Specimen (AU T/K Adult) (Complete)

[greywolf]

They had showered together again this morning...and her body still felt warmed by the caresses that had somehow replaced the requested scrubbing of her back. But they were back at the computer...back to playing chess, while they tried to pool as much knowledge as they had between them about how the weapon under their computer might work, and how they might go about defeating it. Tess found herself wishing she had the knowledge of this 'Liz' person that Kyle knew, and perhaps she felt just a twinge of jealousy about the respect Kyle had for her. But as she felt his love flow towards her through the connection Tess smiled. Whatever happened, she knew...Kyle was her soulmate...and if he wouldn't yet love her body and soul...she certainly had no reason to fear that this Liz-person would somehow supplant her in Kyle's affection. If only she just knew what the girl knew, but while a dictionary could give you vocabulary it didn't much give you content or context.....and apparently nuclear devices were a rather specialized subset of human knowledge...not like football or basketball.

But Tess needn't have felt so inadequate, because in fact no one knew the totality of what that bomb could do, although the people who controlled the facility believed they did. But that had always been a problem with so-called 'black world' programs, because the secrecy they needed always led to a certain loss of understanding of the potential consequences of such programs. In the case of the facility, none of the people who had handled the various segments of the isolation plan for Tess had ever had ever had a 'need-to-know' the whole story, and for that reason it had been kept from them. The nuclear device itself was a rather ancient one.... a so-called A-bomb.... dating from the 1950s that had been designed and built before the interlocks requiring presidential authorization codes had been built in to every nuclear device in the US arsenal. The actual weapon itself had an undistinguished history. After over a decade of being in place in a cave in South Korea to collapse a mountain pass in the event of North Korean invasion, it had been returned to the United States in the late 1960s for destruction. That destruction had never occured. Oh, on paper, ithe device did not exist at all, it had been documented destroyed and its U-235 reclaimed....but in a nuclear stockpile that had literally tons of fissile material. it had been relatively easy to hide the loss of 10 kilograms, and if you looked at the papers that had audited the destruction, that small amount was supposedly in a secure nuclear waste dump at the Hanford Atomic Works in Washington State over a thousand miles from Roswell.

The concept of a fission device is fairly simple...and the key to it was to create a self sustaining chain reaction of fissionable material and for that you needed fissile material. . Fissile materiel was material that, under the right conditions, could produce self sustaining nuclear fission. There were in fact, a lot of materials known to Earth science that were fissile...Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 being the most practical as bomb making material.

The half century old nuclear device buried in the desk under the computer was made of Uranium-235, a naturally occurring isotope that made up a very small percentage of naturally occurring Uranium, the rest being mainly Uranium-238. One of the most difficult processes in the construction of a nuclear weapon was to take the Uranium and separate the lighter...fissionable... U-235, from the rest of the Uranium. This was done with a process involving gas diffusion of Uranium Hexafluoride...not what you'd do in the West Roswell High Chem lab certainly, but when you were done you had fissionable U-235 and the leftover uranium...something that had come to be known as 'depleted' Uranium, since it had been depleted of its U-235. The depleted Uranium was practically pure U-238....but we'll get back to that later.

Once you had purified U-235, however,the problem was not so much one of making an atomic bomb, but rather preventing one from occuring by accident. If a sufficient amount of fissile materiel was brought together, it initiated the chain reaction on its own, and this amount was something known in the nuclear physics business as a critical mass. A physicist would tell you that it would be wrong to think of a criticalmass as a 'weight' of material. In fact, the amount of U-235 in the sphere under the desk was far below the weight of U-235 that would under ordinary conditions become critical at all. Criticality depended, in its essence, on the amount, shape, density, and neutron flux within the mass being sufficient to allow the chain reaction to be self sustaining rather than to damp itself out. To avoid an explosion, it was always necessary for fissile material to lose the neutrons produced by its spontaneous decay at a faster rate than those neutrons caused fission events within the mass of the fissile material. Generally you accomplished this by either keeping the total amount of fissile small or having it in a shape that was non-spherical or had voids in it...that permitted enough neutrons to escape that the few remaining were unlikely to interact much with their fellow fissile atoms. As long as that happened, a chain reaction would not happen.

On the other hand, there were things you could do to decease the actual mass required for a nuclear rection such as to coat the outside of the fissile material with neutron reflectors like Beryllium, Tungsten, or.....for that matter, depleted Uranium. I told you we'd get back to that later, and we still aren't done with it. The other common way was to use shaped charge explosives to condense the fissile material...make it more dense, which rather dramatically decreased the amount of fissile materiel required for criticality, and provided a method to trigger the device at will.

The bomb under the desk was what was called an implosion device, and it was intended to be a mini-nuke...small, clean, and not particularly powerful as nuclear weapons go, although in truth nuclear weapons go rather far in that direction. It had a subcritical sphere coated with beryllium to reflect the neutrons back, and a small amount of Tritium-Deuterium whic would, once the chain reaction was started, boost the neutron production to allow the relatively small amount of U-235 to a briefly self sustaining fission reaction that would produce, by nuke standards, a small explosion.

And if that was all there was to the story, the device would have probably performed as advertised, incinerating everything within a hundred feet of ground zero, and for almost a half mile down the tunnel system, and even then blocked only by the three large blast doors between the holding cell and the rest of the underground complex. But that was most definitely NOT the rest of the story, because the compartmentalization of the black world project had kept the left hand from knowing what the right hand was doing, and of course, there was also another factor that no one knew at all, that dramatically affected the likely outcome in the event of the device being triggered. But, that's one of the problems with black world projects.

The single thing that most directly led to the current situation was the decision to line the entire room with depleted uranium. No one explained that decision to the guy who installed the nuke, he didn't have a need to know. And even if he knew, he may or may not have really understood the significance of that, he was a demolition guy...not a theoretical physicist. A theoretical physicist would have been appalled had he/she known what they wintended.

Depleted uranium isn't fissile, but it IS fissionable. It won't sustain a nuclear chan reaction, but if it's in the area, it will definitely add fuel to the fire. By encasing the bomb itself in depleted uranium the people who ran the Facility inadvertently accomplished a number of things. First, they added fuel to the device, which was going to make the explosion bigger. Secondly they added a second layer of neutron reflector that once the chain reaction was started, would reflect neutrons back into the chain reaction that would have otherwise been lost. That too would make the explosion bigger. The third thing it did was add mass to the outside of the fission device. That would keep the reacting mass together for just a few milliseconds longer, which of course would make the explosion bigger. The final thing it would do, really wouldn't make the explosion bigger, but the whole purpose of making the device small with very little fissile materiel to begin with was to limit the total radiation that would be released. By putting nearly a ton of depleted uranium into the coating of Tess's room, the depleted uranium would become neutron activated and very dirty.

But as bad as that was, that was only part of the problem...the part that a theoretical physicist could have told them about, had the physicist had the 'need to know' and ben asked. The other problem was unknown to anyone....what a lonely young girl who could do molecular manipulation...and limited sub molecular manipulation, could do if you kept her locked up and bored for almost a decade. What no one knew, and what would have caused true nightmares for a theoretical physicist, was that the young girl had tried for almost five years to manipulate the matter right above the nuclear device, and while that matter had started out as Uranium 238, her years of effort had managed to convert a sizable chunk of the depleted uranium into a mixture of Plutonium 239 and Uranium 235....both fissile materials. So when the bomb beneath it went off, the area that Tess had manipulated was going to go off too, and between the two bombs there would be a lens of fissioning material ... a hellish plasma of thermonuclear violence...that would hold together and fission far more completely...far longer...than had ever been the intentions when the mini-nuke was constructed or embedded in the Facilty.

So, unknown to those who ran the Facility, what was sitting in the room was a device that,, were it to be detonated, would NOT be the relatively clean fractional kiloton equivalent device that had been built by Sandia Labs in the early 1950s, but rather a rather dirty fractional megaton device.

And when and if it blew, the mile of tunnel and three blast doors between the holding cell and the REST of the facilty, were going to be scant protection against the hellish blast of the device that squatted under the computer where Tess and Kyle were playing chess and making their plans for escape......

[greywolf]

It was almost noon before Jim Valenti awakened on the couch in Amy DeLuca's living room. There was a smell of hot coffee, and freshly baked pies in the air and he struggled to his feet and went in to the kitchen.

"Good morning," said Amy, and Jim looked at the clock on the stove in front of her...the one that siad 11:56.

"Yeah...just barely."

"Well have some coffee and a pastry. Have you decided what to do next?"

"Yeah...I'm going in to the office....see if I can call Albuquerque, track down the license plates of the cars that were in that parking lot. If I can find out more about the people that work there it might help me to come up with a plan."

"Are you sure that Kyle is in there?"

"No way too be sure, at least not without going in there or getting someone who wors there to confess... but there isn't really much I can do until I get more information. I can't get a warrant on the information I have, but I'm not really sure that place would be something the SWAT team could storm even if I did. Somehow we need to either outhink them...or get real lucky."

"Well, let's hope you get lucky," said Amy, a blush starting instantly as she realized the double-entendre, "I mean....let's hope that Kyle gets lucky..." she corrected herself.


In the holding cell, Tess tried to keep up the appearances...play the chess game, while Kyle talked to her through the mindlink...while he filled in all the background he could about life on the outside...New Mexico....Roswell...West Roswell High. At one level she was searching all that data...searching for the clue....searching for the idea, that would let them escape together. But at another level, she knew she was distracted....just by Kyle's presence.

It was only a fantasy....a harmless one at that...and she loved him so much....

• They were sitting on the couch of a living room somewhere...far from the Facility. He was just a teenage boy, her just a teenage girl. They were sitting together in the semi-darkness, listening to the music...kissing. He was shy...very shy....somehow she knew he'd always been like that. He couldn't bring himself...not quite...to make the move.
  
  She nudged him mentally...oh, it really wasn't a mindwarp...just a push. OK, it was a STRONG push...and a second one. She understood the procedure intuitively...as she used her mindwarp powers to bring his hand to her waist behind her and encouraged it to....accidentally come further up her back. It was part of the courtship procedure...giving her the opportunity to pull away...and him plausible deniability that he was actually trying to get to second base. As her lips pressed his, she felt the hand drift higher. She'd never actually worn a bra, but she knew that the next stage was as his hand made contact with the bra strap behind her....yet another opportunity for her to pull away...with a small degree of deniability on his part.
  
  As the hand went under the strap, and started to come toward her side, the intent was clear...as well as the fact that all she needed to do to block it would be to keep her arm tightly to her side, and he'd back off. But if she'd intended to do that, she really wouldn't have mindwarped him to get this far, now would she? Her left arm lifted slightly to allow his hand to slide under the bra strap...to touch her breast. Normally it would cup it...caressing it....one more step along the human courtship ritual.,...
  
  Humans...., Tess thought, ....obviously had more patience and self-restraint than she did.
  
  In the fantasy she dissolved her bra with her powers...dissolved all of her clothes...and his, and pulled him off the couch onto the rug. "Come here, Earthboy," she said with a grin....

"Checkmate," said Kyle.

Tess shook her head and looked at the screen. "Oh...so it is. Computer...new game. White queen's pawn to queen's pawn three.....

[greywolf]

"State Department of Motor Vehicles....Richardson speaking."

"Fred? This is Jim Valenti, down in Chaves county.."

"Oh, Hi Jim....you got the weekend duty too?"

"Well. sort of. I've got some license numbers I wanted you to look up for me...the New Mexico ones I got off the database, but I've got a Texas one and two from Arizona as well. I was wondering if you knew anybody in the DMV for those states that I might talk to to get the names and addresses of the owners....I'd really rather not do this through the FBI database."

Fred Richardson just smiled. The Feds had recently put a user fee on information retrievals from their database. A lot of the rural counties...with smaller tax bases than the big cities...were now trying to do these things in house rather than pay the lousy two dollar user fee.

"I could give you the numbers, Jim, but I doubt they would give out info to you over the phone without knowing you personally. Why don't you just email me the license plates you want run down...and I'll email the results back to you when I get them?"

"That's be great, Fred....thanks a lot. I'll get them right to you."

In five minutes Fred Richardson had the license plate numbers, and Fred Richardson was back on the phone to the Texas DMV....and getting a busy signal. "Damn it...this'll take forever." And then he remembered...remembered what he'd read about Chaves County. He went to his computer and googled the news about the kidnapped boy.

"Damn...that was Jim's boy...Hell, Valenti's got enough things on his mind without having to wait on this...six bucks isn't going to mean anything to the legislature in Santa Fe...." He quickly input the license plate numbers to the FBI computer and waited for a reponse.

In a basement room in Washington DC a man was sitting in front of the screen of a computer, working the crossword for the Washington Post by the light of the screen-saver. All at once the computer beeped and the screensaver went away. He looked at it briefly before he picked up the phone and called his departmental chief at his home in Herndon Virginia...using the secure phone.

"Sir...we've got a problem. Someone is running the registration on three vehicles that we use at the Facility....."

[greywolf]

Bartelson shivered as he entered the room...the room his predecessor had called, the 'Star Chamber.' The room itself was buried deep within the sub-basement of the Senate Office Building and the two people he would be reporting to were themselves members of that 'august' body that loved to call themselves 'the greatest deliberative body.' The fact of the matter was that ANY of the hundred Senators tended to be arrogant bastards who considered themselves a natural aristocracy, who by rights should rule without being subject to the restraints with which they themselves bound lesser Americans...and perhaps the fools actually did believe they were better than the millions of others...they certainly did everything in their power to convince one another of that. Of course the FACT was, that they really weren't any better than most of the 300 million people they claimed to represent. The difference was their power....and their willingness to use it.

The people...mostly men...in the Senate had long ago devised a way to maintain their power. They'd rigged the rules to favor their own incumbencies...then rigged the rules again to assure that those who wanted to do business with the governmet supported them with their money...and then essentially bought votes with the public monies through such 'earmark' boondoggles as 'the bridge to nowhere' and the 'big dig.' No, these were neither the best nor the brightest...what they were were the most ruthless of politicians...politicians who, regardless of party, had far more in common with each other than they ever would with the millions of people they purported to represent.

Bartelson had briefed the joint Senate-House black workd security committee three days previously...three Senators and three Representatives...and for a while Bartelson had actually believed they might just close the project down...incinerate Tess and the boy...and make the whole area disappear. And it wasn't really that cooler heads had prevailed...more that the most senior and treacherous of the six had wanted the regeneration project to work...and to work quickly...too badly for the committee to simply cut their losses and get out. That's why he was meeting with the two Senators today. One from each major political party, they were the most senior people on the committee, and there was the reason. As much as they might think of themselves as gods, in the final analysis they knew they were not immortal...and if the Tess regeneration project took another decade to bear fruit, neither would likely be around. That's why he had been given three days to come up with this briefing...a plan to eliminate the threat posed by the most unwise choice of kidnapping the local Sheriff's son as a mate for Tess.

"We discussed a number of options...including eliminating the Sheriff himself..."

"Wouldn't work," muttered one of the geriatric Senators. "Roswell New Mexico probably has more government conspiracy theorists per square inch than you'll find anywhere else in the country. Damn Facility should have been built somewhere else...and if you needed to kidnap a kid...it should have been done from somewhere a great distance from the facility itself. Why the hell didn't the people at the Facility just give this local cop an engraved invitation?"

"I was somewhat amazed they did that myself," replied Bartelson. "I was new on the job...I guess I just assumed they weren't complete idiots..," he said, grateful that he seemed to have actually convinced them that the operation to kidnap the boy had been approved before his tenure. He'd seen to it that his predecessor had accidentally drowned in his swimming pool three days previously, so he couldn't tell them any different. It had been the man's habit to swim laps in his pool. Bartelson had gone to his house...caught him as he'd made the turn at the deep end with a small hypodermic needle full of succinyl choline and the paralyzed man had drowned before he had the strength to lift his mouth above the water. Bartelson knew that not just his career was on the line dealing with the committee, but quite possibly his life as well. He was taking no chances.

"Well what do you propose to rectify this situation?" asked the other geriatric Senator.

"Sir...this is the plan..," said Bartelson, putting the first slide up on the screen. "this is a Porsche 911 that...coincidentally...was stolen in El Paso Texas the very day after this Valenti boy was taken. It was taken south of the border..but our agents have tracked it down and will soon have it shipped back to the US in a sealed trailer. The plan is to have the body of the boy found out in the desert...dead of blunt trauma...under the flipped convertible. The body will be found up near Taos...hundreds of miles away from the facility. The intention is to make it appear that he wasn't abducted...merely stole a car and went joy-riding .... until he met an unfortunate accident."

"What about the risk of alien contamination?" asked the other Senator.

"It can be managed, Sir. Incineration isn't the only way to deal with that risk. We'll kill the boy at the facility...simply bashing in his head will do...then keep the body sealed in the facility for several days...until the putrefecation starts. We'll transport then...still sealed...to a facility near Sandia Labs where we have a nuclear reactor...and use high dose gamma radiation to sterilize it completely before we arrange the motor vehicle accident."

"Why not just sterilize the kid's body...then smash it up in the car?"

"Because when we sterilize the boy to eliminate the potential for contamination..we sterilize the organisms in his gut as well. If we didn't hold him for awhile after he was dead...but before we sterilize the body...his body would be preserved by the radiation and not putrefy....it would be detected on autopsy...and the boy almost certainly WILL be autopsied. I'm sorry...I know that takes a few extra days, but it is necessary for the cover story. With your approbval, I can have the people at the facility terminate the boy now...then the cadaver can start rotting. By the time the car gets to Taos we can have the body ready to treat at Sandia and this can all be over in four or five days."

One of the Senators nodded his head in agreement, but the second seemed unconvinced. "You would trust the same idiots that picked the local Sheriff's son out of every teenager in New Mexico to kill the boy and make it look like an accident? Those idiots are just as likely to leave something embedded in the kid's skull...something with a serial number linking it right to the government. No, speed is important, but not as important as doing things correctly, and we will not get another chance at that. I think you should personally be there supervising and make sure that those idiots don't screw this up again. How soon can you be there and have ebvery thing else in motion that you need?"

"The car and everything should be in place in three days. I can be at the facility the day after tomorrow, to supervise the whole operation. In probably eight---nine days tops...this should all be behind us."

The two Senators looked at each other and nodded in agreement. Then the senior one looked at Bartelson and said, "This is now YOUR operation. The responsibilty is YOURS if it goes wrong."

Bartelson did his best not to shudder as he nodded his head. 'If you screw this up, you're a dead man,' he thought to himself.

"Now the other part...we cannot wait for this research to come to fruition. This Tess creature...she needs to be impregnated at the first opportunity. No more...boyfriends...If artificial insemination works for cows, it'll no doubt work for her as well."

"Yessir. She should be approaching her fertile period. We can probably do that at the same time we remove the boy...."

[greywolf]

The hissing of the gas caught Tess by surprise. She'd just stepped into the shower and was waiting for Kyle to join her when she'd heard the soleniod click and the valve start to release the gas. It wasn't a scheduled time for an exam...but sometimes their captors did unscheduled things. She watched Kyle fall to the floor unconscious...and feigned her own swoon falling over the shower drain as she used her ability for molecular manipulation to capture a bubble of air so she could remain conscious.

The medical technicians entered about ten minutes later...and went directly to Kyle.

"I'm still not sure why we are doing this," said the youngest. "Isn't this a little early to get blood tests?"

"Well, our friend here doesn't have much time left it seems. The doc wants us to get all the info from his body we can before he dies in his car accident."

"I still don't understand that. If he's contaminated...how can they let him go?"

"Well...after they smash his skull in, they keep his body warm back at the morgue for a few days...then when it's putrid enough, they haul the body bag up to Sandia and sterilize it with the nuclear reactor there....fake the car wreck....and voila...Sheriff daddy is off the case. Son wasn't abducted at all...just faked his own abduction so he could go joyriding and turned out not to be a very good driver. Tess here has to make do with a syringe...just like a prize heifer. Too bad for the kid...I guess he dies a virgin...he had his chance though..still does for another two days. They aren't going to do him until shift change...so we'll have the extra manpower to decon the tunnel all the way back to the morgue. That'll be a shit-job ....except we'll get overtime."

"I wish the kid had another week at least. I'm in the betting pool...I bet that he tries to nail her next week....and that she kills him when he tries. I wonder if I can get a refund? It's not fair, that I don't even get a chance."

"Well...nobody else has won it and quite a few have already lost...I'm sure they'd be happy if everyone agreed to just call it quits...everybody get their money back."

As the technicians left and Tess waited for Kyle to recover from the effects of the gas she lay in the shower with the water sraying over her body and thought. She and Kyle had been sharing information...trying their best to come up with a plan...some sort of plan...that would give them their freedom. But that wasn't going to happen...not in the few days remaining to shift change. In a very real sense she'd only been alive for ten years..and only conscious for nine of those....but the games she had played against the computer had left her with an inciteful mind when it came to strategy and tactics. They were not going to win this game...not going to get their happy ever after they both wanted. Sure, there was always a chance for there to be some factor she and Kyle didn't know...some incredibly improbable mistake that their opponents could make...but the likelihood of that happening in the next few days was vanishingly small and they would not have years to try to escape.

It was like she and Kyle were the King and the Queen in this chessmatch, and while she might be the most powerful player on the board, they were all there was on their team, and that simply wasn't enough. The other team had pawns and power players by the dozen...the advantages of board position.....the demolition device....just too many things to overcome. If she were playing against a computer, there was no doubt Kyle would be dead in a few days and she would be alone.... But she wasn't playing against a computer...she was playing against human opponents. Not even her best game would give her and Kyle their happy ever afters, but she could play for a stalemate. The start of a plan was forming in Tess's mind...a plan that would give Kyle a chance at freedom...and a chance that their captors would not pursue him. Of course, it would cost...sometimes you can't win without sacrificing...but what queen wouldn't sacrifice to save her king?

[greywolf]

It was almost 6PM when Amy got to the Sheriff's office and as she stepped inside the deputy at the desk just smiled and buzzed her through the door to the interior offices. She found Jim back in his office. He looked tired.

"How's it going?"

"Not well...no response on the license plates. I managed to get some aerial pictures of the place...a friend has an old Piper Cub and managed to fly over there and take pictures. It fills in a few blanks on where they might have some more vents or access tunnels...but nothing major....nothing that will give me the kind of evidence I'd need to get a warrant....or a path to get in there myself."

"You wouldn't really do that, would you Jim. If what you told me about the bus was right, they may have dozens of people in there. You can't go in there without a SWAT team or something."

"Amy, I'm not even sure a SWAT team could get in there by a frontal assault. Those three guys in the parking lot...they had weapons at least as good as our SWAT team does, and they have the advantage of sensors...a protected position...who knows what other weapons. And if it turned in to a standoff...who knows? They might just destroy the evidence....including Kyle. Right now this whole mess just seems so....hopeless."

"Well...we can't give up."

Jim smiled lovingly at Amy. The 'we' in that last sentence meant more to him than she'd ever know.

"I'm not giving up, Amy, but I'm afraid we are running out of time. Sooner or later these guys are going to realize that we are getting close. When that happens, Kyle becomes too much of a liability to hang on to...if that hasn't happened already. Time is never on your side in kidnappings, but if Kyle IS alive...he's seen way too much for them to be able to afford letting him go. What this means though is that I have to take a high-risk strategy....one I don't want you to be any part of."

Her voice sounded as worried as she looked as she asked, "What do you mean, Jim?"

"What I'm going to do tomorrow night is...high risk...and not even remotely legal. If they catch me at it, they'll just eliminate me...and anyone they think might be helping me."

"What are you going to do?"

"I've got a friend in the Army National Guard...he's in demolitions. He's going to be bringing me something tomoorow morning that will let me get inside one of those hatches...the ones that may be emergency exits....hopefully without setting off an alarm."

"You don't think an alarm will go off if you blow a metal hatch off?"

"I'm not going to blow it...I'm going to burn through the hinges and the locking mechanism using something called thermite. Even so, it won't be inconspicuous, but the pictures from the Piper Cub show one hatch that's concealed enough by terrain and some brush that I can probably burn through into the tunnels without being seen from the guard shack."

"What then? "

"Then I do a smash and grab...find someone...beat him around...tell him I'll kill him if he doesn't take me to where my son is, and hope that he believes the threat and spills his guts. If he doesn't, maybe I can at least take him prisoner...get him out to somewhere that we can sweat the truth out of him...videotape it and threaten to tell the world about their secret...whatever it is...unless they swap us Kyle for their guy. That's awfully thin I know, but it's all I've got."

"But Jim, even if you get Kyle out, they'll realize it. They'll be after you almost immediately. You aren't going to be able to wait for morning to be picked up. "

"That's why I don't want you involved. I'll drive a car...park it out alongside the highwway and..."

"And if you do get lucky enough to get Kyle out, they'll be waiting at the car when you get their, Jim. We already discussed this...you KNOW they watch that road...just like they watched that parking lot where those three guys found us...and I doubt if they'll be satisfied with the story that you were only trying to get to second base after you've raided their tunnels."

Jim chuckled and fought to avoid blushing. "It can't be helped..."

"Yes it can...I'm going along. I'll drive back and forth on that highway all night if I have to. You take a radio... I'll have one in the car. If you get Kyle out you take him to the road...tell me what milepost you'll be near, and I'll be there to get you...and not before."

Jim Valenti spent the next 45 minutes arguing, but apparently Maria had gotten her stubborness from her mother. Eventually he conceded and took Amy out for dinner. He figured a condemned couple ought to at least have a hearty meal.

[greywolf]

Back in the Facility, Kyle was enjoying a hearty meal. It was super-nachos....just like his father made. With no woman in the household for the last twelve years, the Valenti diet tended toward things that others might consider junk food...or at least, food devoid of any green leafy vegetables. One of their favorites was super nachos. On special occasions, they would wedge corn tortillas and deep fry them themselves...for the best freshness. Then they would be coated with frijoles refritos, seasoned picadillo meat that had been cooked all morning, fresh pico de gallo, just a touch of finely chopped cilantro, then smothered in a mixture of jack and cheddar cheeses and heated in an oven until the cheese just melted over the nachos..securing all the ingredients to the bite sized corn chips. To a couple of bachelors, it was a perfect meal, just like the one Kyle was eating now.
Except of course, he wasn't...he just THOUGHT he was eating nachos.

In reality, it appeared that whoever was in charge of their dinner preparation tonight was taking the night off. What they had actually gotten was Purina large primate chow...right out of the sack.... and Tess realized that, but she ate it anyway. But she only had about thirty hours left with Kyle...and Tess had decided there was no reason he shouldn't enjoy the meal, so as she knowingly ate the bland stuff, Kyle was enjoying what he thought was one of his favorite meals. She'd promised herself not to mindwarp him but under the circumstances it was a harmless enough fantasy she was giving him, and she'd soon be doing worse to him to give him a chance of survival.

Tess had long experience producing small illusions in the minds of those who would come to take blood and perform medical tests upon her...nothing they could really detect...and certainly nothing the monitors could see. She would shift the actual positiopn of the tourniquet or blood tubes in their mind. They'd think they were just being clumsy..because of the isolation suits. Tess had learned even more about humans and illusions from her mental conversations with Kyle. Kyle had told her that there were humans who were illusionists who had no actual mindwarp ability at all,....and some were quite successful at their deceptions. Humans saw what they expected to see...and what they wanted to see. And knowing that, Tess had come up with the best plan that she could for tomorrow night.

What their captors had expected of Kyle was that he'd rape her...at least some of them had...and that she'd resist and kill him. That had been what those betting pools were all about. Of course, Kyle would never do that...at least not willingly...and it wasn't really like Tess felt any urgent need to refuse to have sex with him either, let alone actually hurt him to resist it. But those had always sort of been the expectations of their captors. What the captors now wanted was easy...they now wanted Kyle dead. Her only real hope was to give them the illusion of these things and then hope that Kyle got some lucky breaks. Tess knew plans worked best when they were simple and straightforward, and hers was neither. But it did have the advantage of complicating their captors plan...which was to bash Kyle's head in. That was about as simple and straightforward as a plan got, and she didn't want to make THAT easy for them.

So the plan was this....Kyle attacks her....she kills him...they take the body and go. They'd have to clear Kyle...and his electronic chip...through the sensor field to take him to the morgue. But Kyle wouldn't be dead...just sleeping...and when he woke up in the morgue, maybe...if they were lucky...he'd be alone, and find a way to get away from the Facility. That was the plan in a nutshell...of course, it was much more complicated than that.

To make the plan work, Tess would need to disable at least two...and preferabl;y three of the video cameras monitoring the holding cell. To avoid spooking the controllers, she would have to be clearly visible in the field of a remaining camera though. She was the queen...the one they would be watching...while the King would be largely ignored...especially once he was dead.

Tess knew Kyle would never willingly do what she was going to mindwarp him into doing...never say the things she was going to force him to say as she forced him to appear to attempt to rape her. While they might expect her to consent to their mating if Kyle were his normal charming self...Tess certainly knew she normally would have....they would not be surprised if she defended herself if he actually acted like that monster she saw in the rape video. She would do to Kyle what she did to those who had vivisected her...use a powerblast to smash them...smash their bodies away from her. She'd be frantic when she did so...pretending she really didn't understand how someone who had been kind to her had suddenly become so violent...so sexually demanding. She'd fire a couple of warning powerblasts to try to scare him off...it would just be an 'accident' that they hit the cameras. When Kyle wouldn't stop she'd hit him with a powerblast...shoot him in to the ceiling like the others...only not quite like that...and smearing blood on the lens of one of the remaining cameras if she could. The blood would come from her mate's nose...she'd have to hurt him a little for that...but she hoped to be able to control her powerblast enough that he really wouldn't be hurt, and his body would fall outside of the view of the remaining cameras, while she herself stayed in clear sight.

Tess was pretty sure they'd gas the room when she did that, which would put Kyle to sleep, while she just feigned unconsciousness. When their captors came to check...to see what had happened to Kyle, she'd mindwarp them into seeing what they thought they would see...Kyle with his face smashed in..his brains showing...just what they wanted. They would bag Kyle's body and take it to the morgue to let it rot. With luck, they'd leave it there...not realizing he was still alive. Kyle would wake up...and have his chance to escape. It was a complicated plan...and Kyle loving her made it more complicated, because she knew he'd never knowingly leave her...knew it with total certainty. But she couldn't have him coming back to try to rescue her...actually, she couldn't even afford to have the Facility intact...if it was, they'd track Kyle down...kill him. No, Tess couldn't allow that to happen.

Tess knew she'd have to mindwarp Kyle to make this happen, but she'd need more still...she'd have to put a mental block in Kyle's mind ...force him to forget...forget everything since the moment he felt the darts go in to his side. He had to forget Tess...forget what they'd had...and what they might have had. She'd mindwarp him to awake with a compulsion to escape...to get away. If he could do it at all, he could do it in an hour or so, if not...well they'd die together.

Tess couldn't control whether or not Kyle could successfully escape from the morgue, she could only hope, but if he did, she intended to destroy the Facility...to kill as many of the people that wanted to kill the man who would always be her mate, no matter if they ever got to consumate that relationship or not. Once Kyle had time to get away, once the tunnel was filled with Facility personnel decontaminating the corridor, Tess intended to blow through the door and kill everything in sight...and keep going until the nuclear device under the computer detonated.

Tess hadn't had much of a life, a year of being almost comatose...nine years of being a captive in isolation...but the last ten days had made up for all that in Tess's mind. They'd been the best of her life. And with those ten days had come a change...Tess wasn't anyone's immature alien life form to be experimented upon anymore...she was a woman fighting for her mate....making her the most dangerous creature in the known universe.

Kyle reached out and touched her hand. *You seem kind of lost in thought?*

She looked up at him and smiled. *Just enjoying dinner I guess*

*It does seem especially good tonight*

She smiled up at him, so glad he'd come into her life...but hoping he'd be able to escape and have a good life without her.... *It is,...isn't it?* she thought back to him...nibbling on another kibble, and savoring every last second of her time with him.

[greywolf]

It was very close to closing time as Jim Valenti entered the Crashdown, in fact, the last customers were just leaving as he entered the restaurant and went to the back, nodding to Jose, the fry cook.

"Last chance, Sheriff...I'm about to start cleaning the grill."

"No thanks, amigo. I had quite the dinner. Just wanted to get a cup of coffee and make sure that Maria had someone to walk her home."

Jose gave a knowing smile as he looked at the four teenagers that had quickly helped Liz and Maria put the chairs up, sweep the restaurant, and had now settled in to the large booth together to enjoy Martian Blast Sundaes of their own.

"I don't think that's going to be a problem, Sheriff...though it probably won't happen for a half hour or so."

The dinner with Amy had started with an argument and ended in a fight....after that things REALLY got interesting. He'd absolutely refused to allow her to take any part in the attempted rescue and she'd argued incessantly before finally breaking down in to tears. He had hugged her...just attempting to comfort her...when she'd looked up into his eyes. The kiss had followed quickly...followed by several more. There had been some talking and somewhere in there Jim had agreed to let her do the driving tomorrow as long as she stayed on the road and kept her speed up unless he specifically called her on the radio and told her to stop. At least, that's what Amy claimed the agreement was fifteen minutes ago, when he'd finally left her. Too be perfectly honest, Jim couldn't remember too much of the conversation...it had taken place in Amy's bed.

Roswell was a small town and all the kids had sort of circled the wagons since Kyle's disappearance, but none moreso than the six in the booth. He'd watched them for quite awhile as they grew up, without really knowing any of them very well, but they were all in the same grade as Kyle and Roswell was a small town, so he had a nodding aquaintance with all of them. Jim left his cup of coffee at his booth and walked across the floor to the teenagers.

"Uh...hate to interrupt, but Maria...could I speak to you over in my booth for a minute...you too, Liz?"

"Sure, Sheriff," replied Maria ...fighting back a smile. She knew her mother was sweet on Jim Valenti had run off six years ago, devoting every moment of her life to making a good life for her daughter. She sort of hoped they would hit it off....although with his current worries about Kyle, she doubted that the Sheriff would even notice. As she sat with Liz across the table from him at his booth Maria asked, "Uh...have you heard anything more about Kyle?"

"Not exactly. We have a lead...well, I have a lead...I mean...well, that's what I wanted to tell you about." Jim Valenti looked at Liz and said, "If it would be alright, I'd appreciate it if Maria could stay at your house tomorrow. Her mother is going to be with me tomorrow night."

Maria's eyebrows shot up and she fought back a smile. "And...what might I ask are you going to be doing with my mother tomorrow, Sheriff?"

"I can't really tell you Maria, we are sort of going to go undercover."

"You're going under the covers with my mother?" asked Maria, in mock dismay. Jim felt his cheeks burn almost immediately as he remembered the feel and smell of Amy against him on the sheets.

"Not under the covers," Jim said loudly before looking guiltily at the other teenagers and Jose...and Liz, who was trying unsuccessfully to stifle an attack of the giggles. "Undercover...it's a police term. She'll be working with me...but nobody is supposed to know."

"Oh...a police term...," Maria said, smiling as Jim Valenti reddened further.

Maria smiled and shook her head...then apparently decided to take pity on the hapless Sheriff. "Sheriff Valenti...my mother ran off with my father when she was sixteen. I was born when she was seventeen and my 'daddy' left her...left us...about six months later...which actually was probably the nicest thing he ever did for her. I haven't had so much as a birthday card from the bastard since I was six, and I think that birthday card was more attention than she has had from any man since my dad left. All the time she should have been having fun...just being a teenager...she was finishing high school...raising me...working to support us both," Maria sighed. "She likes you Sheriff...I can tell....and if you and her want to work undercover together OR under the covers together...well, I guess you have my blessing for what it's worth."

"Maria...I do care about your mother...I care very much. Right now...right now I'm worried about Kyle...I just want to get him back. But ...God willing, tomorrow night works out....well, it's been a long time since I've done anything besides be a single parent too...maybe it's time for both of us to take another try at a serious relationship."

"Sheriff," said Liz, "It'll be fine for Maria to sleep over tomorrow...no trouble at all."

"Thank you, Liz. Now Maria...I'd appreciate it if you'd ask Max and Michael to come over here and talk to me."

It was only a few seconds later that Max and Michael crowded in to the booth with Jim Valenti, neither looking exactly certain about what they were doing.

"Michael," said Jim Valenti, "..I'd sort of like to ask you a favor."

"Uh...what's that, Sheriff."

"Tomorrow night I'm going to try something to get Kyle back...and that may be a little dangerous."

"Can we help, Sheriff?" asked Max

Jim Valenti smiled. "I don't think that would be a very good idea. These guys already have one teenager...I don't want them to get anymore...and I don't think you want to mess with these guys...they are....from the government."

"I thought you were the government.." exclaimed Michael, looking surprised.

"Well, I'm in the county government...these are feds...and not your usual ones either. All the more reason for you to stay out of it...but if you'd like to help.."

"What can we do?" asked Michael.

"I'm not exactly sure how I let her talk me into it," Jim lied....he was pretty sure how it had happened...his mind had been occupied elsewhere..." but Maria's mom is going to be helping me." Valenti looked at Michael and continued. "I'd like you to make sure that Maria is safe while we're gone. I don't think there's much risk for Amy...but if something did happen to me..if somehow they found out that Amy was helping...well, I'd appreciate it if you could take care of both Maria and Amy...do your best to keep them safe."

Michael didn't know Jim Valenti all that well, but it was the kind of request that generated an instant male-bonding. "Sheriff, nothing on Earth will hurt either Maria or her mom while I'm alive."

Jim Valenti looked at Michael. and at Max nodding his head in silent agreement. He smiled slightly and shook his head. "An interesting way to phrase that. Michael...Max...do you know what an alien is?"

Instantly both teenagers eyes flared at the non sequitur. Finally Michael responded.

"A creature from another planet, I guess."

"That's probably the definition my father would have given me. The old man is in a nursing home...with Alzheimer's. He babbles about an alien he helped the feds catch...some guy living on the reservation...not harming anyone. My dad kept a card in his pocket with the number of an organization in the FBI to call if he ever suspected someone was an alien. Apparently he made the call on this guy...next day he disappeared forever. But that isn't my idea of an alien. To me an alien is someone with alien values...if you have human values...and aren't hurting anyone...you can't really be an alien. My father...well, if he'd heard about two six year old kids walking naked along a road...not knowing English or anything...the old man would have been suspicious they were aliens. If they were joined in the Fifth grade by another foster kid...and his records showed that he'd been a six year old foundling who didn't speak English...or any other language..he'd have been real suspicious...and when those three kids kept to themselves...I think my dad would have made the call."

"Why didn't you make the call, Sheriff?" asked Michael.

Jim smiled. "Because even in third grade it was obvious that this lug," poking his finger at Max, "..was in love with Liz Parker, and by seventh grade you were in love with Maria..."

"Mostly we just argued..," objected Michael.

Jim Valenti pondered warning Michael that the DeLuca girls just might consider an argument the start of foreplay, then thought better of it. He'd embarrassed himself enough talking to the girls.

"I've got to admit," the Sheriff continued, "..the Ice Princess and Alex Whitman...THAT one took me by surprise. Sometime if you ever decide to trust me I'd be curious to know how Alex became the man of Isabel's dreams..."

Suddenly both teenagers chuckled as if at some in-joke that Valenti didn't understand.

"You're closer than you realize, Sheriff. Maybe when this is all over we can sit down and talk to you about it." said Max.

"Do they know?" asked Jim, nodding at the two girls and Alex.

"Well, we've been sort of waiting for it to come up in conversation and it hasn't really happened yet..." explained Michael.

"I wouldn't wait too long, Michael. Trust me...you might get in an argument with Maria and...well, sometimes you get overcome by events. It would probably be better if you broke it to her ahead of time. Maybe you could get Max and Isabel's parents to help you break it to her...to sort of reassure her?"

"Uh...maybe not..." said Max looking somewhat guilty.

"Well...if I'm alive in two days...I'd be willing to help," said Jim Valenti.

"We really would like to help you get Kyle, Sheriff," said Max.

"No Max....you know, Roswell is a small town. There CAN'T be two secret government facilities around here. The ironic thing is that the same guys my father turned over his alien to are probably the ones who have kidnapped his only grandson. We don't need for them to get any ideas that there are any aliens running around Roswell, because there aren't...just us ordinary citizens. Good night, gentlemen. Thanks for promising to look after Maria and Amy."

"Our pleasure, Sheriff."

[greywolf]

The lights went off in the holding facility and Tess squeezed closer to Kyle on the sleeping mat.

*What part of the outside world do you want to discuss tonight, Tess?*

*I'm...I'm a little tired tonight, Kyle. Could we maybe just cuddle and not discuss anything?*

*Sure...why don't you just get some sleep? If you change your mind...wake me up. I'll be here.*

Tears glistened in her eyes in the darkness as she held him tightly for their last night together. She would have liked to have talked...at least told him how much he meant to her...not that he'd remember...but she needed this time to work...to make memories. The memories weren't of Kyle really...it wasn't like she would ever forget him...but they were of Kyle's body. Tomorrow she needed to simulate a powerblast...like the one that had killed those vivisecting her. Tomorrow she would use telekinesis...a more controlled form of powerblast...but if she wasn't careful it could kill Kyle just as dead.

The people she'd killed that first day...they'd been killed when the powerblast hit them...their fronts crushed by the force of the powerblast acting against the inertia of their bodies, even before their bodies had hit the ceiling...completing the destruction. What had happened was the sheer forces distorting their bodies...the uneven push of the powerblast and uneven stopping of their bodies as they'd impacted the ceiling. To pull off her plan, Tess needed to map Kyle's body in three dimensions...to remember as many points as she could within his body..and their relationship to each other in three dimensions. She needed to push on all of those points simultaneously to make him fly towards the ceiling...then to stop them simultaneously...still in the same three dimensional matrix. If she succeeded she could fling him at the ceiling quickly...have him apparently hit with a convincingly lethal 'thump,' but really stop him without doing any damage. She needed to move his body as much as possible as a unit...to control the sheering tendency that would actually do real damage if she couldn't keep the three dimensional matrix straight in her head.

Throughout the night Tess worked to memorize the matrix of her mate's body...knowing if she failed she would be the one to kill him when she tried her illusion. But she wouldn't fail...she wouldn't let herself fail. By morning she had memorized almost 400 points. With an hour left of darkness, she simply spooned against his sleeping body...not bothering to memorize any more points..just cherishing the feel of him against her. Perhaps, she thought, in their next lives, it might be different....

[greywolf]

The Continental Airlines flight from National Airport arrived at El Paso Texas at 5 PM. Bartelson called his connection in Taos and assured himself that the stolen Porsche was in position. He picked up his rental car and drove toward Roswell New Mexico, stopping first in a Big Five Sporting Goods store on his way out of town to buy an aluminum baseball bat. It wasn't exactly the same diameter as the steering wheel on the car, but it was close enough. With a stop for dinner in Carlsbad New Mexico, he could still be at the facility by 11PM. The bus for shift change wouldn't be there until almost 1AM, so he would have plenty of time to see that the troublesome Sheriff's son was dispatched while there were plenty of people to clean up the mess....and decon the long hallway between the holding cell and the morgue. In a few days, the kid's rancid corpse .... hermetically sealed in a body bag.... could be taken up to Sandia where the reactor would sterilize it and the boy and the car would be deposited off the edge of some cliff to be found a few days later. With any luck at all, this whole mess would be cleaned up in a week.


In Roswell, Jim Valenti finished dressing in his SWAT gear at 8 PM. The silenced Glock was illegal even in the hands of a law enforcement officer...he'd 'borrowed' it from the evidence room, but tonight Jim WASN'T a law enforcement officer. He was a father gettting his kid back, and that was all that was important to him. Besides the Glock he carried an assault rifle as well.
Amy packed a sandwich and some bottled water in the small pack that went on Jim's web gear and they both checked their walkie-talkies before loading up his equipment in the Jetta. They returned for a quick dinner...Jim so nervous he didn't even ask for seconds on the men-in-black berry pie.

An hour later the Jetta slowed beside the road and Jim quickly got out, sending Amy and the car continuing north. The path to the Facility would be a circuitous one, but he'd be able to keep to ravines that would decrease the likelihood of him being spotted until almost at the installation. They checked the radios again...they seemed to be working normally, and Jim put on his night vision gear and started the laborious trek to the Facility almost five miles away.

At the facility, Tess lay on the sleep platform...her heart breaking...knowing what she would have to do now. She'd put it off as long as possible...but it was time.