Lonnie nodded as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Ava thought she looked as utterly exhausted as she herself felt. 'You worry too much, O Queen of Antar,' Lonnie said, pointing toward a heap of dusty clothing that only moments before had contained a hostile, alien-possessed derelict. 'I just gave 'em their one-way ticket home. Without their machinery, they can't hang on to their host bodies. They just crumble away to dust like the Skins in their husks, or those vamps on Buffy. “
Ava looked at the mortal remains of what had been a human being, and suddenly felt ill. She realized the tear gas was only partly responsible. 'Too bad we couldn't have found a better way. “
'Better them than us,' Lonnie said, shrugging. 'Now let's get out of here. “
Ava coughed like a four-pack-a-day smoker as Lonnie helped her to her feet.
'Great,' Ava said as she recovered from her coughing fit. 'Now all we have to do is slip past the cops and find Ra… “
'Freeze! Police!' Fatigued, Ava hadn't noticed the riot cop until it was far too late.
Should have stayed in freaking Roswell with Max, Ava thought, meekly raising her hands.
Sergeant Vince Orman had only been forced to draw his weapon in the line of duty on a few prior occasions. Today was the first time he'd been forced to take another human being's life. The unkempt young man who had leaped out at him from behind a storage locker had been young… little more than a boy, really. Despite his riot helmet and gas mask, Orman had seen the gun in his assailant's hand and had ordered him to drop it.
But the kid had simply kept on coming, a vacant, strung-out look on his face. Now, he lay dead on the warehouse floor as clouds of tear gas quickly engulfed the place. Feeling a bitter upwelfing of regret, Orman looked carefully at the teen's face. He thought of the kid who had tried to exit the building via the fire escape a few minutes earlier, only to be chased back inside by the squad. Though Orman had only caught a glimpse of that kid, he could tell that this wasn't him. Better keep an eye out for that one. I've seen him around on the street, and he looks like trouble.
Luckily the tear gas canisters seemed to be having a profound effect on the other perps. Like the dead teen, these people carried firearms of various calibers, and represented a fair cross-section of New York 's street dwellers. They were dropping like flies, even as Orman and the men and women of his SWAT team secured the building's perimeter and began methodically handcuffing the at least two dozen people who were now gasping for air on the warehouse floor.
Orman felt the building shudder as a sound like thunder rattled the floor beneath his boots. 'What the hell was that?' he said, turning toward a female officer named Carmody 'Sounds like somebody set off a bomb,' Carmody said. 'Down in the basement. “
'Go check it out,' Orman said, suppressing a nightmare memory of Ground Zero, and all the friends and colleagues he'd lost there. 'Let's hope we don't have more terrorists on our hands. “
'1 don't think it's terrorists, Sarge,' Carmody said, pointing toward one of the cuffed thugs who lay on the floor near her feet. Though Orman couldn't see Carmody's face, he could hear an edge of incredulity in her voice.
Orman studied the perp on the ground and saw that he was decaying into dust right before his eyes. Looking through the haze of gas that still hung in the air, the sergeant saw that the other perps were also rapidly turning to powdery ash, which scattered into the air to mix with the drifting tear gas. All that remained of them was their clothing, weapons, and the handcuffs that had been placed on them during their arrests.
'I don't think it's terrorists,' Carmody repeated, kicking at the now-vacant pile of ragged clothing at her feet. 'Unless we just broke up an al-Qaeda sleeper cell from Mars, that is. “
'Sarge!' called another member of the SWAT team, a burly former bouncer named Richards, who was handcuffing a pair of teenage girls. With their bizarre punk hair and motley riot grrl fashions, they looked like refugees from some eighties-era retro dance club.
Orman walked quickly toward Richards and the girls. 'Bring 'em both in for questioning, Artie. I think these ladies have a bit of explaining to do. “
Hidden behind a discarded pile of scrap metal, Rath j watched as a phalanx of heavily armed riot cops proceeded to cuff the fallen aliens, who proceeded to turn to dust just moments after Lonnie's carefully arranged boiler-room explosion.
Rath smiled. The Antarian-possessed freakazoids wouldn't be bothering them, at least for a little while. That was one problem down.
Then he saw the cops leading Lonnie and Ava away in handcuffs. Both girls were clearly too exhausted to put up any real resistance. And Rath knew he couldn't muster enough power to fight off so many armed cops. Not after having been worn down by the freaks.
Maybe there's another way, he thought, silently emerging from the shadows. Moving stealthily, he mustered the last dregs of his powers.
Rath approached one of the riot cops from behind.
Max heard Kyle's words reverberating as loudly as a thunderclap. 'Isabel! Isabel, wake up! “
He let out a groan as he turned his head, taking in everything in the space of a heartbeat. Everyone in the hallway who wasn't handcuffed or unconscious was clasping hands to ears, grimacing in pain.
All except Kyle, Max noted. Kyle knelt beside him, his mouth tightly closed, though his eyes were wide with surprise at everyone else's reaction to his words.
Max realized only then that Kyle had not spoken the words aloud. Everyone had heard Kyle, but he had not actually uttered Isabel's name aloud.
Their equilibrium disrupted by the sudden imbalance in their inner ears, the agents and police wobbled a bit. But Max could see that they weren't quite incapacitated.
Gazing down the corridor, Max saw Isabel move slightly, then saw her turn her head. She's okay, he thought, his spirits buoyed.
Isabel rolled over and lifted her hand. Though she still appeared weak, she managed to send a power blast into the midsection of the agent nearest to her, tossing him upward and slamming him against the wall. His gun tumbled from his hand as he crumpled to the ground.
Liz, use your powers, Max thought. In that instant, in his mind, he saw Kyle, then Liz. And he knew that she, too, had heard him, thanks to whatever channel had allowed Kyle to speak directly into their minds.
Down the hall, Liz gritted her teeth and kicked out toward the second agent. Her foot collided with his leg. It would have been an ineffectual enough blow under normal circumstances, but Max could see from the glow that suffused her that she had charged herself with electrical energy. It was yet another manifestation of her still-developing powers.
The agent went down as if he himself had been tasered, but Max barely noticed. Moving as one, he and Michael rolled over and extended their hands. 'A barrier, not a blast,' Max yelled, and in his mind he released energy down from his brain, through his heart, into his arm, and out through his fingers.
A few feet behind… between the teens and the second group of pursuers… the air shimmered with a slight rainbow effect. Max, Michael, and Kyle got to their feet, and as they did so, the agents charged toward them. And just as quickly, the men bounced off the barely visible energy barrier that Max and Michael had just erected.
'Get Maria and Liz out of here,' Max yelled, keeping most of his attention focused on the barrier-blocked agents even as he looked toward the girls. As Kyle ran toward the girls, Max and Michael
