding out about you and your friends came my way."

"Maybe it was 'promising' to drug my friend up until yesterday," Max said, doing much better at the dangerous edge than Liz had been able to. "I think that since then you've started to get a glimpse of the reasons it's not a good idea in the long run to piss us off. So let's start there. The Alex Whitman thing is over - completely. You're NEVER getting your hands on him again, even over my dead body. So what were you planning to do with the things that you learned from him?"

This speech made Meris Wheeler stop for a moment, and trade looks with her silent partners, before reaching for something in her pocket. Tess immediately and not-so-subtly got on her guard, but Meris rolled her eyes and made a big production of showing what she was taking, very slowly - a cell phone. "So, is this the part where you call your army goons and have them storm the restaurant?" she asked.

"By no means. I just thought that you might want to call the goon - no, actually, it's more accurate to call him a flunky - who's listed under 'Johner' in my address book." She offered the cell phone to Tess.

Several uncomfortable glances were exchanged among the four Roswellians. Liz was hoping that Valenti would speak up now that things were in deep water, but he seemed reluctant to ruin any intimidation factor that he had built up by playing the strong, silent type. "I - I don't understand," Max finally put in. "Is this one of these things where we have to let you communicate within a certain amount of time or some horrible vengeance will be wreaked?"

"Umm - not what I was thinking of," Meris admitted. "The goons and flunkies know that we're meeting you, of course. I haven't left any specific 'in the event of my non-return' instructions - have you gentleman?" One of the Army men shook his head no, and the other made a face and a 'sort of' gesture. "Well, in any event, they can probably think of some unpleasant ways to retaliate even without being prompted. But the reason that I gave you my phone was - well, I thought that you might want to speak to your friend Alex."

The bottom dropped out of all of Liz's composure and calm. If it was true - and why would Meris bluff about such a thing? - then it looked like the end of everything. Alex back in the hands of the people who had kept him drugged and blackmailed his parents, the ones who had plotted to kill him off in a car crash - or, depending on how you looked at time, the ones who HAD killed him before yesterday rewound.

Isabel would not have let them get their hands on Alex while she had any strength in her body to protect him, Liz knew. What had they done to her? And now, Liz and all of her friends were sitting down at a table with the leaders of the plot, with all of their best strategies for negotiating a truce from strength completely punctured. Meris knew without a doubt that she had the upper hand. What would she try to do with it next?

Max looked like he was just as shattered as Liz felt. Tess seemed to be struggling with a futile rage - probably not so much because of Alex - at least Liz didn't think that she was as close to Alex as some of the gang who had known him for longer - but because of how obviously Meris Wheeler was outmaneuvering them. Silently Valenti held out his hand for the phone, and Tess was in the middle of passing it over when Max muttered, "No, I'll call him."

Soon, this was in process, and after waiting for an answer for a long moment, Max looked over at Meris, shrugged, and said into the phone, "I want to talk to Alex Whitman." There was a pause. "Yeah, man. Things do look a little dire, but don't give up all hope. Listen, what happened..."

Meris reached out to snatch the phone back, but Max wasn't really within her reach, and Tess interposed herself fiercely. Two of the army personnel, (the lower-ranked officer and the guard,) rose out of their chairs, and Max seemed to consider getting up and backing away from the table himself, but thought better of it, possibly because he didn't want to take more of a part in making a scene than he had to. (Just in case this meeting might end up with the police being called, and his side not being able to make a quick getaway before they arrived.) He seemed to listen for as long as he could before either of them got within reach, and then passed the phone to Tess, who hot-potatoed it on to Meris Wheeler.

Meris sighed, staring at her returned property. "Now, just what did that childish little display accomplish? Why do you have to be so difficult - I'm sorry, we didn't exactlyget that far in the introductions, did we? You *are* Max Evans, right? And as well as Liz Parker, you've brought along Tess Harding, and ex-Sheriff James Valenti the second."

"Right," Max agreed. "Meris Wheeler, Peter Corman, Mark Thomas. I'm afraid I can't place your fourth friend."

"Not by name, at least," Valenti put in. "Career army, Sergeant, not the kind of man to ask many questions, right?"

"And I could rhyme off your friends hanging back in the corner, including Tim Hanson, who pulled a sneaky trick to get our names back in Roswell," Mark complained as he resumed his seat. "It's beside the point."

"Even the girl in the black sweater?" Tess asked curiously.

"No, it really is all beside the point," Max said with a small smile on his face. "Somewhat pointier, if you'll excuse the idiom, is what's been happening wherever your men used to be holding Alex safe."

"What the hell?" Meris held the phone to her ear, but whatever she heard, or didn't, it only seemed to confuse her further. Growling softly, she ended the call and started to dial all over again.

"Hi, are you good and fine people ready to place your order?" a young dusky-skinned waitress singsonged as she stepped up to the table. Nobody replied out loud, but the fierce glares from the army men convinced her to go back and try again. Liz was strongly aware of the fact that she couldn't wipe the puzzled frown off her own face and put on a secretive smile to match Max, Tess, and Valenti. (Did Tess and Jim have any idea what was really going on, or were they just following Max's lead?)

Meris Wheeler put the phone down and glared at Max. "WHAT did you do to my people? And who? None of your merry men seem to be unaccounted for, as far as the reports... Just what is going on??"

"Now, now, Miz Wheeler," Max said. The scariest thing of all about him in that moment was just how contented he seemed - it was a demeanor that trumped Meris' slightly gloaty good humor of a few minutes back. "Game like this is somewhat like poker - if you want to see what I've got in the hole, it's going to cost you."

"Damn your alien hide, Evans," Corman burst out. "If it's a showdown you want, then a showdown you'll get, and you're not the only one who's got cards that they haven't shown. You'll lose more than you can afford to bet, if you don't fold at once and..."

"Shut up, Peter," Meris said mildly. She sounded slightly defeated, in comparison to her unholy ally's angry bluster. "And please, let us dispense with the poker metaphor, as I suspect it will not serve us well. This is not a situation where a showdown is as simple as comparing our hands and sliding the pot over to the victor. We both stand to lose somewhat by escalating to open hostilities."

"I do agree with that," Liz agreed. "So what?"

"What the heck are you talking about, Wheeler?" Mark interrupted. "What did you hear on the phone, anyway?"

"Not much of anything," Meris admitted. "But I won't apologize for being worried about that. I can't reach anybody who was standing guard on Whitman."

"Okay, so they were careless, he got away because Ennis untied him to use the phone or something stupid like that," Mark grumbled. "They're all chasing him back down."

"No," Corman agreed, sounding worried in his turn. "Somebody would have been left to stay on the com."

"And I can't see your people being THAT careless," Meris said. "So this is something more." She sighed. "We've had our full of 'something more' ever since they started sniffing around after Alex yesterday morning, really, haven't we? Miz Evans absconds with Whitman, departing for the depths of the woods before we can move to block him from leaving Roswell, and the pair of them slip away again just when I prepare a task force to go out to Frazier and try to bring them both back. Young Valenti and that girl in the black, whoever she is, show up at Corporal Punishment and start harassing Ennis and Johner and some of the enlisted men, and somehow a brawl starts, and by the time the smoke clears we've got us a hostage and no real clue what to deal with her. At least we got rid of that problem in the boondoggle at the Soap Factory, but - each time we tried to get our hands on Alex Whitman again, he's slipped through between fingers, and it seems his friends are learning more about us and how to fight back as we struggle to retain control the situation."

"Why do you SAY such things in front of them?" Corman hissed in a dangerous voice.

"Because she's trying to force you and Mark to negotiate a sensible truce, instead of fighting a battle where she might get hurt," Liz said with a smile. "Because she's a smart woman who's looking out for her own best interests instead of getting lost in fears."

"I regret that remark!" Corman exploded, then got an annoyed, frustrated look on his face as Tess burst out with snickering and Valenti smiled a wide smile.

"By the way, Meris, your husband sends his warmest regards," Max told him. "I liked him a lot, and offered to do what I can to help him when this is all over with and I have the time to concentrate on a healing - whichever way things settle out."

"You - you met with Clayton?" Meris asked in a quiet whisper. "When? How?"

"Up through the floor from the other side of the duplex," Tess remarked calmly. "Didn't your bodyguards tell you anything about intruders there?"

"He loves you very much, Meris, and admires the determination that you've shown in trying to find the way to cure him," Liz chimed in. "But he doesn't believe that kidnapping and threatening people is the right way anymore."

Meris didn't say anything as she turned to Corman and Thomas, but they both read the decision in her face. "So that's the way it is?" Thomas muttered to her. "Well, I'm not sure what you expect to do for your friends. They're not walking out of this building free."

"So you're really going to try and take us into custody right here?" Max said softly. "That might be - interesting." Somehow the menace in his voice was coming through loud and clear.

"Okay, so maybe you'd walk out of here under your own power - just," the bodyguard muttered. "Not much further. There's..."

"Keep quiet, idiot," Corman grumbled.

"Okay, well, I'm not that hungry after all, so we might as well see how this works," Max said, getting up. "Miz Wheeler - considering the group that was sent after Alex - how many people do you think that your friends would have to surround this building with?"

Meris considered for a moment. Thomas nearly lunged at her, either intending to throttle her or cover up her mouth, but she smoothly evaded him and got up. The other four followed her lead, and Valenti led the way over to where the others were sitting. "Eleven I think, not any more."

"I count three exits," Tess pointed out. "Back behind the kitchen, side of the building near the washrooms, and the front doors. Which ones would they put more people on?"

Meris didn't take as much time to think about that one. "The back - and the side. That's the way they think. Four and four and three, I'd guess."

"Good," Max said. "Come on, soldier. We're on plan Torment."

"I'm up for that," Michael said, getting up.

"Sounded like a lot of confusion and something not going exactly as planned, Max," Maria muttered. "What's - oh, did you realize that Meris Wheeler followed you?"

"She's with us now, for the time being," Liz told her. "In terms of what went up - well, Alex's situation is still somewhat uncertain, but..."

"He'll be okay," Max told them all confidently. "Okay - Michael, Tess, and I are leading the way out. Nobody else leaves the building until we wave them on. Hanson, Mister Valenti - you're guarding the rear."

"Understood," Jim Valenti said, having already started to keep a careful watch on the army people. They hadn't got up yet. One of them had gotten out a cell phone. "If you're doing what I think you're doing, you might want to go now, before they change deployments."

"Yeah, that sounds alright," Max agreed. "I've got the middle, Michael, you're on my right hand, and Tess plays the sinister."

"You always make me into the bad guy," Tess complained.

"Sinister as in left side, not shady," Liz pointed out.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that much - never mind." As quickly as possible, the group moved towards the doors, where the three hybrids went out to put their plan into action, while the humans loitered inside.

It wasn't hard to spot the Army shooters, even though they were in street clothes - the large shiny contraptions that they were carrying were already attracting some attention, though they looked more like movie props than familiar firearms. Max had known that they'd be instructed to use the stun guns, especially because the Army wanted as many of them alive as possible. That kept their options open. Even if some people were to be killed, it would be easier to cover up if the deed was done in private.

Max's 'middle man' was across the street from him, half-hidden in a crack of a passageway between two three-story buildings. Max wasn't close enough to see the whites of his eyes, but he could certainly make out the smile on the man's face as he aimed. Probably he was aiming at Max specifically, though it was hard to tell for sure. Max only felt hope, not certainty, as he tried the trick that he had planned after hearing Mister Cagle describe the internal workings of the Stun gun.

The principle was simple. The stun guns were essentially three-barrelled lasers, each tube working on a different chemical basis that would send out energy on a different frequency, with the tubes aligned so that they would converge on the target. The three different kinds of energy, more or less harmless in themselves, would react on a human or hybrid body together in a way that overwhelmed nervous signals and relaxed muscles. One frequency was deep in the infrared, close to microwaves, while the other two were higher and shorter than visible light - one nearly visible in the ultraviolet, and the other almost qualifying as X-rays.

But each of them was still a laser, and worked on the same basic principle - an electrical charge from a battery stimulated the atoms in the laser tube, making them give off energy back and forth in the directions that the tube pointed. The tube ends were sealed with reflective material, one side always reflecting, (the side pointing backwards toward the shooter,) and the other side, pointing towards the target, automatically turning transparent after a fraction of a second of letting the energy build up. It was a very sophisticated piece of weaponry.

But as Max reached out with his powers, struggling to adjust molecules in the gun that was all the way across the street, he was able to turn just enough of those back ends transparent. When the man pulled the trigger, the three beams of energy rocketed into his body at slightly different spots. The stun effect was far from as strong or even as it would have been if he'd been shot point-blank with the gun in the ordinary way, with the beams converging properly, but still, the energy beams interacted enough to knock him over and leave him hardly able to move for a long moment.

Turning around, he could see that Michael and Tess had also completed the Torment maneuver on their own shooters. Three army soldiers, each stunned by their own weapons. Max felt pleased by that - and less than pleased that Maria had stepped most of the way out of the door, though she still had a few toes on the floor inside. "No, stay back," he warned severely. "It's not safe yet."

Sure enough, another group of soldiers had emerged around the building, from the vicinity of the kitchen loading lot. Max checked on the other side, but there were no reinforcements from there yet - maybe they had been directed to cover the kitchen just in case, or go inside and protect their command officers.

Michael had already started using his powers on the new men's stun guns, (Max could feel the surge of his friends' powers in action,) when one of them, wearing a kind of a headset just visible under his helmet, shouted out. "New Orders! The stunners have been compromised. Sidearms, but do NOT shoot to kill unless forced to."

Tess nodded at Max, and he returned the gesture, knowing that the time had come for him to use his powers more openly than ever before. As the first of the subordinate soldiers, (Max assumed that the one who was in contact via the headset had to be a field commander of some sort,) pulled out a big bulky black handgun, Max concentrated, and let the green energy barrier manifest in between himself and his friends and the shooters.

To give them credit, all four of them took several shots, as if they hoped that they could batter down Max's shield by straining it to its limis. Max felt the shock of each impact, but knew that he could manage it through all the ammunition that they were likely to be carrying. Luckily, once the soldiers had the word that the stun guns had been 'compromised', they didn't think to use them against this new obstacle, even though they hadn't really had time to sabotage all four stun guns, and it would be impossible to 'compromise' them through the shield.

But it looked like one man got a very near miss off a ricochet from another's fire, close enough that he could feel the bullet whiz past his arm, and after only a few seconds, their morale had broken. (Probably it had been shaken when the unearthly alien energy field had first manifested.) All four of them turned and ran away. Max waited until he was clear that none of them were only faking or might return before he let the shield drop.

"Okay, let's get to the cars," Tess suggested. "And quickly, before Captain Hunter and Colonel Crank think of something else. Without waiting for Max to nod an agreement, she waved their friends out of the building.

-------------

"Come on, Max," Tess said a few moments later, waving him over to the blue SUV. Max hurried over quickly enough to the front seat next to her, and then as the back passenger doors were slamming and Tess was gunning the engine into life, he looked around to see who was back there. Meris Wheeler - and Jim Valenti.

"Where's Liz?" He saw Tess's mouth curl into a bit of a snarl as he asked, but Max didn't care. "And - what about your car, Jim?"

"The two questions answer each other - in that I passed Liz my keys as we headed out," Jim muttered. "Thought that I needed to be in here."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Tess asked him. "I'm not so sure about Parker's driving."

"You just worry about your own wheels," Max told her in a grumble.

"Not to bring us back to more important topics or anything," Meris' sharp voice cut through the bantering, "but I do have a few questions that might be relevant. How did you get my number? And figure out whatever you did to the stun guns?"

There was a quiet moment. "Your word that you won't use the identity of our source against him?" Valenti asked.

"For whatever her word is worth," Tess muttered, not quite softly enough.

"Yes, you have my word, and I think that's worth something," Meris said. "I may look like conniving and sneaky to you, and often I am, but there are certain points of honor that I do hold to." She paused. "Or if it would make you feel better not to bring up the name, I'll just ask - did Clayton send you to Cagle?"

"I guess you know him better than either of them thought they knew you," Max admitted, letting that sentence answer Meris' question.

"Under the circumstances, I think that's good," Meris told them. "You've won this round, but I assume that you're still not happy about the prospects of my erstwhile partners knowing so much about you, and remaining free to hatch more plots?"

"Umm - actually no," Max admitted. "What can we do about that, and what does Cagle have to do with it?"

"Well, the plan may require a bit of tweaking," Meris admitted. "But I suspect that Mark may suspect Cagle's involvement, or somebody in the local office here working with him, and go to confront him. If he and Peter go with a few of their remaining senior staff, and not too many of the remaining soldiers, we may be able to lay an ambush there, with Mister Cagle's assistance."

"And what then?" Tess insisted, but Meris smiled a slightly secretive smile, and just then Mister Valenti's phone rang. "You know, I think that I remember somebody else's phone ringing, just when everything was starting to happen back there," she muttered.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Max said, and then listened as Valenti started to speak.

"Isabel? It's good to hear from you, are you alright? Okay - you've got Alex there safe with you? Well, how about this, we're going back to Metachem here in Albuquerque, and... okay, okay, just a moment, let me ask." He moved the mouthpiece away from his face to talk to Max. "Max, Isabel has Alex with her, and she said that she thinks this time they can get back to Roswell without getting intercepted."

"Hey, Isabel's in charge of Alex, she doesn't need my permission," Max said. "It sounds good to me. Above all, we still can't let the Army get ahold of Alex - again."

Valenti relayed that, and waited for a response. "Okay, umm - that's tricky, but thank you for telling me. I'll try to find the right way to break the news to him. Goodbye."

"What's tricky?" Tess demanded as Valenti hung up. "Break the news to whom?"

"Hanson's adversary," Valenti muttered darkly. "She made it to the motel in time to plant a secret tracking device on Isabel's car before she and Alex left. That's how the Army was able to track them to Coronado mall, and ambush them on their way out of the city." Meris was nodding soberly.

"Hanson's adversary in what respect?" Meris asked calmly. "We didn't figure out how she knew so much about the situation, or what her interest was, but when she offered a chance like this, we were cautious, but took the opportunity as carefully as we could."

"I'm not going to tell you much of their own secret," Valenti said. "It's unrelated to the alien thing. But it was Hanson's mission to help us keep you from killing Alex, and Maria DeLuca... and this woman's mission was to make sure that they did die. We'll need to be cautious that she doesn't have a trick up her sleeve still."

"Who is it??" Tess asked. "Anybody who we've met already?"

"I think so," Valenti said. "Somebody very close to Hanson. Probably he'd have suspected her already, except at some level he didn't want to know the truth."

"Oh, no," Max muttered, feeling his gut clench as he guessed the truth.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Eighteen

Isabel sighed with relief as she passed the Interstate onramp where she and Alex had been driven off the road - maybe it didn't mean that they were completely safe, just because she'd gotten further than last time, but somehow she thought the worst of the danger was behind them. (Then again, she'd thought that before.)

Alex was sleeping a little fitfully in the passenger seat, but she wasn't sure how to soothe him, and any rest was probably better than none after all that they'd been through. The Army people who had taken him into their custody hadn't been gentle, and even though Sheryl... Sheryl whatever-her-name-was, Hanson's fiancee, had apparently advised them to treat their hostage gently until the time came to finish him off, there were obvious reasons that attitude didn't endear her much to Isabel.

Reviewing what she'd had to do to rescue Alex one last time, Isabel thanked some mysterious power in the great beyond, (maybe the same one who kept rewinding time for Hanson, apparently,) for the lucky breaks that she'd gotten - like the broken axle in the Army van that had forced her enemies to abandon it with her, but had been easy enough for Isabel to mend with her powers - and the fact that they'd been foolish enough to leave the GPS tracking screen that could automatically locate and follow her mother's car in the front seat of the van, without disabling the unit or doing more than switching it off to disguise its capabilities. It really shouldn't have that easy for her to turn the tables, to hunt down the hunters.

But Isabel had never been one to question a lucky break too closely. She'd followed Alex and his captors to a nearly empty garage, probably an emergency second headquarters compared to the warehouse that she'd heard something about from Michael, and watched from hiding as they met with others, probably Meris Wheeler and the commanding army officers. When nearly everybody departed, leaving only the old guy, the grey-haired lady, and one other guard to watch Alex, Isabel had made a plan, trying to intimidate them enough that they wouldn't think of just shooting her down until she had already left with Alex.

That part of the memory made her shudder. Just leaving without hurting anybody had been the plan, but it had been harder than she'd expected to get to Alex without being seen - because everybody's attention had been on him, holding a phone to his head. When she realized that they were letting Max or somebody else talk to him to establish that he was truly being held hostage, well, Isabel lost her temper at that point. The first strike from her alien powers had sent an M16-rifle into the skull of the one formidable guardsman point first, taking him out of action. Isabel hoped that she didn't actually have his death on her conscience, but hadn't been able to do much for him beyond calling 911 once she and Alex were well away. When the other two had reacted to her sudden arrival, Isabel had been able to just throw them aside with telekinetic pushes. The old man hadn't offered any further resistance, while Lady Grey had apparently been struggling to aim a weapon, so without even thinking about it Isabel broke both of her arms, and a leg for good measure.

She wondered how well Max was getting on - when she'd spoken to Valenti he'd said that they were going back to Metachem, and Isabel couldn't tell if that was a good sign or bad. Maybe she should have spent a little more time asking questions and not just giving him exposition. Oh well.

------------

"Okay, what is the meaning of this?" Peter Corman complained as he strode self-importantly through the back door of the Metachem office, flanked by Mark Thomas and one of his first class sergeants.

That was a little bit too easy. All three of them went down - Peter struck with a conventional tranquilizer gun, and the other two staggered with the stun guns that Metachem had developed, (and that Meris had insisted on quietly keeping a few models of.)

"Alright, good enough, get them over here," Meris said, waving at two pieces of furniture that looked more like dentist's chairs than anything. "Just the senior officers, don't worry about the NCO."

Between them, Max and Michael were able to lug the heavier Mark over into his chair. "So, is that the stuff that you put into Alex's orange soda?" Max asked, pointing at an IV stand that was holding a bag full of blueish-purple fluid.

"Yes. It's actually an organic compound that one of our competitors invented, but all commercial or publicity uses were disallowed by the FDA, and probably other government organizations, for reasons that should be fairly obvious," Meris explained. "We only found out about any of it by accident - we were raiding their files for something else entirely. But they kept such careful notes of the synthesis process that our agent couldn't help the impulse to steal the original."

"Fascinating," Max muttered dryly, wondering if there would be any way to pay that little hijink forward on Metachem, and destroy such a dangerous cocktail recipe for good - once Meris had used it to help them out of this scrape, as it were. (Yes, hello hypocrisy, I know that you're waving at me, he admitted to himself.)

"Yes, I expect that it is." Meris turned to Max. "In the meantime, I have received word from my husband, Max. His health is failing, the doctor can do nothing, and I suspect that your unannounced visit had something to do with tiring him out."

"Not to be indelicate about it or anything," Liz muttered.

"You made promises to us both, and we have lived up to our side of the bargain," Meris insisted. "Go back and help him."

"I said that I would do what I can," Max said. "I will, if his need is so great and we have matters well in hand here. But - but I didn't promise that I could save his life. I haven't had that much opportunity to practice my powers, for fear of exposure, and they have been drained by everything that we've been through lately."

"In Phoenix, you were able to..." Meris started hotly, and then seemed to rethink the wisdom of arguing with him. "I understand. All cancers may not be alike. Is there anything that we can provide, that might improve the odds?"

Max considered. "I won't know until I get there if a combination of my powers and more conventional medicine might help - but if so, it would probably be whatever you're already using or have available there."

"What about a power boost, Max?" Tess asked. "I can come along, connect with you, and let my energy flow to you..."

"No," Max muttered. "You and Michael - you might be needed here."

"What, in case I try to betray you?" Meris scoffed.

"In case you can't neutralize the Army commanders," Max said. "Or their other soldiers show up looking for them." That mollified her somewhat. "In fact, we should find some way of making sure that they aren't watching the area before I go - they might try to take me out while I'm away from help."

"I think that I can arrange to have some of our employees here go out on break, walking or driving," Meris commented. "That wouldn't be seen as especially unusual, and if somebody's around, they should be spotted soon."

"That sounds good," Liz said. "And you're not going to go alone, Max."

"Alright," he said. "But just you - and Kyle and Sarah, if they're interested in coming. Sound alright."

"Yes," Liz muttered, though she didn't sound very convinced of the sense of his selections. Max was mostly concerned about making sure that all of the people he could really count on in a messy situation were sticking around - and he didn't particularly want to ask Michael and Maria to split up.

By the time the 'break patrol' had reported that everything looked clear alright, Meris could tell Max that Mark Thomas was responding well to the hypnosis, though there was still some work to do. "Mister Corman is resisting more strongly, which I would expect considering that he's such a - well, a crank. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to bend him without breaking him too much."

"Does this stuff work at full strength in one session, or do you need to dose them again and again, over a period of weeks?" Maria asked. "I mean, I got the impression about Alex..."

"That was because we needed to move more slowly with Mister Whitman - to avoid upsetting his parents, or letting you realize too soon that something was wrong with him."

"And what if the other people that they know realize that something's wrong?" Michael asked.

"I'll be as careful as I can, but the situation isn't the same, and we do NEED to settle them today, as much as possible," Meris admitted. "I'll arrange a post-hypnotic that I can use for followups later, to make sure that the memories don't resurface. Max, will you please leave, before we need to send the Break Patrol out again?"

Max left, along with Liz, Kyle, and Sarah.

-----------

"Wow," Sarah said, puffing as she collapsed into a rough wooden chair in Clayton Wheeler's bedroom. "I thought that you were speaking metaphorically about that 'sucking you in' stuff. Didn't realize that I really did have - Balance, energy, whatever, inside me like that."

"Not until it's gone," Kyle agreed, shaking his head.

"How long have you been carrying around three healing stones in the glove compartment of the Jeep, anyway Max?" Liz asked him.

"Umm - not too long, just since the whole thing with Grant Sorenson in Phoenix," Max muttered, trying to be cryptic in front of Clayton, but the old man nodded as if he understood all too well what Max was talking about. "Seemed like we might need them sooner or later."

"I see," Wheeler muttered. "Truly, I feel like I understand much now that was so well hidden that I never suspected it. How - how well did the operation go, Doctor Evans?"

"You're not out of the woods," Max muttered. "You're on the mend, but - well, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I want to see you again. A weekly appointment, maybe."

"I'm sure that Meris can handle the details," Clayton said. "Am I under Healer's orders not to travel? It would probably be more convenient to rendezvous in Roswell."

"I'm not a doctor," Max reminded him, "so I can't say for sure what any of the ramifications of your current condition might be, but that seems okay to me. You must have been in worse shape when you came to Albuquerque." Wheeler nodded. "What I can tell you is - I've stabilized the tumors, stopped them growing for the time being, and shrank some of the ones that seemed to be causing your symptoms today or likely to trigger similar problems in the near future. This much has been a bit of a shock to your system, but I think that you could handle more if the four of us had the strength for me to do more."

"If human energy can sustain you, then we do have other candidates here," Wheeler pointed out.

"No, I think that we don't want Metachem employees or contractors to get involved in an alien process where their energy is sucked out of their body," Liz pointed out. "That's just asking for trouble."

"Of course," Wheeler agreed. "I didn't mean to insist or seem ungrateful, just - well, I'm a problem-solver at heart, which was how I met with so much success in biochemistry - and in business, I suppose, come to think of it. You mentioned the obstacle, and I saw a possible way to overcome it. And I was just about to comment on the problems that solution might incur in its turn."

"Another obstacle is that I'm just pretty tired and strained myself," Max said, sighing as he lay down on the edge of the bed, next to Clayton's feet. "Do you have a solution for that one too?"

"Yes, but not one that shrinks my tumors any further today," Wheeler said, laughing softly. "Get some rest. I can see if we could rustle up hotel rooms for you and your friends."

"Why aren't YOU in a hotel suite, since you're obviously rich enough for one?" Kyle asked suddenly. "Yeah, I can understand that this house in a bad neighborhood is lower-profile, but just who would you be hiding from? The army people know that you're here, they've been to see you here, and they didn't really bear you any ill will until we came along, at least. And I don't think you really expected that we'd come looking for you - we'd have had at least as much trouble finding you in a fancy hotel, I think."

"Don't worry about that," Wheeler said, with a negligent wave of his hand. "Personal idiosyncracy of mine, I've never really liked hotels that much. Also, considering my medical needs, there were some practical reasons for accomodations of this sort."

"That makes sense," Sarah said. "Are there any beds in the other rooms, actually? Might be better if we can get some sleep without having to drive through the city again, and risk the last few soldiers finding us."

Liz shot Max a worried look, obviously uncertain about the prospect of lying down in the belly of this particular beast. But somehow, as tired and helpless as he felt, Max wasn't at all dubious when it came to trusting Clayton Wheeler. Though he hadn't gone into this in any detail, he'd seen flashes from the old man during the healing process, and though they weren't all pretty or reassuring, Max thought he understood Wheeler well enough now to be certain of his limits. Protecting guests who had done him a major failure as they rested was one thing that Wheeler could be counted on to do to the limits of his resources.

"Umm, actually yes, two queen-size beds, as I understand," Wheeler said with a bit of a twinkle in his eyes. "Will that be acceptable?"

"I don't see a problem with it," Kyle chimed in immediately.

Sarah sighed and rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Okay, okay, but don't expect much more than a good sleep." She started to pull him out of the room. "Well, until tomorrow morning at least. I might well be feeling - friskier then."

Once again Max and Liz shared a look. "We'd probably better say 'just sleep' too," Liz muttered. "Tess would be freaked enough just hearing that we slept in the same bed. In point of fact, maybe we shouldn't even..."

"Oh, come on, Liz, don't get hyper-sensitive again. It's just a bed when we're both very tired," Max started, and was interrupted by Wheeler clearing his throat.

"Umm, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but since I have your attention at the moment - Tess, that's the girl with the curly blonde hair who was in here earlier." Liz nodded. "Is Tess your sweetheart, Max?"

The phrasing of the question made Max choke up for a second, which in turn sent Liz off into nervous giggles. "First off," Max said, when he calmed down, "you do realize that nobody born after 1955 talks that way, right?"

"Does that actually exclude you, Max?" Wheeler asked.

"That one's complicated, and none of your business yet."

"Alright, fair enough. Second off?"

Max 'ummed', and looked over at Liz. "Hey, sorry, I'm not enough of an expert to be able to answer a question about your relationship with Tess Harding," she protested. "I might be stuck somewhat in the middle of it, but not THAT badly."

Somehow that gave Max the cue. "Okay, no, Tess isn't my girlfriend or anything, actually we haven't even really dated. There's - well, there's a really long and complicated history between of us, some of which started before we even met, which I won't explain, but the simple version is that she's been infatuated with me for a while, and I didn't return her feelings for a long time. Meanwhile, Liz *was* my girlfriend, on and off, before Tess came to town, and they didn't get off to a great starting relationship, Tess didn't think that Liz was good for me, Liz was upset that this new girl seemed to think that she was entitled to be with me, and then changed her mind and left me because she thought that it might be better for me to figure things out with Tess first. Is - is that a fair description from your perspective so far, Liz?"

"Umm... yeah, actually better than I'd have been able to put it," she admitted. "And the fact that it makes me sound inconstant - is particularly fair."

"Don't get started beating yourself up," Max warned. "Anyway, I've really been avoiding the issue with Tess for most of the year, partly because she's really touchy and can't take a hint that well, and also possibly somewhat because I've been scared to admit that I might actually really like her if I got to know her. But there was something that happened recently that did shake me up and make me actually feel a connection like that to Tess, so - that's sort of where we still are. Classic love triangle. I still love Liz, I'm starting to really like Tess too, and none of us want whatever choice I make to cause problems in the gang now."

"Ahh, interesting," Wheeler muttered. "I'm afraid that I have no great words of wisdom for you, except to follow your heart if you can figure that much out. Now, I will point out that the difference in terms that you used in describing your feelings for the two young ladies is interesting - love for Liz, and 'starting to really like' about Tess. But perhaps it would be over-hasty to make a decision based on a chance statement."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Well, we should call over to the Metachem office, at least, to let them know that we'll be staying here for a while. Meris will want to know about Clayton as well. We can ask to talk to Tess, and judge her reaction that way."

"I suppose so," Max agreed. "So where's a telephone, anyway?"

"Not in here," Clayton said. "Meris didn't want me having one too conveniently after I started to express my lack of confidence in her direction, and she was calling the shots at that point, alas."

"You don't love her any less for what she was driven to, do you?" Liz asked.

Clayton shrugged. "Speaking of following one's heart..." he muttered, and sighed contentedly. "She might have disagreed about the ethics, but she did what she did out of love for me. I can't help but admire that."

Max rolled his own eyes and went off to look for the telephone.

----------

When Max woke up, something seemed a bit odd. He looked over, next to him, and when the first thing he saw was Tess looking back, he blinked in surprise. For a moment, wondering why he should be waking up next to Tess, his mind constructed elaborate explanations of how she could have plotted to come over to Clayton Wheeler's and taking Liz's place to seduce him into something.

And then, it occured to him that he was definitely not still lying on the bed in Clayton's place. In fact, he wasn't lying down on any kind of a bed at all, which was more than a little unusual for circumstances to wake up under. But clearing his eyes somewhat, he realized that they were both in the backseat of a car - Tess' car, and it was driving through the open desert in the dark of night. "Okay, let me get this straight," he muttered, moving his tongue back and forth a bit in a dry mouth to try and generate some moisture there, if possible.

"Wouldn't it be easier for us to explain, instead of letting you deduce and induce the facts like an induction machine?" Tess asked playfully.

"Can you induce a fact?" Max wondered.

"I'm actually not sure," Liz admitted from the front seat in front of Tess. "There's inductive reasoning, but I'm not sure if what you reason out with that are facts. Inductive might mean that you go from specific facts to more generic theories and rules, instead of deductive where you figure out facts from other facts."

"I don't think it matters, he can be a deduction machine if it fits better, and if he wants," Tess pointed. "So explanations or deductions?"

"I guess I'm too tired to be a deduction machine," Max admitted. "But if I can ask for a favor - could the first explanation be related to who's driving?"

There was a fairly long pause. "That would be me, fearless leader," Michael's familiar voice came from the vicinity of the steering wheel, around the seat. "Thought I'd sit in, and see if I could keep the girls from having you for lunch, if that was possible. Err, or a late night snack, since it's not lunch time or anything."

"Well, thank you so much," Max told him. "So, next?"

"No further preferences?" Liz asked him.

"No, tell me whatever you wish."

"Well - Michael and Mister Valenti came to pick us up in the evening," Liz said. "And Tess, obviously. Actually, I think that was yesterday evening, because it's past midnight now. Hanson and Maria headed straight out of town from Metachem, and Mister Valenti went with Kyle and Sarah."

"I actually tried to wake you up back at Clayton's - do you remember?" Tess asked. Max considered that and went 'nuh-uh', which set Liz off giggling and actually seemed to upset Tess. "Well, when we realized that nothing was working, the three of us agreed to take you out to the car and just let you keep sleeping it off. Clayton's people offered to help carry you."

"Okay," Max said.

"I was sort of watching to make sure that nobody dropped you, and ready to cushion the fall just in case," Tess admitted. "But there wasn't any need - I guess I worry too much when it comes to you. Let's see - we've heard from Alex and Isabel already - they beat us back to Roswell, everything's fine there, except a lot of parents are upset that once again we all took off without a very good reason or calling beforehand."

"Ooh, yeah, that's not going to be fun," Max admitted. "Maybe we should be thinking of - no, if we told our parents, that would just mean that they'd be in danger of this kind of thing too, really."

"Pretty much," Liz admitted regretfully. "Meris was pretty confident about her hypnosis plan when - when they left Metachem, right? Sheesh, I probably shouldn't jump in and explain the stuff that I wasn't around for, should I? Hearsay makes everything so much simpler and less accurate."

"No, that one's just about what I would have said - possibly what I told you word for word," Michael assured her. "We'll have to be careful about lots of stuff for a while, before relaxing and going back into 'everything's back to normal' mode - if indeed we can with the Wheelers and Mister Cagle knowing so much about us. Oh, and Maria remembered to talk to Cagle about Alex, and the problems that he'll be going through in terms of withdrawl from the orange juice drug. She's got some stuff that should help him get back to normal, kind of the non-hypnotic methadone equivalent to ease the cold turkey cravings."

"Okay," Max said. "I think I'll want to check his system when he takes some of it, just to make sure that it'll do what they say it will, that nobody's trying to get him hooked again."

"I hoped that you would," Liz said. "Let's see, what else?"

"I do have one question now," Max admitted. "What about Hanson and Sheryl?"

"Valenti broke the news while we were at Metachem," Tess said. "He was pretty upset, but he believes it. I think I've gotten the impression that he wants to try and go back to her and keep her from realizing that he knows what she is."

"Because he really likes her, or because he wants to outmaneuver her next time?" Max asked. Tess made the 'I-dunno' noise.

"I guess that we're not going to find out that much about what Hanson's calling is really like for him most of the time," Michael said. "Like he's not going to learn everything about life as a teenage alien. He's only a guest star in the story of our lives."

"More like a recurring background character who gets a much bigger role for one episode," Tess countered.

"Hmm." Max tried to go over things. "Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be only one unresolved thread hanging in front of us."

"That depends on how you count," Michael continued. "For one thing, in addition to Hanson, there's Sarah who now knows a lot about us. She's been pretty dependable in the heat of a crisis, but what's going to be happening over the next few weeks? Is she the type who'll blurt out the wrong thing to her sophomore friends? We don't really know much about her."

"She's smart and understands about the need to be careful when keeping a secret," Liz said.

"Probably - but I think that's less important than what Max was getting at," Tess corrected. "Love triangle decision time. Do you have a little speech to make, Max?"

"Yeah, but... you're totally bracing yourself to hear bad news, aren't you, Tess?" Max asked.

"What does that matter?"

"Umm - more than you might think," Max said. "I'm understanding more about you than I used to, Tess Harding - about how deeply afraid you are to hear that Liz and I are getting back together, and how nobly you'd carry on and defend us all no matter how many pieces your heart breaks into. I'm learning to read those little signs on your face that nobody else would be able to spot because you're that good at hiding what you're really feeling from the world."

There was a tense silence in the car, which Max realized that he would have to be the one to break again.

"We're not at the point where I pick one of you incredible young ladies to be the love of my life, and let the other one down easy," Max said. "We have not arrived at that moment - I for one don't feel ready to make such a choice yet, and if either of you are upset enough about my refusal to follow the script in that respect that you don't want to have anything to do with me, well, that would be one way of resolving the situation."

"Even if they both decide that, the love triangle will be over," Michael pointed out helpfully.

"Yeah, thanks," Liz said. "Umm - I think that we're both waiting to see if you have a suggestion for what happens next. I know that I am."

"Is this, then, the part where you try and nudge us both into saying that it's okay with us for you to date both of us, and expect us to be happy about it?" Tess asked. "Is *that* the moment that we've arrived at?"

"Ooh, seriously Max, if you pull that off, you'll be my hero," Michael enthused.

"No, that's not what I'm getting at - quite, and Michael, I'm not sure what you think you're doing, but it's not helping out," Max said, and sighed. "For one thing - I'm not sure that 'dating' Liz would be helpful in this situation, except in trying to maintain the pretense of a symmetry that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe it never really did."

"Okay, I have to admit that I'm curious now," Tess said. "What WOULD be helpful in this situation, and why? Dating me?"

"Yes, maybe - but I'm still waking up, and the highway lights aren't helping me think, so let me explain the roundabout way," Max said. "First - miniature speech for Liz. I - I still love you, cherish you, respect you... but I'm no longer certain that all of those things mean that it's the best thing for us to be together forever. Maybe that's the same thing that you realized last summer, when you... well, you know."

"Yes, yes I think so, Max," Liz said. For a moment a tear shone prettily in one eye, but she blinked it away before Max could properly enjoy the effect. "For a while, I was actually certain of the opposite, that we were truly star-crossed lovers who could never be together again. Now I guess I'm like you, I'm not sure one way or the other."

"I suppose that might be a good thing," Max said. "And - and the thing that I'm most worried about, that I guess I'm hoping for some reassurance about, is that the next Sean DeLuca will come along and sweep you off your feet with some good old-fashioned human romance, and you'll turn away from me just at the moment I figure out that you're the only one for me."

"Isn't the last Sean DeLuca still in the picture?" Michael asked. "Maria said that you were lane-dancing with him on prom night, after catching Max kissing Tess, and what the heck is lane-dancing?"

"Michael, once again, that's not helpful," Liz told him. "Max - I understand your fears, but I'm not sure what I can say to reassure you that much. I'm not going to be looking for some other guy to love while you're still so deeply in my heart and the two of us are still talking about a maybe someday - but I'm not going to lock my heart away from all overs and stop living my life either. I should also say that I live with the same fear - that's what I was trying to tell you on the dance floor on Prom night."

"Yeah, I've got that," Max admitted. "So I guess that's where we leave it for now. We're not dating each other..." He wondered just what to say about them dating other people, and then decided not to rub anything in, "...but we're still in each other's hearts, and not ruling out the possibility of a reunion, whether it be soon or not so soon. And I hope that we can still spend time as friends, and that whatever each of us might have to do to follow our hearts, that it'll never lead to discord between the two of us."

"Yeah," Liz nodded, though she didn't really look that impressed by the prospects before her.

And neither did Tess. "Somehow, hearing you say all those nice things about another girl doesn't really make me feel particularly inclined to date you, Max."

He chuckled. "As I mentioned earlier, that's obviously your choice. But I *do* want to get to know you better, Tess, in a dating-like way, to see if we might have something that's worth working toward. What I feel for you - is not a big love that's overwhelmed and turned my life around... but I've only been in love once before, and maybe it doesn't always have to happen that way." Tess sniffed unhappily, and Max shrugged. "I've seen something deep inside you that I like, Tess, that I want to keep around and close to me for a long time. Something that definitely does NOT have to do with Queen Ava and King Zan on Antar long long ago - or not entirely. It's about Tess Harding, about the person who you only become when you let your human side shine through a little bit. I'd even like to see what you're like when you let more of it out than you ever have around me so far."

"Wow." Tess chuckled. "Nice way to drop an anvil on me about the whole past lives thing, Max."

"Sorry - but I felt that it did need to be said. I'm not interested in reliving Zan's choices. I've got my own life to lead here."

"I'm starting to see the appeal of that," Tess admitted, turning away from him for a few seconds to look outside of the car at the stars of the Earth night sky. "And if there's anybody who I'd actually want to try being more human for - well, it could be either you or Kyle, actually." Liz snickered. "But though you'll be the two most important guys in my life, especially if we start the dating trial thing - apparently it's a very different relationship I have with him."

"Are you upset about the whole 'like a sister to him' thing, Tess?" Liz asked. "Seriously?"

"Hmm." Tess considered. "Not like I'm pining away for him to change his mind, really. My pride was stung a little at the whole experience, and when he asked me to prom I was seriously considering throwing myself into a love affair with him, if only to distract myself from everything else that was going on. But - but no, when I had a little time to calm down, I had to admit that I felt the same way about him. It would've been way too weird if we ever went past the relatively tame kissing."

"Interesting," Liz said.

"I thought you'd like it," Tess continued. "But if I can meander back to the point - full discloser, Max - I've got issues on top of issues, that I guess I've been playing the alien courtesan queen as a way of hiding and avoiding. If you really want me to be open to my human side when I'm around you - then that crap is going to start to come out, and it's not going to be pretty."

Max thought about that for a second, then reached out to stroke the side of Tess' face. "Maybe not - and maybe I'm not ready for exactly what that'll be like. But - but I do want you to go through it - in the best way, I mean. I want you to get over your issues, to sort them out, and probably going through the ugly side is the only way to do that. I want to help you out as much as I can." Tess sighed and brought his hand down from her cheek, though she kept touching it with her own. "Are we talking about Nasedo stuff?"

"Partly - maybe even mostly," Tess admitted. "He was the only constant figure in my childhood, looming large enough to qualify as a planet all to himself when I didn't have much gravity of my own. Also - the Lonnie and Rath thing in New York, and a few other details that I haven't mentioned yet." She took a deep breath. "I do want to get into the messy stuff with you - but maybe not here."

"Well, I don't know how Liz feels," Michael said. "You can unload in front of me if you need to, you should know that, Tess. You're like a sister to me too, and I don't think that there's anything that you can confess to that will make me see you differently from that."

"Umm - I'm working on accepting you that much," Liz instantly chimed in, and Tess had to laugh, muttering something about refreshing honesty. "Maybe there's been enough big revelations for a while, and we're getting close to the edge of town I think." There was a moment's pause. "I do wish you the best of luck, Max, though there's still a little part of me that keeps saying that the luckiest thing for you wouldn't be to fall madly in love with Tess. Can I ask one favor?"

"What's that?" Max asked.

"One more kiss, when we get out of the car or whenever. Sometime before you and Tess go on your first official date."

"Umm... alright, I guess," Max muttered. He hadn't looked to Tess for her reaction, but noticed her nodding out of the corner of his eyes. "Yes, I'd like that too."

"Good." She giggled. "My last chance to show you what you'll be missing for a while, I guess."

"Oh, boy," Max said under his breath.

"Trust me, Lizzie, you don't want to get into that kind of a contest with me," Tess teased.

-------------

"Oh, hello Isabel," Tim Hanson said as he stepped up to the huge picnic blanket that had been spread across a flat stretch of Spring River Park. "How's it going? Good afternoon Alex."

"Mister Hanson!" Isabel nearly jumped up. "Sorry, I've - I've been wanting to meet you again and say thanks for everything that you did - I know that it was a mission that you were assigned, but... I can hardly believe what happened. Alex died, and you saved him from that. I wasn't sure what the best way to get in touch with you would be - we already got Jim fired by hanging around the Sheriff's station too much, and when I heard that Sheryl was still living with you..."

"Yeah, I understand," he agreed. "Well, it's worked out alright, we're all here together... and nobody else much seems to be around, so I could even sit down for a moment and share a snack. You seem to have brought plenty of tasty stuff - but if this is a special occasion for the two of you, I don't mean to intrude."

"Nothing so special that we can't include you," Alex said. "First day of exams has come and gone, and we both did alright."

"Yes, come on." Isabel reached out for Hanson's hand, as if to guide him over the 'threshold' of the picnic spread - and jumped in surprise, losing her balance and tripping over the soda cooler. Luckily, Hanson still had a hold of Isabel's hand, and was able to keep her from collapsing until Alex could scramble to his feet and hold her steadier.

"What - what did you see, darling?" Alex asked, as Isabel opened her eyes again and looked up into his face.

"See?" Hanson asked. "What could she have seen..."

"One thing that you might not have heard about them," Alex said gently. "They can get - sort of psychic impressions when they touch people and things. Come to think of it, you and Isabel probably never touched since the whole thing started, until now."

"No, I guess not," Hanson admitted. "I hardly even saw her - in the Crashdown cafe the first morning after I - after I was sent back for you, but no, we didn't make any physical contact."

"Maybe I'd have trusted you sooner if we had - or maybe I wouldn't have known what to think," Isabel muttered. "Always assuming that I'd have gotten this same flash back then, but I think that I might well have. I - I saw a blue-white light, and a friendly old woman with gray hair, stretching out her hand and smiling." She took a breath. "This is a somewhat wild jump I admit, but could that have been whoever - whoever sent Alex back to ask you for help?"

"I... I suppose," Hanson agreed. "We never know that much about whatever powers give us our calling or bring the people we're supposed to try to help to us."

"Do - do we ever say anything different to you?" Alex asked.

"Not really. Help me, save me, variants on that theme. I think maybe that's one of the rules or restrictions, that we have to figure it out without whatever hints the customer might be able to give. Though - though I think that you were really trying hard to bend the rules, Alex - and in a very limited way, you managed."

"Really?" Alex sounded surprised. "What, how?"

"You said 'help them.'" Hanson cleared his throat. "And though it might not sound like much, I might not have told your friends, without that hint. If I'd kept on trying to get in touch with you, as the gang was focused on protecting you from me and not paying as much attention to the true threat..."

"Yeah, that wouldn't be good," Isabel admitted. "But it doesn't really surprise me that you would have been more worried about the possible implications to us than saving your own butt, sweetie. Good thing Hanson was able to help us all out."

"Yes, I'm glad about the way this 'call' turned out," Hanson agreed. "And - well, I obviously don't want to have to take as much heat as Valenti did, which suggests that I shouldn't have as much contact with you and your friends, but if you really need a friend in the sheriff's station, then you've still got one."

"Good to know," Isabel admitted. "And yes, I'll be careful not to lean on that as much as I did."

"Speaking of which," Hanson said, finally sitting down on a bare patch of blanket. "What was the deal with Laurie Dupree anyway? I still haven't got that sorted out. She really did have an evil alien after her? Why??"

"Oh, boy, that'll be a long story," Alex said with a smile. "Umm, should we start with the Gandarium?"

"I'm not sure if they make sense to anybody, but why not try it, honey," Isabel laughed, holding out a can of Pringles for Hanson.

THE END.