by Melinda Metz
"There's no way." Isabel fixed him with a look of panic and fierce determination in her blue eyes.
"You're right," Michael said. "You'll be faster." He climbed into the backseat beside Adam.
Maria let out a short scream as the Jeep lurched and screeched over the charred earth around them. Isabel took a sharp turn toward the open desert, and Michael twisted around in his seat to look out the back. In the bright sunlight he couldn't get a good look at the approaching car, but it was close enough to have seen them, and it looked like it was speeding up.
"It's chasing us," Liz reported. "Go faster, Isabel."
"I'm trying!" Isabel called.
"Blow out its tires!" Maria shouted. "Adam, can't you blow out its tires?"
"We're moving too fast for me to aim," Adam answered.
There was no way they could slow down. The car was gaining on them. Michael didn't care who the people in it were. They could be military, police, Clean Slate, reporters-nobody could discover the truth about Michael and his friends. He had to figure a way to protect them-his friends-his family.
"We need cover," Michael said, peering around at the loosely vegetated ground up ahead. Cacti and sagebrush grew in clumps all over the desert floor, and the Jeep was bouncing over them as Isabel sped along. Nothing Michael could see was tall enough to help them hide.
"Behind what?" Isabel argued. "There's nothing around for miles."
"There's got to be a ravine or something," Max said. "Someplace where we can lose them."
"They can see us," Liz said. "How are we going to get far enough ahead of them to lose them anywhere?"
For a second everybody in the Jeep was silent, thinking, as the desert whizzed by outside.
"Got it," Liz said. "Use your powers to whip up a dust storm or something. It'll give us some headway, and it won't even look weird. Dust storms happen out here all the time."
Max gave Liz a quick kiss on the lips. "I knew we kept you around for a reason," he joked. "Do you think we can do it?"
Michael shrugged. "We were just digging. Why not?"
"All right," Max said. "We're going to need all of us for this. Except you, Iz. You keep a lookout for anywhere we can hide for a while."
"Got it," Isabel said.
Michael reached out and took Maria's and Adam's hands while everyone else linked up. Liz and Maria couldn't focus their energy on their own, but adding their amber and sapphire essences to the mix strengthened the group overall. Together they spun the elements of the ground along their trail into motion, whipping the reddish dirt into the air until it clouded behind them in a haze.
It's working! Liz sent the message out to the others. I can't believe it's working.
More, Max urged them. Thicker, darker, more.
Luckily Isabel had located a low path into a wide canyon where the ground was covered with the eroded sand of the rock walls. The fine silt was easy to whirl into the storm they'd created. Michael could no longer see the car chasing them, which meant the mystery driver couldn't see them, either.
Isabel cut a hairpin turn down the flat slope of a dry riverbed off the canyon. The arroyo wound around an outcropping of sculpted tan rock before splitting into two branches.
Isabel careened the Jeep down the branch to the left, and after a hundred yards or so of wild driving, she brought the Jeep up short behind a grove of stubby trees growing at a bend in the arroyo. With the added cover their pursuers just might miss them entirely.
"Keep it up," Isabel said. "I think we lost them, but I don't want to take any chances." She connected into the group through Maria, adding her anxious energy to the mix.
Michael continued to concentrate on keeping the dirt molecules in motion, but it was draining. Other questions kept intruding, questions he shared with his friends through their link.
Who was that chasing us? Obviously whoever was in the other car didn't just stumble on the compound, or they wouldn't have raced to follow them.
So who was it?
And what exactly did they want?
***
Time to call home, Max thought. After cleaning the dusty day off his body in the shower, Max lay in bed, propped up by pillows. He was ready to go to sleep, but first he wanted to make a connection to the collective consciousness.
Max hadn't linked in since he'd combined power with the consciousness to open the wormhole. Building that passage had exhausted him nearly to the point of death, and tonight was the first time he'd felt strong enough to even make an attempt at connecting.
In truth, it had been a relief to take a break from visiting the collective consciousness over the past few days. The billions of voices demanding information from him could be overpowering.
But he thought he felt up to connecting tonight.
Max closed his eyes. Breathed in a shaky but deep breath. Let himself relax.
Let himself reach out.
Let himself open up.
The ocean of auras that made up the consciousness was waiting for him, expecting him. Max plunged into the chaos of intertwined beings and was inundated by questioning images.
There was a new ripple of disturbance in the collective perceptions, a shock wave of bright orange confusion. Alex. Confusion over Alex. Confusion and anger and fear and excitement.
Max felt a burst of relief. Alex was alive. He'd made it alive to the home planet. Max had never shared his doubts with his friends, but he'd never been sure if a human could survive the trip through space.
His awful mistake-sending Alex instead of DuPris through the wormhole-no longer lay like a heavy, wet blanket across his shoulders. Alex was alive!
But Max's relief was short-lived. Intense images bubbled up from a pocket of the consciousness depicting Alex as a frightening foreigner, his friendly features exaggerated, a portrait painted by fear and distrust of the unknown.
Alex is my friend, Max shared with the collective, hoping to explain-to calm their fears. He was sent to you by accident. My accident.
A ruffle of interest spiked with doubt and animosity greeted his thoughts, and Max realized he had to talk to them in their own way, recall the sights and sounds and smells of that day and surrender the memory to the consciousness.
Max started with an image of himself struggling to open the wormhole-an event many in the consciousness remembered vividly. They returned their own recollections of painful effort and exhaustion.
Then Max sent a picture of his friends morphing their faces and bodies to look like DuPris in a desperate attempt to buy Max the time he needed. The consciousness reacted with fury to the image of the traitor. DuPris had stolen one of the Stones of Midnight from the planet, and they hated him for robbing them of the sacred power source.
When Max showed DuPris tricking the group into forcing Alex through the wormhole, the collective's fury was whipped into rage. Their anger was so potent that Max wondered if he should disconnect before the strength of their emotion did him damage.
But he had to stay strong. Max focused on channeling their wrath away from Alex. Too many of the voices in the collective were associating him with their feelings about DuPris, and that could be deadly. Max had to let them know what Alex was really like.
He started off with the strongest image of Alex he could remember-Alex sitting in front of Isabel's closed bedroom door, keeping a vigil when Isabel was too destroyed over the death of her boyfriend Nikolas to get out of bed. Alex had stayed there, talking to Isabel through the door, saying anything that popped into his mind-jokes, stories, one-sided arguments-anything to keep Isabel connected to the world. His patience had been endless, and his inventive mind had never run out of things to say.
A murmur rolled through the network of beings. A good number of them turned their attention to Max, and he could feel them considering his image of Alex as a good friend.
What else could he tell them to make them understand?
Humor, Max thought. Above all else, Alex is funny.
Would the web of alien mind
s understand human humor? Max had to try-any picture of Alex would be incomplete unless his humor was factored in. He concentrated on sharing memories of Alex at his goofiest.
Alex mocking DuPris with an overdone, corn-fried southern accent.
Alex making his silly lists to post on the Internet. The twenty best-tasting fried snack foods. The ugliest American presidents in order of hideousness, from Taft to Kennedy. The top ten reasons why goldfish made lousy pets. The fifty funniest words in the English language. (Number one was panty.)
Even when Alex was most down, when he was crushed over Isabel or struggling against his got-to-be-a-military-man father, that spark of light that allowed him to find the humor in any situation never went out.
Max tried to express this all to the consciousness, flashing memories of Alex goofing around, his friends cracking up beside him. The collective absorbed those memories, and Max was relieved to feel amusement from some of the beings in response.
They were getting what Max was trying to tell them.
That Alex was good, Alex was his friend. It was as easy and as difficult to express as that.
There were still some rumblings in the corners of the collective that insisted Alex didn't belong on their planet. Dark rumblings.
Max couldn't agree more. He wanted Alex back on earth more than any of them. Max sent an image of the beings in the consciousness forming another wormhole and sending Alex back. Could they do it?
No, came the reply, they couldn't. Max received a sense of pure weariness and exhaustion from the friendlier members of the collective. A picture of a group of glowing moons traveling slowly through a dark, acid green sky flashed in front of him. Because he didn't know how fast the moons passed over the home planet; Max couldn't be sure how long it would take before the beings in the consciousness were recovered enough to send Alex back. But he understood that it would be a long while.
Max suddenly felt very tired. He wasn't strong enough for this kind of prolonged communication yet.
But before he detached himself, he sent one last message into the darkness.
Tell Alex I'm going to help him. Please tell him I'll find a way to bring him back.
He wasn't sure if the message would get to his friend, but it was the best he could do. Max separated from the collective consciousness and let himself slump down in his soft bed. Every limb on his body felt like it weighed about a hundred pounds.
All he could do now was wait. Wait and hope the collective would get his message to Alex. Hope that he could figure out a way to get his friend home.
TWO
Isabel couldn't relax. All her usual tricks-organizing her jewelry, refolding all her clothes, giving her long blond hair one hundred strokes with a brush-had failed her tonight. She had even arranged the shoes in her closet by designer, subdivided by color, but that hadn't calmed her down, either. Isabel stood in the center of her room, surveying the impeccable order. There was nothing left that needed to be done.
Flopping down on her back on the fluffy bed, Isabel let out a long sigh. As soon as she closed her eyes, she thought about Alex. Alex, who she was trying so hard to avoid thinking about. Alex, who had loved her far more than she had deserved.
She missed him. That sounded so lame. Like he was on vacation with his parents or something. But she couldn't think of a better way to say it. She missed him.
Isabel turned onto her side, pulling her legs up to her chest. Things had been bad between them before he disappeared. And it was her fault. Guilt-her least favorite emotion-churned in her gut.
She sat up on the edge of the bed, clutching a pillow to her chest. You apologized to him for the way you broke up with him, she reminded herself.
Not that some lame apology could make up for the way she'd done the deed. She'd been ruthless and harsh. Maybe there wasn't any good way to break up with somebody, but any other way would have been better than the irrational tirade she'd subjected him to.
A memory of how hurt Alex's eyes had looked when she'd told him off forced its way into Isabel's mind. He had loved her, through some intensely bad times. He'd always been there, even when she tried to shove him away. And how had she repaid him?
Isabel covered her eyes with her hands.
She'd treated him like a toilet.
Flush.
Isabel couldn't stand it any longer. She had to do something to make herself feel better. She hopped to her feet and shook out her arms. Maybe she should exercise a little-sweat it out of her system. Or she could reorganize her nail polish, maybe catch up on some homework. She glanced at her small white desk.
Or she could write a letter to Alex.
Before she could convince herself that writing a letter to someone trapped in another galaxy was a waste of time, Isabel sat down and pulled out a piece of cream-colored stationery. She grabbed a green fountain pen and started to write.
Dear Alex,
Now what? Should she say she'd be waiting for him when he came back, in that girlfriend kind of way? She nibbled on the end of her pen cap. Even if Alex still wanted that, she wasn't sure if she did. She decided to stick with what she knew with absolute certainty
I need you to know how much I care about you. You've been a true friend to me. I miss you every day you're gone. I miss the way you acted like the entire world was created just for me. You're the sweetest guy I've ever met, and I know we need to be important to each other, in whatever way that turns out to be.
I hope you're safe. And believe me when I say that I will do anything in my power to make sure you get back to us safely. Soon.
Love,
Isabel
Isabel put the pen down on the desk and stared at the long letter in front of her. God, it was so mushy-so unlike her. But she couldn't deny that she'd been as honest in it as she knew how to be. She wished she could give it to Alex. If he could read it, Isabel was certain he'd forgive her.
But Alex was trapped in another galaxy. That would take some serious postage.
In a flash, she had an idea. It was a goofy plan, but that meant Alex would love it. Isabel grabbed the paper and folded it into her pocket.
Twenty minutes later she was driving the Jeep through the desert. The night was chilly, and Isabel pulled her pink-and-gray sweater close to her skin.
A mile or so away from the site Isabel pulled over to the side of the road. Before she got out of the Jeep, she opened the glove compartment and took out the bottle rocket she'd brought with her. Her father loved the Fourth of July, and he always kept extra fireworks in a metal box in the garage. The box had been locked, but a simple turnkey clasp couldn't keep out someone with Isabel's powers.
Isabel tied the rolled-up letter to the bottle rocket, high enough on the thin red stick so that the paper wouldn't get burned. Then she got out of the Jeep and walked a few paces into the scrubby vegetation of the desert.
Isabel stuck the bottle rocket into the ground, leaning it against a small rock. Then she realized she'd forgotten to bring matches.
Not a problem. She took a deep breath, reached out with her mind toward the wick, and scratched. The friction produced a tiny spark, which was enough to get the wick sizzling.
As she stepped back, the rocket launched, whistling into the dark sky. Isabel watched its smoky path through the air until she lost sight of it against the canopy of stars.
Go, she thought. Go to Alex. Tell him how I feel.
The only reply was a sharp report and a shower of sparks as the rocket exploded in the distance.
Isabel smiled as she looked out across the desert. She'd just done a really silly thing, but it made her feel slightly better, and that was all that mattered.
A sudden breeze picked up, and Isabel realized with a chill that she wasn't far from the ruins of the compound. An inexplicable fist of fear gripped her heart, erasing any warm and fuzzy Alex feelings. She felt like she was being watched.
Okay. Enough with the midnight hike, Isabel thought.
She turned and hurried back
to the Jeep, fully prepared to gun the engine and speed back to town. But the moment she slammed the door behind her, she realized she was acting like a child. No one was watching her. There was nothing out here for miles. She was perfectly safe.
And just to prove it to herself, she was going to drive over to the charred stretch of ground and check on the ship. It was the least she could do since she was already out here.
As she drove through the eerie darkness of the desert, Isabel felt the uneasiness start to creep up her spine again, and she gripped the steering wheel tightly. She tried to ignore the fear, but she couldn't. All she could do was defy it.
Something told her to stop a quarter mile from the compound and walk the rest of the way. Anyone who might be watching would see the headlights-hear the engine. But Isabel wouldn't give in. Swallowing back her instincts, she floored the accelerator and drove right up to the perimeter of the compound.
Taking a deep breath, Isabel stepped out of the Jeep and looked around defiantly, tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder.
See? There's no one here, she told herself, climbing the small hill she, Max, Michael, and Adam had formed while digging the hole.
"Valenti's dead, so no Valenti," she muttered, scrambling over the loose dirt. "No DuPris. No cops. No news anchors-"
Isabel reached the top of the hill and looked down into the gaping hole. Her heart dropped through her hiking shoes, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
"No… ship," she said quietly.
She shoved at the dirt with her mind. The digging went much slower now that she was alone, but she went deep enough to convince herself that she was right.
The hole was empty.
The ship was gone.
***
"The ship doesn't look anything like that," Adam said, stopping in the middle of Main Street. He pointed at a big plastic flying saucer that had been built into the side of a tourist souvenir shop as if it had crashed there.
Michael slammed into him from behind and gave him a little shove to get him moving again. A car sped by, narrowly missing their heels.