the flames in the fire pit dance and crackle. Langley was in his study making some calls, lining up the people whose help they were going to need, and he had wanted to do it alone. Maria and Michael were elsewhere, probably sleeping, Max guessed. Liz was already asleep in his arms, though fitfully. Max could tell from the fluttering of her eyelids that her dreams were anything but restful. He touched her forehead lightly, his palm glowing. His fingertip traced a silver line near her hairline as he transmitted his feelings of warmth and love directly to her dreaming brain. Max heard a sound and abruptly stopped. He looked around, but saw nothing. And then the room begin to liquefy around him, the muted colors of the walls and draperies running down to the floor like melting ice cream. Even Liz melted from his arms, her body falling like sand through his fingers. Max scrambled to catch her, to keep her whole, but found himself instead kneeling in a parched, sienna-hued desertscape. Looking up, he saw Isabel, Kyle, Jim Valenti, and the female FBI agent who had worked the Dupree abduction case last year. They all stood around him in a loose circle. He realized then that they were standing in the rockstrewn desert outside of Roswell, in the very place where «the Pod Squad» had assembled so often for private conversations over the years. «Max!» Isabel approached, wrapping her arms around him in a hug. She felt somehow less than substantial, like a figment from a dream. «What's going on?» Max asked, pulling away from her. «Long explanation,' Kyle said. «Suffice it to say that those psychic shout-outs I did back in Wyoming weren't a fluke. Isabel's been helping me deal, and bringing me up to speed.» «Why are you here?» Max asked, turning toward the FBI agent and Valenti. «And why am I here?» «Trying to answer the very same questions was why I went Buddhist,' Kyle said wryly. Max was having a hard time processing the conversation, though it certainly seemed real enough. The sudden change of milieu was unnerving. «We're not really here,' Isabel said, scowling at Kyle as she gestured at the desert panorama that surrounded them. «Isabel's right,' Kyle said. «The scenery is probably just an unconscious manifestation of my nifty new mental powers. Sort of a psionic screen saver.» Ignoring Kyle's banter, Isabel looked Max directly in the eye. «Kyle and I are headed for Los Angeles. We're on a chartered jet right now, along with Jesse and a lawyer friend of Dad's. She's got all the proof we need to drag the Special Unit out into the open.» And us as well, Max thought ruefully. «Not all the proof,' the African-American woman said. «Jim and I just cleaned out the files from the Special Unit's safe house outside Roswell. Brody's holding the stuff at the UFO Center right now.» «We're on our way to L.A. now too,' Jim Valenti said. «By helicopter. Once we get there, we'll need to hook up with Jesse and the other lawyer you're traveling with. As well as whoever Brody has been able to contact there to help us bring the Special Unit down.» He gestured around the circle. «It certainly seems as though fate is conspiring to bring us all together, doesn't it?» It certainly seemed that way to Max. He drew comfort from the fact that he, Isabel, Michael, Liz, Maria, and Kyle had so many good people rooting for them. And on their way to help us. «Have you found Langley yet?» Isabel asked. «Yeah. Maybe it's best that you all come here. We can strategize better once we're all together in the flesh.» He gave them the address. «How soon will you be here?» «Our pilot just announced that we're starting to make our descent,' Isabel said. «Which airport?» the FBI agent wanted to know. «The private airfield at Burbank,' Isabel said. «We should be on the ground within minutes. Then we just have to get to Langley's place. Brody's already taken care of that for us.» «I'd give us another twenty to thirty minutes before we get to the Hollywood Hills,' the FBI agent said. «I'm keying in the coordinates for this Langley guy's address now. Any chance there's room to land a helicopter there?» Max laughed, realizing how incredible the entire situation was. «Yeah. You might say he's got a really big front yard. I suppose if you land there, the neighbors will just think it's a publicity stunt to promote one of his movies.» And then it hit him. The thing that had been nagging at him since Isabel had appeared before him. Her death. «Wait. Why did you come here, Isabel? You know what Liz saw.» He could see a flicker of doubt in her expression, but there was determination as well. «I know what she saw, Max. But we're going to make sure that it doesn't happen. We're all going to be there. We can't fight these people one by one, like the bad guys in some cheap kung fu movie. We can't let them keep taking away our freedom, our parents, our ' Isabel suddenly grabbed her stomach and screamed. Wounds began to appear on her, blood seeping through her clothes, running down her face. «Max!» she cried out, her eyes huge, panicked. A moment later, she blinked out, and a reddish stain hung in the air where she had been. «Kyle, what happened?» Max asked, reaching toward the younger Valenti. But Kyle's face a mask of shock and fear was fading as well, until it, too, blinked out of existence. All at once Max felt as though he were rushing headlong through a wind tunnel. His head snapped back painfully, and he was once again in Langley's living room, holding Liz, who remained fast asleep. What just happened to Isabel? 13. Los Angeles Max wriggled out from under Liz's sleeping form as best he could, then sprinted toward Langley's study. Langley was there with paperwork spread in front of him, a phone headset across his bald scalp, and a cell phone held up to one ear. «Hold a sec,' he said into the headset's wire pickup. «What's up, Max?» «Something horrible just happened,' Max said. He grabbed the ken-teef off of the table, and pulled the large area map toward him. He turned the alien-tracking device upside down and concentrated. Isabel, he thought, picturing his sister. The white nodule blinked on, and a light shone down onto the map. The bright spot, apparently representing Isabel, lay a significant distance away from the City of Industry. «What is it?» Langley asked, coming closer. He had put the cell phone down, though he still wore the headset. Show me all the Antarians, Max thought, and the white nodule accommodated him by blinking a multitude of times. Three bright spots appeared on the map in the Hollywood Hills region. One continued to shine where he had asked it to locate Isabel. And two more were visible near the City of Industry. The third, faltering light that had been with the others when Langley had demonstrated the ken- teef was now gone. «She's dead,' Max said. He dropped the ken-teef onto the table. «Who's dead?» Langley asked. «What's this about?» «Lonnie. Isabel's duplicate. Vilandra's duplicate. Whatever. Her light was the one that was blinking before. The one you said was in trouble. It's not there anymore.» «What makes you so sure it's hers?» Langley asked. Max giggled a bit, but not out of mirth. He recognized it as a sound that came from someplace deep, dark, and very deliberately hidden. «One Max. Two Michaels. One Isabel. One Ava. One Langley. That's it. That's all that's left of Antar's good guys. Because the Special Unit just killed Lonnie.» Liz appeared in the doorway. «Max, what's wrong?» Max looked at her. Though he knew his eyes were wet, he could feel a smile tugging gently at his face. «It wasn't Isabel, Liz. In your premonition. It wasn't Isabel they vivisected. It was Lonnie. The duplicate. She's dead now.» «I think you'd better sit down, Max,' Langley said. «You look like you're about to faint, kiddo.» «I'm so sorry, Max,' Liz said, coming over to hug him as he sat in a huge padded chair. «How do you know for sure the other Vilandra is dead?» Langley asked, grabbing the ken-teef for himself and examining the points of light that reappeared on the map. «Maybe she got into a car and just drove out of the ken-teefs range.» «I was having a… Kyle brought me into a vision. It was kind of like one of Isabel's dreamwalks, only I was awake,' Max said, trying to explain. «Isabel was there, and Kyle, and Sheriff Valenti, and this FBI agent who is helping him fight the Special Unit. We were trying to figure out what to do next. They'll all be arriving here in the next hour.» He stopped, trying to refocus his thoughts, to reach high enough ground to avoid being swept away by his own roiling sense of grief and loss. «We were discussing things, and…«He began weeping openly, and used the back of his hand to wipe the tears from his cheek. Liz leaned over from behind, embracing him. «It's okay, Max.» After a pause, he found his voice again. «We were talking, and Isabel suddenly went all bloody, and then she got ejected from the vision,' Max said, resuming. «She just wasn't there anymore.» «Maybe your Vilandra somehow tuned in on the duplicate Vilandra's death,' Langley said quietly, looking and sounding sadder than Max had ever seen him. «Like some sort of psionic sympathetic vibration,' Liz said, nodding in agreement. But Max wasn't at all sure about that. «Then why didn't I feel something when Zan died in New York? The other me, I mean?» Liz shrugged. «Maybe it's because your powers don't seem to have a telepathic component. Isabel's dreamwalk powers might have made her sensitive to the death of her duplicate.» Max nodded soberly. He wondered what the East Coast Tess had felt at the moment of her counterpart's fiery death a few months back. Langley turned away from them, and Max saw one of his hands clenching and unclenching. The shorter man's back tensed, and suddenly, across the room, all of the drink glasses near the wet bar exploded. Glass cascaded through the air, but none of it came close to any of them. Langley turned back around, and Max saw an expression of anger of hatred on his face. He had seen him like this before, when he had forced Langley to shapeshift and help him find the spaceship. Langleys fury seemed even more focused and vehement, almost white-hot in its intensity. «They were my responsibility,' he said, his voice low and menacing. «But they didn't want my help.» «Who?» Max asked.
«Your duplicates» Langley snarled. «They could have been you. They could have been better than you. I could have given them so much! But I let them reject me, let them go off on their own. Because my life became more important to me than theirs.» Max started to speak. «If it was their choice ' «They didn't know any better,' Langley said, interrupting him. «1 should have forced them to see.» He stalked out of the room, jagged shards of glass crunching underneath his bare feet. He didn't seem to notice the crimson footprints he was leaving across the plush cream-colored carpeting. Max felt something rip loose within his chest and
