behind Rath. They both turned sideways as far as they could, and Ava saw a bleary-eyed Lonnie getting slowly upright in her seat. Blinking in the harsh cabin lights, she seemed unaware of where she was, as well as unable to speak. Almost zombielike, Lonnie stared out an unshaded oval window at whatever lay beyond their flying prison.
Which prompted Ava to ask, 'Where are they taking us?' Her own window shade was almost all the way down, and she was seated too close to the aisle to reach it.
Rath nodded toward his own window, whose shade was all the way open, though all Ava could make out from beyond the double-layered Plexiglas was a sliver of bright blue sky.
'Judging from the lay of the land, I'd say we're heading for L.A.,' Rath said.
' Los Angeles?' Ava said, frowning.
'Yup. Swimmin' pools. Movie stars. Probably gonna be on the ground pretty soon. “
Ava thought of Langley, the first alien they had met from their home world, and their sometimes 'protector.' He had worked for the last several years as a television producer. On the rare occasions when any of them had heard from Langley, he had explained that his main goal in working in Hollywood was to gather wealth and power, which would make him better able to protect them.
It was, after all, Langley 's job to keep them out of situations like this one.
A sudden flicker of hope warmed Ava. Had Langley subtly influenced the feds into bringing them right to his doorstep? Maybe he was secretly planning to rescue them.
True to Rath's prediction, the jet touched down a few minutes later, jouncing slightly just before the engines went into reverse to slow the plane down. The sudden deceleration threw Ava forward in her seat, and she had to grab the arms of her seat to keep the cuffs from biting into her skin. The plane stopped, and a charged silence fell across the cabin for several minutes.
'The service is lousy on these alien-class flights,' Rath muttered. 'You'd think Uncle Sugar could spring for a bag of peanuts, at least. “
Ava ignored him, concentrating instead on the sounds she heard coming from the front of the cabin, just beyond the first-class curtains. Footfalls.
When the curtains opened a moment later, Ava half expected to see the face of their occasional protector.
Instead several hard-faced men in black suits entered the cabin. Guns drawn, they marched purposefully toward the three incapacitated teens.
Feeling naked with her powers knocked out, Ava tried to shrink down into her seat, making herself as small as possible, the way she did whenever Rath and Lonnie browbeat her into going along with whatever they planned to do. All of the helplessness she had felt when she'd watched Zan die came flooding back to her. She wondered if this, too, was an effect of the drugs she'd been given.
And she silently cursed herself for having been foolish enough to hope for rescue, from Langley or anyone else.
So far, so good, Special Agent Matthew Margolin thought.
The armored car and the motorized stairway met them on the tarmac, just as the agents hustled their three prisoners toward the open hatches at the front of the plane.
'I don't get it, Viceroy,' Dale Bartolli said, pitching his voice so that no one but Margolin could hear him. 'We go to all the trouble of requisitioning a black-windowed car to take them to the West Coast interrogation facility. But on the way to L.A. we let them look out the windows. “
Margolin smiled at his lieutenant, enjoying for a moment the momentary absence of Bartolli's customary sly, wolfish expression. 'Just a little mind game, Dale. “
'Those kids are alien beings of some sort, and they have some extraordinary powers,' Bartolli said. 'We can't afford to take any chances with them. Christ, we aren't even sure yet how many duplicates of them are running around loose. “
'Maybe that's something they'll shed some light on for us,' Margolin said. 'Particularly if we keep them off balance psychologically.' He imagined that this was a condition with which Bartolli was well acquainted.
'We should have taken them to a secure military facility “
Margolin appreciated Bartolli's thorough attention to his duties, but he sometimes thought the man lacked both a certain flair and the good sense not to question his superiors too much. This was such a time.
'They're drugged and therefore disoriented,' Margolin said, fixing his deputy with what he calculated to be a dangerous stare. 'They're young and therefore relatively easy to intimidate. It's important that they know how completely we've pulled their claws. It's important that they know we're not frightened of them. Just as it's important that you follow my orders. “
Margolin wasn't expecting Bartolli to cower; the man simply wasn't made that way. But he also wasn't expecting what Bartolli said next.
'Understood, sir. Just remember that while success has a thousand fathers, failure is always an orphan. “
Margolin glowered. 'What's that supposed to mean? “
Bartolli's dark, predatory eyes took on the businesslike aspect of an undertaker measuring a still-living prospective client for a pine box. 'I'm just pointing out that the director will no doubt reward you handsomely if our alien-capture ops all go as per plan. But if they don't, your corner office just might be getting a new tenant soon. “
With that, Bartolli turned and followed the prisoners and their guards to the forward hatch. He hadn't bothered to wait for either a reply or a dismissal.
Alone inside the jet, Margolin shivered involuntarily, as though someone had just stepped on his grave.
Ever since he had awakened on board the jet and discovered that he'd been both drugged and handcuffed, Rath had been thinking as rapidly as his fogged mind would allow.
He considered how oddly rested he felt after the long cross-country flight. If not for all the drugs in his system, he felt he'd be ready to take on the world.
Rath also thought about Zan's healing powers, and about how he'd tried to develop similar abilities of his own. As Zan's military adviser back on Antar, Rath had understood well the value of battlefield medicine. Unfortunately, he'd never attained anything like Zan's proficiency at direct wound-healing; Rath had concluded that this was a talent that required a fundamentally nobler worldview than he possessed.
But Rath had gotten pretty good at neutralizing infectious bioweapons, battlefield toxins, and poisons.
And narcotics.
Rath concentrated first on ordering and focusing his thoughts, at least as much as the junk in his bloodstream would allow. It was difficult at first, like trying to start a fire with nothing more than a pair of wet sticks. But somewhere at the center of his mind, his powers began to spark and smolder. The toxins in his blood responded by clumping together like a multivehicle crash on the highway, stopping and thereby rendering themselves harmless. As his faculties gradually returned, the process accelerated.
He knew that the hard part would be hiding his renewed strength from his captors.
'Move it,' said the hard-faced agent who stood almost nose to nose with him shortly after the jet had landed.
Standing in the aisle with Ava ahead of him and Lonnie behind… all of them surrounded by a half-dozen armed MiBs… Rath slowly moved toward the jetway. It took a real effort not to smile as he descended the stairs behind Ava, grabbing the railing to make himself appear weaker than he truly was.
Less than a minute later he stood on the tarmac, watching as several agents pushed a disoriented-looking Ava toward the armored vehicle that awaited them. They had to holster their weapons momentarily as they did so, leaving only three guns trained on both Rath and Lonnie.
