by Andy Mangels
Margolin curtly acknowledged the two agents, then gestured for quiet. He'd heard the muffled sound too. But he found it hard to believe that their quarry would take such a cowardly exit. Not after he'd seen with his own eyes their willingness to fight.
It was far likelier that Guerin would try to set a trap for them.
"Maybe we ought to speed things along a bit, Viceroy," Bartolli said, looking impatient. "Lets force their hand. “
Margolin smirked, making an after you gesture toward the vehicle. "By all means, Dale. “
Bartolli walked cautiously around to the opposite side of the vehicle and approached the driver's side door. Though Margolin couldn't see the door from where he stood, he knew that its tinted, bulletproof window would have prevented Bartolli from seeing inside.
His pistol at the ready in his right hand, Bartolli reached for the door latch and pulled.
Surprisingly, the door swung open without any resistance. A thin plume of smoke curled upward from inside the cockpit. Margolin unconsciously tightened his grip on his weapon as he watched Bartolli, whose normally unflappable expression had abruptly changed to a look of shock. "Boss, you're not gonna believe this. “
Gathering from Bartolli's reaction that it was safe to approach, Margolin advanced quickly toward the passenger door. He pulled it open with an ease that surprised him.
The center of the bench seat was burned away, leaving a meter-wide hole that seemed to go all the way to the vehicle's undercarriage. Ignoring the lingering traces of smoke, he stuck his head into the cockpit and saw that the hole in fact extended all the way down to the tarmac.
The prisoners were gone.
"Looks like one of the girls mustVe whacked us with a Jedi mind trick," Bartolli said, a vague smirk on his face. "This looks bad, Chief." Margolin knew that what his ambitious deputy really meant was, "This looks bad for you. “
One of the other agents approached the burned-out cockpit carrying a small handheld device no bigger than a TV remote. "I can confirm that, sir," she said to Margolin. "I'm picking up electromagnetic traces that match other sites where anomalous psi-powers were documented. “
Margolin realized then that the Harding girl also must have gotten the drugs out of her system somehow. She had probably influenced the minds of her pursuers, rendering all three teens conveniently invisible just long enough for them to escape into the terminal.
Suddenly transported by an impotent rage, Margolin slammed his fist on the hood of the truck. Then he swiftly tried to compose himself.
"Alert the backup team," he said to Bartolli a moment later. "They're going to try to get through the terminal to steal some transportation. We have to head them off. “
"This is a big airport," Bartolli pointed out as he opened up his cell phone.
Margolin gestured angrily toward the electromagnetic detection device the female agent still held in her hand. "The Harding girl is going to have to keep using her abilities as long as they're here. That means she's going to leave a trail. I want it followed. “
Everyone scattered to resume the chase. Margolin swore to himself that the kids wouldn't get far.
Anthony Miller was in a hurry. His flight had arrived late, and unless everything went perfectly for the next ninety minutes or so, he was going to be very late meeting with a very important, very finicky client. And he knew that expecting perfection from the baggage carousel, the car rental desk, and the 405 freeway was asking for the impossible.
But as he left the luggage area, his suit-bag slung over one shoulder, he began feeling lucky. Maybe I used up all my bad luck during the layover at O'Hare, he thought, striding urgently toward a wide-open, relatively uncrowded array of car rental desks. No lines! I can't believe it! Coming out of nowhere, someone bumped him, making his suit-bag tumble from his shoulder and to the floor. Miller was about to say something rude when he saw the frail-looking old man with whom he'd just collided.
The old man was flanked by an equally fragile old woman and a middle-aged woman who had to be their daughter. The old man looked apologetic as he stooped to help Miller recover what he had dropped.
Then the old man lost his balance, and Miller reached out to steady him.
"I'm so sorry," said the old man.
Now feeling guilty, Miller helped the man recover his footing. Retrieving his bag, he said, "Don't mention it. It was probably my fault, anyway. I wasn't watching where I was going. Are you all right? “
The old man smiled, his eyes twinkling as though he had a secret. "Don't worry about me." Then, still flanked by his wife and daughter, the old man continued on his way.
Miller didn't realize that his wallet was missing until a minute later, after he'd reached the car rental desk.
Ducking behind a pillar beside Rath and Lonnie, Ava carefully altered the mindwarp shell she had created to cover their escape from the MiBs back on the tarmac. Ava felt sweat beginning to bead across her brow.
The image of an elderly couple and their middle-aged daughter wavered and vanished as their forms… at least in the eyes of anyone who came within fifty yards of them… quickly shifted and altered, then stabilized into entirely new configurations.
A moment later, Rath looked down at his own expensively dressed body, and then studied Lonnie and Ava, both of whom had been magically transformed into men. They all appeared to be in their mid-thirties, and bore no resemblance at all to the fugitives the MiBs were chasing.
"I always wondered what we'd look like if we swapped sexes," Rath said, grinning down at his short-skirted Ally McBeal ensemble and taking a few experimental steps in his virtual high heels. Ava was proud of the illusion. Rath looked like he'd been walking in heels all his life.
"Now we know," Lonnie said, pausing to admire her newly masculine form, as well as the sharp-looking business suit that covered it. "Too bad we don't have time to do more than just look. “
Ava hadn't thought of that. She blushed, but hoped her illusory black beard covered it. "Sorry to disappoint you guys, but this is just camouflage. Less than skin deep. I picked this illusion because the Feds are looking for two girls and a guy, not the other way around. “
"Good thinking," Rath said, meeting her gaze for a moment. Though he was still grinning, Ava thought something had subtly changed behind his eyes, turning them even flintier and more calculating than usual.
Then he looked away and the moment passed. Ava dismissed it as her imagination, or maybe even some unintended trick of the gender-bending, mindwarp-driven disguises she had created. She fell silently into step behind Rath and Lonnie as they walked back onto the main concourse, proceeded through the large glass doors, and finally came to a stop at a curbside that thronged with both human and vehicular traffic. The early autumn sun beat down on them without mercy. Ava ruefully wished the air-conditioned concourse a fond farewell.
She watched as Rath reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew the large, crumpled wad of cash he'd taken from the yuppie whose wallet he'd filched back inside the terminal, and extended a hand to flag down a cab.
We're actually doing it, Ava thought, allowing hope to return. We're going to get away.
Walking past the car rental area, Special Agent Billings glanced down at his handheld EM detector, knowing that the odds were very much against his finding the three fugitives before they made it out of the terminal. There were simply too many exits, and there just wasn't time to seal them all. Once outside, the aliens could easily get their hands on a car and make a clean getaway.
Then Billings saw the energy spike on the detector's small LED readout. He understood immediately that the Harding girl must be expending a great deal of psionic energy at the moment, no doubt using her mindwarp talent to alter the appearance of herself and her two friends.
And she's somewhere nearby, he thought, examining the readings more closely. Following the GPS coordinates as they scrolled onto his screen, he pressed a couple of buttons to display the range and distance of his prey, relative to his presen
t position. Then he trotted quickly across the concourse and through the large glass doors that led to the curbside.
The readout on his device was going crazy. / must be right on top of them, he thought.
Straight ahead, beside the curb, a yellow taxicab waited. Two smartly dressed men and a woman approached it, their flights evidently having just landed, and started to get in.
Billings recalled what the files on the Harding girl had said about her powers. She evidently possessed at least a limited ability to reach into people's minds and manipulate what they saw. Or what they thought they saw.
Maybe she should have whipped up an illusion of some luggage, he thought. Strange that not one of them has any. He consulted the range and distance data again on his device one last time, making absolutely sure.
It's them, he thought, then sprinted toward the cab before the trio finished closing its doors. Dropping the detector, he pulled his gun, grabbed the rear passenger door, and flung it open.
"Freeze! FBI!" he shouted.
With surprising strength, the slight woman seated in the center of the backseat shoved the man at her right, throwing him straight into Billings.
The agent and the other man fell backward onto the curbside. Billings felt the wind rush out of his body. The man looked confused, but it was obvious that he intended to run. Travelers stepped around them. Someone cursed, then moved on.
Billings rolled into a crouch and brought the smaller man down with a quick rabbit punch. The man slumped toward the sidewalk, unconscious.
By the time he hit the ground, he had transformed into a slightly built teenage female with dyed-blue hair and hardcore alt-rock clothing.
Someone screamed. Billings heard an engine roar and the squeal of tires quickly laying part of their treads on the roadway. He looked up from the unconscious Harding girl to see the taxicab streak away. A dark- skinned man, who appeared to have been its driver, lay unconscious on the sidewalk.
Noting the cab's plate numbers, Billings grabbed his radio and called for backup, though he doubted anyone could move fast enough now to keep the perps from getting out of the airport.
One down. Just two more to go, he thought, handcuffing his sole prisoner. He knew that this one, Tess Harding, was the one his superiors wanted captured most of all.
As another pair of agents and a large black sedan arrived to help him whisk her away, he wondered why the other aliens had sacrificed one of their own.
"That was really smart, Rath," Lonnie said sardonically She noticed immediately that her appearance had now returned to normal.
Rath slammed the accelerator down, as though the entire airport, and the roads that led into and out of it, were his own private video arcade.
"Ava was just dead weight," he said.
She scowled, holding on to the dash as Rath swerved around a hotel shuttle. People dived out of the crosswalk, their luggage scattering in all directions. "Hello? Ava was the only thing that kept our magic makeovers from disappearing! “
Rath turned into a parking garage, almost going up onto two wheels in the process. "She was also a bell around our necks. “
"What are you talking about? “
"Ever wonder why the MiBs only seem to come after us when Ava is nearby, using her Obi-Wan whammy? And how come we never had much of an alien-hunter problem until after she came back from wherever it was she disappeared to for all those months after we went to Roswell to drag Zan Lite off to the Antarian Summit? “
Lonnie had never given those matters much thought. But now she had to admit, at least to herself, that what Rath was saying was at least possible. But possible wasn't the same as likely.
"Might be a coincidence," was all she could think of to say. "Remember, the cops and the Feds might have captured us because we were having that noisy fight with those alien-possessed freaks. “
"The freaks chased us into the warehouse because they followed Ava there. “
"Still might be a coincidence. “
Rath brought the cab to a stop across a pair of handicapped parking spaces and threw his door open. It crunched into the side of the neighboring car.
"Yeah," he said. "And monkeys might fly out of my butt. I think the MiBs know how to track her by her powers. So now they can have her. “
It took Lonnie a moment to wrap her mind around what Rath had just told her. Ava wasn't likely to survive for long on her own in some FBI interrogation/dissection room. First Zan, now Ava. Gone.
Lonnie knew that for all intents and purposes the two of them were all that remained of the Royal Four. At least this version of the Royal Four.
But the approaching whine of a siren reminded her that there was no time to dwell on that. Rath got out of the cab first, and Lonnie followed him over to a nearby BMW Rath knelt behind the rear bumper, altering the plates with a wave of his hand. A moment later, he repeated the procedure on the car's front end.
Their powers got the doors on both sides open in seconds. Lonnie watched from the passenger seat as Rath quickly hot-wired the ignition using a single glowing finger as a stand-in for a strand of copper.
"Yupmobiles," Rath said as he drove the BMW toward the parking lot's exit. "Gotta love 'em. “
The whine of the siren… or was it more than one?… grew steadily louder in Lonnies ears. "What about our disguises? “
"We'll do 'em ourselves. It'll just take a lot of energy. “
Lonnie sighed. She was almost starting to get used to being tired and depleted.
Almost. "You first," she said.
Rath nodded. As Lonnie watched, his hair slowly turned gray, then migrated from the top of his head to the back and sides, forming a long ponytail that hung down his back. His leathers morphed into a disgustingly retro velour shirt, which opened almost to the navel and exposed a chest covered with wiry white hair.
"How do I look?" Rath wanted to know.
She shrugged. "Like Patrick Stewart having a midlife crisis." Concentrating intensely, Lonnie began to change her own features and clothing, hoping they could get clear of their pursuers before her energies were once again depleted. She chose a familiar face to base her image on, complementing Rath's actorly looks.
Rath drove on in silence, leaving the airport behind and taking an on-ramp for the northbound 405 freeway. Like Ava, the sirens were already becoming a distant memory. Their pursuers no longer knew where to look.
Rath glanced at her, evidently done pouting over her earlier insult. "Nice look, Counselor Troi. If the cops pull us over, they'll probably ask for our autographs. “
Lonnie snorted. "So, where to, Captain? Are we going to try to track down Langley? “
He shook his head. "I know Ava always had a lot of faith in Langley, but she believed in Santa Claus, too.
What's Langley done for us lately? I'm not sure I trust him any more than I trust Ava. “
"Good point," Lonnie said, thinking, If Langley had done a better job looking after us, we wouldn't have had to grow up in the sewers. "So where are we going, then? “
"Where else but Langley 's very own backyard? “
Lonnie was confused. "But you just said you didn't trust Langley. “
"I don't. But can I help it if our no-good, rat-bastard 'protector'"… he accentuated this word with Dr. Evil… style finger-quotes… "happens to live and work in the only place on the entire West Coast where the two of us can fit in without having to shapeshift? “
She gave him a blank look. " Disneyland? “
" Melrose Avenue! “
The BMW roared northward, drowning out Lonnie's delighted laughter.
Then a chilling thought suddenly descended upon her: If the FBI guys really had found Ava by tracking her powers, then what made Rath so certain that they couldn't also do the same thing with either of them? How do we know they're not doing it right now?
16 Cheyenne, Wyoming
Max had to be more careful this time, since dawn was imminent, and the hospital was much busier than it had been only
hours ago. He had watched through a window for ten minutes as a nurse did her rounds, before he finally felt comfortable enough to enter the building again.
He quickly made his way back to room 126, but when he got there, he was startled to find that Shania and her sister were gone. Instead, a bulky female nurse was changing the linens on the bed.
Nervously, he cleared his throat. "Excuse me. Where have they moved Shania to? “
The nurse looked at him for a moment, but kept most of her attention on the bedding. "She's made an amazing recovery in the middle of the night. They moved her upstairs, to Ward C. But they're doing some tests on her right now, so you can't see her. Besides, visiting hours haven't started yet. “
"Do you know where her sister is? Lisa? “
"Probably in the commissary. Or the smoking garden. “
Max thanked the nurse and quickly made his way toward the stairway. On the second floor he found a hospital map and located both the commissary and the smoking area.
As he approached the smoking area, he saw through the tall glass windows that the older Cameron sister was indeed there. She hadn't seen him yet, but as he opened the door, the pneumatics on it gave a slight hiss, and she turned.
"What are you doing back?" Her tone wasn't as hostile as before, though he could see the tension in her stance.
"How's Shania? “
"She's doing much better," the woman said, stubbing her cigarette out in a gravel-filled ashtray. "The doctors said it's a miracle she pulled out of the coma, and they can hardly believe how fast her other injuries are healing. The other woman in the wreck is also doing better. They're both out of danger. “
"That's good. “
"Shouldn't you be out of town by now?" Lisa eyed him warily. "You don't know that I didn't call the cops on you as soon as you left the room last time. “
"No, I don't," Max admitted. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a creased envelope. "But I'm hoping that you didn't. “
Lisa sat down on a bench and motioned for Max to do the same. "No, I didn't. Somehow, it didn't seem right. Since it looks like you healed her and all. At least that's what she says. “