'Isabel, wake up!' She didn't respond. Her eyes were rolled back into their sockets, showing nothing but white.
Almost instinctively, he spread his fingers, positioning one on her cheek, the others splaying out from her forehead to her ear, his thumb coming to rest near her jaw.
Then Kyle's hand began to glow, faintly at first, but quickly brightening and taking on a silver-blue tint. His mind was filling up with a kaleidoscopic tumble of images: a star pattern; a spaceship; a trio of moons in fragmented multiple colors; the rock formations of the desert beyond Roswell; a series of runelike characters glowing on a glass surface; the fathomless black eyes of a gray-skinned creature leaning over him. Moments later, the visions faded away, and the glow that had engulfed his hand subsided. Kyle felt exhausted.
'This might take time you don't have,' Alex said. 'But you can end the suffering. You are the key. “
'What's happening to me, Alex? “
Kyle had barely phrased the question before he found himself back in the hallway, standing behind Michael, his hand on Max's shoulder.
'Alex? What?' Michael asked, looking at Kyle strangely.
'We've got to get the girls out of there,' Max said, obviously focused on the girls and the agents who had apprehended them. 'But it's too far to use our powers effectively, and we'll risk them getting hurt. “
'You three, down on the ground!' the gun-toting agent yelled. Knowing more than a little about law enforcement from his father, Kyle imagined that the man was surprised they hadn't left the girls behind and made a break for it. Most criminals ran, or tried to.
'Do what he says,' Max said, his voice pitched low, clearly intended only for Kyle's and Michael's ears. 'But be prepared to fight back. “
Michael grimaced as he put his arms in the air and began to kneel. Whether it was his background as a soldier on Antar or the stubborn tough-guy personality drilled into him by his abusive stepfather in a trailer park back in Roswell, Kyle knew that Michael clearly was not happy about backing down from a fight. 'We can take them, Max. Our shields can stop the bullets. “
Max was kneeling as well. 'We can stop the bullets from hitting us. But we can't shield Isabel or Liz or Maria. Isabel might be able to shield them, but they've done something to her. “
'They disrupted her system,' Kyle explained. 'They've got tasers. “
Behind them, they heard a commotion in the hall. Kyle realized that the other agents and officers had made their way into the back of the corridor. Though it seemed an eternity had passed since he and the others had come to this spot, Kyle knew that, in reality, it had probably only been a minute or two.
Kyle's mind raced. What do we do? If we can wake Isabel up, she might be able to protect the other girls, or at least give Liz a chance to use her defensive powers.
The scuffle of shoes and boots behind them grew louder, and Max and Kyle turned their heads to see seven armed men coming toward them. Kyle glanced at Michael, who kept his gaze squarely on the agents who menaced the girls.
Kyle closed his eyes and tried to go back to the place where he had just come from, where he had seen the unconscious Isabel and had spoken with Alex. He had no idea how he'd gotten himself there in the first place. But he knew that if he could return there, he could change the terrible future that now barreled toward them all like an out-of-control freight train.
Concentrating hard, Kyle saw Isabel again, lying in the darkness, very far away. As he moved closer, he began shouting to her, his words echoing up and down some back service corridor of his own mind. 'Isabel! Isabel, wake up! “
'split up!' Rath shouted, coughing. 'We'll meet up again tonight, in the usual place. “
Unfortunately he had already lost track of Lonnie and Ava in all the tumult, and could only hope that they'd heard him. A bedlam of shouts, curses, and weapons fire now filled the gutted warehouse, as did the smoke from the canisters that had fallen at Rath's feet. Enclosed behind an impenetrable veil of caustic vapor, Rath found that he could still move, but it felt as though he were swimming through peanut butter. Unable to draw breath, or see much of anything through his burning eyes, he forced his body forward, away from the din.
All at once, a wave of dizziness seized him, and he dropped heavily to his knees. Then he noticed that some clear air lingered near the floor. Inhaling deeply, he crawled as quickly as he could toward one of the walls.
He could breathe now, but his eyes continued to water obscuring his vision. But now he saw light ahead of him. The fire escape has to be around here, he thought, rising in a corner to feel around for a railing he remembered having seen earlier. Focusing past the exhaustion caused by the earlier battle, Rath concentrated on neutralizing the effects of the smoke canisters. Moments later, he felt only marginally better. He was still tired, and he simply wasn't the healer the late Zan the Man had been.
But at least he could see a little more clearly now. Rath saw that he stood only a few yards away from a wide, cracked window, through which he could see the platform and railings of a rusty metal fire escape. Its ladder led downward toward the street.
Machine-gun fire perforated the floor near his feet. He bolted toward the fire escape, diving straight for the window. Shutting his eyes tightly and throwing his arms in front of his face, he let his careening body shatter the glass. His heavy leathers protected his forearms, but his cheeks and scalp felt moist from a thousand tiny cuts. He ignored the pain and hurried down the fire escape ladder, which quickly extended toward the pavement in response to his weight.
He paused, glancing groundward for the first time since he'd gotten clear of the building. A little less than one story below him, ten or fifteen riot cops, decked out in body armor and gas masks, were rushing into the building through one of the street-level loading docks, which the cops apparently had just knocked down with the front end of their armored vehicle. More riot cops seemed to be coming, both from the armored car and also from around the building's corner, while he watched.
One of the troopers suddenly looked up in Rath's direction, though Rath couldn't see the cop's eyes through his shiny black helmet visor. The policeman pointed at him with a nasty-looking black truncheon and barked an unintelligible command.
More cops paused momentarily, and each of them looked Rath's way. Several leveled their rifles in his direction. Caught between the hammer and the anvil, Rath thought, quickly moving his muscular body back up the ladder and onto the fire escape platform. Alien-possessed derelicts were one thing. Highly trained armored cops were something else entirely. Even ifLonnie andAva manage to dodge the freaks in there, he thought, they aren't gonna have an easy time getting past these guys.
As Rath headed back toward the shattered window, one of the riot cops down below bellowed an order to halt. Rath ignored the command, as well as the bullet that struck the masonry near his shoulder. He dived back into the building, wondering exactly how long he had left until the oil furnace that Lonnie had sabotaged finally exploded.
Moments later, the warehouse reverberated with a deafening roar as gouts of smoke and flame erupted everywhere all at once. Rath couldn't help thinking that he, Lonnie, and Ava probably had very little chance of getting out of this alive.
'Boom!' Lonnie said, grinning at Ava through the lingering pall of tear gas. The two of them were still lying on the floor, where they had thrown themselves after the cops had entered and started exchanging fire with the armed alien freaks.
'I hope that explosion took out the freakazoids' machinery,' Ava said, coughing. 'I was starting to think that boiler you sabotaged was gonna take all day to blow. “
