Summary: Fourteen years after Future-Max changed the past, Liz Parker's about to do it again. But when things don't go as she expected, how's she supposed to make a better future with only the help of a bitter teenage Zan?

Disclaimer: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

AN: Extra long chapter. Won't keep you from it. (:

Some part ah Zan knew the guy sobbin' on the sidewalk wasn't Rath.

He wasn't listenin' to that part.

"Are you actually cryin'?" Zan sneered and turned his wrist. Rath choked as the wavering green light pulled in tighter – one band around each wrist, one around both ankles, his stomach and his throat. "That's weak, man. Even for you."

Rath was a lot of things – gutsy an' vain an' occasionally really, really friggin' blind. He didn't get girls, which Zan thought was how Lonnie had turned him into such a damn puppet. He thought he was tougher than Zan, an' if they'd stood side by side an' just compared how much energy they used, he'da been right, too. But even Rath had known he couldn't take Zan head-on – that's why Rath'd snuck up behind him an' pushed 'im under a truck.

Still. Zan had expected more… fight. Wanted it.

"Who's pathetic now?" Zan sneered, lookin' him up an' down just to piss 'im off.

But Rath just sobbed.

He's not Rath.

"Shuddup." Zan hissed. "I know he ain't Rath, but Rath ain't here, so he'll just have to do, won't he?"

Five minutes. That was all it'd taken. Zan tilted his head back, saw the brick wall an' grinned. He strolled over, steppin' over Jasper – Zan'd accidently knocked him out earlier when he'd started throwin' shit around – an' laid his hand along the rough surface. Zan brought his hand up an' pictured what he wanted, then traced the letters on the wall. When he was done he stepped back, looked over his work, an' frowned. Another tap lit the whole thing up in neon.

"Much better…" Zan muttered before turnin' back to the cryin' man with a grin.

"What'd I tell ya?"

Rath looked up, glimpsed the glowing 'Zan's the Man' sign on the wall, an' went back to cryin' louder than ever.

Zan rolled his eyes an' had to lean on the wall to keep from fallin'. When he got his balance back, Zan started laughin'. At first it was just at how stupid he must look, drunker than hell after one sip ah crappy beer, an' then it was because Rath was cryin', but not really, cause this guy just looked like Rath. Rath sided with Lonnie, the traitor bitch who'd sold their asses out the last time around.

He'd say people never changed, but that wasn' true. Rath'd died defendin' Zan the first time 'round. An' wasn't that ironic, that Rath would defend the King against Vilandra in one life, and help her kill him in the next?

Well, you ain't his King no more. Just some dumb ass kid on the street.

"Long live dah King." Zan whispered, then snorted an' started laughin' all over again. He laughed so hard he fell over, tears comin' to his eyes. Then, somehow, he wasn't laughin' anymore, but the tears kept comin'. They poured down his cheeks like somebody'd opened the friggin floodgates, years of repressed shit piggybackin' on the pain of fresh trauma.

Zan couldn't even remember the last time he'd cried, before last week. Now it seemed like every other word brought on the waterworks.

"Fuck." He tried to be angry, but all that came out was this pathetic little kid voice. What was wrong with him lately? When'd he turn into such a friggin' pansy?

Why was he even cryin' now?

They left me.

Zan blinked an' looked up toward the stars, toward home – his real home. But he couldn't see anything but black sky beyond the city lights.

"You were supposed to be there." He finally muttered, still starin' up at the empty night sky through the blur of tears. "I was gonna… You were supposed to be there. At our place. You weren't s'possed tah ditch me. Not before I could show you how big you fucked up by not killin' me for real."

He'd gone home for vengeance, only to find it'd left him behind.

An' how sad was it that even now, watchin' Nick beggin' an' cryin', he wasn't feelin' any better? Even though Zan'd won the fight – even though he'd proved he wasn't pathetic? Even though Nick looked so much like Rath?

Where was that feelin' he'd got so long ago, watchin' Jenny hit the wall?

Zan sniffed an' pulled one hand into a fist, then brought it down fast an' hard on the asphault. The sudden hot flare of pain didn't make him feel any better, but it sobered him up, just a little, an' let him stop the tears.

Zan glanced back up after a moment and saw the snot an' tears still runnin' down Nick's face.

That ain't Rath. Zan thought, tryin' to convince himself. That's why it ain't helpin'.

What the fuck'm I even doin' here? He wondered, starin' at the brick for a long, empty minute.

Zan started to stand up an' heard metal slide across the uneven ground. He turned around to see Jasper comin' at him with a pipe of some kind, metal glintin' orange in the cheap ass street light. His eyes were wide an' rollin' an' completely friggin' crazy, an' Zan knew immediately that the guy would try to kill him.

Zan relaxed against the wall an' closed his eyes.

But then Jasper shouted, catchin' Zan's attention, an' went him flyin' through the air.

Zan froze, tensed up, got ready to fight again. But instead of the hit he was expectin', he felt somebody grab his shoulder an' spin him around. For just a second, he saw her face, an' then she was grabbin' him.

It felt… really good to be hugged.

Awkward, uncomfortable, an' unfamiliar as shit, but still good.

"Jesus, Zan – you scared the crap outta me!" Beth scowled, clawed fingers digging into his shoulder to push him away. Zan, feelin' extra dizzy at that moment, wrapped his arms around her waist and kept her close. For balance.

Obviously.

Beth went completely rigid.

"Zan…" she said, soundin' – weirdly enough – both angrier an' kinda amused. "Have you been drinking?"

Zan blinked, shocked she'd figured it out. After a minute he shrugged an' pulled back some, letting' go with one hand to hold his thumb an' pointer finger about an inch apart in front of her. "Lil' bit, yeah. Just a sip, but is nah goin' 'way…"

Beth blinked, goin' just a lil' pale. Zan wondered if she'd been drinkin' too.

"You – you freaks!"

Zan jerked an' turned to look at Nick. He'd actually forgotten the guy was there. With Jasper awake, though, he'd apparently grown some balls, an' now he was wavin' a long, flat chunk of wood toward Beth. Zan frowned, free hand comin' up automatically to renew the hold, but Beth caught his wrist an' pushed his hand back down.

Weird. Zan thought. If Ava or Lonnie'd done that, it woulda really pissed me off. S'it cause I'm drunk? He considered pullin' away from Beth, but changed his mind as another wave ah vertigo almost knocked him over. Instead, he put his head down on her shoulder an' closed his eyes, hopin' it'd go away. Oh man, she smells nice…

… No way. I'm not… I don't… I don't actually like her, right?

He woulda said no right off, most days. But right now, feelin' the way he was, everythin' bein' so clear… he couldn't really tell, one way or another. Which meant he wasn't there yet, but was probably startin' to…

The thought all by itself almost made him toss chunks all over Beth. As his stomach roiled, he pushed the thought aside an' decided to figure it out later. No reason to think about complicated stuff now, when he was wasted.

"Look – you an' you're buddy just go back into the bar, okay? Nobody has to know this ever happened…"

"The fuck they don't!" Nick screamed. Zan clenched his fist on the back of her shirt an' lifted his head up again, wonderin' if he could pull his hand up an' aim before Beth could stop him.

… Prolly not, considerin' how he was feelin'.

"They're gonna lock you two up an' throw away the fuckin' key! After what that little prick did to me – "

"Oh?" Beth asked, soundin' curious. "An' what did he do? Throw trash at you with his mind?"

Nick gaped, mouth openin' an' closin' quietly for a second. Then his face got all red again as he gestured back at the stone bars through the alley. "He did that, and you can't just cover that kinda shit up!"

"Zan?" Beth smiled. "Could you get rid of those bars for me, please?"

Zan smirked, reachin' back for the wall.

The bars slid back, thickening the wall and filling up the empty spaces he'd had to leave behind to make them. Zan smiled an' floated the dumpsters back without bein' asked. Weird how much easier all this shit came to him when he was wasted, though...

I am the Drunken Master, he thought, an' snickered to himself. Kung-fu flicks had always been a favorite of his crew, but until this very moment he'd never been a real big fan of that one.

Nick was gapin' again.

Nick's face spun, an' Zan put his head back on Beth's shoulder with a groan.

God, I think I'm gonna puke.

"So, tell me again how the magic boy attacked you?"

This time, Nick was quiet.

Beth brought her hand up an' started rubbin' Zan's back. He didn't think she realized she was doin' it, but weirdly enough, it was makin' his stomach calm down a lil' bit. "As I said, gentlemen – go back into your bar, and nobody has to know. Or you can tell the cops or the media or whoever that the magical kid made solid wall turn to rock bars and moved things with his brain. I'd be interested to see if they just laughed you out of the office, or had you committed on the spot."

They didn't say anythin' else, an' a minute later, Zan heard the door to the bar open an' shut.

Beth started pullin' Zan toward the end ah the alley, an' he reluctantly picked his head up again. "Zan, we have to leave. Like, now. Do you think you could, uh… make us some hoodies?"

Zan looked down at her. She wasn't calm anymore – in fact, she looked kinda scared. "Why?"

Liz pulled a lil' harder, tryin' to speed him up. "To hide our faces."

Zan blinked, confused, then realized what she meant. "Huh? Hey – why we gotta go so fast?"

"Because you did some very alien things in a semi-public place, Zan, and if the wrong person saw then we could be in deep shit." Liz answered testily as she peeked out the end of the alley. Zan wondered if he'd sounded like that when his crew started gettin' cocky. He hoped not, but he also kinda enjoyed havin' somebody else worry about that kinda stuff for a change. "So – hoodies, please? And… maybe different clothes?"

Zan tilted his head. Lonnie usually did this stuff, but right now he was pretty sure he could do it better. He did his own first – took the sleeves off of his jacket, moved the matter up to form the hood. He changed a curl of fabric in the back into a red Chinese dragon, for no other reason than he figured it'd look badass. Then he took some of what was left an' gave himself some black fingerless gloves.

He started to get into it then, an' he found himself changin' more ah the details – red stripe down the side of his shirt, a spiked bracelet made from a lil' bit of the brick wall...

A few seconds later he looked up at Beth, who was glarin' at him.

He didn't know why, but that expression made him want to mess with her a bit. An image of her in a mini-skirt, tube-top, a skimpy hoodie an' platform shoes came to mind, an' he reached out toward her shoulder to make the image real.

She caught his hand half-way there.

"Uh uh, Zan. No. I just want a hoodie. Take the extra fabric from my sleeves, please."

Zan blinked. "How'd ya know what I was gonna do?"

Beth rolled her eyes. "You're drunk, Zan. Drunk people aren't sneaky."

"Oh," he said, an' made her a normal hoodie. It was a bit tighter than the stuff she usually wore, but she didn't say anything. Glared a lot, but not she didn't say a word…

Zan kinda wanted another hug, but knew better than to ask.

Liz kept them moving until they reached a more populated area. From there, she found a payphone and called a cab – her second for the evening – and then sat down on the curb to wait. There was no company but Zan (who was still looking pretty unsteady) and her own dark thoughts.

She wanted to be mad at him, and had in fact spend the entire cab ride over imaging new and inventive ways of making him suffer for scaring her. When she'd gotten there, some guy was trying to kill him and he was just standing there like an idiot, not even trying to fight back. That'd made it all worse, and she probably would have ignored the other two completely in order to ream him right then, but…

He'd hugged her back.

Which was so freakishly unexpected she'd frozen stiff. But then she'd caught a glimpse of a shaky looking neon sign on the wall declaring Zan as "the man", and things had started to get a little bit clearer.

She'd confronted him, and he'd admitted to drinking. Again, she'd wanted to be angry – wanted to strangle him for being so completely, unforgivably stupid – but… he was doing the adorable-drunk thing. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to be able to look into a person's face and read all of their innermost thoughts.

It wasn't him, not really, because a big part of who Zan was included his fear of getting close to people, his need to protect the few who managed to get around that fear and the desire to hurt the ones who took advantage of it. When he was drunk, all of that was stripped away, and all that was left was the ID. The inner child.

But even knowing that… it'd been really nice to experience that side of him.

Hell, if that had been all that happened tonight, I might've even had fun, she mused with a snort. Liz leaned back, keeping one eye on Zan, and let her mind wander.

After… well, after everything that'd happened in the apartment, she'd made very little headway on her theory. It made sense, but there was really no way to know for sure without actually testing it. She didn't have the luxury of that kinda time, though, so she'd just… have to make an assumption and run with it.

Which Liz had always hated doing.

But who could she really study, anyway? All of Max's cancer-kids were still sick and half the people he'd healed in the war were still playing on jungle-gyms, and it wasn't exactly a bit habit of Zan's to go around healing people. The only people Liz knew of that had already been hybridized in this time-frame (besides herself) all lived in Roswell.

And it wasn't like she could go there to analyze anything, considering the first so-called "big change" she made would undo her entire existence. Assuming that hadn't already happened tonight.

Liz frowned. No – she'd be gone already, right? Except… well, Future-Max had had a couple of hours, so did that mean - ?

Zan shoved her shoulder.

She quickly boxed away the uncomfortable thoughts. If that was the case, there really wasn't anything she could do about it now, was there?

Liz turned to Zan – standing in her apartment – sitting on a curb, staring at – shouting something – her with a look of unfocused annoyance. Liz blinked and quickly banished the unwelcome microvision, and then reminded herself that they were just waiting for a cab to take them back to her apartment. She'd found him in a drunken alien brawl in an alley, displaying his abilities in a terrifyingly public manner.

That was present – that was now.

Tomorrow (assuming she was still here, which made her third assumption of the evening), she'd break the news that it wasn't safe to stay here anymore, and then they'd leave New York and hole up somewhere for a while. He wouldn't be happy to hear it, but that's probably what that weird double vision thing a moment before had been about.

You're getting too used to making assumptions. What if it's important?

Liz ignored the mental warning and turned her face toward Zan.

"Yeah?"

"Ya sure those pricks'll keep they mouths shut?"

Liz thought back to the men she'd seen in the alley, and the furious glares they'd thrown her way when they'd gone back inside. One of the guys was a personality type she knew really well; the self modeled "tough" guy who had to compare sizes with any male that so much as looked at them twice. If she was right about him, then his credit meant a lot to him. He wouldn't want to say anything to make himself look like an idiot or a weakling, so he'd leave the short chick and the magical goth boy out of any stories he told. Hopefully, anyway.

The other guy… the other guy was harder. He'd looked genuinely terrified in a way that made her really, really nervous. She'd met the occasional human Rebel with that look; it was the kind of fear some people got when they were faced with something they didn't understand. And that kind of fear tended to make people do dangerous things.

Still. There was no way they'd be able to figure out where she lived in the next couple of days, so they were safe until they could leave town. Probably. "Pretty sure."

Why'd ya come?

Because I have to keep you safe.

Liz winced and pinched the bridge of her nose. She wondered if maybe, with the lack of emotional baggage and some free time, she could find a way to control what was left of her ability. These little flash forwards were getting a little disturbing.

A few minutes more passed with only the distant sounds of the city.

"Yo, Beth?"

"Hmm?"

"Why'd ya come?"

Liz snorted softly and smiled.

"Because I have to keep you safe."

Zan scowled. "You ain't from da future, Lady. So you're either crazy or you're fuckin' with my head or somethin'."

"Then I'm crazy." Liz said flatly, starting to get a little annoyed.

Zan laughed, kinda brokenly. "That's great. Really. The only person in the whole world who gives a shit about me is psycho. Fuckin' perfect."

Liz paused as the annoyance withered away. Before she could think better of it, she found herself blurting out her first thought. "Still better than nobody caring."

Uh. Ouch?

Zan stared at her from the corner of his eye, then turned his face toward the night sky. Zan sat like that for a few seconds before turning to face her again. His bloodshot eyes had gotten a little teary. "What's that make us, then, Beth? Friends?"

She almost answered on instinct, but her automatic 'yes' sounded at least a little bit like a lie in her mind. They didn't know each other like friends did. They didn't enjoy doing the same things, they didn't like the same music or movies or jokes. She didn't know his favorite foods or his favorite childhood memory – she had no idea what his favorite book was, or if he even liked reading. The only detailed things she did know about him she'd learned from Ava almost a decade and a half after he'd died, and she was pretty sure even those things would be colored by age and Ava's love for Zan.

Zan and Liz, though… they weren't friends. Not really. And she had a feeling Zan knew that, and would have resented it had she lied and said they were.

But she also couldn't honestly tell him they had no relationship. She'd saved his life. She'd seen him cry. She was helping him through what was likely to be one of the darkest, most humiliating times of his life. She'd even seen him naked, although it was in a strictly clinical capacity.

Of course we're friends, she would have said. I saved your life, didn't I? But now, hearing it echo inside her head, it felt… fake. Pretentious and manipulative, the kind of phrase that led people into deals with the devil. Liz sighed and looked down at the asphalt between her knees.

"I don't know."

Zan smiled tiredly. "Story ah my life."

Another long silence followed. Liz stared at the people walking by – not many of them, considering it was almost four AM, but there was a reason New York was called 'the city that never sleeps'…

Zan glanced at her briefly before looking back up at the sky.

"… Yo – how'd you know where to find me?"

Liz smiled weakly. "I'm psychic."

"Yeah, right." Zan scoffed, and for a moment he almost looked like his usual, sober self. But then he reached out to smack her shoulder playfully, missed and hit only air, and the illusion was shattered. "Really, though. How'd ya do it?"

"I'm serious!" Liz said, mock offense coating her voice. "What, you don't believe me?"

Zan stared at her with narrowed eyes for a long moment. Then he snorted, laid down on the sidewalk and closed his eyes. "Fine – don't tell me. Whatev."

Liz swallowed back an automatic rebuke ("Do you know how dirty that sidewalks is?") and looked up at the sky. Almost the instant her eyes settled on the moon, the sound of a nearby gunshot exploded right beside her. She flinched and spun to look for the source, but a quick glance down at Zan stilled her. He was still lying there, looking perfectly relaxed.

It wasn't… it wasn't real. She realized. It was a microvision.

Liz shuddered and tried to force herself to relax, but the earsplitting sound of that gunshot still rang in her ears. She'd gotten over her fear of guns a long time ago, and usually she didn't mind them…

But long after the cab brought them home, it echoed in her head.

Nikolas propped his aching feet up and groaned.

I hate this goddamn city…

"Sir?"

Nik bit his lip against a curse and turned a baleful glare on the interloper. "What?"

The messenger – a Skin in human attire, the Ashe symbol subtly sewn onto his backpack to mark his caste – swallowed heavily. Nik rolled his eyes and relaxed deeper into his chair, trying to ease away the tension that'd built within him over these past few days.

I can't believe that stupid bitch killed him.

Not that he had anything against the actual killing, and some overly childish part of his psyche actually delighted in the mental image of Zan getting ground into the asphalt. No, no – that was all very good, had it been done… oh, a few months from now. After he'd gone to the Summit and served his purpose, not before he could even be put to good use.

Nik didn't care what Vilandra said – Max Evans was going to find a way to mess this up. In fact, being a general annoyance seemed to be the one true strength he had inherited from his predecessor.

Well, that and a flock of besotted female devotees.

Nik sneered.

He hated Max almost as much as he'd hated King Zan.

In a few months, every one of his incarnations will be dead. Nik comforted himself as his eyes slid closed. So what does it really matter?

Of course, it would matter a great deal to Kivar if this Summit didn't go off without a hitch. Oh – nothing Max said could really change the direction the War was going, but if he agreed to cede ownership of the Granolith to Kivar in front of the four remaining Family Heads, it would become legally binding. Even Kivar's most ardent opposition would have to admit he had the right to it if the former monarch himself had promised it to him.

Kivar would then have to quietly dispatch the boy in such a way that it could not be traced back to him, or it would be possible for his enemies to cast doubt on the legality of that deal. But to be frank, after the Four were transported to Antar that would be beyond neither Kivar's intellect, nor his resources.

Unfortunately, there was no way Max would be so agreeable, which just meant Nik would have to make sure Kivar knew exactly which delicate, lady-like shoulders carried the blame. He'd already taken care of a part of that by informing Kivar of Zan's demise, and being very specific about who was responsible for it.

Kivar had actually been pleased, but he didn't understand Max's inability to –

"Uh." The messenger at the door hesitated briefly, but then mustered up his courage and blundered on. Nik blinked, pulling himself back to the present. "Sir, I have some disturbing news."

… Damn it. What now?

He turned to face the messenger in the doorway, thoughts of Max Evans and the coming Summit fading away. Nik frowned with warning at the young Skin. Only belatedly did he remember that his teenage, human face twisted the expression into something childishly petulant. "What do you mean, disturbing?"

The messenger swallowed, face going just a little bloodless. Some distant part of Nik's mind noted the disjointed look of the expression, and he wondered why so many of the Skins often appeared… inhuman, even though they wore human skin.

"Your, uh, your people who monitor the law enforcement feeds?" Nik nodded absently, but the man continued without seeming to notice the acknowledgement. Obviously the Skin was becoming a bit too at home on this planet; rhetorical questions were not a staple of Antar. "Last night, someone called in and reported what sounded like a genuine Antarian flaunting his powers. Our people checked out the nearby security footage to see if they'd caught anything incriminating, and they noticed something – er – uh, rather, they noticed someone… disturbing. Someone who… wasn't supposed to be there."

On a normal day, Nik would have first focused on the messenger's appalling inability to speak properly, but something about what he'd said caught Nik's attention. His thoughts wandered back to the Summit. "Are you talking about Max Evans? Is he here already?"

"Uh. No, sir." The messenger glanced around quickly, then pulled a VHS from the bag at his waist. "It was Zan. He got into a fight outside a bar, and the whole thing was caught on tape."

"Zan is dead." Nik said sharply, knowing it to be true. Still, the hairs on the back of his neck were starting to sit up, and Nik fought back a shudder. Such a disgusting feeling.

I hate this body.

"Uhm. Yes – well, I mean, we… We thought so, but…"

He went quiet. For a minute the two just stood there; Nik trying to will the other Skin to take back his previous statement, the messenger trying desperately to sink into the carpet. Finally, when the curiosity had begun to almost burn, Nik hopped up and snapped. "Give me that!"

He swiped the VHS and left the room. There was a VCR player in the New York compound, but only one and it was located in one of the least-used rooms. It wasn't often they actually had to watch anything humans had recorded; Kivar's supporters most commonly used Antarian crystals to store visual data.

When he got to the right place, the messenger silently sliding in behind him, he immediately shoved the tape into the player. After a few minutes of fiddling around, he found the play button and, with a huff of annoyance, pushed it.

The image was incredibly grainy. It looked down over an alley with several dumpsters, horrible lighting, and a single door. It had probably been placed there to record anyone trying to break in to… whatever the place behind the door was. Judging by the faint throb of base, some kind of club.

"It's about an hour in, sir."

Nik sent a scowl over his shoulder. After another frustrating search, he hit the fast-forward button. A long moment passed without happening before he saw three men zip out through the door. Two of them started beating the third, who curled up on the cement and wrapped his arms around his head. Nik absently reached forward to hit the play button again.

The scene was in black and white. Shadows and image distortion screwed with it even further, creating an oddly pixilated picture. On top of that, the television itself was small and unreliable.

But even despite that, Nik looked at that boy on the ground and felt the stirrings of recognition.

Without realizing he was doing it, Nik leaned in closer to the screen. The two men eventually backed off enough that the third person was totally visible. The boy pushed himself to his feet, hunched back to the camera. The three exchanged words, and judging by the expression on the big man's face, they were not friendly. The boy seemed to deflate for a moment.

And then he reached out one hand and the two men floated into the air.

Nik blinked in shock.

The boy put his other hand against the wall, and bars – bars! – formed around the trio. The dumpsters rose and trash floated up to fly in circles, occasionally hitting one of the two humans still hovering in the air. One was thrown into a wall, the other thrown back toward the bars, and for a moment it seemed to be over.

The boy turned toward the camera...

"Zan." Nikolas whispered.

The image wasn't clear enough to be completely sure, but Nik knew that face. Even if he hadn't, that little display would've been pretty convincing – Nik could count on both hands the number of people he knew with that level of expertise. He wouldn't have even thought Zan capable of it (Max certainly hadn't been when Nik'd faced him in Roswell), except that he'd seen the man perform similar demonstrations back on Antar a lifetime before…

The fight went on for a good twenty minutes before Zan seemed to get bored. For a while everything calmed down; Zan wandered over to the wall and the two men lay insensate on the floor. Then one of the big men got up, picked up a pipe from the ground, and ran at Zan with it. Zan turned to see him coming, but beyond that there was no reaction.

And then the man went flying.

Nik blinked and wondered if he'd missed Zan raising an arm. But someone – a short woman with dark hair – strode into the picture and pulled Zan into an embrace.

Nik blinked again, feeling even more confused.

The vast majority of people in the Whirlwind Galaxy had no special abilities at all. In fact, it was only the higher Houses that possessed them – a cast akin to nobility on most of the Whirlwind worlds. Usually, the stronger the power, the stronger the bloodline, with specific rare abilities (such as Zan's healing, Kivar's empathic force, and Nik's mind bending) never being seen outside of its specific House.

Which meant this girl should at least be familiar to Nik. Oh, not her face – her human Husk wouldn't resemble her native form in the least, obviously. But there were only a limited number of people capable of obtaining a Husk, let alone going to another galaxy and immersing themselves in obscure political maneuvering. Nik had been under the impression he'd at least known of all of them…

Of course, that didn't really change anything – it was entirely possible she was a rebel in hiding who somehow got a hold of an alternative Husk. But if he could determine her identity through some identifiable power, he might be able to determine how (and why) she was in collusion with a dead man, and exactly which faction she'd allied herself with. If nothing else, he might find some weakness in her past that he could use against her.

Unfortunately, there was no further displays of power. Instead, the woman spoke with the two men briefly, one arm still wrapped around an unsteady Zan. Nik wondered if the boy'd been hurt, but he didn't care enough to think about it for very long. A minute later, the two turned and walked out of the alley.

The woman's face remained indiscernible.

"How?" Nik asked several seconds after the two had disappeared.

The messenger didn't ask him to specify. "We… acquired some security videos from shops near the corner where he was hit, and it appears that his body literally disappeared from the scene roughly three seconds after impact. The running theory is that there was some kind of temporal field in place."

Nik turned to stare, eyes wide in surprise. Temporal fields were… well, not new, but certainly expensive and hard to come by. Even he'd had a hell of a time getting one to use in Roswell (his second and even more embarrassing encounter with the Evan's boy), and he one of Kivar's favorite Antarian nobles.

"Ask around." Nik ordered, plans spinning in his mind. "See if you can figure out who they bought it from and when. Maybe then we can put a name to whoever's helping him."

Nik hit rewind (slightly easier to find, given its symmetrical similarity to the fast-forward one), and then pause (harder to find – and why did it have two straight bars?). He managed to get the video to still with the woman's profile vaguely visible, but still obscured beyond recognition by shadow. "Are there any other recordings in the area?"

The messenger shook his head. "No, sir. Not for another three blocks."

Nik grit his teeth. "Then check for any signals leaving the area at this time. Ground-lines, satellite, crystalline – whatever, just get it done."

The messenger nodded and turned to leave.

"One more thing."

He turned back. Nik stared at the grainy video, eyes locked on the two figures leaving the alley, mind running obsessively over all the potential damage this could do to Kivar's plans.

The other Heads cannot know there are two clones.

And if Kivar ever finds out I issued a false report…

"I need a couple of the Wiped sent out to find Zan, with strict orders to be quiet about it." Nik commanded the messenger. After a short hesitation, Nik leaned forward, hit 'eject', and let his energy flow through his palm and into the plastic. It melted around his hand, wisps of toxic smoke rising up towards his face.

Nik scowled as the black ooze dripped down between his fingers.

I hate this whole fucking planet.

"And this time, make sure he stays dead, would you?"

AN: Okay! So. Writings been difficult as hell lately, what with classes and a variety of other distractions right at hand, so depending on whether I get over that or not… updates may be slow. Er – slower, anyway.

Note 1: I do actually think that the drunk-Max episode kinda proved that alcohol brings out the Alien ID in Max, and would probably have the same effect on Zan. The only difference is that Zan's kinda traumatized at the moment, so that side of him is likely to strike out, whereas Max was just a happy-go-lucky drunk all the way around.

Note 2: Liz does not, as of this point, have any romantic feelings for Zan. She's attached to him partly because she feels responsible for him, partly because he looks like Max, and partly because she actually likes him as a person, but she's spent years without any – uh… special relationships with the opposite sex. She's out of practice with that kind of thinking.

Besides which, she's a good deal older than him (sorta? Idk how time travel technically affects that… O.o), so the whole 'cougar' thing will probably give her pause.

Review. It's easy. There's a button just under this and everything.