"Maybe we could capture Maria back," Isabel suggested earnestly. "Michael can snap her out of it, just like we used Maria to get through to Michael." She looked around at the rest of them. "Right?"
From the look on Michael's face, he would have liked nothing better to agree with Isabel, but he knew better. "Two things. First, having lost me, Tess is going to be keeping a much closer watch on everyone she's got left. Second, I wasn't even under her influence: not really. Max and Tess just lied to me to get me on their side. Maria's under full mind control."
There was a pause. "Okay, well, umm..." Liz started, but at that point she was interrupted.
"What about mind control?" All four of them turned around. Diane Evans was standing at the doorway of her upstairs den, where the four of them were gathered. An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment.
"Maria's on 'mind control... in advertising'" Alex blurted out suddenly.
"Yeah," Isabel agreed, seizing on the lifeline. "In our big project for manipulation and the media."
"Oh." Mrs. Evans nodded agreeably. "Do you guys want to order in pizza or something?"
Another series of glances exchanged. "Yeah, pizza's cool," Michael agreed.
Mrs Evans smiled. "So -- that'll be one large with hot peppers, italian sausage, and pineapple," and she waved at her daughter and her longtime friend young Mister Guerin, and then she looked at Liz and Alex. "You guys okay with sharing a pepperoni and mushroom, or what?"
Liz shot a surprised look at Alex, who shrugged a little uncomfortably. "Uh, sure, I guess," Liz agreed tentatively, and Alex nodded. Michael and Isabel, for their part, looked nervous too - embarrased that Isabel's mom was intruding at such a moment with pizza of all things, and startled at how well she knew them both by now.
"Okay, I'll call it in," Diane Evans chirrupped, unaware of most of what was being said by her daughter and young guests. But not entirely clueless, perhaps. "Alex -- are you okay? You don't look like your usual charming self." She cocked her head as she looked at him - all nurturing concern.
"Yeah, uh... just a little stressed about the project," he managed, not unconvincingly.
A little later the four of them were munching on their first slices and settling back to work. "Hmmm... the Granilith," Isabel announced, after checking one more time to make sure that her mom wasn't listening again. "Is there any way that we can use that to our advantage?"
"Maybe, but how -- we don't even know what it does," Michael pointed out.
"Actually, we do, a little," Alex said. "Sorry, guess we didn't mention that when catching you up to speed. A lot of the stuff in the book was about the Granilith. It can be used as a spaceship, to take you guys back to Antar."
"Which doesn't really help us, especially if we don't know how to use it," Liz pointed out.
"We could try to get Max and Maria to it, and then blast off before Tess could..." Isabel brainstormed. "No, that probably wouldn't work. Try to trick Tess into using it herself?"
"She never would, not without Max," Michael corrected. He turned back to Alex. "Is there anything else you can remember from the Book? Any bit of information could help, especially if it's about the four of us - our powers and vulnerabilities. Tess knows more in that department than we do, I'm afraid."
Alex concentrated. "No... that was the only tidbit I was able to keep, I think. Tess concentrated hard on wiping my memories of the translation, for obvious reasons."
Liz turned to Isabel. "Can you think of any way that you can use your dreamwalking talent to help? Either to get through to Max, or to find out more about Tess' plans, or something like that?"
Isabel thought about it. "Maybe. FOr that kind of thing - no kidding around, I'd need to wait until they go to sleep."
"Maybe that's not a bad idea anyway," Alex pointed out. "I mean, the four of us are really working together, and we can watch out for each other. Tess is really all alone - all of her people are under mind control to some degree or another. It'd be hard for her to trust them enough to rest."
"I'll be back in a bit," Michael muttered, getting up. "Need to take a little break."
He went to the bathroom, and then wandered around for a bit, looking for somewhere he could sit by himself in some peace and quiet. He ended up in Max's room, sitting on the bed, unable to escape the fact that every little thing surrounding him spoke volumes about the guy who had been like a brother to him ever since they had found each other again. The microscope and other science paraphernalia on the desk. The 'UFO enthusiast monthly' magazines that he bought for so many reasons - to keep up with the latest trends that might hit the museum, to watch for any tidbits that actually seemed to have real significance - and to laugh at most of the rest. The picture of Liz that he still kept inside the drawer of his bedside table.
"Hey, man." A knock rapped out on the door. "Do you want to be alone, or is it alright if I come in?"
No, Michael realized suddenly that he didn't want to be by himself, he just wanted to be away from the desperate battle plans for a moment. "Naw, man, come on in."
Alex pulled out the desk chair and half collapsed into it. "This is -- this is awkward, Michael, but there were some things I wanted to ask you. In case I... in case I don't make it."
Michael jumped, "Now, Alex... you can't... and even so, there's no g..."
"I believe this--" Alex interrupted. "No matter WHAT, you guys are gonna kick Tess' butt. But it may not be in time for me - I hope it will be, but I can't afford to assume a guarantee where there really isn't any. In that event, there are just a few things I want you to take care of me. Things that I couldn't ask of Liz or Isabel."
Michael took a moment to absorb that, and realized that there was no way he could refuse - he'd probably be asking the same thing of Alex if the situation were reversed. "Okay, what things?"
"Let's see, ummm..." Alex took a second to try and organize his thoughts. "In the top right drawer of the desk in my room at home, there's a manuscript. Try and... I dunno, do whatever you can with it. Throw it up on the web, send it to a magazine." He smirked morbidly. "Put a few pages of it in the yearbook - under my memorial."
"Alex..."
"Those pages are the best I've ever come to expressing myself," he insisted. "They're not finished yet - but if what we're talking about happens, they're never going to be. If I have to die at seventeen, I want people to see them."
Michael nodded. "Second?"
"It's about Isabel." Alex grimaced slightly. "I don't know how hard my death would hit her. Maybe it wouldn't, really..."
"Come on - Alex. She'd be shattered. You know that."
Alex smiled weakly. "Not really the point I was getting at. If she is... try to make sure she moves on, alright?"
"You're not serious."
"I am. I love her, and that's forever. To whatever extent she loves me, that's forever too. But that doesn't mean that she shouldn't have a life - shouldn't fall in love again. Promise."
Michael twisted his face for a second. "I'll do what I can. What's next?"
"Make sure you kick her ass once extra, for me?"
Michael smiled.
----------
It was several hours later, and a lot of earnest strategy discussion had, in the end, come to nothing. Isabel groaned, tore away several pages from her college-size ruled notepad, crumpled them up, converted the paper into dusty ashes with a frustrated look, and began again.
"We need to know what Tess wants at this point if we have any chance of coming up with a plan against her," she muttered, pausing to see if anyone else would chime in.
"She won't lie low forever," Liz agreed. "She's probably coming to the realization that we're holed up somewhere, if she isn't there already. Without needing to worry too much against an attack from us, she can go after her own ends... but what else, if anything, does she want?"
"US," Michael put in, and Liz turned to stare at him. "Not you actually, Liz -- Isabel and me. She wants the Royal Four reunited again, on her own terms."
"But is she really bold enough to take us on when we're together and try to convert us against our will?" Isabel mused.
"No," Alex moaned. He was visisbly the worse for the time the four of them had spent fruitlessly looking for a perfect plan. Most of the good that the energy transfer had done him seemed to have slipped away now, and he refused to let them do another, saying that power was something that none of them could waste now. "I don't think she's that confident, or we'd have seen her influence on Max sooner."
"Well then what?" Isabel asked. "Alex, you probably know her best now -- she's let down her guard around you. You've seen behind the mask."
For answer, all Alex did to start with was close his eyes and keen softly, struggling against some exquisite inner pain. "Max," he muttered, and it was hard to tell if he was deliberately answering Isabel's question or not. "She's obsessed with Max Evans - with Zan, we all know that. If her hold on him is strong enough, she'll want to disappear with him, start a new life somewhere else."
"On another planet, using the Granilith?" Liz prompted softly.
"No... don't think so. She was angry about that, in the Book trensleeshun," Alex mumbled, almost incomprehensibly. "It told her how to use the granilith and find the key, but no haven to fly to where she and Max would be safe."
"Then..." Isabel breathed, starting to piece it together.
"She'll hit the road," Alex continued as if he were in a trance. "Good at hiding - growing up with Nasedo taught her how to do that really well. Not even you or Michael could find her if she doesn't want to be found."
The three of them exchaged a horrified glance. Michael got up the nerve to ask the last question.
"If she goes... what about Kyle, and mister Valenti, and Maria? Would she take them with her, would she let them go, or..." He couldn't even voice the third possibility.
The notion startled Alex out of his strange daze, and he looked up into Michael's eyes with his face full of dread. "That's not how she operates, man. They'd be liabilities... she'd terminate them. There'd be no reason for her to care anymore."
"Well, she might try to reprogram Kyle to think he's really her brother, or something, and have him join them. If she thought that would be safe. And it's not out of the question that she'd mindwipe Jim Valenti of anything incriminating and leave him be - he took her in, and she's not entirely uncapable of gratitude for that. But Maria..." He broke off, forcing himself to keep looking into Michael's face. "I'm sorry, man, I didn't think of it like this before, or I'd have said something sooner..."
"We've been wasting time that we don't have," Isabel announced, and reached out to snatch the cordless phone so quickly that none of the rest of them could make out her hand in the vicinity of the table, just ZZZIP and it was in her hand. (Or maybe she didn't reach out at that, but just PULLED the telephone to her mentally - none of them were sure afterwards, even Isabel.)
She took an instant's breath before hitting the speed dial. and the telephone on the other end didn't have to ring for long before somebody apparently picked up. "Max, put the bitch on."
Liz was starting to shake her head... in a mix of confusion and a sense that something had to be done to stop whatever was going on, but she didn't get any further than that. "Hi, Tess?" Isabel said a moment, later. "Let's talk deal. There's business to be done before you leave Roswell."
Liz could actually hear the voice on the other end of the phone in that stillness, very faintly. "Well Izzy, the car's all packed and everything! What on earth do you have to say that could convince me to postpone our departure?"
Isabel cut right to the chase. "You have Max heal Alex, and I'll go with you. Whatever you want. I just can't bear to see him die."
The bedlam that erupted in the room... well, was still pretty quiet in an absolute sense, but quite a shock compared to the eerie quiet that had preceded Isabel's proposal. And yet, even as she mumbled something about how Isabel couldn't promise that, she saw the sense in it. A life freely offered for a life saved, and everybody got something that they wanted.
But Isabel was shaking her head - Tess wasn't jumping for the deal. Liz could guess why -- she was worried about a possible trap, or that Alex's knowledge of Tess herself - if he lived - could represent a threat to all of her plans.
But that was really only a consideration if there was still someone with the power to press an attack using those secrets... and Michael had already made that connection. He pointed to himself and made some series of other hand gestures which Liz couldn't assign any literal meaning to - but it was easy enough to guess what he was wanting to convey.
"And Michael too," Isabel added. "In exchange for Maria's release, and your word that you won't hurt Kyle or Mister Valenti." There was a long moment, and then a quick "we'll be there," and Isabel disconnected the call. "Twenty minutes - West Roswell high, north corridor."
"You..." Alex fought down a coughing fit. "You can't do this, Isabel."
"I'm not sure I'll have to." A crafty grin spread across her perfect features. "I'm ready to go through with this if Tess does, and I think you are too, Michael -- but I'm almost sure she won't play ball. She'll try to doublecross us, because we've already admitted we're weak in her eyes by bargaining with our own lives."
"And then?" Liz asked, guessing the answer.
"And then we quadruple-cross HER, and take care of a little overdue business," Michael smiled, keeping a nasty chuckle buried at gut level.
----------
The hallway was dark, except for a few lights streaming out from open classroom doors, spotted here on this side of the corridor, and there on the opposite. Michael and Isabel walked up from the south end. Tess was waiting at the very north, just next to the doors that led in from the stairway vestibule. It was as if she'd known which way they'd be taking, coming in, and was waiting where they'd have to cover the maximum ground to get to her.
She wasn't alone, of course. Max was by her side, Maria back a little behind both of them, and the two Valenti men were off to either side, watching the approaching hybrids warily. It seemed to Isabel that aside from Tess herself, everyone in the entourage was even more 'out of it' than before. "All right, we're here," she announced when they were about fifteen feet away.
"Not all of us," Tess replied evenly, arching an eyebrow expressively. "You want Max to heal Alex, so he has to be here. And I'm sure that Liz wouldn't want to miss any of the goodbyes, now would she?"
"Are you ready to have Max heal Alex right now?" Michael countered. Tess remained silent, which he took as answer enough. "When you are, he will be here. Not before."
Tess took stock for a moment, and then nodded, stepping slowly towards the two of them. "Alright. Well, I knew that the two of you didn't want me to do anything that might compromise your objectivity before your little friend is cured..." She must have been able to read their reactions well enough. "I thought so. And yet it occurs to me that once Whitman is okay, you might try taking your chances at that point instead of following through with the deal. It's a tricky situation."
She unslung something from the back of her shoulder, that Isabel hadn't seen before - it was a large plastic drinking bottle, filled with a vibrant reddish-purple liquid. "So -- let's call this a gesture of trust; a purely symbolic one. We share a drink together, the three of us, and then Max will take care of your sweet little baby." She grinned fiercely. "Michael?"
Michael had a moment where it looked like he was about to object or ask a question, but apparently he thought better of it. He took the bottle that Tess had offered, unscrewed the lid, and gestured with it in a vague toasting motion. "To negotiation." With that, be brought the opening to his lips and let a generous amount of the juice flow into his mouth. Isabel could see his throat muscles working, swallowing, and he opened his lips slightly and let out a breath, then drank again. The level was down by nearly a quarter when he passed it along to her.
Isabel shot a curious look at Tess as she fished a silk hankerchief idly out of her pocket and wiped around the neck of the bottle. "Why is this so important to you? Why does it change anything?"
"It's just a token," Tess assured her. "Drinking together before extending a trust."
"And what's in the bottle?" Isabel pressed.
"Some kind of juice," she answered, her voice light but betraying an inner frustration beginning to grow. "It's the nearest earth equivalent to something Nasedo told me about. Now just shut up and drink, or I swear to you I will walk away and let that geeky beanpole with the outrageous ears die!"
Isabel could feel her face flush at the way Tess spoke to her, but she knew what she had to do. She brought the bottle to her own lips, and didn't even register the taste of the liquid as it hit her tongue.
She noticed the expression on Tess' face though. The edges of her mouth began to turn up in the slightest indication of a smile of triumph.
TO BE CONTINUED...