CHAPTER 39
Without consciously commanding his body to move, Michael found himself on his feet and bolting at top speed across the sand. His thudding heart caught in his chest for a moment as he saw her in the distance, a tiny figure in a blue-green dress. His eye caught the light glinting off that stupid antennae headband she wore as his feet pounded across the desert floor. Try as he might, he couldn't find a voice to call to her. He just sent out a mental message in the hope that she would know he was coming. It seemed to take forever, but eventually he skidded to a stop behind her.
Her Michael-radar must have been working, because in a heartbeat she had turned and thrown herself into his arms. He held her for a moment, then took her face in his hands and urgently searched her eyes for some clue as to what was happening. Was she all right? "Are you okay? What happened?" he demanded.
Maria buried her face in his shoulder and tried to stop shaking. "It's just a dream. I know it's just a dream, but...oh, Michael."
"What happened?" he repeated, pressing her to answer. When she didn't speak, he tightened his arms around her, saying hoarsely, "It's okay. Everything's okay. Just tell me what happened."
After a moment, she remembered how angry she was with him and gingerly detached herself from his arms. When she spoke, her voice was a little less tremulous. "You have to promise me you're not going to freak."
He raised a sardonic eyebrow. "I think you have the market cornered on that right now."
"Promise me," she insisted.
"Okay, okay. I promise. Now what are you all upset ab--" His voice cut off as he followed her gaze to the sand a few feet away. She pointed.
"That," she said baldly.
There, lying half-covered with sand, was a navy blue trouser leg. And it wasn't empty. Michael swallowed. By his side, Maria began to babble. "I wasn't even looking where I was going, you know? I was too busy trying to decide where I could get a giant Acme anvil, and then, boom, I trip over...over that. I mean, I've never discovered a body before, and it kind of startled me, okay?" A frown appeared on her face. "And why is it that whenever I'm in one of your dreams, I run into things, or trip over them or something, anyway?" she asked angrily.
He looked down at the sand-covered form, willing his brain to work. Or his mouth, or something. Anything. What finally came out was not, upon consideration, the best thing he could have said. "Friend of yours?" She swatted him on the arm.
"That's not funny," she scolded.
"I know, I know," he told her. "So lay off the arm. It's just a dream, remember?"
"Yeah, I guess so," she said, regaining a little more composure.
"So there's not a real body lying there. It's just my subconscious trying to tell me something. No big deal." He listened to himself with skepticism. Was he trying to convince Maria or himself?
She gave him a disapproving look. "It may not be a big deal to you, Michael, but it sure scared the heck out of me. And me without my cedar oil."
He looked down at her and spoke in a firm tone. "There's nothing to be scared about. It's not real."
She nodded halfheartedly. "I know, I know. I mean, my brain knows that, okay? The rest of me just needs a little time to catch up." She glanced over at the still form on the sand. "So who do you think--Michael!" she yelped. "It's moving!"
Immediately on the defensive, he thrust her roughly behind him and turned to face it, his right hand out to ward it off. A moment later he relaxed. "It's not moving, Maria. It's just the sand blowing around." Sure enough, a slight breeze was picking up.
"Oh, that's reassuring," she complained. "The last time I was in one of your dreams, Isabel and I were almost killed by a giant rampaging sandstorm. I so don't need to hear that it's back."
Michael crouched down by the body and studied it closely. He could tell from the trousers that it was a man--or a very butch woman--but enough sand covered it to completely hide its features. Great. Trust his subconscious to make things difficult. Almost involuntarily, he reached out towards it.
"Michael! You're not actually going to touch it, are you?" Maria said, horrified.
"You're the one always bugging me, wanting to know what's going on in my head," he pointed out. "So here's your chance."
"I wanted a nice, straightforward conversation, that's all. Bodies--imaginary or not--were not involved."
He shrugged. Something within him wanted to--no, needed to find out what this meant. So he reached out and began to brush the sand from the still form.
"It's a good thing that you don't want to kiss me," Maria muttered behind him. "Because there's no way I would let you lay a hand on me after touching that."
He pointedly ignored her, working to clear the body of its grainy covering. If the feet were there, the arm must be...here. Michael uncovered a pale shirt sleeve and slowed his motions. He suddenly felt very uneasy about this whole thing. With a quick shake of his head to dismiss the feeling, he bent to his task once more. There was the shoulder. His hands found the top of the head and uncovered a shock of dark hair. Frowning, Michael slowly began to work on the face, a knot in his stomach. A moment later, he scrambled back with a curse. It wasn't just a body, it was a corpse.
Pierce's corpse. Its--no, his eyes stood open and stared blankly into the sky.
In an instant, Michael was caught up in a replay of that horrible moment when he'd...killed Pierce. Again he felt the hate, the rage at what the man had done to Max, the fear for himself and for the others, coming together in a burst of white-hot energy that shot forward and obliterated the agent as if he were no more than a bug, sending him flying backward into a display, to lie unmoving in a heap on the UFO Museum floor...Michael's mind grappled with the memory, playing it over and over for what seemed like forever...
...until the touch of a hand on his arm brought him to his senses. He turned burning eyes to see Maria kneeling beside him. He looked away, staring at the far-off horizon rather than at the corpse or the worried girl next to him. He swallowed and managed to find his voice. "Well," he muttered, "I guess this proves that subtlety is not my strong suit."
"Are you all right?" she asked. "For a moment there, I thought you'd zoned out on me again."
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. I...I almost wish I had. Believe me." His eyes shifted back to the still form and then away again.
Beside him, Maria spoke softly. "Come on, Michael. Let's get out of here."
His response was firm. "No."
"Micha--" she began.
"You go ahead. Wait for me back where we started. I'll be there in a little while."
"I don't think that's a very good idea."
He forced himself to look back down at Pierce. "Why? He's not real. Max and Isabel...they changed him. Afterwards. He doesn't exist any more. And even if he was real...he's dead. He can't hurt me." He seemed to be trying to convince himself.
"Maybe not. But...it can't be good for you to...I mean...please, Michael, just let him be."
"It's not like I don't see him all the time anyway." He took in her look of alarm. "No, I'm not seeing things now. I just have a very clear picture of it all in my head. It's nothing new."
She gazed at him, concern in her eyes. Her close scrutiny made him acutely uncomfortable. "Look, why don't you head back? I'll be there in a little while. I just wanna..." He focused on a few grains of sand on Pierce's sleeve and repeated, "I'll be there in a little while."
"I'm not leaving you." Her statement was matter-of-fact.
"Fine. Do what you want."
Forcing himself to see what was in front of him, Michael studied Pierce's face. He couldn't tell if the frozen expression held more shock or fear. This wasn't someone to be afraid of. He was just a man. A man who had killed and tortured, with no regard for what was right. Michael wondered if he'd ever felt remorse for his actions, if he'd been weighed down by the thoughts Michael had now. Somehow he doubted it. But it didn't make him feel any better. Whatever Pierce had done didn't negate his actions.
He slowly dropped his eyes to Pierce's chest. His brain hadn't conjured up a silver handprint, but the man's shirt was burnt away, as was--Michael felt sick--the flesh beneath it. His eyes flew back to the man's face, somehow expecting to see accusation in it. He didn't. It was still blank, lifeless.
Michael grimaced. His brain was obviously holding on to this image, the idea. But he wasn't sure that the obvious horrible message it sent was all there was to it. Somehow it seemed as if there must be more. What was he setting himself up to do? There must be something. Surely his brain couldn't be just using the image to punish him, to torture him. If so, it was going to have to get in line behind the voice that kept accusing him.
A sick feeling rose in his throat. The voice--could it be Pierce's? Was he so screwed up that he had to create a mental projection to blame himself, rather than facing up to the truth of what he'd done? He clenched his fists. Alien or not, he was just seventeen. He shouldn't have to deal with this. It wasn't fair.
He laughed bitterly. But then, what in his life had been particularly fair? Not much. His life sucked. That was just the way it was. So be it.
Once more studying the body before him, Michael tried to figure out how he should be feeling. It wasn't real, after all. Should he even care? Should he be sorry for what he'd done, apologize to it? It wouldn't do Pierce any good--and he wasn't so sure he did feel sorry about it. He wasn't sorry that Pierce was dead. After what he'd done to Max, Michael could almost bring himself to believe that. So maybe he was just sorry that he had been the one who'd ended Pierce's life, that fate or karma or bad luck had set him up to do this terrible thing.
But it could've been Max. Or Isabel. And that would have been worse. Max, the leader, the healer...or Isabel, proud and strong...Michael couldn't bear it if one of them had done it. If they had been lessened by such an action. If there was blood on their hands...
Reflexively, he scrubbed his palms against his jeans, trying to rid them of their aura of guilt. It had been his hands, not Max's or Isabel's. His guilt. He had to live with it, at least long enough to keep Maria safe and to help Max and Isabel find their rightful place. If any of the whole 'come back and save us all' message was true in the first place.
Enough of this. Sitting here wasn't going to help anything. He needed to be on his feet, moving ahead, taking action. No more of this pussyfooting around. The sooner they solved Maria's problem, the sooner they could concentrate on Max's. And once that was taken care of, assuming they survived, then he could move on to--well, he didn't know what. But it didn't matter. He just had to be doing something.
Taking one last glance at Pierce, Michael grew more determined. The man was dead and gone. He couldn't do anything about it now. There was no time for guilt or remorse or fear; he had things to do. The rest could wait until afterwards. Until then, he would shut the door on Pierce and whatever he stood for.
Michael reached out once more, as if to say goodbye. To the man, to his actions, to...he wasn't sure what. But he placed a hand over the raw flesh of Pierce's chest and shut his eyes. This was his dream; he could do anything. He reached out, picturing the burnt body whole, the shirt pressed and new. A tingle ran down his arm, pressing thousands of tiny pinpricks of sensation into each of his fingers...and then it was gone. He slowly opened his eyes and looked.
Pierce's body was whole once more.
Feeling a little incredulous that he'd actually done it, even if only in a dream, Michael stared down at the body before him. The slight breeze picked up once more, and he closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of it across his face. A hiss from behind him snapped his eyes back open. Maria. He'd actually forgotten she was there. How had she kept so quiet? This must be some sort of record for her.
But she was speaking now, saying his name in a tense voice. He looked over at her to find her eyes focused on Pierce, staring in shock. Turning, he saw that Pierce was...shimmering. The breeze shifted over the body, blowing away the grains of sand that still stuck to him, until he was perfectly clean. But it didn't stop there. As it continued to blow, the body seemed to turn to sand and began to blow away, little bits of Pierce spreading out over the horizon, being blown up and down.
And leaving in its place a glowing, humanoid figure, almost too bright to look at. It lay still and unmoving on its bed of sand, growing more and more brilliant and more and more blinding and more and more painful until Michael had to throw up his arms to shield his eyes from its intensity, sure that nothing would ever shake the afterimage from his brain.
And as it grew, eclipsing whatever light normally existed in this world, a soft whisper of a voice came from the desert around him. It was back, but he could hardly hear it, totally immersed in shielding himself from the glow in front of him. With one final burst of light, the figure was gone, leaving in its wake daylight that seemed black as pitch in comparison. And in the split second of the figure's passing, Michael could hear the voice, clearly this time.
It said, Killer.
And this time he recognized it.
TBC...