It wasn't until he reached the first stairs to the lighthouse that Willie noticed he was alone. Their return had been accompanied only by the sound of the waves. He'd kept as far from the water as possible, a good twenty feet up the beach, while Angie walked close enough to the waves for them to lap near her feet. He was troubled by their discussion with Todd, more deeply so by his being turned away when he so obviously wanted to return with them to help in any way he could. As Willie himself had done. Still, Willie had been among this particular group of humans long enough to understand that their survival might depend upon their ability to deny their better instincts. As he glanced at Angie slogging along in the wet sand, eyes downcast, he was keenly aware of the difficulty of her decision. As hard as it was for him to see that his own species was capable of the coldest kind of cruelty, it was even harder to see others forced into cruel acts they would give anything to avoid. Now he stood still, unwilling to call out her name. His chameleon-like eyes rotated in opposite directions, searching for Angie's heat halo. He found her about a dozen feet from the stairs, sitting flat on the sand.

"Angie," he approached carefully, not wanting to upset her further, "are you okay?"

Unsure at first what to say, Angie couldn't contain a sigh. Then she leaned her head back toward Willie without exactly facing him.

"Yeah."

"Do you not want to return to camp and sleep? It is late, and you must be tried."

Oh, truer words were never spoken…

"Not so tired, really, I just need to sit here a bit and gather my thoughts. You know there's gonna be a lot of explaining to do, so best I know what I'm thinking before I try to tell anybody else."

Hesitation, then, "I will tell whatever is necessary to help." He could see her nod.

"Thanks. Let's just see what happens next."

A Visitor sigh, in fact, wasn't discernible by human ears. "Okay." Willie turned to climb the stairs but was stopped by Angie's question.

"Willie? Are we still friends?" She knew too well that acquiescing was a long way from understanding.

"You didn't hear me," Willie suggested as he retreated from the stairs to speak directly to Angie, though she didn't face him, "we will never be enemies."

"That's not the same." Realizing then that she was demanding too much of his language skills she added, "no, wait, I'm sorry…" but he'd already knelt in the sand behind her.

"No it is not," Willie agreed and pressed both hands against Angie's shoulders as he leaned closer, "we are still friends, Angie. We will always be friends."


"I'm telling you, nobody came or went on my watch!" Sancho insisted angrily. Ham Tyler had done a weapons inventory count prior to the morning watch at 6 am, again at noon, and most recently Sancho's watch at 6pm. The count before Chris Farber's midnight watch had come up one hand blaster short, and Tyler was on a tear. As a key tactical coordinator it had always been a Tyler habit to keep tabs on the munitions. Since the destruction of the library and the concentration on the biophysics and personnel modules in past two days, The Fixer had had nothing to occupy him except tracking inventory. With no raids in or out it should have been routine, but right now Sancho had no defense except "I saw nothing."

"Look, Slick, there's only one way into this fucking tool shed. You saying that the fairies pranced in under your feet and spirited a blaster away? Maybe while you were taking a little nap," he glowered threateningly.

"I'm saying, I didn't see nobody, and I didn't take no 'nap'!"

Both men stood toe to toe, on the verge of shifting from words to blows, when Willie overheard the commotion and hurried to where they were standing. "What is wrong," he asked in alarm.

"Stay outta this, Willie," Tyler warned. "This is about somebody not doing the job right, even though there was nothing to do but stand here and stare at the door!"

"There's a blaster missing, and Mr. Fixer-Commando here says I shoulda known. I'm telling him I didn't see or hear anybody come or go, but he knows better!" Sancho raged.

Getting the gist of the situation, Willie explained, "Angie took the weapon."

Tyler and Sancho were silenced in mid-rant as they stared at Willie. Tyler recovered his wits first.

"Angie took it?" He glared at Sancho. "You saying you didn't see her?" Sancho, tired of repeating himself, responded with a wild explosion of Spanish.

"She waited," Willie hastened to continue, "she waited for a long time. Until you left for just a moment and went behind that tree," he indicated a scrubby bush nearby.

Tyler was having a hard time absorbing any of this. "She waited until Slick took a leak, and got in and out without him seeing?"

Willie nodded, "She has had much practice, for the raid."

"Fine, take off," Tyler grunted at Sancho, who snorted in disgust and strode off into the darkness, then turned his attention to Willie. "You wanna tell me what went on tonight? You can start with where Angie is, and what she did with that blaster."

There was nothing for Willie to do but tell Tyler the truth: about the message on the module, Angie's decision to meet with Todd, Willie's insistence that she not go alone. He kept expecting Tyler to interrupt, to express anger, but the dark man listened in silence. By the time he'd finished his story, Willie was truly perplexed. Surely Mr. Tyler would be enraged that Angie had given a weapon to an unarmed Visitor, surely he would be extremely displeased that Angie and Willie both had gone off on their own to meet Todd without telling anyone. But the man in the black leather blazer was unreadable.

Finally Tyler spoke. "Where is she?"

Willie gulped. He understood the nature of Angie's relationship with Tyler, and suspected that tonight's events would cause serious discord between them. More than that, Mr. Tyler's being in charge of things like weapons, tactical operations, and the like put such a reckless "mission" in direct opposition with what was expected of all of the rebels. Not surprisingly, the first possibility troubled Willie more than the second.

"When we returned she stayed on the beach, at the bottom of the stairs. She wished to harvest her ideas. Ah, gather her thoughts."

"I'll bet. Okay, Willie, we're gonna have to go over this with the others tomorrow. Gooder hasn't come back from his meet with that lizard friend of his."

"Martin," Willie offered.

"Yeah, him. He was going to get some background on this Todd, see if he's got two faces or three. Might as well find out what he learned before we talk any more about this." He turned on his heel to go, then stopped short and exclaimed in exasperation, "Shit, Willie, couldn't you have talked her out of it? She listens to you."

"I could not. She would go, so I went with her. We planned as safely as we could, but… she would go. She does not always listen to me." Willie could discern a smirk in the darkness.

"Well that's one thing we have in common," Tyler muttered as he strode away. Willie ran to catch up.

"Please, do not be very angry with her. She wanted the right thing for everybody."

"I know that, for christsake," Tyler shot back irritably. Not for the first time, he wondered shit, how much of a monster do I really seem like? Then he asked the question that was nagging at him, because it was the one thing that didn't make a damn bit of sense.

"When Angie said no to that lizard... don't tell me you liked the answer because I know you didn't. There were two of you, and just one of her. You know damn well she wouldn't shoot either one of you. So why didn't you just bring him back anyway?"

Willie nodded somberly, "She said no. She said why. It is how things have to be."

"You didn't answer my question. When Angie turned this Todd guy away, why did you go along with it? He's one of yours, and she's not in charge of anything."

For the first time, the reluctant invader and the badass mercenary stood on equal ground.

"We want to help," Willie emphasized the last word as if Tyler might not understand it. "This resistance is not for our survival, it is for yours. So we 'went along'."

Tyler suddenly felt like a world-class asshole, and abruptly began to walk in the direction of the barracks. "It's late, and there's gonna be lots of discussion tomorrow. Time to crash."

"You are not going to look for Angie?" Willie asked cautiously as he followed.

"I think it's better to leave her to herself for a while." Before they parted company at the barracks building Tyler told Willie, "Thanks for not letting her go off alone. She can get crazy on her own."

Willie rolled his eyes and nodded readily in agreement. "You can say that twice."


Angie stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in one of the thick terry robes that Elias had managed to get from a plundered luxury hotel that the Visitors had taken over. She stood in front of the mirror toweling her hair, staring at the face that stared back at her. Same old face, no new wisdom, no loss of humanity. No golden glow to tell the world she'd learned to swap one life for many. She knew it was a swap, no question, because whatever Todd was planning it'd take a miracle for him to pull it off, and a bigger one to get on with the life he'd mentioned: blending in with humanity. Sharing the world instead of conquering it.

"Miracles are as dead as Elvis," she announced bitterly and shoved every black possibility out of her mind. Sleep, Angie wanted to shut her brain off and retreat into blackness. Slipping silently into her quarters, she dropped her robe and grabbed one of Tyler's generic black t shirts from where it hung on the hook behind the door. Sleepwear, war-wear, who cares.

She dragged it over her head and approached where Tyler lay on his side with one arm flung out over her empty side of the bed. Sitting very carefully she studied him for a bit. Angie hadn't seen Tyler asleep since that night in the cheesy hotel shortly after he and Chris had picked her up. He looked the same now as then, sleeping but ready, the hard face softened by the beard she knew he'd love to get rid of but kept because she liked it. By this time, of course, she'd learned more about what was inside. But not so much more, she realized. What she knew outweighed what she'd learned. One thing she knew for sure is that he would not be pleased by what she'd done tonight. Stealing a weapon, sneaking off to a "freestyle" meet with someone nobody in the camp would trust on their most naïve day. Painting another target on Tyler's forehead for the doubters to draw aim on, because of who he was in the rebel hierarchy and who she was to him.

"I did a really bad thing," she whispered like a guilty six-year-old.

"Yeah. Willie told me all about it."

She'd have jumped at the sound of his voice if she hadn't known instinctively that he wasn't really asleep.

"I didn't know what else to do. I had to find out for myself. I couldn't tell anyone else, they'd never have agreed to it."

"You got that right." Tyler rolled onto his back and looked up at Angie.

"I planned it all as carefully as I could," she felt compelled to tell him, "I took a weapon, took Willie along, I'd never have gone if the place wasn't in the middle of nowhere and far enough from here… but I had to."

She was waiting for a lecture on discipline, a scolding about freestyling, but all he said was, "I know."

"Huh?"

Now Tyler sat up to look Angie straight in the eye. "Don't sound so surprised. You're right, it was important to find out what this lizard was up to, why he covered you and Maggie, and why he stuck that message in the module. We both know I wouldn't have handled it the same way. But if you had to do it, you did it the right way. All of it."

She knew what he was referring to. "I don't need anybody to tell me that."

"No, you don't." Acknowledgment. "But there's something you do need to be told, there just hasn't been time. About Peterson…"

"Don't bother telling me your story was bullshit," Angie told Tyler flatly. "David never held a weapon in his life." She thought for a minute then added, "He liked to pull strings, but he left the triggers to people who didn't mind getting their hands dirty."

"Not that." He leaned closer now, as if sharing a secret. "He wasn't after anything from you but down time. His real mark was your boss."

Angie's eyes widened. "You mean that? How do you know?"

"He told me. Right before I blew the sorry sonofabitch away." She didn't even flinch, and he couldn't decide whether or not he was surprised.

"So he got nothing… I never gave him anything he used against anyone…" Angie felt as if a knife had been pulled from her gut.

"Not a thing. I would've told you sooner but you were busy planning a fit of freestyle." He studied her face as best he could in the dark. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I almost wish I wasn't." Angie felt the warmth of Tyler's beard press against her face.

"Goes with the territory. C'mon Angel, you're gonna be up before the inquisition again."

"It's getting to be a habit, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you're refining your style."

Tyler lay back in bed and lifted the covers in invitation, a move that Angie had once admitted was possibly the hottest one she'd ever seen. When, as expected, she slid in and wrapped around him he commented, "Hey, that my t shirt?"

"Mmm, yup."

"Well take it off, you're gonna stretch it out in all the wrong places."

Angie rolled on top of Tyler, a move that he'd once admitted was the fastest turn-on he'd ever experienced. "Where might those be?"

"Well," he rumbled, "here... and right here..." He slid his hands up and under the shirt as Angie stretched above him. "There," as she bent forward a bit he popped the shirt over her head and tossed it away, "disaster averted."

"Oh, I'm so glad," Angie smirked slyly, "now where were those bad places?"

Tyler couldn't suppress a dark chuckle, "Well I wouldn't call them bad, but c'mere, and I'll show you again..."

Willie's concerns about discord were rapidly rendered moot.


Tyler was wakened by a stirring against him. Angie was lying face down, Tyler resting across her back, one arm wrapped around her, his face laid in the side of her neck. He raised his head a bit, hearing her call indistinctly, words he couldn't discern. If it was a nightmare, it was a damn calm one. Then the words were repeated more clearly.

"Come back," she called, voice fuzzy, as if she were literally speaking from the other side of sleep where another world was happening. Fuzzy or no, the plaintive note was obvious.

"I'm right..." Tyler began, then stopped himself as he realized she wasn't calling to him at all. She wasn't calling him because it was something else she needed. Explanations from a dead lover, forgiveness from a reluctant enemy, a nearly-forgotten life resurrected by revelations she could have done better without and the need to revisit choices too late to change.

"Come back..." this time it faded into sadness, then Angie was quiet again.

Tyler moved carefully so he wouldn't wake her (she had a right to some inner privacy, he figured) and rested his cheek against hers, feeling traces of tears as they lost themselves in his beard. Angie turned in his arms without waking, then slurred his name just once, "Tyllllrrrr." It sounded like a purr of contentment.

"That's right, Angel. I'm not going anywhere." He kissed the side of her head and settled her closer. It took him a while to fall asleep again.