Turnabout

them from picking us off later on, after our families go home? It's pretty clear we can't trust them, Max. Her eyes were huge and soulful. They will come after us again. They'll keep coming as long as they're afraid of you. Of us. They won't give up as long as they even know about us. So what do I do, Liz? Kill them? Of course not, Liz said silently, in tandem with the quiet voice of his conscience. I suppose I could just order Langley to do it. How would that be any different from doing it yourself, Max? He knew she was right. But he also understood that he had no alternative other than to make this deal with the Special Unit. With luck, there would be time later to manage whatever blowback today's battle was sure to generate. «Come on, Liz,' Max said aloud, taking charge of Michael, with Liz's help, so that Duff and Valenti could keep their hands free just in case the MiBs tried a parting sneak attack. «Let's gather everybody up and get the hell out of here.» Max was startled to hear Michael's frantic voice coming from elsewhere in the hallway. «Bastards!» Max turned quickly toward the angry shout and saw the rapidly approaching form from which it had come. No, not Michael. Rath. Michael's East Coast duplicate. Though the two Special Unit leaders appeared every bit as surprised as Max, they reacted instantaneously to the threat, as did the cadre of armed guards who instantly raised their weapons. The scene became a slow-motion tableau before Max's startled eyes. While he and Liz struggled to drag Michael's limp form out of harm's way, Rath bypassed them, his fists glowing like a pair of meteors as he ran directly toward Scarface, who dived behind the cover of several heavily armed men. But the feral man stood his ground, grinning his dangerous grin as he drew a big-bore pistol from his shoulder holster. He pointed the weapon and fired several rounds in rapid succession. But not before Rath's hands released a flurry of eyedazzling energies that passed Max closely enough to singe his eyebrows. Despite the apparent dilation of time during this lethal exchange, Max found he couldn't think or move quickly enough to try to erect a force field between the two combatants. From a little farther down the corridor, he heard an anguished cry coming from Langley, who had once again failed to protect one of his young Antarian charges. «Run!» Max shouted to his parents and the Parkers, and through the brilliant spots that still clouded his vision he saw that Duff and Valenti were already busy hustling everyone to the relative safety of a room directly off the main corridor. The air was perforated by the multiple sharp reports of machine-gun fire. His vision cleared enough to reveal the bullet-ridden corpse of Rath and the charred, smoldering ruin of what had once been the feral man. Max stared for a moment in horrified fascination before he realized that Scarface was still very much alive, and directing his men to open fire. Thinking quickly, Max raised another force field around himself, Liz, and the retreating backs of the rest of his party, rescued and rescuer alike. «Come on, Max,' Liz was saying, puffing as she struggled to drag the still-unconscious Michael. «I can't move him by myself.» A moment later, they had all passed through a door, which Max reinforced with force-field energies. Looking across the wide chamber, he saw that Langley was doing the same thing with the opposite door, as well as blocking off the balcony above to prevent any Men in Black from drawing a bead on them from overhead. Max heard his mother's frightened scream, and he realized with a start that the group had taken refuge in the chamber of quasimedical horrors from which he had just escaped. The place his sister's dupe had failed to escape. Max wanted to walk toward the butcher's block where the corpse lay, to take his mother in his arms and reassure her that the carved piece of meat that lay there wasn't her daughter. Wasn't his sister. But he couldn't afford to split his concentration right now; if he was to let the force field slip even for an instant, none of them would likely survive for very long. Liz, he said wordlessly. Tell my mom. Gotcha, Max. She didn't need an explanation. Moments later, Max's force field was still holding strong. And Liz was doing the very thing Max longed to do: offering words of comfort and reassurance, but mostly repeating over and over that this wasn't Isabel, that Isabel was safe, safe with Jesse and Kyle and Maria. Meanwhile, Valenti and Duff found some surgical linen and discreetly covered up Lonnie's gore-spattered body. After helping Duff cover up the mutilated corpse that lay on the operating table, Valenti quickly took stock of the room. Several other still bodies lay strewn about in the awkward random postures of sudden death. From the singed white lab coats most of them wore, he concluded that these people were the ones responsible for the grotesquerie they had found on the table. All but one. Crumpled behind the operating table was a teenage girl who strongly resembled Tess Harding. It's Ava, Valenti realized, kneeling beside her. The other Tess, the one from New York. Valenti heard someone moaning nearby. He looked up and saw Langley, who was helping Max barricade the room with force fields. The alien protector's face was a mask of concentration and remorse. «I've failed them,' he said, sobbing. «I was supposed to protect them, but instead I've failed them all.» Very gently, Valenti reached under Ava's blue hair to touch her neck. He felt a faint pulse. «Maybe not completely, you haven't,' he said. The MiBs were smashing something heavy into the door, and Max kept his force field strong and steady. But he already felt exhausted, and pushed beyond his limits; he wondered how long he and Langley could keep this up. The chasm of despair yawned wide again. Rath's attack no doubt precipitated by his discovery of Lonnie's body had ruined Max's last chance to get out of this situation without getting more blood on his hands. He looked toward Langley, and they locked eyes significantly for a moment. What now? Max said/thought, using Kyle's still-open psychic channel. Most likely we Mil or we die, Max. Looks like we're gonna have to go ahead with the brain-blast after all. The thought of being the cause of more death today was making Max physically ill. No. There has to be another way. His mind replied with something Liz had said earlier: They won't give up as long as they even know about us. Langley, whose emotions felt jangled and confused in Max's head, had evidently overheard the thought. Ava's alive, he told Max. If we can get her mindwarp powers into the mix, we might be able to zap the MiBs with persuasion. Max suddenly understood. You and Isabel and Kyle can extend Ava's mindwarp power over a wide area, he thought. Use it to trick these guys into leaving us alone instead of just frying their brains. This is still pretty powerful stuff, Max, Langley thought in response. Doing this will pretty much burn all our alien bridges. After we do it, we won't be able to look up any of the other aliens living on Earth because all the ken-teefs on the planet will be so many paperweights. It's not the kind of solution you'd consider if you were still thinking about going home to Antar. Max replied: Right now, all I'm concerned about is getting all of us out of here alive. And keeping the Special Unit from coming after us again. I'm right with you, Maxie, Langley said/thought. Under the circumstances, this is probably the best choice with the support of the king of Antar, of course. And with your Isabel and Kyle and my Ava still in the game, we just might have enough resources to pull it off, tinfoil hats notwithstanding. Kyle seemed to be beside Max then though Max knew he was actually still outside either in or near the Microbus and assured Max that he felt very good about what they were about to do. The chasm of despair receded yet again from Max, replaced by the first real feeling of hope he had experienced since the day the Special Unit had forced him and his friends to flee Roswell. «Tess!» Liz said, then caught herself. Try as she might, she found it nearly impossible to set aside the intense, whitehot hatred she still felt for the late Tess Harding, the woman who had betrayed Max and murdered Alex Whitman without a shred of remorse. She had to keep reminding herself that this young woman wasn't Tess, despite the close resemblance. She thought she might be able to get past that one day, given enough time to grieve and heal. But putting those feelings aside in the here-and-now was quite another matter. «Ava,' Liz said tightly, kneeling beside the semiconscious girl, «wake upi We need you. The Special Unit agents are pounding down the door, and Max and Langley can't keep their force fields up forever.» Ava blinked and shook her silvery-blue hair as she tried to sit up. Her eyes looked bleary and unfocused. «What? Where's Rath?» Liz hated having to answer questions like that, even for somebody who looked so much like Tess. «I'm sorry,' she said, taking Ava's hand. «Rath… I'm afraid he didn't make it.» A look of intense grief and guilt crossed Ava's delicate features. Liz found it gratifying, and was immediately ashamed of herself. She reminded herself again that Ava wasn't Tess. «I tried to stop him from going after them alone,' Ava said, looking a few yards away at Michael's unconscious form. Ava's tears began flowing freely. «But he wouldn't listen.» Liz gently patted Ava's hand. «We often have the same problem with our own Rath,' was all she could think of to say as she watched the slow rise and fall of Michael's chest. She looked back at the sobbing girl. Here but for the grace of the Special Unit goes Maria, she thought sadly. Liz was startled by a loud thump as the agents out in the corridor apparently redoubled their efforts to knock down the door beyond Max's force field. «I'm sorry about what's happened to you,' Liz told Ava. «But if you don't get into this fight, we're all dead.» Ava shook her head, looking defeated. «Did you notice those tinfoil beanies the MiBs are wearing? My power can't cut through those. It's a waste of time.» «We have a way to boost your mindwarp power to a much higher power level,' Langley said aloud. «You just have to believe. Maybe you could even try clapping your hands, the way they did for Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.» «If we're going to do this,' a sweating Max said, also speaking out loud, «we're going to have to do it now.» Liz suddenly realized that if both Max and Langley were getting too exhausted to communicate telepathically, then the collapse of their force fields couldn't be far off. Soon, they'd be overrun by MiBs. «Kyle says he's right outside in the van now, holding the alien communicator orbs in his hands, just the way you explained,' Liz said, hoping to bolster their spirits. «I'm ready too,' Langley said, sweating profusely as he struggled to maintain his own force field. Liz thought he looked just as worn out as Max did, and could easily see why; at the