Chapter 6
Run!
He remembered the sound. The loud, pounding-like sound of the machine, going on and on at equal intervals, and the almost claustrophobic effect it had on him.
He didn't feel safe in this place, despite the voice that kept reassuring him he was doing great. A voice that was echoing in his memories and had nothing to do with the reality surrounding him, where his new doctors were whispering amongst themselves, instead of being beside him, asking him questions he had already answered.
He hadn't minded the questions then. They had been easy to understand and easy to respond to. It was the sound he hadn't liked, that had made him nervous.
And now that he was inside one of those machines again, memories were coming back to him, clearer now than before he had found himself in that terrible ER. It was no longer 3:00 a.m. in Saint Paul's Hospital; it was four days before, running down an alley right before nightfall, breathless . . .
.
. . . "I think we lost them," Max's words came rushed as he was trying to catch his breath. Michael was barely able to nod at him. Though it was getting colder by the second, they both had just run for fifteen minutes straight, so they were anything but cold.
"How the hell did they find us?" Michael asked, exasperated, still bent over trying to get his breath again, his words forming white puffs in the air. A storm was coming soon, the sky above them a dark gray. Max shook his head as if saying that he didn't know. It took him a few more seconds until he could breathe normally again.
"I wish I knew. At least it was just the two of us," Max said, looking back the way they had come, searching for any pursuers.
"You seriously think they don't know where Maria and the others are?" Michael's voice came harsh, in typical Michael fashion, but concern and hope were equally mixed on his face. They were standing on a deserted street in some industrial sector of the city, three store buildings and warehouses on every block. God, had they run.
"I think the man that spotted us just got lucky. As long as they stay at the motel, we all should be fine." Max was quiet for a second, almost as if he had heard something. "Liz is really worried about us," he said after a moment, his connection coming strong now that he was calming down.
"No kidding. Maria is going to crawl the walls any second now," Michael said, as he placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky, finally getting his breathing under control. Max smiled at Michael's words. It amused him to think what feeling Michael or Maria would be like if he could do it at the same level he could Liz. He had the distinct notion it would be like having an electric shock every single time.
Michael's body tensed.
It only took a fraction of a second, but Max didn't have to turn to look at what Michael was staring at to know they had not lost their pursuers. Next thing he knew, Michael had pretty much crashed on him in order to get him out of a shooter's aim, effectively throwing both of them behind high trash cans and discarded boxes.
Max impacted against the wall behind him, his left shoulder making a loud thud sound, making him see stars for a second, as Michael almost knocked the air out of him. But besides the initial hit, he didn't register pain, adrenaline running through his body at light speed once more. The shots kept coming, though their sound was low as the shooters were using tranquilizers, not bullets. One dart hit barely inches from his foot.
"There's a sniper on the rooftop!" Michael said, as he gracelessly helped Max to his feet to run in the opposite direction. They were not going to make it, Max knew, if they kept running unprotected.
His green energy shield was more than a dead giveaway of their position, but Max would keep it up as long as he could until they reached the corner and could keep running out from the sniper's aim. It was difficult to concentrate and run, but Max found that multi-tasking wasn't that hard when he was running for his life.
The corner seemed impossibly far, and darts started bouncing off Max's shield. He could hear them, even if he wasn't turning around to look at them. He couldn't. He just couldn't let himself see them and think what they would mean if one hit him… they would trap him again, they would take him again, they would—
He turned the corner behind Michael, and let go an inner sigh of relief as his shield collapsed into itself. They kept running, of course, but at least now he had a sense that they would make it this time. They would disappear in this maze of buildings and warehouses, and be with his wife and the others before the storm hit.
Too late he saw the other agent coming from the other corner they had almost reached. Michael saw him first, being some six feet ahead of Max, and sent him flying with one movement of his hand as he bent over almost at the same time with a barely audible groan. It took Michael less than a second to pull the dart off his thigh and let it drop to the floor, the small object hardly making a sound as it hit the pavement. Michael had been hit, and the whole world stopped for Max.
He vaguely registered that the agent had been thrown away pretty far and that he wasn't getting up in pursuit. He moved towards his best friend, feeling as if everything were going in slow motion. Michael turned to look at him, their eyes locking, fear flashing in his eyes for a second, replacing it with determination as Max finally reached him to steady him.
"Run," Michael simply said, as if already giving in to his fate, his legs starting to give up on him.
"No," Max said as his brain raced trying to come up with an escape route. He couldn't lift Michael, put his shield up, and run. No, he had to think fast how to put an obstacle between them and the Unit, if not space. He took Michael's arm to support him, and faced the wall, finally coming up with a plan. He had no idea what was inside that building, or how much time he had to open a hole in that wall, but he was sure they had to disappear now. There had been two agents shooting at them, and chances were they weren't alone.
"Maxwell! Get the hell out of here!" Michael said, anger filling his voice, by now his entire weight on Max. Max's left shoulder began to ache with the effort of keeping Michael up, the hit it had received only minutes before beginning to bruise. By tomorrow morning, his entire chest would display the force with which Michael had pushed him to the wall in the form of slightly purple marks.
"Like hell I am," Max said as he lifted his right hand, willing the molecules apart. Sweat broke in his forehead barely ten seconds after he had started, his muscles tensed and his attention divided between hearing if anyone else was coming and making the hole big enough for them to get through. The instant Michael finally collapsed, almost taking them both down, Max stopped opening the hole. It would do, Max briefly thought, his heart in his ears.
He half carried, half dragged Michael through the opening, the other side being a paper storage warehouse from what Max could see. They would search for them in here, Max knew, but maybe they still had time. He needed to hide Michael, and then to divert their attention from this place. As long as Michael was sedated, all Max could do was take them away from him and wait for his friend to wake up.
How long would that take? He didn't know, but he hoped it would be fast. He left Michael sitting against the wall, and started closing the hole they had come through just seconds before. God, he was feeling tired by now; between the shield and the hole and the 15 minute run… He pushed the thought aside. He had enough energy to get them both out of there, and that was all he would think about.
Wiping the sweat off his forehead with his long sleeve, Max finally nodded at the closed wall, confident that no one would notice that they had gone through the wall in this spot. He hadn't heard anything from the other side, and no one seemed to be in this place, it being a Sunday night with a snow storm closing in.
That worried Max. If they didn't hurry, they would be stuck in here until the weather would let them go. He knelt down beside Michael, wondering if he could wear out the sedative effects, helping Michael wake up faster.
The instant Max put his hand on Michael's shoulder, he knew something was wrong. He was barely breathing and his heart was going crazy.
"No!" Max said almost above a whisper, his connection intensifying as he started to mend things. What had they given Michael? Were they trying to kill them now? Why wouldn't they be using bullets then? It felt as if Michael's lungs were paralyzed, unable to inhale and exhale. As Max took a deep breath, he willed Michael's lungs to do the same, imagining he was breathing for both of them.
He kept doing that for minutes, though he wouldn't have been able to tell exactly for how long. He had to stop when he heard a door being opened somewhere at the other side of the warehouse. He fell on his back, panting, but relieved to see that Michael was breathing on his own. Now his only hope was to hide Michael and make them follow him. But where?
The answer came in the form of a huge roll of paper barely three feet from where he was. Although he was really tired at this precise moment, he knew he had to try out the idea that was taking form in his head. He stood up with some difficultly, but keeping quiet so he could hear any possible sound. If someone had indeed entered, he –or they- was being really quiet now.
Getting to the roll, Max placed both hands in front of him, almost touching the paper. Molecules moved away, opening a gap through the sheets of rolled paper, the process much easier here than with the wall, which was thicker. The idea was to hide Michael inside the roll, nestling him as best as he could, and closing the gap again. Once Michael woke up, he would be able to get himself out of there. Maybe the paper wouldn't survive Michael's energy, Max thought with a smile that didn't reach his eyes, but at least his friend would have a chance.
Compared to opening gaps through paper, dragging Michael inside was anything but easy. By now, Max was certain at least two people were inside the building, muffled sounds echoing in the warehouse. He started to think about what he was going to do as he made more room inside the roll to set Michael as comfortably as possible. He thought about staying here with Michael, but he knew the agents wouldn't give up until they found a trail.
And a trail Max would give them. They couldn't possibly know where Max had taken Michael –maybe they didn't even know Michael had been hit- so there were at least six places in this block where they could have vanished into. Good.
He stepped aside and started mending the paper back together, the process much slower now than before, but Max didn't let that stop him. So what if he was tired, he still could manage a trick or two. By now his shirt was clammy with sweat on his back, and once he finished closing the roll, he had to wipe the sweat off his forehead again.
"You're going to be all right," Max whispered, more for his own benefit than Michael's. Giving the roll one last glance as he turned to his right, Max started searching for an escape route. Though the place was a maze of paper walls, the "emergency exit" signs were very clear to find. How ironic he couldn't follow them. All he wanted to do was to reach the wall at his right and make an exit through it, hoping to cross the street and make it into the next building unnoticed. Maybe the storm would become his ally, he thought, being that the agents wouldn't be able to follow him for much longer.
It was an unexpected relief when he saw a door in the wall in front of him, the sign reading "CARGO" in big red letters impossible to miss even from 25 feet away. It would mean he wouldn't have to make yet another hole in the wall, saving his energy. But it would also mean that someone might be waiting for him to come out. He would have to gamble on this one. He was too tired right now to fully use his powers, and opening the wall would mean he wouldn't be able to put up his shield in defense if he needed to.
Something embedded itself in a roll of paper Max had at his left. Something small. It took him less than a second to recognize the dart. At 15 feet from the door, Max spun around with his shield up to face the agent that was shooting at him.
The agent took aim, wide eyed, but didn't shoot. As Max walked backwards as fast as he could, the agent kept walking towards him, both silent, both looking at each other as if they were locked in that position.
Okay. It didn't matter. He would reach the door, open it, drop the shield and seal the doorknob once on the other side. The agent would call for reinforcements, of course, but at least Max would be out, running for the next building, and just waiting for the storm. By the time the agents would be able to hunt him down again, he would be rested. And God, he needed the rest.
He was probably less than 3 feet from the doorknob when he felt it. The intense, sharp pain on his left shoulder numbed him in an instant, his shield dropping at the sheer shock of having been shot from the side. He lost his balance backwards, not even able to turn to look at the agent who had shot him coming at him from the hallway at his left, his eyes still looking at the man he had in front.
His right hand landed on the doorknob as Max was trying to find purchase and stop his fall, but all he remembered from that moment was the agent's eyes narrowing at him, finally firing the shot he had been holding from the moment Max had put up his shield.
Max didn't really feel the impact of the second dart as his legs gave out and he fell on his back against the door.
Run! Max thought, as if Michael could hear him right now, the agent in front of him walking carefully towards him, the gun still aimed at his body. Run Michael! When you wake up, don't let them catch you… don't let them… just… run...
The call came at 3:33 a.m.
Dr. Peter Shore noticed because it was an odd number, and everything and anything odd had always held his interest. He should be sleepy, he thought, since he hadn't been sleeping well for the past three days, but he couldn't have been more alert.
It had been more then seven hours since Max had escaped, and Shore's mind was going on and on about the things he should've done, or said, or shown, or whatever else he could think of. He should've convinced Michael when he had the chance, but gosh, he had never seen such feral eyes before.
Now he was on the phone with the latest report. At least four potential leads had come out of their search, all of them related to the train derailment hospitals or shelters. Too many people were out there, too much ground to cover. It wasn't hard to imagine Max easily being mistaken for a victim or something, lying in some hospital bed.
But would they risk it? That was the main question here. Michael knew –or at least had been told- that Max needed medical attention, but that didn't mean that the group was going to agree. Or that they didn't have means of their own to heal Max properly. God, he hoped so.
Reports were vague at best about what these kids could or couldn't do with their "special" abilities. Those reports were conflicting at best, and ever since the Army had taken the project under its wing after the "graduation fiasco", the little information the remaining agents from the FBI Special Unit had given seemed more biased than anything else.
It was hard to believe that four days ago he had been so blissfully ignorant of the moronic ways his taxes were being spent, but now that he was deep into this mission/project/unit/whatever, he just couldn't let it go.
He hung up the phone, the agent on the other side promising to update him as soon as they got any positive identification. Half of him wanted to warn the agent that not all the gods in history would help him if he approached Max while Michael was guarding him, but he guessed the agent already knew.
Oh, what a mess he was in. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he still had had a rather simple life. It wasn't hard at all to relive in his mind what had happened a little over 72 hours ago, the room he was in vanishing from his mind's eye, his own room back home taking its place. . .
.
. . . "Hello?" a sleepy Peter Shore answered the phone. It was close to midnight,and he had had one of those days that had made him crawl into bed way before 7 p.m., wishing the world away. The storm that had been threatening the city still menaced the sky, not one single snowflake having fallen.
"Lieutenant Colonel Shore?" an expressionless voice asked. For one second, Shore had thought he was dreaming. He had been retired from the Army for four years now, and he had no plans on going back. Besides, it was the middle of the night, so it had to be a dream.
"Retired," he automatically answered, not really knowing why. He was barely shaking the sleep off when the same voice said, "Just a minute, sir."
Sir. Oh yeah, that darned little word that had been stuck in his mind for twenty years, like a reflex that he couldn't shake off. But he had shaken it off, he had finished his military career and had pursued other interests. It only took a couple of seconds for someone to be back on the line.
"Pete, you better be awake and dressed in two minutes."
"Bill?"
Well, actually, it was Lieutenant Colonel William Anders, but for at least 15 years of those 20, they had been close friends, had served together on more missions than either wanted to count. Yet somewhere in those long years, they had gone their separate ways, even if they still kept in touch. Bill had had a way with words, and had ended up being a diplomat of some sort. When things got rough, Bill would be there to smooth things over without shooting one single bullet. He was an odd soldier, really; a peacemaker with a gun.
Peter, instead, had joined the medical corps. He was actually pretty fond of the Red Cross band that used to hang on his arm, always alert to that dreaded call of Medic! in the middle of the battlefield.
"I mean it, Pete. We're two miles from your place, I need you ASAP." Bill hung up. Peter blinked. Still holding the phone to his ear, still shaking off the cobwebs of sleep, Peter Shore looked at nothing, trying to decide if he was really dreaming or not.
When his doorbell rang two minutes and twenty-three seconds later, Shore was more than relieved to know he had guessed right –he had been awake and not dreaming, and was now dressed and ready to go- but half of him was dreading what this midnight call could mean. What on Earth could Bill want with him?
The young soldier saluted when he opened the door, and out of habit, he did the same, both walking quickly to the car waiting outside. Obviously, these people meant business, and fast.
"I'm sure I'm going to regret this," Shore said as he sat beside a troubled looking Bill, who smiled at him.
"I'm sure you won't," he enigmatically said, as they shook hands. It had been more than a couple of years since they had seen each other in the flesh, and no amount of e-mailing could ever make up for the lack of personal contact.
The car was already moving and half a mile away from Shore's house by the time Bill opened the manila folder he had in his lap. "I'm sure the midnight nature of our meeting pretty much spells 'Sensitive Information' to you, so let's skip formalities," Bill began, making it obvious whatever Peter was going to see was not meant for anyone else's eyes.
"In 1947, an alien space craft did crash in Roswell, New Mexico," Bill continued, by now passing Shore the first of many pictures, this one of a debris field.
What came next was a slide show of almost sixty years of cover-ups, chases, shapeshifters, silver handprints and corpses. When the Army had lost its second prisoner in 1950, everyone thought things would go quiet. Except 10 years later the FBI formed its "Special Unit", chasing at least one known alien across the country.
"They claimed the aliens were invaders, colonizers, and the little green men did leave a trail behind them," Anders said, showing Shore a black and white picture of a corpse with a handprint on its chest.
They had been driving for almost half an hour now, yet Peter had no idea why Bill was telling him this, especially since he was now a civilian, or how he was going to help. Or better yet, where the hell were they going?
"They thought they finally got one of them in 2000," Bill said, searching for the right picture to give.
"They thought?" Shore asked, finally taking his eyes off the corpse picture, wondering how these beings could generate the energy to pretty much cook a person alive, hardly leaving any trace behind.
Anders gave him another black and white picture. The young man that stared back at him had a small smile that didn't quite show his teeth, bangs of hair over his forehead, clear but somehow guarded eyes.
"This was a school picture from about four years ago," Bill was saying, still shuffling pictures on his lap.
"This being of yours disguised itself as a student?" Shore asked, amused. If he had been living for fifty years in enemy territory, and had the ability to disguise as anyone, would a teenage form throw his pursuers off?
Bill humorlessly chuckled. "It would have made my life easier, knowing what I know now," he mused, without giving any further explanation. Taking another picture, this one being a surveillance shot, it showed the same young man coming out of a building. Peter had to do a double take when he saw the billboard proudly displaying "UFO Center". Now that was a good disguise.
"No, the kid you see in these pictures is not 'that being of mine'. His name is Max Evans, he was an honor student at Roswell High, employee of the UFO Center, beloved son and... husband," Bill said, taking one more picture out, this time of Evans with a pretty girl, as they were coming out of a movie theater.
"An awfully young husband," Peter quietly remarked. "So, why is he interesting?" Shore asked, the car speeding down the freeway as he absently scanned the night outside. That snow storm was due any second now, so he hoped they were really close to their destination.
"Because Mr. Max Evans is also a '47 survivor. You see, he's not exactly an alien, he just has enough of both sides to make him a hybrid."
Suddenly, his remark about an "awfully young husband" didn't seem so accurate. His interest was immediately 100% there.
It actually took them another half an hour before they started to slow down, the car going through the city now, tall buildings looking imposing. By then Dr. Peter Shore had a short recount of events, starting with Max saving his future wife, continuing with his detention and interrogation, his escape, the Special Unit's disbandment and subsequent reunion. Their suspicions that Evans wasn't alone wouldn't have any substantial ground for a couple of years.
Though the Army had kept the spaceship, it wasn't until another UFO crashed two years before, and its survivor fled, that the Army had turned its sights towards finding an alien being again.
Funny how the alien being actually found them first... and blew up a base. Things got really heated after that, especially with the careless retaliation the base's Commander had taken. Now the Army had taken over the Special Unit, and had been re-evaluating its data for the past year and a half. The chase was still on; the six kids in the last picture Shore had seen being wanted for more than just questioning.
"Bill, my friend, you've been keeping a lot of stuff in your basement," Peter said, trying to process all this information while he still had absolutely no idea why he had been told all this, big pieces of this puzzle still missing. He looked again at one of the black and white pictures of the young man, this time accompanied by his sister and friend. How did Bill know Max Evans was a '47 survivor? Any of them? If he wasn't a shapeshifter, then he looked awfully young, indeed, for a 50-something guy.
Bill stopped shuffling pictures –apparently, there were still some to show-, and seriously turned to look at him. "I was debriefed a couple of hours ago while I was boarding a plane in Washington. I'm actually waiting for someone to come out of the shadows and laugh at both of us for having swallowed such a story."
"Wait, you were coming from the airport when you picked me up?"
Anders smiled. "You were always the sharpest of us all, Pete. I can hardly believe I'm here myself."
"Why are you in this mess? And why am I in this mess, too?"
"Because as of six hours ago, this tale got messier than anyone could have imagined," Bill said in a rather ominous voice. The little hairs at the back of Peter's neck stood up, and somehow, he knew he wasn't going to like where this was going. Not one bit.
Bill pulled one last picture out of the manila folder. This time, it was a standard surveillance camera photo, from a store at a mall, it seemed. Max and… Michael? Yeah, Michael, they were both in the picture. The date and hour printed at the bottom clearly showed that it had been taken less than ten hours ago.
They both had changed from the first pictures Peter had seen. They had grown up, it was clear, and not exactly on the easy side of life. But even if they now looked like young adults, there was still an easy pose. They were quietly laughing at something they were looking at out of the camera's reach.
"You know where they are," Shore stated.
"I know where one of them is," Anders corrected. "There's where we're going right now."
"Why do they want a diplomat and an internist to go meet him?" Peter looked down at the picture again, almost sure that the one they were going to meet was Max. Bill had way too much information on him for this whole thing to be centered on Michael.
"Surveillance picked up this photograph, and a group in the area was dispatched. Half an hour later, they ambushed them in the industrial sector, though Michael seemed to vanish into thin air. Agents Walker and Cooper caught up with Max, and both fired at him – tranquilizer darts."
Like a wild animal, Shore reflected for a second, as a more urgent thought came, "They both hit him?" Anders nodded.
"The doses were fairly low; the idea was to slow them down," Bill said, as he opened a folder that had been waiting by his other side. "It didn't really work that way."
The folder contained two lonely faxed pages of rapidly scrawled handwriting, medical terms here and there. Whoever had written this, he –or she- had been in a big hurry. Shore's eyes read through it all with the expertise all doctors seemed to develop to understand the handwriting of their fellow colleagues.
A respiratory arrest and 8 different drugs later, they had managed to stabilize and wake Evans two hours after his capture. His current stats were at the bottom. And that was all there was in those pages. No blood work information, no pending test results that were being done at the moment the pages had been sent, nothing.
"They don't seem to be having any more trouble," Peter dryly said, knowing full well half of the important information was being left out. Maybe someone was paranoid these pages would fall into the wrong hands. "So, I still don't get what they want with us."
"The first time Max Evans was detained, he was rescued by his friends less than 24 hours later. Up until this minute, we don't know how he was found. We suspect that the serum that was administered to block his special abilities is not completely effective, and that some sort of telepathy remains. This time around, we don't want to run any risks."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it is priority one to move the prisoner out of the state. Or, rather, it was priority one. When they woke him up, Max was not stable enough to be moved, but awake enough for interrogatory procedures to begin. Just your basic questioning. Boy, were they in for a surprise."
Bill paused, looking out of the window at the snow finally falling. "They told me it could all be a lie, but Max was barely conscious enough to think straight, let alone spin a tale so complicated." Bill's eyes turned to Peter's. "Our honor student, beloved husband and son, is actually a political refugee from far, far away." Shore stared at him, Bill slightly chuckled, "He's the freaking king of an entire planet, and it turns out that fifty years ago two of his bodyguards died and two were held by us, while he and the royal family had been hidden in a pod somewhere. That part is still unclear."
Now it was becoming very obvious why they both were here.
"He's still not stable, is he?" Shore asked, while Bill muttered something about needing a drink.
"We wish. The United States government is now responsible for the well being of Antar's once and future king. There's a civil war, and the tale comes complete with a usurper, and four other planets in the mix. If Max Evans dies under our care, and next week or next century someone from there comes looking for him, what do you think we're going to look like? My God, these people can travel through space, create hybrids and shapeshift. What chance would we have?"
"So they called you to mediate between us and…"
"And Max. Once he's well. By the time I got out of the plane he wasn't improving one bit. That's where you come in. You were close, you have the expertise, and from the moment you stepped in the car, you had the clearance. You already know how the game is played. It was out of the question to bring a civilian into this whole mess." They stared at each other for a whole minute, almost as if confirming that the other was accepting this was the truth.
"I think I need a drink, too," Peter quietly said, the whole reality of it hitting him as the car finally stopped. They had arrived at their destination, and suddenly all he could think about was Run! Run away from this whole thing while you can. Away from the Army, away from the government, and away from their alien conspiracies.
Oh, what a mess he was in.
