Author Notes

Italics denote telepathic conversations

{ } = flashbacks in dream form. I know that sound a bit weird but go with it.

From now on, I'm going to have be taking a little artistic license with Ben's age. I just couldn't fit in what I wanted his character to be within the 2014 deadline.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I'm abandoning Max and Liz just for a chapter to introduce the other main characters in the story. I'm a little weary about creating my own characters so let me know if they appear to Mary Sue thanks.

Chapter 2: Close Encounters

`This too is probable according to the saying of Agathon: "It is a part of probability

that many improbable things will happen."

~ Aristotle: Poetics

Rubicon de Salva braced himself for another attempt. Standing outside the crack, he listened.

Nothing.

That was a good sign. There would be no obstacles in reaching his contact, but other thoughts began to intrude. Maybe he could just go home and forget about this. He was lizard after all. What did they actually think he could do? From overhead, a hawk let out a high pitched cry. Rubicon shivered in fear, the bird sounded impatient. Remembering all the gruesome scenarios she had promised to visit upon him, reluctant feet moved onward into the cavern. Perched on a ledge, he noticed dozens of people in sleeping back below him.

Now what?

There was no telling what bag Ben was in, and what he was going to do when he found him. The kid healed animals, he didn't talk to them that was Angel's ability, but she was gone now. Crawling towards the edge, Rubicon looked over. The sandy floor looked miles away to him, but in all actuality it was only about a foot. Carefully, he made his way down letting out a sigh of relief when the soft sand of the cavern's floor replaced the hardness of the rock.

Unbeknownst, to the lizard two yellow eyes watched his progress. "What are you doing?" The voice said good naturally.

However, all Rubicon could see were the large white teeth staring at him.

He sat down on his belly to hide his shaking feet. Courage. No one would respect him if he continued acting like a sniveling idiot. He imagined a towering Tyrannosaurus Rex. Weren't they distant relatives after all? You're a fierce desert creature he chanted in his head as he looked at the wolf straight in the eye. The creature was sitting down anyway. " Um.. the hawk sent me. Said I had debt really since the boy healed my leg." He waved his back leg in the air for dramatic effect. "I really thought I was a goner that day but my..."

"Get on with it lizard," the wolf ordered.

"Obviously not a fan of chitchat," Rubicon muttered.

A flurry of noise sounded as the wolf rose onto his feet.

It was up and it was moving. "Eek," Rubicon backed up.

"Relax, I don't eat lizards. I think better when I'm moving. Now about the hawk."

"Oh, yes. It was a lot rubbish actually. I really don't understand why they have to be so long winded."

"The message."

"The jewel has been unearthed and the guard has fallen away.

"What?" Shiloh cast a weary glance at Ben before returning to the lizard.

Deciding to abandon the hawks' love of metaphors, he settled on the direct approach. "They discovered her true identity." He turned his eyes towards the boy. "He's not safe anymore. None of them are. Oh, and the hawk said something about a snake being hidden in the grass."

"Great," the wolf's moving had turned into full out pacing. Every now and then, he would look down at the sleeping boy.

A frown began to form on the boy's lips.

"Does he even have a clue of what's coming?" Rubicon asked finally feeling a bit of sadness for the child.

Shiloh never did answer him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben Evans wrapped in his sleeping bag was totally oblivious to the events moving around him. Instead, his mind drifted in a state of restless dreams until it landed on the one memory he always came back to. It had always been a beacon for him, but now it made him feel strangely empty. He was six, and they were running from Khivar's invasion force. His mother's firm hand pulled him pass the empty shells of bombed out building and the groups of frantic people mulling around in the streets. Their faces etched in utter confusion upon discovering that their cars and any other technology no longer worked.

"What are we supposed to do now," Ben heard one woman sob. "How are we supposed to fight them?"

She like all the other had given up, but his mother wasn't one of them. Weaving through the crowd with a look of utter determination, he could feel the power emanating from her. She would never give up on his dad or Uncle Mike. In that moment, he never felt more proud of her.

"What if we don't find them," Maria asked?

"We'll, find them," she answered. "I can already sense them a bit."

"I'm not getting a thing from Michael."

"That's because you're letting your emotions cloud the issue."

"Well, excuse me Liz the world is being conquered by a group of trigger-happy aliens. I think that's a valid reason for freaking out."

His mother ignored her. "You ok Ben?"

He squeezed her hand in reply. She wasn't scared so there was no reason for him to be. They would find his dad and Uncle and everything would be fine. It always turned out fine in all the stories she used to read him. Didn't they all end with the sentence "and they lived happily ever after?"

A high pitched wail erupted over their heads. Ben let go of his mother's hand to cover his ears. Glancing upwards, he noticed a bright green web of light. They stopped moving, even his mother was not immune to the sight of this new threat.

"What is that Liz?" Maria whispered.

"I have no idea."

Stretching further and further, the bands spiked up in the air like a jump rope and then came crashing down. At that instant, the Earth lurched in response. A wave of energy tore through the street shattering the glass from the window. Ben felt his mother pick him up in her arms as she started to run. Over her shoulder, he watched the green light spike again. This time the ground rumbled loosening cement blocks from their foundations. Then things began to fly. The force uprooted a sickly little dogwood tree and a trash can with gum stuck all over its front.

"Hold on to me Ben," his mother ordered. Slight tinges of panic evident in her voice.

He wrapped his arms tighter around, but his fingers snapped open as another force flung him underneath a doorway. Dazed, he looked up just in time to see the ceiling come down over him and then he saw nothing for a long time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slowly, Ben opened his eyes. A bended doorframe stared down at him . He didn't feel hurt. Looking upwards, he realized for the first time he was trapped. Everything was dark just like the black crayon from his Crayola box. He hated the dark. The way it transformed harmless objects into full blown monsters. It made him feel weak. He didn't possess the ability to shoot blasts like his mother and Uncle Mike, and he couldn't warp like Troy. Yes, he could heal things but that wasn't a real power.

From behind, he heard a slight scuffling noise. A green mass came flying through the air and attached itself to his chest. With his fingers he tried frantically to pry it off, but its tentacles just held on tighter while a third arm hovered above his throat. Ben watched with a sense of horror as a smaller creature peeked out of the appendage. Its white teeth glinted in the darkness.

"Eaeta vearus abrieht," another voice rang out causing the second creature to run back inside the arm. The larger body turned its five head towards the source.

Squinting his eyes, he could barely make out a girl with pigtails standing over him.

"Nyaz demi nzarzul," the mass hissed at her.

They were not speaking English, but he seemed to understand it all the same.

"I said let him go you Scion filth," she demanded.

Withdrawing from him, the creature slithered towards the rubble towards the girl. "You're a yellow bleeder," he croaked in surprise. "To think all this time and no one guessed it."

One moment the Scion seemed to be afraid and then the next Ben watched it move across the room and thrust its arms into his chest. Its dark energy immediately surrounded him. Forcing Ben, to let it dig deeper and deeper in his subconscious , but there was another presence. A stream of blue light collided into the dark, and for a long time it looked like it was winning. until the brightness diminished. That's when Ben felt his own green life force began to stir. Wrapping around the blue in a tight thread, it exploded causing the darkness to receded.

"Whoa," he heard her muttered as she fell to her knees next to him. A bright half moon scar now blazed on her neck.

Instinctively, he reached up to heal it but his hands went right through her.

"You're an angel aren't you?"

" No, I'm real sort of it," she explained. "How's your chest?"

He removed the burned scion from his stomach. Throwing it across the room.

The wound had stopped bleeding. It was deep. There would be a scar, but for some he didn't want to heal it.

He watched her rise to her feet. "Please don't leave me," he begged.

She didn't. She stayed with him as the rocks floated away until he was back in his mother's embrace.

She was there when he placed his hands on Shiloh's wound and healed the hole in his side:

"I would love to be able to that," she commented.

"It's not a real power."

"Why not?"

"It's not like I'm blasting anything."

"It takes more strength to heal something Ben than to destroy it." Her black eyes stared at him for along time as if she was searching for some expression on his face. She frowned "Real power comes through love not force."

He had never really understood what she was getting at.

His dreams began to drift once again from the past to the present. To the time when he was no longer afraid of the dark and she no longer wore her hair in pigtails, but like always she stayed with him:

"I hate being different," he had yelled one day in frustration. "Everyone one expects me to be a leader like my dad. What if I don't want to?"

"Then don't," she had replied.

"But my parents want me to be like them."

"No, they want what any parent wants for you to be happy."

"You sound like a greeting card Angel."

"Well, are you finished throwing your fit?"

His cheeks reddened. He was kind actually childish, "yes."

She smiled. "Then I guess my advice worked then."

She seemed to understand his powers better than he did. With her help, he learned to shoot blasts. It was hard to believe that he had only known her for six years. It seemed like her presence had always been linked with his own but that was all an illusion. When it came down, he knew next to nothing about her. Even her name, Angel, was a farce. Something he had made up after he had gotten tired of calling her hey you all the time:

"I just don't see why can't tell me your real name," he demanded. "If you trying to entice me with mystery, it's not working."

She looked up from the daisies she had made sprout in the sand. "First off, I'm not trying to entice you. I think you're too young for me anyway."

"Only by five years," he added a little too quickly.

Her black eyes twinkled with mirth. "Been thinking about this have we?"

"No, I get a little tired of having to repeat Angel over and over because it something you don't respond to."

She waved her hand over the daisies causing their white heads to wither up and die. "I have my reasons."

"I'm beginning to think you don't even exist. ."

" I assure you, I do."

Something stirred within him. He felt his anger spike. Later he would blame it on petty human emotions, but never did he realize it was the other side of his DNA exerting itself. "You could have fooled me. If you're real please tell me why you spend most of your time here with me as an astral projection." He thrust his hands through her body to annunciate his point.

It happened so quickly he barely had time to register it. One moment he was standing the next he found himself lying on his back. Angel stood over him. Her black hair whipping fiercely in a gust of wind that had started to blow. "You have no concept what my life is like. If you had vaguest idea of what was happening, the fear of it would break you. That's why I come here. I come to escape because if I stayed, I would surely go mad."

"I'm sorry." Ben got up. Driven by one need to make her feel better, he wrapped his arms around his shoulder. For the briefest moment, Ben could have sworn he felt the warmth of her skin, but then she vanished completely from his sight. That had been the last time he had seen her.

Reaching out with his mind, he tried once again to find her. He expected a wall. There was always a wall, but this time he passed right through it. A fluorescent light now hummed overhead while two bodies blocked his view. He definitely wasn't on Earth. The Antarians orbiting in their ships were the only ones that had power now.

"To think she had been here all the time. We would have never seen if not for the boy, but she isn't going to break. It could take years," the one spoke.

"Years we don't have. The mines made her claustrophobic. Use that."

The bodies parted to reveal a plastic partition. Ben could just make out a girl crouching in the corner. His blood chilled as he recognized the half scar raised on her neck. Going up to the plastic divider, he felt himself diffuse into the next room.

She noticed him immediately. "You shouldn't be here. They might see you." Her tone sounded icy, distant, no trace of the warmth he was used to.

"Please tell me what I can do to fix this."

"Absolutely nothing."

He wouldn't accept that. There were always ways. He'd get his parents, and they could help. Somehow he caused this, and he had to make it right.

Pushing herself off the ground, her tattered sleeves revealed black bruises and puffy pink burns. "Now you listen to me. Here's you're final lesson. You can't save everyone."

The door squeaked loudly as two guards shoved a large wooden box into the room. Unlatching the hook, it looked like a hungry mouth awaiting its prey. A slight spasm crossed the girl's face.

"I can get you out of here. Just tell me the name of the ship," Ben pressed.

She shook her head. Her eyes never leaving the box He saw her place her shaking hands behind her.

"It's it going to be the easy or the hard way Serena," one of the guards asked?

Ben couldn't help the feeling of guilt that washed up in him. He had wanted her name and look what his stubbornness had caused her.

One of the guards grabbed her by the hair and shoved her towards the wall. She punched him once in the mouth as she ducked his fist, the other jabbed a syringe into her thigh.

Ben lunged at the them but he passed right through him and landed on the floor. Waving his hand, he tried to make the soldiers fall but nothing happened.

He watched helplessly as the guards picked Serena up and throw her into the box. A loud echo sounded as the slammed the lid over her. Through their connection, Ben could feel her rising fear. Yet, she still seemed more concern with him that on her own plight.

Leave now, Ben please.

I can't.

Then you leave me no choice.

His eyes sprung open He was back in the cave. Surrounded by people, sleeping contently while who knows what was happening to her. Clearing, his mind he tried to reach her again. A sudden blue energy rushed through his head. He knew it was her. The blue whips surrounded his cerebral cortex. Gently prying apart, their connection. He fought her. The force intensified and in the end he gave up. She was just too strong. He recognized one word before she left him entirely.

Goodbye.

He awoke again to Shiloh's concerned whimpering.

"It's O.K.," he whispered to him.

She was gone, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. If he had been stronger, maybe he could helped Serena like she had helped him. He tucked his pain and guilt far away. After all emotions were a human trait, and this was no time for being human. It wasn't going to help bring her back.

From outside he could hear the low sounds of horns, his parents had returned