Part 35: Promises
November 2nd, 2011 - New York
1 : Isabel
The despair she'd felt for herself and facing the consequences of what Vilandra had done a lifetime ago paled in comparison with knowing what Jake was planning to do to Max.
"You can't—you can't just expect me to keep his heart going," she said, her eyes wide with fear.
"He's certain Khivar will kill him, probably in the next couple of hours. He needs to play dead before that."
"But he won't be just playing dead, he might end up dying!" she said, the barrier between them preventing her from turning around and walking out of that room to knock some sense into her brother. "He can't possibly know if this is Khivar's doing or not."
"They certainly think it's possible. In any case, this won't work without you. They don't have the machines, nor do I the expertise to clinically induce a coma deep enough to fool an alien machine while keeping him alive."
"How long would he be out?" Jesse asked from the other side of the cell.
"Four hours is all we can give him. Once he's down, the rebels expect to hear Khivar's announcement. That's our sign to bring him back. If we don't get any signs, then four hours is the limit."
"You can keep your brother alive for four hours," Jesse confidently said.
"The last time his life was in my hands I ended up opening the door to his enemies," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
Jesse shook his head, standing as close to the energy barrier as he dared. "You found him when he was captured by the Unit. You found him when he was in peril in New York. You're his sister, Isabel, you mean the world to him. This doesn't even have anything to do with you as Vilandra and everything with you as Isabel Evans," he pressed.
"You honestly think there's a difference?" Isabel asked, astonished.
"Yes!" Jesse answered, "And I also think you desperately need to do something to redeem yourself. This is it. You will be literally holding his life in your hands. We both know Michael doesn't have the finesse. If you say no, this whole thing, the rebels, Khivar, the Unit, Max's life, it's all over. You would become the villain of this story by virtue of doing nothing."
That scared her to the bottom of her soul. She remembered Alex, holding her as she dreamwalked Max into the horrors of the Special Unit and the white walls that held him prisoner. She still dreamed about that sometimes. That it could be her had always been a possibility. That it could always be her hung like a knife over her head.
Even Vilandra was rattled by Jesse's words. To be the villain again, to be the reason Max would die. Like the icy feeling of fear before, the warm fire of courage sprung from her heart to her body. She nodded twice.
"Okay… What exactly do you need me to do?"
2 : Max
For a moment, the hall in the compound became the hall in the palace and then became the compound again. Max placed a hand on the wall, more to steady reality than to steady himself, but his Guards were there for him, all except Ash, who was taking Daniel to his makeshift jail.
"Your Majesty!" Violet said, alarmed.
"I'm okay, I'm…okay…" Max said, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath.
"Are you sure?" Jet asked, looking anxious.
"No…" Max honestly answered, with a slight smile. It did little to calm their nerves. "You know this is already over, right? I mean, for you four… I no longer have the Seal; you don't need to protect me anymore."
"You have Zan's memories, Seal or no Seal," Shade said, all four of them standing in the middle of the deserted hall. "We guard his essence."
Max shook his head. "You're no longer tied to me. Van is your current king however reluctant he might be about it. If the Unit enters, if Khivar succeeds… promise me you will fight for yourselves and not for me."
"Zan—" Violet started.
"There's only one thing I can give you, and that's your freedom. Your future. You've stayed this long because you needed to hear what Van decided. Well, Van decided I'm not Zan, just a recipient of Zan's memories. That's why he accepted the Seal."
"The only one who can give us a future is Van," Shade said, looking fierce and on edge, longing to attack something, anything, that would come his way. "He has the Seal. He can command us to do his will. You, on the other hand, lost that power. You can't order us to go."
Max barked a laugh. Leave it to his guards to mutiny the moment he wanted them gone.
"You can't stay with me, either. The Rebellion, Antar, Van needs you to be somewhere else."
"But we choose to be by your side," Violet said. "It's a long journey the one you must still walk, Max. As Zan, as Max—whoever you want to be, you still have to survive today. We won't leave your side, not until you're safe. We owe you that much."
Max looked down the hall and shook his head. "What did I ever do to deserve your protection?"
"In the face of death itself, you're still thinking about us," Shade gruffly said. He looked mighty uncomfortable being in human form. "Who should have the Seal was your priority, and as we walk down to the place you will most likely die by Khivar's phantom hands, you're still thinking about us, shapeshifters. No Antarian ever does that."
"Shade…" Max said. How could the decent thing to do—the right thing to do—be the one thing no one ever did for these people?
"I wish you had said yes," Jet said as Shade melted into the wall before Max could say anything else. "You would have been a great king."
"I would have been a king divided," Max answered, picking up pace. He was running out of time, even if he couldn't see the clock ticking. "Half my heart here, half my mind there, but never whole."
"I would take half a king over Khivar any given day," Jet said, shrugging.
"I still want you all to get a future after whatever happens today. You deserve to have a life, to see the world, whichever world that is."
"We did, Your Majesty," Violet said, "We did it by guarding you all these years. And while we dreamed of a future and worried about your answer to Van, it is now time to face reality. We are the Rebellion. Until Khivar is gone, we have no choice but to fight."
Violet stopped in front of the door to the medical bay and signaled for him and Jet to wait as she went in, checking that it was safe.
"If I don't survive," Max told Jet, "Please know that this life and the life before, I always felt honored that you and your kin would spend your life guarding me. Zan never took it lightly, and I wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for you all."
Violet opened the door then, indicating he could come.
"I really wish you had said yes," was Jet's answer.
3 : McKay
It had been hell to go through the first door, and everybody silently cheered when they finally broke through. McKay was already on the phone, fielding questions from the Mayor, even if technically McKay didn't exist. Some idiotic police captain had asked for who was overseeing the operation and then had handed his phone to McKay.
"This is way over your head, Mayor," McKay said with a steely voice, as the aliens were still nowhere to be seen. "Who is in that warehouse is top classified information and all you need to know is that no one is coming out of this hole alive."
The Mayor did not like that answer, not that McKay gave a damn. He simply hung up and gave the phone back to the captain. "Don't do this again."
The captain also didn't like that answer, but as his phone started ringing again, he saw something in McKay that warned him to turn around and walk away.
"There's a tunnel that seems to lead to another closed door," the man leading the team responsible for getting through said, sounding exhausted. "How long is this thing, anyway?"
"At the end of that corridor, the hall divides in two," Agent Andrews said, following the blueprints gained from the sonar. "That's where we might find the hostiles. There are rooms here, here, and here. Now, at the end of each direction, you will find several long corridors that lead to larger rooms. We have no idea what they might be housing there, from a small arsenal to multiple hostiles we don't know about. This needs to be done with caution and precision."
"Let the locals handle the first line," McKay said, calculating the risks. "Once those aliens start shooting back, they'll get everybody here more than happy to stamp them out."
"Some of them might see too much, sir," one of his agents pointed out.
"Let's see how well these invaders can hold their own before we cross that bridge." In the end, in an intense crossfire like the one he was anticipating, casualties were expected. After all, they didn't say that curiosity killed the cat just because.
"Agent Andrews," he called his hacker, signaling for a private talk outside their command center.
"Yes, sir?" the man asked, eager to be of help. None of these newer recruits had ever crossed paths with an alien until they had captured Van this afternoon, and the motivation to recapture that one and the others was palpable.
"I need you to send a confirmation for me. I know for a fact that David is going to be monitoring what we're doing. Let the man see what we're sending, just not be obvious about it."
"We're setting a trap for that traitor?" Andrews asked. Since the moment McKay had taken control over the Unit, he'd made it everybody's business to find that waste of brains that was David. He had never believed he was dead, and to his own surprise, finding him tangled with aliens had felt as if the Universe itself had placed McKay in the interception to tackle the most dangerous alliance ever made.
"Oh yes. Let him know a little birdy has told us that his goddaughter was taking her finals at Cambridge today. That Interpol has already agreed to get her under custody in the next hour when she tries to board her plane to the States…. Imply we're willing to negotiate the aliens for her. Let's see what we get in return."
"Yes, sir!"
Now that the bait was set, it was going to be interesting what kind of fish he got. It was only a matter of time.
4 : Liz
"It's done. He has it now," Max said, slightly swaying as he was sitting down. The medical bay was small, and besides the gurney, there were four plastic chairs. So much for royalty, Liz had thought when she'd first come here. Seeing Max now brought home how close she was to losing him.
"How do you feel?"
"Lightheaded?" he said, though it sounded more like a question. "I don't feel any different, though I know Khivar is trying to take over again. What did Jake say?"
"They're pretty well stocked in here. We think we can give you four hours, tops. We've never tried this before, you know? He's asking Isabel right now to be your heart and lungs while you…while…" she swallowed her tears as best as she could. "Max…I don't like this plan," she finally said, placing a hand over his as she sat on the plastic chair next to his.
"I cannot pretend to be dead if this is going to work, you know?"
"There's a good chance you might not wake up."
Max leaned closer, clasping her hand in his.
"We always knew we were living on borrowed time," he whispered with a small smile. Liz shook her head.
"Not, not borrowed. Earned. I should have died at the Crashdown that day. You should never have come to this planet. And all the narrow escapes? All the impossible choices? Max, not even the future could keep us apart."
"The more reason to believe this is going to work."
"If this works, do you honestly think Dave and Van will let you go? All of us?"
"Not entirely, no," Max said, for a moment eying Rose as she got everything ready on her corner. "I do possess Zan's knowledge. So does Michael and Isabel. We do have royal genes. But once Van takes control over Antar…once Khivar is gone, then I think we'll have a mostly normal life." He winced, his forehead touching hers. "You can always go and have the life you were meant to have…" he whispered, his eyes sad. An old wound that had never really disappeared.
"Max, you are the life I was always meant to have. Just—you come back to me, okay?"
"I will."
5 : Dave
For the first time in a long time, Dave froze in front of the keyboard, unable to make a decision. Sybelle's location was known to McKay. In a not-so-subtle manner, he was offering to trade her off for useful information on bringing down Antar's monarchy.
In the span of twenty-four hours, Dave had brought down his Network, been apprehended, encountered his worst enemy, escaped from his makeshift prison, been rescued by no other than his ex-protégé, arrived at a secret compound run by aliens, and faced the very possibility that all his work to bring Max to the table was for nothing if the alien lord in another planet was going to remotely kill him anyway.
Somewhere, in those same twenty-four hours, McKay had got hold not only of Sybelle's existence but also of her location. Because the Network was down, her phone wasn't working yet, so he couldn't warn her. And even if he could contact her, what was he going to say?
Run?
But run where? If the threat that Interpol was going to arrest her came through, maybe that would be the safest place for her to be—but he didn't believe that. Dave had way too many enemies to let Sybelle be put in the spotlight like that.
No, he had to cut the snake's head off if he wanted everyone he loved to be free. He was way too deep into his own dark world to have any hopes of walking away. He'd made too many deals with too many people, and favors could only get him so far. But Sybelle and Jake? They were worth fighting for.
He also needed to find places they could run to. Max's timely information had prevented Dave from sending everyone to a secondary trap. Van's shapeshifters had needed several safe houses through the years, and all of them had been kept out of Level 6 codes. He was looking for something near Sybelle, though getting to Europe at this point was rather laughable.
First, we get out of here. Then the airport. Then England.
He started moving the pieces then. He had no idea how Ray and the shapeshifters would get them out, but he was certain they would. He also knew taking everyone currently in this base to England was laughable. He had to divide them, so he had to work with multiple locations and multiple logistics.
On his secondary monitor, McKay's offer still taunted him.
Two can play this game, Dave thought, narrowing his eyes. The internet worked both ways, and it had been a long while since Dave had been playing with authority figures. Sure, the Special Unit took painstaking care about firewalling their own network, but everyone else out there? Not so much.
He had a disturbingly large menu to choose from. FBI, NYPD, and even news stations were all for the taking. He just had to play it cool and to their advantage.
You wanted to bait me? Let's see how long you can stay here…