AN - Sorry its taken so only to get back to my Roswell stories. I lost all the data on my thumb drive without backing it up. Thousands and thousands of words. I'm attempting to recreate the stories now. On top of that I've been sick over Christmas and New Year. I hope everyone had a great time. I will try to update a little more often but my work schedule will be hellish for January.

'We have to go back to the pod chamber,' Liz decided, stopping dead along the trail.

Isabel led the way back to Tess's SUV. Her long legs and even longer stride eating up the distance. The petite blond followed, disheartened and looking to the ground. She hadn't said a word in the last ten minutes as they trudged to her car. Michael brought up the rear, scowling at Max. It increased the moment Liz made her comment into the silence of the dessert. Until that moment they'd all be lost in their own private and somewhat hellish thoughts.

'What do you mean,' Michael said irritably, placing a hand on his forehead. 'Look, we need to get back to Roswell and decide what we're going to do next, not stay here waiting for whoever might answer that signal.'

'I need to go back,' Liz stated in a quiet but determined tone. Instantly her eyes sought and found Max's. He melted under her intense stare. No matter what occurred in the last few days or the emotional turmoil of an hour ago, they'd grown even closer. 'And so do you.'

'Come on,' Max took her hand. Turning around, he started back the way they'd just come. Although he didn't get any flashes, he could read the importance radiating off Liz.

Rolling her eyes, Isabel placed a hand on her hip and muttered under her breath, 'really.'

Tess looked furious. Blond curls bobbing in time to her stilted steps, she waited for Isabel to march past. If her blue orbs could have spat fire, they would have singed both Max and Liz. Michael simply stood like a sentinel, waiting to once again take up his place at the back of the line. Silence surrounded them, thick and heavy.

Max opened the cave entrance without a word. Standing aside he allowed Liz to enter first, telling her this was her show. She went over to the pods, not sure what she looked for. The others gathered in the defuse light cascading into the small space as the dark haired girl walked around, seemingly aimlessly. After completing one circuit, Liz came to stand before Max.

'Can you get me the orb please,' she requested in an intense voice.

Nodding, Max found the shelf they'd used to store the devices. He felt a sensitivity towards the orb on the right, almost as though it pulled him to it. Placing it gently in his cupped hands, Max came to stand before Liz. He let his fingers brush along hers as he handed the object into her waiting fingers.

Holding the device in her left hand, she stroked the symbol with her right. Nothing happened. Closing her eyes, Liz tried to will something to occur. Nothing, not a spark.

'I've never touched one of these before,' she stated into the room. Sharing a glance with each other, the Royal Four couldn't believe the statement. 'Even when Max and I found it in the dessert, something, a fear stopped me from going near it. I kind of wondered if all the flashes where the direct result of the orb calling to me but that just didn't make sense.'

'Try the other one,' Isabel suggested, never willing to admit she'd become curious. Taking it from the shelf, she indicated Max should retrieve the first orb. 'There heavy, Liz.'

'The symbols are reversed,' she commented looking at the new object analytically.

'I didn't notice that,' Max responded now showing the orb in his hand to the others gathered around him. They compared it to the one held by Liz. 'It's almost as if they are mirror images.'

'Max,' Liz demanded, holding out her palm, 'please give me the other one. I think they're a matched pair.'

The moment she took the orb, a bright green force shield appeared around Liz. She felt the changes taking place at a molecular level. The junk DNA, usually lying dormant in the human genome used the energy supplied by the devices in her hands. Hidden among this non coding area, a fifth and sixth nuclear base pair existed in Elisabeth Parker. Able to express themselves for the first time, they coded a new form of RNA. This messenger molecule began to rally the thirty five new amino acids Liz's body had been storing since the day of her birth. Bursting forth, they hurried to make chains which turned into proteins. However her clever genetics were a long way from done. Allowing internal bonds to from, secondary, tertiary and even quaternary folding occurred giving the long chain of amino acids a three dimensional shape. It became an enzyme capable of creating monumental change. Now in a usable form, this molecule crossed the blood brain barrier. Seeping into Liz's neural cortex, it began to make the necessary changes to her human biochemistry.

Within her brain mitochondria, the AMP/ADP/ATP pathway became a secondary energy producing system. Generating a completely new conduit, the ten percent of the human brain that Elizabeth Parker normally used became fifty percent in a nanosecond. Telepathy, telekinesis and molecular exchange became possible. As her body took the necessary steps to complete the process, to increase her biological capacity to utilize just over ninety percent of her cerebral matter, she would uncover new and amazing powers.

To the four waiting on the other side of the green barrier, time seemed to stop. Isabel glared at Michael while she looked to Max with concern. They'd all had an emotional upheaval not an hour ago in this very room. Although she'd never admit it, Isabel felt it more than most. She'd finally met her biological Mother. The feelings that hologram set off confused her.

Tess appeared to want to kill something or someone. Nesado had never prepared her for this eventuality. Still reeling from the fact Max chose Liz over his destiny, she felt numb. Michael looked on the scene with his usual expression of astonishment. He'd become less than a friend with Liz and more than an acquaintance after taking her journal and reading it. Seeming at odds with her, in fact with all humans, he couldn't let anyone get close.

Max simply panicked. Dancing around the green force shield, he couldn't wait for it to fall so he could scoop Liz into his safe, warm embrace. When it occurred, she fell to her knees, dropping both orbs on the floor and allowing them to roll away.

'Liz,' Max moved to her side without knowing how.

'Don't touch me,' she scuttled away on the floor.

Taking refuge in one of the pods, she curled into a ball. The transformation had given her flashes. Alien, incomprehensible insights she needed time to work out. If anyone touched her now she might lose them. If anyone touched her now, she'd link with them telepathically. Keeping Max's emotions beyond her newly formed and delicate barriers proved to be more difficult than she's imagined.

'Please,' Max begged, once again trying to get close.

Holding out a hand, Liz's fingers felt the moment the green shield engaged. Trapping her in the pod, she felt the back of the space with her opposite hand. Under the gentle pressure, the walls caved. An un-Earthly glow emanated from beyond the tunnel.

'The Granolith,' she stated, dropping her shield. Backing up the comment with a mental prod, she invited the others to follow her.

Be wonderment showed on all five faces. 'Where are we?' Michael demanded as he entered the chamber. He liked new and unexpected situations least of all.

'I think,' Tess looked around her, 'this is how we got here.'

'No way,' Michael argued. 'We came out of the ship from the '47 crash.'

'I don't think so,' Max stated, his eyes never having left Liz. 'What happened back there?'

'Fate,' Liz finally turned to gaze on the Royal Four. 'Destiny, call it what you will. Isabel, do you still have the book?'

'Yes,' she handed it over when Liz indicated she needed it.

Flipping to a page that had once been blank, Liz held her palm over the metal plate. On the page opposing the engravings of two pairs, a pregnant woman and man, words appeared. Turning the leaf over, a second lithograph of the couple's faces began to glow with a soft white light. Once again words took shape. This time a fifth image materialised with a striking resemblance to Liz.

'What does this mean,' Isabel asked, completely dumbfounded.

'It means, don't make the same mistakes as in the past,' Liz reported in an exhausted tone. Even with her new energy source at a molecular level, the changes occurring in her body required rest and recuperation. But she knew they hadn't finished here tonight. 'We need to study this book.'

'How the hell are you doing that,' Michael almost yelled. In the confusion, no one else noticed Liz hadn't once opened her mouth. 'How are you talking to us?'

'Telepathy,' Liz announced, clearly trying to work the muscles of her face. 'It's part of the new me.'

In that instant she realised something. To have a fifth and sixth de-ribonuclease pair in her genetic make-up, she couldn't be of this Earth, at least not entirely. Closing her eyes to concentrate, Liz found she had almost instant recall. That meant one of her parents couldn't belong to her biologically. The memories of every family photograph she'd ever seen cascaded through her mind. Not one showed a pregnant Nancy Parker. Not one showed a nursing Nancy Parker. Not one showed a newborn in Nancy Parker's arms.

Yet she knew her father. Instinctively, or perhaps at a coded genetic level, she felt part of Jeff Parker in her makeup. Somehow her father got another woman pregnant, deliberately or by surrogacy. It explained the bond between father and daughter and the stilted, somewhat cautious relationship with her mother.

'What do you mean,' Max's terror at this piece of news clearly showed on his face, 'part of the new you? What happened when you were in that bubble?'

'The reason I'm in that book,' she pointed to the metal sheets now in Tess's hand, 'is a new destiny. You were right Max, we have to find our own fate.'

Tess had taken the book after Liz metamorphosed the pages. It had fallen from her fingers. Capturing it, she'd retreated to the edge of the Granolith to read it. Placing it on the edge of the upright white crystal, Tess didn't want to share the translation. She didn't need to. The Granolith took the book as a sign to come to life. As it sensed the five lives, a pulse went out to the five guardians. Bouncing back a signal, it knew they were close and would soon been here. All it needed to do now was follow its prime objective.

A white light shot out of the top of the pyramid towards Max and Liz. Encompassing them, the colour changed slightly. A vibrant red beam separated and curled around Max. The same occurred to Liz, only the iridescent blue circled her form. As the refracted light split, the bolt of Yellow surrounded Michael and the orange, Tess. The remaining colours, indigo and green faded into obscurity. A pale pink reached Isabel. It became a deeper red as the colours twirling around Max and Liz coalesced. Finally, in the space between them, a violet space existed.

'Max,' Liz understood one of her visions. Reaching out into the swirling mass of colour, she requested, 'take my hand and then we step in together.'

'Why,' he asked, mystified.

'You wanted a new destiny,' Liz swallowed hard, hoping he'd understand her words, 'the Granolith is offering it to you.'

'What is it offering,' he whispered.

'Me,' she stated, her eyes locked with his.

Nodding, Max reached out to encompasses his destiny. Fingers touched, palms contacted, hands entwined and they both stepped into the light made from their individual colours at the same moment.

'What the universe has combined,' a sultry voice whispered into their minds, 'nothing can divide. Go now and be always as one in your new destiny.'

Please leave me a line or two and tell me what you really think. All positive criticism is welcome. I also write under Trixfan, but the material is a little different. If you feel the need, please amble over there and look me up.