A New Beginning

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 years, 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