Homecoming, Part 4d: "Pick up the pieces"
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'
(Still morning of Wednesday November 29th.)
"Ah!!" Maria watched as Alex bent down to the desert floor under the platform and retrieved his small metal disk. He found the string a few inches away, but didn't bother trying to re-tie it around his neck, just putting the washer and the string in opposite pockets.
"So... what now?" Maria asked aloud. The eastern sky was brightening - dawn would come any minute now. "I mean, first off, there are seven of us here and we won't all fit in Kyle's car. Do we hotwire the SUV or something?"
"We were about to, to save Isabel," Alex reminded her. "And I'm not so sure that we should leave it out here."
"The chemical company is going to notice their geologist is missing at some point," Isabel said. "Maybe it'll best if his car is missing too. Make it look like he just bugged out on the job and left Roswell."
"I just hope nobody notices that Grant and Steve Banks disappeared at the same time," Michael muttered. "Assuming of course that now that his cover is blown Steve doesn't go back to the radio station."
"Um, I have a question," Kyle put in. He had finally gotten out of his car and crept closer to the group, Maria noticed. "Where the heck is Tess??"
Mentioning her name sent a double-take through the whole group, except perhaps for Liz and Alex. "Tess?" Isabel repeated. "You mean she isn't back at your father's, Kyle?"
"No, that's why I'm here," Kyle told them. "I woke up in the middle of the night, I was walking around a bit, and the bedroom door was wide open, she was nowhere to be found. I was cruising the neighborhood looking for her when I saw Courtney heading for the highway like a crazed person, and I figured that might be relevant. She led me here."
"Mental note, find out how Courtney knew to find Steve here," Michael muttered under his breath.
"Tess goes up by Frazier woods," Liz spoke up, surprising everyone. "Grant said something about it while Max and Isabel were in the tunnel. She goes up there every night, he didn't know why, but they didn't expect Tess to come running to the rescue."
"Well, *I* wanna know why!!" Michael exclaimed. "We're supposed to be a team, and Tess hasn't been pulling her weight for a while now. If she had our backs, this would have been much less of a close call... no offense Liz, and thanks for saving all our butts by the way." He nodded solemnly at the dark-haired girl.
"Wait a second," Maria put in suddenly. "Alex, you future self said that four skins could come up against the royal four at any one time, right?"
"Yeah," Isabel chimed in. "That arbiter woman confirmed it. Steve, Grant, and that other doof made three. Where's the fourth?"
"That's a good point..." Max said slowly. "Who launches an attack like this without their full complement? Another guard could have been the one to stop Liz before she set us free." He took a deep breath. "Unless the fourth skin is going after the fourth hybrid. Tying up loose ends." He looked pale as he sad it.
"You mean one of these nutcase aliens might be trying to kill Tess?" Kyle exploded. "Then why the heck are we all sitting around here? Frazier woods, next stop, all aboard."
"I think we'd better go check on her," Max agreed. "Even if all this conjecture about the fourth skin is unfounded, there's Steve to think about. He might try to make up for the failure of his plan A by taking out Tess before she's on herguard."
Michael looked over the group. "Max, Liz and I go with Kyle to find Tess," he suggested. "Isabel, you Alex and Maria take the SUV, swing through town just long enough to pick up some spare wheels, and..." he thought a second. "You can find somewhere to hide it where it won't be found, right?" He looked at Grant's ride critically. "It'd be a shame to total it if we don't have to."
"I can handle things," Isabel assured him. "Go and make sure that Tess is okay, And then read her the riot act for me, okay?" She smiled faintly.
Quickly Max and Liz bundled back into the Prowler, this time with Michael, and the other three approached the SUV. Isabel got behind the drivers' seat, waved her hand over the dashboard, and the engine roared into life. Another wave and it died down.
"What's wrong, Isabel?" Maria asked.
"Just think we'd better secure the area first," Isabel said, walking back over to the platform as Kyle's car drove away. "Make sure that there isn't anything left around here that could connect us to it... fingerprints and such..." She was climbing the ladder, and as her head cleared the platform she did a double take. "Wait a second, I thought you said that Liz roasted the third alien doofus with the ray gun up here." She glared down accusingly at Maria.
"She did," Maria insisted.
"Then what happened to the body??" Isabel asked. Alex took a look up from where he was, half underneath the platform. It was obvious that Zentar's body was nowhere to be seen.
"Check for dust," Alex called up. In a few seconds it had been confirmed - Zentar's body had collapsed into dust when nobody was looking, much the same way Nasedo's had in the pod chamber.
They cleared the area, (Isabel doing fingerprint duty with her powers,) and collapsed the platform so that it was nearly level on the rocky ground, hoping to make the tunnel opening less suspicious by depriving anyone of an easy way to look down into it. Then Isabel led the way back to Grant's car.
"So... what do we do after we stash the wheels?" Maria asked as she climbed
"I dunno about you," Alex quipped, "but I think we've earned another personal day."
* * * * *
"That's her!" Max pointed out, spotting a car going the other way down route 380, towards Roswell. Kyle's car had just passed through town, leaving the city limits behind about five minutes ago.
"Probably wanting to get home before Sheriff Valenti wakes up," Liz commented.
"Can you catch her?" Michael asked Kyle from the shotgun seat. "We need to have this out, *now* and out here in the middle of nowhere seems like the safest place.
Kyle shrugged. "Sure." He pulled his car through a U-ie across the bright yellow line down the middle of the four-lane highway and charged off, honking at the Tess-mobile when he got in range and waving at her to pull over. Tess started driving faster, but she wasn't any match for the enging under Kyle's hood. He drag-raced her, pulled ahead, and gradually cut Tess over to the shoulder.
Tess was storming out of the coupe by the time Kyle had parked. Eloquent as always, she glared at the four individuals as they piled out of the Prowler and snarled "What the fuck??"
Kyle was the next to speak up, though he didn't show any sign of having heard Tess' words. "Are... are you okay, Tess? Did any aliens try and kill you too?"
Tess stared at him in confusion for a few seconds. "No, Valenti, I'm fine," she muttered. "What's your problem?"
Michael waded into the conversation at this point. "Well, *my* problem is that Skin assasins came *damn* close to killing me, Isabel, and Max, and the person we expected to have our backs after she's put all of us through so much was nowhere to be found!!" Michael paused a moment and brought his volume down three notches. "What were you doing going out by Frazier woods, Tess??" The intensity was thick on Michael's voice and written in his face.
"I, um... god!!" It took Tess a moment to come to terms with the news Michael had dropped. "I, I go up there to think when I can't sleep, which is all the time, lately," she admitted. "If I'd known that the Skins had an assasination planned, I'd have stuck in town. Everyone's okay, right? Isabel didn't..."
"Isabel's fine," Liz said, her words to Tess somewhat distant and impersonal out of habit. "It was touch and go there for a while, from what I heard, but thanks to Michael and Alex she'll be fine. Alex and Maria are okay too, thank you so much for asking." The sarcasm seeped in on that last sentence. "They're tying up a few loose ends."
"Well, I'm glad everyone's all right," Tess said sincerely looking intently at all of them. "But maybe you guys should get used to the idea that I won't be coming to the rescue any more."
Max got a sinking feeling in his stomach. "What is that supposed to mean, Tess?"
She turned to focus narrowly on Max. "You want me to spell it out for you, sweetie??" she spat angrily. "I'm thinking of leaving Roswell."
The stunned silence lasted for nearly half a minute, and then Liz charged forward and got right into Tess' face. "You selfish little bitch."
"You came into Roswell with your little games, trying to make everyone dance to your tune. Manipulating *all* of us.
"But these people," Liz waved at Max and Michael, "never held it against you. They accepted you as you are, because you were one of them. Max, Sheriff Valenti, and even Kyle have gone out on a limb for you. And Michael and Isabel would do anything for you, because you're family."
"Bull shit!!" Tess declared. "Do you really have blinders on so heavy that you see your friends that way, Liz?? Because the reality is that you declared war with me over Max, and you've won. Nobody wants me around any more. 'The tribe has spoken.' I'm just doing what all of you want me to."
"'Bull shit,'" Liz mimicked. "You're not really planning on leaving, are you Tess?" A cold smile came across Liz's face for a second, and then she caught herself, apparently not being too comfortable with the feeling that went along with it, and shook it off. "You're just trying to blackmail Max into feeling something for you, because you *know* he can't afford to let you walk out on the team, now of all times. This is a time when the pod squad has to be all 'all for one and one for all,' and all you're thinking about is if it gives you a chance to steal your boyfriend back!!"
The two girls glared at each other for a few seconds and then, surprisingly, Tess broke away first. "I'm not tring to change Max's mind," she mumbled towards the highway shoulder, "really I'm not." She looked up and shot a forlorn look in Max's direction. "You get that, don't you? I'm not gonna give you an ultimatum and say 'Love me, or else I leave and you lose.'" The blonde girl chuckled hollowly. "I'd probably give it a try if I thought it stood a shot of working, but it doesn't. Clueless as I am, even *I've* learned that love doesn't work that way." She sighed again, looking away from Max.
"I'm not gonna torpedo the challenge." Though she was avoiding eye contact, this time Tess' voice was steady and loud enough to be heard clearly by all of them. "If you get the tickets home one way or another, you can just let me know. I'll come along for the ride, and try to make a better life for myself on the homeworld than I'll probably ever be able to have here.
"But I can't stay here, not right now, not around you, Max. Please, just let me go, and then maybe I can actually start to put what I feel for you behind me."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Michael said softly, pulling something out of his pocket and passing it from hand to hand. "Kivar Andraicus' people tried to murder us tonight, as I said. They know that each one of us are keys to the challenge. This time they were dumb enough to go after Max, Izzie, and I at once, and to bring Liz, Alex, and Maria into it, partly because they had cooked up a trap that worked well with that. But if you leave Roswell on your own, Tess, you're going to be the vulnerable target. They won't stop hunting you until they've killed you."
"And plus," Max said, stepping into the conversation for the first time since the Liz/Tess shouting. (It kind of embarrassed him to be the center of such focused emotional struggle, to be honest.) "It isn't enough to not torpedo the challenge, Tess. To be willing to go along at the very end. If we're gonna live up to this thing, we're gonna need your help all the way through. Your talent with the power. Your experiences from growing up with Nasedo." Max tried a slight smile. "Your gift for looking at a problem from a completely different perspective. Our people need you, Tess."
"I don't *care* about our people." That confession was an embarrassed whisper. "I know that makes me sound horrible and selfish, but there it is. If I can't be with you, then..."
"Then *do it for me,*" Max urged her impulsively. "We can't be true loves, or husband and wife or whatever it was that you were expecting, but we *can* be a part of each other's lives. If you'll let us."
Tess looked uncertainly into Max's eyes, and shot glances over at Michael and Kyle. Obviously, she wasn't about to set herself up for another tirade from Liz just at the moment.
"I think," Max began again, his voice soft but still persuasive, "that you're probably right if you think that each of us have, at some point or another, been unfair to you, Tess." Though he was tempted, Max didn't rub her nose in the fact that it had been a two-way street. "But everything's changed now. What would you say to starting over??"
Tess weighed what Max had just said, (and, probably, what he hadn't said. And then she finally turned back to Liz. "What do *you* say to that, Liz?? Can you find it within your heart to give me a clean slate, assuming that I quit putting the moves on Max?"
Liz, stunned, was silent for a long moment, and Tess must have caught the curious looks that some of the others were giving her. "Liz is... the heart of you," she explained in a short soliloquy. "I don't know why, but somehow she IS. If Liz carries a grudge, sooner or later the whole gang will turn against me."
Liz spoke up at this point. "I have a few questions to ask you, before I make my decision," she told Tess matter-of-factly. "The sort of things I might not be able to bring up if we start over. What's the story with the kiss, Tess?"
Tess blinked in surprise. "Which... oh, right. *That* kiss. But what about it? Did I enjoy it? Yes, of course I did."
"Not that," Liz spat out. "Did you use your powers on Max to set up that kiss?"
Tess' jaw dropped. "You think I... No!! Liz... Maz... if my word of honor means anything to you, I swear it: I didn't *make* Max kiss me." Faced with a look of stony disbelief from Liz, Tess tried logic. "If I had that kind of power, to *make* people do what I wanted, why did I never use it when it could have saved all our butts? Against Pierce, or Whittaker for that matter."
Liz was unmoved. "Sensory projections can have quite a subtle effect, especially on someone who isn't out-and-out hostile."
Tess nodded slowly. "Ah, I see what you're driving at. Well, I'll admit that I used a mindwarp on Max once, to try to get him interested in me, the same way as I was in him." She cocked her head slightly, then nodded. "You were there, Liz, yeah - it was earlier that dayin the chemistry lab, when we were first assigned as partners."
Tess sighed. "*Not* the brightest idea I've ever had, I realize that now. But I didn't mean any harm, really I didn't. It was just..." she searched for the right words. "A pleasant little fantasy that occured to me, and I decided to share it with you, to show you what it could be like. I didn't know you were going to stick your sleeve into the bunsen burner." Another deep sigh. "And obviously I didn't appreciate how much Liz meant to you, back then."
"Wait, wait a second," Max broke in. "You're claiming that was the only time you ever mindwarped me, Tess? What about the *night before* that, at the crashdown? You didn't try any little tricks then?"
Tess scrunched up her face in thought. "The night before... I remember coming to the cafe - I thought you'd probably be hanging out with Liz on her shift, and I wanted to see you." She paused. "You and Liz were acting very couple-y, but when I got close to you I got a flash of the two of us together."
"That's what I'm talking about," Max said. "In the backroom, for a second it was like I was out in the desert and you were holding my hand. And, umm, well while I was kissing Liz - for a moment I thought that she was you." He looked accusingly at Tess. "You're claiming you didn't help those effects along with your powers?"
"Only with my proximity, I think," Tess told him. "As I just said, I was having flashes like that too. Venus had moved into Aries, and that was the cue to awaken the instincts that told us who we were supposed to have been..." Tess caught herself. "Not getting into Destiny again, that ship has sailed."
"Okay, but what about that kiss?" Liz pressed. "Are you saying that was probably instinct too?"
"I don't know, Tess told her. "It came as a complete surprise to me. I had set up that meeting between us, the broken-down car... I guess I was hoping Max would offer me a ride home. But he was acting... weird. Like he was struggling against some big shadow."
"Is it possible that someone *else* was controlling his mind?" Michael suggested. "Nasedo?"
"Ed didn't have that kind of power either," Tess reminded them. "And though he wanted the best of luck for me with Max, he was a lot more worried about the special unit right then."
"Well then..." Michael thought a second. "Maybe this 'dark shadow' Max was struggling with was just his alien Venus-in-Aries instincts??"
"Do you remember anything about that night, Max" Kyle put in, just when Max had forgotten that the young human man was there too. "Do you have anything you can tell us about how it felt?? Did you see any flashes or weird imagery."
**He's trying to clear Tess' name,** Max realized. As long as there was any doubt about this episode, Liz would remain slightly suspicious of the hybrid girl. Max was nervous about what this line of investigation might reveal about *him*, but he knew he had to go along with it. "No, no flashes, no imagery. But I remember feeling seriously wigged about Tess - between the flashes in the crashdown and the incident in the chemistry lab, I think you could see why. And I guess maybe I was feeling some kind of vague bond with her - the instinct thing. When you put it all together... I'd been nervous about her all day. Like I was gonna see her again sooner or later and I wasn't sure what would happen then."
Kyle nodded as if something he'd been suspecting had just been confirmed. "Had you already come to the conclusion that Tess had some king of weird power over you?"
"Yeah..." Max agreed with a little surprise. "'She could make my mind go places where I wasn't taking it'," Max quoted Isabel's description... though what Isabel had been talking about might have been one of those Venus-Aries deals. Still, it reflected what he had felt about her at the time.
"And you could tell that she liked you?" Kyle continued, and Max nodded. "Did you think she *wanted* you to kiss you?"
"Yeah, yeah I think I remember that thought passing through my mind when I first saw her on the street." He was so intent on the memory that his eyes were almost closed.
"So Tess wanted to kiss you, and Tess had a power over you. So you kissed her," Kyle said softly.
"Yes. I mean... what?" Max sapped his eyes back open, and flinched a bit at the brightness of the morning, since dawn had broken over the desert while they had been involved in their discussion.
"This is just a theory," Kyle quickly disclaimed, "but I'm remembering something my dad told me once about sollipsism. Police tend to pick up some weird bits of abnormal psych - you can never tell what kind of nut you're gonna run across.
"Anyway, Sollipsism is when someone becomes convinced that real life is a dream. It's known to happen in Alaska when the winter nights get long. The thing is, people with sollipsism act as if nothing matters, very erratic and unhibited, because it's all a dream."
"Max, if you thought that Tess could manipulate your thoughts and emotions, that might be even worse than sollipsism. The world would be real, but you wouldn't, in your mind, because what you did, even what you thought, was only what Tess wanted. I think in that state of mind you might have been psyched into kissing Tess because it's what you thought she wanted. Not your fault, just your subconscious playing tricks on you. Does that fit with what you remember?"
"Umm..." Max thought about that, and looked at Liz, who seemed to have a poker face on. "Yeah, yeah actually it does. It all fits." He shot a semi-apologetic glance over at Liz.
"I'm sorry, Max," Tess told him. "I had no idea..."
"It's okay," he told her. "Not your fault either."
"Why can't it be *somebody*'s fault," Liz griped, but a second later she smiled at Max and he could tell she wasn't really pissed off.
"So, uh... Liz," Michael said, "are you going to put Tess through the ringer any more or are you ready to make your decision??"
Liz thought about it a second, then stretched out her hand for Tess to shake. "If you hurt me or the people I care about in the future, Tess, there'll be payback," she warned. "But the past is behind me."
Tess smiled slightly. "Works for me."
They all looked around for a moment once the deal was done, each expecting someone else to bring up the next item of discussion. Finally Kyle said "Well, are we heading back into town again, or what??"
"Seems like there's nothing else to do around here," Max agreed vaguely, waving at the highway (which was starting to get busier) and the plain beyond.
They started back towards the cars, and then sudddenly Tess called out "Michael!! Where did you get that?"
"Uh, where did I get what?" Michael shot back, confused. Tess pointed silently at Michael's right hand, which was hanging at his side. Michael opened the hand up into a shallow cup. "Have I been fiddling with this thing long?" he asked, a little sheepishly.
"Yes," Liz told him softly.
"What is it? Max asked, stepping closer, as did Tess. Michael showed it to them - a shirt button, on the large side, white with a hint of color in concentric rings - here purple, there green...
"I musta picked it up while we were searching Grant's car for the healing stones," Michael said. When Tess gave that a confused look, Michael explained, "Grant Sorenson was one of the skins that tried to kill us tonight. So was Steve Banks, and the guy who attacked Liz at the Banks party... wait, did you ever hear about that?"
"I heard there was something of a broohaha, but I never asked about the details," Tess said in an abstracted, faraway voice, her eyes focused on the button. "This is weird."
"Why?"
"Because that's Ed's button," Tess replied to Max's gentle prompting. "At least, he had three buttons like that on a shirt he used to wear often as 'Ed Harding.' I've never seen any other buttons like that."
"It is a little distinctive," Liz commented, having moved in beside Max. "So, any idea where the shirt is now, Tess?"
"Probably in our old house," Tess replied offhandedly. "I didn't have a chance to go through his old things before Max bundled me off to Valenti's..."Tess' voice trailed off as she was struck by the connection between tonight and the circumstances under which she came to the Valenti's.
Max picked up the train of thought. "Grant was a skin. The skins broke into your house. Could *that*," he pointed at the button, "have been part of what they were after?"
Tess considered that. "Harding showed me how we could use our powers to archive large amounts of information inside ordinary objects."
"Like Alex's washer?" Kyle put in.
"Not really," Tess explained. "Alex's doo-dah was able to initiate a link with him automatically, and he's a human. That's obviously a much more complicated thing. What I'm talking about is more like a molecular diary - an ordinary object as far as any human could tell, hard to recognize even for other aliens."
"Well, here," Michael said, handing Tess the button. "It is one or not?"
Tess held the button, her fingers sliding over its surface, and then out of the blue she laughed. "What is it?" Max asked.
"It's a molecular archive, kinda, but not really a diary," Tess explained. "I heard Ed's voice saying close but no cigar. This is a decoy, a red herring."
"So where's the real diary?" Liz asked. "Does Steve have it?"
"If I know Harding," Tess said, "he'd have found some way to slip it to one of us. Me, Max... maybe Isabel. We may not know what it is, but I bet one of us still has it."
Michael smiled at Tess. "Can you give me a lift back into town? Kyle's convertible doesn't have much leg room.
* * * * *
Once again, an episode of horror and danger had a subtle effect on the gang in the days and weeks afterwards. The feeling of nervous energy had been moderated with quiet confidence. And yet each of the group felt the need to savor each day after fate had come so close to taking many of them away forever.
Tess, Max, and Isabel started the search in earnest for Nasedo's molecular diary. There was some discussion about trying to find the skin Steve Banks and run him to ground, but a lack of real ideas about how this was to be done. As Michael put it one night over a hand of Hearts, "he can change his name, he can probably change his face though we don't know that for sure, and he has contacts, other aliens working for Andraicus, all over the world. We don't even know how quickly or how far he can travel. Nah, there's gonna have to be a few more surprises in our bag of tricks before we can really plan on tracking Steve down. Call out your spades." (That last bit was about the game.)
Work resumed again on translating the book, though at a less breakneck pace than in the last week and a half in November.
* * * * *
(Sunday, December 10th, 2000)
"Hmm... how about... here." Maria parked the Jetta carefully behind a desert hill. "D'you think we could be seen from the highway at all here??"
Liz got out of the shotgun seat, vaulted herself up against the doorframe so that her head was clear above the Volkswagon's roof for a few seconds, and turned her head back and forth. "Considering that I can't see the highway at all, no, I don't think so. What are we doing out here, Maria??"
"You'll see, just as soon as I get my b..." Maria had gotten out of the car as soon as Liz gave the parking job her dubious blessing, and was scanning the horizon herself, focusing on the terrain *away* from the direction of the highway. "Ahh, this way. Come on." Having (presumably) oriented herself, she led Liz away from the car.
After walking in silence for about twenty seconds, Liz felt the impulse to say something. Since their destination still seemed to be a forbidden subject until they had actually arrived, she searched for another topic.
"So... how are things going between you and Michael??"
Maria couldn't hide a goofy grin. "Pretty great. I mean, well, he's been spending a lot of time practicing his powers, but I don't really mind that considering the alternative. And he's been working on your surprise, too - what I'm about to show you."
"Really?" Liz muttered, trying to fit that tidbit of information in amongst the other hints that Maria had dropped.
"Yep. How about you and Max??"
Liz considered. "No complaints. Oh, he's been working on the big diary search with Isabel and Tess..."
Maria harrumphed at the moment the second name was spoken, and Liz glanced at her best girlfriend sidelong. "Sorry, I -- I just still cannot believe that you let the gerbil off the hook so easily."
"Maria!!" Liz exclaimed, pondering the significance of Maria's choice of term for a moment, and then letting it go. "I... I don't want to hold a grudge against Tess or give her a hard time, really I don't. She keeps her..." Liz giggled softly. "Her tiny little gerbil claws away from Max and we're cool."
Maria laughed, and Liz continued on. "I still haven't figured out what to get Max for christmas though."
"We'll think of something, chica, don't worry," Maria said. Oooh, here we are!"
"Here where??" Liz replied. Maria was a little in front of her, but she couldn't see anything other than desert aroun-- Oh, boy!! All of a sudden what looked like a large sinkhole had appeared in the desert ground before them. (Well, presumably *it* had been there the whole time, but until Liz got within a few paces of it she hadn't realized it was there amidst the rocky terrain.
"Okay, this gets a little tricky now," Maria said, holding out a hand for Liz to take. "There's a bit of a footpath over here..." Liz was speechless as Maria led her down into the hole... but she noticed how practiced the other girl's movements were. How often had Maria come down here?? Soon they were standing at the bottom - or were they? Maria fumbled out something from her belt pouch and flicked it on - it was a miniature flashlight, and as Maria started shining it around Liz realized that a winding tunnel passage continued on from the bottom of the 'sinkhole'. It was down this tunnel that Maria led her next.
"Okay, *really* wondering what all this is about," Liz teased her friend. After rounding the second turn, Maria kept Liz from going any further, and to her surprise Liz realized that the way was barred by a jagged chasm - a very deep and scary looking crack in the floor, too wide to jump and too sheer to climb.
"Okay, we're here," Maria announced. Another flashlight hit them from the other side, and suddenly Maria was rising into the air and over the chasm. Once Liz was feeling very alone except for the mysterious light, she felt weight being lifted off her own feet and she was flying through the air too.
"SURPRISE!!" several voices yelled at Liz as she touched down. Liz opened her eyes (she had kept them closed during the trip over the chasm, and looked around. All of the gang was here - Maria of course, Alex, Max, Michael, Isabel, even Tess and Kyle. And the small cul-de-sac left before the tunnel finally dead-ended was especially crowded, because there was also...
A car. A royal blue four-door sedan, to be more specific. Liz reached out to run a hand down the side of the vehicle, wondering how much effort it had taken alien powers to get it here, and where it had come from in the first place...
"Like your present, Liz?" Michael asked. Liz whirled around to stare at him.
"*My* present? Huh??" She shook her head, trying to clear the fuzziness out. "Where did this even come from??"
"It's what's left of Grant's SUV, Liz, now that Michael's almost through with it," Isabel explained softly, and Liz blushed with embarassment for not having made the connection. "We've all talked it through, and we think you should have it. To the victor go the spoils, and all that - and you're the one who saved the day."
"Plus, you're the only one who doesn't already have access to wheels of some description, Liz, what with your parents never being able to lend you the car and all," Tess added.
"I, I..." It was all too much to take in at once. "I... I can't just suddenly 'show up' in a car!!" she exclaimed, turning to Max in a search for support. "My parents would have about a year's worth of questions that I couldn't answer."
Max smiled comfortingly and walked up to her, putting an arm around her shoulder. "We know that, and nobody's suggesting that you just drive it into town. We've got a plan -- or at least, the first draft of a plan. Where's the draft?" Alex passed a piece of paper into Max's hand, who passed it to Liz for her to read.
Liz skimmed over the note uncertainly, muttering the key phrases aloud. "Dear Mister Parker... writing you this letter to say an unusual thank you... A year ago, I was in Roswell on business and ate breakfast at your cafe. I was also in a bad way emotionally at the time -- or at least I was until I talked a brief while with the waitress, a young girl with long dark hair, brown eyes and a dimple in her cheek when she smiled... She probably won't remember me, but her simple kindness and friendliness gave me the strength I needed to keep from taking my own life and seek help for my depression... Due to an unexpected windfall, I'm able to express my gratitude to her in a material way... if for any reason you are unable to get in touch with my personal angel, please don't hesitate to take the gift yourself, with my gratitude..." Liz looked up from the note.
"Lemme guess - this gets sent to my dad along with the faked registration and a set of keys, knowing that the clues planted in this letter will lead him to think it's me?" Michael and Alex nodded. "We'll need to talk details, but -- it could work. And thanks, all you guys." She looked around. "How did you even know that this place was here??"
"I found it years ago," Michael explained. "Poking around the desert was a good way to stay out of Hank's hair. There's a lot of these tunnel caves scattered around the Roswell area, but I've never seen one as this for keeping out unwelcome visitors. Until recently even *we* didn't know how to levitate across that final gap."
"Okay, okay," Kyle broke in. "We've shown her the car -- is anyone else up for lunch??"
* * * * *
(Friday, December 15th, 2000)
Alex strummed to himself on the bass guitar he held across his lap, blinked twice, and took what Maria would call a 'deep, centering breath.' Isabel poked her head through the doorway from the kitchen to the little storeroom where Alex was sitting, (perched on a short bench next to the back door out of the restaurant,) and smiled. "There's my radio star!!"
"Hehe, very funny," Alex shot back.
Isabel's face dropped for a second, and she kicked over a crate so she could sit down opposite him. "I wasn't teasing you -- much," she informed him with a quiet smile. "Seriously, I know this gig may not be a 'big break' but *I* think it's cool. And I'm going to be sitting in the front row out there, clapping my hands together the loudest."
"Nah," Alex told her with a big grin. "You can sit in the last row. Max, and Michael are gonna be back there."
Iz reached out and playfully swatted Alex on the shoulder. "You goof!! I didn't really mean the LITERAL front row, I just... I'm your biggest fan, Alex Whitman."
"And you're my inspiration, Isabel," Alex whispered softly.
Isabel smiled, and then her face quirked into a question. "Max and Michael? What about Liz??"
"She'll be on duty as a waitress, remember??" Alex said. "The whole point of this thing is kinda to sell food and such..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, Einstein." Isabel looked around the back room as if seeing it for the first time. "Where's the rest of the group??"
"Upstairs." Alex pointed through the ceiling towards the Parker family residence. "Getting dressed, or made-up, or some such. I came down here to get a little air, and actually, could you do me a favor?"
"Sure, anything," Isabel assured him.
"Can we talk about anything that *doesn't* remind me of my fabulous Crashdown debut performance in..." (he leaned forward to see the wall clock in the kitchen,) "ten minutes?"
Isabel blinked in surprise. "Uh, okay. Well -- Oh, Max and I found Ed Harding's molecular journal today!"
Now it was Alex's turn to be surprised. "Really? So soon?! Where was it??"
"Right around Max's wrist," Isabel said, and beamed at Alex's confused expression. "Somehow he managed to switch watches with Max, probably the night he died. Max has been wearing the journal around for weeks now, hee heh."
Alex chuckled - it *was* an ironic situation. "Tess has been teaching us how to read it," Isabel added.
"Cool," Alex remarked simply, then thought of something else. "Oh... you said something about taking Tess up to see River Dog??"
"Yeah," Isabel agreed. "Actually, it was Michael and Max who went with her, to make the introductions - they know him better. I've only ever really met River Dog the two times, and there wasn't exactly much occasion for conversation at either of them."
"Uh... yeah," Alex muttered, working it out. The first time was healing Michael: all six of them had been there that time. The second would have been on the Frazier Woods camping trip, when Michael and River Dog had met Max and Isabel near Nasedo's old cave and found the whirlpool galaxy icon that he had left for them to find.
"Anyways," Isabel continued, "Max said that she hit it off with 'the Dog' fairly well. She was supposed to go up by herself yesterday afternoon."
"Oh." When she said that, something came together in Alex's mind. "Oh, no!"
"What, what is it??" Isabel asked, her face all concern suddenly.
"I was talking with Kyle... about nothing in particular, but he mentioned that Tess came home last night 'pissed off as all hell.' Kyle didn't know where she had been, but..."
"Uh oh," Isabel muttered. "You're right, that's not a good sign."
"But..." Alex countered, "it's not really our problem. You guys did what you could, you put Tess in contact with him. Working things out is between the two of them."
"You're right." Isabel smiled. "Ohh - there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about," she looked about, and then locked her brown eyes onto him, "and now that I have you alone..."
Alex laughed with only a trace of nervousness. "Well, what is it?"
To his surprise, Isabel didn't say anything immediately, and a faint pink flush spread about her face. "It's a little... I'm not quite sure how to put this..." Alex nodded encouragingly, and she started again. "I almost died. I know... we've had close scrapes before, and probably will again. but this was the first time when it really kicked in that I might not wake up to see any particular tomorrow. And so... well, I've been thinking that I want to... *experience*... certain things, in case I never get another chance to. Are you... do you know what I'm talking about, Alex??"
Alex blinked in surprise and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "Is this the 'I don't wanna die a virgin' impulse?? Literally?"
"Pretty much." Isabel smiled temptingly at him, and all kinds of things that he'd like to 'experience' with her ran through Alex's mind, but... He couldn't figure out what to say.
And of course, at that moment, they both heard about eight footsteps coming down the stairs, and Maria called out "Alex!! Get yer butt over here, we're on in two minutes!"
Isabel grinned. "We'll talk about it later." She quickly leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "Have a great show," she whispered sexily in his ear, her long golden hair falling against his face and his arms. And then she was gone, presumably heading back to join Max, and Michael in the back row.
Just as Maria had said, in about a hundred and twenty seconds the group of amateur musicians that Jeff Parker had assembled were set up on an impromptu stage, and Jeff was making his introductory speech from the piano seat. "Hi everybody, and thanks for coming to our first 'Music night at the crashdown.' Don't be shy about ordering food or drinks between songs, and... I hope you all have a great evening!" (quiet applause broke out here.) "And now... well, no time like the present, right?" He sat down and played an introductory set of chords on the piano.
Someone in the audience laughed. It seemed quite clear that Maria was staring off into space, not really paying attention. Alex nudged her gently with an elbow. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, shaking herself out of the daze. "I forgot where I was."
On that cue, Donald, (the junior college student,) got busily to work on the drum machine, pounding and rapping the various touch-sensitive surfaces with his drumsticks so that a furious rhythm emerged from the speakers. Alex joined in with a deep riff a few heartbeats later, and Maria broke into the song proper.
"I try to think about Elvis,
Memphis,
Oprah in the afternoon.
I try to think about palm trees!
Fig leaves,
The creature from the black lagoon."
Sandra, the marketing secretary in her older twenty-somethings who was on the accoustic guitar joined in with a few well-timed chords.
"I try to think about high heels,
And good deals,
Anything to get me through!!
I just can't con--cen--trate..."
This was where Jeff joined back in on the piano. Maria's stare had a thousand watts of heat behind it and was aimed right at Michael Guerin in the back row as she sang the last line in the verse:
"YOU'RE ALL I THINK ABOUT THESE DAYS!!!
I try to contemplate the cosmos;
What goes,
Round and round the sky at night."
Alex reminded himself to loosen up, throwing little improvisational bits into his bass line. There was something so incredible about being part of a group like this, making music. And the song was a great first number. A lot of people in the audience seemed to be getting into the fun of it.
"I try to think about champagne,
Freight trains,
Slowly rolling out of sight.
I try to focus on the headlights,
Street crimes.
But every time I think I might..."
Max called out from the back "Go, Maria!!"
"...I just can't con-cen-trate --
You're all I think about these days!"
Sandra did some impressive hot-picking to bring Maria into the bridge.
"My mind wanders where it will,
And when it settles right on you.
I forget what I should say,
I forget what I should do!!"
During the pause in the lyrics, Sandra and Jeff each took their turn with instrumental solos, wowing the crowd, and Maria belted out a repeat of the bridge. As she got back to 'I forget what I should do...' all the instuments quieted down for another little joke part as Maria pretended that she really *was* driven to distraction by love.
"C'mon, Maria -- get it together!!" (Instruments break back out of their pause.)
"I try to think about Shakespeare,
Leap year,
The Beatles or the Rolling stones!
I try to think about hairdos, (whoop!)
Tatoos,
Sushi bars and saxophones.
I try to think about the talk shows,
New clothes!!
But I guess I should have known...
I just can't concentrate!!"
Alex tried to squeeze a little bit more pizazz into his bass playing as Maria built up to the final climax. She was staring at Michael again, he noticed.
"You're all I think about these days, whoa.
You're all I think about these days!!"
Over four measures, Alex finally brought the bass line back down to nothing with a last flourish. The audience went wild with approval.
* * * * *
(Wee hours of Monday, December 18th 2000)
Max tapped lightly on the window. No response. He tried again, slightly louder.
There was movement within the dark room beyond... and finally Michael opened the window up, wearing a bathrobe.
"Forgive me if this is a stupid question, Maxwell, but as a matter of curiosity why didn't you knock on my front door??"
"Tradition I guess," Max replied, hopping over the window sill and into the bedroom. "Sorry for dropping by so late, but Isabel was asleep already, Liz needs to get her rest for that physics final tomorrow and I didn't think you'd mind."
"Of course," Michael agreed under his breath. "It's not like I ever get any sleep anyways."
Max ignored that remark and continued on. "I've found something. Something that could be huge." He waved a silver dress watch in front of Michael's face.
"Where did you find..." Something about the look on Max's face clued Michael in. "You found something *in* it - that's the watch that has Nasedo's journal inside?"
"The very one." Max headed out of Michael's bedroom and down the short hall.
"Umm... Max, maybe we should just st--" Michael started, but Max wasn't paying attention, so Michael trailed along.
"We've been working on this thing for a few days now - it's not too hard to learn how to 'read' it, but it still tends to give me a headache and there's a lot to go through. But I think, to borrow a phrase, the jackpot has been hit." He opened Michael's fridge, looked at the door, and waved at the iced tea bottles. "You mind?"
"Hmm?" Michael tried to catch up. "Not as such, but we really shouldn't..."
Max tossed Michael a lemonade snapple and took one for himself. "Nasedo didn't seem to care about the alien artifacts that the Special Unit had taken," he continued as if he hadn't even missed a beat. "His usual tunnel vision - the only thing on his mind was our safety, to the point of monomania." Max sighed. "Not to mention homicide." He held the watch in front of his hands in a certain way, closed his eyes, and concentrated.
"Subject case file number ninety-three." Although Max was moving his lips along to the words, he wasn't voicing them and the voice that he heard aloud wasn't his own - more like splitting the difference between Ed Harding's and Daniel Pierce's. It was an odd effect, but none of the three of them had figured out a way to turn the messages from the diary into words (as opposed to silent thoughts) any other way. Max knew that Michael would be a little creeped out, seeing and hearing the effect for the first time, but he hoped his oldest friend would also be able to pay attention to the content. "Doctor Neil Thompson."
"Despite his doctorate in Psychology from Stanford, Thompson's role in the Special Unit is essentially little more than that of a glorified data bank. He has memorized the details of sensitive Unit activities all the way back to its inception in 1948, and even its predecessors before that -- Places, people, facts, dates, and events. This unique talent has enabled Special Unit top brass to eliminate damning physical evidence of some of their most controversial programs.
"If there is a single individual currently in the Unit who exemplifies the concept of 'the man who knew too much,' Neil Thompson is surely he. The data he will carry locked forever in his brain is just as dangerous to my charges as it is to his old employers.
"And yet I have to be careful at this point how many Special unit personnel I plan to 'liquidate.' If it were up to me I would destroy every last son-ofabitch who ever signed up, but the consequences of such a move would be disastrous. These are paranoid people who move within paranoid circles, and too many 'accidents' would inevitably end up shining the light of suspicion on Daniel Pierce... and on his mission to Roswell. That could expose my charges all over again."
"And Doctor Thompsons' one saving grace is that he has no great loyalty to the Special Unit or its causes. When I engineer the disbanding of the Unit, the chance seems great that he will simply take another job or retire into anonymity as a man of leisure, never telling another soul of the special unit information. Yet can I afford to take that chance, when the lives of my kids hang in the balance??"
"What the heck??" The voice startled Max out of rapport with the diary, mostly because it was *not* Michael's voice. Max had been bracing himself for Michael to say something, but the usually irrepressible teenage hybrid had been quiet during Max's entire recitation of the diary entry. The voice had come from behind him...
Max opened his eyes and spun around in a 180 turn. Through the dimness of Michael's apartment he could just make out Kyle half sitting up on Michael's couch, his legs still covered by one of the comforters Max and Isabel's mom had given Michael as a housewarming present. "Why... why are *you* here, Kyle??"
"Well, after being banished to the living room for almost three months, I thought I would give crashing on someone ELSE'S couch a try," Kyle groused, "and Mister Guerin here was good enough to take me in."
"I... I tried to tell you he was out here and we shouldn't disturb him," Michael said. He had, Max realized that now. He had been so jazzed about the diary thing that he hadn't really been listening to Michael - or letting him finish sentences, even.
"Um... Sorry. Both of you," Max mumbled embarassedly.
"So... what did Nasedo do, anyways??" Kyle asked. "About this total-recall guy??"
"What?" It took a moment for Max to change subjects mentally again. "He decided against bumping him off -- though you're gonna have to find out about all the people he *did* butcher for our sakes sometime, Michael." Max gave a shudder in spite of himself. "I did a quick search for this Neil Thompson guy on the internet before coming over. He's living in this place called Puerto Penasco - tourist town in Mexico, not that far from here. No record of what he's doing there, so he may have retired, like Nasedo thought he might."
"Working for the forces of evil must pay pretty well," Michael mused. "Okay, road trip."
Max smiled slightly. "Road trip?"
"Yeah, right after all the Christmas hooplah is over next week, Wednesday or something, we head across the border. Kyle's dad can come along as a chaperone..." Kyle gave Michael a look, and Michael forestalled the objection before it could emerge. "Well, I'm sorry, but we *need* to do this, those in the group cursed with parents aren't going to be happy seeing their progeny take off to a foreign country without adult supervision, and your father is the only parent in on the secret. We won't be able to find out what this guy knows if we're always worrying about keeping the secret from... Max's mom, say. Or Liz's dad."
Max broke in here. "There's plenty of time to sort out details like this. Like you said, Michael, we won't be able to go until classes let out and Christmas comes and goes." He looked around. "You should probably go back to bed, Kyle. I'll let myself out the front door. Michael??" He nodded to his best friend to come with him.
Once they were outside of the apartment proper, Max turned back to Michael. "So, what's in it for you??"
Michael blinked in surprise. "Come again??"
"Kyle, crashing on your couch. Is it just you being gracious or is there some kind of quid pro quo??" Max smiled at Michael.
"Well..." Michael smiled himself. "He's helping me a little with Maria stuff. Don't ask."
"Uh... okay." Max shrugged and headed off back to the Jeep. "G'night Michael."
* * * * *
(Tuesday, December 19th 2000)
"Hmm..." Liz clicked the mouse on Alex's computer. "Long-stemmed roses??"
"Flowers are not exactly Christmas-ey," Alex reminded her.
"I guess you're right," Liz agreed. "Well, mister Picky, do you wanna take the helm again??"
"I dunno," Alex sighed. "What do you get a girl to tell her 'I love you madly but I'm not sure if I'm ready to sleep with you'??"
Liz blinked several times in shock, and turned away from the computer screen to look at her best guy-friend. "Umm... I'm not sure. I didn't realize that guys ever *needed* to say that."
Whoops. "Ummmm, uhh..." Alex lurched over and crashed into a sitting position on his bed. "Isabel's brought up the prospect of us, ummmm... 'closing the deal,' and I guess I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, I know how I *feel* about it... and I know how I *think* about it, and unfortunately they're completely opposites."
Liz was looking at him cooly. "Go on."
"Umm, well... I mean, of course I feel the, um... the push to do it. But I... well, as corny and naive as this sounds, I was brought up to believe that there's a right time and place for making love... I'm not quite sure if it's the wedding night or what, but I don't think that Isabel and I are quite there yet. You know??"
Liz nodded. "Wow, a teenaged guy capable of rationally turning down sex when his girlfriend offers it. Popular american culture would have it that you don't exist, Mister Whitman."
"Ha ha," Alex pronounced.
"Umm... feel free to say no if this is too weird, but how did Isabel 'bring this up'??"
Quickly Alex related the key parts of the conversation before music night, while Liz weighed each line of dialog carefully. "Well... it kinda seems that the reasons Isabel wants to do this have more to do with the stuff she's working through after deathtrap night than your relationship. Which I can understand... but I think it's something you need to talk to her about. And in the mean-time... I don't think you need to worry about sending any message to Isabel with your christmas present other than 'I care about you very much.'" She smiled.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Get out of the way." Alex headed over to the computer desk, and Liz quickly scrambled out of the chair to let him sit down. "So... have you decided what you're getting Max, by the way?"
"Uh, yeah... an MP3 disc player for the Jeep. :] I found out that his father's getting him a burner for his computer, and he's always complaining about running out of CDs to play on the long drives we take hither and yon, so I figure he can make a few mix discs that will last for days on end."
"Yeah, that's cool, he'll like that," Alex agreed. "Guys are so easy to shop for. You girls are lucky."
"You're not that easy, bud!!"
"Okay, let's see..." Alex split-screened his online shopping windows on the computer. "We have... the white cashmere sweater... or the golden necklace with sapphire setting. Watcha think??"
"Go with the sweater," Liz assured him. "Isabel will love it."
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'
(Still morning of Wednesday November 29th.)
"Ah!!" Maria watched as Alex bent down to the desert floor under the platform and retrieved his small metal disk. He found the string a few inches away, but didn't bother trying to re-tie it around his neck, just putting the washer and the string in opposite pockets.
"So... what now?" Maria asked aloud. The eastern sky was brightening - dawn would come any minute now. "I mean, first off, there are seven of us here and we won't all fit in Kyle's car. Do we hotwire the SUV or something?"
"We were about to, to save Isabel," Alex reminded her. "And I'm not so sure that we should leave it out here."
"The chemical company is going to notice their geologist is missing at some point," Isabel said. "Maybe it'll best if his car is missing too. Make it look like he just bugged out on the job and left Roswell."
"I just hope nobody notices that Grant and Steve Banks disappeared at the same time," Michael muttered. "Assuming of course that now that his cover is blown Steve doesn't go back to the radio station."
"Um, I have a question," Kyle put in. He had finally gotten out of his car and crept closer to the group, Maria noticed. "Where the heck is Tess??"
Mentioning her name sent a double-take through the whole group, except perhaps for Liz and Alex. "Tess?" Isabel repeated. "You mean she isn't back at your father's, Kyle?"
"No, that's why I'm here," Kyle told them. "I woke up in the middle of the night, I was walking around a bit, and the bedroom door was wide open, she was nowhere to be found. I was cruising the neighborhood looking for her when I saw Courtney heading for the highway like a crazed person, and I figured that might be relevant. She led me here."
"Mental note, find out how Courtney knew to find Steve here," Michael muttered under his breath.
"Tess goes up by Frazier woods," Liz spoke up, surprising everyone. "Grant said something about it while Max and Isabel were in the tunnel. She goes up there every night, he didn't know why, but they didn't expect Tess to come running to the rescue."
"Well, *I* wanna know why!!" Michael exclaimed. "We're supposed to be a team, and Tess hasn't been pulling her weight for a while now. If she had our backs, this would have been much less of a close call... no offense Liz, and thanks for saving all our butts by the way." He nodded solemnly at the dark-haired girl.
"Wait a second," Maria put in suddenly. "Alex, you future self said that four skins could come up against the royal four at any one time, right?"
"Yeah," Isabel chimed in. "That arbiter woman confirmed it. Steve, Grant, and that other doof made three. Where's the fourth?"
"That's a good point..." Max said slowly. "Who launches an attack like this without their full complement? Another guard could have been the one to stop Liz before she set us free." He took a deep breath. "Unless the fourth skin is going after the fourth hybrid. Tying up loose ends." He looked pale as he sad it.
"You mean one of these nutcase aliens might be trying to kill Tess?" Kyle exploded. "Then why the heck are we all sitting around here? Frazier woods, next stop, all aboard."
"I think we'd better go check on her," Max agreed. "Even if all this conjecture about the fourth skin is unfounded, there's Steve to think about. He might try to make up for the failure of his plan A by taking out Tess before she's on herguard."
Michael looked over the group. "Max, Liz and I go with Kyle to find Tess," he suggested. "Isabel, you Alex and Maria take the SUV, swing through town just long enough to pick up some spare wheels, and..." he thought a second. "You can find somewhere to hide it where it won't be found, right?" He looked at Grant's ride critically. "It'd be a shame to total it if we don't have to."
"I can handle things," Isabel assured him. "Go and make sure that Tess is okay, And then read her the riot act for me, okay?" She smiled faintly.
Quickly Max and Liz bundled back into the Prowler, this time with Michael, and the other three approached the SUV. Isabel got behind the drivers' seat, waved her hand over the dashboard, and the engine roared into life. Another wave and it died down.
"What's wrong, Isabel?" Maria asked.
"Just think we'd better secure the area first," Isabel said, walking back over to the platform as Kyle's car drove away. "Make sure that there isn't anything left around here that could connect us to it... fingerprints and such..." She was climbing the ladder, and as her head cleared the platform she did a double take. "Wait a second, I thought you said that Liz roasted the third alien doofus with the ray gun up here." She glared down accusingly at Maria.
"She did," Maria insisted.
"Then what happened to the body??" Isabel asked. Alex took a look up from where he was, half underneath the platform. It was obvious that Zentar's body was nowhere to be seen.
"Check for dust," Alex called up. In a few seconds it had been confirmed - Zentar's body had collapsed into dust when nobody was looking, much the same way Nasedo's had in the pod chamber.
They cleared the area, (Isabel doing fingerprint duty with her powers,) and collapsed the platform so that it was nearly level on the rocky ground, hoping to make the tunnel opening less suspicious by depriving anyone of an easy way to look down into it. Then Isabel led the way back to Grant's car.
"So... what do we do after we stash the wheels?" Maria asked as she climbed
"I dunno about you," Alex quipped, "but I think we've earned another personal day."
* * * * *
"That's her!" Max pointed out, spotting a car going the other way down route 380, towards Roswell. Kyle's car had just passed through town, leaving the city limits behind about five minutes ago.
"Probably wanting to get home before Sheriff Valenti wakes up," Liz commented.
"Can you catch her?" Michael asked Kyle from the shotgun seat. "We need to have this out, *now* and out here in the middle of nowhere seems like the safest place.
Kyle shrugged. "Sure." He pulled his car through a U-ie across the bright yellow line down the middle of the four-lane highway and charged off, honking at the Tess-mobile when he got in range and waving at her to pull over. Tess started driving faster, but she wasn't any match for the enging under Kyle's hood. He drag-raced her, pulled ahead, and gradually cut Tess over to the shoulder.
Tess was storming out of the coupe by the time Kyle had parked. Eloquent as always, she glared at the four individuals as they piled out of the Prowler and snarled "What the fuck??"
Kyle was the next to speak up, though he didn't show any sign of having heard Tess' words. "Are... are you okay, Tess? Did any aliens try and kill you too?"
Tess stared at him in confusion for a few seconds. "No, Valenti, I'm fine," she muttered. "What's your problem?"
Michael waded into the conversation at this point. "Well, *my* problem is that Skin assasins came *damn* close to killing me, Isabel, and Max, and the person we expected to have our backs after she's put all of us through so much was nowhere to be found!!" Michael paused a moment and brought his volume down three notches. "What were you doing going out by Frazier woods, Tess??" The intensity was thick on Michael's voice and written in his face.
"I, um... god!!" It took Tess a moment to come to terms with the news Michael had dropped. "I, I go up there to think when I can't sleep, which is all the time, lately," she admitted. "If I'd known that the Skins had an assasination planned, I'd have stuck in town. Everyone's okay, right? Isabel didn't..."
"Isabel's fine," Liz said, her words to Tess somewhat distant and impersonal out of habit. "It was touch and go there for a while, from what I heard, but thanks to Michael and Alex she'll be fine. Alex and Maria are okay too, thank you so much for asking." The sarcasm seeped in on that last sentence. "They're tying up a few loose ends."
"Well, I'm glad everyone's all right," Tess said sincerely looking intently at all of them. "But maybe you guys should get used to the idea that I won't be coming to the rescue any more."
Max got a sinking feeling in his stomach. "What is that supposed to mean, Tess?"
She turned to focus narrowly on Max. "You want me to spell it out for you, sweetie??" she spat angrily. "I'm thinking of leaving Roswell."
The stunned silence lasted for nearly half a minute, and then Liz charged forward and got right into Tess' face. "You selfish little bitch."
"You came into Roswell with your little games, trying to make everyone dance to your tune. Manipulating *all* of us.
"But these people," Liz waved at Max and Michael, "never held it against you. They accepted you as you are, because you were one of them. Max, Sheriff Valenti, and even Kyle have gone out on a limb for you. And Michael and Isabel would do anything for you, because you're family."
"Bull shit!!" Tess declared. "Do you really have blinders on so heavy that you see your friends that way, Liz?? Because the reality is that you declared war with me over Max, and you've won. Nobody wants me around any more. 'The tribe has spoken.' I'm just doing what all of you want me to."
"'Bull shit,'" Liz mimicked. "You're not really planning on leaving, are you Tess?" A cold smile came across Liz's face for a second, and then she caught herself, apparently not being too comfortable with the feeling that went along with it, and shook it off. "You're just trying to blackmail Max into feeling something for you, because you *know* he can't afford to let you walk out on the team, now of all times. This is a time when the pod squad has to be all 'all for one and one for all,' and all you're thinking about is if it gives you a chance to steal your boyfriend back!!"
The two girls glared at each other for a few seconds and then, surprisingly, Tess broke away first. "I'm not tring to change Max's mind," she mumbled towards the highway shoulder, "really I'm not." She looked up and shot a forlorn look in Max's direction. "You get that, don't you? I'm not gonna give you an ultimatum and say 'Love me, or else I leave and you lose.'" The blonde girl chuckled hollowly. "I'd probably give it a try if I thought it stood a shot of working, but it doesn't. Clueless as I am, even *I've* learned that love doesn't work that way." She sighed again, looking away from Max.
"I'm not gonna torpedo the challenge." Though she was avoiding eye contact, this time Tess' voice was steady and loud enough to be heard clearly by all of them. "If you get the tickets home one way or another, you can just let me know. I'll come along for the ride, and try to make a better life for myself on the homeworld than I'll probably ever be able to have here.
"But I can't stay here, not right now, not around you, Max. Please, just let me go, and then maybe I can actually start to put what I feel for you behind me."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Michael said softly, pulling something out of his pocket and passing it from hand to hand. "Kivar Andraicus' people tried to murder us tonight, as I said. They know that each one of us are keys to the challenge. This time they were dumb enough to go after Max, Izzie, and I at once, and to bring Liz, Alex, and Maria into it, partly because they had cooked up a trap that worked well with that. But if you leave Roswell on your own, Tess, you're going to be the vulnerable target. They won't stop hunting you until they've killed you."
"And plus," Max said, stepping into the conversation for the first time since the Liz/Tess shouting. (It kind of embarrassed him to be the center of such focused emotional struggle, to be honest.) "It isn't enough to not torpedo the challenge, Tess. To be willing to go along at the very end. If we're gonna live up to this thing, we're gonna need your help all the way through. Your talent with the power. Your experiences from growing up with Nasedo." Max tried a slight smile. "Your gift for looking at a problem from a completely different perspective. Our people need you, Tess."
"I don't *care* about our people." That confession was an embarrassed whisper. "I know that makes me sound horrible and selfish, but there it is. If I can't be with you, then..."
"Then *do it for me,*" Max urged her impulsively. "We can't be true loves, or husband and wife or whatever it was that you were expecting, but we *can* be a part of each other's lives. If you'll let us."
Tess looked uncertainly into Max's eyes, and shot glances over at Michael and Kyle. Obviously, she wasn't about to set herself up for another tirade from Liz just at the moment.
"I think," Max began again, his voice soft but still persuasive, "that you're probably right if you think that each of us have, at some point or another, been unfair to you, Tess." Though he was tempted, Max didn't rub her nose in the fact that it had been a two-way street. "But everything's changed now. What would you say to starting over??"
Tess weighed what Max had just said, (and, probably, what he hadn't said. And then she finally turned back to Liz. "What do *you* say to that, Liz?? Can you find it within your heart to give me a clean slate, assuming that I quit putting the moves on Max?"
Liz, stunned, was silent for a long moment, and Tess must have caught the curious looks that some of the others were giving her. "Liz is... the heart of you," she explained in a short soliloquy. "I don't know why, but somehow she IS. If Liz carries a grudge, sooner or later the whole gang will turn against me."
Liz spoke up at this point. "I have a few questions to ask you, before I make my decision," she told Tess matter-of-factly. "The sort of things I might not be able to bring up if we start over. What's the story with the kiss, Tess?"
Tess blinked in surprise. "Which... oh, right. *That* kiss. But what about it? Did I enjoy it? Yes, of course I did."
"Not that," Liz spat out. "Did you use your powers on Max to set up that kiss?"
Tess' jaw dropped. "You think I... No!! Liz... Maz... if my word of honor means anything to you, I swear it: I didn't *make* Max kiss me." Faced with a look of stony disbelief from Liz, Tess tried logic. "If I had that kind of power, to *make* people do what I wanted, why did I never use it when it could have saved all our butts? Against Pierce, or Whittaker for that matter."
Liz was unmoved. "Sensory projections can have quite a subtle effect, especially on someone who isn't out-and-out hostile."
Tess nodded slowly. "Ah, I see what you're driving at. Well, I'll admit that I used a mindwarp on Max once, to try to get him interested in me, the same way as I was in him." She cocked her head slightly, then nodded. "You were there, Liz, yeah - it was earlier that dayin the chemistry lab, when we were first assigned as partners."
Tess sighed. "*Not* the brightest idea I've ever had, I realize that now. But I didn't mean any harm, really I didn't. It was just..." she searched for the right words. "A pleasant little fantasy that occured to me, and I decided to share it with you, to show you what it could be like. I didn't know you were going to stick your sleeve into the bunsen burner." Another deep sigh. "And obviously I didn't appreciate how much Liz meant to you, back then."
"Wait, wait a second," Max broke in. "You're claiming that was the only time you ever mindwarped me, Tess? What about the *night before* that, at the crashdown? You didn't try any little tricks then?"
Tess scrunched up her face in thought. "The night before... I remember coming to the cafe - I thought you'd probably be hanging out with Liz on her shift, and I wanted to see you." She paused. "You and Liz were acting very couple-y, but when I got close to you I got a flash of the two of us together."
"That's what I'm talking about," Max said. "In the backroom, for a second it was like I was out in the desert and you were holding my hand. And, umm, well while I was kissing Liz - for a moment I thought that she was you." He looked accusingly at Tess. "You're claiming you didn't help those effects along with your powers?"
"Only with my proximity, I think," Tess told him. "As I just said, I was having flashes like that too. Venus had moved into Aries, and that was the cue to awaken the instincts that told us who we were supposed to have been..." Tess caught herself. "Not getting into Destiny again, that ship has sailed."
"Okay, but what about that kiss?" Liz pressed. "Are you saying that was probably instinct too?"
"I don't know, Tess told her. "It came as a complete surprise to me. I had set up that meeting between us, the broken-down car... I guess I was hoping Max would offer me a ride home. But he was acting... weird. Like he was struggling against some big shadow."
"Is it possible that someone *else* was controlling his mind?" Michael suggested. "Nasedo?"
"Ed didn't have that kind of power either," Tess reminded them. "And though he wanted the best of luck for me with Max, he was a lot more worried about the special unit right then."
"Well then..." Michael thought a second. "Maybe this 'dark shadow' Max was struggling with was just his alien Venus-in-Aries instincts??"
"Do you remember anything about that night, Max" Kyle put in, just when Max had forgotten that the young human man was there too. "Do you have anything you can tell us about how it felt?? Did you see any flashes or weird imagery."
**He's trying to clear Tess' name,** Max realized. As long as there was any doubt about this episode, Liz would remain slightly suspicious of the hybrid girl. Max was nervous about what this line of investigation might reveal about *him*, but he knew he had to go along with it. "No, no flashes, no imagery. But I remember feeling seriously wigged about Tess - between the flashes in the crashdown and the incident in the chemistry lab, I think you could see why. And I guess maybe I was feeling some kind of vague bond with her - the instinct thing. When you put it all together... I'd been nervous about her all day. Like I was gonna see her again sooner or later and I wasn't sure what would happen then."
Kyle nodded as if something he'd been suspecting had just been confirmed. "Had you already come to the conclusion that Tess had some king of weird power over you?"
"Yeah..." Max agreed with a little surprise. "'She could make my mind go places where I wasn't taking it'," Max quoted Isabel's description... though what Isabel had been talking about might have been one of those Venus-Aries deals. Still, it reflected what he had felt about her at the time.
"And you could tell that she liked you?" Kyle continued, and Max nodded. "Did you think she *wanted* you to kiss you?"
"Yeah, yeah I think I remember that thought passing through my mind when I first saw her on the street." He was so intent on the memory that his eyes were almost closed.
"So Tess wanted to kiss you, and Tess had a power over you. So you kissed her," Kyle said softly.
"Yes. I mean... what?" Max sapped his eyes back open, and flinched a bit at the brightness of the morning, since dawn had broken over the desert while they had been involved in their discussion.
"This is just a theory," Kyle quickly disclaimed, "but I'm remembering something my dad told me once about sollipsism. Police tend to pick up some weird bits of abnormal psych - you can never tell what kind of nut you're gonna run across.
"Anyway, Sollipsism is when someone becomes convinced that real life is a dream. It's known to happen in Alaska when the winter nights get long. The thing is, people with sollipsism act as if nothing matters, very erratic and unhibited, because it's all a dream."
"Max, if you thought that Tess could manipulate your thoughts and emotions, that might be even worse than sollipsism. The world would be real, but you wouldn't, in your mind, because what you did, even what you thought, was only what Tess wanted. I think in that state of mind you might have been psyched into kissing Tess because it's what you thought she wanted. Not your fault, just your subconscious playing tricks on you. Does that fit with what you remember?"
"Umm..." Max thought about that, and looked at Liz, who seemed to have a poker face on. "Yeah, yeah actually it does. It all fits." He shot a semi-apologetic glance over at Liz.
"I'm sorry, Max," Tess told him. "I had no idea..."
"It's okay," he told her. "Not your fault either."
"Why can't it be *somebody*'s fault," Liz griped, but a second later she smiled at Max and he could tell she wasn't really pissed off.
"So, uh... Liz," Michael said, "are you going to put Tess through the ringer any more or are you ready to make your decision??"
Liz thought about it a second, then stretched out her hand for Tess to shake. "If you hurt me or the people I care about in the future, Tess, there'll be payback," she warned. "But the past is behind me."
Tess smiled slightly. "Works for me."
They all looked around for a moment once the deal was done, each expecting someone else to bring up the next item of discussion. Finally Kyle said "Well, are we heading back into town again, or what??"
"Seems like there's nothing else to do around here," Max agreed vaguely, waving at the highway (which was starting to get busier) and the plain beyond.
They started back towards the cars, and then sudddenly Tess called out "Michael!! Where did you get that?"
"Uh, where did I get what?" Michael shot back, confused. Tess pointed silently at Michael's right hand, which was hanging at his side. Michael opened the hand up into a shallow cup. "Have I been fiddling with this thing long?" he asked, a little sheepishly.
"Yes," Liz told him softly.
"What is it? Max asked, stepping closer, as did Tess. Michael showed it to them - a shirt button, on the large side, white with a hint of color in concentric rings - here purple, there green...
"I musta picked it up while we were searching Grant's car for the healing stones," Michael said. When Tess gave that a confused look, Michael explained, "Grant Sorenson was one of the skins that tried to kill us tonight. So was Steve Banks, and the guy who attacked Liz at the Banks party... wait, did you ever hear about that?"
"I heard there was something of a broohaha, but I never asked about the details," Tess said in an abstracted, faraway voice, her eyes focused on the button. "This is weird."
"Why?"
"Because that's Ed's button," Tess replied to Max's gentle prompting. "At least, he had three buttons like that on a shirt he used to wear often as 'Ed Harding.' I've never seen any other buttons like that."
"It is a little distinctive," Liz commented, having moved in beside Max. "So, any idea where the shirt is now, Tess?"
"Probably in our old house," Tess replied offhandedly. "I didn't have a chance to go through his old things before Max bundled me off to Valenti's..."Tess' voice trailed off as she was struck by the connection between tonight and the circumstances under which she came to the Valenti's.
Max picked up the train of thought. "Grant was a skin. The skins broke into your house. Could *that*," he pointed at the button, "have been part of what they were after?"
Tess considered that. "Harding showed me how we could use our powers to archive large amounts of information inside ordinary objects."
"Like Alex's washer?" Kyle put in.
"Not really," Tess explained. "Alex's doo-dah was able to initiate a link with him automatically, and he's a human. That's obviously a much more complicated thing. What I'm talking about is more like a molecular diary - an ordinary object as far as any human could tell, hard to recognize even for other aliens."
"Well, here," Michael said, handing Tess the button. "It is one or not?"
Tess held the button, her fingers sliding over its surface, and then out of the blue she laughed. "What is it?" Max asked.
"It's a molecular archive, kinda, but not really a diary," Tess explained. "I heard Ed's voice saying close but no cigar. This is a decoy, a red herring."
"So where's the real diary?" Liz asked. "Does Steve have it?"
"If I know Harding," Tess said, "he'd have found some way to slip it to one of us. Me, Max... maybe Isabel. We may not know what it is, but I bet one of us still has it."
Michael smiled at Tess. "Can you give me a lift back into town? Kyle's convertible doesn't have much leg room.
* * * * *
Once again, an episode of horror and danger had a subtle effect on the gang in the days and weeks afterwards. The feeling of nervous energy had been moderated with quiet confidence. And yet each of the group felt the need to savor each day after fate had come so close to taking many of them away forever.
Tess, Max, and Isabel started the search in earnest for Nasedo's molecular diary. There was some discussion about trying to find the skin Steve Banks and run him to ground, but a lack of real ideas about how this was to be done. As Michael put it one night over a hand of Hearts, "he can change his name, he can probably change his face though we don't know that for sure, and he has contacts, other aliens working for Andraicus, all over the world. We don't even know how quickly or how far he can travel. Nah, there's gonna have to be a few more surprises in our bag of tricks before we can really plan on tracking Steve down. Call out your spades." (That last bit was about the game.)
Work resumed again on translating the book, though at a less breakneck pace than in the last week and a half in November.
* * * * *
(Sunday, December 10th, 2000)
"Hmm... how about... here." Maria parked the Jetta carefully behind a desert hill. "D'you think we could be seen from the highway at all here??"
Liz got out of the shotgun seat, vaulted herself up against the doorframe so that her head was clear above the Volkswagon's roof for a few seconds, and turned her head back and forth. "Considering that I can't see the highway at all, no, I don't think so. What are we doing out here, Maria??"
"You'll see, just as soon as I get my b..." Maria had gotten out of the car as soon as Liz gave the parking job her dubious blessing, and was scanning the horizon herself, focusing on the terrain *away* from the direction of the highway. "Ahh, this way. Come on." Having (presumably) oriented herself, she led Liz away from the car.
After walking in silence for about twenty seconds, Liz felt the impulse to say something. Since their destination still seemed to be a forbidden subject until they had actually arrived, she searched for another topic.
"So... how are things going between you and Michael??"
Maria couldn't hide a goofy grin. "Pretty great. I mean, well, he's been spending a lot of time practicing his powers, but I don't really mind that considering the alternative. And he's been working on your surprise, too - what I'm about to show you."
"Really?" Liz muttered, trying to fit that tidbit of information in amongst the other hints that Maria had dropped.
"Yep. How about you and Max??"
Liz considered. "No complaints. Oh, he's been working on the big diary search with Isabel and Tess..."
Maria harrumphed at the moment the second name was spoken, and Liz glanced at her best girlfriend sidelong. "Sorry, I -- I just still cannot believe that you let the gerbil off the hook so easily."
"Maria!!" Liz exclaimed, pondering the significance of Maria's choice of term for a moment, and then letting it go. "I... I don't want to hold a grudge against Tess or give her a hard time, really I don't. She keeps her..." Liz giggled softly. "Her tiny little gerbil claws away from Max and we're cool."
Maria laughed, and Liz continued on. "I still haven't figured out what to get Max for christmas though."
"We'll think of something, chica, don't worry," Maria said. Oooh, here we are!"
"Here where??" Liz replied. Maria was a little in front of her, but she couldn't see anything other than desert aroun-- Oh, boy!! All of a sudden what looked like a large sinkhole had appeared in the desert ground before them. (Well, presumably *it* had been there the whole time, but until Liz got within a few paces of it she hadn't realized it was there amidst the rocky terrain.
"Okay, this gets a little tricky now," Maria said, holding out a hand for Liz to take. "There's a bit of a footpath over here..." Liz was speechless as Maria led her down into the hole... but she noticed how practiced the other girl's movements were. How often had Maria come down here?? Soon they were standing at the bottom - or were they? Maria fumbled out something from her belt pouch and flicked it on - it was a miniature flashlight, and as Maria started shining it around Liz realized that a winding tunnel passage continued on from the bottom of the 'sinkhole'. It was down this tunnel that Maria led her next.
"Okay, *really* wondering what all this is about," Liz teased her friend. After rounding the second turn, Maria kept Liz from going any further, and to her surprise Liz realized that the way was barred by a jagged chasm - a very deep and scary looking crack in the floor, too wide to jump and too sheer to climb.
"Okay, we're here," Maria announced. Another flashlight hit them from the other side, and suddenly Maria was rising into the air and over the chasm. Once Liz was feeling very alone except for the mysterious light, she felt weight being lifted off her own feet and she was flying through the air too.
"SURPRISE!!" several voices yelled at Liz as she touched down. Liz opened her eyes (she had kept them closed during the trip over the chasm, and looked around. All of the gang was here - Maria of course, Alex, Max, Michael, Isabel, even Tess and Kyle. And the small cul-de-sac left before the tunnel finally dead-ended was especially crowded, because there was also...
A car. A royal blue four-door sedan, to be more specific. Liz reached out to run a hand down the side of the vehicle, wondering how much effort it had taken alien powers to get it here, and where it had come from in the first place...
"Like your present, Liz?" Michael asked. Liz whirled around to stare at him.
"*My* present? Huh??" She shook her head, trying to clear the fuzziness out. "Where did this even come from??"
"It's what's left of Grant's SUV, Liz, now that Michael's almost through with it," Isabel explained softly, and Liz blushed with embarassment for not having made the connection. "We've all talked it through, and we think you should have it. To the victor go the spoils, and all that - and you're the one who saved the day."
"Plus, you're the only one who doesn't already have access to wheels of some description, Liz, what with your parents never being able to lend you the car and all," Tess added.
"I, I..." It was all too much to take in at once. "I... I can't just suddenly 'show up' in a car!!" she exclaimed, turning to Max in a search for support. "My parents would have about a year's worth of questions that I couldn't answer."
Max smiled comfortingly and walked up to her, putting an arm around her shoulder. "We know that, and nobody's suggesting that you just drive it into town. We've got a plan -- or at least, the first draft of a plan. Where's the draft?" Alex passed a piece of paper into Max's hand, who passed it to Liz for her to read.
Liz skimmed over the note uncertainly, muttering the key phrases aloud. "Dear Mister Parker... writing you this letter to say an unusual thank you... A year ago, I was in Roswell on business and ate breakfast at your cafe. I was also in a bad way emotionally at the time -- or at least I was until I talked a brief while with the waitress, a young girl with long dark hair, brown eyes and a dimple in her cheek when she smiled... She probably won't remember me, but her simple kindness and friendliness gave me the strength I needed to keep from taking my own life and seek help for my depression... Due to an unexpected windfall, I'm able to express my gratitude to her in a material way... if for any reason you are unable to get in touch with my personal angel, please don't hesitate to take the gift yourself, with my gratitude..." Liz looked up from the note.
"Lemme guess - this gets sent to my dad along with the faked registration and a set of keys, knowing that the clues planted in this letter will lead him to think it's me?" Michael and Alex nodded. "We'll need to talk details, but -- it could work. And thanks, all you guys." She looked around. "How did you even know that this place was here??"
"I found it years ago," Michael explained. "Poking around the desert was a good way to stay out of Hank's hair. There's a lot of these tunnel caves scattered around the Roswell area, but I've never seen one as this for keeping out unwelcome visitors. Until recently even *we* didn't know how to levitate across that final gap."
"Okay, okay," Kyle broke in. "We've shown her the car -- is anyone else up for lunch??"
* * * * *
(Friday, December 15th, 2000)
Alex strummed to himself on the bass guitar he held across his lap, blinked twice, and took what Maria would call a 'deep, centering breath.' Isabel poked her head through the doorway from the kitchen to the little storeroom where Alex was sitting, (perched on a short bench next to the back door out of the restaurant,) and smiled. "There's my radio star!!"
"Hehe, very funny," Alex shot back.
Isabel's face dropped for a second, and she kicked over a crate so she could sit down opposite him. "I wasn't teasing you -- much," she informed him with a quiet smile. "Seriously, I know this gig may not be a 'big break' but *I* think it's cool. And I'm going to be sitting in the front row out there, clapping my hands together the loudest."
"Nah," Alex told her with a big grin. "You can sit in the last row. Max, and Michael are gonna be back there."
Iz reached out and playfully swatted Alex on the shoulder. "You goof!! I didn't really mean the LITERAL front row, I just... I'm your biggest fan, Alex Whitman."
"And you're my inspiration, Isabel," Alex whispered softly.
Isabel smiled, and then her face quirked into a question. "Max and Michael? What about Liz??"
"She'll be on duty as a waitress, remember??" Alex said. "The whole point of this thing is kinda to sell food and such..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, Einstein." Isabel looked around the back room as if seeing it for the first time. "Where's the rest of the group??"
"Upstairs." Alex pointed through the ceiling towards the Parker family residence. "Getting dressed, or made-up, or some such. I came down here to get a little air, and actually, could you do me a favor?"
"Sure, anything," Isabel assured him.
"Can we talk about anything that *doesn't* remind me of my fabulous Crashdown debut performance in..." (he leaned forward to see the wall clock in the kitchen,) "ten minutes?"
Isabel blinked in surprise. "Uh, okay. Well -- Oh, Max and I found Ed Harding's molecular journal today!"
Now it was Alex's turn to be surprised. "Really? So soon?! Where was it??"
"Right around Max's wrist," Isabel said, and beamed at Alex's confused expression. "Somehow he managed to switch watches with Max, probably the night he died. Max has been wearing the journal around for weeks now, hee heh."
Alex chuckled - it *was* an ironic situation. "Tess has been teaching us how to read it," Isabel added.
"Cool," Alex remarked simply, then thought of something else. "Oh... you said something about taking Tess up to see River Dog??"
"Yeah," Isabel agreed. "Actually, it was Michael and Max who went with her, to make the introductions - they know him better. I've only ever really met River Dog the two times, and there wasn't exactly much occasion for conversation at either of them."
"Uh... yeah," Alex muttered, working it out. The first time was healing Michael: all six of them had been there that time. The second would have been on the Frazier Woods camping trip, when Michael and River Dog had met Max and Isabel near Nasedo's old cave and found the whirlpool galaxy icon that he had left for them to find.
"Anyways," Isabel continued, "Max said that she hit it off with 'the Dog' fairly well. She was supposed to go up by herself yesterday afternoon."
"Oh." When she said that, something came together in Alex's mind. "Oh, no!"
"What, what is it??" Isabel asked, her face all concern suddenly.
"I was talking with Kyle... about nothing in particular, but he mentioned that Tess came home last night 'pissed off as all hell.' Kyle didn't know where she had been, but..."
"Uh oh," Isabel muttered. "You're right, that's not a good sign."
"But..." Alex countered, "it's not really our problem. You guys did what you could, you put Tess in contact with him. Working things out is between the two of them."
"You're right." Isabel smiled. "Ohh - there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about," she looked about, and then locked her brown eyes onto him, "and now that I have you alone..."
Alex laughed with only a trace of nervousness. "Well, what is it?"
To his surprise, Isabel didn't say anything immediately, and a faint pink flush spread about her face. "It's a little... I'm not quite sure how to put this..." Alex nodded encouragingly, and she started again. "I almost died. I know... we've had close scrapes before, and probably will again. but this was the first time when it really kicked in that I might not wake up to see any particular tomorrow. And so... well, I've been thinking that I want to... *experience*... certain things, in case I never get another chance to. Are you... do you know what I'm talking about, Alex??"
Alex blinked in surprise and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "Is this the 'I don't wanna die a virgin' impulse?? Literally?"
"Pretty much." Isabel smiled temptingly at him, and all kinds of things that he'd like to 'experience' with her ran through Alex's mind, but... He couldn't figure out what to say.
And of course, at that moment, they both heard about eight footsteps coming down the stairs, and Maria called out "Alex!! Get yer butt over here, we're on in two minutes!"
Isabel grinned. "We'll talk about it later." She quickly leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "Have a great show," she whispered sexily in his ear, her long golden hair falling against his face and his arms. And then she was gone, presumably heading back to join Max, and Michael in the back row.
Just as Maria had said, in about a hundred and twenty seconds the group of amateur musicians that Jeff Parker had assembled were set up on an impromptu stage, and Jeff was making his introductory speech from the piano seat. "Hi everybody, and thanks for coming to our first 'Music night at the crashdown.' Don't be shy about ordering food or drinks between songs, and... I hope you all have a great evening!" (quiet applause broke out here.) "And now... well, no time like the present, right?" He sat down and played an introductory set of chords on the piano.
Someone in the audience laughed. It seemed quite clear that Maria was staring off into space, not really paying attention. Alex nudged her gently with an elbow. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, shaking herself out of the daze. "I forgot where I was."
On that cue, Donald, (the junior college student,) got busily to work on the drum machine, pounding and rapping the various touch-sensitive surfaces with his drumsticks so that a furious rhythm emerged from the speakers. Alex joined in with a deep riff a few heartbeats later, and Maria broke into the song proper.
"I try to think about Elvis,
Memphis,
Oprah in the afternoon.
I try to think about palm trees!
Fig leaves,
The creature from the black lagoon."
Sandra, the marketing secretary in her older twenty-somethings who was on the accoustic guitar joined in with a few well-timed chords.
"I try to think about high heels,
And good deals,
Anything to get me through!!
I just can't con--cen--trate..."
This was where Jeff joined back in on the piano. Maria's stare had a thousand watts of heat behind it and was aimed right at Michael Guerin in the back row as she sang the last line in the verse:
"YOU'RE ALL I THINK ABOUT THESE DAYS!!!
I try to contemplate the cosmos;
What goes,
Round and round the sky at night."
Alex reminded himself to loosen up, throwing little improvisational bits into his bass line. There was something so incredible about being part of a group like this, making music. And the song was a great first number. A lot of people in the audience seemed to be getting into the fun of it.
"I try to think about champagne,
Freight trains,
Slowly rolling out of sight.
I try to focus on the headlights,
Street crimes.
But every time I think I might..."
Max called out from the back "Go, Maria!!"
"...I just can't con-cen-trate --
You're all I think about these days!"
Sandra did some impressive hot-picking to bring Maria into the bridge.
"My mind wanders where it will,
And when it settles right on you.
I forget what I should say,
I forget what I should do!!"
During the pause in the lyrics, Sandra and Jeff each took their turn with instrumental solos, wowing the crowd, and Maria belted out a repeat of the bridge. As she got back to 'I forget what I should do...' all the instuments quieted down for another little joke part as Maria pretended that she really *was* driven to distraction by love.
"C'mon, Maria -- get it together!!" (Instruments break back out of their pause.)
"I try to think about Shakespeare,
Leap year,
The Beatles or the Rolling stones!
I try to think about hairdos, (whoop!)
Tatoos,
Sushi bars and saxophones.
I try to think about the talk shows,
New clothes!!
But I guess I should have known...
I just can't concentrate!!"
Alex tried to squeeze a little bit more pizazz into his bass playing as Maria built up to the final climax. She was staring at Michael again, he noticed.
"You're all I think about these days, whoa.
You're all I think about these days!!"
Over four measures, Alex finally brought the bass line back down to nothing with a last flourish. The audience went wild with approval.
* * * * *
(Wee hours of Monday, December 18th 2000)
Max tapped lightly on the window. No response. He tried again, slightly louder.
There was movement within the dark room beyond... and finally Michael opened the window up, wearing a bathrobe.
"Forgive me if this is a stupid question, Maxwell, but as a matter of curiosity why didn't you knock on my front door??"
"Tradition I guess," Max replied, hopping over the window sill and into the bedroom. "Sorry for dropping by so late, but Isabel was asleep already, Liz needs to get her rest for that physics final tomorrow and I didn't think you'd mind."
"Of course," Michael agreed under his breath. "It's not like I ever get any sleep anyways."
Max ignored that remark and continued on. "I've found something. Something that could be huge." He waved a silver dress watch in front of Michael's face.
"Where did you find..." Something about the look on Max's face clued Michael in. "You found something *in* it - that's the watch that has Nasedo's journal inside?"
"The very one." Max headed out of Michael's bedroom and down the short hall.
"Umm... Max, maybe we should just st--" Michael started, but Max wasn't paying attention, so Michael trailed along.
"We've been working on this thing for a few days now - it's not too hard to learn how to 'read' it, but it still tends to give me a headache and there's a lot to go through. But I think, to borrow a phrase, the jackpot has been hit." He opened Michael's fridge, looked at the door, and waved at the iced tea bottles. "You mind?"
"Hmm?" Michael tried to catch up. "Not as such, but we really shouldn't..."
Max tossed Michael a lemonade snapple and took one for himself. "Nasedo didn't seem to care about the alien artifacts that the Special Unit had taken," he continued as if he hadn't even missed a beat. "His usual tunnel vision - the only thing on his mind was our safety, to the point of monomania." Max sighed. "Not to mention homicide." He held the watch in front of his hands in a certain way, closed his eyes, and concentrated.
"Subject case file number ninety-three." Although Max was moving his lips along to the words, he wasn't voicing them and the voice that he heard aloud wasn't his own - more like splitting the difference between Ed Harding's and Daniel Pierce's. It was an odd effect, but none of the three of them had figured out a way to turn the messages from the diary into words (as opposed to silent thoughts) any other way. Max knew that Michael would be a little creeped out, seeing and hearing the effect for the first time, but he hoped his oldest friend would also be able to pay attention to the content. "Doctor Neil Thompson."
"Despite his doctorate in Psychology from Stanford, Thompson's role in the Special Unit is essentially little more than that of a glorified data bank. He has memorized the details of sensitive Unit activities all the way back to its inception in 1948, and even its predecessors before that -- Places, people, facts, dates, and events. This unique talent has enabled Special Unit top brass to eliminate damning physical evidence of some of their most controversial programs.
"If there is a single individual currently in the Unit who exemplifies the concept of 'the man who knew too much,' Neil Thompson is surely he. The data he will carry locked forever in his brain is just as dangerous to my charges as it is to his old employers.
"And yet I have to be careful at this point how many Special unit personnel I plan to 'liquidate.' If it were up to me I would destroy every last son-ofabitch who ever signed up, but the consequences of such a move would be disastrous. These are paranoid people who move within paranoid circles, and too many 'accidents' would inevitably end up shining the light of suspicion on Daniel Pierce... and on his mission to Roswell. That could expose my charges all over again."
"And Doctor Thompsons' one saving grace is that he has no great loyalty to the Special Unit or its causes. When I engineer the disbanding of the Unit, the chance seems great that he will simply take another job or retire into anonymity as a man of leisure, never telling another soul of the special unit information. Yet can I afford to take that chance, when the lives of my kids hang in the balance??"
"What the heck??" The voice startled Max out of rapport with the diary, mostly because it was *not* Michael's voice. Max had been bracing himself for Michael to say something, but the usually irrepressible teenage hybrid had been quiet during Max's entire recitation of the diary entry. The voice had come from behind him...
Max opened his eyes and spun around in a 180 turn. Through the dimness of Michael's apartment he could just make out Kyle half sitting up on Michael's couch, his legs still covered by one of the comforters Max and Isabel's mom had given Michael as a housewarming present. "Why... why are *you* here, Kyle??"
"Well, after being banished to the living room for almost three months, I thought I would give crashing on someone ELSE'S couch a try," Kyle groused, "and Mister Guerin here was good enough to take me in."
"I... I tried to tell you he was out here and we shouldn't disturb him," Michael said. He had, Max realized that now. He had been so jazzed about the diary thing that he hadn't really been listening to Michael - or letting him finish sentences, even.
"Um... Sorry. Both of you," Max mumbled embarassedly.
"So... what did Nasedo do, anyways??" Kyle asked. "About this total-recall guy??"
"What?" It took a moment for Max to change subjects mentally again. "He decided against bumping him off -- though you're gonna have to find out about all the people he *did* butcher for our sakes sometime, Michael." Max gave a shudder in spite of himself. "I did a quick search for this Neil Thompson guy on the internet before coming over. He's living in this place called Puerto Penasco - tourist town in Mexico, not that far from here. No record of what he's doing there, so he may have retired, like Nasedo thought he might."
"Working for the forces of evil must pay pretty well," Michael mused. "Okay, road trip."
Max smiled slightly. "Road trip?"
"Yeah, right after all the Christmas hooplah is over next week, Wednesday or something, we head across the border. Kyle's dad can come along as a chaperone..." Kyle gave Michael a look, and Michael forestalled the objection before it could emerge. "Well, I'm sorry, but we *need* to do this, those in the group cursed with parents aren't going to be happy seeing their progeny take off to a foreign country without adult supervision, and your father is the only parent in on the secret. We won't be able to find out what this guy knows if we're always worrying about keeping the secret from... Max's mom, say. Or Liz's dad."
Max broke in here. "There's plenty of time to sort out details like this. Like you said, Michael, we won't be able to go until classes let out and Christmas comes and goes." He looked around. "You should probably go back to bed, Kyle. I'll let myself out the front door. Michael??" He nodded to his best friend to come with him.
Once they were outside of the apartment proper, Max turned back to Michael. "So, what's in it for you??"
Michael blinked in surprise. "Come again??"
"Kyle, crashing on your couch. Is it just you being gracious or is there some kind of quid pro quo??" Max smiled at Michael.
"Well..." Michael smiled himself. "He's helping me a little with Maria stuff. Don't ask."
"Uh... okay." Max shrugged and headed off back to the Jeep. "G'night Michael."
* * * * *
(Tuesday, December 19th 2000)
"Hmm..." Liz clicked the mouse on Alex's computer. "Long-stemmed roses??"
"Flowers are not exactly Christmas-ey," Alex reminded her.
"I guess you're right," Liz agreed. "Well, mister Picky, do you wanna take the helm again??"
"I dunno," Alex sighed. "What do you get a girl to tell her 'I love you madly but I'm not sure if I'm ready to sleep with you'??"
Liz blinked several times in shock, and turned away from the computer screen to look at her best guy-friend. "Umm... I'm not sure. I didn't realize that guys ever *needed* to say that."
Whoops. "Ummmm, uhh..." Alex lurched over and crashed into a sitting position on his bed. "Isabel's brought up the prospect of us, ummmm... 'closing the deal,' and I guess I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, I know how I *feel* about it... and I know how I *think* about it, and unfortunately they're completely opposites."
Liz was looking at him cooly. "Go on."
"Umm, well... I mean, of course I feel the, um... the push to do it. But I... well, as corny and naive as this sounds, I was brought up to believe that there's a right time and place for making love... I'm not quite sure if it's the wedding night or what, but I don't think that Isabel and I are quite there yet. You know??"
Liz nodded. "Wow, a teenaged guy capable of rationally turning down sex when his girlfriend offers it. Popular american culture would have it that you don't exist, Mister Whitman."
"Ha ha," Alex pronounced.
"Umm... feel free to say no if this is too weird, but how did Isabel 'bring this up'??"
Quickly Alex related the key parts of the conversation before music night, while Liz weighed each line of dialog carefully. "Well... it kinda seems that the reasons Isabel wants to do this have more to do with the stuff she's working through after deathtrap night than your relationship. Which I can understand... but I think it's something you need to talk to her about. And in the mean-time... I don't think you need to worry about sending any message to Isabel with your christmas present other than 'I care about you very much.'" She smiled.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Get out of the way." Alex headed over to the computer desk, and Liz quickly scrambled out of the chair to let him sit down. "So... have you decided what you're getting Max, by the way?"
"Uh, yeah... an MP3 disc player for the Jeep. :] I found out that his father's getting him a burner for his computer, and he's always complaining about running out of CDs to play on the long drives we take hither and yon, so I figure he can make a few mix discs that will last for days on end."
"Yeah, that's cool, he'll like that," Alex agreed. "Guys are so easy to shop for. You girls are lucky."
"You're not that easy, bud!!"
"Okay, let's see..." Alex split-screened his online shopping windows on the computer. "We have... the white cashmere sweater... or the golden necklace with sapphire setting. Watcha think??"
"Go with the sweater," Liz assured him. "Isabel will love it."
TO BE CONTINUED...