Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad
Part: 2
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom. ;)
Max hurried into his house through the back door, and felt a huge relief to see his mom standing there in the kitchen, chopping up tomatoes. From a large saucepan on the stove he could already smell the aroma of home-made spaghetti sauce... hamburger and more tomato and onion and garlic and oregano and just enough hot peppers to give it the right kick. "Mom!!" he exclaimed in relief, rushing over towards her.
"Uh... yeah honey??" Diane Evans asked with a clear question mark in her voice -- the question probably being what was making him act so strangely.
"Ummm..." Max quickly covered up a little. "Nothing... just that dinner smells delicious. Is Isabel here? Did Michael come by??" Certain that the true answer was no, who Max was really asking after were the sinister dupes, Lonnie and Rath.
"No, haven't seen either of them all day. Do you know if your sister's going to be here for dinner?"
"I doubt it." Okay, that was reassuring on two counts, and Max discretely waved out the window at his compatriots still waiting outside in the driveway, all crammed into the Jetta - well, not too badly crammed now that he was in here. There was no particular reason for them to all wait outside at this point, though for the whole lot of them to come in at once would probably surprise his mom.
Meanwhile, two of his fears had been put to rest, so Max decided to tackle the last one head on. "And Dad??" he asked his mother. "Is he..."
"Got home about ten minutes ago, and he's off playing with those weird moving patterns on his computer," his mother reported. "Maybe you should go in with him, Max... spend a little quality t-- oh, hello there!!" Liz and Tess had just come in. "I didn't realize that you had comp..." A sound distracted all of their attention to the driveway, and Mrs. Evans hurried to the window in time to see the Jetta pulling back out of the driveway. "Ummm... did Maria give you guys a ride? Where's the Jeep, Max?"
"Umm... I lent it to Isabel," he covered, hoping tha that half-truth wouldn't end up causing more problems later. Quickly he pulled Liz aside for a private word. Tess automatically jumped in to divert Max's mother... something about her dad always adding diced pepperoni into spaghetti sauce, which Max found doubtful considering what he knew of Ed Harding, but...
"Maria??" he hissed frantically at Liz.
"She wanted to make sure her Mom was okay," Liz said. "I didn't think it would be a big risk. She'll check in."
Max nodded, and then realized that the phone was ringing. His mother picked it up. "Hello, Evans residence?" A look of surprise crossed her face. "Why yes, she just walked on the door." She held out the phone to Liz. "It's for you."
Liz blinked in utter shock. Who would be calling for her here?? "Who is it??" she managed to mumble out.
"Umm... he didn't give a name... should I..."
Max nodded Liz towards the phone encouragingly. She smiled back slightly and took it, and Max faded back into the rec room and silently picked up another extension. When he got on the line, Liz was asking: "-at is it, Brett??" Brett was a waiter at the crashdown cafe.
"I don't know how to tell you this, but... your parents have been taken prisoner, or something like that."
Liz gasped. "What.... how??"
"It was that kid Michael, and a girl... your exboyfriend's sister, Isamenth. They musta gone off the deep end or something, because they came charging in here with knives. Agnes called the cops."
"She did??" Liz repeated somewhat blankly. Then she pulled herself together noticeably. "Thanks, Brett. By the way -- can you think of anything in particular that Michael and Isabel said while it was happening that seems like it might be relevant?? Anything that was even more out of character than kidnapping my parents with knives?"
"Hmmm..." Pause. "No, can't say that I can think of anything, Leezabella. Wish I could... your old man's been nothing but decent to me, and your mom?? Hh--"
Liz and Max hung up the line simultaneously before Brett could finish his inappropriate outburst.
Liz hurried to join Max in the rec room. "Well, I guess that answers the unpleasant question of what *they* did after finding out that Harding House was empty. Dammit, why'd they have to take it out on MY..." She trailed off in midrant, realizing that she was stepping dangerously close to wishing her misfortune on someone else.
"On your parents?" Max asked softly, taking her hand in his comfortingly. Liz only left it there a moment before taking her own hand back. "I don't know... may have been sheer opportunity, or they may have been trying to make a move that we wouldn't be defending against ahead of time." He sighed, and realized that Tess was standing there. "In any event, I'm pretty sure that your folks are safe, Liz," he told her. "Rath and Lonnie will want to use them as bargaining chips, not to do anything stupid right away."
Right then a cell phone rang, and Max took it out of his pocket - Maria's cell phone, which Max had kept because it was the one that Michael was going to call and check in on. Was it really Michael calling... or one of the dupes, or someone else entirely??
It was Isabel... the real Isabel, Max was quickly able to verify. "Tell me you're starting to get your powers back," he demanded of her.
"No, sorry, not a trace as of yet. Why??"
"We got a report that you and Michael broke into the Crash with knives and kidnapped Liz's parents."
"Oh my god," Isabel breathed. "That's... what do we do now??"
Max sighed. "We wait... as long as we can. I don't want to go up against Rath and Lonnie until we've got more firepower than they do. The gruesome twosome don't seem particularly likely, to me, to try the kidnapping routine more than once, but we'll keep watch on all the usual targets."
************
"Okay," Max said, looking into Isabel's eyes. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"
"Yeah," she nodded.
"Okay." He dropped something on the table between them. "Try to lift this."
Isabel concentrated on the heavy lead weight. After about fifteen seconds, one side of it lifted up... and fell, lifted and fell again. Finally, she managed to get that one side up and keep it up steadily... for about ten seconds, and then it clapped down again. "Whew. That's about all I can do."
"It's still more that most people can lift with their brains alone," Max pointed out. "Okay..." He reached out to take Isabel's hand, but someone knocked on the door before he could.
"It's Lonnie on the line," Michael said, barging in before anyone had answered his knock.
"You handle her, we're busy," Max said. "Ask to talk to Liz's folks; make sure they're being treated right. If Lonnie and Rath hurt them I'll make sure I see them cut apart into tiny little chunks.
Michael considered a moment. "Got it," he said, swinging back out of the room and bringing the phone back up towards his ear again.
Max reached out to touch Isabel's hand and connected with her system. "Try to lift the weight again." Isabel tried, and for a second Max could feel the weight about to take off for the ceilig because of HIS powers, which were available to Isabel because of the connection between them. But that wasn't what Max wanted - he wanted to observe Isabel's system in isolation, so he cut his own power off from her, maintaining the connection only for observation, something that he didn't know he could do before this.
Again only one side of the weight could lift, and only briefly - Isabel had been straining her system before. But Max could see... well no, not see because it wasn't like that. He could FEEL the foreign agents in her bloodstream blocking something in her brain when she tried to use her powers. Inhibiting a neurotransmitter reaction.
"Okay, that's enough." Isabel relazed her effort, and Max tried to get rid of the drug particle, to denature them into something harmless, but there were so many, almost entirely below his threshold of perception, and he wasn't sure how the drug really worked anyway. (He wouldn't want to break it down into something lethal, and he couldn't really control where they DID break... like snapping a small twig in your fingers.) When he had Isabel try her power one more time, there was no noticeable improvement.
Alex showed up next. "I've got something," he told Max. "Might be the edge we need."
************
"Okay, so gos over it for us again," Rath said, grabbing Liz by the shoulder. "How's this gonna works??"
Liz wrenched herself around enough to look back, and make sure that her parents were safe with Tess and Michael now. While she and Kyle on the other hand, were now here with Rath and Lonnie and definitely NOT safe.
"The four of us drive out to the rocks again," Liz told him. "I go up the path to detrigger the trap we set at the entrance to the pod chamber." Lonnie nodded grimly.
"You didn't go back there, did you??" Kyle asked.
"No, but I knew you cornballs woulda done something like that," Lonnie sneered. "Lemme guess - only a nonalien can get close enough to turn it off without it blowing up??" she guessed.
"More or less," Liz said, hoping Kyle would take the hint. If Lonnie and Rath didn't realize the true nature of the Tritium amplifiers, Liz would have a much better chance of carrying out her phase of the (hastily written) plan smoothly. "Once I've defused the bomb, I'll take it back down the path to let you guys know that it's safe to come up." Rath's eyes narrowed suspiciously at that point, but he nodded for her to go on. "We point out the pod squad chamber, you try to use your handprints to open it. If you can't, then we call in Max to do it."
"Not Max," Lonnie countered. "Not with the shield. If we call in someone, we call in Isabel, and she comes in alone. Got it?"
Liz and Kyle exchanged a glance, and nodded. (Hopefully, it wouldn't matter -- Rath and Lonnie shouldn't even really get to that point.) "You go in, take the Granilith and do whatever it is you want to, and you let us go. Agreed??"
Lonnie and Rath exchanged a glance at this point, and both grinned nastily. "Agreed."
Liz had to hide a smile at how badly the dupes were covering the delight in their own planned doublecross.
Liz had to force herself to neither hurry nor dawdle up the path... she didn't want Lonnie or Rath to get impatient, since Kyle would be there for them to take their frustration out on, but neither did she want to be exhausted at the time she'd have to spring their counterattack... and quite possibly fight for her life until help could arrive.
It was simple enough. She found the amplifier where Maria had left it and pressed the tiny, invisible touch-sensitive spot on it that altered the setting to a quiescent one. This, too, would be picked up on the other resonator, and would serve as a cue for their guys to move into position. Then she walked back down the path, and just before reaching Rath, Lonnie, and Kyle... she pressed on a different spot, triggering the Tritium device in an entirely new configuration.
A huge shock wave burst out of the device, passing through Liz's body without any sensation greater than a tingle as it spread out in all directions. But Lonnie and Rath were knocked back and away from Liz as if they had been hit by Mac trucks, while Kyle also seemed to be unaffected. Liz quickly ducked away behind an unlikely boulder, while Kyle scrambled up onto a rock from which he felt he would be able to defend himself.
It's a good thing that they felt confident in their powers and their knives to keep us from causing trouble, Kyle thought to himself as he watched the two clones pick themselves up... murder in their eyes. Might have been a smart idea for them to handcuff me... even just tie my wrists together behind my back. Kyle sighed slightly in relief when Rath pointed a palm up at him and concentrated... to no effect at all. Michael had told them that the setting Liz was to use would hurt the clones and supress their powers temporarily... long enough, hopefully, for the cavalry to come charging in.
Furious with the failure of his purely alien assault, Rath brought his switchblade back out and charged to the base of Kyle's rock. He started to climb up the same way the Kyle had... and then dropped to the ground when he realized how easy it would be for Kyle to stomp down on his head if it got much higher. Kyle chuckled hollowly, but didn't let down his guard... the dumb brute would figure out some other way. He just hoped that Liz would be able to keep herself hidden until Max arrived.
"Find the girl," Lonnie snapped at Rath, thumbing the switch on her own knife so that the blade glinted dangerously in the desert sunlight. "I'll handle this reject."
Oh-kay.
Kyle stood warily, watching the hybrid young woman, wishing he'd had an opportunity to pick up some Shao-lin kung fu or something of the sort. Ah well. The path he was on was his reality, and he'd just have to trust in the cosmos that that would prove enough.
Lonnie climbed up onto another boulder nearby... a nice big one with a wide flat top that seemed to point towards his own perch. Suddenly Kyle realized what she was up to, and tried to evalute his options as Lonnie stood up and took her place for a running jump. Should he dive aside, off the rock?? No, if he ran, she'd just follow him. If he stayed there, he might be able to deflect her leap, knock HER down, and then there wouldn't be much she could do but try again.
As Lonnie sailed through the air between them, Kyle tried to shove her aside and onward, but she slashed viciously at him, and he flinched away slightly by instinct, and then she was there... crouched on the corner of his high ground, but definitely THERE, and obviously not intending to be moved easily.
Kyle tried a punch to the side of her head, and it connected hard, but Lonnie just answered with a swinging leg sweep. As Kyle's feet were seemingly pulled toward and to the side from under him, he had to catch hiself with his hands in an awkward crab position to keep the small of his back from smashing itself into a rocky projection. Lonnie scuttled over his body, looking for an opportunity to drive her blade home. Kyle grabbed her arms and pushed up, flipping both of them over so that he was pinning Lonnie against the boulder, but Lonnie just reacted by using the new leverage to butt her forehead into Kyle's nose. In the crashing pain, he felt his grip loosen, and Lonnie wrench her knife arm away.
"Drop it!!" Both of them looked over to see Kyle's father standing there, pointing an automatic pistol at Lonnie. Tess and Isabel stood beside him.
Outraged, Lonnie waved her knife hand vaguely at Jim... and the cruel grin returned to her face when she realized that the gun had flown violently out of his hands. Snarling, she turned back to Kyle, determined to finish him off the old-fashined way no matter what else happened.
She didn't quite have time. The switchblade drew blood in Kyle's chest but Lonnie's fingers lost their grip and dropped it penetrated anything crucial, he somehow realized. Lonnie was staring down at him... at the knife she had just dropped... and with a final effort brought her hand up to touch the object that had penetrated her skull... a seven-inch long stainless steel nail file. And then she collapsed on top of him, and almost instantly Lonnie's body began to disintegrate into fine white dust. Everyone turned to look at the person responsible for launching that nail file with such deadly velocity... Lonnie's opposite number, Isabel.
"Whh..." Kyle's voice broke from the tension, and he had to clear his throat and start again. "What about Liz??"
************
Max and Michael were facing off a desperate Rath, who was holding his knife to Liz's neck. "Come on, Rath, don't do anything stupid," Max warned. "Let Liz go, and we'll... we'll let you go. Fair trade, the way I look at it."
"Yeah, right," Rath spit. "Da way youz said you wuz gonna give us da Granilith, in exchange for her parents, and den for her and de other human kid. Youz wuz just WAITIN' for a chance to screw us over!! No way I'm gonna give you whutcha want this..."
All of a sudden things started to happen. Rath's knife flex away, propelled by a burst of force from Michael, and Max rushed forward to try to effect Liz's rescue as soon as he realized that he had an opportunity. But Rath was realizing what was happening at the same time, and he clapped his right hand to Liz's neck in a commanding grasp, and waved his left hand out. A small rock near Max, sitting on the desert floor, exploded in a tiny hail of stony shrapnel.
"Nicely done," Rath spat. "Youz woulda had me by now, 'cept that I've got my powers back now from that surge overload." He turned to look at Max warningly. "Now, yous is probably figgering that you's close enough to touch me and connect wit' me... squeeze my heart valves closed, or my brain arteries. But just think about this: I'm right here, and I can connect with your dear darling in as much time as it takes to think about it. If I can't kill her before you get to me, I can do something so bad that yous and she would wish I had. Don't think I can't."
Max waited a moment, staying perfectly still. "Okay. Then what do you want?"
Rath frowned. "Gimme a minute, alls right??"
Suddenly a car door slammed, and Max dived forward, terrified that Rath would panic with this new development. It was only a split instant before he was touching Rath's hand, and connecting. Instinct was in full control.
"FREEZE! *POLICE*!!" Max looked 'into' Rath's brain, stunned at what he managed to do. Something else occured to him -- something that he'd never even thought he was capable of before, but the same instinct was showing him how. (A detatched portion of Max's brain noticed that Liz had run away from her attacked and rescuer already, and was crying in Michael's arms with relief. Max did the second thing and disconnected, shoving Rath away and collapsing himself.
"Well, not to say that I didn't believe Mister Parker, but that's something else," Sheriff Hanson was saying, looking at Michael and the unconscious Rath. "You really do look like Xerox copies. Any notion where your identical twin came from, Mister Guerin??"
"Um... not really, except that he said something about New York," Michael mumbled, his brain racing. Liz's parents had called the sheriff in?? And just what would Rath have to say to the cops? Could Hanson even hold him? Rath had gotten his powers back, and he seemed good at using them to protect his own ass - and without the slightest consideration for human beings.
"Well, that's the tatoo there," Hanson said, looking at the side of Rath's neck under his hair - he must have been too sloppy or too vain to get rid of it. Hanson investigated Rath a little bit further, and turned to Michael. "Under the circumstances, I hope you won't object to helping me verify your identity, Mister Guerin?? You may want a little privacy." He nodded at Liz.
In a few moments, Liz was sitting with Kyle and his father and almost all calmed down, Isabel had made sure that Max was alright, and between two rocky outcroppings Hanson had run through a list of Michael's distinguishing characteristics on record, and was satisfied about his and Rath's identities. "So... can I ask what happens to him now?"
"Well, I'm not sure that the Parkers are wild about testifying, and it turns out that this character has a list of outstanding warrants as long as your arm. But I'm pretty certain that he's going away for a long time."
When they got back, Hanson's deputies had secured custody of Rath, who was awake, and the group of them watched the police car drive away. "Max, what are we going to do??" Michael asked.
"I'm not sure we need to do anything, Michael," Max mumbled. Before Michael could interrupt, Max continued. "I don't think I could do it again, but I've taken his powers away for good and scrambled his memories. Didn't plan it this way, but somehow I think Rath's going to be paying his dues to society... and not causing US any more trouble."
Michael blinked in shock. "You took away his powers for good? How??"
"I'm not really sure," Max admitted. "I just... I connected to Isabel earlier and tried to help her regain her powers, right?? I couldn't really do much with that, but somehow I could do the same things that the drugs did, directly to Rath's brain. And that means it's permanent... it's not a chemical that can fade from his system, and brain tissue never really heals completely." He looked at his hand in shock, realizing the horrible power that had been brought to bear through it.
"Well... I guess that's better than having to kill him," Michael pointed out. "I'm just glad Alex found that antidote to the drug in time."
**********
(March 9th 2002)
Alex Whitman's birthday party was in full swing... a small gathering, mostly of the usual suspects in the club, but highly spirited nonetheless.
Any wishes the birthday boy might have had in mind were blown out of the park when Isabel whispered her birthday surprise for him... later on, when they coulld find somewhere to be alone, she'd enact a reversal of Alex's own performance (or attempted performance) at her surprise party over a year and a half before.
Maria and Michael were slow dancing all by themselves. Tess and Kyle were watching 'Ocean's Eleven' on the super widescreen DVD player that Alex's parents had rented for the party.
Liz came up to Max as he started on his second helping of the birthday cake. "Listen, Max -- there's something that I have to tell you."
Something about the way she put that let Max know he wouldn't like it. "We can do it another time, if you like. I just thought... I mean, we hardly even see each other any more, so... but I didn't mean to ruin the party for you."
"Might as well get into it now," Max said. He wouldn't be able to enjoy the party with the secret hanging over him after all. "What is it?"
"I'm going to Chicago... for university, next year," Liz blurted out awkwardly. "They offered a free ride - I've confirmed."
"That... that's great," Max forced himself to say, wondering why the news was hitting him like a freight train. They hadn't been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time, true, and they didn't hang out particularly often lately, but Liz had been exaggerating when she implied that they hardly ever saw each other... there wasn't a week that went by that he didn't spend a little time with her in some way or another. And he couldn't grasp the notion of her being thirteen hundred miles away. (Yes, he'd checked in an atlas when she'd first mentioned Northwestern.)
"I hope that you love it there."
"Goddammit Max!!" The expostulation apparently startled Liz as much as Max from the look on her face, but she continued on. "If we have nothing else left, why can't we at least be honest with each other??"
"Do we really want to be, Liz??" Max asked. "I could say that I don't want you to leave, that I don't understand why you don't want to be with me, that I'm still as muc in love with you as I ever was. That's all the truth... does saying it make anything any easier??" He waited a long moment, with everyone staring at them, Liz overwhelmed and clearly fighting back tears. "I didn't think so." He turned around and stormed out.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Part: 2
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom. ;)
Max hurried into his house through the back door, and felt a huge relief to see his mom standing there in the kitchen, chopping up tomatoes. From a large saucepan on the stove he could already smell the aroma of home-made spaghetti sauce... hamburger and more tomato and onion and garlic and oregano and just enough hot peppers to give it the right kick. "Mom!!" he exclaimed in relief, rushing over towards her.
"Uh... yeah honey??" Diane Evans asked with a clear question mark in her voice -- the question probably being what was making him act so strangely.
"Ummm..." Max quickly covered up a little. "Nothing... just that dinner smells delicious. Is Isabel here? Did Michael come by??" Certain that the true answer was no, who Max was really asking after were the sinister dupes, Lonnie and Rath.
"No, haven't seen either of them all day. Do you know if your sister's going to be here for dinner?"
"I doubt it." Okay, that was reassuring on two counts, and Max discretely waved out the window at his compatriots still waiting outside in the driveway, all crammed into the Jetta - well, not too badly crammed now that he was in here. There was no particular reason for them to all wait outside at this point, though for the whole lot of them to come in at once would probably surprise his mom.
Meanwhile, two of his fears had been put to rest, so Max decided to tackle the last one head on. "And Dad??" he asked his mother. "Is he..."
"Got home about ten minutes ago, and he's off playing with those weird moving patterns on his computer," his mother reported. "Maybe you should go in with him, Max... spend a little quality t-- oh, hello there!!" Liz and Tess had just come in. "I didn't realize that you had comp..." A sound distracted all of their attention to the driveway, and Mrs. Evans hurried to the window in time to see the Jetta pulling back out of the driveway. "Ummm... did Maria give you guys a ride? Where's the Jeep, Max?"
"Umm... I lent it to Isabel," he covered, hoping tha that half-truth wouldn't end up causing more problems later. Quickly he pulled Liz aside for a private word. Tess automatically jumped in to divert Max's mother... something about her dad always adding diced pepperoni into spaghetti sauce, which Max found doubtful considering what he knew of Ed Harding, but...
"Maria??" he hissed frantically at Liz.
"She wanted to make sure her Mom was okay," Liz said. "I didn't think it would be a big risk. She'll check in."
Max nodded, and then realized that the phone was ringing. His mother picked it up. "Hello, Evans residence?" A look of surprise crossed her face. "Why yes, she just walked on the door." She held out the phone to Liz. "It's for you."
Liz blinked in utter shock. Who would be calling for her here?? "Who is it??" she managed to mumble out.
"Umm... he didn't give a name... should I..."
Max nodded Liz towards the phone encouragingly. She smiled back slightly and took it, and Max faded back into the rec room and silently picked up another extension. When he got on the line, Liz was asking: "-at is it, Brett??" Brett was a waiter at the crashdown cafe.
"I don't know how to tell you this, but... your parents have been taken prisoner, or something like that."
Liz gasped. "What.... how??"
"It was that kid Michael, and a girl... your exboyfriend's sister, Isamenth. They musta gone off the deep end or something, because they came charging in here with knives. Agnes called the cops."
"She did??" Liz repeated somewhat blankly. Then she pulled herself together noticeably. "Thanks, Brett. By the way -- can you think of anything in particular that Michael and Isabel said while it was happening that seems like it might be relevant?? Anything that was even more out of character than kidnapping my parents with knives?"
"Hmmm..." Pause. "No, can't say that I can think of anything, Leezabella. Wish I could... your old man's been nothing but decent to me, and your mom?? Hh--"
Liz and Max hung up the line simultaneously before Brett could finish his inappropriate outburst.
Liz hurried to join Max in the rec room. "Well, I guess that answers the unpleasant question of what *they* did after finding out that Harding House was empty. Dammit, why'd they have to take it out on MY..." She trailed off in midrant, realizing that she was stepping dangerously close to wishing her misfortune on someone else.
"On your parents?" Max asked softly, taking her hand in his comfortingly. Liz only left it there a moment before taking her own hand back. "I don't know... may have been sheer opportunity, or they may have been trying to make a move that we wouldn't be defending against ahead of time." He sighed, and realized that Tess was standing there. "In any event, I'm pretty sure that your folks are safe, Liz," he told her. "Rath and Lonnie will want to use them as bargaining chips, not to do anything stupid right away."
Right then a cell phone rang, and Max took it out of his pocket - Maria's cell phone, which Max had kept because it was the one that Michael was going to call and check in on. Was it really Michael calling... or one of the dupes, or someone else entirely??
It was Isabel... the real Isabel, Max was quickly able to verify. "Tell me you're starting to get your powers back," he demanded of her.
"No, sorry, not a trace as of yet. Why??"
"We got a report that you and Michael broke into the Crash with knives and kidnapped Liz's parents."
"Oh my god," Isabel breathed. "That's... what do we do now??"
Max sighed. "We wait... as long as we can. I don't want to go up against Rath and Lonnie until we've got more firepower than they do. The gruesome twosome don't seem particularly likely, to me, to try the kidnapping routine more than once, but we'll keep watch on all the usual targets."
************
"Okay," Max said, looking into Isabel's eyes. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"
"Yeah," she nodded.
"Okay." He dropped something on the table between them. "Try to lift this."
Isabel concentrated on the heavy lead weight. After about fifteen seconds, one side of it lifted up... and fell, lifted and fell again. Finally, she managed to get that one side up and keep it up steadily... for about ten seconds, and then it clapped down again. "Whew. That's about all I can do."
"It's still more that most people can lift with their brains alone," Max pointed out. "Okay..." He reached out to take Isabel's hand, but someone knocked on the door before he could.
"It's Lonnie on the line," Michael said, barging in before anyone had answered his knock.
"You handle her, we're busy," Max said. "Ask to talk to Liz's folks; make sure they're being treated right. If Lonnie and Rath hurt them I'll make sure I see them cut apart into tiny little chunks.
Michael considered a moment. "Got it," he said, swinging back out of the room and bringing the phone back up towards his ear again.
Max reached out to touch Isabel's hand and connected with her system. "Try to lift the weight again." Isabel tried, and for a second Max could feel the weight about to take off for the ceilig because of HIS powers, which were available to Isabel because of the connection between them. But that wasn't what Max wanted - he wanted to observe Isabel's system in isolation, so he cut his own power off from her, maintaining the connection only for observation, something that he didn't know he could do before this.
Again only one side of the weight could lift, and only briefly - Isabel had been straining her system before. But Max could see... well no, not see because it wasn't like that. He could FEEL the foreign agents in her bloodstream blocking something in her brain when she tried to use her powers. Inhibiting a neurotransmitter reaction.
"Okay, that's enough." Isabel relazed her effort, and Max tried to get rid of the drug particle, to denature them into something harmless, but there were so many, almost entirely below his threshold of perception, and he wasn't sure how the drug really worked anyway. (He wouldn't want to break it down into something lethal, and he couldn't really control where they DID break... like snapping a small twig in your fingers.) When he had Isabel try her power one more time, there was no noticeable improvement.
Alex showed up next. "I've got something," he told Max. "Might be the edge we need."
************
"Okay, so gos over it for us again," Rath said, grabbing Liz by the shoulder. "How's this gonna works??"
Liz wrenched herself around enough to look back, and make sure that her parents were safe with Tess and Michael now. While she and Kyle on the other hand, were now here with Rath and Lonnie and definitely NOT safe.
"The four of us drive out to the rocks again," Liz told him. "I go up the path to detrigger the trap we set at the entrance to the pod chamber." Lonnie nodded grimly.
"You didn't go back there, did you??" Kyle asked.
"No, but I knew you cornballs woulda done something like that," Lonnie sneered. "Lemme guess - only a nonalien can get close enough to turn it off without it blowing up??" she guessed.
"More or less," Liz said, hoping Kyle would take the hint. If Lonnie and Rath didn't realize the true nature of the Tritium amplifiers, Liz would have a much better chance of carrying out her phase of the (hastily written) plan smoothly. "Once I've defused the bomb, I'll take it back down the path to let you guys know that it's safe to come up." Rath's eyes narrowed suspiciously at that point, but he nodded for her to go on. "We point out the pod squad chamber, you try to use your handprints to open it. If you can't, then we call in Max to do it."
"Not Max," Lonnie countered. "Not with the shield. If we call in someone, we call in Isabel, and she comes in alone. Got it?"
Liz and Kyle exchanged a glance, and nodded. (Hopefully, it wouldn't matter -- Rath and Lonnie shouldn't even really get to that point.) "You go in, take the Granilith and do whatever it is you want to, and you let us go. Agreed??"
Lonnie and Rath exchanged a glance at this point, and both grinned nastily. "Agreed."
Liz had to hide a smile at how badly the dupes were covering the delight in their own planned doublecross.
Liz had to force herself to neither hurry nor dawdle up the path... she didn't want Lonnie or Rath to get impatient, since Kyle would be there for them to take their frustration out on, but neither did she want to be exhausted at the time she'd have to spring their counterattack... and quite possibly fight for her life until help could arrive.
It was simple enough. She found the amplifier where Maria had left it and pressed the tiny, invisible touch-sensitive spot on it that altered the setting to a quiescent one. This, too, would be picked up on the other resonator, and would serve as a cue for their guys to move into position. Then she walked back down the path, and just before reaching Rath, Lonnie, and Kyle... she pressed on a different spot, triggering the Tritium device in an entirely new configuration.
A huge shock wave burst out of the device, passing through Liz's body without any sensation greater than a tingle as it spread out in all directions. But Lonnie and Rath were knocked back and away from Liz as if they had been hit by Mac trucks, while Kyle also seemed to be unaffected. Liz quickly ducked away behind an unlikely boulder, while Kyle scrambled up onto a rock from which he felt he would be able to defend himself.
It's a good thing that they felt confident in their powers and their knives to keep us from causing trouble, Kyle thought to himself as he watched the two clones pick themselves up... murder in their eyes. Might have been a smart idea for them to handcuff me... even just tie my wrists together behind my back. Kyle sighed slightly in relief when Rath pointed a palm up at him and concentrated... to no effect at all. Michael had told them that the setting Liz was to use would hurt the clones and supress their powers temporarily... long enough, hopefully, for the cavalry to come charging in.
Furious with the failure of his purely alien assault, Rath brought his switchblade back out and charged to the base of Kyle's rock. He started to climb up the same way the Kyle had... and then dropped to the ground when he realized how easy it would be for Kyle to stomp down on his head if it got much higher. Kyle chuckled hollowly, but didn't let down his guard... the dumb brute would figure out some other way. He just hoped that Liz would be able to keep herself hidden until Max arrived.
"Find the girl," Lonnie snapped at Rath, thumbing the switch on her own knife so that the blade glinted dangerously in the desert sunlight. "I'll handle this reject."
Oh-kay.
Kyle stood warily, watching the hybrid young woman, wishing he'd had an opportunity to pick up some Shao-lin kung fu or something of the sort. Ah well. The path he was on was his reality, and he'd just have to trust in the cosmos that that would prove enough.
Lonnie climbed up onto another boulder nearby... a nice big one with a wide flat top that seemed to point towards his own perch. Suddenly Kyle realized what she was up to, and tried to evalute his options as Lonnie stood up and took her place for a running jump. Should he dive aside, off the rock?? No, if he ran, she'd just follow him. If he stayed there, he might be able to deflect her leap, knock HER down, and then there wouldn't be much she could do but try again.
As Lonnie sailed through the air between them, Kyle tried to shove her aside and onward, but she slashed viciously at him, and he flinched away slightly by instinct, and then she was there... crouched on the corner of his high ground, but definitely THERE, and obviously not intending to be moved easily.
Kyle tried a punch to the side of her head, and it connected hard, but Lonnie just answered with a swinging leg sweep. As Kyle's feet were seemingly pulled toward and to the side from under him, he had to catch hiself with his hands in an awkward crab position to keep the small of his back from smashing itself into a rocky projection. Lonnie scuttled over his body, looking for an opportunity to drive her blade home. Kyle grabbed her arms and pushed up, flipping both of them over so that he was pinning Lonnie against the boulder, but Lonnie just reacted by using the new leverage to butt her forehead into Kyle's nose. In the crashing pain, he felt his grip loosen, and Lonnie wrench her knife arm away.
"Drop it!!" Both of them looked over to see Kyle's father standing there, pointing an automatic pistol at Lonnie. Tess and Isabel stood beside him.
Outraged, Lonnie waved her knife hand vaguely at Jim... and the cruel grin returned to her face when she realized that the gun had flown violently out of his hands. Snarling, she turned back to Kyle, determined to finish him off the old-fashined way no matter what else happened.
She didn't quite have time. The switchblade drew blood in Kyle's chest but Lonnie's fingers lost their grip and dropped it penetrated anything crucial, he somehow realized. Lonnie was staring down at him... at the knife she had just dropped... and with a final effort brought her hand up to touch the object that had penetrated her skull... a seven-inch long stainless steel nail file. And then she collapsed on top of him, and almost instantly Lonnie's body began to disintegrate into fine white dust. Everyone turned to look at the person responsible for launching that nail file with such deadly velocity... Lonnie's opposite number, Isabel.
"Whh..." Kyle's voice broke from the tension, and he had to clear his throat and start again. "What about Liz??"
************
Max and Michael were facing off a desperate Rath, who was holding his knife to Liz's neck. "Come on, Rath, don't do anything stupid," Max warned. "Let Liz go, and we'll... we'll let you go. Fair trade, the way I look at it."
"Yeah, right," Rath spit. "Da way youz said you wuz gonna give us da Granilith, in exchange for her parents, and den for her and de other human kid. Youz wuz just WAITIN' for a chance to screw us over!! No way I'm gonna give you whutcha want this..."
All of a sudden things started to happen. Rath's knife flex away, propelled by a burst of force from Michael, and Max rushed forward to try to effect Liz's rescue as soon as he realized that he had an opportunity. But Rath was realizing what was happening at the same time, and he clapped his right hand to Liz's neck in a commanding grasp, and waved his left hand out. A small rock near Max, sitting on the desert floor, exploded in a tiny hail of stony shrapnel.
"Nicely done," Rath spat. "Youz woulda had me by now, 'cept that I've got my powers back now from that surge overload." He turned to look at Max warningly. "Now, yous is probably figgering that you's close enough to touch me and connect wit' me... squeeze my heart valves closed, or my brain arteries. But just think about this: I'm right here, and I can connect with your dear darling in as much time as it takes to think about it. If I can't kill her before you get to me, I can do something so bad that yous and she would wish I had. Don't think I can't."
Max waited a moment, staying perfectly still. "Okay. Then what do you want?"
Rath frowned. "Gimme a minute, alls right??"
Suddenly a car door slammed, and Max dived forward, terrified that Rath would panic with this new development. It was only a split instant before he was touching Rath's hand, and connecting. Instinct was in full control.
"FREEZE! *POLICE*!!" Max looked 'into' Rath's brain, stunned at what he managed to do. Something else occured to him -- something that he'd never even thought he was capable of before, but the same instinct was showing him how. (A detatched portion of Max's brain noticed that Liz had run away from her attacked and rescuer already, and was crying in Michael's arms with relief. Max did the second thing and disconnected, shoving Rath away and collapsing himself.
"Well, not to say that I didn't believe Mister Parker, but that's something else," Sheriff Hanson was saying, looking at Michael and the unconscious Rath. "You really do look like Xerox copies. Any notion where your identical twin came from, Mister Guerin??"
"Um... not really, except that he said something about New York," Michael mumbled, his brain racing. Liz's parents had called the sheriff in?? And just what would Rath have to say to the cops? Could Hanson even hold him? Rath had gotten his powers back, and he seemed good at using them to protect his own ass - and without the slightest consideration for human beings.
"Well, that's the tatoo there," Hanson said, looking at the side of Rath's neck under his hair - he must have been too sloppy or too vain to get rid of it. Hanson investigated Rath a little bit further, and turned to Michael. "Under the circumstances, I hope you won't object to helping me verify your identity, Mister Guerin?? You may want a little privacy." He nodded at Liz.
In a few moments, Liz was sitting with Kyle and his father and almost all calmed down, Isabel had made sure that Max was alright, and between two rocky outcroppings Hanson had run through a list of Michael's distinguishing characteristics on record, and was satisfied about his and Rath's identities. "So... can I ask what happens to him now?"
"Well, I'm not sure that the Parkers are wild about testifying, and it turns out that this character has a list of outstanding warrants as long as your arm. But I'm pretty certain that he's going away for a long time."
When they got back, Hanson's deputies had secured custody of Rath, who was awake, and the group of them watched the police car drive away. "Max, what are we going to do??" Michael asked.
"I'm not sure we need to do anything, Michael," Max mumbled. Before Michael could interrupt, Max continued. "I don't think I could do it again, but I've taken his powers away for good and scrambled his memories. Didn't plan it this way, but somehow I think Rath's going to be paying his dues to society... and not causing US any more trouble."
Michael blinked in shock. "You took away his powers for good? How??"
"I'm not really sure," Max admitted. "I just... I connected to Isabel earlier and tried to help her regain her powers, right?? I couldn't really do much with that, but somehow I could do the same things that the drugs did, directly to Rath's brain. And that means it's permanent... it's not a chemical that can fade from his system, and brain tissue never really heals completely." He looked at his hand in shock, realizing the horrible power that had been brought to bear through it.
"Well... I guess that's better than having to kill him," Michael pointed out. "I'm just glad Alex found that antidote to the drug in time."
**********
(March 9th 2002)
Alex Whitman's birthday party was in full swing... a small gathering, mostly of the usual suspects in the club, but highly spirited nonetheless.
Any wishes the birthday boy might have had in mind were blown out of the park when Isabel whispered her birthday surprise for him... later on, when they coulld find somewhere to be alone, she'd enact a reversal of Alex's own performance (or attempted performance) at her surprise party over a year and a half before.
Maria and Michael were slow dancing all by themselves. Tess and Kyle were watching 'Ocean's Eleven' on the super widescreen DVD player that Alex's parents had rented for the party.
Liz came up to Max as he started on his second helping of the birthday cake. "Listen, Max -- there's something that I have to tell you."
Something about the way she put that let Max know he wouldn't like it. "We can do it another time, if you like. I just thought... I mean, we hardly even see each other any more, so... but I didn't mean to ruin the party for you."
"Might as well get into it now," Max said. He wouldn't be able to enjoy the party with the secret hanging over him after all. "What is it?"
"I'm going to Chicago... for university, next year," Liz blurted out awkwardly. "They offered a free ride - I've confirmed."
"That... that's great," Max forced himself to say, wondering why the news was hitting him like a freight train. They hadn't been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time, true, and they didn't hang out particularly often lately, but Liz had been exaggerating when she implied that they hardly ever saw each other... there wasn't a week that went by that he didn't spend a little time with her in some way or another. And he couldn't grasp the notion of her being thirteen hundred miles away. (Yes, he'd checked in an atlas when she'd first mentioned Northwestern.)
"I hope that you love it there."
"Goddammit Max!!" The expostulation apparently startled Liz as much as Max from the look on her face, but she continued on. "If we have nothing else left, why can't we at least be honest with each other??"
"Do we really want to be, Liz??" Max asked. "I could say that I don't want you to leave, that I don't understand why you don't want to be with me, that I'm still as muc in love with you as I ever was. That's all the truth... does saying it make anything any easier??" He waited a long moment, with everyone staring at them, Liz overwhelmed and clearly fighting back tears. "I didn't think so." He turned around and stormed out.
TO BE CONTINUED...