Title: Tapping Fingers
Part: 3
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the Roswell characters, though if I did I'd treat them better than Jason Katims.
Category: Sci-fi drama. CC, alt timeline
Spoilers: Up to 'cry your name'
Michael looked at the delegation that had arrived at his apartment - Tess, Max, and Kyle - and tried to put his finger on what seemed so weird. "So, there's a shapeshifter Liz running around?"
Kyle looked at Tess. Tess nudged Max ever so slightly with an elbow. "Umm... Yeah. She was -- she was acting really weird, and then -- then, she tried to attack me!! And, uh, at the end... it wasn't her face, it was all creature-ey."
Michael snapped to closer attention. "Oh, my god, you're serious! Where... what about Maria? And Isabel!! Do we know where they are??"
"Haven't been able to reach Maria," Tess rhymed off. "Isabel got a phone call and took off from the Crashdown. It's possible that both of them may be with the impostor."
"We have to find them!!" Michael charged up from the couch and grabbed a jacket. "They could be in danger, right now... um, what are we all doing standing around here for??"
"We can't just charge off and joust against the windmill here, Michael," Kyle suggested. "We don't know what kind of alien this is - what she, or it, is capable of. Until we do, everyone is safer - Maria and Isabel included - if we don't make any sudden moves that might alarm 'her'."
"How do we know that?" Michael growled. "We don't know what its agenda is."
"We don't, for sure, but it seems to be the best shot we've got," Max said, grabbing at Michael's arm. "Don't you see that this is killing me? We don't even know what's happened to the *real* Liz." Tess seemed to tick in frustration at that, but it got the point across to Michael.
"Action in the absence of information is counter-productive," Kyle quoted softly.
Michael groaned again and collapsed into the Lay-Z-boy, waving Max onto the couch. "Okay, well, let's go over what information we do have, then. Where did you meet this shapeshifter??"
"Ummm..." Max froze for a second. "At my place. She told me that she wanted to get back together, but something seemed weird, so I asked her something that only Liz would know about..."
"Oh, right, what did you use," Michael asked with interest, "the night you guys found the orbs??"
"Ummm... uh, n-no," Max stuttered. "Blind date contest."
"You used that??" Michael shook his head. "I mean, half the town knows at least parts of..."
"That isn't the point," Tess broke in crossly. "Go on, Max." She smiled at him.
"Umm... anyways, she tried to bluff her way through, but could tell it wasn't working. That was when she changed her face and attacked me. I used the shield, and she ran off."
"Okay," Michael muttered. "So, what's our next step? We need to do some careful recon, I guess, finding out where our shifter is, what she's doing, who's with her."
"We've got Jim Valenti on that, doing a patrol around town of the likely spots," Tess said. "He'll let us know what he finds out. We figured that the shifter would be less likely to suspect him than any of us."
"Uh... good thinking," Michael muttered, but his spidey-sense was tingling again. Since when did Jim drop everything for patrol duty like this? Admittedly he didn't have much to keep himself busy lately, and Tess had bonded with him over all the months that she had been living at the Valenti house. But something still seemed wrong.
Michael got to his feet and let out a low growl of frustration. "God, it's like Nasedo all over again. No offense, Tess, but you remember when..."
"When he impersonated me and kidnapped Liz," Max finished without missing a beat. "Yeah, that occured to me too."
Okay, scratch one theory. Max, at least, hadn't been replaced by a shapeshifter. At least, Michael didn't really think so. But something was still...
Tess' cell phone rang, and she slapped it to her ear in a second. "Yeah?? Okay, thanks, we'll check it out. Thanks, Jimmy." She hung up and turned to the rest of them. "The Jetta is up at the Whitman's house, but the place looks deserted. We can look for clues there."
"Alex," Michael muttered. He'd forgotten the guy - he had to admit he tended to sometimes. But how did Alex Whitman fit into all of this?
"We'll take the Jeep," Max decided.
* * * *
"I really thought I was headed to Sweden," Alex said. He was nestled in a corner of the Pod chamber, with the three girls spread out in a loose circle around him, faint blue light illuminating the room. "But when I got to the airport, Tess was waiting for me. When I understood that it was all a trick, I tried to get away -- at least, I wanted to get away. But I couldn't make my body co-operate, and then, she kept me from wanting to."
"She was gloating in her scheme. Drove me over to Las Cruces, She must have made some arrangements beforehand for the people at the quantum project to expect me, aka Ray Anderson, a hotshot teenage software engineer from Albuquerque. But she didn't realize how complicated it was to maintain a web of lies that big, to keep everyone from getting suspicious. There were times it looked like everything would blow up in her face - she was far enough out of my mind that I hoped they would. But we just managed to squeak through."
"Translating the book was incredibly difficult. The Quantum software was only partially successful at making transcriptions between fairly similar human languages, and this was a source text completely different from anything on earth. I think she didn't expect that it would take so long."
"Which would explain why your 'trip to Sweden' got extended, again and again," Liz said, seeing it.
"Yeah. I won't go into all the details of the work I was doing, because it's so not the point. But the more tired and stressed out I got, the more Tess would *push* me. I hated her so much by then, hated how vulnerable she was making me. She never changed the hate - either she liked it or she knew she couldn't waste the effort to make me adore her."
"And, of course, she kept dragging me around and taking pictures that she could alter so that I'd have a slide show when I came back from 'Sweden.' In the end, I had to tie her into the transcription process - give her a series of partial results and choose the one that looks best. Since she, like the rest of you aliens, had an intuitive familiarity with the Book writing. And it worked."
"She altered my memories when I got back to Roswell, replaced them with 'Sweden.' But she couldn't keep the true memories buried forever. So she also implanted a trigger that when I started to remember, I'd go back to her. And she'd cover her tracks again. It happened over, and over, and over again -- working for a shorter period each time. I could tell that something was going on, that my brain couldn't handle this. I begged her to just leave me be, that I wouldn't ruin her secret, but..." Alex was crying now. "But she wouldn't listen to me..."
Isabel scrambled over to hold Alex in a comforting hug. "It's okay, it's okay Alex. We're going to make it all beter."
"How??" he wailed. Liz and Maria shared a look -- that was the question of the hour, after all.
"Do -- do you have any bright ideas, Alex??" Maria asked softly.
Alex dried his eyes, and thought for a long moment. "Max. He might be able to heal my mind."
"I tried to call him over to your house, back when things were first breaking," Liz told him softly. "He said he'd come right over, but he never showed. We think Tess ran into him - that she might have convinced him not to help us, or something."
"Oh, god, no..." Alex moaned.
"Michael!!" Isabel blurted out.
Alex looked at her. "What was that??"
"What about Michael??" Maria asked suspiciously at the same time.
Isabel looked at them. "I'm not moving in on Michael," she assured them both. "It's just... he's the last piece of the pod squad we don't know about. He's the wild card, maybe. If he's with Max and Tess..." she sighed, "then to be honest I'm not sure how we can stand against them. If we could get him on our side, though..."
"It's a good notion," Liz said. "And in any event, we can't stay here in the Pod chamber forever. I think it's time to head back into town - take the fight to Tess. One step at a time, of course."
"Yeah, let's roll," Alex agreed, struggling to his feet.
"Are you sure you're in any shape to be marching off to battle?" Isabel said doubtfully.
"First off, we'll be driving off to battle," Alex pointed out. "And I'm stronger now than I'll be tomorrow, unless we get Max back. Let's go."
* * * *
"Thai food delivery, untouched," Michael pointed it out and then moved on. "Picture of Leanna. Liz's crashdown alien antenna..." the barette had been marked with L PARKER on the inside. "Was the imposter wearing these at your place, Maxwell??"
"Um, uh..." Max seemed caught off guard by the question, and hesitated a remarkably long time. "Uh, no, no, she wasn't."
"What was she wearing?? Any part of the uniform?"
"N-no, just a t-shirt and jeans."
"And this was when??"
"What does it matter when it was?" Tess exploded.
"Everything might be a clue," Michael pointed out. "Especially the exact circumstances of Max's run-in with our alien shapeshifter."
"Ummm, uh..." Max looked at his own watch. "A few minutes after two."
"Hmm." Michael thought about that. "I might be wrong, but I think she and Maria were supposed to go on shift at two. I wonder if that relates." He continued itemizing the clues that they'd found. "Key ring, with front door key that fits the front door lock, left dropped near said front door. So presumably Alex's keys. Maria's cell phone. And another picture, this one of Alex..." Michael frowned at it for a second. "I know this one - Isabel carries it around." He thought about it. "But where did they all go? The Jetta is still here, so is Alex's dad's car. Any idea where his dad and mom are, anyway??"
"Convention up in Santa Fe," Kyle mentioned, looking at the calendar. "Probably took a taxi to the airport yesterday."
"But where did our people go??" Michael repeated. "Alex, Isabel, Maria, and either Liz or the fake Liz were here."
"Isabel had my mom's car," Max pointed out. "They could have gone anywhere in it."
Michael considered that disspiritedly. "Maybe we should see if we can get any flashes off this stuff."
"No!" Tess blurted out again. "Michael, something really bad happened here, I can feel it. We need to go somewhere safe, get ready for when IT comes after us. It'll find us soon enough, and we need to be ready."
"Yeah. We can use my place," Kyle suggested.
Michael looked to Max, who shrugged his agreement. "Okay, I guess." They filed slowly out, and Tess closed the door behind her.
* * * *
"So," Alex asked softly from the rear seat of the car. "Any idea where we go, once we get into town??"
Isabel and Liz exchanged a glance, up front. "Michael's apartment," Isabel decided. "It's a risk, but it also has the best chance of gain."
They drove along in silence for a while, and then Liz spoke up. "Alex, do you have any idea WHY Tess went to such great lengths to decode the Book in secret? Why wouldn't she have brought this to Max, Isabel, and Michael openly - aside from the fact that she had to push you so hard to get the job done, which she didn't know at the time."
"Well, among other things, the Book apparently has instructions on using the Granilith to go home," Alex said softly. "It's a spaceship of sorts, or at least it can be used as one. I think that Tess wants to pull that fact out of her pocket at a very specific moment, as it were, when travelling back would cement her relationship with Max. And leave you with no hope of ever getting him back."
"Oh, great," Liz whispered. The term 'cement a relationship' brought back memories of Future Max and his warnings, though Alex obviously wasn't using the phrase the same way.
"That's not really the point right now, what Tess does or doesn't mean to do with the granilith," Isabel pointed out. "Right now, our priority is to make Alex better. Then that Max isn't caught up in Tess' web."
When they got to Michael's apartment, there was no answer at the door and no light of movement visible through the windows. They checked the Crashdown cafe, Max and Isabel's place, (very carefully, since it was all too easy to imagine Max and Tess waiting for them there for them.) But no luck, although Diane Evans said that Max had been calling asking for Isabel, she had no idea where he was now. She also asked for her car back, a request that was accomodated after some shuttling back and forth to the Whitman house.
At which point, something strange started to become clear. The front door of Alex's place was locked, and he didn't have his keys. Liz wondered whether they had managed to lock themselves out in their hurry to get Alex to the healing stones, but Maria insisted that she had checked to make sure the front door was unlocked before they left, just in case.
They finally got in through the back, using a safety key. In the living room, it was evident that a few items had been moved - personal effects that they had left behind in the hurry, which made it clear that all four of them had been there.
"Tess knows," Maria whispered softly. "She knows that all four of us were together, and that we know her secret. That we know what she did."
"Let's go," Liz declared, picking up the clues and heading for the front door. "No more time for kidding around. I think we'll all know where we can find Michael - in the belly of the beast."
"Kyle's place," Maria groaned.
They parked the Jetta a long way away from the Valenti house and quietly crept closer. Kyle was sitting on the front porch, and Michael standing near the side door, as Jim prowled around the area. Of Tess and Max, there was no sign.
"They're inside," Isabel guessed. "She's protecting her King." The notion of this showdown as a deadly game of chess was almost impossible to resist by now.
"Yeah, but we're not after her king right now," Maria whispered back. "We just want to capture the... should Michael be a rook or a knight??"
"Does it matter?" Isabel shot back. "The question is -- how do we get to him without Sheriff Valenti spotting us?"
They hurried back from the premises a ways to plan strategy without being visible from Valenti's beat. "I've got an idea," Liz mentioned. "You may not like it, though, Isabel."
"I don't care if I like it," she snapped back. "I'll do whatever I have to to make sure Alex is okay."
"You dreamwalk Michael, right now."
There was a silence. Dreamwalking someone while they were wide awake was something that Isabel never liked to try, and had rarely been able to achieve. But...
"Okay, I'll try. But I think the chances are better if I put Maria in to speak to him."
"Me!!" The word came out in a squeak from Maria's throat.
"Ahh, I get it," Liz whispered quietly.
"When I was trying to warn Max at the Summit, I couldn't get him to see me, while he was awake," Isabel explained. "But Liz could get through, because he loves her. Michael loves her."
"But... but Liz is 'changed,'" Maria pointed out. "I'm just a regular human, can you really dreamwalk me into Michael's head??"
"I hope so," Isabel sighed. "It's the best chance we've got."
"And -- and Max didn't hear Liz. He just saw her and couldn't hear what she was saying. It was just sheer luck that in trying to get closer to her, he stepped away from Lonnie's trap," Maria continued to babble. "What if Michael can't hear me."
"Hopefully, the fact that we're doing this at closer range will help," Isabel muttered. "Have you got a picture of Michael??"
Maria quickly extracted a snapshot from her purse and handed it over. Isabel tapped it and started concentrating deeply.
* * * *
Michael waited impatiently for Valenti to come around again. When he cleared the back corner of the house, Michael called off softly. "Hey, how 'bout we switch jobs for a bit??"
Jim Valenti just stared at him for a second. "Come on, I'm bored, and I can patrol just as well as you. Better, with the whoosh."
"All right, can't see why not." Jim took up position at the side door, and Michael started to circle the premises. After having completed one loop, Valenti scowled at him. "Got your dawdle on, boy??"
Michael ignored him, but as soon as he was out of sight he hurried down the street.
"Boo!!" Isabel stepped out from behind a hedge and quickly pulled him in. "You got the message?"
"Yeah." Michael quickly kissed Maria hello, then swept his eyes across Liz and a tired-looking Alex. "So, what's the deal??" He quietly massed his powers, ready to use them in case he had to.
"Okay -- Tess took Alex to Las Cruces to decode the book when we all thought he was in Sweden, and because she's mind-warped him so much we need Max to heal him or Alex could die." Isabel evaluated her ramble, then shrugged, figuring there was nothing else critical to say.
"Ah." Michael turned to Liz. "And I suppose you'll tell me you're not a shapeshifter??"
Liz blinked in surprise. "No, just one hundred percent authentic Liz Parker in here. And if you want proof, I'll just mention that neither of us ever told anyone that you were the one who stole my diary, a month after I got shot. Right??"
Maria, Isabel, and Alex's various degrees of shock backed that up. "Right."
"So Tess said that I was a shapeshifter?" Liz asked.
"Tess, and Max," Michael confirmed. "Max was the one who said he'd seen you, but Tess seemed to be pulling his strings a little, if you know what I mean." Suddenly pounding feet were coming their way from the Valenti house. "Let's clear out, we can discuss everything else later!"
"Get Alex back to the car," Maria called out. "I'll create a diversion."
"Okay." Michael pecked her goodbye quickly, and then followed Liz as she led the way, helping Isabel out with Alex. Soon they were all crowded into the Jetta, leaving some room for Maria.
"There she is," Liz pointed Maria out, running towards the car from a different direction. Valenti was chasing her, but there was no way he'd catch up in time.
Suddenly Isabel cranked the ignition and pulled away, leaving Maria raging in frustration at being left behind. "Wh- what did you do that for??" Michael complained.
"That wasn't Maria, Michael," Isabel told him. "Couldn't you feel the mind warp??" Michael caught one more glimpse before they were out of range, and sure enough he could tell that it hadn't been Maria. It was Tess that he had almost let into the car.
"But Maria..."
"They've got her now," Liz sighed. "But don't worry, I don't think Tess will hurt her. Now that we've got you and Isabel, we have a fighting chance."
Michael had to admit he could see the sense in it. Trading himself for Maria - a net gain to the good guys side. But he couldn't help but worry about her. Considering that Kyle and Jim Valenti seemed, in retrospect, near-zombies doing Tess Harding's will, would Maria fare much better??
"Where to now?" Alex muttered, obviously also sick with worry about Maria.
Isabel and Liz shared a long glance once again. "Back to my place, for now," Isabel suggested. "Tess can't come there without producing Max. That would make her vulnerable."
"Okay," Michael agreed. "Then we need to come up with some serious strategy."
* * * *
When she realized that they had somehow seen through her ploy, Tess hurried back to where she had tripped Maria and left her with her leg asleep so she wouldn't be able to move easily.
As Tess approached, the human girl flailed in fear, but it was simple to hold back her arms with kinesis so that she couldn't attack, and touch at the base of her head. A simple connection and adjustment to some of the brain's chemical balances, and it was done. Humans were so much easier to deal with.
Maria looked up into Tess' face with awe. "I'm... I'm sorry."
"That's okay," Tess told her sincerely. "Isabel and Liz. How much do they know??"
"That Alex never really went to Sweden..." Maria began.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
Part: 3
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the Roswell characters, though if I did I'd treat them better than Jason Katims.
Category: Sci-fi drama. CC, alt timeline
Spoilers: Up to 'cry your name'
Michael looked at the delegation that had arrived at his apartment - Tess, Max, and Kyle - and tried to put his finger on what seemed so weird. "So, there's a shapeshifter Liz running around?"
Kyle looked at Tess. Tess nudged Max ever so slightly with an elbow. "Umm... Yeah. She was -- she was acting really weird, and then -- then, she tried to attack me!! And, uh, at the end... it wasn't her face, it was all creature-ey."
Michael snapped to closer attention. "Oh, my god, you're serious! Where... what about Maria? And Isabel!! Do we know where they are??"
"Haven't been able to reach Maria," Tess rhymed off. "Isabel got a phone call and took off from the Crashdown. It's possible that both of them may be with the impostor."
"We have to find them!!" Michael charged up from the couch and grabbed a jacket. "They could be in danger, right now... um, what are we all doing standing around here for??"
"We can't just charge off and joust against the windmill here, Michael," Kyle suggested. "We don't know what kind of alien this is - what she, or it, is capable of. Until we do, everyone is safer - Maria and Isabel included - if we don't make any sudden moves that might alarm 'her'."
"How do we know that?" Michael growled. "We don't know what its agenda is."
"We don't, for sure, but it seems to be the best shot we've got," Max said, grabbing at Michael's arm. "Don't you see that this is killing me? We don't even know what's happened to the *real* Liz." Tess seemed to tick in frustration at that, but it got the point across to Michael.
"Action in the absence of information is counter-productive," Kyle quoted softly.
Michael groaned again and collapsed into the Lay-Z-boy, waving Max onto the couch. "Okay, well, let's go over what information we do have, then. Where did you meet this shapeshifter??"
"Ummm..." Max froze for a second. "At my place. She told me that she wanted to get back together, but something seemed weird, so I asked her something that only Liz would know about..."
"Oh, right, what did you use," Michael asked with interest, "the night you guys found the orbs??"
"Ummm... uh, n-no," Max stuttered. "Blind date contest."
"You used that??" Michael shook his head. "I mean, half the town knows at least parts of..."
"That isn't the point," Tess broke in crossly. "Go on, Max." She smiled at him.
"Umm... anyways, she tried to bluff her way through, but could tell it wasn't working. That was when she changed her face and attacked me. I used the shield, and she ran off."
"Okay," Michael muttered. "So, what's our next step? We need to do some careful recon, I guess, finding out where our shifter is, what she's doing, who's with her."
"We've got Jim Valenti on that, doing a patrol around town of the likely spots," Tess said. "He'll let us know what he finds out. We figured that the shifter would be less likely to suspect him than any of us."
"Uh... good thinking," Michael muttered, but his spidey-sense was tingling again. Since when did Jim drop everything for patrol duty like this? Admittedly he didn't have much to keep himself busy lately, and Tess had bonded with him over all the months that she had been living at the Valenti house. But something still seemed wrong.
Michael got to his feet and let out a low growl of frustration. "God, it's like Nasedo all over again. No offense, Tess, but you remember when..."
"When he impersonated me and kidnapped Liz," Max finished without missing a beat. "Yeah, that occured to me too."
Okay, scratch one theory. Max, at least, hadn't been replaced by a shapeshifter. At least, Michael didn't really think so. But something was still...
Tess' cell phone rang, and she slapped it to her ear in a second. "Yeah?? Okay, thanks, we'll check it out. Thanks, Jimmy." She hung up and turned to the rest of them. "The Jetta is up at the Whitman's house, but the place looks deserted. We can look for clues there."
"Alex," Michael muttered. He'd forgotten the guy - he had to admit he tended to sometimes. But how did Alex Whitman fit into all of this?
"We'll take the Jeep," Max decided.
* * * *
"I really thought I was headed to Sweden," Alex said. He was nestled in a corner of the Pod chamber, with the three girls spread out in a loose circle around him, faint blue light illuminating the room. "But when I got to the airport, Tess was waiting for me. When I understood that it was all a trick, I tried to get away -- at least, I wanted to get away. But I couldn't make my body co-operate, and then, she kept me from wanting to."
"She was gloating in her scheme. Drove me over to Las Cruces, She must have made some arrangements beforehand for the people at the quantum project to expect me, aka Ray Anderson, a hotshot teenage software engineer from Albuquerque. But she didn't realize how complicated it was to maintain a web of lies that big, to keep everyone from getting suspicious. There were times it looked like everything would blow up in her face - she was far enough out of my mind that I hoped they would. But we just managed to squeak through."
"Translating the book was incredibly difficult. The Quantum software was only partially successful at making transcriptions between fairly similar human languages, and this was a source text completely different from anything on earth. I think she didn't expect that it would take so long."
"Which would explain why your 'trip to Sweden' got extended, again and again," Liz said, seeing it.
"Yeah. I won't go into all the details of the work I was doing, because it's so not the point. But the more tired and stressed out I got, the more Tess would *push* me. I hated her so much by then, hated how vulnerable she was making me. She never changed the hate - either she liked it or she knew she couldn't waste the effort to make me adore her."
"And, of course, she kept dragging me around and taking pictures that she could alter so that I'd have a slide show when I came back from 'Sweden.' In the end, I had to tie her into the transcription process - give her a series of partial results and choose the one that looks best. Since she, like the rest of you aliens, had an intuitive familiarity with the Book writing. And it worked."
"She altered my memories when I got back to Roswell, replaced them with 'Sweden.' But she couldn't keep the true memories buried forever. So she also implanted a trigger that when I started to remember, I'd go back to her. And she'd cover her tracks again. It happened over, and over, and over again -- working for a shorter period each time. I could tell that something was going on, that my brain couldn't handle this. I begged her to just leave me be, that I wouldn't ruin her secret, but..." Alex was crying now. "But she wouldn't listen to me..."
Isabel scrambled over to hold Alex in a comforting hug. "It's okay, it's okay Alex. We're going to make it all beter."
"How??" he wailed. Liz and Maria shared a look -- that was the question of the hour, after all.
"Do -- do you have any bright ideas, Alex??" Maria asked softly.
Alex dried his eyes, and thought for a long moment. "Max. He might be able to heal my mind."
"I tried to call him over to your house, back when things were first breaking," Liz told him softly. "He said he'd come right over, but he never showed. We think Tess ran into him - that she might have convinced him not to help us, or something."
"Oh, god, no..." Alex moaned.
"Michael!!" Isabel blurted out.
Alex looked at her. "What was that??"
"What about Michael??" Maria asked suspiciously at the same time.
Isabel looked at them. "I'm not moving in on Michael," she assured them both. "It's just... he's the last piece of the pod squad we don't know about. He's the wild card, maybe. If he's with Max and Tess..." she sighed, "then to be honest I'm not sure how we can stand against them. If we could get him on our side, though..."
"It's a good notion," Liz said. "And in any event, we can't stay here in the Pod chamber forever. I think it's time to head back into town - take the fight to Tess. One step at a time, of course."
"Yeah, let's roll," Alex agreed, struggling to his feet.
"Are you sure you're in any shape to be marching off to battle?" Isabel said doubtfully.
"First off, we'll be driving off to battle," Alex pointed out. "And I'm stronger now than I'll be tomorrow, unless we get Max back. Let's go."
* * * *
"Thai food delivery, untouched," Michael pointed it out and then moved on. "Picture of Leanna. Liz's crashdown alien antenna..." the barette had been marked with L PARKER on the inside. "Was the imposter wearing these at your place, Maxwell??"
"Um, uh..." Max seemed caught off guard by the question, and hesitated a remarkably long time. "Uh, no, no, she wasn't."
"What was she wearing?? Any part of the uniform?"
"N-no, just a t-shirt and jeans."
"And this was when??"
"What does it matter when it was?" Tess exploded.
"Everything might be a clue," Michael pointed out. "Especially the exact circumstances of Max's run-in with our alien shapeshifter."
"Ummm, uh..." Max looked at his own watch. "A few minutes after two."
"Hmm." Michael thought about that. "I might be wrong, but I think she and Maria were supposed to go on shift at two. I wonder if that relates." He continued itemizing the clues that they'd found. "Key ring, with front door key that fits the front door lock, left dropped near said front door. So presumably Alex's keys. Maria's cell phone. And another picture, this one of Alex..." Michael frowned at it for a second. "I know this one - Isabel carries it around." He thought about it. "But where did they all go? The Jetta is still here, so is Alex's dad's car. Any idea where his dad and mom are, anyway??"
"Convention up in Santa Fe," Kyle mentioned, looking at the calendar. "Probably took a taxi to the airport yesterday."
"But where did our people go??" Michael repeated. "Alex, Isabel, Maria, and either Liz or the fake Liz were here."
"Isabel had my mom's car," Max pointed out. "They could have gone anywhere in it."
Michael considered that disspiritedly. "Maybe we should see if we can get any flashes off this stuff."
"No!" Tess blurted out again. "Michael, something really bad happened here, I can feel it. We need to go somewhere safe, get ready for when IT comes after us. It'll find us soon enough, and we need to be ready."
"Yeah. We can use my place," Kyle suggested.
Michael looked to Max, who shrugged his agreement. "Okay, I guess." They filed slowly out, and Tess closed the door behind her.
* * * *
"So," Alex asked softly from the rear seat of the car. "Any idea where we go, once we get into town??"
Isabel and Liz exchanged a glance, up front. "Michael's apartment," Isabel decided. "It's a risk, but it also has the best chance of gain."
They drove along in silence for a while, and then Liz spoke up. "Alex, do you have any idea WHY Tess went to such great lengths to decode the Book in secret? Why wouldn't she have brought this to Max, Isabel, and Michael openly - aside from the fact that she had to push you so hard to get the job done, which she didn't know at the time."
"Well, among other things, the Book apparently has instructions on using the Granilith to go home," Alex said softly. "It's a spaceship of sorts, or at least it can be used as one. I think that Tess wants to pull that fact out of her pocket at a very specific moment, as it were, when travelling back would cement her relationship with Max. And leave you with no hope of ever getting him back."
"Oh, great," Liz whispered. The term 'cement a relationship' brought back memories of Future Max and his warnings, though Alex obviously wasn't using the phrase the same way.
"That's not really the point right now, what Tess does or doesn't mean to do with the granilith," Isabel pointed out. "Right now, our priority is to make Alex better. Then that Max isn't caught up in Tess' web."
When they got to Michael's apartment, there was no answer at the door and no light of movement visible through the windows. They checked the Crashdown cafe, Max and Isabel's place, (very carefully, since it was all too easy to imagine Max and Tess waiting for them there for them.) But no luck, although Diane Evans said that Max had been calling asking for Isabel, she had no idea where he was now. She also asked for her car back, a request that was accomodated after some shuttling back and forth to the Whitman house.
At which point, something strange started to become clear. The front door of Alex's place was locked, and he didn't have his keys. Liz wondered whether they had managed to lock themselves out in their hurry to get Alex to the healing stones, but Maria insisted that she had checked to make sure the front door was unlocked before they left, just in case.
They finally got in through the back, using a safety key. In the living room, it was evident that a few items had been moved - personal effects that they had left behind in the hurry, which made it clear that all four of them had been there.
"Tess knows," Maria whispered softly. "She knows that all four of us were together, and that we know her secret. That we know what she did."
"Let's go," Liz declared, picking up the clues and heading for the front door. "No more time for kidding around. I think we'll all know where we can find Michael - in the belly of the beast."
"Kyle's place," Maria groaned.
They parked the Jetta a long way away from the Valenti house and quietly crept closer. Kyle was sitting on the front porch, and Michael standing near the side door, as Jim prowled around the area. Of Tess and Max, there was no sign.
"They're inside," Isabel guessed. "She's protecting her King." The notion of this showdown as a deadly game of chess was almost impossible to resist by now.
"Yeah, but we're not after her king right now," Maria whispered back. "We just want to capture the... should Michael be a rook or a knight??"
"Does it matter?" Isabel shot back. "The question is -- how do we get to him without Sheriff Valenti spotting us?"
They hurried back from the premises a ways to plan strategy without being visible from Valenti's beat. "I've got an idea," Liz mentioned. "You may not like it, though, Isabel."
"I don't care if I like it," she snapped back. "I'll do whatever I have to to make sure Alex is okay."
"You dreamwalk Michael, right now."
There was a silence. Dreamwalking someone while they were wide awake was something that Isabel never liked to try, and had rarely been able to achieve. But...
"Okay, I'll try. But I think the chances are better if I put Maria in to speak to him."
"Me!!" The word came out in a squeak from Maria's throat.
"Ahh, I get it," Liz whispered quietly.
"When I was trying to warn Max at the Summit, I couldn't get him to see me, while he was awake," Isabel explained. "But Liz could get through, because he loves her. Michael loves her."
"But... but Liz is 'changed,'" Maria pointed out. "I'm just a regular human, can you really dreamwalk me into Michael's head??"
"I hope so," Isabel sighed. "It's the best chance we've got."
"And -- and Max didn't hear Liz. He just saw her and couldn't hear what she was saying. It was just sheer luck that in trying to get closer to her, he stepped away from Lonnie's trap," Maria continued to babble. "What if Michael can't hear me."
"Hopefully, the fact that we're doing this at closer range will help," Isabel muttered. "Have you got a picture of Michael??"
Maria quickly extracted a snapshot from her purse and handed it over. Isabel tapped it and started concentrating deeply.
* * * *
Michael waited impatiently for Valenti to come around again. When he cleared the back corner of the house, Michael called off softly. "Hey, how 'bout we switch jobs for a bit??"
Jim Valenti just stared at him for a second. "Come on, I'm bored, and I can patrol just as well as you. Better, with the whoosh."
"All right, can't see why not." Jim took up position at the side door, and Michael started to circle the premises. After having completed one loop, Valenti scowled at him. "Got your dawdle on, boy??"
Michael ignored him, but as soon as he was out of sight he hurried down the street.
"Boo!!" Isabel stepped out from behind a hedge and quickly pulled him in. "You got the message?"
"Yeah." Michael quickly kissed Maria hello, then swept his eyes across Liz and a tired-looking Alex. "So, what's the deal??" He quietly massed his powers, ready to use them in case he had to.
"Okay -- Tess took Alex to Las Cruces to decode the book when we all thought he was in Sweden, and because she's mind-warped him so much we need Max to heal him or Alex could die." Isabel evaluated her ramble, then shrugged, figuring there was nothing else critical to say.
"Ah." Michael turned to Liz. "And I suppose you'll tell me you're not a shapeshifter??"
Liz blinked in surprise. "No, just one hundred percent authentic Liz Parker in here. And if you want proof, I'll just mention that neither of us ever told anyone that you were the one who stole my diary, a month after I got shot. Right??"
Maria, Isabel, and Alex's various degrees of shock backed that up. "Right."
"So Tess said that I was a shapeshifter?" Liz asked.
"Tess, and Max," Michael confirmed. "Max was the one who said he'd seen you, but Tess seemed to be pulling his strings a little, if you know what I mean." Suddenly pounding feet were coming their way from the Valenti house. "Let's clear out, we can discuss everything else later!"
"Get Alex back to the car," Maria called out. "I'll create a diversion."
"Okay." Michael pecked her goodbye quickly, and then followed Liz as she led the way, helping Isabel out with Alex. Soon they were all crowded into the Jetta, leaving some room for Maria.
"There she is," Liz pointed Maria out, running towards the car from a different direction. Valenti was chasing her, but there was no way he'd catch up in time.
Suddenly Isabel cranked the ignition and pulled away, leaving Maria raging in frustration at being left behind. "Wh- what did you do that for??" Michael complained.
"That wasn't Maria, Michael," Isabel told him. "Couldn't you feel the mind warp??" Michael caught one more glimpse before they were out of range, and sure enough he could tell that it hadn't been Maria. It was Tess that he had almost let into the car.
"But Maria..."
"They've got her now," Liz sighed. "But don't worry, I don't think Tess will hurt her. Now that we've got you and Isabel, we have a fighting chance."
Michael had to admit he could see the sense in it. Trading himself for Maria - a net gain to the good guys side. But he couldn't help but worry about her. Considering that Kyle and Jim Valenti seemed, in retrospect, near-zombies doing Tess Harding's will, would Maria fare much better??
"Where to now?" Alex muttered, obviously also sick with worry about Maria.
Isabel and Liz shared a long glance once again. "Back to my place, for now," Isabel suggested. "Tess can't come there without producing Max. That would make her vulnerable."
"Okay," Michael agreed. "Then we need to come up with some serious strategy."
* * * *
When she realized that they had somehow seen through her ploy, Tess hurried back to where she had tripped Maria and left her with her leg asleep so she wouldn't be able to move easily.
As Tess approached, the human girl flailed in fear, but it was simple to hold back her arms with kinesis so that she couldn't attack, and touch at the base of her head. A simple connection and adjustment to some of the brain's chemical balances, and it was done. Humans were so much easier to deal with.
Maria looked up into Tess' face with awe. "I'm... I'm sorry."
"That's okay," Tess told her sincerely. "Isabel and Liz. How much do they know??"
"That Alex never really went to Sweden..." Maria began.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!