Homecoming, Part 3b: "Into the maze"
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of the Roswell characters. I don't plan to steal them and lock them up in white rooms either. I just let them out to play from time to time and see what happens.
Distribution: Distribute anywhere you like, currently based at fanatics: http://www.roswellfanatics.net/
Feedback: YES PLEASE!
Category: Alternate timeline epic. Conventional couples angst leading up to UC in later parts - you have been warned!
Rating: PG-13, for now
Summary: Alien mysteries lead to an interesting year...
Spoilers: Up to 'Ask not'
(October 20 2001.)
"So, what was it like, man?" Alex asked as the limo sped on towards Maria's. "Going through the vortex, I mean."
Michael thought about that a second. "Kinda like how I always imagined a luge ride would be. Without the snow and ice. Or the luge sled. And plus a *very* sudden stop at the end of the ride." Neither Alex nor Max could entirely keep from laughing. "Seriously, thoughm guys, big props. Maria and I could have been lost in there for ever if the two of you hadn't figured out how to help. And my girl, of course: Can't forget all she did to help."
"No, she wouldn't let you forget," Alex joked.
* * * *
(October 23 2000.)
"Liz? Liz??" Max called, still staring in shock at the phone.
"What?" Liz hurried back into the living room, a can of grape soda in each hand. "What is it, Max?"
"Either Michael is playing a very not-funny joke on me," Max decided slowly, "or something very bad has just happened." A second's pause. "I have to get over there."
Liz took a second to process all this. "Maria," she breathed. "She's going over there to have her 'talk' with Michael..."
"I think she got there already," Max told Liz softly. "If something bad's happened, she..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
"I'm coming too," Liz decided. "Grab the Jeep keys," she reccomended, pulling on her jacket.
* * * *
(Ummm... not saying yet. :] You'll be able to figure it out in the end.)
"Unnhhhhh," Michael groaned as he lay still, eyes closed, not knowing or caring where he had endedup, not yet remembering how he had gotten there.
"I'll agree to that, and add on an 'Oowwwww...'" Maria's voice answered woefully from nearby.
The tone of Maria's voice was what finally roused Michael into action. Scrambling up only as far as a half-crouch, he oriented on the voice and hurried over. "Maria? Maria!?" he called out, his voice rough and quavery. "Are you okay? Where does it hurt!?"
At first, Maria just moaned again, and as Michael waited for more of an answer, his vision cleared from blurry lights and colors to something approaching normal clarity, and his breath let out in a familiar sigh. Maria was *so* beautiful.
She was always beautiful, no matter what style of clothes she was wearing that week or what her hair looked like this month. Even back before sparks had started to fly between them, and Michael thought of Maria DeLucca as one of the most *annoying* people he had ever met...
Michael shook his head and cut off that line of thought. Maria wasn't wearing anything particularly unusual today... jeans, leather boots, and a slightly funky red top that tied together up behind her neck. "Aaa... all over," she whispered suddenly. "And... and especially my shoulder." She waved her right upper arm in the air for demonstration, and winced with the pain.
"Don't do that again..." Michael whispered solicitously, scooting around to take a closer look at the shoulder in question. "Hmm..." he carefully ran a fingertip over her skin, trying to make a decision. "It doesn't look broken or sprained - you probably just bumped it the wrong way."
"Thank you so much, doctor spaceboy..." Maria muttered.
"Hssh. Hold still." Michael focused his powers carefully. He wasn't the healer specialist - that was Max. But after years with Hank, he had learned a few tricks about using molecular manipulation to fix up scrapes and such. Black eyes were still out of his league, but sprained and bumped joints were right up Michael Guerin's alley. "How does that feel?"
"Better... can you do the rest of me?"
An image of what part of Michael would *like* to do to the rest of Maria flashed through his mind. "Maybe later." He stood up and took a look around.
As if by an unspoken cue, Maria followed suit. They were standing in an alleyway. "Hey, I know this place..." Maria said, more than a little surprised. "It's the alley behind the Crashdown... except it looks different." Her face scrunched up in that cute little thinking expression she had. "How the heck did we get out here?"
"Obviously, whatever alien gizmo you set off inside the lamp sent us here," Michael reasoned.
"*I* set off... what the heck are you doing with alien gizmos in your furniture anyway..."
"I didn't know it was there..." Michael snapped. "Obviously a trap set by the Skins." Michael's mind raced for a second... where *had* he gotten that lamp in the first place? "Well, anyways, it doesn't matter. It didn't send us far enough away. I mean, we can *walk* back to my place from here. Though I wish I didn't have to."
"Well, we could go inside the cafe, to start with," Maria suggested.
"Good idea." Michael turned around, got his bearings and led his way over to the back door.
BAMM! Michael groaned, yet again, and tried to figure out what had happened. He had walked into something. The only problem was, there was nothing in front of him. "What?" He put a hand up. Sure enough, there was what seemed to be an invisible wall right in front of him, blocking off the cafe entrance.
"Michael?"
"Yeah, just a second here," Michael told Maria. "Little invisible wall issue here."
"No, not that," Maria insisted. "Look over there!"
Michael looked back at Maria, and then when she was pointing. A little girl was running down the alley towards them. Not just *any* little girl.
It was Isabel -- the way Isabel looked when she was ten. It couldn't be another girl - Michael would always recognize her.
She was running right at Maria -- didn't seem to even notice the older girl was there. "Aayhh!" And then, as Michael watched in stunned amazement, ten-year-old-Isabel ran right THROUGH Maria's body - like a hologram shot on Red Dwarf or Quantum Leap -- made a hard left turn, jogged right PAST Michael, through his invisible wall, and into the cafe. Michael rapped on the wall where Iz had gone through, but it was still completely solid.
"Uhh... Michael..." Maria said again, once she had recovered from the shock of being run through.
"Yeah, I know, something *really* weird is going on," he summarized.
"Including the fact that you aren't standing on the ground," Maria snarked. Michael blinked in shock. "Check it out." Suspecting some kind of weird Maria joke, Michael bent down to investigate. She was right. As well as his invisible wall, there was apparently an invisible floor about an inch and a half over the asphalt.
"Well... lookit that," he groaned, too surprised this time to do anything else.
* * * *
(October 23 2000.)
"Hello?" Max called, knocking on the door. No answer. He tried the knob. It wasn't locked, and swung in slightly.
He shared a glance at Liz, and she kinda shrugged at him, as if to say 'Well, we came all the way over here, he's not answering, so we might as well at least go in!' Max opened the door the rest of the way and walked into the rat's nest Michael called a living room.
Things were even more disorganized than usual. A blue crystal lamp was lying on the floor, in three pieces, and the phone was sitting askew on one of the chairs. Max picked it up. Still on, and the timer went back far enough... yeah, it was still 'on the hook' from when Michael had been talking to Max.' Not a good sign.
"Something bad happened here," he announced in a dark tone, and turned his attention to the lamp. The metal extension that held the light bulb and shade had broken off, and the cord looked like it was snapped, so that the blue crystal piece was now not connected to anything else. Max reached for it... and a tiny sweep of pale blue light reached up to touch his hand.
"What the heck..." Max pulled his hand back, and the blue aura streched, and strained back, and finally snapped back with an ever-so-faint sucking sound. Max moved his hand back into the area of the lamp very cautiously... and when the blue light manifested, jerked it back. The field leapt up, trying to reach him, and then fell back.
"Let me see..." Liz said, hurrying over. She picked up the lamp, and it didn't react. Max tried to touch it in Liz's hands... and jumped back as the field reached out for him.
"Speaking from a strictly scientific standpoint... that ain't right!!" Liz quipped.
Max shot her a dark look. "This is big... and in the absence of any better clue to where Michael and Maria have gone... we'd better find the others."
"Okay," Liz agreed after a second. "Should I bring the lamp or not?"
"Hmmm..." Max nerved himself... touched the lamp one more time, ready to try to do *something* if the field was harmful. But it wasn't... sort of tingly as it touched him, but not harmful in any way he could tell. Max played around with taking his fingers away from the lamp, watching the strange blue energy react, and then snapped himself free again. "Take it. I'll want to see if the others react to this thing... well, like me, or like you."
"Or both," Liz guessed. "Aliens get a reaction, plain old ordinary human beings don't."
Max smiled, hoping to convey how far Liz was from 'plain old ordinary' to him. "We'd better go. Oh... except... *one* of us should check the bedroom."
"Why?" Liz asked. Max smiled sheepishly. "Do you mean to suggest that nothing about Michael and Maria's disappearance is foul play or has anything to do with this lamp, they've just been getting it on all this time??" Liz considered that a moment. "Well, doesn't hurt to rule everything out, I suppose. I'll go and check, ya big baby."
* * * *
(Be patient. :] )
"Okay, let's recap," Maria's said in a tired voice. "I picked up a lamp in your apartment that apparently had an alien booby trap inside, though no-one knows how or why. It sent us to the alley behind the crashdown... but the alley behind the crashdown circa 1993. That convenience store," she pointed to a building not far away, "was torn down about four and a half years ago and used for a christmax tree lot every December. And this old truck of Mister Emerson's got junked about nine months later. On the other hand, the wodden fire escape above the cafe has been replaced with the metal, so that confirms the time period indicated by... um, well, little Isabel."
"Item two..." Maria sighed as she continued. "we appear to be holograms or something, since Isabel didn't seem to notice we were even here, and she walked right through me, but you're walking on an invisible floor and walked into an invisible wall, so *those* things are real."
"Wait a second," Michael broke in. "On Quantum Leap..."
"You watched Quantum Leap, Michael??"
"When I could." Maria smirked slightly. "Hey, it was a pretty good show, alright? Anyways... Al was projected into the past as a hologram, but really he was in some sort of a projection room, right? What if that's what we're really doing here? In some sort of projection room, so that the walls and the floor are real, but ten-year-old-Isabel, the cafe, the truck, and the convenience stores are just images projected to confuse us?"
"Hmmm..." Maria considered that. "Possible. Except who's doing the projecting?"
Michael considered. "Well, I hate to even say it, but aliens?"
"So... that would mean we're in some kind of incredibly elaborate holding tank, stocked with images that would have taken extraordinary amounts of footwork to jive with our memories?" Michael shrugged. "Well, we can test it out. Stay there." She carefully took a step away from him. "Okay... I've got another invisible wall here..." Trailing her hand against the 'wall,' Maria walked over towards the convenience store - and jumped in surprise as she came into contact with something new. "Corner here..." she walked over to the crashdown... and actually put her hand a short way into the cafe wall. "Looks like we've got a dead end here... three walls of your holding cell maybe, closing us off." She looked up into the sky. "Do you suppose we should check the ceiling for trap doors?"
Michael groaned. "That would be one hell of a royal pain, I'm thinking. Let's just verify that the ceiling is there, and then work on the fourth wall, okay?" Maria nodded, and Michael put his hands together into a foothold for Maria to step into. Maria sighed, and let him boost her up into nowhere.
He had to admit, it looked pretty weird - both of them leaning against the invisible wall, an inch and a half off the ground, boosting Maria into the sky looking for an invisible ceiling. He also had to admit Maria had a beautiful butt. "Okay, that's enough... yeah, I got ceiling here. That's... what, about nine feet up?"
Michael looked up at where Maria's arms were, and tried to judge. "Yeah, sounds abour right."
"Pretty standard... and the walls are maybe ten or eleven feet away from each other. I'd be surprised if the fourth wall was too far away." Maria got down carefully, and then a scary thought struck her pretty face. "What if they cut off the air supply?"
Michael shook his head. "Whoever *they* are, they're not going to all of this trouble just to suffocate the two of us."
Hand in hand, taking turns to check the walls, Maria and Michael headed away from the second wall Maria had found. Once they had covered twenty-five feet from where they'd 'landed,' Maria started to get nervous. "Longer than I thought it would be."
"Relax... it's just a long and narrow room. Don't worry about it."
"Okay, Mi--- yahh!!" Maria yelped, suddenly windmilling in a frantic effort to keep her balance, and Michael reached out and pulled her body into his as a reflex reaction. He couldn't help but notice how good that felt... the way Maria fit when she was nestled up against him like this...
"What... what happened?" he asked after a few seconds.
"There was... there was no floor," she answered. "Go... go and check for yourself."
Michael did... sitting down first... (the invisible 'floor' seemed to have dipped slightly below ground level... they were in somebody's backyard now. How had he not noticed that?) Sure enough, the 'floot' did not continue much past where he stood when Maria had had her episode... but it dropped down and continued on a lower level... "Stairs," he announced eventually.
"Stairs? Oh, my god. I don't like walking down stairs in the dark... but stairs underneath the ground? This is gonna be too weird."
"Come on... we've gotta try. At the least, it'll keep our minds off waiting." Actually, Michael was starting to think that this didn't seem like a holographic holding tank... but since he didn't have any clue what it *was,* he didn't mention that yet. "Hold my hand."
Maria did, as he stood up, and Michael slowly stepped down each step, testing each one carefully, sight unseen, and helping Maria down. But even he hesitated before taking the step that would bring their heads down below 'ground level.' What could possibly happen down there? Would they be suddenly plunged into total darkness?
"Just a sec..." he said, and keeping his feet firmly planted on the stair, he hunched down 'beneath.' Sure enough, absolute blackness greeted him. (How could holograph projectors create that effect, total darkness only a few inches away from bright daylight??)
"So?" Maria said when he resurfaced.
"Just a sec," Michael told her. After thinking for a second, he ducked back down and tried exerting his powers. The stairs and a straight passage beyond flared into visibility from the light Michael was generating from his right hand. Curious now, Michael stepped up a few stairs and waved his hand out in the 'daylight.' The walls and ceilings that they had felt out with so much difficulty could be dimly seen.
"Oh great, *now* he gets clever," Maria groused.
"Come on," Michael urged her. "I don't know where we are, but I don't think it's any holding tank." He seized Maria's hand and let her beneath the ground line again.
* * * *
(October 23, 2000.)
"Where *are* they," Max growled. He and Liz were back at the Evans house, and had checked, in person or by telephone, just about every place they could think of looking for Alex or Isabel or both. Alex's house. The school gym. The crashdown. Several of Isabel's favorite hangouts. The public library.
"It's like... it's almost as if they've disappeared too," Liz commented ominously.
Max groaned. *That* thought he didn't need. Sighing, he bowed to inevitability and picked up the phone one more time, tapping out the number for Sherrif Valenti's home address.
"Bruno's Mortuary, you stab 'em we slab 'em, may I help you?"
Max recognized the voice. "Kyle??"
"Oh, great. Evans. What can I do you for?"
"Umm... I'm just trying to round up Isabel and Tess right now... have you seen..."
"Boy, got a private party in mind, Maxxie boy?" Kyle teased. "Bet Liz would love to hear about that. Well, I have no clue about your babe-alicious sister, but I'm pretty sure that our unexpected house guest is sulking in her room, this afternoon. Correction, I'd like to make that sulking in *my* room, just for the record. I can call up to her, if you'd like."
"Please," Max said, stifling a groan.
There was a shout of 'Tess!! Phone call, it's Maxxie!!', a pause, and then a click on the line. "Yeah Max, what the hell is it?"
"Get off the line, Kyle," Max announced first. Click. "We gotta problem. Michael and Maria have disappeared. It looks like it could be an alien booby trap."
"And I should care... why?"
Max groaned. Tess was in a mother of all snarky moods, to be sure. "Because until we've figured out what's going on, any of us could be next?"
Sigh. "I'll be ready to go in five - just honk when you get here."
"Uhh... before you go," Max said quickly. "Any idea where Isabel might be? We've tried everywhere and there's no sign of her and Alex."
"We??" Tess' voice had a dangerous edge all of a sudden.
Max's mind raced. He had just admitted that Michael and Maria had disappeared, Isabel and Alex couldn't be found, and Kyle was over there with Tess. So the only gang member left unaccounted for was Liz. Plus, despite Liz's warnings about not making their renewed romance obvious to Tess, he didn't want to lie about it. "Well, Liz and I. So... have you seen either of them?"
"Let's see..." Tess considered, "They were in history class - passing notes and generally making spectacles out of themselves. But I don't think Isabel was in last period. Were they spotted during the rest of the school day?"
"Hmm..." Max shared a look at Liz. "I'll ask around. Five minutes, right"
"Five minutes," Tess agreed perkily. "See you then, *Maax*..."
Max hung up the phone and turned to Liz. "Tess says Isabel wasn't in eighth period. Did you have classes with either of them today?"
Liz thought about that... "Uhh... seventh with Alex and Michael... creative writing. Alex was there the whole time... but he ran out pretty quickly once the bell rang." She thought about that, her eyes glittering prettily. "Do you think they might have blown off last class for some kind of amorous escapade?"
Max thought about what Tess had said about the note-passing. "It fits. But where would Alex have gone for something like that?"
Liz thought a little longer. "I'm not sure," she admitted, blushing. "And why the hell didn't either of them take cell phones?"
"Isabel's is in the shop," Max explained. "She wore out the connection on the 'TALK' button."
Liz giggled. "And Alex hasn't gotten one yet. Sigh."
"Well, either we'll find them or they'll show up," Max said hopefully. "Come on. We've got to swing by the Valenti's in... about three minutes."
"The Valenti's?" Liz said, as she got up and grabbed her jacket again. "Tess??"
"Center," Max recommended, impulsively swinging her in for a quick peck. "I know how you feel about her... but when things get tough she's... well, she can be useful. Even save the day."
Liz stared coolly at him. "Let... let's just go, okay?" Max finished uncomfortably.
* * * *
"This has been so amazing," Isabel said, looking over the park one last time before heading back to Alex's car. "Thank you for inviting me along." She swung Alex up against the front passenger door and kissed him passionately, her hands wandering up and down up and down his body.
"Mmmm... it wouldn't have been any fun without you," Alex said truthfully once he could talk again.
Isabel smiled, kissed him playfully on the cheek, and stepped back. "It's so beautiful."
"Yeah... an incredible view." Isabel looked back and Alex, and sure enough he was staring right at her. Iz couldn't fight back a smile.
Alex went around to the driver's side of the car, and Isabel took the hint and got into the passenger side. Neither of them said anything as Alex started up the vehicle, and drove back along the county road into town.
"So... what's the next step?" Isabel teased him. "And when??"
"Well... um, I don't have any plans for tonight," Alex couldn't resist saying. "You??"
"Not a thing... ohh - study date for advanced english lit. Mrs. Darinsky's curriculum is a killer."
"Study date?" Alex saw his own face fall when he looked into the windshield.
"Figure of speech," Iz assured him with a merry smile. "An all-girl study group - some people I met down at the food bank."
"Okay," Alex said, a little relieved and still disappointed at the same time.
"Of course... you could come over afterwards," Isabel continued carelessly. "Just for a few minutes."
Alex looked over, and then had to wrench his eyes from her wide smile back to the road. "I'd l... What the heck??"
A Jeep was travelling towards them on the other side of Lincoln Avenue... not just any jeep, but Max's Jeep. That was obvious because Liz was standing up in the front seat, waving one arm in a hugely exxagerated gesture, and apparently calling out to them. Alex hit the down control on his power window and the door creaked open enough for him to make out the words. "Pull over! Pull over!!"
Surprised, Alex did just that, slowing down and slaloming into the first parking spot that opened up in front of him... (dinging the car ahead of him in the process - hopefully there wouldn't be a dent on either of their bumpers.) Mostly, Alex was surprised that Liz had been able to recognize his dad's car from far enough away to start waving by the time Alex had seen her, and wondered what the heck this was all about anyways.
Isabel and Alex were out of the car and waiting by the time Max had pulled the Jeep around in a tight U-turn and found a parking spot that Alex had passed before he could slow down enough to even try getting in. "What's up?" Alex called out. Tess was in the backseat, and the trio hurried quickly out to meet Isabel and Alex in front of the old quarter arcade.
"Big trouble," Liz said as soon as she was close enough to talk softly and be heard. "Michael and Maria have disappeared, right out of Michael's apartment as near as we can figure it."
"We think it was Czechoslovakians," Max deadpanned. Alex smiled inside at the thought. Liz and Maria's little 'code word' to avoid saying the word alien out loud had become common knowledge among the six of them last spring, but Alex still remembered being puzzled by their references to it, especially because, (as he had flung in Liz's face when he had lost temper with the routine,) it was a term that referred to a country that no longer existed. Somehow, now, that seemed to him to make it perfect for referring to people that conventional wisdom declared had never existed - aliens, little green people of the Roswell crash.
"Do you have the lamp, Liz?" Max was asking. Alex noticed that Tess hung back from all this awkwardly... as if she didn't want to be here, but couldn't quite bring herself to leave for some reason or another. In response to Max's question, Liz brought out a piece of blue crystal with a few bits and pieces sticking out of it - Alex could see how it might have at one point formed the main part of an electric lamp, but it didn't really qualify any more.
"Touch it," Tess suggested. Isabel looked surprised, but she reached out and touched her fingers to the crystal surface - and yelped as a pale blue field of light reached out to touch her fingers - she yanked her hand back, and the light stretched and snapped back.
"Don't worry, it's harmless - but weird," Max summarized. At Liz's nod, Alex tried - and had no success at eliciting the same reaction. Max and Liz were obviously expecting this - once again, it was an aliens-only thing.
Alex brought his hand back from the crystal - and suddenly staggered as a strange sensation struck him. Everything was woozy and dark for a few seconds... "Max," he muttered, trying to keep his balance until things returned to normal.
"What is it?" Max asked, suddenly concerned.
"Michael and Maria need our help. And I... I'm going to have to ask you to do something you may not want to do."
"What is it?" Max pressed. "Anything to help out, man, you know that."
"Get me back into the UFO center so I can touch the memory archive again."
Liz gasped, and Max took a step back. "Are you sure that's necessary, Alex??" he mumbled in embarassment.
"What's the big deal, Max?" Isabel asked, her voice threatening to get out of volume control. "If it might help Michael, just let Alex in and let him touch the gizmo. Personally, I thought we should try it again ever since I *found out* about all this, but you didn't seem to want to talk about it."
Max shook his head silently for a few seconds. "Brody has been really riding us all lately about security in the UFO center... which isn't the tourist trap it used to be, by the way. Brody's converted the whole place into a personal research center. Guy practically called the cops on me the *last* time I snuck inside when I wasn't supposed to be there... and he DID fire me, as you might remember. I'm pretty sure I'm still on probation, and *nobody* but Brody has keys to his office or any of the other secure locations the washer is likely to be. I could probably use my powers to unlock doors and get us around... but that would just make everything look even *more* suspicious if we're caught."
"I understand all that..." Alex said slowly. "But Max... I recognize this thingumajig..." he waved at the crystal lamp... "from a fragment of the alien memories that washer gave me. I don't know how to help Michael, or even what it does... but if I touch the washer and concentrate on the crystal, I might be able to find out. It's our only shot - unless you're willing to work in the dark when it could be Michael and Maria's lives on the line."
Max groaned. "Okay, okay... I'll take you in. But the fewer people who come inside the center, the better."
"I should come too," Tess pointed out. "If you get caught, my powers could save us all." Liz was getting that 'Tess frown' on her face and neither Max nor Isabel looked happy about it, but they couldn't deny the truth of what Tess was saying.
"Okay, let's go." Max turned to Liz and Isabel. "You two... I dunno. Go back to Michael's place and look for more clues... okay?" The two sweeties nodded. "This shouldn't take long, so we'll come over and meet you there."
Alex considered a second - and then tossed his car keys to Isabel. Liz and Isabel went back to the Taurus, while Alex and Tess followed Max to his Jeep.
Alex hoped that all this would work. Just about twenty-four hours ago he had been calling Maria up with the idea for that open mike night. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to never see her face - or Michael - again.
* * * *
(Whenever and wherever...)
Michael sighed as he and Maria walked along. Now that they were underground, and he had gotten used to illuminating the passage walls with his alien glowing hand, things were starting to seem more normal. Just like walking along your ordinary everyday underground passageway.
He watched Maria as they walked. She was so pretty, and so determined to find a way out of this, whatever the hell 'this' was. **I got her into this,** Michael thought to himself. **Just like I got her into so much danger, ever since that first time I stole the Jetta - and ended up stealing HER into the bargain. The day I first got her alone in a motel room.** Michael wanted so much to hold onto Maria, like he had once held on for deal life, to kiss her, and...
**But that's not gonna happen. You're through ruining her life, Michael Thomas Guerin. Get out of this trap and then stay as far away as you possibly can.**
**But what if she doesn't really want me out of her life??**
"Fork in the road, space-boy," Maria told him.
"What, right now?" he asked, still deep in his own thoughts. And then snapped back to reality, suddenly. The passageway they had been following diverged into two - one going mostly ahead, but bearing to the left, and seeming to stay level for a while. The other one cornered fairly sharply to the right, call it two o'clock, and seemed to be tending downward in a gentle slope. "Okay... which way do we go?" he asked out loud.
"This is your alien holding tank, buddy boy," Maria told him. "I'm just along for the ride because of a mistake. Your call."
"Okay..." Michael considered the options one more time, then chose the left branch. Both from going more nearly forward, and not taking them further down, it seemed the better bet to him, though he couldn't have explained why he thought those were better things. "Come on." He led the way along the pathway of his choice, and Maria followed along quickly.
"I'm bored, Michael," Maria announced after about half a minute. "Enough with the forging bravely on in silence, we can at least chat while we walk through this... whatever-it-is, can't we?"
Michael sighed. "If you can think of something we can 'chat' about, go right ahead and start a conversation. I'll chime right in."
"Hmmm..." That stumped Maria for a second. "We could play truth or dare."
"I don't know about you, but *I'm* nowhere near THAT bored."
"Okay, then... how about that gizmo Alex f--"
"Not that," Michael quickly disclaimed.
"What? Why not?? Are you just being difficult, Michael..."
"No." He looked around significantly. "We may be being monitored. We can't talk about anything that... well, you know." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "May give away strategic information."
Maria blushed. "Oh, my god... I'm so sorry. I didn't think of that. Well... okay, we got something new going on here."
They did indeed. About fifteen feet away, the ceiling was angling down, and when Michael brightened his hand, it became clear that the floor was following suit a little sooner. "Stairs," he announced. "We're heading down on this route after all."
"Is that why you picked this branch?" Maria asked. "Because it wasn't going down?" Michael shrugged. "Well, you got stairs, buddy. Go ahead." She waved him on.
Michael shrugged, walked up to the lip of the top stair, and stepped carefully down. Something weird happened.
Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a busy restaurant -- the layout looked vaguely like Senor Chao's, but the decor was totally different and the food being served looked mostly like steak and potatoes. He was supported about five inches above the floor, in a narrow aisle between two booths in the 'intimate' section, and as before, nobody was noticing him. In fact... somebody appeared out of nowhere right in front of him and took a seat, and Michael realized that he had now been walked through.
But, most importantly... "Maria?" he called out. "Where are you??" None of the steak-and-potato diners paid any attention to him.
"Michael?" the voice calling back was strong, but as Michael turned around, he couldn't see her. "I'm right here where you left me, but the light has gone out. I can touch the wall here, but... I'm scared. What happened to you?"
Something funny hit Michael when Maria said those words. "I'm scared." Since he'd known Maria DeLucca, they'd been through chases with FBI agents, alien diseases, run up against a pretty nasty shapeshifter, and faced the wrath of the law aka Sherrif Jim Valenti, She had been plenty scared when she first found out that Michael and the Evans kids were aliens in the first place, he knew. And yet he'd never heard her admit to being afraid. Simple darkness won that dubious honor - or maybe it was being alone, in the dark, on top of everything else that was going on here?
Suddenly, Michael realized that he had forgotten to keep his hand lit, in the surprise of finding himself in the restaurant. He brightened it up again, raising it high in the direction that he had gone, hoping that its light would reach Maria. "Does that help?"
"Does what help? I... I can't see what you're doing Michael."
This was confusing. The palm-light illuminated the same passageway structure that Michael remembered from underground - the tunnel leading back, the stairs just starting, Michael standing on the next step, further ones leading further down. But there was no sign of Maria. "What the..." Without even thinking about it, Michael stepped back up to the top of the stairs again.
And everything was back - the underground, and Maria - shaking slightly as she kept her hand against the corridor wall, relaxing instinctively as Michael and the light returned. "There you are, thank god! What the heck happened?"
"I... I can't really explain it," Michael admitted. "Come on... take my hand, and we'll step down onto the first stair at precisely the same time. Hopefully, that'll take us there together."
"Take us where?" Maria asked, but Michael didn't even bother answering that one. So she let Michael take her hand in his and lead her to the edge of the first stair. He waited until Maria was ready, stepped down as close to unison with her, and tightened his grip on her hand when she gave a small start of surprise.
"What the heck?" Maria was looking around the restaurant. "We're back above ground... and judging by the clothes, we're in the fifties or something." Michael looked around - he hadn't noticed the wardrobe choices before, but would have to agree that they were dated. "Michael-vision would tell us that the stairway is still going down, though. Want to try another step?"
Michael blinked in surprise. "Um... sure, fine by me." They stepped together, again... and found themselves in the air four and a half feet above a roof - the roof of the Texas steakman restaurant, to judge by the sign in the parking lot. Probably that was the restaurant they had been in. And yes... this was the same location as Senor Chao's, allowing for a lot of development getting made between 1952 and the nineties. Weird.
"What the *hell* is wrong with this place??" Maria swore suddenly, beside him. "We go down, but we're up. That's not right!" She turned her fury on the sky above them. "Do you hear me?? This isn't even *FUNNY*!!"
"C'mon." Michael caught Maria's free hand in his, turning her around to face him head on. "I admit this whole thing is the mega-weird, but losing your temper with big blue up there isn't gonna help. We've got two alternatives here - we can go back and try that other fork, or we can keep going down slash up steps and see where that leads us. Which do you want to do?"
Maria scrunched up her face. "Let's keep going with the stairway, I guess." Michael nodded, let Maria's left hand go, and they stepped down one more time. Another eight or nine feet of altitude.
"Wait a sec," Maria said suddenly. "Try taking one without me." There was a pause in which Michael neither moved nor said anything. "C'mon, I know what I'm doing here. Just step down." She let go of his left hand and gestured.
Michael stepped down and looked around. Sure enough, there was Maria below him, straight down except for the few inches of forward progress represented by the stair and the two feet sideways that she had been away from him in the first place. She waved at him, then stepped down - and disappeared in mid-step, only to appear stepping *down* onto the same level as he was. Totally weird.
"Stupid place that can't even keep down and up straight," Maria grumbled. "Well, let's go, space-boy."
Michael followed, noticing idly that though the trees were bending in a stiff wind, the air that he felt around himself was cool and calm. Weird.
* * * *
(Oct/23/00.)
As Max approached the Jeep again he paused, considering, and then suddenly tossed the keys over to Alex. "Huh?" Alex was caught by surprise and only just managed to make the catch.
"Take the wheel," Max explained unneccesarily. "I'll need to do some prep work." He pulled out his cell phone and swung into the front passenger seat.
Tess pouted and unhappily climbed back into the back seat. Alex walked around and got into the driver's seat, still feeling like he was missing something. "Prep work?"
Max sighed. "We can't just assume that the UFO center is empty, ready for us to sneak in, wearing black clothes. Fortunately, I have a decent way to check the status of the premises before going in." Motioning Alex to get the car started, he began dialing.
Alex pulled out into the street and started looking for a side street by which they could turn around again and get heading in the direction of the center. Max started talking into his phone. "Hey, Brody, it's Max Evans. Just wondering if you were burning the midnight oil." A route map clicked into firm detail in Alex's mind. "Need anyone to lend a hand?" Alex carefully turned the Jeep onto Leslie street. "Well, actually Brody, to tell you the truth I've got a few friends here and I was hoping to give them a little tour of the place." Now onto Barrister, heading south towards the Crashdown Cafe and the UFO center.
"Do you remember Alex Whitman?" Max contiued into the phone. "The guy who you told to tell me I was re-hired?" Whatever Brody's answer was, it drew a laugh from Max. "Cool. And I've got another friend..." Max flicked a glance at Tess. "She's a *huge* UFO fan. Close encounters of the third kind, the whole bit." Longer response from Brody. "Okay... we're almost there. See you in a few." Max hung up the phone and grinned triumphantly at his friends. "We're in."
Tess scowled prettily at him. "Calling ahead on a top secret mission, Max?"
Alex had to differ. "It's the purloined letter bit, one last time. Hiding in plain sight. You've gotta love it." He turned into the UFO center's parking lot, which was now full of portables and 'Authorized Parking Only' signs. "We're here."
All three teens were completely silent from the moment of disembarkation as Max led them across the parking lot, opened the front door with a solitary key, and waved Alex and Tess inside the darkened interior.
Alex looked around with surprise as his eyes acclimated to the dimness. With Milton in charge, the majority of the space in the center had been 'half open' in the manner of a museum, suggesting large areas without exposing them all at once. You walked from one exhibit to another through wide passageways, creating a layout that seemed mazelike without being hard to navigate.
Things were different now. Large spaces were now completely cut off with newly constructed walls and doors with obvious locks on them, allowing free travel only through a centralized system of main passageways. It hardly seemed to be practically superior to using conventional office space for the same purpose, but the overall effect somehow managed to have a mysterious cachet that was probably right up Brody Davis' alley.
Once all three of them were inside, Max closed the door behind himself, checking to make sure that the lock had caught, and once again took the lead. Two passageways later, Alex caught sight of a solid door that was older than the other, and it was to this one that Max was leading them. Brody's office, presumably.
Max knocked. No answer. He was about to knock again when a speaker buzeed into life. "Evans?"
Max was surprised, even once he'd found the little intercom down to one side of the door. "Brody?"
"Yeah, Evans... I forgot to mention this on the phone. We're... we're doing a radiographic analysis of the Fairfield metal sample. The process is... is *extremely* sensitive to light, so -- so you see, I can't open the door."
"Um, okay..." Max said, puzzled. "No biggie. Um, the keys? I still wanna give my buddies the tour."
"Whitman, my man?" Brody called out expectantly.
"Umm... right here, Mister Davis," Alex replied.
"So nice to see you again, Alex," Brody replied chattily. "You see why I like him, Evans? Alex gives me a little respect, not like the rest of you classless oafs." Max was shaking his head and grinning with only a little embarassment. "And you said you had a second friend?"
After a second's pause, Tess took her cue. "I'm Tess Harding, Mister Davis. So nice to make your acquaintance, Max has told me a little about you."
"A girl!" Brody said with mastery of the obvious. "Charmed, Tess my dear. Max, show Tess the good stuff, okay? Thomson is working in room 4, he can give you the spare keys. Tell him I said it was alright, huh?" The intercom clicked off.
Max shrugged and led the two of them through the labyrinth once more, to a room full of files wher a thirtyish man was consulting endless sheafs of paper and crossreferencing notations on an elaborate computer program. Max made the request for the keys, invoking Brody's name as e had been told to, and Thompson looked over Alex and Tess closely. Alex was dressed fairly normally in his school clothes, but Tess, Alex realized for the first time, (he had hardly had the time to worry about such details before,) was wearing a tight white tank top, pleated skirt, and black sandals with heels.
She had probably been dressing up to impress Max, not realizing that Max had gotten back together with Liz because the two of them were downplaying it in public. But right now the trampy clothes made her look like some kind of wild UFO groupie.
But soon enough the master key ring was handed over and Tess could beat a retreat from Thompson's misinformed leer. Max waited until they were in a deserted section of corridor before whispering to Max, "Do you have any idea where it is?"
Alex had to think a second before shaking his head. "In the process of being moved when I first saw it, and I couldn't say to where. Even if I knew which way was which in the UFO center version two point oh."
"Okay, then we'll have to go with hunt and peck, guided by my guesstimates of Brody's sorting system," Max said, undeterred. "Over here is as good a place to start as any." He pointed to a nearby door.
They searched that room without any luck. By the time Max had brought them to a second, Tess was getting impatient, and rushed in as soon as Max had unlocked the door.
"Tess," Max groaned, hurrying in after her after pushing the door open for Alex. By the time Alex had stepped into the doorframe, it was happening.
FWOOOMM!! A blue pulse emerged from a metal shelf on the far side of the storage area, expanding into the open space and bouncing dimly off of the walls. First Tess and then Max groaned in surprise as the wave passed through their bodies. Alex didn't seem to be affected.
"Oh my god," he muttered, rushing to Max and steadying the alien boy. He had heard of the alien device that had hurt Michael and convinced Isabel that Brody was a skin. Was this it again? "Are you okay man?" he asked in a low whisper.
Max was checking as if to make sure that all his arms and legs were unbroken. "Fine, except that..."
"I can't use my powers!!" Tess stage-whispered from a few yards in front of them.
Alex thought quickly. "Okay. We might as well check this room while we're here, but as long as either of you are nearby, it might go off again, even worse or something. So Max, go out into the hallway across from the door, act as if the two of you are talking about something she finds *incredibly* fascinating. Stand watch and run interference. I'll do as thorough a search as I can in a few minutes and then come out. Kys?" Max handed them over. "Good. Go." Tess and Max both seemed uncertain about this plan, but went along with it, possibly urged on by the possibility of getting zapped again. Once the door was pulled to, Alex spread out and started looking furiously for his washer.
Nothing. He did spot the pentagon device and was briefly distracted by it... Five big symbols that might be alien letters or something else, each near one side of the device. One side was marked below the top, and Alex guessed that the top pentagon spun like a dial, allowing the unit to be 'set to' any of the five symbols. Two settings were probably power drain and the more harmful punch that Michael had taken, and one might be 'off.' What could the other two settings be for? (Alex forced himself to move on and continue searching the room, but couldn't force his mind away from speculation.) A setting for tracking? A lethal kill-setting?
If room two held the washer, it would take a more through search than Alex was willing to make with his friends forced to stay outside the room. He hurried out, locking the door, and giving the keys back to Max.
Soon they were on their way to search location number three. Alex was starting to get nervous - this seemed entirely too easy. Except for Thompson, they had seen no-one at all since they'd entered the UFO center. And talked to Brody over the intercom, of course. And whoever else had been inside Brody's office.
Alex's vivid imagination started to run away with that speculation. Anyone could have been in there with Mister Davis. What if the whole 'radiographic analysis bit had been a cover, an excuse not to open the door so that Max couldn't see who Brody was with? So instead they had all nicely introduced themselves to this mystery person, while learning nothing at all about him or her?
**Lighten up Alex man, you're getting paranoid.**
As soon as Max opened the door to the third room, he could spot the alien washer, sitting propped up on its oversize backing card, just as Alex had described it. This time, Max and Tess crowded near the door as Alex stepped inside alone, even though for all Alex could guess the chances of running into another harmful alien device in this room were practically zero. Or were they afraid of his little washer?
Alex nerved himself, reached out, and gingerly touched the tiny metal ring. ZZZZAAPP!!! The shock was even more intense this time. (What happened to 'only on the first time?' Then again, if he expected the washer to only do something on the first time, why had he even *tried* to touch it again??)
While those thoughts were still running through Alex's head, the second phase of the change hit. Memory, self-identity, personality, character... all of those things seemed in danger of being altered. Alex fought back the forces - he couldn't afford them right now. Later, he could go over what he had received from the slug and assimilate it. He turned to Max.
"Do you wanna try touching it yourself? I'd be curious to see what happens."
Max shrugged nervously, but walked into the room, and with what seemed like more confidence, reached out to touch the disk. And yanked his finger back.
"What... what happened, Max?" Alex asked.
"I... I don't know," Max said at first. "I felt a static charge, like you said. It was like the gizmo was trying to tell me something, but blocked itself off at the last second. I guess you're the only one it'll talk t-"
"Word up!" Tess called from the door. Max and Alex froze for a second. Footsteps coming towards their room could be clearly heard. Then Max dragged Alex across the room, motioning Tess to come and join them. He was searching through a box when the footsteps arrived, Tess and Alex looking on nervously. "Evans?" It was Brody, and he opened the door wide. "What are you guys doing in here?"
Max looked up, his face all earnest uncertainty. "Looking for the alien autopsy pictorials, Brody. You said to show Tess the good stuff, right?"
Brody gave Tess a quick once-over. "Oh. I hadn't thought that included this room, but no harm done, I suppose." His eyes swept over the room as if searching for any tiny disarray. Alex was wondering whether he and Max had left the washer card exactly as they had left it, but didn't dare look across the room for fear of attracting Brody's attention.
"Well, enjoy the tour, Tess, Alex," Brody said, and walked on. Neither of the three teens spoke or moved until his footsteps had faded away.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Max muttered in a hoarse whisper. Brody was nowhere to be seen when Alex checked the hallway. A quick trip to return the keys to a table just inside Room four, (Thompson didn't even look up,) and they were back out to the parking lot.
"So, what now, Alex?" Tess asked nervously. "Did you find out anything useful, after all that?"
To Alex's surprise, he knew the answer. He climbed into the back seat and tossed the Jeep's keys to Max. (Fair shotgun was fair, after all.) "First, Michael's place, I suppose. We need to find the girls. Isabel is the only one who can help guide Michael and Maria out of the space/time labyrinth!"
TO BE CONTINUED.
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: Chris_Kenworthy@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of the Roswell characters. I don't plan to steal them and lock them up in white rooms either. I just let them out to play from time to time and see what happens.
Distribution: Distribute anywhere you like, currently based at fanatics: http://www.roswellfanatics.net/
Feedback: YES PLEASE!
Category: Alternate timeline epic. Conventional couples angst leading up to UC in later parts - you have been warned!
Rating: PG-13, for now
Summary: Alien mysteries lead to an interesting year...
Spoilers: Up to 'Ask not'
(October 20 2001.)
"So, what was it like, man?" Alex asked as the limo sped on towards Maria's. "Going through the vortex, I mean."
Michael thought about that a second. "Kinda like how I always imagined a luge ride would be. Without the snow and ice. Or the luge sled. And plus a *very* sudden stop at the end of the ride." Neither Alex nor Max could entirely keep from laughing. "Seriously, thoughm guys, big props. Maria and I could have been lost in there for ever if the two of you hadn't figured out how to help. And my girl, of course: Can't forget all she did to help."
"No, she wouldn't let you forget," Alex joked.
* * * *
(October 23 2000.)
"Liz? Liz??" Max called, still staring in shock at the phone.
"What?" Liz hurried back into the living room, a can of grape soda in each hand. "What is it, Max?"
"Either Michael is playing a very not-funny joke on me," Max decided slowly, "or something very bad has just happened." A second's pause. "I have to get over there."
Liz took a second to process all this. "Maria," she breathed. "She's going over there to have her 'talk' with Michael..."
"I think she got there already," Max told Liz softly. "If something bad's happened, she..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
"I'm coming too," Liz decided. "Grab the Jeep keys," she reccomended, pulling on her jacket.
* * * *
(Ummm... not saying yet. :] You'll be able to figure it out in the end.)
"Unnhhhhh," Michael groaned as he lay still, eyes closed, not knowing or caring where he had endedup, not yet remembering how he had gotten there.
"I'll agree to that, and add on an 'Oowwwww...'" Maria's voice answered woefully from nearby.
The tone of Maria's voice was what finally roused Michael into action. Scrambling up only as far as a half-crouch, he oriented on the voice and hurried over. "Maria? Maria!?" he called out, his voice rough and quavery. "Are you okay? Where does it hurt!?"
At first, Maria just moaned again, and as Michael waited for more of an answer, his vision cleared from blurry lights and colors to something approaching normal clarity, and his breath let out in a familiar sigh. Maria was *so* beautiful.
She was always beautiful, no matter what style of clothes she was wearing that week or what her hair looked like this month. Even back before sparks had started to fly between them, and Michael thought of Maria DeLucca as one of the most *annoying* people he had ever met...
Michael shook his head and cut off that line of thought. Maria wasn't wearing anything particularly unusual today... jeans, leather boots, and a slightly funky red top that tied together up behind her neck. "Aaa... all over," she whispered suddenly. "And... and especially my shoulder." She waved her right upper arm in the air for demonstration, and winced with the pain.
"Don't do that again..." Michael whispered solicitously, scooting around to take a closer look at the shoulder in question. "Hmm..." he carefully ran a fingertip over her skin, trying to make a decision. "It doesn't look broken or sprained - you probably just bumped it the wrong way."
"Thank you so much, doctor spaceboy..." Maria muttered.
"Hssh. Hold still." Michael focused his powers carefully. He wasn't the healer specialist - that was Max. But after years with Hank, he had learned a few tricks about using molecular manipulation to fix up scrapes and such. Black eyes were still out of his league, but sprained and bumped joints were right up Michael Guerin's alley. "How does that feel?"
"Better... can you do the rest of me?"
An image of what part of Michael would *like* to do to the rest of Maria flashed through his mind. "Maybe later." He stood up and took a look around.
As if by an unspoken cue, Maria followed suit. They were standing in an alleyway. "Hey, I know this place..." Maria said, more than a little surprised. "It's the alley behind the Crashdown... except it looks different." Her face scrunched up in that cute little thinking expression she had. "How the heck did we get out here?"
"Obviously, whatever alien gizmo you set off inside the lamp sent us here," Michael reasoned.
"*I* set off... what the heck are you doing with alien gizmos in your furniture anyway..."
"I didn't know it was there..." Michael snapped. "Obviously a trap set by the Skins." Michael's mind raced for a second... where *had* he gotten that lamp in the first place? "Well, anyways, it doesn't matter. It didn't send us far enough away. I mean, we can *walk* back to my place from here. Though I wish I didn't have to."
"Well, we could go inside the cafe, to start with," Maria suggested.
"Good idea." Michael turned around, got his bearings and led his way over to the back door.
BAMM! Michael groaned, yet again, and tried to figure out what had happened. He had walked into something. The only problem was, there was nothing in front of him. "What?" He put a hand up. Sure enough, there was what seemed to be an invisible wall right in front of him, blocking off the cafe entrance.
"Michael?"
"Yeah, just a second here," Michael told Maria. "Little invisible wall issue here."
"No, not that," Maria insisted. "Look over there!"
Michael looked back at Maria, and then when she was pointing. A little girl was running down the alley towards them. Not just *any* little girl.
It was Isabel -- the way Isabel looked when she was ten. It couldn't be another girl - Michael would always recognize her.
She was running right at Maria -- didn't seem to even notice the older girl was there. "Aayhh!" And then, as Michael watched in stunned amazement, ten-year-old-Isabel ran right THROUGH Maria's body - like a hologram shot on Red Dwarf or Quantum Leap -- made a hard left turn, jogged right PAST Michael, through his invisible wall, and into the cafe. Michael rapped on the wall where Iz had gone through, but it was still completely solid.
"Uhh... Michael..." Maria said again, once she had recovered from the shock of being run through.
"Yeah, I know, something *really* weird is going on," he summarized.
"Including the fact that you aren't standing on the ground," Maria snarked. Michael blinked in shock. "Check it out." Suspecting some kind of weird Maria joke, Michael bent down to investigate. She was right. As well as his invisible wall, there was apparently an invisible floor about an inch and a half over the asphalt.
"Well... lookit that," he groaned, too surprised this time to do anything else.
* * * *
(October 23 2000.)
"Hello?" Max called, knocking on the door. No answer. He tried the knob. It wasn't locked, and swung in slightly.
He shared a glance at Liz, and she kinda shrugged at him, as if to say 'Well, we came all the way over here, he's not answering, so we might as well at least go in!' Max opened the door the rest of the way and walked into the rat's nest Michael called a living room.
Things were even more disorganized than usual. A blue crystal lamp was lying on the floor, in three pieces, and the phone was sitting askew on one of the chairs. Max picked it up. Still on, and the timer went back far enough... yeah, it was still 'on the hook' from when Michael had been talking to Max.' Not a good sign.
"Something bad happened here," he announced in a dark tone, and turned his attention to the lamp. The metal extension that held the light bulb and shade had broken off, and the cord looked like it was snapped, so that the blue crystal piece was now not connected to anything else. Max reached for it... and a tiny sweep of pale blue light reached up to touch his hand.
"What the heck..." Max pulled his hand back, and the blue aura streched, and strained back, and finally snapped back with an ever-so-faint sucking sound. Max moved his hand back into the area of the lamp very cautiously... and when the blue light manifested, jerked it back. The field leapt up, trying to reach him, and then fell back.
"Let me see..." Liz said, hurrying over. She picked up the lamp, and it didn't react. Max tried to touch it in Liz's hands... and jumped back as the field reached out for him.
"Speaking from a strictly scientific standpoint... that ain't right!!" Liz quipped.
Max shot her a dark look. "This is big... and in the absence of any better clue to where Michael and Maria have gone... we'd better find the others."
"Okay," Liz agreed after a second. "Should I bring the lamp or not?"
"Hmmm..." Max nerved himself... touched the lamp one more time, ready to try to do *something* if the field was harmful. But it wasn't... sort of tingly as it touched him, but not harmful in any way he could tell. Max played around with taking his fingers away from the lamp, watching the strange blue energy react, and then snapped himself free again. "Take it. I'll want to see if the others react to this thing... well, like me, or like you."
"Or both," Liz guessed. "Aliens get a reaction, plain old ordinary human beings don't."
Max smiled, hoping to convey how far Liz was from 'plain old ordinary' to him. "We'd better go. Oh... except... *one* of us should check the bedroom."
"Why?" Liz asked. Max smiled sheepishly. "Do you mean to suggest that nothing about Michael and Maria's disappearance is foul play or has anything to do with this lamp, they've just been getting it on all this time??" Liz considered that a moment. "Well, doesn't hurt to rule everything out, I suppose. I'll go and check, ya big baby."
* * * *
(Be patient. :] )
"Okay, let's recap," Maria's said in a tired voice. "I picked up a lamp in your apartment that apparently had an alien booby trap inside, though no-one knows how or why. It sent us to the alley behind the crashdown... but the alley behind the crashdown circa 1993. That convenience store," she pointed to a building not far away, "was torn down about four and a half years ago and used for a christmax tree lot every December. And this old truck of Mister Emerson's got junked about nine months later. On the other hand, the wodden fire escape above the cafe has been replaced with the metal, so that confirms the time period indicated by... um, well, little Isabel."
"Item two..." Maria sighed as she continued. "we appear to be holograms or something, since Isabel didn't seem to notice we were even here, and she walked right through me, but you're walking on an invisible floor and walked into an invisible wall, so *those* things are real."
"Wait a second," Michael broke in. "On Quantum Leap..."
"You watched Quantum Leap, Michael??"
"When I could." Maria smirked slightly. "Hey, it was a pretty good show, alright? Anyways... Al was projected into the past as a hologram, but really he was in some sort of a projection room, right? What if that's what we're really doing here? In some sort of projection room, so that the walls and the floor are real, but ten-year-old-Isabel, the cafe, the truck, and the convenience stores are just images projected to confuse us?"
"Hmmm..." Maria considered that. "Possible. Except who's doing the projecting?"
Michael considered. "Well, I hate to even say it, but aliens?"
"So... that would mean we're in some kind of incredibly elaborate holding tank, stocked with images that would have taken extraordinary amounts of footwork to jive with our memories?" Michael shrugged. "Well, we can test it out. Stay there." She carefully took a step away from him. "Okay... I've got another invisible wall here..." Trailing her hand against the 'wall,' Maria walked over towards the convenience store - and jumped in surprise as she came into contact with something new. "Corner here..." she walked over to the crashdown... and actually put her hand a short way into the cafe wall. "Looks like we've got a dead end here... three walls of your holding cell maybe, closing us off." She looked up into the sky. "Do you suppose we should check the ceiling for trap doors?"
Michael groaned. "That would be one hell of a royal pain, I'm thinking. Let's just verify that the ceiling is there, and then work on the fourth wall, okay?" Maria nodded, and Michael put his hands together into a foothold for Maria to step into. Maria sighed, and let him boost her up into nowhere.
He had to admit, it looked pretty weird - both of them leaning against the invisible wall, an inch and a half off the ground, boosting Maria into the sky looking for an invisible ceiling. He also had to admit Maria had a beautiful butt. "Okay, that's enough... yeah, I got ceiling here. That's... what, about nine feet up?"
Michael looked up at where Maria's arms were, and tried to judge. "Yeah, sounds abour right."
"Pretty standard... and the walls are maybe ten or eleven feet away from each other. I'd be surprised if the fourth wall was too far away." Maria got down carefully, and then a scary thought struck her pretty face. "What if they cut off the air supply?"
Michael shook his head. "Whoever *they* are, they're not going to all of this trouble just to suffocate the two of us."
Hand in hand, taking turns to check the walls, Maria and Michael headed away from the second wall Maria had found. Once they had covered twenty-five feet from where they'd 'landed,' Maria started to get nervous. "Longer than I thought it would be."
"Relax... it's just a long and narrow room. Don't worry about it."
"Okay, Mi--- yahh!!" Maria yelped, suddenly windmilling in a frantic effort to keep her balance, and Michael reached out and pulled her body into his as a reflex reaction. He couldn't help but notice how good that felt... the way Maria fit when she was nestled up against him like this...
"What... what happened?" he asked after a few seconds.
"There was... there was no floor," she answered. "Go... go and check for yourself."
Michael did... sitting down first... (the invisible 'floor' seemed to have dipped slightly below ground level... they were in somebody's backyard now. How had he not noticed that?) Sure enough, the 'floot' did not continue much past where he stood when Maria had had her episode... but it dropped down and continued on a lower level... "Stairs," he announced eventually.
"Stairs? Oh, my god. I don't like walking down stairs in the dark... but stairs underneath the ground? This is gonna be too weird."
"Come on... we've gotta try. At the least, it'll keep our minds off waiting." Actually, Michael was starting to think that this didn't seem like a holographic holding tank... but since he didn't have any clue what it *was,* he didn't mention that yet. "Hold my hand."
Maria did, as he stood up, and Michael slowly stepped down each step, testing each one carefully, sight unseen, and helping Maria down. But even he hesitated before taking the step that would bring their heads down below 'ground level.' What could possibly happen down there? Would they be suddenly plunged into total darkness?
"Just a sec..." he said, and keeping his feet firmly planted on the stair, he hunched down 'beneath.' Sure enough, absolute blackness greeted him. (How could holograph projectors create that effect, total darkness only a few inches away from bright daylight??)
"So?" Maria said when he resurfaced.
"Just a sec," Michael told her. After thinking for a second, he ducked back down and tried exerting his powers. The stairs and a straight passage beyond flared into visibility from the light Michael was generating from his right hand. Curious now, Michael stepped up a few stairs and waved his hand out in the 'daylight.' The walls and ceilings that they had felt out with so much difficulty could be dimly seen.
"Oh great, *now* he gets clever," Maria groused.
"Come on," Michael urged her. "I don't know where we are, but I don't think it's any holding tank." He seized Maria's hand and let her beneath the ground line again.
* * * *
(October 23, 2000.)
"Where *are* they," Max growled. He and Liz were back at the Evans house, and had checked, in person or by telephone, just about every place they could think of looking for Alex or Isabel or both. Alex's house. The school gym. The crashdown. Several of Isabel's favorite hangouts. The public library.
"It's like... it's almost as if they've disappeared too," Liz commented ominously.
Max groaned. *That* thought he didn't need. Sighing, he bowed to inevitability and picked up the phone one more time, tapping out the number for Sherrif Valenti's home address.
"Bruno's Mortuary, you stab 'em we slab 'em, may I help you?"
Max recognized the voice. "Kyle??"
"Oh, great. Evans. What can I do you for?"
"Umm... I'm just trying to round up Isabel and Tess right now... have you seen..."
"Boy, got a private party in mind, Maxxie boy?" Kyle teased. "Bet Liz would love to hear about that. Well, I have no clue about your babe-alicious sister, but I'm pretty sure that our unexpected house guest is sulking in her room, this afternoon. Correction, I'd like to make that sulking in *my* room, just for the record. I can call up to her, if you'd like."
"Please," Max said, stifling a groan.
There was a shout of 'Tess!! Phone call, it's Maxxie!!', a pause, and then a click on the line. "Yeah Max, what the hell is it?"
"Get off the line, Kyle," Max announced first. Click. "We gotta problem. Michael and Maria have disappeared. It looks like it could be an alien booby trap."
"And I should care... why?"
Max groaned. Tess was in a mother of all snarky moods, to be sure. "Because until we've figured out what's going on, any of us could be next?"
Sigh. "I'll be ready to go in five - just honk when you get here."
"Uhh... before you go," Max said quickly. "Any idea where Isabel might be? We've tried everywhere and there's no sign of her and Alex."
"We??" Tess' voice had a dangerous edge all of a sudden.
Max's mind raced. He had just admitted that Michael and Maria had disappeared, Isabel and Alex couldn't be found, and Kyle was over there with Tess. So the only gang member left unaccounted for was Liz. Plus, despite Liz's warnings about not making their renewed romance obvious to Tess, he didn't want to lie about it. "Well, Liz and I. So... have you seen either of them?"
"Let's see..." Tess considered, "They were in history class - passing notes and generally making spectacles out of themselves. But I don't think Isabel was in last period. Were they spotted during the rest of the school day?"
"Hmm..." Max shared a look at Liz. "I'll ask around. Five minutes, right"
"Five minutes," Tess agreed perkily. "See you then, *Maax*..."
Max hung up the phone and turned to Liz. "Tess says Isabel wasn't in eighth period. Did you have classes with either of them today?"
Liz thought about that... "Uhh... seventh with Alex and Michael... creative writing. Alex was there the whole time... but he ran out pretty quickly once the bell rang." She thought about that, her eyes glittering prettily. "Do you think they might have blown off last class for some kind of amorous escapade?"
Max thought about what Tess had said about the note-passing. "It fits. But where would Alex have gone for something like that?"
Liz thought a little longer. "I'm not sure," she admitted, blushing. "And why the hell didn't either of them take cell phones?"
"Isabel's is in the shop," Max explained. "She wore out the connection on the 'TALK' button."
Liz giggled. "And Alex hasn't gotten one yet. Sigh."
"Well, either we'll find them or they'll show up," Max said hopefully. "Come on. We've got to swing by the Valenti's in... about three minutes."
"The Valenti's?" Liz said, as she got up and grabbed her jacket again. "Tess??"
"Center," Max recommended, impulsively swinging her in for a quick peck. "I know how you feel about her... but when things get tough she's... well, she can be useful. Even save the day."
Liz stared coolly at him. "Let... let's just go, okay?" Max finished uncomfortably.
* * * *
"This has been so amazing," Isabel said, looking over the park one last time before heading back to Alex's car. "Thank you for inviting me along." She swung Alex up against the front passenger door and kissed him passionately, her hands wandering up and down up and down his body.
"Mmmm... it wouldn't have been any fun without you," Alex said truthfully once he could talk again.
Isabel smiled, kissed him playfully on the cheek, and stepped back. "It's so beautiful."
"Yeah... an incredible view." Isabel looked back and Alex, and sure enough he was staring right at her. Iz couldn't fight back a smile.
Alex went around to the driver's side of the car, and Isabel took the hint and got into the passenger side. Neither of them said anything as Alex started up the vehicle, and drove back along the county road into town.
"So... what's the next step?" Isabel teased him. "And when??"
"Well... um, I don't have any plans for tonight," Alex couldn't resist saying. "You??"
"Not a thing... ohh - study date for advanced english lit. Mrs. Darinsky's curriculum is a killer."
"Study date?" Alex saw his own face fall when he looked into the windshield.
"Figure of speech," Iz assured him with a merry smile. "An all-girl study group - some people I met down at the food bank."
"Okay," Alex said, a little relieved and still disappointed at the same time.
"Of course... you could come over afterwards," Isabel continued carelessly. "Just for a few minutes."
Alex looked over, and then had to wrench his eyes from her wide smile back to the road. "I'd l... What the heck??"
A Jeep was travelling towards them on the other side of Lincoln Avenue... not just any jeep, but Max's Jeep. That was obvious because Liz was standing up in the front seat, waving one arm in a hugely exxagerated gesture, and apparently calling out to them. Alex hit the down control on his power window and the door creaked open enough for him to make out the words. "Pull over! Pull over!!"
Surprised, Alex did just that, slowing down and slaloming into the first parking spot that opened up in front of him... (dinging the car ahead of him in the process - hopefully there wouldn't be a dent on either of their bumpers.) Mostly, Alex was surprised that Liz had been able to recognize his dad's car from far enough away to start waving by the time Alex had seen her, and wondered what the heck this was all about anyways.
Isabel and Alex were out of the car and waiting by the time Max had pulled the Jeep around in a tight U-turn and found a parking spot that Alex had passed before he could slow down enough to even try getting in. "What's up?" Alex called out. Tess was in the backseat, and the trio hurried quickly out to meet Isabel and Alex in front of the old quarter arcade.
"Big trouble," Liz said as soon as she was close enough to talk softly and be heard. "Michael and Maria have disappeared, right out of Michael's apartment as near as we can figure it."
"We think it was Czechoslovakians," Max deadpanned. Alex smiled inside at the thought. Liz and Maria's little 'code word' to avoid saying the word alien out loud had become common knowledge among the six of them last spring, but Alex still remembered being puzzled by their references to it, especially because, (as he had flung in Liz's face when he had lost temper with the routine,) it was a term that referred to a country that no longer existed. Somehow, now, that seemed to him to make it perfect for referring to people that conventional wisdom declared had never existed - aliens, little green people of the Roswell crash.
"Do you have the lamp, Liz?" Max was asking. Alex noticed that Tess hung back from all this awkwardly... as if she didn't want to be here, but couldn't quite bring herself to leave for some reason or another. In response to Max's question, Liz brought out a piece of blue crystal with a few bits and pieces sticking out of it - Alex could see how it might have at one point formed the main part of an electric lamp, but it didn't really qualify any more.
"Touch it," Tess suggested. Isabel looked surprised, but she reached out and touched her fingers to the crystal surface - and yelped as a pale blue field of light reached out to touch her fingers - she yanked her hand back, and the light stretched and snapped back.
"Don't worry, it's harmless - but weird," Max summarized. At Liz's nod, Alex tried - and had no success at eliciting the same reaction. Max and Liz were obviously expecting this - once again, it was an aliens-only thing.
Alex brought his hand back from the crystal - and suddenly staggered as a strange sensation struck him. Everything was woozy and dark for a few seconds... "Max," he muttered, trying to keep his balance until things returned to normal.
"What is it?" Max asked, suddenly concerned.
"Michael and Maria need our help. And I... I'm going to have to ask you to do something you may not want to do."
"What is it?" Max pressed. "Anything to help out, man, you know that."
"Get me back into the UFO center so I can touch the memory archive again."
Liz gasped, and Max took a step back. "Are you sure that's necessary, Alex??" he mumbled in embarassment.
"What's the big deal, Max?" Isabel asked, her voice threatening to get out of volume control. "If it might help Michael, just let Alex in and let him touch the gizmo. Personally, I thought we should try it again ever since I *found out* about all this, but you didn't seem to want to talk about it."
Max shook his head silently for a few seconds. "Brody has been really riding us all lately about security in the UFO center... which isn't the tourist trap it used to be, by the way. Brody's converted the whole place into a personal research center. Guy practically called the cops on me the *last* time I snuck inside when I wasn't supposed to be there... and he DID fire me, as you might remember. I'm pretty sure I'm still on probation, and *nobody* but Brody has keys to his office or any of the other secure locations the washer is likely to be. I could probably use my powers to unlock doors and get us around... but that would just make everything look even *more* suspicious if we're caught."
"I understand all that..." Alex said slowly. "But Max... I recognize this thingumajig..." he waved at the crystal lamp... "from a fragment of the alien memories that washer gave me. I don't know how to help Michael, or even what it does... but if I touch the washer and concentrate on the crystal, I might be able to find out. It's our only shot - unless you're willing to work in the dark when it could be Michael and Maria's lives on the line."
Max groaned. "Okay, okay... I'll take you in. But the fewer people who come inside the center, the better."
"I should come too," Tess pointed out. "If you get caught, my powers could save us all." Liz was getting that 'Tess frown' on her face and neither Max nor Isabel looked happy about it, but they couldn't deny the truth of what Tess was saying.
"Okay, let's go." Max turned to Liz and Isabel. "You two... I dunno. Go back to Michael's place and look for more clues... okay?" The two sweeties nodded. "This shouldn't take long, so we'll come over and meet you there."
Alex considered a second - and then tossed his car keys to Isabel. Liz and Isabel went back to the Taurus, while Alex and Tess followed Max to his Jeep.
Alex hoped that all this would work. Just about twenty-four hours ago he had been calling Maria up with the idea for that open mike night. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to never see her face - or Michael - again.
* * * *
(Whenever and wherever...)
Michael sighed as he and Maria walked along. Now that they were underground, and he had gotten used to illuminating the passage walls with his alien glowing hand, things were starting to seem more normal. Just like walking along your ordinary everyday underground passageway.
He watched Maria as they walked. She was so pretty, and so determined to find a way out of this, whatever the hell 'this' was. **I got her into this,** Michael thought to himself. **Just like I got her into so much danger, ever since that first time I stole the Jetta - and ended up stealing HER into the bargain. The day I first got her alone in a motel room.** Michael wanted so much to hold onto Maria, like he had once held on for deal life, to kiss her, and...
**But that's not gonna happen. You're through ruining her life, Michael Thomas Guerin. Get out of this trap and then stay as far away as you possibly can.**
**But what if she doesn't really want me out of her life??**
"Fork in the road, space-boy," Maria told him.
"What, right now?" he asked, still deep in his own thoughts. And then snapped back to reality, suddenly. The passageway they had been following diverged into two - one going mostly ahead, but bearing to the left, and seeming to stay level for a while. The other one cornered fairly sharply to the right, call it two o'clock, and seemed to be tending downward in a gentle slope. "Okay... which way do we go?" he asked out loud.
"This is your alien holding tank, buddy boy," Maria told him. "I'm just along for the ride because of a mistake. Your call."
"Okay..." Michael considered the options one more time, then chose the left branch. Both from going more nearly forward, and not taking them further down, it seemed the better bet to him, though he couldn't have explained why he thought those were better things. "Come on." He led the way along the pathway of his choice, and Maria followed along quickly.
"I'm bored, Michael," Maria announced after about half a minute. "Enough with the forging bravely on in silence, we can at least chat while we walk through this... whatever-it-is, can't we?"
Michael sighed. "If you can think of something we can 'chat' about, go right ahead and start a conversation. I'll chime right in."
"Hmmm..." That stumped Maria for a second. "We could play truth or dare."
"I don't know about you, but *I'm* nowhere near THAT bored."
"Okay, then... how about that gizmo Alex f--"
"Not that," Michael quickly disclaimed.
"What? Why not?? Are you just being difficult, Michael..."
"No." He looked around significantly. "We may be being monitored. We can't talk about anything that... well, you know." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "May give away strategic information."
Maria blushed. "Oh, my god... I'm so sorry. I didn't think of that. Well... okay, we got something new going on here."
They did indeed. About fifteen feet away, the ceiling was angling down, and when Michael brightened his hand, it became clear that the floor was following suit a little sooner. "Stairs," he announced. "We're heading down on this route after all."
"Is that why you picked this branch?" Maria asked. "Because it wasn't going down?" Michael shrugged. "Well, you got stairs, buddy. Go ahead." She waved him on.
Michael shrugged, walked up to the lip of the top stair, and stepped carefully down. Something weird happened.
Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a busy restaurant -- the layout looked vaguely like Senor Chao's, but the decor was totally different and the food being served looked mostly like steak and potatoes. He was supported about five inches above the floor, in a narrow aisle between two booths in the 'intimate' section, and as before, nobody was noticing him. In fact... somebody appeared out of nowhere right in front of him and took a seat, and Michael realized that he had now been walked through.
But, most importantly... "Maria?" he called out. "Where are you??" None of the steak-and-potato diners paid any attention to him.
"Michael?" the voice calling back was strong, but as Michael turned around, he couldn't see her. "I'm right here where you left me, but the light has gone out. I can touch the wall here, but... I'm scared. What happened to you?"
Something funny hit Michael when Maria said those words. "I'm scared." Since he'd known Maria DeLucca, they'd been through chases with FBI agents, alien diseases, run up against a pretty nasty shapeshifter, and faced the wrath of the law aka Sherrif Jim Valenti, She had been plenty scared when she first found out that Michael and the Evans kids were aliens in the first place, he knew. And yet he'd never heard her admit to being afraid. Simple darkness won that dubious honor - or maybe it was being alone, in the dark, on top of everything else that was going on here?
Suddenly, Michael realized that he had forgotten to keep his hand lit, in the surprise of finding himself in the restaurant. He brightened it up again, raising it high in the direction that he had gone, hoping that its light would reach Maria. "Does that help?"
"Does what help? I... I can't see what you're doing Michael."
This was confusing. The palm-light illuminated the same passageway structure that Michael remembered from underground - the tunnel leading back, the stairs just starting, Michael standing on the next step, further ones leading further down. But there was no sign of Maria. "What the..." Without even thinking about it, Michael stepped back up to the top of the stairs again.
And everything was back - the underground, and Maria - shaking slightly as she kept her hand against the corridor wall, relaxing instinctively as Michael and the light returned. "There you are, thank god! What the heck happened?"
"I... I can't really explain it," Michael admitted. "Come on... take my hand, and we'll step down onto the first stair at precisely the same time. Hopefully, that'll take us there together."
"Take us where?" Maria asked, but Michael didn't even bother answering that one. So she let Michael take her hand in his and lead her to the edge of the first stair. He waited until Maria was ready, stepped down as close to unison with her, and tightened his grip on her hand when she gave a small start of surprise.
"What the heck?" Maria was looking around the restaurant. "We're back above ground... and judging by the clothes, we're in the fifties or something." Michael looked around - he hadn't noticed the wardrobe choices before, but would have to agree that they were dated. "Michael-vision would tell us that the stairway is still going down, though. Want to try another step?"
Michael blinked in surprise. "Um... sure, fine by me." They stepped together, again... and found themselves in the air four and a half feet above a roof - the roof of the Texas steakman restaurant, to judge by the sign in the parking lot. Probably that was the restaurant they had been in. And yes... this was the same location as Senor Chao's, allowing for a lot of development getting made between 1952 and the nineties. Weird.
"What the *hell* is wrong with this place??" Maria swore suddenly, beside him. "We go down, but we're up. That's not right!" She turned her fury on the sky above them. "Do you hear me?? This isn't even *FUNNY*!!"
"C'mon." Michael caught Maria's free hand in his, turning her around to face him head on. "I admit this whole thing is the mega-weird, but losing your temper with big blue up there isn't gonna help. We've got two alternatives here - we can go back and try that other fork, or we can keep going down slash up steps and see where that leads us. Which do you want to do?"
Maria scrunched up her face. "Let's keep going with the stairway, I guess." Michael nodded, let Maria's left hand go, and they stepped down one more time. Another eight or nine feet of altitude.
"Wait a sec," Maria said suddenly. "Try taking one without me." There was a pause in which Michael neither moved nor said anything. "C'mon, I know what I'm doing here. Just step down." She let go of his left hand and gestured.
Michael stepped down and looked around. Sure enough, there was Maria below him, straight down except for the few inches of forward progress represented by the stair and the two feet sideways that she had been away from him in the first place. She waved at him, then stepped down - and disappeared in mid-step, only to appear stepping *down* onto the same level as he was. Totally weird.
"Stupid place that can't even keep down and up straight," Maria grumbled. "Well, let's go, space-boy."
Michael followed, noticing idly that though the trees were bending in a stiff wind, the air that he felt around himself was cool and calm. Weird.
* * * *
(Oct/23/00.)
As Max approached the Jeep again he paused, considering, and then suddenly tossed the keys over to Alex. "Huh?" Alex was caught by surprise and only just managed to make the catch.
"Take the wheel," Max explained unneccesarily. "I'll need to do some prep work." He pulled out his cell phone and swung into the front passenger seat.
Tess pouted and unhappily climbed back into the back seat. Alex walked around and got into the driver's seat, still feeling like he was missing something. "Prep work?"
Max sighed. "We can't just assume that the UFO center is empty, ready for us to sneak in, wearing black clothes. Fortunately, I have a decent way to check the status of the premises before going in." Motioning Alex to get the car started, he began dialing.
Alex pulled out into the street and started looking for a side street by which they could turn around again and get heading in the direction of the center. Max started talking into his phone. "Hey, Brody, it's Max Evans. Just wondering if you were burning the midnight oil." A route map clicked into firm detail in Alex's mind. "Need anyone to lend a hand?" Alex carefully turned the Jeep onto Leslie street. "Well, actually Brody, to tell you the truth I've got a few friends here and I was hoping to give them a little tour of the place." Now onto Barrister, heading south towards the Crashdown Cafe and the UFO center.
"Do you remember Alex Whitman?" Max contiued into the phone. "The guy who you told to tell me I was re-hired?" Whatever Brody's answer was, it drew a laugh from Max. "Cool. And I've got another friend..." Max flicked a glance at Tess. "She's a *huge* UFO fan. Close encounters of the third kind, the whole bit." Longer response from Brody. "Okay... we're almost there. See you in a few." Max hung up the phone and grinned triumphantly at his friends. "We're in."
Tess scowled prettily at him. "Calling ahead on a top secret mission, Max?"
Alex had to differ. "It's the purloined letter bit, one last time. Hiding in plain sight. You've gotta love it." He turned into the UFO center's parking lot, which was now full of portables and 'Authorized Parking Only' signs. "We're here."
All three teens were completely silent from the moment of disembarkation as Max led them across the parking lot, opened the front door with a solitary key, and waved Alex and Tess inside the darkened interior.
Alex looked around with surprise as his eyes acclimated to the dimness. With Milton in charge, the majority of the space in the center had been 'half open' in the manner of a museum, suggesting large areas without exposing them all at once. You walked from one exhibit to another through wide passageways, creating a layout that seemed mazelike without being hard to navigate.
Things were different now. Large spaces were now completely cut off with newly constructed walls and doors with obvious locks on them, allowing free travel only through a centralized system of main passageways. It hardly seemed to be practically superior to using conventional office space for the same purpose, but the overall effect somehow managed to have a mysterious cachet that was probably right up Brody Davis' alley.
Once all three of them were inside, Max closed the door behind himself, checking to make sure that the lock had caught, and once again took the lead. Two passageways later, Alex caught sight of a solid door that was older than the other, and it was to this one that Max was leading them. Brody's office, presumably.
Max knocked. No answer. He was about to knock again when a speaker buzeed into life. "Evans?"
Max was surprised, even once he'd found the little intercom down to one side of the door. "Brody?"
"Yeah, Evans... I forgot to mention this on the phone. We're... we're doing a radiographic analysis of the Fairfield metal sample. The process is... is *extremely* sensitive to light, so -- so you see, I can't open the door."
"Um, okay..." Max said, puzzled. "No biggie. Um, the keys? I still wanna give my buddies the tour."
"Whitman, my man?" Brody called out expectantly.
"Umm... right here, Mister Davis," Alex replied.
"So nice to see you again, Alex," Brody replied chattily. "You see why I like him, Evans? Alex gives me a little respect, not like the rest of you classless oafs." Max was shaking his head and grinning with only a little embarassment. "And you said you had a second friend?"
After a second's pause, Tess took her cue. "I'm Tess Harding, Mister Davis. So nice to make your acquaintance, Max has told me a little about you."
"A girl!" Brody said with mastery of the obvious. "Charmed, Tess my dear. Max, show Tess the good stuff, okay? Thomson is working in room 4, he can give you the spare keys. Tell him I said it was alright, huh?" The intercom clicked off.
Max shrugged and led the two of them through the labyrinth once more, to a room full of files wher a thirtyish man was consulting endless sheafs of paper and crossreferencing notations on an elaborate computer program. Max made the request for the keys, invoking Brody's name as e had been told to, and Thompson looked over Alex and Tess closely. Alex was dressed fairly normally in his school clothes, but Tess, Alex realized for the first time, (he had hardly had the time to worry about such details before,) was wearing a tight white tank top, pleated skirt, and black sandals with heels.
She had probably been dressing up to impress Max, not realizing that Max had gotten back together with Liz because the two of them were downplaying it in public. But right now the trampy clothes made her look like some kind of wild UFO groupie.
But soon enough the master key ring was handed over and Tess could beat a retreat from Thompson's misinformed leer. Max waited until they were in a deserted section of corridor before whispering to Max, "Do you have any idea where it is?"
Alex had to think a second before shaking his head. "In the process of being moved when I first saw it, and I couldn't say to where. Even if I knew which way was which in the UFO center version two point oh."
"Okay, then we'll have to go with hunt and peck, guided by my guesstimates of Brody's sorting system," Max said, undeterred. "Over here is as good a place to start as any." He pointed to a nearby door.
They searched that room without any luck. By the time Max had brought them to a second, Tess was getting impatient, and rushed in as soon as Max had unlocked the door.
"Tess," Max groaned, hurrying in after her after pushing the door open for Alex. By the time Alex had stepped into the doorframe, it was happening.
FWOOOMM!! A blue pulse emerged from a metal shelf on the far side of the storage area, expanding into the open space and bouncing dimly off of the walls. First Tess and then Max groaned in surprise as the wave passed through their bodies. Alex didn't seem to be affected.
"Oh my god," he muttered, rushing to Max and steadying the alien boy. He had heard of the alien device that had hurt Michael and convinced Isabel that Brody was a skin. Was this it again? "Are you okay man?" he asked in a low whisper.
Max was checking as if to make sure that all his arms and legs were unbroken. "Fine, except that..."
"I can't use my powers!!" Tess stage-whispered from a few yards in front of them.
Alex thought quickly. "Okay. We might as well check this room while we're here, but as long as either of you are nearby, it might go off again, even worse or something. So Max, go out into the hallway across from the door, act as if the two of you are talking about something she finds *incredibly* fascinating. Stand watch and run interference. I'll do as thorough a search as I can in a few minutes and then come out. Kys?" Max handed them over. "Good. Go." Tess and Max both seemed uncertain about this plan, but went along with it, possibly urged on by the possibility of getting zapped again. Once the door was pulled to, Alex spread out and started looking furiously for his washer.
Nothing. He did spot the pentagon device and was briefly distracted by it... Five big symbols that might be alien letters or something else, each near one side of the device. One side was marked below the top, and Alex guessed that the top pentagon spun like a dial, allowing the unit to be 'set to' any of the five symbols. Two settings were probably power drain and the more harmful punch that Michael had taken, and one might be 'off.' What could the other two settings be for? (Alex forced himself to move on and continue searching the room, but couldn't force his mind away from speculation.) A setting for tracking? A lethal kill-setting?
If room two held the washer, it would take a more through search than Alex was willing to make with his friends forced to stay outside the room. He hurried out, locking the door, and giving the keys back to Max.
Soon they were on their way to search location number three. Alex was starting to get nervous - this seemed entirely too easy. Except for Thompson, they had seen no-one at all since they'd entered the UFO center. And talked to Brody over the intercom, of course. And whoever else had been inside Brody's office.
Alex's vivid imagination started to run away with that speculation. Anyone could have been in there with Mister Davis. What if the whole 'radiographic analysis bit had been a cover, an excuse not to open the door so that Max couldn't see who Brody was with? So instead they had all nicely introduced themselves to this mystery person, while learning nothing at all about him or her?
**Lighten up Alex man, you're getting paranoid.**
As soon as Max opened the door to the third room, he could spot the alien washer, sitting propped up on its oversize backing card, just as Alex had described it. This time, Max and Tess crowded near the door as Alex stepped inside alone, even though for all Alex could guess the chances of running into another harmful alien device in this room were practically zero. Or were they afraid of his little washer?
Alex nerved himself, reached out, and gingerly touched the tiny metal ring. ZZZZAAPP!!! The shock was even more intense this time. (What happened to 'only on the first time?' Then again, if he expected the washer to only do something on the first time, why had he even *tried* to touch it again??)
While those thoughts were still running through Alex's head, the second phase of the change hit. Memory, self-identity, personality, character... all of those things seemed in danger of being altered. Alex fought back the forces - he couldn't afford them right now. Later, he could go over what he had received from the slug and assimilate it. He turned to Max.
"Do you wanna try touching it yourself? I'd be curious to see what happens."
Max shrugged nervously, but walked into the room, and with what seemed like more confidence, reached out to touch the disk. And yanked his finger back.
"What... what happened, Max?" Alex asked.
"I... I don't know," Max said at first. "I felt a static charge, like you said. It was like the gizmo was trying to tell me something, but blocked itself off at the last second. I guess you're the only one it'll talk t-"
"Word up!" Tess called from the door. Max and Alex froze for a second. Footsteps coming towards their room could be clearly heard. Then Max dragged Alex across the room, motioning Tess to come and join them. He was searching through a box when the footsteps arrived, Tess and Alex looking on nervously. "Evans?" It was Brody, and he opened the door wide. "What are you guys doing in here?"
Max looked up, his face all earnest uncertainty. "Looking for the alien autopsy pictorials, Brody. You said to show Tess the good stuff, right?"
Brody gave Tess a quick once-over. "Oh. I hadn't thought that included this room, but no harm done, I suppose." His eyes swept over the room as if searching for any tiny disarray. Alex was wondering whether he and Max had left the washer card exactly as they had left it, but didn't dare look across the room for fear of attracting Brody's attention.
"Well, enjoy the tour, Tess, Alex," Brody said, and walked on. Neither of the three teens spoke or moved until his footsteps had faded away.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Max muttered in a hoarse whisper. Brody was nowhere to be seen when Alex checked the hallway. A quick trip to return the keys to a table just inside Room four, (Thompson didn't even look up,) and they were back out to the parking lot.
"So, what now, Alex?" Tess asked nervously. "Did you find out anything useful, after all that?"
To Alex's surprise, he knew the answer. He climbed into the back seat and tossed the Jeep's keys to Max. (Fair shotgun was fair, after all.) "First, Michael's place, I suppose. We need to find the girls. Isabel is the only one who can help guide Michael and Maria out of the space/time labyrinth!"
TO BE CONTINUED.