Part 65

"Max is awake," Will said, as he entered Kate's quarters in the Valonian palace.

Kate looked up from the board she was examining, meeting Jack's gaze with surprise. They had been in the process of playing chess, with a gaming set they had uncovered in another room. The game meant to be played on the board was obviously slightly different, but not so much so that it was proving overly difficult to manage.

"Thank goodness," Kate said now, firmly and pointedly.

Her brother's expression remained neutral at the vocalizing of her relief. Kate still didn't know exactly what was going on in Will's head, but she knew it wasn't overwhelming joy that Max was back. She had guessed easily that, somewhere within him, he had been hoping that the king of Antar's clone would never regain consciousness, and he would be able to step into the void in Liz's life. It was Will's face Kate had been watching when Grant had announced that, because Zan had never died before they were cloned, Max might never wake up. While everyone else had been horrified beyond measure, Will's demeanor had been carefully blank. But his eyes…they had blazed with something that had made Kate entirely uncomfortable.

"Is he okay?" Jack asked, climbing to his feet.

"I don't know," Will replied. "Tess came to tell me. She didn't elaborate beyond saying that we were to all meet in an hour."

"Tess, huh?" Jack asked, smirking slightly.

"Shut up, Jack," Will shot back.

Jack looked at Kate, his grin widening. "I appear to have touched a nerve, Katie. Would you not agree?"

"Jack…" Kate trailed off warningly.

"There is nothing between Tess and me," Will said firmly, interrupting.

"Maybe not," Kate said carefully, since Will seemed willing to pursue the conversation. "But, Will, you do know that you and Liz…that's over. There's nothing there either?"

"I know it," Will snapped. "I'm not completely delusional."

There was a long pause. Kate glanced at Jack, whose expression was no longer amused. He appeared aware that he had opened a can of worms, and seemed somewhat ashamed. He raised his gaze to meet Kate's and grimaced.

"No," Kate replied soothingly. "I know you're not. You're a good person, Will. You won't stand in the way of what she wants. Of what she needs to be happy."

"No, I won't," Will confirmed.

"Then why are we still here?" Kate asked softly. "Will, if Max is awake…why are we still stuck here?" She motioned around the room, knowing that Will would understand that she was referring to the granolith and not the Valonian palace.

Will met her eyes, scowling slightly, but he eventually lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry," he finally said abruptly, his voice cracking slightly. Kate watched with horror as his blue eyes shone with tears. She hurried across the room, throwing her arms around him. He buried his face in her neck. "I can't turn it off. I can't stop it. I want to - so badly. But I just can't. I love her."

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "Will, I am so sorry. But you're going to have to stop. You just have to."

She knew, though, that this was easier said than done. And, until it was done, it seemed that none of them were going anywhere, whether Max Evans had returned to the land of the living or not.

"We're not going back to Antar," Max said. "We don't have to go back."

He proceeded to tell the group exactly what he had learned while he'd been asleep, down to the fact that the original Zan had never given him the seal, which meant he couldn't rule Antar. They did not belong back there. They belonged on Earth. Max was certain of it now, but he knew that it might take some time to convince the others.

Silence greeted his story when he was done. It was obvious from the varying expressions of shock, surprise, and dismay appearing on the faces around him, that this was not what anyone had expected to hear.

"Max, what about the message from our mother?" Isabel finally asked, sounding a little sad.

"What about it?" Max demanded. "We don't even know who that woman was, Iz. We do know that Nasedo wasn't working for us. I'm betting it was completely faked."

Somewhat habitually, Max looked at Tess, who scowled at him. "I didn't do it!" she exclaimed. "Max, I've already told you all that I know, and all that I did for him."

Max glanced at Liz, whose lips were pressed together disapprovingly. She didn't say anything though, just watched him. "Fine, that's all I needed to know," he said. "But you can't blame me for wondering."

Tess thought about this for a moment, then shrugged, sighing slightly. "I guess not," she admitted, even laughing a bit. "But I swear I didn't do it."

"So we're just rejecting it out of hand, then?" Isabel asked. "I mean, what if it wasn't faked?"

"All I know is that I didn't meet our mother while I was gone," Max told her. "And we haven't met any mother the entire time we've been in here, have we? I don't think she existed anymore…exists…you know what I mean," he finally finished impatiently. This was all still somewhat confusing to discuss, what with all the doubles, and time periods they were dealing with.

Isabel looked at Grant. "You should know. Was our mother still alive when the ship was sent to Earth?"

"Yes," Grant said. "But I wouldn't have put it past Nasedo to have faked a message to force you back to Antar. It would have made his plot a lot easier if you'd just gone peacefully."

Max eyed him suspiciously. "Why did you tell us that Zan died? Why did you let us continue to believe that, when it wasn't true?"

"In every way that counted, he died," Grant shrugged. "He's dead now. So he wasn't dead when the ship left. What's the difference?"

"It's a big difference!" Max exclaimed in annoyance. "Khivar is sitting on my throne because he inherited it. Zan must have died without an heir by Ava, and he passed it to Khivar, because his sister was dead. Isn't that right?"

"Well, yes," Grant admitted. He raised his hands, as though to ward off Max's accusations. "Hey! Don't blame me for any of this! I told you, I just hitched along for the ride, because of Vilandra." He glanced at Isabel, who glared back at him, causing him to sigh heavily. "I wasn't involved in any of the upper level stuff. I knew he wasn't dead, of course. Everyone did. He was king. But most of the rest of them were gone, so when Edgen told me on the ship that we were supposed to look after you all until you could go back and recover the throne from Khivar, I believed him."

"You said most of them were, but that's not true either," Max snapped. "Zan, Rath, Serena, and Khivar were all still alive."

"Does Serena really count though? No one knew about her," Michael reminded Max. "I mean, Courtney didn't."

"True, but he must have," Max insisted, meaning Grant. "She was the one who cloned us."

Grant sighed. "Fine, she wasn't dead. But Rath was. He died before the ship left."

Max blinked, surprised. "What? How?"

There was a long silence again. Max could see that Grant was struggling to figure out how to phrase it. Grant looked at Michael, who appeared interested, but only intellectually, not because he particularly cared. When he became aware of Grant's regard, he shrugged. "Hey, I'm alive now. Whatever happened to me back then is water under the bridge. Just tell us."

"He tried to stop the ship from leaving," Grant finally said. "He changed his mind about thinking it was a good idea. Nasedo killed him when he and Serena boarded it to retrieve the pods."

Max frowned thoughtfully. This wasn't completely foreign to what he knew about Rath from the time he had spent with him in the past, but it didn't sound quite right. He glanced at Michael, who shrugged again, obviously not remembering anything that would be helpful.

"I don't think that's what happened," Max said firmly. "Tell us the truth. It's time, Grant. We need to know everything."

"If you were supposed to know this, don't you think you would have stayed asleep long enough to find it out?" Grant shot back, more logically than Max cared to admit.

"It makes you look bad, doesn't it?" Liz asked, speaking up for the first time. She was seated behind Max, and had been listening quietly, but, as usual, she was much more in tune with the feelings of those around them than anyone else. Max watched Grant as she spoke, and could see a shudder run through the shapeshifter. As usual, Liz had hit the nail right on the head.

Grant seemed almost panicked now. The calm, cool, collected shapeshifter, who seemed to find a lot of this mostly amusing - who seemed to think it was funny that the eight of them spent most of their time uncertain if they were coming or going - was finally cracking.

And this wasn't just about what Isabel thought of him, Max realized. He hadn't looked at her again. He was scared now.

"What happened?" Max demanded, refusing to reassure Grant until he knew exactly what they were dealing with.

Grant met his eyes for a long moment. Whatever he saw in them seemed to be the last straw. He collapsed into a nearby chair, his arms hanging limply beside him. He stared at the floor, unseeing, as he recounted Rath's final moments.

"He was supposed to come with us," Grant said quietly. "Rath and Serena were going to come with us. As Valonians, they could have survived on Earth without skins, so Zan and Khivar wanted them to go, and they agreed. That's why Serena was sent later, with Nicholas. They were chasing us. She was supposed to have been in control of the pods, and the granolith. They were supposed to settle you all into new lives here, and then go back."

"And?" Max prompted, when Grant stopped for a moment.

"Edgen didn't find out until the last minute, and he was furious. He felt like it was an insult to Wendar, that Zan didn't trust us to take care of things ourselves." He paused again, glancing at Michael, shaking his head slightly. "By the time Rath came onto the ship to take control, Edgen had convinced me that I would never have a chance with Vilandra on Earth if Rath was there to engineer your lives the way that Zan wanted them to go. And, then, when Rath came…he was his typical self. Rude, bullying, and refused to listen to anything anyone else said."

"So you killed him?" Isabel exclaimed in horror. "Because of me, you killed him?"

"I didn't," Grant insisted. "But Edgen did. And I didn't stop him. He sent Serena packing back to Antar with Rath's body, and told her to tell Zan that he would regret not trusting him. Then we left. We took the pods, and we left, came to Earth, and the rest you know. The crash happened. And I hid half of you from Edgen, because I had no idea what he was planning. By the time we got to Earth, he was almost as bad as Yorvin, convinced that the only the insults to Wendar would stop was if our planet took control of the system. Zan was right not to trust him entirely, and Edgen couldn't even see that. He started to plot against Zan, which was exactly what Zan had sent Rath to prevent."

"Good grief," Michael said into the silence that had fallen again. "That's a really crappy way to die for a general." He sounded almost disappointed, which if Max wasn't so angry, he might have found funny. "Shouldn't I have been more suspicious of Edgen? I mean, I'm suspicious of everyone!"

"Rath was Rath," Grant said. "He was suspicious of everyone, too, and he never hid it. He did things his way, like a bull in a china shop. He couldn't be inconspicuous about anything. Edgen knew what his presence on the mission meant. It meant that Zan didn't trust him. But Rath didn't deserve to die because of it. He was only doing what his king asked him to do. Edgen had no right to take the pods, and I had no right to let him. We proved Zan - and Rath - completely right."

"But Rath still died," Max said. "It didn't matter if he was right or not. He died."

"And I'm willing to go back to Antar and face trial for that," Grant replied. "I know now that I am just as responsible for it as Edgen was." Max watched him glance at Isabel to see how she took that. His sister's expression was still entirely disgusted. Grant sighed heavily.

"We haven't said so," Kate said, after everyone absorbed what Grant had told them, "But it's safe to assume that Edgen and Nasedo were one and the same?"

"Yes," Grant acknowledged.

"What I don't get is how the Knosians got wrapped up in all of this," Michael said. "If Serena did the cloning, why would she have gone along with throwing in Ava's DNA?"

"Remember, Whittaker told us that Nasedo made a deal with the Knosians," Liz said. She looked at Grant. "That must have come about after he killed Rath."

"It did," Grant acknowledged. "We went to Knosis before coming here." He looked at Tess. "That's why we had Knosians working for us in the cave. They were sent by Ava's planet to ensure her safety."

"But why?" Michael demanded. "The original Zan was married to Ava. They had their queen married to the high king. Why would they support someone who wanted to overthrow them both?"

"The Knosians are anything if not pragmatic," Grant replied wryly. "They didn't believe that Edgen's plot would succeed - the whole cloning thing was beyond their comprehension - but they weren't taking any chances either. If it did, they wanted a clone with Knosian blood on the throne. If the original Zan and Ava had had children, they would have switched sides again."

"Lovely," Michael muttered, rolling his eyes. "Real trustworthy people you come from," he said to Tess.

"Hey! It's not my fault!" Tess exclaimed. "Besides, I'm only half Knosian…or a quarter…" She trailed off. "Whatever. I'm not Knosian," she insisted. "I'm just…not."

"No, you're not," Liz agreed. "You're one of us." Max saw Tess' tension drain out of her at her sister's words. Liz stood, frowning at Michael. "None of us are them, Michael. None of what happened before matters for us, except so far as what's expected of us now. Can we please try to remember that?"

"Sorry," Michael said, holding up his hands. He looked at Tess. "I am sorry. I'm just frustrated, okay? I mean, what does it matter that we're learning all this? We're still stuck here!"

"Good point," Max said. "I think that, now, we need to just remind ourselves of what we do know, which is that we don't have to go back, because that was never what they meant for us to do. Grant has told us what he can about how we ended up so lost and alone on Earth. In some ways, the Crash was a good thing, because if it hadn't happened, Nasedo probably would have had us all back on Antar by now, and the civil war would never have ended."

The thought of that sent a shiver down Max's spine.

"Doesn't this all mean that there isn't a civil war happening at all?" Isabel asked. "I mean, if we're not meant to go back, and Zan left his throne to Khivar, why would there be one?"

"I'm betting it's because not everyone was in agreement with Khivar taking over the high kingship," Max replied. "Remember what started this all in the first place. Planets jealous over other planets' influence. Knosis must not have been very happy about the Sardican king ruling over them when they had been equals for so long. Plus, they must have thought that they were finally gaining one over on Sardica by marrying their queen to Zan. If they had no children, they were no better off in the long run than they had ever been."

They all looked at Grant, who shrugged again. "I don't know much about what's going on back there. Only what…" He trailed off frowning, a strange look crossing his face.

"What?" Michael asked. "What's wrong?"

"I was going to say that I only know what Nasedo told me he'd learned from Ava's Knosian bodyguards," Grant replied. "But that doesn't really make a lot of sense. They've been on Earth almost as long as anyone. They didn't crash, and it took them a while to find Nasedo after we did, but they were with him for a long time."

"Maybe they were in contact with home?" Isabel suggested.

"Maybe," Grant conceded. "But if so, why didn't Nasedo know more?"

"He could have, and just didn't tell you," Liz said. "You've already said before that he didn't really trust you. That's why you killed Courtney, isn't it? To show that he could?"

"Yes," Grant said, lowering his gaze. "Something still seems wrong though."

"Nicholas was in touch with home," Kate said softly. "Maybe he was the one who knew. We already know that he worked with Nasedo, at least a bit."

It was the first time one of the Sardican members of their group had actually spoken throughout this. Max looked at her in surprise, realizing for the first time that Kate, Will, and Jack had all been strangely quiet throughout the entire conversation.

Max looked at Will. He felt strange about Will since waking up. He still didn't particularly like him, but he had respected his original, Khivar, while Max had been living Zan's life. Max knew that Will still wanted Liz, and that his sullen behavior now was likely linked to the fact that everything Max had told them about why the original Khivar went along with the cloning meant that he and Liz were not meant to be, from the very beginning, and his original had known it.

He was distracted by his musings on Will by Michael. "That's one thing I just don't get in all of this. If the real Khivar was still alive, and was king of Antar, why was Nicholas working with Nasedo at all?"

And, suddenly, as though Michael's question had suddenly jolted all the pieces of the puzzle into their proper places, Max blinked. Because, abruptly, he finally understood the one thing that Zan never had.

He knew who the traitor had been. The traitor who had betrayed Serena and Rowena on Valonia, and he led directly to their deaths. It was the same traitor now as it had been then.

The answer was so obvious, he couldn't believe that he hadn't thought of it before. It was the only thing that made any sense with what they knew about what Will, Kate, and Jack had been raised to believe. How could they have not realized it?

But, as Max met Will's gaze for the first time since he'd woken up, he understood that someone had thought of it, and perhaps had not wanted to be disillusioned once more, so had said nothing.

"Because Nicholas was a traitor," Max said grimly, because Will needed to face reality. At this point, it was absolutely essential. "He has been betraying all of you all along, including the real Khivar."