Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 56: The Night Before
It was a quarter past eleven in the morning, Wednesday, when the U.S. Air Force transport plane carrying Major General William Pittman touched down at Holloman Air Force Base. The General, and his entourage of lesser officers, were driven from the aircraft to a hangar bustling with activity, but there were no aircrafts being attended to inside. Instead, the large space was being transformed into a command-and-control center. The General perused the activity going on inside the hanger with the look of a person who did not like waiting and was capable of cruelty when disappointed. As the ranking officer, all there were obliged to pay homage to him. This they did with sharp salutes whenever he came within speaking distance. It took him little more than five minutes to visually inspect all quarters of the hangar and, more importantly, ingrain his presence in the awareness of all there. At the end of that time, he was taken to the room that would serve as his office for the duration of his stay in New Mexico.
Shortly after six that evening, General Pittman received a video call from Secretary of Defense Patrick Drenning. The communication came in on the large screen in the hangar. The call was expected. Waiting on its arrival with General Pittman was his staff of junior officers.
"Mr. Secretary," General Pittman acknowledged from a posture that was near to a rigid attention stance.
"General, are we set for tomorrow?" Secretary of Defense Drenning casually queried from a seated position.
"Operation Commencement is in place, Mr. Secretary," General Pittman reported with a confident nod.
"Explain it to me," Secretary Drenning requested from behind a sober stare.
In response to that request, General Pittman, promptly, clasped his hands behind his back and widened his stance in preparation for his delivery.
"At five a.m. tomorrow, local time," he asserted in a strong and confident voice. "We will approach the homes of the Roswell Fourteen and collect them and their parents. From there we will transport them directly to Holloman."
"Why tomorrow?" Secretary Drenning questioned tersely.
"Today was the last day of public school in Roswell, Mr. Secretary," General Pittman began to explain without hesitation. "Graduation ceremonies are the only events left undone for this school year. I thought it best to collect them in between these two events."
"Wouldn't it be better to wait until after the graduation ceremonies?" Secretary Drenning asked with a fixed stare and a stern expression.
"The graduation ceremonies for the three high-school senior classes are spread out over the next three days," General Pittman continued to explain with confidence. "We don't want to risk one or more of the packages leaving the area in the interim of these dates. And taking them in segments will alert them that we're coming. By doing it tomorrow we maximize our chances of taking them all simultaneously."
General Pittman felt more than a little pleased at that moment. The Secretary of Defense asked a questioned that he was not only prepared to answer, it was one he was eager to explain.
"Understood," Secretary Drenning acknowledge after a moment of reflection. "The arrests, what will they look like?" He questioned an instant behind in a, seemingly, prepared delivery.
"Minimum profile," General Pittman puffed up to announce with a rapid address. "We will be going in with three vehicles and two agents per vehicle … no emergency lights or sirens. Backup agents will be nearby, but off site. Weapons will remain holstered unless cause is given to do otherwise. The objective is to make this happen as quickly and quietly as possible. In and out time is estimated at between twenty and thirty minutes."
"Is this going to be quick and quiet?" Secretary Drenning questioned directly. "Yes, it will be," General Pittman reported with a nod of his head.
Secretary Drenning paused to study the image of General Pittman on his screen. He then gave his closing remark with the barest of smiles.
"I'm looking forward to hearing from you tomorrow, General Pittman."
General Pittman responded with a much more obvious smile.
"I'm looking forward to making the call, Mr. Secretary."
LINE BREAK
Phillip and Diane Evans spent the eight days following their talk with Jim Valenti giving careful attention to everything that Max and Isabel said and did. Before they left the house, they questioned them about their plans. When they returned, they questioned them about their day. Without even planning to do so, they took to searching their rooms and listening to their talks. For the whole of this time, Phillip and Diane were perpetually ill at ease with worry for their children. That feeling was reinforced by the multiple sightings of vehicles with unknown occupants passing repeatedly through their community or parked nearby on a major thoroughfare. By the eighth day, Phillip and Diane were convinced that their children were being watched.
Despite that belief, Phillip and Diane were reluctant to say anything that might alert Max and Isabel of their fears. Their concern here was that telling them would catapult this secret surveillance into a public event, and they were reluctant to go there ahead of their promised end of month deadline. Instead, they repeatedly warned Max and Isabel to be good and safe, and then they sent them out the door with the hope that all would be well until their return.
Max and Isabel were not oblivious to their parents change in behavior, but they chose not to call them on it. They suspected that they had been advised of the surveillance going on around them, and they thought the likely suspect in that was Sheriff Valenti. Kyle had informed them of the conversation he had with his father. That was the only explanation that made sense of their new curiosity in their activities outside of the home. What they did find confusing was the fact that their parents did not openly discuss it with them or confront the Air Force about it. They considered reading their thoughts on several occasions, but their reluctance with invading their parent's thoughts stopped them each time.
Over the eight days that Phillip and Diane were showing excessive interest in their children's lives, Max and Isabel were feigning a disinterest in what was happening with their parents. That changed on the ninth day of school. Sheriff Valenti received a call on this day from his source within the FBI. He was advised by the source that something was set to occur in Roswell within the next day or two, and that he had no details beyond that. Sheriff Valenti, per his promise, passed that information on to the Evans and the Parkers. Worried by that report, even more than they had been, Phillip and Diane waited until after dinner to push their children for answers.
"Max, Isabel, is there anything you need to tell us?" Phillip questioned his son and daughter moments after he and Diane situated them both on the living-room sofa.
"Are you in some kind of trouble?" Diane almost pleaded.
Max and Isabel were both loathed to entertain this conversation. They could think of no way through this talk other than to lie or tell the truth, and the latter was something they could not do.
"What do you mean?" Max asked with a feigned look of confusion.
After hearing that reply, Phillip came to the conclusion that he would have to give his children some inkling of what he was talking about to steer their responses into the area of interest to them.
"For the past several months, there has been a criminal investigation going on in all of the high schools here in Roswell," Phillip stated with resolution.
"You think we're in some kind of trouble with the police?" Isabel, softly, questioned with a look of shock.
"No, baby," Diane quickly discouraged. "We just want to make sure you don't get caught up in to something by accident. You're our children and there is nothing that you could do that would stop us from loving you and protecting you."
Max and Isabel knew at that moment that they could not go on deceiving their parents with their pretense of ignorance. They glanced abashedly at each other in response to their mother's heartfelt declaration. After a moment of indecision, Max took ownership of the response.
"Mom, Dad, we're okay," Max began in a sincere tone. "You don't have to worry about us. We haven't done anything," he finished with a definitive emphasis.
"We're your children," Isabel spoke up an instant behind, in support of Max's words. "You raised us to be good, and kind, and respectful. We will always be your children," she emphasized with an almost pleading expression to her words. "We would never do anything that might embarrass or hurt you."
"We would never betray your confidence in us," Max declared with a fervent stare toward his father. "You know us. I don't care what anybody else says. Please believe that we are the children that you raised."
Both Phillip and Diane were stunned into silence by their impassioned declaration. They looked at their children with confused expressions. Phillip, more so than Diane, felt that there had to be something behind their emotional response. After a moment of study, he put that suspicion into a question.
"Is there something wrong? Did something happen?"
"We didn't do anything, Dad," Isabel, loudly and quickly, asserted. "Please just trust us on this."
"I can't help if I don't know what I'm dealing with," Phillip stated with an inflection of concern.
"There's nothing for you to do, Dad," Max declared in earnest. "We haven't done anything that we need you to protect us from. That's the truth," he emphasized with a gentle shake of his head.
Phillip and Diane could not help but believe that their children were telling them some version of the truth. It was the tone of their words and the passion behind them that was causing them to believe that they were holding something back. They both paused to study their children. Neither of them could see any sign that they were lying. Phillip was the first to conclude that there was nothing left to do but trust them. He had never known his children to be dishonest and he was not going to start accusing them of being dishonest now.
"Okay," Phillip acknowledged with a nod of his head.
After taking a second to note that their parents had finished with their inquiry, Max and Isabel got up from the sofa and went to their rooms. Phillip and Diane sat in their and waited for their doors to close before speaking to each other about what they had just heard.
"They're not telling us something," Diane nearly whispered to Phillip.
"I know," Phillip agreed in an equally soft voice. "But they're not lying to us either."
LINE BREAK
In the Parker home, and in the Valenti home, similar conversations were going on that night. Liz found it hard to say anything in the face of what she knew was about to occur. Her thoughts were too full of concern for her parents to perform an elaborate deception. For the most part, she limited her responses to "no" and "I don't know" from behind expressions of sadness and fear. Often, in between these two answers were long moments of nothing at all. That behavior continuously elevated her father's passion which produced increasingly more vociferous demands for answers, but in the end, it was the opposite effect that it had on her mother that brought the interrogation to close. Nancy became convinced that they were going to get nothing more than what they had heard, and she convinced her husband that they could do nothing more than trust in the word of their daughter.
Kyle was more vocal in response to his father's queries, and Jim was more giving with regards to what he knew. He advised his son that forces were being arrayed and that several of his friends were the reasons behind their assembly. He questioned his son repeatedly about what he knew about that. Kyle responded to his inquiries with the lie that he knew of nothing that anyone was doing to warrant a response from Law Enforcement. In the end, Jim accepted that answer with reluctance.
"I pray for your sake that you're not a part of this," Jim exclaimed before turning to go to bed.
Jim had taken three steps when he was stopped by Kyle's call back, "Dad."
Jim turned about and faced his son with a look that suggested he was not expecting anything different from what he had already heard. He noticed Kyle's hesitation, and suspected he was formulating the words in his thoughts. He became slightly more intrigued by the sight of that. He waited on that process to complete, and then he listened to the words it produced.
"All I ever wanted was to be a son you could be proud of," Kyle enunciated in solemn voice. "And I have never done anything that was in conflict with that. I just want you to know that."
Jim looked at his son with a sudden awareness that he knew something that he was not saying. He studied him for a dozen seconds before resigning himself to the realization that he was not going to get more than that. He then turned about and set off for his room with the knowledge that he had no recourse but to address events as they came. Within an hour past ten o'clock that night he was asleep in his bed. Within two hours past ten o'clock all of the parental members of the Roswell Fourteen were asleep in their beds. But their children were not.