by Kevin Ryan
Now it was her turn. "Max, behind you!" she shouted.
He held his eyes on her for a moment. She saw all the pain and grief in his eyes. And something else. Something just for her. Then she could see that he was determined. He would fight for her. He would give everything for her.
It won't be enough, the voice inside her said.
Darkness was racing toward Max as he steeled himself and lifted his right hand. Liz didn't need her newfound ability to see the future to know what would happen next.
She felt it, from someplace older and deeper than the source of her new powers.
"NO!" Liz screamed.
She didn't want to be here. She wanted to wake up, but she sensed this was not a dream. She didn't want to watch what was about to happen. Liz found that she could not even close her eyes. She watched Max steel himself from the darkness that was flying toward them now.
When the darkness was almost upon them, energy flared from Max's hand, and a green defensive shield appeared in front of them.
It's too big, Liz thought. Too strong.
She knew she had to do something. She had to help Max, but she knew it was already too late. Then the dark shape reached the shield and tore through it after less than a second's pause. There was only a moment now, Liz knew, and Max used that moment to fire a burst of energy into the darkness that swallowed it without even hesitating.
"NO!" Liz screamed as she watched the darkness tear into Max. Finally she was able to turn away, but she didn't need to see it to know what happened next. Whatever had raced into Max almost instantly tore him apart, and Liz felt him die.
Liz Parker screamed.
Liz was stirring.
She's having a bad dream, Max realized. No, not just a bad dream… a full-on nightmare.
As she tossed in her seat, Max considered waking her. He couldn't remember if it was better to let someone who was having a nightmare sleep or to wake them up.
Maria would know, Max realized.
"No!" Liz practically shouted in her sleep.
"Maria…," Max began, but he was interrupted by Liz saying, "Max, behind you!" Her voice was clear, and for a moment Max was certain that she had woken up.
Then she lapsed into unconscious moaning and twist- ing in her chair. That's it. That's enough, Max decided.
He reached for Liz. Maria did the same and said, "Hey, Parker.”
As they did, Liz let out a terrifying scream and pitched violently forward in her seat. "NOOOO!" she howled as she thrust her hands forward.
Her hands would have cracked into the windshield if it were there. But a burst of white energy exploded from her hands and shattered the windshield outward. Max slammed on the brakes and swerved the wheel as the van skidded.
He was vaguely aware that the blast that came from Liz's hands traveled down the highway. Hoping there were no cars in front of them, Max skidded onto the road's shoulder.
As soon as the van came to a stop, Max turned to Liz, who was wide awake and reaching for him.
"Max," she sputtered as her hands cupped his face and she studied him with a wide-eyed stare.
As someone opened the side door of the van, Max pulled Liz toward him. "It's okay, Liz," he said, fighting to keep the worry out of his voice.
"No," Liz said forcefully, pulling back from him. "It's not okay. Oh my God, Max, you died.”
She's terrified, Max thought. Completely terrified.
"No, I didn't, Liz. I'm right here," he said gently.
Max could see that Liz was fighting for control. She pulled him toward her and started to cry. When her sobs began to die down, he whispered reassuringly into her ear, "Liz, it was just a dream.”
Pulling away again, Liz looked at him with a new expression on her face. It wasn't fear this time. It was grief. "No, Max, it wasn't," she said clearly.
3
Liz crumbled into Max's arms as Michael appeared at Max's side.
"There's a pretty big hole in the ground a few hundred yards ahead, but I don't think-anyone saw anything. Isabel is filling the hole now.”
Old habits die hard, Max thought. He's making a report.
Max simply nodded and held Liz. The others kept a respectful distance, though Max could feel Maria's tension. She was pacing a few yards away. Max was aware of move- ment in front of the van, and Isabel appeared, joining Kyle, Michael, and Maria.
As Liz's breathing returned to normal, he noticed for the thousandth time how small she felt to him. She was the smallest of the three girls, both in height and stature. As she nestled under his chin, Max gently stroked her straight, dark hair and felt a reflexive desire to protect her.
Protect her? Max thought. He had not done a very good job of that in the last three years. She had suffered too much because of him.
When her breathing slowed, he leaned back and said, "Did you have a premonition?”
Liz nodded. "I watched you die, Max," she said.
Michael stepped forward and said, "Where was it? What happened? And what do we have to do to stop it?”
Liz shook her head and said, "It's not that simple…”
"Tell us what you can from the beginning," Max said.
Starting from the beginning of the dream, Liz told about being in school and meeting Max in the band room like they had the day after he had healed her in the Crashdown. "I think you touched my cheek while I was sleeping," Liz said.
Max nodded.
"That's when the dream changed into one of my premoni- tions," Liz said, and told about seeing Michael and Isabel dead. And then seeing Max face the unseen force on his own. "You fought, Max, but…," she said as her voice broke.
Max nodded and kept his expression neutral.
"Maybe it was a dream, at least partly," Isabel said.
Liz thought for a moment and then said, "Partly, yes, but I'm sure I saw Max die, as well as you and Michael.”
"Do you have any idea how far in the future this was?" Max asked.
"Fifteen years," Liz replied immediately.
Max started at that. There was something unnerving about her certainty. "That is pretty exact. Are you sure?”
Liz nodded and said, "I recognized you…" Then she shot a glance at Maria, and something passed between the two girls.
"Future Max!" Maria exclaimed.
"What?" Michael said. "Who is that?”
Maria immediately looked sheepish, as if she had said too much.
Max looked down at Liz and said, "Future Max?”
"Who the hell is Future Max?" Michael said to Maria. "What are you two talking about?”
"Sorry, Liz," Maria said.
"It's okay," Liz replied. Then she turned to Max and said, "There's something I have to tell you.”
"We'll just give you guys a minute," Maria said.
"No," Max said, raising his hand. "This involves all of us. No secrets.”
"This involves Tess and Kyle and…" Liz collected her- self for a moment, and then spoke quickly and clearly. "It goes back to just before you found Kyle and me together.”
The memory of that night came back suddenly, like a blow. He remembered seeing Kyle and Liz in bed together. He remembered the shock and the feeling like someone had reached into his stomach and twisted his insides.
"Max, it wasn't an accident that you saw us. I set that up for a reason," Liz said.
Max felt the beginnings of understanding and said, "You wanted to be free of all this. You wanted a normal life.”
Shaking her head, Liz said, "No. I did it for you, because you asked me to.”
Max could remember few times in his life when he was as surprised as he was now. "I asked you to?”
"The night before you came to visit me, but not you, exactly. It was you from the future, fifteen years in the future," Liz said.
"How?" Max asked, finding things making less and less sense.
"You had used the Granilith. You explained that it had powers we had not discovered yet. You brought a warning and asked me to do somethin
g," Liz said.
"Go to bed with Kyle?" Max said, feeling even more confused. He looked over at Kyle, who was keeping his eyes to the ground. The boy looked as embarrassed as Max was confused.
"No," Liz replied. "You described a scene similar to the one in my premonition, where there was a battle and both Isabel and Michael died. And it was all because Tess had left and the four of you were not together for the battle. Max, Tess had left because… ”
"Of you and me," Max said, finally beginning to understand.
"You told me that 1 had to give you up to keep peace between Tess and the group," Liz said.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" Max said.
"You told me not to. You from the future told me that you would try to find another way," Liz said. "You said the only way to be sure was if you believed that it was over between us.”
Then the totality of it hit Max. Liz had given up so much… all because he had asked her to. Not who he was now, but some version of him from the future.
"It was all for nothing," Max said finally. "Tess…"He didn't have to say any more. Everyone there knew what Tess had done. She had killed Alex and betrayed them all. She had given birth to Max's son and tried to turn him over to Max's enemy Kevar on their home world. Then, when Kevar rejected Max's son as heir, she had come back looking for shelter.
"You didn't think to mention any of this before?' Michael asked. Then he turned to Maria and said, "And you knew?”
"What good would have it have done?" Liz said.
That stopped Michael in his tracks.
"How would you prepare for some mysterious danger fifteen years in the future?" Liz continued.
Then Max understood the final piece. Liz had taken all of that on herself. She had once accused him of taking too much on his shoulders, and now she was doing the same.
She turned to him and said, "I hoped that so many things had changed that there was a chance that that had changec too. And I didn't think you needed any more weight to carry You blame yourself for things that happened on another planet and in another life. You blame yourself for Alex and everything that happens to every one of us.”
Max shook his head. She didn't think he could have borne another burden. So she had taken it on herself.
He marveled at this small, slight girl in front of him. She had tried to protect him. Unfortunately she could not pro- tect him from the truth. He had been responsible for the fall of their home planet. He had been responsible for Alex's death and the pain his friends and his sister had suffered.
"What now, Max?" Isabel asked.
Max realized that everyone was looking at him… looking to him. He knew what they wanted. They wanted him to lead. To solve the problem. To keep them safe. Well, his track record on that score hadn't been very good so far. Max shook his head. "I don't have any answers here," he said.
"So we just chalk it up that in fifteen years we're going to take second place in a duel to the death?" Michael asked.
"I told you, Michael… I told you all before we left: I'm not the leader of this group anymore. And from what Liz is telling us, it's under my leadership that everything goes to hell," Max said.
Isabel was looking at him with a look of disbelief in her face. After a long moment, she said, "Well Max, as a mem- ber of this group, do you have any thoughts at all?”
"Yes," Max said. "I think it's very important that I not make all the decisions here. I honestly think that following me will lead us to ruin again. I brought us there on our home planet. I bring us there in the future that Liz describes.”
"Maybe third time's a charm, Maxwell," Michael said. It was a surprising attempt at humor for Michael, and Max found himself smiling. The effort won Michael a hard smack in the arm from Maria, however.
"I do have a few other thoughts," Max added. "If what Liz said was correct, then we lost because all four of us, including Tess, were not fighting together.”
"But Max," Liz said, "Tess is dead. She died when the air force base blew.”
Max nodded. In perhaps the only selfless act of her life, Tess had walked into the base instead of endangering the group further. She had chosen to die fighting instead of living out the rest of her life in the Special Unit's White Room. Shuddering from his memory of that place, Max wondered how much of his youth he had left in that room.
How much had been burned out of him by Agent Pierce under those bright white lights? Just about all of it, I guess, Max thought.
Max understood Tess's decision. He had vowed to him- self that he would die fighting before he ever went back there. Oddly, Max had died and had seen things, glimpses of the other side that he wished he could forget. Neverthe- less, he would go there before he would go back to the White Room, because he had seen both death and Hell… and Hell was white.
"I think the three of us have to become stronger, to.compensate for Tess's loss," Max said.
"How do we do that?" Isabel asked.
"By doing the opposite of what we have done up until now," Max said. He saw the light of understanding go on in Michael's eyes.
"Our powers," Michael said.
"What? What about them?" Isabel said.
"Up until now," Max explained, "we have tried to not use them, or to do so only when absolutely necessary.”
"But not anymore," Michael said.
Max nodded his agreement. "The point of this trip for me was to do things differently. We've been hiding our whole lives, denying who we are. Now I'm ready to use my powers to do whatever good I can. We're not hiding anymore and we're not exactly running. I think if we can keep moving we can stay ahead of… our enemies. Maybe as we use our powers more, well gain extra strength.”
"Sounds like a plan, Maxwell," Michael said.
Isabel nodded her agreement, and Max realized that in spite of what he wanted and in spite of what he had just said, he had just mapped out their future. And the others had agreed.
Old habits, he thought. As he approached the van, he sighed and thought, Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. And if took longer than a day to fall, he reminded himself.
As he surveyed the damage to the front windshield, he wondered if the fall took more or less than fifteen years.
Pieces of windshield were scattered on the road and desert around them in a radius of two or three dozen yards. The bits of glass were very small. The force must have been tremendous. He wondered how big the hole in the ground was that Isabel had filled in.
Max waited until three cars passed them and they were alone on the road. Raising his hand, he collected the hun- dreds of bits of broken glass and used his powers to lift them in the air. Bringing them together, he fused them into the windshield and reset the glass onto the van.
When he was finished he could see the problem: a hole about two feet around in the center of the windshield.
"Some of the glass must have been pulverized," Max said.
Liz looked embarrassed.
Maria looked amazed. "Remind me not to make you mad, Parker.”
"There's plenty of sand around, Max," Liz said. Max nodded and reached out with his powers to pick up a small pile of sand. It was simple to heat it to the right tem- perature and make it into a good approximation of the windshield glass. Then he fused the new piece into the hole. When he was finished, he smoothed over the whole piece of glass and saw that it would do.
"Not a bad job, Your Highness," Michael said.
"Michael…," Max started.
"Just a joke, Maxwell," Michael said, smiling. "It's good to see what you can do when you really let loose with your powers.”
Max found himself smiling back. "I also do light house- keeping.”
His smile faded when he saw Liz's face.
"Don't worry, we have a long time to figure something out," he said. "And you can tell us how we're doing. You will probably have a number of flashes between now and…”
Liz gave him a thin smile, and Max saw that she was still afraid. And not just about what will happen in fifteen yea
rs, he thought. Her vision had cost Liz something, he knew. The prospect of more like it was not comforting to her.
Another price Liz is paying for being with me, Max thought.
Back in the van, Max drove through the morning, head- ing north. For a moment, he was tempted to get on Inter- state 25… it was the quickest route. And though there was no rush on this trip to nowhere special, he wanted to put as many miles as he could between the group and Roswell as quickly as possible. Then he would relax a bit.
But Max's instincts told him to stay away from major roads, at least for now. They might be watched. They had found that out when Kyle's father had tried to get them out of the state, west to Arizona. Sheriff Valenti hadn't liked what he had heard on the police band, and the group had had to change direction and go north.
Since then, Max had been basically traveling in almost a straight line up from Roswell, which was in the southern part of New Mexico. This route allowed him to steer clear of Santa Fe, which was too large a city, and Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was built. It was still a center for nuclear research, with just too much government and mili- tary activity for him. He would feel better when they reached Colorado, which would be sometime that afternoon if they continued at the same speed. He made a mental note to start traveling northwest when they hit Colorado. If he traveled diagonally across Colorado, he would pass well below Pueblo and the Air Force Academy.
He looked over at Liz, who was watching the road speed by. She looked alert, and Max guessed it would be a while before she slept again.
Maybe we can all relax a little when we reach Colorado, Max thought. It was possible, but not likely, he realized.
It won't be long now, Maria thought as she watched the road ahead. She could see mountains out her window in the distance. For years she had been afraid that this would never happen, that she would never leave Roswell, never leave New Mexico.
Maria remembered her school report in sixth grade. New Mexico was one of the largest states in the country (fourth or fifth, she couldn't remember which). But it only had one and a half million people… and over half of those lived in the three major cities, of which Roswell was defi- nitely not one.