Part 37: Fine Lines
November 2nd, 2011 - New York
1 : Van
He felt different. He wasn't entirely sure if the Royal Seal of Antar by itself could make such a change, or if it was the knowledge that he was the current King of Antar. His words were law, his very existence was history in the making.
He knew how to move in the shadows, how to be invisible. Hardly anyone alive today knew of his lineage, but everyone out there spoke in whispers about the Rebellion's leader. With the Seal, though, Van had to become a creature that walked in the light, a public figure everyone everywhere would know.
His own shifter friends, all of those who had fought with him and would guard him with their lives, were bound by the power of the Seal. They would no longer have a choice but to obey him. His heart ached at the prospect of robbing them of their autonomy.
He was finding out that the weight of the crown was heavy indeed.
"Oh, you look really good in blue," Maria complimented his new attire as she entered the comms room. In her hand, she carried the speech that would make or break their world in the next twenty minutes. "Luke had some annoying comments and a couple of good ideas. But it's up to you, Your Majesty."
She placed the piece of paper that deceptively weighed nothing in his palm.
"You would have been an incredible asset to our cause," Van said without reading it.
"I like to think of myself as a little bit of a rebel," she said, her contagious smile eliciting a fleeting one from him.
"The General chose well in this lifetime."
Her smile faltered at that. "Speaking of that… would it be too much to ask if you reconsider Isabel's position in all of this—Your Majesty?" she hastily added the title at the end. Another thing that felt too heavy for his liking.
"She's declared herself guilty of treason, Maria, that's not a small thing."
"Didn't she die because of that?" she pressed. "Because let's be honest here. You know Max is not Zan. I mean, Royal Seal of Antar and all that aside, he's given you all you want short of him coming to your home. It's an out for him and you and the whole Antar debacle. Couldn't you extend the same courtesy to your sister?"
That felt like treason, right there and then. He almost crumbled the piece of paper in his hand.
"Although we share a mother, I do not—"
"—think of her as your sister," she finished for him with a raised eyebrow, "That's convenient."
"I do not have the power to publicly forgive her," he corrected her, making her blush at her assumption. "I've never cared about the whole Vilandra story. She did what she had to do for what she believed in. I can respect that. My world, though, they need a scapegoat."
"You're about to declare to your future kingdom that Zan has sacrificed himself and you are the next in line. If you find it useful to also proclaim that the past is the past and Vilandra has no claim to the throne by virtue of her giving up her claim—you might find this other speech helpful. But again, it's up to you, Your Majesty. All I'm saying is, that starting your kingdom with a nice touch of forgiveness might do wonders for your first days as a monarch. Let the Royal Four story live to its full potential."
She gave him a second, slightly longer speech. The whole thing would not even last three minutes—they were pressed for time and the message had to be swift and concrete—but as her astute green eyes looked at him, Van begrudgingly read the longer speech first.
2 : Dave
Every single law enforcement agency in New York City was on edge, so all Dave needed to do was a few pushes here and a few others there to see his magic working. He sent the NYPD scrambling to ten different areas in the city and the FBI was inundated with hundreds of reports of suspicious activity.
Although McKay held the best position by claiming the terrorists were hiding under the warehouse, it didn't mean that other places in New York were not at risk of copycat terrorist cells, or that this particular cell didn't have people operating somewhere else. Every threat had to be investigated, and every lead had to be followed. And since McKay couldn't shout to the four winds that aliens were the threat here, well… he was powerless to stop his reinforcement from thinning out.
Most of all, Dave was working in parallel to either find Sybelle or stop any communication from the Unit to get out to Interpol. His Network was mostly down, but every single Network Keeper had been tasked with hindering McKay's ability to contact his goddaughter.
The door opened suddenly, a panting Kyle entering with little decorum. "I can't find Daniel," he said between two heavy breaths. "I've looked everywhere I could, it's like the earth swallowed him whole."
"He's in jail," Dave said, getting his eyes back to the monitor. "He pissed off Max of all people, so he ordered him to be sent to jail."
"Max Evans? For real?"
"The one and only. I'm pretty sure Daniel deserved it. He ratted Sybelle's location to McKay."
Kyle cursed in colorful ways before turning around. "You said he's in jail, right?" he asked, with all the intention of going to beat the crap out of Danny Boy.
"Kyle, wait," Dave said, a part of him deeply regretting he had to stop the man. "Ray's still in the secondary war room, looking for a way to get us all out. Tell him I can give us an opening in about thirty minutes. See if he can work with that."
"Great, now I'm a glorified errand boy…" Kyle muttered before leaving. In the distance, another explosion tried to open the compound's doors, making the ground vibrate.
Maybe thirty minutes was all they had.
3 : Jesse
His new cellmate was most definitely not an improvement over his wife. While Isabel had been allowed to go and help with the let-Max-die-to-come-back-later plan, Jesse had been left behind in his cell, just in case he got any weird ideas and tried to make a run for it.
Talk about false imprisonment, he depressingly thought.
A few minutes after that, a kid younger than his wife and friends had been unceremoniously thrown into another cell on the opposite side.
"What are you here for?" Jesse asked without much humor, as the kid looked ready to explode yet too shocked with whatever he'd just done.
"Nothing…" he evasively whispered, coming out of his daze. "Nothing at all," he added as he walked the length of his cell, tentatively placing a hand to feel the invisible force field that kept them in.
It sounded like every guilty client he'd ever had.
"It must have been a pretty big nothing for them to throw you in here. I mean, from what I heard, they usually shoot first and ask questions later."
"No one shot at me," the kid sullenly said, finally sitting with his back against the wall, mirroring Jesse's position. "I came here as an asset. They're crazy to not have me with them. They need me to get the Unit off their backs. Max has just absolutely ruined his chances right now."
"You saw Max—and they didn't shoot you?"
"I'm too important to be shot at," he said, turning to look directly at Jesse. "You're Isabel's husband, aren't you? Jesse Rodriguez?"
"Ramirez," Jesse corrected. "I don't know who you are, though."
"I'm Daniel Walsh. Dave's most brilliant hacker."
"Never heard of you," Jesse honestly said, taking a cheap shot at deflating Daniel's ego. The guy soured immediately.
"You have no idea about the things I'm capable of…" Daniel said, narrowing his eyes.
"No, you're right, I don't," Jesse said, now baiting him. What had this kid done? And would knowing it help Jesse get out of here faster? "What did Max do that he ruined his chances with the Unit?"
"Nothing..." Daniel said, looking at the floor, annoyed.
"But you do know about the Unit. You an agent or something?"
"I'm an agent of my own self," Daniel said, looking at Jesse with disdain.
"Well, in my experience, if you know about the Unit, it's because they're either chasing you or you're working with them."
"I told you, I'm Dave's best hacker. Everything Dave knows, I know. That means I know about Max, and Antar, and the fact that you were all going to be here today."
That rang all kinds of red alarms in Jesse's internal system, though he didn't show it.
"Our grand vacation," Jesse nodded instead. "Maria has been planning it for months. New York City, baby, what better city in the world to spend time together, right?"
Daniel didn't say anything, just brooded in silence.
"You really must be the best if you could follow Maria's plans, that's what I'm saying," Jesse clarified with a conciliatory tone.
"I don't waste my time with that kind of thing," Daniel answered, offended. Then Daniel's head wiped up so fast that Jesse winced. "Wait, you're a lawyer, right?"
"I am," Jesse said, for all the good it's doing me today…
"Then you need to defend my case."
"Against New York City?" Jesse asked, completely lost in this conversation.
"Against Max!"
Against the Crown, then. Get in line, I have a wife to get out of jail first.
"He's the one who imprisoned me. He just said I was never sick, and I have no way to know if that's true. In fact, I don't even think that's the actual truth—but the point is that he sent me here when all I've done is nothing but protect his interests!"
"Slow down, please. I have absolutely no idea what you've been through or what Max has to do with anything." I'm also damn sure Earth's international law does not cover alien royalty. And even if it does, Max would have diplomatic immunity to do with you whatever he wants.
Not that Max was prone to hand out punishments. This kid must have really pissed off Max to be in here by his orders.
"What did you do, exactly?" Jesse asked.
"Not following Maria's chaotic plans, that's for sure," Daniel said, back to being offended again. "What I actually did was I hacked into Dave's communications and saw that Van had requested to meet Max, Michael, and Isabel soon. Then Dave talked to Maria to settle the date this week. All I had to do was be in the right place at the right moment to cross paths with Max Evans."
"Sounds like you did a lot of moving pieces around to get your wish," Jesse prodded, having absolutely no idea why meeting Max was so important to him.
"I did!" Daniel proudly said, eager for the recognition he so clearly deserved. "You know what else I've been doing? Keeping tabs with the Unit, something none of you, not Dave, not Van, not anyone had been doing."
"For real?" Jesse asked, genuinely impressed. "I guess we all owed you for that."
Now Daniel's eyes were shining with emotion as he had the audience he was hungry for. "And you know that kind of surveillance is hard to come by."
"So, you knew about the Unit because of Dave, but then followed them on your own?"
"Sort of…" Daniel said, now evasive. "I mean, I was a one-man operation, and the Unit has tight security around their systems. If any of you were safe during this time from them, then it was thanks to me and my quick thinking. I misdirected the Unit on a few occasions, you know?"
"That's—that's really—thanks, I mean. Thank you for keeping an eye on us. You really were hacking into the Unit?"
"Pft. You make it sound as if that was difficult."
"Obviously not to a brilliant mind like yours."
"Still, McKay is an astute man. He's very paranoid about computers. He's ancient in his ways of doing things, very old school."
Very weary of Dave, most likely.
"What I'm saying is, to keep the integrity of the data, I had to make myself known to McKay. Dangle a few carrots here and there. Let him know I had it against Dave and knew about his targets. He welcomed me with arms wide open and a big, fat check."
I bet McKay was also very paranoid about you, Jesse thought as he put the picture together. "You were playing double-agent?"
"Yes. For a while, at least, just long enough that I could have something to bring the Unit down."
"And you were doing all of this to meet Max? Why not just ask Dave?"
"Dave and I hadn't spoken for years by this point. Look, at first I did it for the fun of it. Aliens, you know? How cool was that?"
In Jesse's own experience, there was absolutely nothing cool about that. Whatever perks he got from their powers, being around them usually led to a dangerous life.
"And it was getting intense," Daniel continued, now lost in his own story. "Rebels. Aliens fighting against each other. The Unit was always a step behind you, and then messages started coming from outer space. I probably would have tired of it sooner rather than later, but then I got diagnosed. Brain cancer. This brilliant mind of mind was going to go to waste."
"No… I'm so sorry, man."
"Don't be. I had already been dabbling with the Unit's systems and knew that my only way to get close to Max was to bring valuable information. So that's what I did. I got the info. I mean, sure, sacrifices needed to be made, appearances needed to be kept. He touched me in the hall and said he saw all of it, but for some reason, despite knowing everything I did, he still dismissed me."
Now despair filled his eyes. "Max is lying, he has to be."
"Lying about what, exactly?"
"That he saw anything at all. He never heals, so why—"
"He does. If Max put his hands on you to heal you, he definitely saw your life. You didn't see anything from his end?"
"Nothing. See? He wasn't even trying. But he then said that I'm not sick. That there's no cancer!"
"Max might be many things—and God knows I'm not his biggest fan—but he's not a liar. He also never heals, as you well know. If he decided to do this, he was not half-doing it."
"You all pray at Max Evans' altar, don't you?" Daniel said, now narrowing his eyes in distrust.
"Woa, woa. Did you get a second opinion?"
"Why? It's not like a doctor will confuse brain cancer with anything else."
"You might be surprised—but that's beside the point. You ever had any symptoms? Headaches? Pain? Any reason to believe you were sick?"
Daniel looked at him, not saying a thing, his lips getting thinner and thinner as he pressed them harder and harder.
"I mean, how did you even know to look for a doctor?"
"I went to the hospital because I had a stomach bug that wouldn't stop. They did tests. They told me they found it, the tumor…" Daniel was making himself smaller and smaller by the second, as something he didn't want to face was becoming obvious. "Max said… he said in the hall that someone set me up so I would come after him. I don't believe that."
"Well, does the timeframe work for that? Did the Unit know about you before that?"
"Maybe—No…they wouldn't even know."
"Did the Unit tell you that Max could heal?" Jesse pressed, wishing he had powers of his own to read this man's mind.
"They had thousands of pages detailing what they can do. And it wasn't like I didn't see it in Jake's private files, that Max could but wouldn't heal. Max never told him why, though. Why doesn't he heal?"
"That's irrelevant. What information did you give the Unit about us?"
"But—I mean, if I was set up, then none of this is my fault!" Daniel triumphally said as the answer to his prayers became clear in his mind.
"That's not how these things work," Jesse said, exasperated with the thickness of Daniel's thoughts. Maybe not reading minds was the best course of action here.
"How could he order me to be thrown in jail if McKay was playing with me all this time? I'm telling you, as my lawyer, you have to argue my case!"
"I'm not your lawyer, Mr. Walsh. I'm not even a free man myself—"
The door to the containing area opened, and a shifter rushed in. "We need to go," he said, swiftly deactivating the energy field on Jesse's cell.
"Go? Go where?" Jesse asked, scrambling to stand up.
"The Unit is about to breach the second entrance, and we need to be in place to leave—" the shifter turned to look at Daniel, shutting up whatever information he was about to disclose. "We need to go," he repeated instead as Jesse walked out.
"Wait! Aren't you forgetting about me?" Daniel shouted, leaning over the invisible wall.
"I forget nothing," the shifter said. "It's your people who are coming. I'm sure they'll be delighted to have you back."
4 : Jake
The first attack registered in the EEG not two minutes after Max had been placed in a coma. Isabel felt it, too. She turned to look at him and then at Max, holding his hand tighter.
"Is this affecting you?" Jake asked. She shook her head.
"Nothing I cannot fight. It just feels—like a disconnect. Max isn't dreaming or anything, and yet I can feel our connection slipping by. I wouldn't even feel him if I weren't holding his hand."
"Let's make sure you don't let him go, then," Jake said with a smile that Isabel didn't return.
Tough crowd, he absently thought, as the peaks and valleys in the monitor slowed down and then flattened. Whatever the aliens were trying to do in Antar, they had just realized that something was different.
They tried again to reach Max three minutes later. And a third time ten minutes after that. By this point, Liz had taken a seat opposite Isabel, holding Max's other hand.
"He's so cold…" Liz said, rubbing her hands against his in a misguided attempt to warm him up. He needed to be cold.
"Let's wait a couple of more attempts," Jake said.
"Violet will let us know when the Rebellion takes control of Khivar's machine," Rose reminded them, hawkishly observing the whole thing, waiting for them to fail of all things.
Isabel was visibly transpiring, though her own breathing was calm and even. She had been keeping Max alive for close to forty minutes.
"Maybe we should call Michael," Jake proposed, "just in case you need some rest."
She shook her head. "I'm fine. But the Rebellion should have a plan by now. Maybe Max's guards know if any progress has been made on our escape route."
"Jade—" Liz said without taking her eyes from Max's still face, "could you go ask them for an update, please?"
Out of the wall, a shifter materialized at once. "Yes, Your Majesty," was all he said before walking out of the room.
"They sure are handy," Jake lightly joked.
"Their only purpose is to keep Max alive," Liz said, placing Max's hand on her cheek. "This must be torture for all of them."
Violet rushed in as if summoned by Liz's words, Jade barely standing out of the door itself. "It's done! Khivar has proclaimed victory as the Rebellion cut all energy towards the lab. He has no way to attack Zan now."
A sigh of relief left Jake's soul, as Isabel grinned.
Liz gripped Max's hand then. "You hear that, Max? It's time for you to wake up, now."
Jake went to revert the anesthetic, carefully following Max's rhythm. Until those brain waves didn't start to peak, he couldn't let Isabel stop providing assistance. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. Granted, this was uncharted territory, and it wouldn't be out of place for Max to take a couple of hours to recover, but…
It wasn't working.