Disclaimer: I do not own any part of this series. Nor am I the intellect behind Bennie's fic Conspiracy.

Summary: Liz always knew a return to Roswell was in the cards. Five years after she left, Fate plucked that one from the deck. AU inspired by 'Conspiracy' (details inside).

Author's Note: Title of this chapter is from the song "Keep the Streets Empty for Me" by Fever Ray.

…

Memory comes (Whispering morning)

…

There had to be a clue in the paper trail.

Pierce was still somewhere in the desert. Had he left behind a contingent of allies, whom he could contact for pick-up and assistance? If he thought that far ahead, then this became even more complicated. I thought it was a strong possibility since he had not come to the motel last night.

Though I appreciated the lack of interruptions, it was also concerning. I should have been irresistible. But then, bait depended on prey knowing that it was there.

I scanned what we dug up of Pierce's life. The pages took over the entire table. I leaned one knee on the chair seat, my hands holding tight to my hips. My elbows bent awkwardly out from underneath the rolled sleeves of my shirt. Professional appearance took a backseat when we were working down to the wire and all leads were turning up empty.

"Long," I called. Maybe something had changed in the last ten minutes.

Unfortunately, my response was, "Section eighteen clear, ma'am."

The systematic search had not turned up any weapons, and my teams were drawing closer to the center of town with every sweep. If he had stockpiled everything around the downtown area, if he made it past all patrols on his search for the explosives, he'd have us trapped. Our base of operations was only as good as our escape routes out.

The longer this went on, the more it seemed that we had no choice.

My eyes scanned habitually over the brightly lit street in front of the Crashdown. Hiding under shade covers, my agents worked despite the heat of the midday sun. Pierce should be taking refuge: even bent on a mission, the heat was too much. Or perhaps that was wishful thinking.

Was I willing to push our luck any longer?

I glanced at the counter, where Max's trusted council—everyone there from the day previous, including Alex and my parents, with the addition of Max's "parents" and Maria's "mother" and Kyle's "father"—lingered and chattered quietly, waiting like everyone else for word from the agents out in the field. These were the government officials of Antar, of both older and younger generations, and that was the only reason they were allowed inside our established base of operations.

Was I willing to wait any longer?

I allowed the privacy of my thoughts recede from professional distance. Max spoke with Michael. My eyes lingered for an instant on the angle of Max's body, the line of his back. Was our night a secret? Or did everyone know? Could I hope to hide it? I looked away, but the image lingered. His expression, stern and contemplative. Michael's crossed arms. Maria's fingers twirling a lock of hair. Alex leaning back on his heels. Kyle nudging his father, who was flirting with Maria's mother. My mom balancing the books, my dad pouring coffee for Max's parents while Isabel slid a plate of croissants down the counter. Ava leaning on the heels of her hands, eyes on my agents.

No. No, I was not going to wait.

"Vasquez." I rubbed my forehead, trying to organize my thoughts. She showed up at my elbow with the report in hand, thinking I just wanted a stack of papers compiling all our data. But when she had returned to her makeshift desk I opened it atop the papers at my table, pulled out my secure cell phone, and speed-dialed the only number it contained.

"This is Parker, reporting."

My agents kept working diligently, unaware of my actions until I spoke in a mostly-quiet room to someone who was not physically present. I let the Antarians see my profile, not wanting to hide my expression and make them nervous, but also not wanting to look at them directly.

The tension would have been tangible even if I couldn't see stiff bodies from the corner of my eye.

In my ear, a tinny speaker emitted, "Go ahead."

"No progress, sir."

"We must assume the worst." A whistling crackle of air blowing over the speaker. "Well, we were reaching the end of the time frame. Very well. Use the searched areas. He can't move the explosives, and blowing up an empty town cannot be his goal. Perhaps we can flush him out if his plans are failing."

"Yes, sir."

"Bring the officials, and anyone else he deems important enough to keep close. I think that it's time Zan was made fully aware of his allies."

"Yes, sir."

"And Liz?" A brief pause. "You've done everything as well as you were trained far. No hesitation."

"None." A faint smile tugged at my lips and I fought it down. The familiar encouragement bolstered my fraying nerves. "I'll see it done, Director."

"I shall see you soon."

I clicked the phone off without a word of farewell—a promise that he would hear me greet him in the coming hours. I left it on the table and faced the wall behind me.

I debated a few minute details. Once I gave the orders, these agents would be packing and ready to go within the hour.

"Ma'am?" Vasquez eyed the Antarians.

I inhaled the distinctive diner scent. Such a short time back but I'd miss it all over again: the grill and fryer, always-hot coffee pots, and lemon-scented floor cleaner.

My chin tilted down and I told Vasquez, "Link to all teams. New orders." I waved a hand in the direction of the non-agent party, a come-closer gesture which I only followed up with a look after I had a radio in my hands. I met Max's concerned eyes over the table, suddenly so close, and asked, "Do you have a way to contact all of your people?"

He hesitated. My shoulders tightened. Vasquez was in a flurry of signaling all team leaders to receive my orders. Then he nodded. "What's going on?"

"You need to tell them to cooperate with my agents."

He opened his mouth, to ask again, and Vasquez pressed the radio mouthpiece into my hand. Without removing my eyes from his, I spoke into the open line. "Code yellow, I repeat, code yellow. All second wave teams continue search grids. All first wave teams switch to evacuation." He stiffened, eyes flying wide open. "Repeat: code yellow. Evacuation procedures begin immediately."

Acknowledgments came in, but Vasquez dealt with them. I relinquished the radio mouthpiece to her and focused on the Antarians. All around us, my agents were in a flurry of motion. Men and women who had seemed completely detached from their surroundings were packing and preparing for departure.

I stepped away from the hubbub and directed us back toward the counter. While some seemed shell-shocked, for the most part they were accepting. But I could see how resistant they were to the idea, and that concerned me.

The individuals who posed as parents were all on phones. It seemed there was a phone tree set up. That would save some time.

I was a little shaky when I realized I was surrounded by my friends, by my peers. By people who looked like they were treading a line between wanting answers and not wanting to push me.

I pushed at the sleeves of my shirt. "We're leaving within the hour," I told Max, deciding to concentrate on him as leader. "You and your officials are going to a safe house. All civilians will be taken to already-searched areas."

His eyes narrowed. "You want me to leave people behind."

I shook my head. "We cannot risk a mass exodus without getting other branches of the government involved. The majority of my agents will remain here to guard them."

"Why can't we stay here to be near them? The Crashdown was used all night," Isabel bit at her lip. "Isn't it safe?"

"This base of operations might not be rigged, but the searches have been coming in closer and closer," Michael reminded her. He eyed me. "If we don't leave before he gets to the explosives, there won't be any escape routes."

I nodded. Max crossed his arms. Tess eyed me with interest, looked her former husband, and then a faint smile twitched at her lips. In the back corner of my mind, far from my mouth, I wondered if she knew what went on the night before. What she thought about it.

Not the time, not the place.

She clapped her hands together. "Everyone your Director would consider important is already here. Word of the evacuation will spread quickly," she told me.

My eyes flickered between her and people on their phones. "The Director considers all of your people important," I said, diplomacy flexing its wings in my brain. "But they will be safe with our protection. And there are some matters you may wish to discuss with the Director."

"Yes." Max's stern gaze was not focused on my face, but I felt the shiver of aligning vertebrae up my spine anyway. "I have a lot of questions."

"Think we all do, pally," Maria muttered, pulling at her thumbnail with her teeth.

I looked at her without thinking about it, wincing when her expression turned from morose to a mixture of angry and guilty. This wasn't the time, any more than it had been with Max earlier.

"Ma'am," Vasquez called.

Sweet sanctuary. "Gather what you need. We have less than an hour before we're leaving," I said as I broke away from our brief conference.

No one tried to stop me.

When we left, it was quiet. A tumbleweed blowing down the street wouldn't have surprised me.

Inside the cars, it was calm. While the king and queen, the second-in-command and his wife, the princess and her guard, and an extra royal guard, shared my vehicle, Vasquez driving and me riding shotgun with the radio constantly in my hand, I expected the silence between everyone in the car. I expected to be giving orders, for my eyes to be darting behind my dark sunglasses, for the heavy noon sun to cast a fiery gild over the sand and stone out into the desert. I expected to feel distantly uncomfortable, as I had for the past day already, as I did my job under the sight and hearing of people I knew five years ago. I expected weirdness of the alien I had sex with the night before being one of our passengers.

I did not expect the checkpoint to signal for us to slow. For a vaguely familiar face—Agent Nunez—to show under the cap.

He wasn't assigned here. And he was on Sully's list of Pierce-affiliated suspects.

I glanced at Vasquez. By the tension in her jaw, I saw that she remembered too. And when her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, I realized that if we panicked the Antarians, things could get messy.

We had a few options. But I already knew which one we had to take. Hidden by the backrest, close to my lap, I flattened my palm in a signal to pull over.

Her lips pursed as she slowed the SUV's approach to the barred road. To her credit as a trained agent, she did not hesitate. Only her grip on the wheel betrayed her displeasure. Behind their tinted glasses, her eyes were steely. I nodded once as I slipped the seatbelt from my shoulder. "Keep the motor running."

As I opened the door, she said only, "Ma'am."

The door closed loudly behind me.

I cast a glance at the second SUV of our party. Halin climbed out of the passenger side, nodding to me, both of us skirting around the front of our respective cars. I left my sunglasses on, pushing the sides of my suit jacket behind my hips to showcase my badge and gun. Halin placed himself slightly behind me.

The wind tugged at my loose hair as I eyed Agent Nunez from behind my glasses. There were fewer agents here than assigned, standing at attention or conversing quietly at the physical roadblock of plywood and orange traffic cones. I did not recognize all of them by name, but the faces were on file folders. All had been labeled suspicious.

How had they known this was the exit we'd take? Maybe they didn't. Maybe we were just unlucky. But Pierce was smart. I had to give him some credit.

A swinging arm caught the edge of my vision. I hit the dirt the same time the shot rang.

Halin hit the dirt, too, but didn't get back up.

I did.

The fight was a blur—sweeping legs, flailing arms, a knee in the stomach and a punch to the eye socket—but I remember one shining crystal minute.

I could hear car engines revving, my bullet shattering the weak plywood roadblock, and trained agents converging while some unknown hesitation stilled their guns. And I saw a face behind tinted glass, a hand pressed, clenched, trying to break reinforced bulletproof the old human way.

I remember my hand flinging in non-lethal motion, a "Leave!" of flickering fingers.

And after that moment, a blur of two cars and the pounding of feet and, painfully sharp to quick dull, the sight of cars carrying Antarians disappearing into dust, turning into blackness spread from the back of my skull.

This is what happened while I was away:

Vasquez shouted down her Antarian passengers as they drove away from the scene. Max tried to use his powers. Michael subdued him, speaking in gritted-teeth logic. In the second car, my parents cried. Tess and Maria's mother figure were the only two to turn and see me fall. They separately elected to keep silent, a nugget of pain shielded from those for whom the news would be devastating.

They made it to the safe house in Galinas, an abandoned silver mine with hidden tech built into supposedly rough exterior. Provided with rooms and food, the protected were more or less imprisoned as they waited for the Director to arrive.

He came. He spoke both of his names to Max. There was an emotional alien reunion, all blustering gestures and exasperated smiles and weary sighs. Larek explained, Brody reassured.

The two main men in my life talked about bringing me home. The agents who remained in Roswell sent a message to Vasquez, who reported immediately that I had been sighted in town.

It would have been hard for him. But Larek was a strategic thinker. He hesitated to send anyone in—but in the end, he had no choice. Not when Max became infuriated enough to escape even Michael and Isabel, stealing a car and heading back to the city alone. They had to chase the king and thus, also rescue a senior agent.

And nothing could have stopped them from coming, not even the certainty that it was a trap.

This is what happened while I was away:

I woke to stars burning in space. My head and shoulders ached. Dirt crusted on the back of my neck. I turned, dazed, propped against stone. My wrists and ankles were bound. I catalogued the silence of the night air, the scent of dirt and rock lacking water, uneven edges under my thighs.

Then I tilted my head to watch the lookout hunched on rocks above.

Pierce took stock of our surroundings, a thin breeze ruffling his thick hair. Suit torn, stained with rusty blood from other bodies, he looked right back down at me. "You took out most of my men."

"They were traitors."

He laughed and slid down from his height, careful of his gun's angle. "We both know who the real betrayer is here—you're with those fools who are letting the aliens camp in our own backyard. You're actually protecting them. So silly, for a little girl with Stockholm."

My chin tipped to the right. Our security would need an overhaul if he had figured out so much. So I kept him talking, got him to admit to some of the spies Sully had already quietly tagged, others we could have missed. And he mocked my old, confessed sense of being an outsider in Roswell, called my parents kidnappers and my community subhuman. They were nothing more than taunts, but they set my blood boiling.

Finally, I asked, "Why am I here?" He had everything he needed. He'd be moving in to set those weapons off, determined that if he couldn't go back he may as well go forward into oblivion.

"You're coming back with me," he said, eyes shining with a reflection of outer space. "Alien's whore. He'll come after you—they're possessive bastards."

I recalled what Max said before I left Roswell five years ago. The way he behaved towards me now. Perhaps that was an accurate word to use. I also recalled my gut reaction to Tess being a foot away from him. Possessive. The emotion seemed pretty human to me.

But I was unable to respond, for his radio crackled with a short burst of code. He grinned down at me, and the butt of the rifle encompassed my view.

When I next tenderly touched the stiff blood on my lip, I was alone.

Something tugged me out of unconsciousness, a pull identified but just beyond the reach of description. My eyes flickered open to the ceiling of the city hall conference room.

The place we first found him, a place he'd spent time taunting the aliens: I just thought he would never have rigged the building he was standing in. I was left here as insurance, bait, so he could take out the aliens and the girl who'd fucked one of them. A desperate agent who had nothing left to lose, not even his own life, would be right next to the explosives setting them off.

Not in this lifetime. I learned to fight, but my feet were born knowing how to run.

Between the echoing silent spaces in my rattled hearing, I could hear bouncing noise through the door. The racket was obscene. Unbelievable damage was being done outside: gunshots, wood shattering, scrapes like thrown tiles and burning rubber.

Something was happening in Roswell and I couldn't let my agents handle it by themselves. Shoving Max's face out of my mind's eye, I rolled off the table and landed hard on my knees.

Then I clung to air, arm clasped to my side, gasping at unexpected pain.

As my fingers brushed through the gap in my suit jacket, I felt the warm stick of a bloody shirt. Hunched on all fours, I curved my back enough to peek down at my side. There was a gash curving along my lower ribs, not a puncture but a slash. Knife. Fire flared when I moved, but my touch told me it might be shallow. I pressed a hand hard to staunch the flow and whimpered at the white heat.

False hope retrieval. I knew this trick.

Pierce's eyebrow arched, immaculate as the steel doors of the office. "He wanted to be certain he would win. So they went in, thinking they could save her from one danger—but he'd already made sure she would die. Brutal, suicidal, but accomplishing exactly what he wanted." He raised the coffee cup to his lips. "So, Agent Stone," he smiled at me, "What's the worst that you've seen?"

There was a gun strapped to my ankle. He never knew that about me. I moved it to my hip holster. He was too arrogant to pat me down, too certain of his victory over the alien menace.

I had to get outside. I remember the desire, pulsing like a need. Throbbing like certainty. Outside, now.

I wondered when it had become personal as I stumbled to the door, one arm outstretched and the other holding my blood under my skin. Pierce made me the representative, the epitome of all traitors, how dare a human sleep with an alien. Clearly he had bought my bait, to know that detail. The Antarians had become everything evil to him, because he couldn't find something else to hate.

Sanity was where logic lay.

I collided with the corridor wall, then doorframe, a brittle grip on the handle finally letting my eyes see. Aching bones held steady under the visual onslaught.

The street was mostly cleared, only a few agents throwing their lot in on either side, shooting to kill. A shimmering green shield, flung up against every incoming projectile, Max behind it, motionless under constant barrage, the green starting to flicker and fade in small gaps. A Jeep with the core Antarian command careening around the corner, Michael raising a hand to deflect gunshots.

Pierce in prominence, too close to Max's shield. Gun pointed at his head. Again.

An unknown pressure had brought me outside, and once I saw whatever the force needed me to see, it coalesced into wrath.

Fire spread from my heart down my arm, twisting my elbow up and snapping the muscles strong. I cleared the doorway, I breathed in, I looked around the small dots swimming in my eyes, and I squeezed the trigger.

Pierce wasn't paying attention to the hall where he left his hostage damaged. Too many agents were pinned, at a bad angle to aim at either human or alien. The cavalry was a beat too far.

I looked at Max, whose body I knew and wanted to know, whose soul I felt and wanted to feel, whose entire being was the subject of my growing love.

Maybe it had to be me, manifesting to reaper, to protect not just a fragile new love but my friends and their home.

My home.

Pierce collapsed with a bullet in his skull.

The Antarian cavalry knocked down the enemy agents with bursts of power, leaving them to my agents.

I stood at the top of the city hall steps, gun arm shaking as it lowered to my side. Max rose. I thought, or imagined, that the crease between his eyebrows deepened as he saw me alive and moving. The blood was concealed by my dark jacket and pants: only the white field of my shirt would show that blossom. One hand pressed on the outside of my jacket, pressure on the wound.

The mirage of the heated pavement was rising into a kaleidoscopic sun. As if drawn into the bullet, my need to be out in Roswell's streets faded when I fired.

I recall slipping, though perhaps it was that the stairs slid underneath me. I felt sharp pain in my knee and shin, my lower back and arm, and curled with strange ridges along my side. I saw red smeared up the edges of the steps like a brush stroke of paint. My hand had come loose from gripping my side and it was stained in swirls like the sea.

Eyes deep as an ocean. That's what I remember. And a voice pleading.

"Liz, you have to look at me. Liz. Liz! Look at me."

I did.

I trusted Max. Even fuzzy as I was, I trusted him enough to follow his orders.

When it was happening, I didn't register what it meant. My memories are so vague, though I recall enough to know that I was bone-deep weary.

But what happened, was that Max healed me. He made me look into his eyes and opened a connection, made a bond that I felt in my soul. It was emotional, pain and fear and loss and hurt and rage and desperation and sadness. And I wanted to replace that bog, that sinkhole, with happiness and serenity, but I settled for reciprocating and encouraging a deeply-rooted love.

My eyes locked on Max's. The world tunneled to just him and me, then expanded again as my mind cleared of the pain and was submerged in the fuzziness of blood loss.

Freed of pain, I felt trembling hands on my shoulders and the sun's heat and a faint wisp of wind on my scalp.

I truly woke up with the lingering aroma of day-old pizza and generic detergent. Opening my eyes to the dimly lit motel room, I was almost surprised to see Vasquez and the Director waiting for me.

Larek would know when I was most likely to wake, even if alien-human healing was unprecedented. That was just Larek.

We exchanged pleasantries, I demanded details, they told me everything that had happened while I was physically and mentally away. My healing happened early in the afternoon the day before and my body took a night to replenish my blood supply and rest. The explosives were taken away during the night, returned to the military base. Sully had begun shuffling through the agents to discover who was in which category: ally, foe, or oblivious. Tourists had been fed a cover story, leaving out the alien bits of a story about a government consultant who went off the deep end. And the Antarians had been slowly getting back to normal.

Vasquez took her leave, carrying with her to our base of operations the knowledge of my consciousness. And when we were alone, Larek asked what my plans were now.

I looked away. A bullet entering a man's head floated in front of my eyes: when it happened, I had enough clarity to store that in my memory. "There are reports to file, paperwork, I need to balance the budget—"

Brody waved his hand, the gesture careless. A genial smile came to his lips, the faint markers that distinguished this mind from the alien presence. "Plenty of other agents, others much less talented than you, can handle the mundane necessities. In fact, duckling, let's save you the trouble of coming up with more excuses. Nothing at headquarters requires your immediate attention." His head tipped to one side. "Nothing requires it at all, actually."

My throat felt scrubbed raw. "Are you…firing me?"

He laughed. "Hardly," he said, eyes piercing, and my back straightened automatically as Larek said, "I want to set up an outpost in-town, with the king's permission. A more direct line of contact is necessary now that Zan knows about his Earthen allies."

Suspicions had fluttered in the back of my mind when it became clear that Safeguard could no longer remain on the fringes. Events cascaded so quickly that I had no time to think about the implications I had noticed, before an offer was set out on the table so glaringly between us.

"Well, Liz?" The chair creaked as my boss shifted his weight, relaxing into Brody again. "I've found an office, and a deposit is already down for a nice little one-bedroom apartment within walking distance. Comes with a decent pay raise. You could continue your research through the much more prestigious state university campus nearby. I can talk to people for you."

Bedsprings creaked as I stood and paced to the window. My dress pants felt uncomfortably creased, sweat dried, blood-stained shirt scratching my skin. Preservation of modesty, I suppose: no need for a doctor to remove my clothes when I was healed by an alien. My rumpled outsides matched my insides.

Flicking the curtain aside with one hand, I peered down at the parking lot. It teemed with agents, our former base of operations abandoned. A couple hours from now, the SUVs would be heading out of town and back to headquarters. Larek-Brody would be with them. Vasquez. Sully.

Would I?

Either.

Give up my life at our secret base on the outskirts of a busier city in New Mexico. Choose to leave: the comfort of a desert city full of strangers; the familiarity of an office I had carved out my own place in; the ability to do research through the satellite campus of the state university system; my anonymity and prestige, my coworkers, a life I built on my own.

Or.

Give up my life in Roswell and return to Safeguard. Choose to leave: the comfort of a desert city full of aliens; the familiarity of the streets I walked all my life as I grew up; the ability to do research through a different campus in a bigger state university system; my family and old friends, the chance to head a field office, a life I left behind once already.

I saw Antarians lingering on the edges of the motel parking lot, watching agents pack the SUVs with all of our equipment. I saw a distinct lack of several faces I hoped to see again.

It was the kind of decision a person shouldn't make if they have been unconscious for a number of hours. It was the kind of decision a person needs to sleep on, not make within the coming three hours of their life. It was the kind of decision which should be weight carefully against all options, the pros and cons lined up, everything stacked in neat little boxes, tic-tac-toe.

Turning from the window, I answered Brody's question.

The corners of his eyes crinkled.

On my inhale came the aromas of lemon-scented cleaner mixed with a deep fryer. A small bell tinkled from the inner handle of the door, but my presence had long been spotted through the sparkling glass of the Crashdown.

I saw precisely what I was walking into before I finished crossing the street: a relatively empty restaurant, Maria leaning on the counter into the kitchen to harass Michael, my father at the cash register and my mother coming through the back door. A few other people were there, just customers, but not the one I had hoped the most to see.

It wasn't as if I could expect him to keep the same routines I remembered from high school. Of course he wouldn't be at the Crashdown for breakfast every morning. He probably had things to do, now that the invasion of government agents was presumed over.

My dad stood up from his comfortable seat as I pulled open the door. The creases around his eyes deepened. "Lizzie."

Just a few syllables could hold so much emotion. I had wondered if Larek kept my healed self away from my parents, or if they stayed away of their own volition. From the relief on my dad's face, I knew the answer.

"I'm fine, Dad." Reaching over the counter, my hand met his halfway. "No one else was hurt." The reports said that. Reports could lie.

He nodded.

Having walked while we spoke, my mother's grip on my arm almost blindsided me if not for my sense of spatial awareness. And I turned into her hug, no longer denying myself the brief comfort. A moment later, I felt my father's arms surround us both.

The mission was over, the threat had been contained, and I was allowed to be human in this lull before returning to active duty. To give and receive comfort as a person, which I couldn't allow my agents to see while I was at work: I had to be the stoic leader of my troops. I had to suppress emotion and be completely in control.

I had messed up during this mission. Sleeping with Max shouldn't have happened, for a lot of reasons: my room was under surveillance and some agents may have caught a glimpse; it had impacted my compartmentalization; neither of us had any clue how alien energy or bodily fluids might interact with a human body. I had a few clues—the only descriptions I had for the experience were 'celestial', 'out-of-this-world', 'amazing'. It was highly unusual for new lovers to avoid awkward fumbling, let alone manage a perfect encounter that seemed out of a romance novel. And the images I had seen of Antar proved a psychic connection had been made.

That connection's length and depth were unknown, but I also remembered the strange tug that pulled me off the ground when I had been stabbed. My need to be outside at just the right moment to save Max…

Pulling back from my parents' arms, I smiled to reassure them. My mother took my face between her palms, delicately, as if afraid to crush my head, as if I would tear away without warning. "Young lady," she croaked, cleared her throat, began again. "Young lady, you have always and you will always belong with us."

My cheeks felt very hot. "I know." He would have said something. I should have realized. "I need to speak to him, actually." Before I could ask for the phone, my father offered. I accepted.

Taking one of the booths, and avoiding the eyes of other customers, my fingertips traced the cover of a menu I'd snagged at the register. They had changed it, the cover. Same general alien imagery and graphics, but the design had changed. And the specials—I recognized, with a jolt, something Michael had thrown together for me on a slow night, a sandwich he'd called by my name.

There, in bold font: The Liz.

We had joked that night, that if it were a menu item we'd have to figure out a cheesy alien-related name. He argued that it could refer to multiple actresses or characters; I reminded him that our menu was specific. An impasse reached, a moment I thought would fade to memory. Yet it seemed that upon my departure, several people immortalized me in vague reference on the diner menu. I blinked away prickling salt-water.

I closed the menu just as a lurker, who wavered by the soda fountain and nervously made trips back—first for order pad, then for antennae—took a seat across from me. My eyes flickered up to Maria.

She looked the same, though I could tell she was older. Her hair had always wavered between short and long, but she seemed to have settled on a middle ground: under her chin, but above her shoulders. Her eyes were lined with makeup, but tastefully—neutral colors, accenting her light eyes. And those eyes shimmered with unshed tears while the corners of her mouth twitched and creases deepened.

My hand rested on the table between us, atop the menu. I left it there, almost reaching for her yet hesitant to truly do so. She placed hers on top. We sat. We stared.

The corner of her mouth finally twitched up. "Chica, you suck."

"It wasn't about you, or anyone," I said.

"Girlfriend had a few words to say." I smiled, remembering the day she'd christened Max with his new nickname. She shrugged. "I wish you could have told us."

"I tried. I was always shut down on the conspiracy front." My hand not resting under hers crossed my body, griping the table edge underneath my opposite elbow. "Maybe it wasn't fair to expect you all to know how big it was. I misunderstood some things, but I wasn't the only one who didn't get it."

Love was felt and seen and acted out in countless ways—but controlling another person looked the same to any eyes.

She nodded, head ducking shyly. "Yeah, there's a bit of xeno- prejudice. I didn't realize it until after you left, but it's probably always been there. This underlying assumption that humans are… Well, they didn't build spaceships and genetically recreate themselves, and they're in the process of destroying their planet with wars and pollution."

"That's true," I agreed. "And we're the ones who attacked this town. We are a little bit slow and violent and crazy." Her chin lifted, eyes peering through her lashes. "But we're also the ones who defended Roswell's right to exist. Many people are working to save our planet, now that we've learned we can't keep on the way we have. We're sharp and loyal and intelligent, too."

"You are," she said. We shared a smile. Her eyes slid over my shoulder, then back to my face. Her grin sharpened, wicked. "But in the realm of love, I think we're all equally messed up."

Her nonsensical diversion would have surprised me if not for the tingling. A small tickle in the back of my head, and I knew exactly why Maria rose to her feet chirping a request for my order. A faint bell's tinkle and steady footsteps intersected with my hands placing the menu in Maria's hands. "The Liz with a side of fries, please."

She laughed, pen curling careless loops on the order pad. "Anything else? A drink?"

"Yes, two Cherry Cokes. And," I paused, recalled the day of the week, "a Kirk combo with onion rings instead of fries."

Her smile was proud, like a mother watching her children play together without fighting. She left with a happy hum of approval, but if she had said anything I wouldn't have heard it. Because as she stepped away, Max slid into the seat she had vacated.

His eyes were sharp, scanning my body and face. The lines around his lips were deep. His clothes were rumpled, but at least he'd changed since I last saw him. The shadows under his eyes showed that whatever sleep he managed hadn't been enough.

"Hi, Max."

"Hi, Liz." He held his shoulders defensively, an inch closer to his ears than they would be if confident. He thought he knew what I was going to say.

I wanted to make it clear that I was in control of my life, now.

And that it didn't mean I didn't care about Roswell, or the people here.

It just meant that no one else could decide for me and without me.

I folded my hands atop the table, drawing my shoulder-blades back. The soreness of my back muscles eased into a familiar rigidity. "Thank you for coming. We're all pretty busy, but the Director has made some decisions you should be aware of."

Max nodded, the swing of his head tipping him into the role of king again. "He let us know your organization would be leaving this afternoon. I had wondered if that was truly going to be the end of it, but it seems he won't make me seek him out."

"You found out about him," I said. "He can't go back to watching over your settlement from the shadows." The crease between his eyebrows deepened and I hastened to add, "We can't be secret from Antarians anymore, though we will continue to operate under the eye of—and, in some cases, with willing participation from—the government."

"That's acceptable," he said slowly. His eyes scanned my face. "Preferable, in fact, because though I understand Larek's desire to protect us from ourselves—"

"Being kept in the dark kind of degrades trust," I finished.

He nodded. I took my soda from Maria's hands, refusing to look at her or anyone else in the café. The last tourist had blindly shuffled out the door and no new ones had entered, leaving the locals to eavesdrop unsubtly on our conversation. They had paid attention all my life while I was growing up. It was only to be expected now.

A brief silence reigned until Max asked, "What did he send you to say?"

"In the interest of establishing ongoing communication with your people, the Director wants to construct a field office in Roswell." He eased back, spine curving to match the seat back. "It will take a month to get up and running, barring any reservations you have about the starter crew. Any personnel make it through our background and psychic checks, but your local security force is welcome to run their own and veto any workers. We'd like to be a cooperative force. This is intended as supplemental security which brings to your people the advantages of our resources, reach, knowledge, and experience."

Max rested an elbow on the table, clearly deep in thought. The turn of his head brought Michael swinging a chair to the end of the booth. He had emerged from the back during my speech and now, emanating grill scents and sweat, he studied me.

The past few days had made an impression of Safeguard, and of me. He weighed it in his mind, and when Max nodded, he offered his opinion. "It's a good deal. If you're keeping your end of the bargain not to interfere with us."

I flushed as I remembered one of my more emotional statements. "Roswell is officially part of the United States. Unofficially, Larek is in the process of making it a secured, private entity, internal and classified to the public and most of the government itself. Regardless of whether it works out, Safeguard has no intention of disrupting the rule of any monarch," I reassured him. "Nor President, nor Parliament, for that matter."

Michael lifted an eyebrow. "Far reach."

"We draw agents from a global pool. Women and men with special talents, or who have demonstrated an acceptance for unusual situations," I said. "Or, like me, they were exposed and brought in to ensure—" Realizing too late what I was about to say, I briefly weight the benefits of cutting myself off. Their intent gazes made it clear that they wouldn't accept that action. "Protection."

"Protection from what?"

I avoided meeting Max's eyes, choosing instead to turn my glass between my hands. "Pierce wasn't new. He wasn't even the first." I could feel the heat of his glare. "We keep tabs on a lot of potential threats. That's the only reason something like this hasn't happened to Roswell before."

Michael muttered, "Larek left that out."

My lip curled up on one side, a fake grin. "He means well, but he doesn't seem to grasp the concept of transparency."

Max crossed his arms on the table. Michael straightened, and in response I did, as well. "We will discuss in council the extent to which Safeguard will be integrated into our community, but barring the particulars we welcome your presence."

"Excellent. You should know," I added, when Michael seemed about to stand and leave us, "that Larek's already contacted a realtor for office space on the corner of Main Street."

A flicker of a smile passed over Max's face and a few of my stomach butterflies stopped fluttering. "I should have remembered that about him," he said.

"At least I got him to agree that the supervising agent of the field office should make the rest of the decisions," I said. "If I hadn't, the wall paint would have been shipped an hour ago."

Michael laughed as he stood. "Controlling busybody," he said as he headed back to the kitchen.

My eyes met Max's. While a fond exasperation lingered on his lips, the corners of his eyes were already flattening out. "So, do you know who the supervising agent will be?"

The butterflies returned with a vengeance. My hands folded, unfolded, palms pressed to my thighs, re-folded. "Not yet," I said. "The position is currently being debated internally. You'll have some say of the nominees when the pool has been narrowed down further."

"Then is everyone leaving in a few hours?"

One the surface, he meant to ask if Safeguard would return to start up the field office later in the month. I heard what he wasn't really asking underneath—if I was leaving Roswell.

It seemed that the whole restaurant was waiting for that answer. I could practically hear everyone breathing, though it could have just been my own which sounded loud in my ears. Looking at him, I saw both hope and sadness. Acceptance of my choice. He clearly wasn't going to try and persuade me, but as our eyes met I knew he could tell that I saw his desires.

I felt that tug again in the back of my mind: it felt like awareness. It was the same as the first time I felt it. And suddenly, I understood: it wasn't mind control or emotional manipulation which led me to stand when I had a knife wound in my side.

It was me.

My senses told me that Max was in danger. And I was not willing to let it happen when I could do something about it. Our link told me where he was and that there was danger, but my body and heart told me that I could do something about it. That was why I stood. That was why I shot.

I was in control of my decisions. I could choose how to act.

A gentle smile on my lips served as his only warning. "I have to go with them back to headquarters."

Like a gust of wind blew through the café, a common held breath gushed out. Max's shoulders started to deflate.

Honestly. They had no patience.

"My work at the university has to be transferred to another scientist. I'll need to sort through our personnel files to choose my staff. And I have an obscene amount of paperwork." Max lifted his chin, eyes wider than I'd ever seen them. "Larek offered the raise, and I thought…maybe it's time to come home."

The inflation of energy in the room was so wild and sudden that I felt completely off-balance. Perhaps it was my link with Max, this newly-formed and fragile connection, which made my reception of Antarian subliminal communication slightly overwhelming.

But looking at his glowing smile across the table, I let myself be swept along with their joy.