Roswell Fanatics

After my last wonderfully incoherent chapter, I'm not sure if anyone really wanted another but here you go. Drop me a line if you want me to continue with this story. Is there anyone still interested in it?

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There's a darkness
Deep in my soul
I still got a purpose to serve
So let your light shine
into my home
God don't let me lose my nerve
Lose my nerve
Everlast

Chapter 11: A Purpose to Serve

Reality's light opens up within me and drives the murky visions away. Almost immediately, my body registers the hard tree trunk against my back, and the faint pine scent. Blotchy shapes rear up in front of me. I count the seconds until the void will give birth to teaming pines and redwoods. Starting out as small saplings, the trees will age a hundred years in a matter of seconds.

Panic begins to take hold. For there is no rumble and twist as life suddenly thrusts its way back into my eyes. Nature's palette remains colorless.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Khivar always said that I needed him. Without his care, the results would be inevitable. Looking at the dark shapes surrounding me like bars, I can't hide from the truth. I'm suffering from the first stages of oracle madness. My mind is stuck in limbo.

Something rustles in the grass.

Blindly, I thrust my hands out in front of me. "Who's there?"

"An old friend poppet."

"I won't let you hurt him." I frown the moment the words leave my mouth. Who is him? The question tumbles down inside of me with no echo of an answer.

"You know it's almost tragic in a way the lengths you go to protect a person you don't even remember. Let me tell you something, he's forgotten you and moved on."

My nails dig into the dirt underneath me. "Who are you?"

"The real question is what do I want."

"I don't know." I shiver as the presence wraps around my shoulders.

"Yes, you do down to the last sordid detail. You'll be my instrument. When it's time, we'll destroy him together and then you'll be free. It will be my gift for a job well done."

"I won't do it."

"You don't have a choice. It's your destiny, and you can't escape it as I'll never be able to deny mine."

Two sharp points jab into my shoulder triggering an immediate darkness within me. Wrapping around me in a chokehold, it suffocates any other emotion. The energy hums with such a destructive force I can barely keep it in check. I reach for my own sparkling green powers to ground it, but nothing comes to me.

"You feel that? It's what you are now. You do well to remember that. You belong to me, not Khivar, not Zan, BUT ME." The phantom grip tightens around my neck.

"YOU'RE HURTING ME."

A piercing shriek sounds, and the darkness crawls back to its primordial depths.

The panic that threatens to build to a crescendo tumbles down to a soft melody.

Two brilliant eyes replace my intangible tormentor. Within them, coca and brandy swirl together to form a color that rescues me from the monotony of grey and black.

I can see again.

He made the monster stop hurting me, but his purpose still remains a mystery. Is he slaying my demons so he can take their place?

"Are you ok?" Max's voice comes out as barely a whisper.

"Yes."

"You were talking to yourself."

"It happens."

"No, you were having a full blown conversation with someone who wasn't even there."

"They're there to me."

"I never believed in the oracle. I thought it was a bunch of crap." He rips a blade of grass out of the earth. "People aren't supposed to be able to tell the future."

"Aliens aren't supposed to exist either," I lean my head back against the trunk.

A slight smile forms on his lips, which makes him look younger in a way. For some reason, I'm gripped with the desire to make him smile again.

"How do your visions work?"

I stiffen.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No one has ever asked me that before. Khivar was always into the results never the process."

"What did he do to you?" his voice gains a deadly edge to it.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. I got used to it after a while."

"Used to it," he croaks as the color drains from his face.

"I belong to the King of Antar. He had every right to do with me what he wishes. I am his property."

"Property," he parrots. "You don't really believe that do you?"

"Prove me wrong and let Tess and me go. We'd leave Earth, and you would never have to see us again."

He frowns obviously not to keen on my plan. "I can't," he leans forward to touch me, but I jerk away. "I was never really good at letting you go even when I had to. It isn't safe for you to be out there alone. You are too much a liability for Khivar, and I...I just can't. I'm sorry."

"Then don't pretend you see me as actually being a person. People have the right to go where they want, but hey maybe it might be fun being Zan's slave and whore."

"What?" he asks sharply.

"I come from a long line of home wreckers. Of course, the wonderful kings of Antar probably forced them into it. I really don't see them taking no for an answer."

He continues to look at me dumbstruck. "Tess told you this didn't she?"

"What does it matter who told me when it's the truth? Khivar never hid the fact that he could take me anytime he wanted."

"Did he?" he whispers.

"No, he was too busy with my mind to be concerned with my body. I'm not exactly what the Antarians would deem beautiful."

"Then they're stupid. I've been to five worlds, and I've never seen anyone more beautiful than you are."

I drop my head to cover my red cheeks.

"I'm just so glad that you've come back to me. I've been so lost without you. I know you're scared, but we're going to work this out together."

"There is no we."

He winces.

I soften my voice. "I'm sorry for your loss. I really am, but you've made a mistake Max. You need to fix it before it comes back to hurt you." I get up and dust off my pants. "Khivar is going to come for me, and this is going to get very ugly for you."

"He's never getting near you again," he says with a deadly calm.

"And Zan? What happens when he comes to collect me?"

Creases appear in the middle of his forehead as he seems to be settling some internal debate. "Zan doesn't see you as his property. The first oracle came to the King of Antar for protection because her mental powers left her vulnerable. She needed someone to watch over her when she was in her trances. The relationship between the king and oracle is supposed to be a partnership."

"A partnership," I roll my eyes, "is that why you were threatening to slit my throat earlier? Is that why Zan left Tess in Khivar's clutches? He obviously doesn't have an all to stellar record in protecting those he's supposed to care about."

"Zan and Ava were married for political reasons, and it only lasted two hours so forgive me if I don't get all teary eyed over it."

"You can't tell me he doesn't feel a pull to her. Two hours or a lifetime she was made for him." My heart beats loudly in my chest. Why am I getting so upset over this?

"She wasn't made for him. Last time I checked love wasn't exactly a response you can engineer in a lab. Tess made her own grave with Khivar so let her lie in it."

"And me, what was my great crime?"

Nervously, he runs his fingers through his hair as his total demeanor shifts to one of uncertainty. "You never tried to run."

"I had no one to run to."

He stiffens, "your relationship with Tess is well known so we, no, I" he corrects "assumed that you shared some of her more prominent attributes. With Khivar restricting your access to the Antarian elite, it made it easier to think of you as a being some trigger happy witch. I was so stupid. The moment I touched you I should have put it together. I felt this rush of electricity. It felt so familiar, but as quick as it started, it stopped. I thought I had imagined it. It wasn't until I pulled you out of the lake and you were so cold and blue," he stares down at the grass as if reliving some horrific nightmare, "just like before," he mutters to himself. "Can you ever forgive me for failing you?" he asks softly full of pain.

The strength and assertiveness of just minutes ago leaves him completely. Vulnerability and emptiness circle him, instead; like lions waiting to pounce. For some reason, all I want to do is chase them away.

I take a few steps forward, but stop.

Max stares harshly at the space.

Am I too close? Not close enough? I have no idea what I'm doing or why I feel so much for a man I've just met.

"You can't can you?"

"I don't know what you want me to say. You claim there was an us, but I can't remember it. All I know is that you threatened to kill me and then you saved my life. I don't understand you at all."

"Do you want to?"

If that's a loaded question, I don't know what is. I could tell him that he scares me more than anything that when I'm around him I literally forget myself. Acting as some reactant, he's rewriting my whole make up. My once solidarity atoms crave to react with his again. I can't do this. The pitfalls are just too numerous. "No."

"I won't accept that." He pins me with his molten eyes. A heated passion swirls beneath their depths, "there was a time I could look at you and know exactly what you were thinking or feeling," he says sadly, " that was the hardest thing to get used to when you died.... disappeared, "he corrects. "The silence was so deafening that sometimes I used to imagine you were reaching out to me and maybe you were. So know this, you can push me away a hundred times a thousand even but I'm not going away, because I know deep down inside you need me. "

"I don't need anybody."

"Everyone needs someone. I'm not your enemy, and I hope in time you can realize that," he says leaving me.

I watch him retreat. "You've made a terrible mistake. I'm not her Max. You have to believe me. I could never be her." I grab his wrist to stop him. A flash wraps itself around me.

"Paging Romeo and Juliet. Could you please stop making eyes at each other and look at the camera?" a voice teases in front of them.

Max runs his fingers through her hair," why Maria? Don't you know that the only person I want to look at is right here?"

She touches her forehead to his, "I'm sure you say that to all the girls."

He smiles a lopsided grin, "nope, only you Miss. Parker." Darkness creeps into his carefree expression, "I only wish that things could be normal. You deserve so much more than running and hiding...."

"Don't. We have each other. Whatever chaos is happening around us it doesn't matter. Say it Max."

"We have each other."

"I know you felt that."

I stagger backwards. "I didn't feel anything."

"Really," he takes a step forward to me.

"If you keep going down this road, you're going to get hurt. I'm not her."

"Say her name then," he demands ignoring my warning.

"I'm not L-- i -z," a stabbing pain fans out from the center of my forehead.

He places his palm on my head, and it stops. "Now tell me, why out of thousands of names that one brings you pain? You can't can you. They made the very word that embodies your identity repellent to you," his voice grows angry. "They were trying to break you and remold you into someone they could use, but you didn't break. You ripped our connection out didn't you? It's why I couldn't sense you, but a bit of it survived somehow, and you within it."

"So you want to throw the switch so you can get your old girlfriend back," I sneer. "It isn't happening. She's dead let her go."

"If she's dead why do you still feel something for me? I know it's why you're scared of me. The whole thing scared me in the beginning to. How do you maintain your own independence when your joined body and soul with someone else?" His eyes turn a deep stormy color, "what happens if you lose them? How are you supposed to go on?"

"I'm not frightened of you, and I have no idea what you're talking about."

Undaunted, he takes another step forward, " so kissing strangers is a common thing for you?"

I move back a step, "I did it to protect Tess," I blurt out.

"Or did you do it because you wanted to?"

My skin tingles remembering how his lips felt gliding across it, "no....yes."

"Which one is it?" He breathes against my skin.

My eyes drift to the sky.

"The answer isn't up there."

"I was trying to help. You bear a burden that isn't yours."

"That's debatable."

"Whatever happened wasn't your fault Max. She doesn't blame you."

"You weren't looking for anything else from me," he continues.

Warmth
Protection
Love
The list seems to be endless of what I want from him.

"No. There's nothing you could give me that I want."

The air practically sizzles between us. I move further back until I crash into the trunk."I don't feel anything for you."

He turns his molten eyes to full blast causing something inside of me to do a slow roll.

"Absolutely nothing," I squeak.

"It's interesting how the majority of things that come out of your mouth are lies. You've gotten so good at denying things I don't even think you realize when you're doing it," his knees rubs against my thighs.

"Thank you Dr. Phil. You've cured me."

"I can't cure you. All I can do is be there for you when you need me." Very slowly, he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

My pulse throbs wildly at my neck. "Don't take my visions from me," I beg in a small voice. "They're mine."

"I would never do that to you," he vows backing up from me.

"Khivar," I pause searching for the right word. Words like beginnings exist in a world of artificiality. Saying I'm scared by his gesture in no way describes the sickly taste of fear in my mouth or the shame the stings my skin. Syllables of sound can't begin to capture how Khivar tucked my hair back each time prior to pushing his way into my mind. Rubbing my hair between his thumb and index finger, he enjoyed his appetizer before the five star meal. I was powerless to stop him. Yet, I want Max. No, need him to understand it. "Heusedcouldn'tstophim" comes the garbled explanation.

Tentatively, his arms surround me.

My body tenses against him.

"I'm not going to hurt you. All I want to do is heal you. Please let me," he pleads.

"You scare me," I mummer into his shoulder. "You really, really scare me." My eyes drift close as his hand starts to make little swirls on my back. "I think I'm going to betray Zan. The thought terrifies me." His movements only continue as my body begins to relax against his. "Zan is going to die, but I can't put the pieces together. He's my king, and I can't protect him." I stifle a whimper as Max's ministrations stop.

"He is not your king, and you are not his property," he says firmly.

"I'm the oracle. My visions..."

"Mean nothing to him," he interrupts.

I lift my eyes to his and the warmth and the love that shines in them nearly sends me tumbling over. No one has ever looked at me that way before. This is all happening too fast.

He lets me go.

"Why did you let go?"

"You wanted me to."

I stare down at his muscular arms. He had the power to keep holding on, but he didn't. "Because I wanted it," I mutter under my breath as my brain tries to process this new idea.

"I'm never going to take anything from you that you don't want to give whether it’s your visions or anything else for that matter."

I frown. There has to be a catch.

He grimaces, "they're here."

Around us, a glass octagonal structure begins to rise. Red pieces fuse with blue. Green join with yellow until a patchwork quilt of color blocks out the sky. "Um are you seeing this or is this in my head?"

"The thread is building."

"Thread?"

" It's where we have our meetings. It's on a different plane one that Khivar and his men can't get to. The threader controls it."

"Threader?"

"She serves a mediator and threads the two combatants together. Now I need you to do everything I tell you."

"You promise equality now you're ordering me around again. I should have known it was all words."

Bending down, his lips dip down to my ear. Max's voice drops to a husky whisper, "I am trying to save your life. They're a lot of people who don't like you very much."

"What did..."

He places his finger to my lips to silence me. Suddenly, all I can think about is how much I want to lick my tongue up the side of the bronze digit. Taking it into my mouth, I would suck and suck until...

"You're eyes are glazed over. You're not starting another vision are you?"

"No," I croak.

A look of relief settles over his face. He mentions something about staying quiet and disregarding everything he says about me, but all I can focus on are his lips and how much I want to shove my tongue into the warm cavity of his mouth. I clinch my fist to fight off the urge to run my fingers up his cheek and into his soft hair.

He eyes me suspiciously. "You're not listening to me are you?"

"Hmm?"

"The plan."

"Yes, act like a zombie. I'm at good at that."

"Sorry about this." The air swooshes out of me as his hot lips collide with mine, but this kiss bears no resemblance to the last. Hard and demanding, it's a kiss designed to disengage all thought completely. He wants me to lose control. He increases the pressure as his tongue strokes the roof of my mouth. Flash after flash pop around me. Years worth of memories of her pass before me in seconds. With all my might, I push him away. There is just too much to process.

"I see you're tasting the goods but you appear to be having the same success as Silas does with her," a nasal voice says.

Max shoves me forward to a group clad in shimmering blue cloaks. They're wearing the same clothing as my spiritual advisor.

"Since I did all the work I figured I deserved something," he tells one of the Gogli's three bobbing heads.

A small cloaked figure, and a giant grey wolf hound pass through the wall into the room.

Two of the Gogli's heads turn in that general direction. "Why did you call a threader? Do we have a dispute Max?"

"It's my prerogative to do whatever I feel is necessary. "

"You need us as much as we need you Max," a blonde human looking woman speaks up. "Backing out of our deal can have serious consequences for Isabel."

"Failing to help Max can have even more serious consequences for yourself Thalia. When Khivar is done battling Zan who do you think he's going to turn his attention to? You all will end up prisoners in the mainframe just like the others." The cloaked figure pulls down her hood, and the group backs away from her. All but Max touch their head and then their heart making the sign to ward off evil.

"You should of stayed back on Antar little girl." Thalia answers. "You have no understanding of the situation. We are neutral in this conflict."

The dog at the girls feet begins to growl. She runs her hands through its hair to calm it. "No one is neutral in war. Khivar craves power and next to Zan you all have it."

"We want another threader," the Gogli demands. "She is not right in the head. She has too much of the Serena in her."

Serena. The snake.

"Keep this up Yalon and I'll show you exactly how not right in the head I can be," she purrs flicking her head around to us. For the first time, I see her face. She looks to be all of fifteen.

Her lips twitch when she sees me. "Alright speak," she motions to Max.

"Antar petitions to be freed from the Varaguard Protocol."

"This is illegal," Yalon shouts to the girl. "Everyone knows your partiality to Max."

"My relationship to Antar's representative has nothing to do with my efficiency in threading this discussion. I'm very good at what I do. Slur me again Yalon, and I won't even listen to your argument. You know what? I don't even want to talk to you. Evander you will be the depositor's representative."

"The depositors," I whisper.

All eyes turn to me.

I swallow.

"The witch speaks," Yalon snipes. "How does it feel to be the murderer of hundreds of women and children? We record time and you disrupt it with every one of your dirty visions. You were an extinct race, and I for one cannot wait to see that happen again." Three tongues shoot out of his mouths.

A green blast forms in Max's hands while an identical one forms in the girl.

Yalon's mouths close.

Her silver bracelets clink as she thrusts her hand out from underneath her cloak. "Out. Yalon. I will not have violence in my thread."

"I'm not afraid of you little girl. You were weak and sniveling when you went away with Max, and you are just as weak now."

She smirks.

His three heads sway erratically while blood starts to drip from his eyes.

"Care to revise that opinion or should I blow one of your heads up so you can see just how powerful I am."

"This isn't over." He breaks up into bits of light and flies away.

One wizened old man comes to the center of the crowd. His long snow white beard stretches past his waist. "I would like to speak privately with the witch."

"Antar refuses the overture,” Max answers.

"Max you have been against the oracle for years. Now you come to us and renig on your part of the bargain. What are we supposed to think?"

"Antar controls the oracle as such I don’t have to clear what I’m doing with you."

"Khivar controls the oracle. She cannot serve more than one master."

"She never served him."

He strokes his beard in thought. "Why did she break Tess' punishment then? Tess would have died if she hadn't healed her."

"She doesn't have to answer that."

"Oh but she does. A death warrant is not put down lightly."

Max was sent to kill me. I try to break away from him, but he refuses to let go.

"I repeat the question oracle."

"She believes Tess to be her friend," the girls answers with pity.

"Then she is more of a threat than I thought."

"Have you ever been alone Evander? Surrounded by cinderblock," her voice takes on an almost hypnotic quality. "Enclosed by bars. Sitting there day after day, you stare at the metal and you find yourself thinking they almost look like tree trunks that have lost their branches."

Those are my thoughts. She's mind rapping me, but it doesn’t hurt. Who is this girl?

"Then there's the dark. It's so black that you are unable to see even your own hand in front of you. Then imagine in the darkness a light comes. Tess is her light."

The old man turns to Max. "You should be proud of yourself. You've taught her well but not well enough. Not all the mental suggestions in the world are going to make me feel empathy for that witch. There is nothing she can do that can give me back my wife or all the others we've lost."

"She was the vehicle not the driver of those actions," Max says. "I know you know that Evander. You call yourself the universe's elite act like it and show her the compassion that she deserves, because she could have brought it all down upon on our heads if she had wanted."

"How can you be sure of her loyalty Max?" Evander asks.

His amber eyes meet mine. "Because I trust her. I've trusted her since the first day I saw her," he says as if it's the most simplest thing in the world.

I stare down at my muddy boots if he only knew about Tess and my little plan.

"The issue of her fertility must be accounted for."

My head snaps back up. "I'm not having a child with Khivar, Silas, Zan or anyone."

"I find agreement with you there witch. I will not settle for anymore oracles coming down the pipeline. Procedures must be taken."

I don't think I like where this is going.

"Prophesy is not genetic," the girl answers wrapping the cord of her hood tightly around her hand. "She could have a hundred daughters, and they would never have it."

"Unless they carry the Serena in them," Evander answers. "I will not accept that chance. You after all did inherit it from your own mother."

She tightens the cord until her skin begins to turn white.

"Her mother is not the issue," Max inserts. "Antar rejects your proposal. It's archaic, and it isn't going to happen."

"Because Zan thinks he can father the prophesy child?"

She releases the cord's hold. "I think Zan has a little more on his mind that fathering children. I side with Antar on this subject."

"I appeal."

"Your appeal is denied."

"We want Tess then."

"No. She hasn't done anything," I say.

"Done anything. Hmm. That's an interesting way of describing firebombing a complete settlement, because she thought they knew who Zan was or torturing this child," Evander points to the girl "to the point of death all so she could find her long lost husband."

"You're lying," Max grabs me by the waist. "Zan left her in there to rot just like he left me."

His hold on me tightens.

"If anything, it's his fault for what occurred."

The girl’s face pales at my words. "This isn't getting us anywhere. I suggest a trade. Tess will reside with the depositors until the oracle's true loyalties can be ascertained. You Evander will have the power of having the Queen of Antar to bargain Khivar with if the time comes, and Max will have the oracle."

"We want Tess ascertined," Evander demands.

"Ascertined,” I screech. “Max you can't let this happen. I've seen an ascertinemint. Khivar used to do it to his prisoners. You can't do this."

His mouth forms into a grim line. "Agreed."

"You promised not to hurt her."

"Antar might want to work on disciplining it's new little toy,” Evander snipes.

Helplessly, I watch two depositors fade through the walls.

A blast sizzles in my hand. I'm seconds from letting it go when Max twists my arm behind my back. "Stop it," he whispers. "It is either her or you, and I'm not losing you again."

I look over my shoulder at him. "You've already lost me. You do this you are no better than Khivar."

The depositors return with Kyle and Tess.

"TESS YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE," I struggle in Max's grasp.

Effortlessly, he picks me up and carries me back into another sectioned off room.

"You need to calm down, or they're going to think you have the madness."

"I have the madness."

"What?"

"You have to stop this. You seem to have some power use it. She doesn't deserve to be put in stasis."

"It will give her some time to rethink her priorities," he answers dryly.

"Max she was abandoned by her family. Zan and the others,they were supposed to accept her, and they didn't."

"That's one way of telling it."

"You've got Tess all wrong. For Christmas, she knitted me a blanket. She got Khivar to let me keep my cat Claudia."

"You named your cat Claudia? Why did you pick that name?"

"My cat is not the issue. Khivar almost killed me a week ago, but Tess stopped him. You don't even know her."

"I know more about her than I ever want to." His hand skates up to my temple. "I'm sorry to do this to you, but if your conscious while the ascertinment is going on you might feel it. I think you’re connected to her.”

My lids fall close, and I force them open again. "She's the queen. It's a genetic imperative for her to protect the oracle as much as the king would. She wouldn't hurt me." A fogginess descends over me. "Don't...do...this."

"I'm sorry." He tells me before I fall asleep, “but you’re very wrong about her.”

Howdy, it's been nearly a year since I've update. I know bad me. I kind have to be in a certain mood to write this, but guess what, my mood is back.

I'm going to provide a little summary because of the lag:

Liz has amnesia. She is the oracle. Max kidnapped her but did not know that she was Liz until she almost drowned. Max has just allowed Tess to be ascertined, which is not a really cool process. I will explaining the full ick factor of what an ascertinement is later. Anywho, Liz is currently pissed at Max because he just put her best friend on ice. The threader is an individual who is like an intergalatic judge. She sided with Max. That's about it.

If you have any further plot question, I'll answer them so you don't have to go back.

Here we go.
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Before you can read me
You gotta learn how to see me
~ En Vogue

Chapter Tweleve: See Me


The wind howls low from outside mournfully carrying its message of loss into the dark arms of night. Once safely entrenched there, it allows itself to mourn in great gusts and tears, but the comfort of solace continues to elude it as solace continues to elude me.

I miss my friend.

Wiping a tear away, I turn back from the window to the small room. A tired firelight flickers. From its weathered hand, soft shadows creep across the wall and fall along my goose flesh skin. Little black swirls of darkened heat, they slither down to the crooks of my arms in an almost serpentine like form.

I swallow hard against the reanimation of my vision.

“Are you alright? Are you still cold?”

My eyes flick up to Max having forgotten about his presence entirely as if there is something natural about this quite moment carved from the chaos.

The fire curves into a single yellow curl.

Chaos he can just as likely wield when it suits him.

I turn back to the flame. Its cobra like head dances before me suspended in a large golden cauldron. The vivid bands of light slide down the base. Reaching out to touch it, an unseen presence jerks my arm back.

Instantly, my body retracts, and my head curls under. If I have learned anything from Khivar, it is how to make myself a much more difficult target to wound.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Max says gently. His fingers touch my chin but withdraw just as quickly when my body stiffens. “Please look at me.”

I wait for him to force my head up while he seems to be waiting for some sign from me.

Finally, he says my name. It sounds weird and stilted on his lips as if he dislikes using it all together. “I just didn’t want to you burn yourself. The Healian’s metal can get very hot.” Sighing, he treads softly back to a table covered in numerous papers. He pulls out a sheet and starts to scribble something down on it.

I let out a breath that I didn’t even know I was holding, but anxiety’s mighty fists still hold my lungs hostage. I take a seat on the divan and easily tie the straps of a cerulean balack around me

I wipe another tear away.

“This is stupid Tess. I can’t get the straps tight enough. I don’t really need a balack. Khivar is going to have a fit if he sees me wearing something reserved for Antarian aristocracy.”

“If he doesn’t want you to freeze to death up here, he’s going to have make a couple of concessions. I told him was stupid to bring a human to Antar.”

“I go where the king commands.”

“He’s not the king. Let’s try again. You take this strap and you go over the first strap and then you weave under the third strap.”

“I feel like I’m in a straight jacket.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

I finger the straps tied perfectly down my middle. It’s amazing what a person can get used to. I glance around at the objects aligning my cell but still find repulsive at the same time.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder again about the man who inhabits this room. The talia and Healian meshes oddly with the table and chairs creating a meeting of two worlds that have never been unified.

It doesn’t matter. I reason as my anger starts to rise up. It is a hungry monster that in the last couple of hours has not gotten her fill.

I meet his gaze and then look away.

“Where did you learn to wear a balack? You always had so much trouble putting them on.” He muses more to himself than to me.

I stare at the wall. Talking to Tess’ killer is the last thing I want to do.

“How long are you going to be angry with me?”

Memories of Tess and me shopping in the bazaars of Theron and of her taking care of me each time Khivar struck fill my mind. She was loyal to me in life, and I will be damned if I will be disloyal to her now. I turn over in the divan to keep from having to look at him.

“She was dangerous even though you never saw it. Tess has been put somewhere where she can’t cause us anymore trouble. You not speaking is not going to change that fact.” A slight irritation creeps into his voice, which proves he just like any other Antarian. They can be sheep when they want to, but the wolf is always lurking beneath the surface. With them, you can never show weakness, or they will eat you alive.

Sitting up from the divan, I turn to him. Fear acting as sculptor compresses my lips into a thin line and adds a touch of distance to my eyes. It expertly crafts a mask one that elicited mild annoyance from Khivar and full-blown rage from Silas. Yet, the emotion I see flirt across Max’s face are none of the above.

He stares at me hard. Pain shows in his warm eyes, but underneath stands defeat.

I cover my heart against the torment that has come to life breed from his hurt. I nearly stumble over from the weight of it. What is this thing between us?

I start to go to him. My purpose remains a mystery, but I know that touching him will make all the difference in the world.

We both flinch at a bell sounds from the outer chamber.

“You have nothing to fear here from me or our king Oracle. You are Antar’s guest.”

I blink at the use of my title, and the distance it now places between us. Another tears leaks out, but this time it is not for Tess.

“I am needed elsewhere at this time. For your safety, I ask that you confine yourself to this chamber. Please excuse me.” He says before parting the green gauzy curtain and disappearing into another room.

“Well, what if I’m sick of being Antar’s guest?” I snit after Max is long out of earshot. “I’m done with the crap.” I attempt to part the curtain only to find a very large guard in my way. He is polite in his insistence that I stay where I am, because after all, I am Max’s guest. Rolling my eyes, I retake my seat back on the divan and fill the time by levitating various objects around the room. I’m just about to sit a brass ornament back down on the table when I notice the papers. Treading quietly to them, I pick a sheet up covered in a scientific formula that seems oddly familiar even though I’ve never had much of interest in science.

“Why won’t you hear me out?”

The entire pile of papers goes tumbling on the floor at the sound of the threader’s voice. Stooping over, I start gather them up.

“There’s nothing to hear. You’re going back to school.”

My hands start to shake as I recognize Max while dreading what he’ll do if he catches me.

“There’s no way the depositors would have listened to anyone else but me.”

“It was a biased judgment that they will appeal.”

“No, they won’t. My personal investment trumped their logic. Evander and I have both been Tess’ victims. He has possession of her now, which gives some fulfillment to his vengeance. If he is content, the others will be also. The oracle would have been ascertined right along with Tess. I know that would have killed you.”

“You know too much already.” He sighs.

“If it’s a question of telling, I won’t.”

“I know you won’t. My enemies are never going to stop hurting the people I love. What they did to her, I may never get her back from. It’s why you have to go back to school where it’s safe.”

“Safety is an illusion.”

“What do you mean?” He asks sharply.

“Khivar’s Suthgrad came to my school Max.”

I perk up. Khivar sent his elite paramilitary force after a teenager.

“Max, are you okay? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you about it. You have enough to deal with already.”

Frantic, I rush to the curtains and part it just enough not to alert the guard. Peeking around his massive body, I can just make out Max’s figure in the room across the hall. A red laser grid from an anti listening device fills up the doorway.

I shouldn’t even be able to hear this conversation. To be an intimate, I would have to have been cleared. I push up my sleeves looking for any new scars where a transmitter could have been implanted. I encounter only old battle wounds. “There has to be a logical explanation for this.” I sink down into the corner of the room. “How could I have been made an intimate if we’ve just met.”

“Let me get you some brandy.” The threader offers from across the hall.

“They found you at school.” He repeats again as if trying fully to grasp the almost grisly scenario playing out in his head for the Suthgrad are not in the business of leaving their marks alive. “You’re alright. You looked okay in the clearing.”

“I’m fine.”

“People aren’t ever fine after the Suthgrad. How did you get away?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now.”

“They didn’t,” he pauses. “They didn’t touch you, did they?”

“No.”

“Okay, we are going to talk about this eventually.”

Footsteps pass by my room while all conversation across the hall ceases.

“There it is.” I find a small red mark just above my wrist. Red and puffy, it’s definitely where they inserted the transmitter. I smile confident until it starts to itch, and a large welt appears. “It’s nothing more than a bug bite, but this one could definitely be it.”

I was so excited to see that you're not abandoning your faithful, that I copied the previous chapters onto my laptop at last, confident that you'll finish and I "won't be left wanting"! I can't tell you how much I love your stories, this one in particular. And you write such a wonderful Max!

Please come back soon, you are surely in a groove! This story is wonderfully creative, and has such a unique voice! It has an authentic sci-fi feel, but without the pedantic tone many sci-fi novels get, where you need a map and a "glossary" to remember all their terms.

You introduce terrific, other-worldy stuff, and I understand it in context -- there's just enough to let me know what's going on, and to intrigue me about the history and traditions of these institutions. It's much more realistic to have the characters accept things like "threading" and "the Varagard Protocol" as commonplaces, not making a big deal about them, than to have them stopping to explain things all the time.

I got chills when Max said, "Antar refuses the overture." You get the feeling that the carefree teenagers from the show have gone on and faced unspeakable things, and "that which did not kill them, made them stronger." All the more reinforced by seeing Max accepting the terrible mantle of responsibility, and speaking with power and familiarity about these unearthly things.

I love how much Liz is scared of Max -- having faced the truly terrifying in Khivar and Silas, only gentleness, tenderness and love can frighten her. She's learned to bury everything she loved and seal it away forever, beyond hope, to keep it safe. Max is the only one who threatens that terrible resolve — he is the key that can unlock it, and with it, all the pain and terror she's forced undercover as well.

Beautiful, and agonizing, and thrilling -- I love this story, and hope your capricious muse will favor us by taking up residency!

Please come back soon!

.

DMartinez

If I do a dance, will you consider writing another part to this? '-)
I could start off with the Urkel, throw in a little running man, little BSB, some Hammer-time, just a second or two of NSync and finish it off with a jig.

I just saw this and the entire picture I got in my head was priceless.

What do you think? I could try and update something by Tuesday... okay, I was planning on doing that anyway but I could dedicate it to you. '-)

You've updated? I've been away from the board car shopping. I have to get over there now. I love Cocking/Caulking. It's brilliant.


Don't try to fall
Cuz I'll crawl the way
You're harder than I'll show
Devastation I will find
Dreaming afraid by your side
~You Can't Find Peace ~ Pale 3 & Skin
________________________________________________________
Chapter Thirteen: Dreaming Afraid

Hours drift onwards.

Their quantity is immeasurable.

For exactness is not a luxury a prisoner often has. This absence used to drive me to the point of insanity until I let go of it. What need is there to count off the days and follow the passing of the sun as it makes the same journey since time first began? Time is instrument to count down the moment that wishes will be fulfilled. I have only wish now that reality will never breathe life into as long as I’m here.

Wrapping still another blanket around my shoulders, I sit confined to just this one room. Looking yet again at the same tapestries hanging from the doorway and rugs lining the floor, the lack of variety starting to exert its toil on me. Time may be easy to let go being stationary has not.

As I listen to what I swear are the same footsteps passing through the hallway to the threader playing the same game over and over with her dog outside, these signs of movement further mock me. For I seem to be destined for the nothing while my thoughts serve as my only scouts for escape.

The vision comes to me fast and potent. I cling greedily to the energy, and the action it entails.

The detested walls of my confinement fall away into the void while a clean city street takes its place lined with shiny cars and human constructed dwellings. Khivar soldiers stationed at every corner, and the buzz of H&Ks flying above my head are noticeably absent. There are no banners offering money for Zan’s capture. I am jolted for this is not the future but the past.

A past before Khivar.


A past before me.

Yet, here I am weaving between tables balancing plates in my hand in a restaurant where spaceships and aliens dot the walls.

“Max Evans is looking at you again.” A pretty blonde girl tells me.

I quickly discount the notion. Words continue and are loss as time marches on to the inevitable ending that finds me on the floor.

Bleeding.

Dying.

Ending.

“You have to look at me.” He says.

I open my eyes, and it all changes. I change along with the scene. I am staring out through a large window as a jeep drives away.

For two years, I look back to the night and wish I had done something, anything different to make him stay.

The television squawks about a leaked email detailing an attempted hack on a Department of Defense server.

“These guys have to be geniuses. You’re talking about breaking codes that are humanly impossible to break. I would give my left arm to meet the guy who did it. Think of the information you could get from that, I knew this guy once who said the government had just about everything on everyone in there.”

“No, that would be Choice Point Alex.”

“You really need to appreciate the seriousness of the situation Maria.”

“So a couple of stoners want to try and hack a site, big deal. Where’s my alien blast Jose?”

“What do you think? Liz, stop moping over him. Max is gone.”

I scream. The light dims. I’m alone again trapped in this ridiculous sea foam uniform. Ripping of my antennae, the giant glass window in front of me shatters.

Newspapers blow in from the street with headlines growing progressively more dire detailing power outages, bombs, famines and diseases until the articles cease to be written in English all together.

I am running down some non-descript street. The sounds of boots slaps against the payment behind me. My chest throbs just before I stumble to the ground.

Their terribly grotesque faces surround me. I hear their guns charge. I close my eyes and wait for the inevitable.

“Open your eyes.”

I know that voice.

“You’re okay now.”

“You came back.” I touch his cheek to convince myself that he is indeed real.

“I had to. I haven’t stopped thinking about you, since the day we left.”

“Me to.” I do what I’ve only dreamed about for the last two years press my lips to his in a kiss full of promise of what is to come.

He smiles.

I smile back at him. It is only then that I see the dead bodies at our feet.

“I’ve sort of learned some new things, since I left. Does it scare you?”

“No, the world is changing and sticking to rules from what it used to be like isn’t going to help anyone.”

“All of this is my fault.”

“Never say that.”

“I don’t know what to do only that I have to do something.

“We’ll figure it out together.”

“Together,” he repeats.

But together is fleeting as I find myself back in the restaurant staring at the burned out and broken hole of its once giant picture window.

“Come with me.” Max’s hand reaches in through the broken window.

I stare at it dumbly. “I can’t. You’re not real, and I have to stay here and finish this where ever it goes.”

“No, you don’t not anymore.”

“This is who I am now.”

“No.”

“LOOK AT ME.”

A spasm crosses his jaw.

“See me here, now, this is me. See me Max,” I plead.

“I’ll try.”

“You can’t try.”

His eyes start to water. “I will just take my hand.”

“Grab me please,” I beg unable to reach through.

“It doesn’t work that way. You have to take my hand. You have to make the choice.”

“You are asking too much of me.”

“Trust me again,” Max’s mouth freezes before his body falls through the window frame.

“MAX!” I try to catch him, but his weight brings us both down onto the floor. A small yellow snake falls from his back onto my lap. Terrified, I brush it way. “ LOOK AT ME.” My hands are slick with his blood. “Please open your eyes.” His limbs grow heavy before his body turns into dust as the wind in her cruelty blows it away.

My eyes open to the same tapestries and furniture of before.

But difference has begun to exert her fluid hand into this tired palette.
I feel in the faint ghostly whisper getting louder deep inside born from a woman who is and is not me. Despite the obvious contradiction between the dead phantom and living woman, they unite effortlessly driven by one terrifying but undeniable need.

Parting the curtains, I meet once again with the guard and a lanky, shorthaired individual who immediately rears back upon seeing me.

He swallows several times. “It’s you.”

“Yeah, it’s me. Is Max here? I really need to talk to him.”

“No,” he answers dazed ushering me back into my cell. “Max wanted to talk said urgent,” the man continues to tell his story in hurried garbled fragments and frenzied hand movements, which revolves around him having no contact with command and arriving on site a day earlier than planned.

“Just calm down.”

“I am perfectly calm,” he counters. “This has to be a dream. With everything that’s been going, I’m dreaming. You’re here, because you always fixed everything. So you’re a Jungian representative of this feeling I’m having that I am incapable of ever fixing any of this crap around me.”

“What kind of crap? I always find it easy to list everything that is going on. It makes finding possible solutions easier by narrowing down the exact problems.”

New awareness enters his eyes. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” He touches my cheek. “You’re really alive Liz”

I feel my body sway. An intense popping presses into my brain.

“How is this possible Liz?”

Blood drips down my nose. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why? It’s your name.”

“You’re in it to.”

“In what?”

“Max’s conspiracy.”

“Why would Max have a conspiracy against you when you’re were like the key member of Max’s conspiracy? Heck, you even thought it up. You said if Batman and Robin could have secret identities, why couldn’t he? ”

“What on Earth are you talking about?” I knock several ornaments off the table by mistake.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“How could I know you when I’ve never met you before in my life.

“What did you give me for my tenth birthday?”

I push him away from me. “You’re nuts.”

“Nuts is having your best friend come back from the dead, and your fiancée abducted by her ex lover and having to wait and plan because if it isn’t done precisely right we’re all going to end up dead.”

“You’re Isabel’s fiancée?”

He bangs his head against a pillow. “You have to remember me. Just look at me.”

“I do not know who you are.”

“Alright, alright that wasn’t a good angle.” He turns to the right. “This is a much better angle. Do you remember me now?”

“No.”

“Do you remember Max at least?”

“Why would I remember him?”

“Oh I don’t know possibly because the two of you are mm…”

“Alex,” the red cheeked threader calls running head long into the room followed by her dog.

“What are you doing down here? Does Max know you’re here?”

“Later,” she huffs the clear after effects of sprinting. “Michael’s here.” Her dog growls at the name.

Alex looks from me to the threader before muttering something under his breath. “Where’s Max?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s just great. We’re trying to plan an intergalactic revolution here, and the key revolutionary…”

“Alex,” the threader elbows him hard. “We need a plan, because Michael’s here.”

The dog snarls.

“Who’s Michael?” I ask startled by the dog’s continued reaction to his name.

“He’s scary,” the threader offers.

“Really scary,” Alex adds, “and he doesn’t like you very much.”

“Michael doesn’t like anyone. Put this on,” she hands me a cloak. “You need to distract him Alex.”

“Distract him with what?”

“I don’t know talk about the weather or football.

“Khivar banned football last month.”

The threader starts to unlatch the window.

“This is crazy. The two of you can’t make that drop. Michael can be reasonable.”

“Right,” the threader parts her hair to reveal a silver scar etched across her forehead. “So he was being completely reasonable when he gave me this? He is after the one that suggested that Max should exterminate me.”

“You’re right.” Hurriedly the two of them begin unlatching the numerous clasps on the window.

Focused on their work, they never see the ridiculously tall and imposing man part the curtains or his cold look upon seeing me.

The theader’s dog arches his back and is in the process of beginning to the growl when it falls mutely to ground

I swallow noting his eyes share the same deadened color of Khivar’s. Refusing to show my fear, I attempt to hide behind courtly etiquette bowing to this obvious Antarian aristocrat.

It takes both the threader and Alex being thrown from my side, and Michael’s large hands clamping around my neck for me to realize that Michael is anything but an Antarian aristocrat.