Part 7: Interrogation
When Ariel got up to her room after saying goodnight to Brian, there was a message tacked to her bulletin board. Smiling to herself as she thought about what an amazing night it had been, Ariel closed her bedroom door and turned her light on to read the note. "Oh, awesome," she commented as she saw that Liz had called to invite her to a girls' night out at UFOnics tomorrow night. She quickly dressed for bed and brushed her teeth. As she climbed into bed, there was a knock at her door. "Come in," she called.
David walked in and sat down on the bed by her. "Hey. You and Brian seemed really cozy together tonight," David observed with a teasing grin.
Ariel laughed. "So did you and Kara. Oh, tonight was just perfect," she sighed dreamily.
"Yeah," David agreed completely. "Kara is amazing. She's intelligent, she's funny, she's."
"Perfect for you," Ariel broke in. She and David shared a laugh. They both knew how right Ariel was about that.
"Definitely." Then David saw the note. "Dancing tomorrow night, huh? Cool."
"Yeah, I'm going to call Liz back in the morning. You could invite the guys to do something," Ariel suggested. "I'd ask Kara to go dancing but she and Brian have that thing at their Dad's work."
The next morning, Ariel called Liz back to find out the details for the girls' night out. The girls would pick her up at around 8 in the evening. David called the guys, but nobody was home. Ariel and David decided to spend the day hiking at a nearby park.
By 8 o'clock, Ariel was just putting on the finishing touches of her makeup using her powers. She was dressed in a green tank top that showed a little midriff and a matching skirt. As Ariel gave her blonde hair a final brushing and hairspray, she heard the honk of the car horn. Grabbing her purse, Ariel kissed her parents goodbye and headed out to Maria's Jetta. "Hey, girls," Ariel greeted everyone with a cheerful smile as she slid in the backseat next to Isabel. A short drive later, and the Jetta pulled up to the UFO Center. Ariel was surprised that the UFOnics club would be there, but she guessed it made sense. Until she saw that there were only a couple other cars around. But, the girls knew what they were doing, Ariel figured, so she followed them inside without asking about it. Maria was her usual bubbly self, but Isabel, Tess, and Liz were strangely quiet as they all headed down a flight of steps. Tess and Isabel walked behind her, Maria, and Liz. Ariel listened for music, but didn't hear anything. Maybe they were just visiting Max at work on their way to UFOnics, Ariel guessed. Sure enough, when they reached the bottom of the steps, there were Max, Michael, Alex, and Kyle. "Hi," Ariel greeted them. "David called you guys to see if you wanted to do something tonight since us girls are going out. He's at home if you want to catch him there."
When nobody said anything, Ariel looked around the group, a little uncomfortably, and noticed the looks everyone was giving her. For some reason, they looked at her like a possible enemy that they wanted to.interrogate or something? They seemed unsure about her. "What?" she asked nervously. Then the group turned to Max, and Ariel did as well, sensing that he would let her know what was going on.
"Ariel, sit down," Max said in a commanding voice, gesturing to a chair in the center of the room.
Ariel looked from Max to the chair and back, uncertain that she should sit down. All she wanted to do at that point was get out of this room. "Max, what's going on?" She asked, backing away toward the stairs. Isabel and Tess grabbed her by the arms and had her sitting down in the chair before she could pull herself away from them. Then Michael and Kyle grabbed her hands behind her and cuffed them together so that she couldn't get out of the chair. Ariel struggled and fought against them with all her strength, but she couldn't stop them from tying her legs to the chair, too, so that she couldn't fight anymore. "What you do guys want?" She asked bitterly, with hurt and betrayal in her voice. She looked every one of them levelly in the eye, refusing to let them see her cry. A million possibilities went through her mind. Was this some sort of stupid group initiation ritual? Did they want to hurt her for some reason? Oh, God, did they know somehow about her powers?
"We want to know the truth about who you are why you're really here," Michael answered her.
Ariel gave him a puzzled expression. "You did all this just to ask me that? You already know why I moved here. My dad is going to be teaching at Las Cruces University." She mentally reached out to the group to find out from them what they really wanted, but found that some force was blocking her. Isabel whispered something urgently to Max, who turned on a strange device. Suddenly, Ariel found that she could no longer use her abilities. With a jolt of panic, Ariel realized that she was completely trapped now. And she could tell that the group didn't believe her. "Just check the university's website. He's on the faculty list," Ariel suggested to Alex, seeing that Alex had brought his laptop with him. Ariel just knew that Alex would have web access and could verify the truth. Alex and Max exchanged a look, and Max nodded.
As Alex went to the website, Michael commented to Ariel and the others. "Even if he is on the faculty list, that doesn't mean it isn't a cover story." He was not going to let Ariel think for a second that she could lie to the group and not be found out.
"A cover story? For what? What are you talking about?" Ariel asked, totally confused now. She looked around the group again, searching for someone to actually explain, since Michael refused to answer.
"We're the ones asking the questions, not you," Tess interjected. "So I suggest you start answering."
Before Ariel could reply, Alex had news for the group. "Her father is on the faculty list," he told them.
"Alex, like Michael said that doesn't mean anything," Liz reminded him.
"She still hasn't said what she wants here in Roswell," Maria added, then turned to Ariel with a questioning look.
"I didn't even want to come here in the first place. It really sucked to have to leave all my friends and everything, but my parents wouldn't let me stay. All I want is to survive senior year, make some friends and have some fun until I can go back home for college," Ariel answered honestly. She hoped that Brian and Kara would want to go back East. They seemed interested in living there again.
"Home?" Isabel asked sharply.
"Pennyslvania," Ariel reminded Isabel. "We lived a little south of Philadelphia."
Max and Michael exchanged a look. This was the same old story that she had told everyone already. They weren't getting anywhere. If Ariel wasn't going to tell them the full truth, then it was time to confront her with it. "Let's see if you have more to add when you see this," Michael said, more than a hint of malice in his voice. Alex turned his laptop so that Ariel could see the screen.
Meanwhile, Liz had another question for Ariel. "Where did you get your necklace like this?" she asked, showing Ariel the necklace that Max had given her. Liz had seen Ariel's necklace with the other jewelry when the girls had hung out with Ariel the other afternoon.
Ariel's eyes widened to see another necklace like hers. For a second, Ariel thought that Liz might have taken her necklace, but then Ariel noticed that this necklace was broken and looked more worn than hers. Not to mention the fact that Ariel knew her necklace was still in its place on her dresser. "Oh, my God." Ariel exclaimed in amazement. "I've never seen another one like mine. It's the only thing I still have from the night my parents found me and David." At the group's questioning looks, Ariel added, "They found us wandering lost in the woods when we were about five years old and later adopted us. We don't remember anything before that."
"Right," Isabel said in her classic, sarcastic Ice Princess tone. Isabel knew that lie about not remembering anything before age five because she and Max had told their parents the same thing.
Ariel barely heard Isabel. She was focused on finding out more about that necklace, her only connection to her and David's past. "Liz, where did you get your necklace?" Please answer me, Liz, she silently pleaded with Liz. Even after all this time, Ariel needed so much to find out something, anything about the past she couldn't remember. Max gave Liz a warning look, and Liz kept silent. "Please?" she asked them. "This could be the only clue I have to my past. Maybe you can't understand what that means to me.maybe it's something that only somebody else who's adopted can understand.but it's what David and I have been searching for our whole lives. Please tell me." Max and Isabel exchanged a look, and Ariel could see that somehow this hit home for them, too.
But instead of answering Ariel, Max turned to Alex and said, "Alex, go ahead." Alex nodded and began to play the video for Ariel.
Ariel gasped in horror as she saw what was playing on the computer screen. It was a recording of herself and David in her bedroom last night before they had gone out with Brian and Kara! "Oh, my God.you guys were spying on us?" She asked, half furious that the people she thought were her friends would do this, and half terrified of what they may have learned. Ariel watched with a growing dread as the conversation between herself and David about their powers played on the computer monitor. Then, the color drained from Ariel's face as she watched herself use her powers to fix the broken figurine that the wind had knocked to the floor. "No." Ariel whispered brokenly as the truth sank in. She and David were going to have to leave their parents forever and run away from Roswell. They'd be hiding and looking over their shoulders, running from danger for the rest of their lives. And it was all her fault. Ariel had never fully let herself believe that this nightmare would ever really happen, but now it had. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"So you see that we know the truth, Ariel," Max said as he switched off the device. He wanted to give Isabel the chance to see if Ariel was telling the truth or not. "We know who you are, and you know who we are. The question is, whose side are you on?"
"Max, what are you talking about? Of course we all know each other! We met at the Crashdown the day I moved here!" Ariel cried out in fury. Suddenly, she found that her hands and legs were free, and that the strange feeling was gone now that Max had shut off the device. Standing shakily and brushing the tears from her eyes, she looked around the group, meeting each person's eyes with an intense, heartbreaking gaze. "Do any of you have the slightest idea of what you've done? Do you realize that now David and I can never live normal lives again? We're going to have to leave our parents, leave everything, now. If the government learns about what we can do, they'll experiment on us or worse, and they'd never let us go alive. We'll be running and hiding from them for the rest of our lives! Do you have any understanding of what that's like? Would any of you want to be ripped away from your families and have to live every day terrified of being caught?" Ariel's tears were flowing freely again, and she couldn't even see the stunned expressions on the faces of those around her as she sank to the floor and sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Why did you do this? Why?"
Isabel was crying, too. She understood Ariel and her plight, having almost gone through exactly the same thing herself. Isabel was easily able to get into Ariel's mind, and she saw that Ariel had been telling the truth. "Oh, my God, Max." she whispered to her brother. "She's telling the truth about everything. She doesn't know.she doesn't know who we are. She doesn't even know who she is."
Ariel forced herself to calm down and think. She had to get rid of the evidence. She stood, feeling stronger this time. With a graceful gesture of her hand, Ariel used her powers to make Alex's keyboard fly from the table and into her hands. Throwing up a shield, she quickly searched for the video and was relieved to find that the recording was only on the floppy disk. Taking out the disk, she concentrated and turned the disk to ashes that she let slip through her fingers to fall to the floor. "Are there any copies of this?" she asked Alex.
"N..no." Alex stammered nervously.
Ariel reached out mentally to him and knew that he was telling the truth. "Thank God," she sighed in relief. She let the shield down.
Michael walked over to Max and said quietly, "Maxwell, we can't just let her leave here. She's an alien, which means she has to be a skin. And she's a hybrid. She's really powerful, more than we are together. We couldn't even break through that shield of hers. She and her brother are probably like us. We can't let them live to become our enemy. We need to strike while she's weakened."
As much as Max hated to admit it, Michael was right. He couldn't afford to let anything happen to the people he loved. "I'm sorry, Ariel." Max said with regret as he, Michael, Isabel, and Tess focused their powers with a deadly beam toward Ariel.
When Ariel got up to her room after saying goodnight to Brian, there was a message tacked to her bulletin board. Smiling to herself as she thought about what an amazing night it had been, Ariel closed her bedroom door and turned her light on to read the note. "Oh, awesome," she commented as she saw that Liz had called to invite her to a girls' night out at UFOnics tomorrow night. She quickly dressed for bed and brushed her teeth. As she climbed into bed, there was a knock at her door. "Come in," she called.
David walked in and sat down on the bed by her. "Hey. You and Brian seemed really cozy together tonight," David observed with a teasing grin.
Ariel laughed. "So did you and Kara. Oh, tonight was just perfect," she sighed dreamily.
"Yeah," David agreed completely. "Kara is amazing. She's intelligent, she's funny, she's."
"Perfect for you," Ariel broke in. She and David shared a laugh. They both knew how right Ariel was about that.
"Definitely." Then David saw the note. "Dancing tomorrow night, huh? Cool."
"Yeah, I'm going to call Liz back in the morning. You could invite the guys to do something," Ariel suggested. "I'd ask Kara to go dancing but she and Brian have that thing at their Dad's work."
The next morning, Ariel called Liz back to find out the details for the girls' night out. The girls would pick her up at around 8 in the evening. David called the guys, but nobody was home. Ariel and David decided to spend the day hiking at a nearby park.
By 8 o'clock, Ariel was just putting on the finishing touches of her makeup using her powers. She was dressed in a green tank top that showed a little midriff and a matching skirt. As Ariel gave her blonde hair a final brushing and hairspray, she heard the honk of the car horn. Grabbing her purse, Ariel kissed her parents goodbye and headed out to Maria's Jetta. "Hey, girls," Ariel greeted everyone with a cheerful smile as she slid in the backseat next to Isabel. A short drive later, and the Jetta pulled up to the UFO Center. Ariel was surprised that the UFOnics club would be there, but she guessed it made sense. Until she saw that there were only a couple other cars around. But, the girls knew what they were doing, Ariel figured, so she followed them inside without asking about it. Maria was her usual bubbly self, but Isabel, Tess, and Liz were strangely quiet as they all headed down a flight of steps. Tess and Isabel walked behind her, Maria, and Liz. Ariel listened for music, but didn't hear anything. Maybe they were just visiting Max at work on their way to UFOnics, Ariel guessed. Sure enough, when they reached the bottom of the steps, there were Max, Michael, Alex, and Kyle. "Hi," Ariel greeted them. "David called you guys to see if you wanted to do something tonight since us girls are going out. He's at home if you want to catch him there."
When nobody said anything, Ariel looked around the group, a little uncomfortably, and noticed the looks everyone was giving her. For some reason, they looked at her like a possible enemy that they wanted to.interrogate or something? They seemed unsure about her. "What?" she asked nervously. Then the group turned to Max, and Ariel did as well, sensing that he would let her know what was going on.
"Ariel, sit down," Max said in a commanding voice, gesturing to a chair in the center of the room.
Ariel looked from Max to the chair and back, uncertain that she should sit down. All she wanted to do at that point was get out of this room. "Max, what's going on?" She asked, backing away toward the stairs. Isabel and Tess grabbed her by the arms and had her sitting down in the chair before she could pull herself away from them. Then Michael and Kyle grabbed her hands behind her and cuffed them together so that she couldn't get out of the chair. Ariel struggled and fought against them with all her strength, but she couldn't stop them from tying her legs to the chair, too, so that she couldn't fight anymore. "What you do guys want?" She asked bitterly, with hurt and betrayal in her voice. She looked every one of them levelly in the eye, refusing to let them see her cry. A million possibilities went through her mind. Was this some sort of stupid group initiation ritual? Did they want to hurt her for some reason? Oh, God, did they know somehow about her powers?
"We want to know the truth about who you are why you're really here," Michael answered her.
Ariel gave him a puzzled expression. "You did all this just to ask me that? You already know why I moved here. My dad is going to be teaching at Las Cruces University." She mentally reached out to the group to find out from them what they really wanted, but found that some force was blocking her. Isabel whispered something urgently to Max, who turned on a strange device. Suddenly, Ariel found that she could no longer use her abilities. With a jolt of panic, Ariel realized that she was completely trapped now. And she could tell that the group didn't believe her. "Just check the university's website. He's on the faculty list," Ariel suggested to Alex, seeing that Alex had brought his laptop with him. Ariel just knew that Alex would have web access and could verify the truth. Alex and Max exchanged a look, and Max nodded.
As Alex went to the website, Michael commented to Ariel and the others. "Even if he is on the faculty list, that doesn't mean it isn't a cover story." He was not going to let Ariel think for a second that she could lie to the group and not be found out.
"A cover story? For what? What are you talking about?" Ariel asked, totally confused now. She looked around the group again, searching for someone to actually explain, since Michael refused to answer.
"We're the ones asking the questions, not you," Tess interjected. "So I suggest you start answering."
Before Ariel could reply, Alex had news for the group. "Her father is on the faculty list," he told them.
"Alex, like Michael said that doesn't mean anything," Liz reminded him.
"She still hasn't said what she wants here in Roswell," Maria added, then turned to Ariel with a questioning look.
"I didn't even want to come here in the first place. It really sucked to have to leave all my friends and everything, but my parents wouldn't let me stay. All I want is to survive senior year, make some friends and have some fun until I can go back home for college," Ariel answered honestly. She hoped that Brian and Kara would want to go back East. They seemed interested in living there again.
"Home?" Isabel asked sharply.
"Pennyslvania," Ariel reminded Isabel. "We lived a little south of Philadelphia."
Max and Michael exchanged a look. This was the same old story that she had told everyone already. They weren't getting anywhere. If Ariel wasn't going to tell them the full truth, then it was time to confront her with it. "Let's see if you have more to add when you see this," Michael said, more than a hint of malice in his voice. Alex turned his laptop so that Ariel could see the screen.
Meanwhile, Liz had another question for Ariel. "Where did you get your necklace like this?" she asked, showing Ariel the necklace that Max had given her. Liz had seen Ariel's necklace with the other jewelry when the girls had hung out with Ariel the other afternoon.
Ariel's eyes widened to see another necklace like hers. For a second, Ariel thought that Liz might have taken her necklace, but then Ariel noticed that this necklace was broken and looked more worn than hers. Not to mention the fact that Ariel knew her necklace was still in its place on her dresser. "Oh, my God." Ariel exclaimed in amazement. "I've never seen another one like mine. It's the only thing I still have from the night my parents found me and David." At the group's questioning looks, Ariel added, "They found us wandering lost in the woods when we were about five years old and later adopted us. We don't remember anything before that."
"Right," Isabel said in her classic, sarcastic Ice Princess tone. Isabel knew that lie about not remembering anything before age five because she and Max had told their parents the same thing.
Ariel barely heard Isabel. She was focused on finding out more about that necklace, her only connection to her and David's past. "Liz, where did you get your necklace?" Please answer me, Liz, she silently pleaded with Liz. Even after all this time, Ariel needed so much to find out something, anything about the past she couldn't remember. Max gave Liz a warning look, and Liz kept silent. "Please?" she asked them. "This could be the only clue I have to my past. Maybe you can't understand what that means to me.maybe it's something that only somebody else who's adopted can understand.but it's what David and I have been searching for our whole lives. Please tell me." Max and Isabel exchanged a look, and Ariel could see that somehow this hit home for them, too.
But instead of answering Ariel, Max turned to Alex and said, "Alex, go ahead." Alex nodded and began to play the video for Ariel.
Ariel gasped in horror as she saw what was playing on the computer screen. It was a recording of herself and David in her bedroom last night before they had gone out with Brian and Kara! "Oh, my God.you guys were spying on us?" She asked, half furious that the people she thought were her friends would do this, and half terrified of what they may have learned. Ariel watched with a growing dread as the conversation between herself and David about their powers played on the computer monitor. Then, the color drained from Ariel's face as she watched herself use her powers to fix the broken figurine that the wind had knocked to the floor. "No." Ariel whispered brokenly as the truth sank in. She and David were going to have to leave their parents forever and run away from Roswell. They'd be hiding and looking over their shoulders, running from danger for the rest of their lives. And it was all her fault. Ariel had never fully let herself believe that this nightmare would ever really happen, but now it had. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"So you see that we know the truth, Ariel," Max said as he switched off the device. He wanted to give Isabel the chance to see if Ariel was telling the truth or not. "We know who you are, and you know who we are. The question is, whose side are you on?"
"Max, what are you talking about? Of course we all know each other! We met at the Crashdown the day I moved here!" Ariel cried out in fury. Suddenly, she found that her hands and legs were free, and that the strange feeling was gone now that Max had shut off the device. Standing shakily and brushing the tears from her eyes, she looked around the group, meeting each person's eyes with an intense, heartbreaking gaze. "Do any of you have the slightest idea of what you've done? Do you realize that now David and I can never live normal lives again? We're going to have to leave our parents, leave everything, now. If the government learns about what we can do, they'll experiment on us or worse, and they'd never let us go alive. We'll be running and hiding from them for the rest of our lives! Do you have any understanding of what that's like? Would any of you want to be ripped away from your families and have to live every day terrified of being caught?" Ariel's tears were flowing freely again, and she couldn't even see the stunned expressions on the faces of those around her as she sank to the floor and sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Why did you do this? Why?"
Isabel was crying, too. She understood Ariel and her plight, having almost gone through exactly the same thing herself. Isabel was easily able to get into Ariel's mind, and she saw that Ariel had been telling the truth. "Oh, my God, Max." she whispered to her brother. "She's telling the truth about everything. She doesn't know.she doesn't know who we are. She doesn't even know who she is."
Ariel forced herself to calm down and think. She had to get rid of the evidence. She stood, feeling stronger this time. With a graceful gesture of her hand, Ariel used her powers to make Alex's keyboard fly from the table and into her hands. Throwing up a shield, she quickly searched for the video and was relieved to find that the recording was only on the floppy disk. Taking out the disk, she concentrated and turned the disk to ashes that she let slip through her fingers to fall to the floor. "Are there any copies of this?" she asked Alex.
"N..no." Alex stammered nervously.
Ariel reached out mentally to him and knew that he was telling the truth. "Thank God," she sighed in relief. She let the shield down.
Michael walked over to Max and said quietly, "Maxwell, we can't just let her leave here. She's an alien, which means she has to be a skin. And she's a hybrid. She's really powerful, more than we are together. We couldn't even break through that shield of hers. She and her brother are probably like us. We can't let them live to become our enemy. We need to strike while she's weakened."
As much as Max hated to admit it, Michael was right. He couldn't afford to let anything happen to the people he loved. "I'm sorry, Ariel." Max said with regret as he, Michael, Isabel, and Tess focused their powers with a deadly beam toward Ariel.