Section Four - Liz Parker, sub one

Part 4a

(Liz Parker's diary, edited after the fact.)

I came out of the drug-induced fog sitting with all the others, in a Mexican food eatery about a block and a half away from Tess' place. It took them quite a few tries to tell me, Maria, and Alex all that had happened at Tess' party after people had started the second, highly doped, batch of punch. Having to whisper, and the fact that Max, Michael and Isabel didn't seem to remember all the details clearly, and would disagree with each other on particular points, didn't help.

"I, I can't believe this," Maria said, starting to hyperventilate. "Drugged punch, laced with something that doesn't even match up with all of the things that my Mom warns me about. An alien shapeshifter impersonating the football player guy. Freaky guys in dark uniforms just standing there and watching. I... I'm sorry, it's just getting to be a little too much."

"I understand," Max replied softly. "I wouldn't object if you wanted to associate less with us, but as we've discussed, it's not clear how much that would help you with these people by now. It's not fair and it's too much to deal with, but we have probably each been targeted, and we need to play the game and find some way to play it better than everybody else, or lose everything that we care about."

There was a long, awkward moment of silence after Max whispered that. It was Isabel, finally, who spoke. "Well, any idea what our next move is??"

Another short pause, and Michael jumped in. "I say we go up and see 'our friend.'" It took me a second to place the reference -- Topolsky. "Taking all reasonable precautions... but she's a resource to us now, and an associated part of our team. She may see something that none of us can."

There was an uncomfortable tentative agreement to that, and then we dropped all the conspiracy business and tried to just look like a bunch of teenagers, friends, hanging around together and grabbing dinner at a fast food dive. Pretty soon, I was even fooling myself.

* * * * *

Okay, this is a long entry, but bear with me. I want to record everything as well as I can while this is fresh in the brain cells.

It was early this morning (Sunday,) when Max and Isabel picked me up in the Jeep, again with the emphasis on casual. Izzie and I chatted about the most unimportant things we could think about as Max went off to pick up Alex, and then it was west out of town, heading for the reservation.

Max got very serious for a second just as we left the city limits. He nodded to Isabel, who started doing her new 'sensor sweep' trick all around.

She stopped after a little while, (maybe ninety seconds,) and stayed quiet, thinking. Max looked over at her a few times, and then burst out with "well?"

"I'm not entirely sure," she admitted. "There's a lot of complicated electronic equipment in the car anyway, and I'm far from expert in all of it that belongs here. Nothing seems to be broadcasting, at least, nothing coherent enough to be picked up any decent distance away. As far as bugs that might be recording us 'silently' to be read later in some fashion... that's tougher. But I can't see anything that's 'looking' or 'listening' to us particuarly, for whatever that's worth."

"I think it's enough," Alex sighed. "I guess even with your, umm, talents, there aren't any easy answers, are there? Trying to strive for perfect security is really only good for making yourself crazy."

"Maybe so," Isabel agreed slowly. "Doing without 'acceptable' security is just plain being stupid... but I think we have that. Only... Be on the watch out for any suspicious characters hanging round the jeep, okay Max??"

"Um, sure," he agreed. "So... well, I have to admit, I've pretty much given myself a headache, trying to guess what Tess' motives are. She... she's human, I'm convinced of that, but seems to feel like she has a right to be sympathetic about aliens, and us in particular, even though none of us have ever confided in her about what we are. There are connections all over the place between Tess and the special unit, but..." He frowned, trying to figure out what it was that was bugging him. "She doesn't seem to *like* them, or what they're doing. She doesn't say it straight out, or refuse them anything outright, but..."

"Maybe they're threatening her or something," I said, a little tentatively. "To get her to play ball. Or..." A connection hit me at that moment. "Or maybe threatening someone close to her, like her *Mom* off in Santa Fe that she was careful to mention to us!"

"Hmmm." Alex thought about that. "Maybe. It seems to fit, everything back to when Topolsky first spotted her and her father. Except, why would they go to so much trouble? What makes Tess special? They probably don't have a lot of agents who can believably pass for being in high school, true, but I'd imagine there's probably a few. They could find someone with all of Tess' obvious qualifications who didn't have to be coerced into the job, or do without."

"Unless her prime recommendation for the job was something that *isn't* obvious," I finished. "Hmm."

"I'm not at all sure that you aren't leaping to very tenuous connections," Isabel pointed out. "Maybe Tess is doing exactly what the Special unit want her to, whether that's confusing us, cultivating us... or something else."

"You have a point," Max allowed. "The part that's kinda freaking me out, I have to say, is that at the party, while she was presumably under the influence of the punch... she went and made out with Nacero. Now, probably she didn't know who he was, and maybe he was trying to find out more about her, just like we are... but it just seems really strange, doesn't it??"

"Yeah, kinda," I said. We drove on in silence for a fairly long time.

"Something, I have to admit, has been nagging at me for a little while," Alex said eventually. "Max, at the end of the pool party, after you'd figured out that Casey was really Nacero -- you asked him where you all come from, right??"

"Uhh, yeah," Max replied. "I thought none of you really remembered that part."

"It came back to me after I went home yesterday. Now, I realize that you meant the question in a kind of cosmic way... what star, what galaxy your people are from, that kind of thing. But I started thinking about it a little more directly... as in, where you came from just before you ended up wandering in the desert, getting picked up by various people. It's pretty clear that if you'd been left in the ship after it crashed, the only place you'd have grown up would probably be some top-secret government lab, but that's obviously not the way it happened. Liz said that you mentioned something about incubation pods... do any of you know where they are??"

"Not precisely, no, though it's something that's occured to us before," Max said, looking over at Isabel, who nodded slightly. "The memories we have that go back that far are extremely vague... more like the faintest possible impressions than reliable recollections. Michael mentioned something to me about tunnel or cave walls, and Isabel talked about poking her hand back into the pod and feeling something gooey still inside. I don't really remember any more than coming out from someplace dark and seeing the stars for the first time." He sighed.

"Even though we know we walked a long way, from the areas we were picked up, it had to be somewhere north by notheast of town," Isabel said. "Which was pretty much the region where whatever it is crashed in 1947. That's as far as we've got."

"Even when we were young and Michael was kinduv obsessed, we spent more time looking for the ship or government facilities than trying to rediscover our incubation pods," Max admitted. "If they'd kept us safe for --- well, for more than forty years, they had to be pretty well hidden. And none of us seemed to have any memories that were helping to lead us back there."

I nodded, and they were silent, though Alex had a familiar pensive expression on his face. Suddenly he burst out, "'How many years did Max, Michael, and Isabel have to stay in their incubation pods?' A candidate for the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Huh?? A long shot I know."

"What the hell are you blabbering about?" Isabel shot, then instantly melted. "I'm sorry, honey, just kind of getting nervous about talking about all of this stuff, and I didn't understand what you meant. I'll try to keep from biting anybody's head off like that again today."

"Umm, okay," Alex said after a moment. "I know it was a bad joke... in 'Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy', they find out that the ultimate answer in the Universe is 'forty-two', and there's a lot of fuss and speculation about what the question actually is. When Max said 'more than forty years', I stated doing the math in my head, and kinda got carried away when I realized it was coming out to forty-two."

"Actually, a little less than forty-two, sad to say," Max admitted. "The crash was in July of '47, and we came out more like early May of '89. Forty-one years and about ten months."

"Too bad," I sighed. It's strange, but on some level I thought that would help to protect Max and the others, if it had been so important, cosmically, for them to be 'born' the way they were.

We got to the cave about then, and found River dog and Topolsky, Michael and Maria all waiting for us. It took a little while to catch the first two of them up on everything that had happened lately, and then Alex looked to Max for permission, and started explaining his idea about Tess being threatened or blackmailed by the special unit - possibly her father being threatened by them too.

"Yes, I think I agree with you," Kathleen T agreed after a long moment of thought. "It explains some of their behavior, but leaves open the question of 'why' -- not so much why don't they want to play ball with Pierce, but why he'd bring them here if they don't. I don't think Tony Harding, (if that is his real name,) would be the only person who could manage the Kilohertz arcade as a front for them... and even if he were, that doesn't explain why his daughter would have to be the deep-cover agent to contact you guys. I feel like if this is any part of the answer, there's something pretty damn big that we're still missing. Alternatively, maybe they're setting up the 'threatened into working for the FBI' angle as part of something to gain your confidence, in which case she's going to have to tell you about it at some point, and explain why. And you can make up your mind then."

"Hmmm..." Michael considered this. They were all sitting on patches of grass or sand or folding chairs a little way from the entrance to the cave. "Something else I'd like to ask you about... this other alien, Nacero. The shapeshifter. Did you ever hear anything about him from the Special Unit, Miss... umm, Katy?"

She smiled tightly. "Well, I heard the stories about the wandering alien. Somebody who escaped from the scene of the '47 crash before the Air force got there, travelling this part of the country ever since... and killing more than a few people. Actually, I kind of got the impression that they think one of your group, probably you Max, are the same person as that wandering alien... that he took the shape of a little kid and got 'adopted' by a human family for some nefarious scheme of his own. Handful of different theories about how you'd fit into that scenario Isabel... the one that sticks out most clearly in my mind would be that you're actually Max's offspring - that he was able to reproduce asexually or something." She sighed, and Isabel shuddered vehemently and made a face at the mere notion. "But, well, the fact that Nacero and the three of you were fairly clearly all together at that party ruins those theories... or so it seems to me. How Pierce will see it when he reads the reports, is a little harder to say."

"Did Nacero ever try to target Special Unit personnel that you know of?" Isabel put in.

"I don't think so... most of the murders that I heard about were more like crimes of passion or opportunity. He was trying to interact with people as another human being would, but didn't have the language or social skills for it, lost his temper and killed them in a rage. Or he needed something and knew off the bat that he didn't have any way to get it from its rightful owner other than brute force."

She sighed. "He's killed people in the special unit, yes... ones who have been trying to capture or follow him. But I never heard anything about him organizing a planned assasination of a Special Unit leader or something like that. Either he guesses that would be a bad idea, or his brain just doesn't work in those terms."

"About the only thing we know is that he has some interest in the orbs," I put in. "He impersonated Michael to steal the first one... the one that he might have showed us where to find, buried in the desert. Just about the time that we were saving you and getting the second orb in exchange... like --"

"Like he did not want you to have both of them together, for an extended period of time?" River dog suggested.

"But we still don't know how to use them, either of them," Max said with a sigh.

"By the way, there's something I wanted to mention," Topolsky put in. "I think I've gathered from a few stray references that the three of you... you think you were on that ship that crashed in '47 with Nacero?"

"Umm, yeah, it..." Isabel thought about that. "I suppose it was just the simplest theory -- why??"

"I think that some of the Special Unit leaders believe that there was another ship that landed in the Roswell area," Kathleen said. "One that didn't attract as much attention because it didn't crashland. Around, umm... I think it was between nineteen seventy-two and seventy-five. Maybe the three of you, or your embryos or whatever, came in that ship instead of the first one??"

An amazed look passed between us kids. "Well, it would help cut down that extended incubation time," I said, "which I've always thought a little strange." I shot a look over at Alex. "Cuts your forty-two years down to, what, around fifteen or sixteen??"

"Sounds possible," Max replied. "But why send us here as embryos at all?? Why are the aliens sending ships to earth in the first place? And so different... Nacero was able to take care of himself when the first ship crashed. Someone or something had to hide our pods when we arrived, whenever that was."

"Maybe it was so you guys could integrate into humanity better," Maria suggested. "Nacero can't, he doesn't fit in. I don't think he understands us, though he's had years to study. But... but his thinking patterns are still inhuman. You guys didn't have any set patterns, you learned pretty much what all human kids learn, albeit getting a slightly later start. Maybe that's the point."

"Could be," Michael said. "But that leaves the slightly freaky question -- what do they want us to DO now that we can blend in with human culture??"

I think Maria was about to say something in reply, but suddenly Isabel held up a hand and hssshed her. I strained, my ears, trying to hear if anything was going on. For a long moment, there was nothing but the sounds of the outdoors, and then -- a car. Driving way too fast on one of the rough paths around here... probably not the road that we'd used to arrive... and approaching quickly.

There was a moment of panic, and then desperately I took charge. "Topolsky, Max, Michael, Isabel... go." I pointed at an angle, the direction that the car noise seemed to be coming from but also hugging the rock wall that the cave was part of. After a few minute's walk in that direction, I knew, there was a footpath into some stone hills, that the car would never be able to follow. "Maria, Alex, you're with me."

Max hesitated, but I could see that he recognized the sense of it. Just like Maria and I had been the time we were out this way on the father-child camping trip -- the three of us could act as decoys, because we weren't really who anybody was trying to find, it seemed. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to protect me, because whoever it was might get pissed at the decoy routine... but he knew that I wanted to keep him safe, and I couldn't do that and let him protect me at the same time.

We all rushed off in different directions, except for River dog, who probably wouldn't attract too much attention just staying put. Alex and Maria stuck close behind me as I charged off to intercept the approaching vehicle, wondering what it was that I'd find.

It turned out to be a light blue SUV -- with Tess Harding behind the wheel. She braked to a bouncing stop right amid the three of us, threw open her door and charged out, meeting me about ten feet away from the car. "Good, it's you guys," she whispered intently. "Umm... Liz, wanna go for a quick ride??"

I was stunned speechless for a moment, until she prodded with an impatient, though quiet "Well?"

"Ummm... err, why?" I heard myself ask, not much louder than Tess herself had been talking. "Seeing you around school notwithstanding, and your party, you're still kinduv a stranger to me... and I believe there's some merit to the old saying about taking a ride from a stranger."

"Okay, here's why," Tess said even more softly and surely, and took a deep breath. "Liz, my father and I have gone to a lot of trouble in order to speak with one of you privately today, without *certain* other people being able to overhear. You're my first choice - I feel safe with you somehow, for reasons both obvious and less than. I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be interested in what I have to say. But our window is slamming shut, because there are two other cars following mine, and they're gonna be here in fifty-five seconds. If you don't come soon, I'm going to have to drive off without you, because none of us want them to find me here with you guys."

I hesitated only a moment. This was clearly Tess' last gambit, where she told a sob story about being forced to work with the Special Unit, and the gang had pretty much decided that she had to be allowed to play her cards, and then we'd all decide how much we were going to trust what she said. "Okay," I said quietly, and rushed over to scramble into the shotgun seat of Tess' car, as she regained the driver's position. I just had time to wave to Maria and Alex, partly a friendly farewell, partly a reassurance that I would be okay (I hoped,) and partly a cue for them to get back into the brush and greenery surrounding the path. And then Tess had stamped on the gas, and her four-wheeler's engine roared to life with entirely too much enthusiasm.

"So..." I started, but Tess shook her head, gesturing to something near the ignition key. At first I didn't understand anything beyond the fact that she was telling me not to talk, and then it started to fit, maybe. A listening device, planted in Tess' car, that she couldn't turn off? That would explain why she had gotten so far from the car to talk, instead of staying in her seat, and why she had been so quiet. But if that was it... how would we get to talk without being overheard??

I only saw one car behind us, and only a very brief glimpse of something black and shiny it was, but I didn't really doubt Tess' word that there were two of them. She started to drive even more quickly and recklessly down the forest path, heading a little deeper into Frazier woods, (I was getting thrown back and forth and around even with the seatbelt on,) and then pulled to a sudden stop again. I looked at her in confusion, and Tess made a clear 'get out' gesture. I did, and realized that Tony Harding, Tess' father, was waiting for us, and he slipped behind the wheel as soon as Tess had cleared the way for him. Well, that answered one question, maybe... Tony would drive the car away, taking care of both the listening device inside, and (for a while at least) the pursuing agents in the black cars. But somebody would probably notice that we could have gotten out at this point, and agents on foot would be dispatched to follow our trail.

"Quick!!" Tess hissed at me, and led the way into the woods, following a route so rough I hesitate to even call it a path... just a twisting way that managed, through sheer luck, to avoid having to actually walk through any trees or branches. I was puffing and sore quickly, not used to this sort of thing. Tess seemed to be frantic, but bearing up under it stoically.

"Was..." I panted, "was there a bug in the car??" Might as well try to get some facts at this point.

"Save your breath," Tess advised, but a few seconds later she admitted, "Yeah. Very advanced little gizmo - no way to stop it from recording without permanently disabling the ignition and setting off the anti-theft device, making the car undrivable. Records on super-micro memory circuits, which can be downloaded wirelessly from a hundred yards away or more."

I concentrated on my breathing and running for a little while, and even caught up to right behind her. "They'll be trying to find us, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "But I don't think they will, until we have a better chance to talk... here we are, watch it." It was a good thing that she'd warned me, or I might have run right off the seventy-five foot escarpment that suddenly loomed over another patch of forest. "Umm..." Tess looked this way and that, and led me to a tall evergreen tree. Hidden among its branches was a black plastic-fabric vest, attached to a bungee cord that was tied on further up the tree. The way it was set up, you would probably be able to...

"Oh, no. You're not getting me to jump down there!" I inisisted.

"Suit yourself, I guess," Tess snapped a little irritably. "Wish you luck trying to find your way back to your friends, then." She had unfastened the vest by now, and quickly strapped it on. "If you do follow me down, though, do yourself a favor and stay away from the blue button." She hopped off the ledge, falling down quickly. Because of the way the cliff hung over itself at this point, she wasn't in any danger of bouncing against the wall, I saw, and she landed softly on her feet, ran up a small rock and grabbed onto a tree as the cord tried to retract, and managed to unsnap the vest mostly with one hand and send it part of the way back up to me.

I hated this with an intense passion, (never been wild about heights, though it's never been much of an issue living here in Roswell,) but it seemed to me that there was nothing for it but to follow through with what Tess wanted. I pulled the vest back up quickly, and put it on, noticing the big 'blue button' that Tess must have been talking about, on the back near the collar. I didn't even touch it, just made sure that the fit was as tight as possible, (Tess and I have about the same body type, but she's a little fuller across the front. Fit pretty well on me though, so it must have been tight on her.) Tried to judge the way that she had done this, and jumped.

I very nearly ended up bobbing about five or ten feet in the air, but Tess caught me and helped me down, and gave a solid whack to the blue button. Suddenly the lift from the bungee was gone, and I landed a little awkwardly, followed by the length of the stretchy cord. Button must have set up a tiny explosive charge or something, right where the bungee was tied to the tree. Damn, they very nearly *had* thought of everything. If the special unit agents managed to follow our tracks to the edge of the cliff, they probably wouldn't see any trace of how we could have gotten safely down.

Tess helped me take the vest off and stashed it, and the bungee, in some bushes, and led the way up yet another path deeper into the forest. This one wasn't too long though, and ended up at a place where a lazy creek settled into a pool about forty feet wide and seven feet deep before continuing on. I had no intention of diving in for a swim, but it looked pretty and I dipped my hands into the water and washed a little sweat off my face and legs. (Since it was warm again, and I'd known that we'd be heading out into the woods where there'd be no air conditioning, I'd gotten dressed in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt.) She wasn't in a hurry any more, so clearly this was the 'place that we could talk,' and I had to admit that I didn't expect the special unit agents, no matter how clever and well-equipped they were, to be finding us very quickly.

That didn't mean I wanted to hang around any longer than necessary though. "You said you had things to say that I would be interested in," I wheezed, still catching my breath a little. "Say. Why don't you start with who you really are and why you're involved in any of this?"

Tess shrugged. "Tess Harding is my real name. I'm just a sixteen-year old girl... well, with slightly unusual parents."

There was a short pause. "Your dad?" I repeated probingly. "And your mother, who's stuck with work in Santa Fe?"

"Yes and no," Tess sighed. "Yes, my dad, who you've met. No, my mom isn't really working, though she is 'stuck' in Santa Fe. It's dad and I who are doing a job, and Mom is being taken care of to make sure that we behave. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

She sat on a tree trunk and scooped up a handful of pebbles, tossing them into the pool one at a time. Tess was wearing blue jean cutoffs that went nearly to her knees, and sandals and an oversized t-shirt with a chili peppers logo on it, and suddenly she looked very ordinary indeed. It seemed strange that she looked so much like any other high school girl, and yet she was wrapped up in the middle of all this alien craziness. Maybe Tess thought the same about me, come to that... I'm nothing special to look at either, even if Max thinks I'm pretty.

"My dad used to be special ops when he was younger," Tess started. "Green Beret. Maybe technically he still is, even though he hasn't been on a mission like that for years, but I think they don't let you quit something like that, you just get to go on 'Individual Reserve' - i e, you can live your own life until the next time that they need you. And my mom... well, my mom has parapsychic powers."

I must have snickered at that, and she shot me a dirty look. "What... with everything that you must know, you don't believe that certain human people, because of unlikely genetic sequences that no one else has, might have unique and unusual powers? And that some of these people have a vested interest in making sure that the rest of the world either don't know or don't believe in their powers, because that gives them a secret edge against everybody else??"

I blinked in surprise. "I guess I hadn't thought about it. I suppose that would suggest that your hidden parapsychic conspiracy makes sure to have people publicly claim to have psychic powers every so often, and makes sure that they get debunked, in order to cover any stray tracks or rumors that would inevitable emerge?"

Tess smiled, almost apologetically. "It sounds a little crackpot, doesn't it??"

"Little bit, yeah," I admitted. "But maybe even the crackpots are right sometimes. So, you say that your mom was psychic?"

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "Not one of the nasty ones who was trying to use their gift for selfish reasons, and screw the whole rest of the world. She had inherited the gift from her father, though, and he had made an enemy of some of the important people in the psychic conspriacy... then he died in a quote 'accident.'" A short pause. "Yeah." I wasn't quite sure what sign from me she might have been agreeing with, or if she just thought she knew what I was thinking. (She would have been pretty much right - it was quite a leading phrase.) "So mom tried to use her powers for good, but didn't do anything to disrupt the status quo, and in exchange they helped her find good altruistic opportunities. She did some secret missions for the government, which is how she met my dad in the first place. They worked a lot together, but once I was around four or five they both retired from their old lives and tried to disappear into suburbia as much as possible. Even after my mom found out that I took after her."

"Things started to change around the end of last summer. I started to have weird dreams, and then to sense strange things while I was awake. My mom told me that I was picking up on mental signals, but I could tell that there was something that she wasn't saying. After a few weeks, I started to put it together on my own. The thought broadcasts that I was overhearing weren't human."

I was pretty much stunned speechless, unable to even run what Tess was telling me past the skeptic filter, though I knew I'd have to make sure to do that later. The idea that Tess was psychic... and that she'd been receiving alien thoughts around the same time that I'd found out Max's secret... just the concept had thrown me for a loop.

"I put this part together later - mom was trying to keep all of this secret, because she knew, very vaguely, that there were people who would be interested in what I could do, and she didn't want me, or any of her family, anywhere near them. But it wasn't always possible to keep things secret in those circles... someone was keeping tabs on our family, closely enough to tell that something had changed, and then they didn't stop until they knew as much as we did, or more."

"That's when they took me to meet with Pierce for the first time."

"Agent Daniel Pierce??" I repeated dizzily. "The leader of the Special Unit??"

Tess smiled a little, but it wasn't a happy expression on her at all... like she had confirmed something that had already been guessed at, but wasn't good news. "So Topolsky told you that much, huh?? Well, understand this: Topolsky knows next to nothing about Pierce, though she may think she does. The real Pierce is one of the leaders of the... the psionic cabal, and she understands that to be known, even slightly, is to become a target. Especially when it comes to other psionics. So she works as much as possible through an intermediary, a man, who the FBI and the rest of the world know as 'Daniel Pierce.' I would probably have never met the real Pierce, Danielle Pierce, if she didn't think that time was of the essence."

My head was spinning again. "There's something that I'm not sure I get here. Why would a... a psionic be so interested in aliens??"

Tess's mouth became hard. "Well, to start with, there are some similarities between psionic power, and the kinds of things that aliens can do. The cabal found that out when they heard the first reports about the alien killer - the one who crashed here in 1947."

"It makes sense, that if psionic powers come from unusual human DNA, maybe from mutations or something like that... than another race, an older race, might have powers that go far beyond ours. Natural selection could have had extra centuries or millenia to hone their abilities... to test one combination against another, and keep only the winner. Nacero has done things that Pierce and the other top human psionics can only dream about. The same goes for your friends. And Pierce won't stop until she can control that power, one way or another. Either she'll try to learn to do what your friends can do for herself... or she'll make them work for her, somehow or another."

"Umm... okay." I frowned. "What exactly did Pierce want you to do, once she knew you were picking up alien thoughts?? How do you know all this about her motives?? From the way you describe her, she doesn't exactly sound like the 'oooh let me tell you all about my evil plan' type."

Tess laughed. "No, she isn't. To answer your first question, at first she just wanted me to tell her what I was picking up, in as much detail as possible. She didn't tell me anything about the why - that was mom. Grampa had told her a lot about the players in the cabal -- it was information that he had gathered to try and bring them down with. And mom's a pretty smart woman, and was able to figure out some of the specifics herself."

"It was after Pierce found out that mom had been telling me this sort of thing, that she decided Dad and I would be coming to Roswell ourselves. Mom would stay behind, of course, as a hostage to our good behaviour."

"And that's it, pretty much, what I wanted to tell you. We don't want to see any of you guys caught by Pierce -- my sympathies are entirely with you, and Nacero, compared to her, and my parents pretty much agree with that. But there's very little overt that we can do, while my mom is a guest of the special unit."

"Are you expecting us to help her escape, or something like that??"

"Not expecting, really..." Tess said slowly. "Though I can't deny it'd be nice... really risky, but nice. Really, though, I just wanted to warn one of you what the score really is."

And here was the moment of truth. "And why exactly am I supposed to trust you about any of this stuff??"

Tess sighed and stared into my eyes for a long moment, holding her left wrist out very deliberately. I could see, peripherally, that she was wearing a small gold-plated dial watch, and after several seconds I realized that this was the point. She took her eyes away to deliberately scan the face of said timepiece. "It is... ten minutes after eleven, mountain daylight time." She dropped her wrist, and closed her eyes, a pensive expression coming across her face. "Max is... worried about you, well, that's no surprise. Also entertaining a, erm... umm-uuh a rather interesting daydream involving the two of you, someplace that looks like the Hondo reservoir, and, eei, skinnydipping. Ask him for the rest of the details later. Michael is standing behind Maria, his arms around her, and trying to figure out if he can scrape up enough money to take her out dancing at the Silver Spiral next week... assuming, of course, that the Secret Unit hasn't caught him by then. Isabel is talking with Alex about... heheh, about me, and the UFO hunters, and whether Nacero kills to protect himself or just because he loses his temper." She opened her eyes and smiled teasingly. "Of course, I could tell you about that... at least, as much as I told Pierce. Seems only fair."

"About Nacero, and his motives??" I repeated, still a little dubious. More than a little, actually, until I was able to check out Tess' predictions with my friends. "Because... because you overhear his thoughts, as well as my friends'?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Of course, there have been times, I think, when he's killed out of protection, but-- Well, he has human emotions, like your guys do, but he never had a good chance to learn how to control them. He's figured out some of the basics by sheer trial and error, but 'losing his temper?' Yeah, Nacero, as you call him, is very prone to that. If you ever meet him again, be very careful."

"There's also... also something that I haven't been able to figure out, because his mind is so different from mine, and because it happened so long ago. Maybe right around the time of the '47 crash. Something that he lost, that was incredibly valuable to him. That's the root of his anger and hatred maybe, and I have to warn you... he seems to blame the new three for what he's lost. Max, Michael, and Isabel. So they have to be *extra* careful when they're dealing with him. I'll try to tell you if I figure any more of it out."

She sighed and paced around. "So, that's it. It explains, as I hope you realize, why Pierce is working with my father and I, even though she can tell we don't like her, and we do like you. She has my mother to keep us in line, and as far as she knows, I'm the only human psychic in america who's tuned into the alien frequency. Maybe in the whole world." She sighed. "And here is where we part company I think. They're starting to search this part of the woods -- probably won't hurt either of us as long as we're not together."

"That's a guess, and so comforting anyway," I spat a little angrily. "Of course they won't hurt *you*, but they'll suspect that you told me something, maybe something that they don't want to get to Max. And just how am I supposed to get home or anything? Hike to the highway and hitchhike?"

"Don't worry, there's almost no chance they'll find you anyway," she assured me with that maddeningly sincere smile. "And, well, you've got your cell, right, and Max has his??" I nodded, a little blankly. "Call him and tell him to pick you up on the Breer loop road through the woods... he knows where it is and how to get there. And the loop is just a few minute's walk that way." She waved off into the forest.

I was far from certain, but I took out my phone and made the call, and when Max assured me that he did know how to get to that road (and even about where I would probably be, based on the location of the cave,) I shook my head at Tess in disbelief, and started walking off.

* * * *

Okay, so the special unit agents didn't get anywhere near me, true enough, and Max picked me up quickly. Given the prediction that government operatives were in the area, following Tess, we ended up all piling into the two cars and heading off in a random direction away from the woods... well, not all of us - the six who had driven up that day and Miss Topolsky, who we definitely didn't want one of Pierce's people to happen across by accident. Isabel, Alex, and Kathleen took the Jetta, and Michael and Maria rode wth Max and I in the jeep.

I told the guys some of what Tess had told me, including her 'telepathic reception' of what the guys had been thinking about that particular time, and all of them confirmed that it seemed to be on the level. (Maria giggled when I mentioned Max's skinny-dipping fantasy, and hugged Michael's arm when he silently confirmed how scared he was about getting captured by somebody.)

"So, what do we think about her story in general terms, then??" I asked nervously.

"The psionics stuff... I'd say I preobably accept that, tentatively. There's no particular reason why the sort of thing we should do is exclusive to alien status, that there's no way some small percentage of humans would have similar powers," Michael said softly. "That Tess has some kind of ability to mentally eavesdrop on us, and Nacero too... it certainly seems so. That doesn't mean we should trust her, of course... she might be completely in line with Pierce's plan, or whoever it is who's really pulling the strings here, and just trying to gain our trust."

"About Nacero..." Maria put in. "Exactly what was it that she told you about his motives? You kinda skipped over that part."

I repeated it, as nearly as I could, and saw all three of my friends get deep 'thinking face.' "He lost something, something tremendously important to him, and he takes it out on us??" Max repeated. "I wonder what it could be."

"Probably not just losing his homeland or whatever, because you don't have that either," Maria put in. "Or... well, you had nothing to do with him getting stranded here, we don't think."

"I don't think we really have enough information to make a good guess," I sighed. "Are we just going to keep driving out here all day??"

"I was kind of making for a motel out in the middle of nowhere I remember," Max said absently. "The indian reservation is too hot for Topolsky right now, she can't go back there for tonight. Figure she can stay here, there's no particular reason for anyone in the unit to be able to find it within a day or two. Then we can swing around to the north of town and get back to Roswell from that direction, I guess."

"Oooh, we gotta swing by Blackie's and grab some food," Michael insisted, smiling.

TO BE CONTINUED...