by Andy Mangels
Closing her eyes again in the hopes that her head would clear soon, Ava wondered what had become of Rath and Lonnie. Had they gotten away? From just before she'd lost consciousness in the hands of the MiBs, she vaguely remembered Rath's attempt to rescue her and Lonnie. If he only had a chance to free one of us, he would have picked Lonnie. So maybe I'm the only one the bad guys managed to hang on to.
"Morning, Your Majesty," came a voice from behind her, startling her out of her anxious ruminations.
It was Rath.
She turned in her seat as much as the unyielding cuffs permitted. She saw that Rath was seated several rows behind her, no doubt drugged and handcuffed as well. She figured his head must have been slumped forward in the seat earlier, or she would have seen him when she'd taken her first look around the planes cabin.
"You almost gave me a heart attack, Rath!" Ava's tongue felt clumsy in her mouth. The drugs, she thought.
"Sorry," Rath said, grinning without any evident humor. "I just woke up from a catnap. You looked like you needed some company." His speech, too, was slurred by whatever the feds had pumped into his veins.
"Where's Lonnie?" Ava wanted to know.
Before Rath could say anything, Ava heard a moan coming from a few rows behind Rath. They both turned sideways as far as they could, and Ava saw a bleary-eyed Lonnie getting slowly upright in her seat. Blinking in the harsh cabin lights, she seemed unaware of where she was, as well as unable to speak. Almost zombielike, Lonnie stared out an unshaded oval window at whatever lay beyond their flying prison.
Which prompted Ava to ask, "Where are they taking us?" Her own window shade was almost all the way down, and she was seated too close to the aisle to reach it.
Rath nodded toward his own window, whose shade was all the way open, though all Ava could make out from beyond the double-layered Plexiglas was a sliver of bright blue sky.
"Judging from the lay of the land, I'd say we're heading for L.A.," Rath said.
" Los Angeles?" Ava said, frowning.
"Yup. Swimmin' pools. Movie stars. Probably gonna be on the ground pretty soon. “
Ava thought of Langley, the first alien they had met from their home world, and their sometimes "protector." He had worked for the last several years as a television producer. On the rare occasions when any of them had heard from Langley, he had explained that his main goal in working in Hollywood was to gather wealth and power, which would make him better able to protect them.
It was, after all, Langley 's job to keep them out of situations like this one.
A sudden flicker of hope warmed Ava. Had Langley subtly influenced the feds into bringing them right to his doorstep? Maybe he was secretly planning to rescue them.
True to Rath's prediction, the jet touched down a few minutes later, jouncing slightly just before the engines went into reverse to slow the plane down. The sudden deceleration threw Ava forward in her seat, and she had to grab the arms of her seat to keep the cuffs from biting into her skin. The plane stopped, and a charged silence fell across the cabin for several minutes.
"The service is lousy on these alien-class flights," Rath muttered. "You'd think Uncle Sugar could spring for a bag of peanuts, at least. “
Ava ignored him, concentrating instead on the sounds she heard coming from the front of the cabin, just beyond the first-class curtains. Footfalls.
When the curtains opened a moment later, Ava half expected to see the face of their occasional protector.
Instead several hard-faced men in black suits entered the cabin. Guns drawn, they marched purposefully toward the three incapacitated teens.
Feeling naked with her powers knocked out, Ava tried to shrink down into her seat, making herself as small as possible, the way she did whenever Rath and Lonnie browbeat her into going along with whatever they planned to do. All of the helplessness she had felt when she'd watched Zan die came flooding back to her. She wondered if this, too, was an effect of the drugs she'd been given.
And she silently cursed herself for having been foolish enough to hope for rescue, from Langley or anyone else.
So far, so good, Special Agent Matthew Margolin thought.
The armored car and the motorized stairway met them on the tarmac, just as the agents hustled their three prisoners toward the open hatches at the front of the plane.
"I don't get it, Viceroy," Dale Bartolli said, pitching his voice so that no one but Margolin could hear him. "We go to all the trouble of requisitioning a black-windowed car to take them to the West Coast interrogation facility. But on the way to L.A. we let them look out the windows. “
Margolin smiled at his lieutenant, enjoying for a moment the momentary absence of Bartolli's customary sly, wolfish expression. "Just a little mind game, Dale. “
"Those kids are alien beings of some sort, and they have some extraordinary powers," Bartolli said. "We can't afford to take any chances with them. Christ, we aren't even sure yet how many duplicates of them are running around loose. “
"Maybe that's something they'll shed some light on for us," Margolin said. "Particularly if we keep them off balance psychologically." He imagined that this was a condition with which Bartolli was well acquainted.
"We should have taken them to a secure military facility “
Margolin appreciated Bartolli's thorough attention to his duties, but he sometimes thought the man lacked both a certain flair and the good sense not to question his superiors too much. This was such a time.
"They're drugged and therefore disoriented," Margolin said, fixing his deputy with what he calculated to be a dangerous stare. "They're young and therefore relatively easy to intimidate. It's important that they know how completely we've pulled their claws. It's important that they know we're not frightened of them. Just as it's important that you follow my orders. “
Margolin wasn't expecting Bartolli to cower; the man simply wasn't made that way. But he also wasn't expecting what Bartolli said next.
"Understood, sir. Just remember that while success has a thousand fathers, failure is always an orphan. “
Margolin glowered. "What's that supposed to mean? “
Bartolli's dark, predatory eyes took on the businesslike aspect of an undertaker measuring a still-living prospective client for a pine box. "I'm just pointing out that the director will no doubt reward you handsomely if our alien-capture ops all go as per plan. But if they don't, your corner office just might be getting a new tenant soon. “
With that, Bartolli turned and followed the prisoners and their guards to the forward hatch. He hadn't bothered to wait for either a reply or a dismissal.
Alone inside the jet, Margolin shivered involuntarily, as though someone had just stepped on his grave.
Ever since he had awakened on board the jet and discovered that he'd been both drugged and handcuffed, Rath had been thinking as rapidly as his fogged mind would allow.
He considered how oddly rested he felt after the long cross-country flight. If not for all the drugs in his system, he felt he'd be ready to take on the world.
Rath also thought about Zan's healing powers, and about how he'd tried to develop similar abilities of his own. As Zan's military adviser back on Antar, Rath had understood well the value of battlefield medicine. Unfortunately, he'd never attained anything like Zan's proficiency at direct wound-healing; Rath had concluded that this was a talent that required a fundamentally nobler worldview than he possessed.
But Rath had gotten pretty good at neutralizing infectious bioweapons, battlefield toxins, and poisons.
And narcotics.
Rath concentrated first on ordering and focusing his thoughts, at least as much as the junk in his bloodstream would allow. It was difficult at first, like trying to start a fire with nothing more than a pair of wet sticks. But somewhere at the center of his mind, his powers began to spark and smolder. The toxins in his blood responded by clumping together like a multivehicle crash on the highway, stopping and thereby rendering themselves harmless. As his
faculties gradually returned, the process accelerated.
He knew that the hard part would be hiding his renewed strength from his captors.
"Move it," said the hard-faced agent who stood almost nose to nose with him shortly after the jet had landed.
Standing in the aisle with Ava ahead of him and Lonnie behind… all of them surrounded by a half-dozen armed MiBs… Rath slowly moved toward the jetway. It took a real effort not to smile as he descended the stairs behind Ava, grabbing the railing to make himself appear weaker than he truly was.
Less than a minute later he stood on the tarmac, watching as several agents pushed a disoriented-looking Ava toward the armored vehicle that awaited them. They had to holster their weapons momentarily as they did so, leaving only three guns trained on both Rath and Lonnie.
The odds were as good as they were ever going to get.
Rath concentrated intensely for a moment, and his wrists glowed like shooting stars. His handcuffs dropped away as he spun toward the agents, raised his hands, and let fly with several tightly focused energy blasts.
14 Cheyenne, Wyoming
As Michael drove the Microbus back toward the hotel where they had left their belongings, Liz looked over at Max. Something was definitely wrong. But he didn't want to talk about it, so she wasn't going to press the issue. Yet.
"So our pictures are on the news then?" Michael asked.
"Just the three of us guys," Kyle said. "They weren't very good shots, though. Looked like they were taken from a security camera at the clothing store or something. It would be hard for anyone to identify us from them. “
"I don't get it," Maria said. "If they want the word out about us, why don't they just release the pictures they have of us from Roswell? “
"What if they don't want word out about us?" Liz asked. "I mean, the Special Unit doesn't seem to want its agenda known to the public. Think how ridiculous they'd sound if they told your average American, 'Aliens are living among you, and they're teenagers.' So, what do they have to gain by releasing information about us? “
Michael nodded, a slight grin on his face as he looked back at them. "Liz has a point. They don't have any reason to expose us. But the media and the local cops don't know that. So maybe these reports came from them. After all, what happened in the mall was pretty public. It's not like it would be easy to cover that up. Even for Special Unit spooks. “
Liz nodded. "It would explain why the news pictures looked like security-camera screen captures instead of photos. “
"We haven't heard enough of the news yet to see if anybody's talking about your astounding displays of power," Maria added. Then, to Michael, she said, "Hey, Spaceboy, eyes on the road. We don't need to get pulled over right now.
"Jesse didn't mention anything about people discussing our powers," Isabel said. "According to him, the news was pretty vague about the details. “
Liz looked over at Max. He was still brooding. Not that brooding was anything new for him, but he seemed to have gone even deeper into the darkness than usual.
"Maybe we can find out more at the hotel," Kyle said. "At least we can watch TV while we pack. “
"No," Max said clearly, speaking for the first time since the hospital parking lot. "We get in, get our stuff, and get gone. No time for showers or TV or snacks. “
"If we even can get our stuff," Isabel said from the front passenger seat. "We don't know that they aren't waiting there for us. “
"No, but we're going to find out pretty soon," Michael said. "I'm parking behind the restaurant up here. The hotel is on the other side of the block. If they're watching for us, we'll stand a better chance of ditching them on foot. “
As Michael parked the van, Isabel said, "I'm staying here. I've got an idea that might help us. And get us more information. “
"What's that?" Max asked.
Isabel grinned and held up the I.D. badges and wallets of the government agents who had tasered them in the corridors. "I'm going dreamwalking. “
Agent Frank Kaneko had returned to his duplex that evening dog-tired. His wife already knew he was physically all right; following the altercation he had faced at the mall that afternoon, he had called her to allay any fears she might have if she'd heard the news. He made his best effort to assure her he was emotionally all right, as well as physically four-square.
But he wasn't.
Something about the operation today didn't smell right. From the time his squad had received their orders to scramble to the moment he'd picked himself up off the floor in the back corridor of the mall, unease had sat heavily in the pit of his stomach.
Afterward, he and the other agents there had been debriefed and were ordered not to discuss the matter with anyone, even one another. He was certain they all had questions, and it would just be a matter of time before one of them brought the subject up with a colleague. But right now, it was best to keep one's mouth shut. There were some other kind of spooks involved… he didn't know if they were Bureau, CIA, special ops, or something else… and even with only five years on the job, Kaneko knew better than to mess with mysteries.
But the situation refused to leave his mind. He had been among the group approaching from the side when the muscular young man had exited the internet cafe and pushed a heavy concrete garbage can at them, scattering most of them like tenpins. Kaneko hadn't lost his footing, though he'd been momentarily startled to see the windows of the Internet place clouding over darkly, as if by an invis- ible can of spray paint.
He and an agent named Pelner had doubled back and moved through a plus-size clothing store a few doors down. Initially, they'd planned to see if they could go through a back corridor and enter the Internet cafe that way, but instead they had come into direct contact with three of the fleeing targets.
Pelner had tasered two of the girls before they could react; orders had been very specific that guns were not to be used. Trank darts, gas, tasers, or other immobilization techniques were the only acceptable options. The teens in question were reportedly armed and dangerous.
As Pelner had advanced on the third girl, Kaneko knelt to check the status of the two unconscious girls. For a] moment, he was concerned that the girls might have been innocent bystanders… employees scared by the conflict in the mall… but then he'd recognized them from the pictures the office had gotten along with the alert.
The third girl finally got down onto the floor as ordered, and while Pelner kept the trank gun trained on her, Kaneko had cuffed her. As far as he could see, none of the girls were armed, nor did they seem very dangerous. But he knew that looks could be deceiving, and it was anyone's guess what horrors lay in the minds of these three.
Kaneko had planned to cuff the other two unconscious girls and call in with his cell phone, but a noise down the hall drew his attention. That was when three young males rounded a corner, coming toward them.
The next minute was a blur, and even now, Kaneko didn't know whether to believe his eyes… and his body… or not. At one point during the stand-off he had heard a shout in his head; someone calling for an Isabel to wake up. Moments later, one of the unconscious girls had awakened, and somehow slammed Pelner into a wall.
And then, the cuffed girl had kicked him in the leg, making him feel as though he'd just been struck by lightning.
Ten minutes later, when he had finally regained consciousness, he saw many of the other agents picking themselves out of a maze of concrete and steel rubble a floor beneath them. A local deputy named Duane Elkins had been hurt the most, when a metal support bar had punctured his leg in the fall; most of the rest of them had just been scraped or bruised when the floor had collapsed underneath them.
No one knew how or why the floor had given way, nor how the cafe's windows had changed from transparent to black, nor how the clothing store's windows had blown out. Compared to those questions, the mystery of how the unarmed, cuffed girl had electro-shocked him into unconsciousness was small potatoes.
After much tossing and turn
ing, he had taken a trip to the kitchen for a nip or two of Maker's Mark. The bourbon helped him sleep on particularly stressful days. Now he finally drifted into slumber.
His dreams were… as always… a barely lucid hodgepodge of scenes from recent events and conversations, snippets of television shows, and random elements swirling up from his subconscious. Kaneko was rarely able to make sense of his dreams, even when he awoke and wrote them in his dream diaries. A few times, some nugget of dream-delivered information had spurred him to recall a forgotten detail, enabling him to use it to help resolve a case. But those times were few and far between.
Now events from the day at the mall began to replay in his dreaming mind, though they were disarrayed, like an incident report whose pages had been shuffled into random order. But this time, as he knelt to check the status of the taller girl who had been tasered, Kaneko found that their positions were reversed. He was the one lying on the cold concrete, and she was kneeling over him instead.
"Frank Kaneko, do you know who I am?" the girl asked. She seemed to glow with a silver aura. She was beautiful, but he could tell she was fierce as well.
"You're the fugitive from the report." As he answered her, the scenery shifted, and he was in an all-white room, strapped to a table in the center. A bright light shone on him from above.
She was now in different clothing, and the leather pants and dark red top showed off her figure. "But you don't know my name? “
"No," he replied. "The report just told us to apprehend you and five others. It didn't specify who you were or what you had done. “
"Who issued the report? “
Frank struggled against his bonds, and saw that they weren't like any binding material he had ever seen before. Instead of rope or steel or canvas, these seemed to be composed of energy. "Why am I being held? Why are you interrogating me? How are you interrogating me? "This is a dream," the girl said. "Don't you know that? I'm not really here, and you aren't really tied up. I'm a figment of your subconscious mind, a part of your guilty conscience." She leaned over toward him. He felt her soft breath on his face, and looked into her beautiful brown eyes. "You do feel guilty about today, don't you? “