Okay, this part may have just a little bit of strong language… but probably no more than you hear on any TV program today… maybe not as much! Just so you know, though (Like that's going to stop you, right?) Also, this part is being told by Alex, but not always in the first person. There is direct dialog between the characters, set off by quotation marks "" in the usual way. There is simple exposition, to say what you should be "seeing" as Alex tells it, but which is not in Alex's own words precisely, though he is telling it. And there is what Alex says to us directly. This has been indicated with before he begins each time. I think it will be clear when you read it.

Sliding Into Antar

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Alex's Story

Chapter 16

XVI

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Alex sighed and rubbed his chin… "Where to start…"

"Try at the beginning," Liz said.

"Okay… well, I was born in…"

"Not that far in the beginning, Alex! Come on! Start with… whenever whatever happened that led to your BEING HERE ON ANTAR!"

"Oh, that!" Alex smiled. He knew he was jerking the girls around, but he also knew that he could get away with it.

"Well… I guess it started when…"

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"You did this to me, Tess! You sent me to Las Cruces!"

"Okay… Alex… Alex, let me fix your mind. You're not thinking straight."

"You mind warped me for two months while I decoded that silly book for you, and now there's nothing left for you to mind warp. You destroyed my mind! How could you do this to me?"

I think that's when Kyle came in and asked what was going on. Tess was already frustrated and scared, because she was having trouble controlling the situation…

"Kyle, get out!"

At that point, I was losing it, too… totally. I didn't care who was there or anything. My mind was just so totally numb from all the mind warps, and I couldn't think straight anymore. But I finally remembered enough to know who was responsible…

"See what you've done, Tess? I can't… I can't… think… I have nothing left of ME anymore. I might as well be dead!"

"Calm down! Just calm down," Tess pleaded frantically, at the same time trying to get Kyle out of the room. Then I felt it happening again… It felt like a flood washing through my brain, washing away everything that was me… all my memories, all my own thoughts, all my feelings. I tried to fight it…

"No! You can't mind warp me again… NOOO!"

That's all I remember. Then everything went blank. I know now that my brain couldn't take any more, and it simply shut down on some level. It was gone, like a light that had been blown, and it wasn't coming back on this time… not for anything that Tess might wish or do."

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"Your duffel's all loaded."

"Thanks Kyle."

"Want me to come along?"

"No. Go in the house. I'll take care of everything from here."

"Are you sure?"

Tess looked Kyle in the eyes, and he nodded and walked back toward the house. He never knew that the "duffel" he had put in the car was actually me… he had been mindwarped. Tess drove over to my house and got a guy who was passing by on the sidewalk to move her "duffel" from her car into the front seat of mine. Then she drove out to the highway and stopped and got out. She pushed me over into the driver's seat and used her powers to start the car and guide it into the front of a semi at 70 miles per hour while she watched from a safe distance away, out of sight.

After the crash, Tess went back to the café and tried to act like one of the group and like nothing had happened, but her mind was in turmoil. Then Valenti came into the CrashDown and told everybody that I had been killed in an accident, and they all rushed over to the morgue with him so Max could heal me. When the coroner's van showed up, Valenti hurried the two attendants inside to give Max a chance to get into the back and bring me back to life, but Max wasn't able to. My body was too… well…

When Max wasn't able to bring me back, everybody just started to fall apart, and Tess didn't know what to do. She walked around for the rest of the afternoon, thinking. That evening, she showed up at the CrashDown again…

"Max."

"Tess."

"I need to talk with you, Max."

"Okay."

"Not here. Not in front of everybody."

"Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Liz and me," Maria said.

"This doesn't concern you, Maria. Stay out of it."

"If it's about you and Max, it concerns me, Tess. Liz is my friend, and you're hurting her."

"Maria… It's okay," Liz whispered.

"No, it's not okay, Liz… You have to speak up. Wherever you and Max are, Tess always shows up. It's like she's got a LoJack hidden in his pants. She always knows where he is. If you don't stop it now, she'll have him in bed before you know it."

"Maria!" Liz exclaimed, her face reddening to a bright crimson, "That is so not going to happen. I'm a big girl, Maria. I can handle my own relationships. I know you're trying to help, but… well, don't. Not here… not right now. You're embarrassing me."

Max and Michael looked at each other, and both decided, perhaps wisely, not to comment.

"Well, I tried to tell you," Maria said, glaring at Tess.

Tess huffed and pursed her lips tightly together… "Okay… okay… you all want to hear it? Okay, then. But you may not find what I have to say very pleasant."

"Well, that won't be a big change," Maria said.

Tess took a deep breath. "I killed Alex."

There was total silence for several moments… total stunned silence.

"Why?" Maria asked, tears starting to roll down her face. "Why would you hurt Alex? Alex, of all people! What did he ever do to you?"

"Nothing." Tess' lips trembled, and she started to cry.

"Oh, for God's sake, don't!" Liz said, starting to shake uncontrollably and unable to contain her feelings any longer. "Save it for the theater, Tess!"

"I'm not acting. I didn't mean to kill him. It just… it happened."

"Shit happens," Maria said. "Killing my best friend doesn't just happen."

"It was an accident. I needed him to decode the book. I didn't know his mind couldn't handle the mind warps."

"He died in a car wreck," Liz said.

"I staged that to take suspicion off of me. He didn't die in the crash."

"Why are you telling us all of this now," Max asked solemnly.

"I only wanted to tell you, Max. I didn't want to tell everybody."

"Well, now we all know," Michael said.

Tess nodded. "Max, you need to try again to heal Alex. If I help you, maybe we can do it… together."

"You didn't see the body after the crash, did you?" Max asked.

Tess shook her head.

"If you had, you wouldn't ask me."

"But it was an accident, Max. I didn't mean to kill him. You have to heal him."

"It's too late for self-recriminations, Tess. Maybe if you hadn't smashed him into a semi head on at 70 miles per hour, I could have done something…"

"A hundred twenty-five," Liz said. Max turned and looked at Liz.

"The truck driver said he was doing 55. Alex's car was going 70. That's 125 miles per hour."

Max nodded and looked back at Tess. "I can't fix that, Tess. Nothing can."

Tess closed her eyes and choked back a sob, but there was no sympathy for her in the room.

"Leave us," Max said, "Leave Roswell. Go far away and don't ever come back. If you ever do, I'll kill you myself."

Michael nodded in agreement. Tess looked around the room, but except for Maria, everyone was in agreement that she be banished. Maria preferred the death option.

"Omigod," Liz whispered, placing her hand over her mouth reflexively, "When Isabel finds out what really happened, she'll die."

"Where is Isabel," Michael asked.

"She went home," Maria said, "To cry."

Max turned and looked at Tess again. His eyes were hard, cold, and totally void of any sympathy… or any feelings that he ever might have had for her. Tess knew that this time she had stepped over the line, and what she had done could not be fixed with a few tears, real or otherwise. She turned and walked out the door of the CrashDown in silence… and didn't look back.

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At home, Isabel lay on her bed, sobbing into her pillow. She had been like this since finding out that Max would not be able to do anything, and her pillow was already in desperate need of a long tumble in the dryer. Seeming to finally realize this, she rolled over to reach for a dry pillow… And that's when she noticed…

Thinking that it must be the tears making it look like what she thought she saw, Isabel wiped her eyes and looked again…

"Hello, Isabel."

"Alex? Omigod, Alex! You're alive! How did you…?"

"That's not important, Iz. Actually, I'm not sure how I got here."

Isabel reached out and touched me to see if I was real, and she found that I was solid… It surprised me, too… maybe more than her. She threw herself into my arms and hugged me, and tears started running down her face again.

"You're not really here, are you, Alex? This is a dream. You're not real. It's not fair!"

"It's not a dream, Isabel. I'm here… in some way."

I tried to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, even if I couldn't be there with her anymore, but I felt wrong saying it, because I knew that it would never be all right for me. I wanted Isabel to move on… for her sake… but…

I put my arms around her and kissed her… and I was overcome by the passion that flowed between us… through our kiss… through every fiber of our very beings, whatever our beings were at that moment. Isabel closed her eyes and surrendered herself to me totally, and we both let the feeling carry us away emotionally. But her heart was still breaking, and I could feel it. We both knew that our time together was limited and I would have to be going much too soon, so we held each other tight, trying, in those few short minutes, to capture all the moments that we would miss for the rest of… eternity.

"Dance, milady?"

Isabel nodded and smiled, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. And we danced…

…and we danced…

…and as we danced, I felt myself slipping away…

"Iz, I have to tell you something. I love you!"

"Oh, God, I love you, too, Alex… so much! Will I ever see you again?"

"Not here."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm being taken somewhere… I think… my body…"

"Your body?"

"Tess…"

That was the last thing Isabel heard me say before I disappeared.

Isabel stood there, her mind reeling, thinking about what she had heard, trying to put it all together…

"Omigod! Tess!"

Isabel raced from her room and out the front door. Slamming the door behind her without stopping to look back, she jumped into Max's jeep… then headed for the desert.

tbc