Part 12 – Consider
May 18 - 21, 2005


1 : Dave

9:58am
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 13 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes

Dave watched the roses go into the small incinerator. Jake had not told Max yet, and Dave supposed that unsavory news was going to be his to deliver.

Sixteen months. Henry had said Max had been working on his rose project for sixteen months. That he'd gotten the rose he wanted was a happy coincidence. Some people could go a lifetime without getting their perfect rose.

The last plant went in, and the door was closed. This was the sixth batch. Dozens and dozens of pots burned to the ashes inside the fiery box. I'm sorry, Dave apologized. He didn't like to see illusions go up in flames, especially for someone like Max. He had talked to Jake about any way around it, but the truth was, all those roses along with half the plants under Henry's care, had been sprayed with Henry's formula. One that had turned into a very effective hybrid killer. Max had been exposed to it for sixteen months, but it was the latest version that had proven almost lethal.

Now Henry had to start again on his research from his last version before this one, or risk getting nothing from Dave. Dave could not risk something as dangerous as that getting out into the world Max was sure to walk in the future. If the Antarians came to know it, they would kill him, and he wouldn't blame them.

"Anything else you need?" Henry quietly asked. It had been sixteen months for Max. It had been nine years of research for Henry. He understood that Max had had a violent reaction, and he had accepted that part of his work had to disappear. It didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

"No Henry, I think we're done here," Dave said, placing a hand over the older man's shoulder. "You are going to help Max again, right?"

Henry smiled for the first time since Dave had arrived. "He really had something, you know? I hope he can have it again."

It wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no neither. Either way, it was too soon to press Henry for any compromise.

Alone in the spacious room that was the engineering area, Dave kept watching the door to the incinerator. They had kept things from him. Important things. And he wasn't sure how to react to that. He'd thought he knew them well enough. Research and observation could only take him so far, of course, but still…

They were good, he reluctantly approved, much the same way he was reluctant to allow Sybelle's involvement with extreme sports. Two years under his roof… It begged the question, then: what things would they do once they were out from under his roof?

For the first time in two years, Dave wondered if he should call Langley.

If he was not careful though, his plans could very well go up in smoke, just like the roses and Henry's formula were doing inside the incinerator right now.

"I'll let Liz see Max in about half an hour," Jake said coming into the room. Dave turned to see him, and was surprised by Jake's lack of scars. Jake simply smiled.

"Small miracles, I guess," he said by way of explanation. He stood by Dave's side, looking at the incinerator while Dave processed that latest bit of Max's behavior.

"Did you talk to Liz?" Dave asked a few seconds later.

"Yes, though not for long. She's a tight bundle of nerves, which is understandable with her husband unconscious for three days. But Dave… I wouldn't hold my breath. If they feel we need to know, then we'll know."

"You didn't see it, Jake. Liz blew up the entire room's electric system. Fourteen lamps in a thirty foot radius. She could have done it five minutes earlier with a room full of people. At the very least she has to learn to control it. There's only so much I can hide."

"I'll make sure she's aware of your worries," Jake said dryly. Not everything is about you, Jake had told him when he was fourteen, wanting to get drunk. Who do you think has to babysit you? And what if we have to run, then how are you going to even know what's happening? Dave had refrained, until he was nineteen, supposedly dead, and away from Jake's tendencies to kill his interest in the world. He'd regretted it fourteen hours later when he had experienced his first and only hangover, of course.

Dave sighed to concede the point. "How's Max doing?"

"He's fine, darn that metabolism of his. He's a little frustrated about being ordered to remain in bed until tomorrow. He didn't want to miss Liz's birthday, but I'm arranging the party to come to him." Dave smiled, thinking about Danielle's wonderful chocolate cake. But Jake did not smile with him. "It was really close, Dave. Had he been somewhere else… I asked him to carry an epi-pen. He looked at me as if I had grown a second head."

"I'm sure Liz will make him," Dave guaranteed him, standing to walk away. The people who worked here were coming back from the testing they had been doing on the other wing of engineering.

"There's a thought," Jake mused, following him out.

"You haven't told him? About the…" Dave hesitated, turning to look at the distant incinerator.

"Now-extinct roses? No. He suspects, but if anyone is persistent enough, it's Max. How long are you going to stay?"

Until Max agrees to carry his epi-pen, Dave thought somberly. It was one thing that Max had almost died by accident, another to not be prepared for next time. "A few days. See that things settle down again. I have some ideas I'd like to try discussing with our merry band now that the girls are back… I think it's time for a change."


2 : Liz

11:11am
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 13 days, 4 hours, 49 minutes

"He even sent for our bags," Liz was telling her audience, while they quietly ate her birthday cake. Jake had allowed them to use one of the lab's long tables, so they were sitting bar style, with Max on one side, and all five of them on the other.

"And he hasn't asked you anything else?" Max questioned, sneaking a bit of chocolate cake even though Jake had sternly warned he shouldn't load his stomach with something so heavy after two days of nothing solid. Michael tossed him the Tabasco sauce, and since Max's reflexes were as good as ever, Liz didn't argue with him about his sweet-n-spicy treat.

"He said it on the plane. 'I won't ask about it, but you better tell me if you have a vision'. I thought for sure he was going to corner me until I came up with a suitable answer."

"That doesn't sound like him…" Kyle mused.

"It's a tactic," Michael deadpanned, looking intently at Max. "He's just waiting for us to do or say something and he'll use it to his advantage. He'll probably provoke us into it, too."

"What about Jake? Has he asked you anything?" Isabel asked her brother. Max shook his head.

"He's talked to me in detail about what happened. Made sure I was really feeling okay, which I am," he added when Liz started to chew on her lip. "It's over, and everything is back to normal," he smiled that slow smile that she loved so much, but she needed far more than that to calm her guilty conscience.

"It was awful…" she whispered, "I thought it had been my fault. I wasn't thinking what I was saying to Dave. I just… I'm sorry…"

"No one is blaming you, Liz," Isabel said, "Michael and I felt it too. It was horrible, Max. Don't take it lightly. If Jake hadn't acted so quickly, I don't even know where things would be right now."

"I am not taking it lightly," Max said with a little bit more force than he needed. It was in moments like this when Liz thought she got a glimpse of something. Something else going on behind Max's eyes. It didn't scare her, it intrigued her. She never felt anything unusual in their connection, and it never lasted more than a few seconds, that feeling that Max had tapped into something deeper within himself.

Michael and Isabel took it in stride, but Liz noticed how Maria and Kyle had stopped eating for just a second. They had noticed. It was Michael and Isabel who just hadn't cared. Or were used to it far more than she was.

"Do you think we should figure out what are we going to say about Kyle if we ever need to?" Maria asked, changing the subject.

"How about we don't?" Kyle answered without skipping a beat. "If he doesn't want to know about Liz, he sure as hell is not going to know about me."

They kept talking, and eating, and after a while, they started joking. Presents were unwrapped, hugs given. Yet the doubt nagged at Liz. Why wouldn't Dave want to know about it?


3 : Isabel

3:37pm
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 11 days, 23 minutes

The door to Dave's office was ajar, and Isabel took a moment to compose herself. She'd been the only one who had been called to a meeting with Dave, and after the last couple of days with Max getting sick and Liz showing some of her power, Isabel had no idea why would she be the one to be called.

It reminded her of the first time she had been in this same spot, two years ago, not knowing what to make of this man and his offer. Sadly, her position had barely changed.

She went in.

Instead of 15,000 pieces of puzzle, a white sheet covered one half the surface of Dave's desk, while he was typing on his laptop on the other. He looked absorbed on his work, and barely raised his eyes to acknowledge she was here. "Just a minute," he said, without breaking the speed at which he was typing.

She briefly looked around, noticing that the place had been dusted. On her right, the large group of numbers she remembered was still hanging on the wall. In front of her, looking past Dave, was the window. Instead of the eternal white they had seen in their first meetings, now all she could see was green and greener all around.

She sat down as Dave's typing slowed almost to a standstill. He frowned, not liking what he was reading. Then he let it go, closed the laptop, and looked at her. He was forty, and still looking ten years younger. Not for the first time she wondered if he had lied about his age.

"Jesse is in trouble," he started without even a good afternoon. She stared at him, her mouth slightly opening as her mind ran with a thousand things to say, to ask, to shout.

"What?" was the only one that managed to escape.

"Two days ago, while you were celebrating Liz's birthday, Jesse was found by the Unit. Fortunately, he was quick on his feet, figured it out, and left his apartment. In about twelve minutes, Ray is going to pick him up. Now, Isabel, Ray can take him anywhere in the world."

"No…" she whispered. "No…" she said again, wanting Dave to stop. Because he couldn't ask her to make that decision. She couldn't just say bring him here! No matter how much she missed him, how much she wanted to know he was okay, he had moved forward and built a life for himself; she just couldn't make the decision to take it all away from him. "You're not bringing him here," she said through clenched teeth. Her fear was turning into anger, and Dave knew it.

"Isabel," he firmly said, "I'm not telling you this so you can make the decision. I'm telling you this because I'm going to let Jesse make the decision of where he wants to go."

"You can't… You can't bring him here!" she loudly said, her heart leaping in her chest. "You can't have Jesse making that decision! You can't play with him like that!" She was standing now, ready to do whatever it took to make Dave see reason.

"I think you made the decision of not making any decision a long time ago. Jesse is a man who has always known what he wants. If he doesn't want to come, we won't bring him here. He'll stay protected, whatever he wants to do, but that's as far as I'm going to go if you are not going to pick one way or another."

"I pick no," she said. "Let him leave, let him out of this," she was begging. She didn't care.

Dave regarded her with those penetrating hazel eyes, and she held his stare.

"The Unit won't leave him alone."

It was as if all the air had been punched out of her. She knew that. She knew that and yet she still didn't want to believe that after two years they would still be after him. She had left him on the side of the road so he could get out of this kind of life. And she had failed.

She sat down. "He'll choose here," she said without any inflection. No matter what she tried, he just couldn't escape her.

"He can choose here, yes. You can talk him out of it once you see him."

Hope fired in her veins. "You would let him go?" she eagerly asked. Dave wouldn't let them go by themselves, only as a group. So she'd figured if Jesse came, he was bound by the same rules.

"I would let him go somewhere I can still keep an eye on him, if that's what you mean. But he wasn't on the road when I found you. He didn't make your deal with me."

She could say good-bye. They could have one more moment together, make sure he was okay, and then he could move on. She was trapped in a life half human, half alien, her memories about destroying her world haunting her more and more. She didn't deserve to see Jesse, but God, she wanted it so much.

"I called you in to be here when Ray takes Jesse in, so you can talk to him. He'll want to know we are the good guys."

Are you? she fleetingly thought as she looked at the desk, at the floor, anywhere but at Dave. Jesse might say no, she thought, and she wasn't sure how to feel about that. Devastated yes, but could she feel relief?

Dave opened his laptop again, typed in a few things, and then turned it around so Isabel was looking at the screen. It was a live video. The camera was inside a vehicle, not a van, but something big. She couldn't tell, cars had never been her strongest subject. The interior was pitch black, but outside on the street, the afternoon light was very bright.

"We have visual confirmation. He's coming out of the elevator," someone narrated. She couldn't look at anything but the monitor, her heart sounding loudly in her ears as all her attention was on that half block away from the car. All she could see was a few people walking by, and the sand colored granite walls of the building. She didn't want to make a sound. She didn't even know if she could be heard or seen. She was about to ask, but then… then Jesse came into view.

"Jesse…" she whispered in anguish.

He had lost weight. Even at this distance, she could see the haunted look he had, the dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing a suit, but it was wrinkled, the tie knot hardly looking professional. His hair had been subjected to hands that wouldn't stay still. He was walking with his usual firm stride, but she could tell he was nervous. Looking to his right and left, he briefly looked directly at her, and she wanted to shout his name. Then he stopped, looking at something to his right.

"Jesse!" someone was yelling in a friendly tone, and a few seconds later, Ray was jogging to him, as if they were long lost friends that had just met. Jesse didn't trust the friendly guy, Isabel could tell, and rapidly looked around to look for a way out.

"Listen, sorry I'm late," Ray kept saying, now standing three feet from Jesse, "but I had to make sure your wife knew you were coming." Jesse froze. And so did she. "She wants to know if you would like to have dinner with her," Ray said, handing Jesse a phone. He looked at it as if it was going to bite.

"You can speak," Dave whispered over the monitor, and she looked at him both terrified and betrayed. She wasn't prepared to do this now! And Dave had known about this for two days.

On the monitor, Jesse took the phone and moved away from Ray. "Isabel?" he whispered, yet his voice came loud and clear to her. "Jesse…" she said, her eyes filling with tears.

"Oh my God, Isabel!" he exclaimed, and through the monitor she could see how years were lifted off his shoulders, the smile she loved so much gracing his lips. "Are you all right? Where are you? Oh God, is this really you?"

"Yes! Yes, it's really me. It's… it's really me…" she felt warm inside as she hadn't felt in so long just to hear the longing on his voice, to see the happiness in his face.

"Who is this man? Where are you? I'm coming to get you."

She looked at Dave then, he slightly shrugged. If she didn't tell Jesse, Dave sure would.

"Listen. The man who gave you the phone, he's Ray. I'm not sure how much he can explain to you, but he's telling you the truth. He can get you to where I am, and then we can… we can decide things."

Jesse wearily looked at Ray. "I don't want to hang up," he said a second later.

"You don't have to," she said, looking at Dave for confirmation. He smiled and stood up. A minute later, she was alone.

"Isabel?"

"I'm here. I'll be here as long as I can."

It turned out that she could stay for a very long time.


4 : Jake

1:57am
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 10 days, 22 hours, 3 minutes

"That was sneaky," Jake admonished as he was sitting on the couch outside Dave's office. Jesse had arrived a couple of hours earlier and he was sharing one of the outside huts with Isabel. He wasn't supposed to come so late, but Ray had decided to drive all the way instead of taking a plane that would have surely severed the phone call.

Sitting across from Jake, Dave looked far more relaxed now than Jake had seen him in the past two years. "I told you I wanted some changes around here. At least that one was easy."

"I'm afraid to ask which ones aren't," Ray said from his comfortable position on the other couch, stretched on his back. He'd been driving for a good many hours.

"How did Max and the others take it?" Dave asked Jake. While Dave had been talking to Isabel, Max and Michael had felt Isabel's distress and had almost blasted a hole in the wall to get to her. Jake had barely stopped them.

"Anxious. They want Isabel to be happy, but Jesse can make her very unhappy. This is going to affect their dynamics a whole lot."

"Oh, I'm counting on it," was Dave's cryptic answer.


5 : Michael

9:01am
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 10 days, 6 hours, 59 minutes

"So?" Michael asked with one eyebrow up as Max leaned on the wall, the same one Michael had tried to bypass almost a week ago and had found impermeable to his molecule-manipulation powers. Max concentrated for a second, and then shook his head.

"I can't work around it," he said, sighing at the effort.

Michael cringed. He shouldn't have asked Max to use his powers so soon after he had been released from Jake's watchful eyes, but there was no way he would drag Isabel down here to tell him if what he had felt six days ago was right or not.

"It's all the main halls," Michael explained, wearily looking at the wall. "They are all made of something we can't get through. If we wanted to escape…"

"We would have to dig a hole, and that would exhaust us before we were half way out there…"

"On the other hand…" Michael reluctantly said as he leaned on the wall beside Max. "It also means no one who can do what we do, can come down."

That was Rath's reasoning. The only good thing that had come out from getting their memories back was that Michael understood things better. Rath had had an aggressive temper as well, but Rath had learned to use it. Michael was trying to get there, but meanwhile, he'd learned to see things from a tactical perspective. His Michael self would have concluded Dave had built them a cage. His Rath self argued that a cage could be turned into a sanctuary.

Max kept looking to the wall in front of them, thinking.

"Afraid of the Skins?" he finally questioned out loud.

"Our evil twins?" Michael added.

"Ourselves," Max concluded, turning to look at him. "If he were to separate us, we wouldn't be able to reach for the ones left behind."

Michael somberly nodded, placing his hand against the wall, and trying to do something to it. He couldn't even alter its color. "We need to get out of here," he said with a determination he hadn't felt since they had woken up in those blue rooms two years ago.

Max slowly nodded, still thoughtful. Still not showing the anxiety Michael needed him to show. They needed to get out of here, Max had to see that!

"Maxwell!" Michael snapped, afraid Max had a but coming.

"We can't make too many plans with Jesse here," Max said a bit exasperated. "If he decides to stay, he might not want to leave abruptly."

Michael inwardly groaned. Of all the times to reunite, Isabel had to pick now? Now?

"If he decides to go… I'm not sure how Isabel will cope with that…" Max continued, his eyes turning sad.

They had both felt her withdrawing, and they both had a very good idea of what was causing it: Vilandra. She had always felt guilty about it, but it was one thing to be told they had done things in the past, and completely another to know they had done things in the past. Max was very sure this knowledge meant nothing to their present lives, now. Michael walked a fine line, wanting to keep remembering, and being happy with how things were now, memory-wise. But Isabel had never wanted any part of this, and sometimes she would look at them almost expecting them to hate her.

"I don't get it," Michael said in frustration. "He tricked her! Khivar tricked her and she knows it. It wasn't her fault!"

"Knowing you were used does little to ease your guilt," Max said in a somber tone. "These memories don't tell us who we are, Michael, and we should hardly feel guilty for what they did with their own time, in their own lives." It sounded to Michael that Max was trying to convince himself as much as he was him.

"What's the latest thing you've remembered?" Michael quietly asked, his exasperation gone.

"Vividly? Zan's father's funeral… I started crying in front of Jake…"

All the alarms went off in Michael's head. "You told him!" he hissed.

Max didn't answer, just stared at the wall. It was useless to talk to him when Max was like that. Something Max had gotten from Zan, and that his Rath self hadn't appreciated either.

"You can't trust these people, I thought you knew that," he was trying to be patient about this. Rational even. He wasn't sure if he was pulling it off.

"I hardly think telling Jake we're remembering something we were supposed to remember all along is going to make any difference," his best friend in the world finally said, in his usual quiet Max way. "I didn't tell him about you or Isabel. I would never tell him anything but my own."

"I can't believe it," Michael muttered, his hands tingling with his need to blast something. "Even with what we have just discovered about these walls?"

"Even with Jake risking himself to protect me from the exploding lights?" Max countered. Michael hadn't seen Jake's scarred face, but Maria had. She'd said it looked pretty bad. And Max had felt compelled to heal him. Privately, Michael thought Jake was only protecting an investment, but even he had to admit Jake seemed like a nice guy. Maybe, just maybe, he'd truly been worried about Max getting hurt further.

"Look, I know you don't like it," Max conceded, "but we… I need someone to talk to about this who has some perspective on how to deal with it."

Michael snorted. "Because there are manuals on how to deal with bioengineered hybrids and their former lives. We would be luckier turning to Kyle and his Buddhist stuff."

Max sighed, one of those deep ones he did when he was grasping for patience.

"I want to know what he thinks about this. I need someone to help us deal with this. You are a lot like Rath, and you always wanted to know about this. But I'm not Zan. Zan is in love with someone who is not Liz, someone I desperately don't want ever to think about. He's all about following his destiny, and it terrifies him to think about making any decisions outside of that. He's arrogant, and too self-assured. I have one hell of a time separating his emotions, his reactions from mine. So forgive me if you don't feel like sharing this information, but I'm more than lost here. I… just want this over…" Max whispered, leaning his head against the wall, looking at the ceiling. "Just over."

That had been the worst outburst Michael had seen from Max in years, and it effectively shut him up.

Rath had been older than Zan, not by much by Antarian longevity, but certainly older. His glimpses of Zan were of someone who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, had a short temper for stupid things, and was always trying to live up to his father's example. Rath had loved Zan as much as Michael loved Max, although for different reasons. But Rath had not been in love with anyone, even if Lonnie had not been hard to look at. They were the obvious choice for the king's sister and his second in command, and they both had agreed. They hadn't been in love, but they got along just fine.

Michael loved Isabel far more than Rath had ever loved Vilandra. She was his sister, and she understood him in ways that no one, not even Max or Maria, ever had. But all put together, Michael hadn't recalled as many memories as Max had. He didn't know that much about Rath to want it to stop. Secretly, he'd been pleased Max had said he and Rath were alike, because from all Michael had seen, Rath was someone he did want to be like.

He would have said that Max and Zan were alike as well, but seeing Max so anguished about it, he decided to keep his mouth shut just a little longer. It was hard to see Max lost, almost unnatural, really. Michael placed his hand on Max's shoulder, and lightly shook it.

"I'm not liking it," he sternly said, "but… you're my friend. Do what you have to do." With that, he walked down the corridor, Max following him a second later.

He'd been about to say 'but you're my king', and that had chilled him. It was the first time Rath's behavior had competed against his own words. It was the first time he truly had an inkling of what Max had been talking about. If it was going to become an everyday occurrence, then by all means, Max had to do whatever he had to do.


6 : Max

3:55pm
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 10 days, 5 minutes

"I take it you heard the good news?" Dave asked as Max entered his office. He was sitting on his leather chair, his laptop closed in front of him while he was taking a sip of something steamy. The white sheet on the desk was placed all over it, a sign Max took as meaning Dave was leaving the compound.

"Jesse is… a little overwhelmed," Max diplomatically said. He wasn't sure if it was good or disastrous at the moment, but looking at Isabel smiling again, he was betting on the former.

"You didn't leave your apartment quarters for over a month when you first came. I bet you can relate."

No, we were waiting for you to kidnap us and force us to do unspeakable things, Max silently thought as he took a seat. But to Dave's credit, that had not entirely happened. The kidnapping thing was up for debate, though.

"I wanted to apologize for the roses," Dave started, placing his mug on the desk, giving Max his full attention.

"Oh…" Max said, not expecting that. Henry had already told him the roses were gone, and Max had felt more terrible about Henry losing his research because he had gotten an allergic reaction to it than losing Liz's precious flowers. "I… I think Henry lost more than I did," he quietly said.

"In a way, yes," Dave conceded. "If you want to start over, Henry will have a space for you in a few months. You just have to give him time to get things ready before he can give you any room."

"Okay…" Max said. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to start over with the roses. Liz had felt bad enough as it was, and his surprise had been thoroughly ruined for obvious reasons. "Thank you," he added, for both the apology and the offering.

"Allan said Liz, Maria and Isabel were having a great time in Paris, though," Dave continued, and Max was instantly alert. This was the reason he had been called, although the apology had been appreciated.

"They… haven't said much," Max admitted. Between him almost dying and Jesse coming, only Maria had been standing to tell the story, and she hadn't wanted to without Liz and Isabel joining in.

"That's… a surprise," Dave said, genuinely amazed.

"I'm sure they did… have a great time," Max said, wanting Dave to continue.

Dave smiled. "If their luggage is any indication, I'm sure they did, too." Max smiled back. Michael had said half his apartment was clogged with new clothes, shoes and accessories, and Max had thought he had been exaggerating until he had tried to enter his friend's apartment. Someone could pay a king's ransom with all that clothing, Kyle had muttered in disbelief.

"Ray has pointed out to me that there's hardly anything else he can teach you. Maybe it's time for you to be out there instead of in here."

"You want to end the deal," Max stated, not sure whether to feel relief or dread. But why go through the entire thing with Jesse, then?

"I want to change it," Dave corrected. "You have many talents that are being wasted here, and that's not doing you any good. You are young, you're in love, you shouldn't be here. At least that's what Jake says. I think you want to get out, too, you just don't know how to do it."

The reinforced walls came to Max's mind.

"What… what do you have in mind?" Max cautiously asked, for the second time in two years wanting to know how Zan would handle this kind of situation.

"You are too young or inexperienced for the kind of work I need, for the most part. But there is something… you could be very creative in achieving. Tell me, Max, have you heard about my Messengers?"

Max stared at Dave, thinking for a moment what exactly he knew about them. "I… Network Keepers are obsessed about them. They say they are linked to you."

"Yeah, they would think that. Messengers are, for all practical purposes, couriers. They are sneaky, invisible. Some things have to be hand delivered in this profession of stealing and selling information. For the most part, they go places and do nothing. They deliver packages, devices. They usually only carry one third of the total amount, so if they are caught, the information is useless. Ray has offered to teach you, said it would be useful to you once you are dodging your own pursuers. Time to put in practice what you've learned with him."

Dave was offering him a job. A highly risky job, if Max could read between the lines, but a job nonetheless.

"What about the Unit?" It was the first question on his mind, because that was the main reason they never went out further than 50 miles around the compound.

"Their jurisdiction reaches only so far. I work in over one hundred forty countries. You are the ones who didn't want to move from the United States. I respected your wish, but that came with a tight leash."

"What if we say no?"

"Your world stays fifty miles around. Little would change, I guess." Dave stood up, walked towards Max and leaned back against his desk. "Think about it. Ask Ray what it's like. He was a Messenger once. If you don't like what you hear, you can always stay."

Max nodded, and stood. He would ask the Network Keepers first. And then Ray. Then he would ask his group. He didn't want to accept, not with the little information he had now, but Dave was right on one thing: they wanted out of here. Maybe this was the perfect way to do it.

Maybe.


7 : Maria

7:19pm
T minus 6 years, 5 months, 9 days, 20 hours, 41 minutes

"Welcome to the underground," Maria said as she hugged Jesse. The poor man had not slept in three days and it showed, but his hug was firm and warm.

"You have no idea how many times I wondered where you were, all of you," Jesse said as the seven of them claimed a place in Isabel's –and now Jesse's- apartment. "For the first six months, the Unit harassed your parents as much as they dared. We would travel around town in groups, always letting everyone know where the other was supposed to be. We were always, always hoping to hear something from you, and at least having the Unit waiting for us to slip up meant that they didn't have you. We took comfort from that."

It was hard to hear him say that. She'd gotten in touch with her mom briefly in the past two years. She'd even managed to send her a couple of gifts when the time was appropriate. But they had kept their conversations short and on the positive side. Her mom had never said any of this.

"We contacted our parents whenever we could," Kyle said, "but Dad always made it sound like you were holding on."

"Valenti didn't have a better time of it. We all wanted answers and he was more knowledgeable on what had happened with you. He filled in the gaps that Liz's journal couldn't answer."

"Everything?" Max asked, concerned.

Not that, please not that, his eyes seemed to plead. Maria knew how tight Max kept his experience at the hands of their hunters. She suspected he had not gone into any detail about it with his parents. Now she was sure he hadn't told them, and was hoping Valenti hadn't told them either.

"As much as he knew," Jesse said. Max nodded, accepting the fact he couldn't know from Jesse what exactly everything meant. "I left Roswell. I couldn't take it anymore. When you contacted them, I was relieved, but back then, all I really wanted was to find you. Find a way to put an end to this senseless pursuit. I knew your life had to be hell."

Maria didn't believe she would think this, but she couldn't complain much about where she had spent the last two years of her life. It certainly wasn't hell. Well, not physical, at least. Mentally… some days, it really seemed like hell.

"You didn't have it easy either," Isabel whispered, hugging him with one arm on his hip.

"There were times I would wake up in the middle of the night, knowing someone was outside the window. I would pack and leave the place in two hours. No wonder my bosses were always so flexible, always found something to do for me in my new place."

Leave it to Dave to be so accommodating. On the other hand, it had been a long time since Maria had thought someone was lurking in the shadows. Michael made sure to fuse the door every time they went to sleep.

"It takes some getting used to," Kyle said, "but we've managed to keep sane for two years here."

"I'll manage," Jesse firmly said, tightly hugging Isabel with his one arm around her hip.

She could only imagine what they had been discussing in the hut for an entire day. But then again, maybe talking hadn't been part of it at all…

"About… that…" Max tentatively said, unconsciously reaching for his right earlobe in an I'm-nervous Max gesture, "Dave wants us to consider something…"

Those were the words she would always think of as the before and after of their life with Dave. Consider something. Even without being able to see the future, she instantly knew she was going to like it.


T minus 6 years, 5 months, 9 days, 20 hours, 31 minutes