moment, someone was very noisily trying to smash down the door Langley was covering, and the balcony overhead was crawling with armed men who would be able to open fire the moment the force field there fell. As both force fields flickered and began to collapse, Liz helped an exhausted Max walk toward the operating table, which Ava and Langley were approaching from the opposite side. The parents were huddled against a wall, tending to the unconscious Michael. «The more power we pour into this, the better,' Langley said as the four linked hands near Lonnie's body, making Liz think of seances and weird mystical rituals. Maybe that's what this is, she thought. Whatever. So long as it works. Liz closed her eyes. Once again, she saw a future-flash of a soft-focus white room, suffused with both terror and anger. Hoping she wasn't glimpsing a future that awaited anyone she cared about, she put it out of her mind. «Concentrate, kiddies,' Langley said, his eyes tightly closed. Liz imagined it was as much to concentrate as to avoid seeing the table where Lonnie's corpse lay. «I can only do this little trick once.» Liz didn't like the sound of that. In fact, she wondered what the price would be for carrying out this plan, for focusing and channeling so much power. After all, in literature whenever anyone tampered with the forces of nature or made a bargain with the Devil, or with scheming Machiavellian types like Langley there was always a steep price to be paid, a painful sacrifice to be made. Putting her misgivings aside, Liz concentrated on placing whatever psionic energies she possessed into the channel Kyle and Isabel had established. If I'm to be the sacrifice, then so be it. They won't give up as long as they even know about us, someone's voice her own? was saying in her head. So we're targeting every one oj their people who knows about us. Every one oj their machines that knows about us. The pounding on the doors grew louder, more insistent. Mass-mindwarp amnesia, broadcast on a need-to-know basis over the Kyle-and-Isabel Channel, Liz thought, chuckling. With a little help from their psychic friends. One of the doors came crashing open. The room immediately filled with a cacophony of angry shouts, clacking rifle-bolts, and the harsh footfalls of booted feet. «Now,' Langley said. Then, as though a silent bomb had detonated, the room abruptly filled with a blinding radiance. And Liz felt herself or perhaps only a part of herself being swept away. Margolin held his pistol at the ready as his men repeatedly struck the medical section's door with the military siegeram. Though the door was reinforced with structural steel, it should have given way minutes before it did. Those aliens beyond the door must have been propping it up somehow, using their bizarre psychokinetic abilities. Who can doubt now that those abilities represent a clear and present danger to the entire country? he thought, glancing back at the heap of charred meat that had been his second-in- command only minutes ago. «Door's coming loose,' Henrickson said. A moment later, a bone-jarring crash signaled that he was right. The Special Unit troopers streamed through the opening like voracious soldier ants. Abruptly, the world turned white. Margolin shielded his dazzled eyes, but it did little good. Something was tugging insistently at his brain, his mind, his will. No! he thought, clutching madly at his protective cap. I'm insulated from this! I won't allow my mind to be bent by these alien freaks! Then the tsunami of white light and psychic noise rose to a crescendo around him, engulfing him as though he were a straw in a hurricane. But he stood his ground, refusing to bend, just as he always had. 18. Maria could feel that Langley's improvised «brain bomb» had just gone off. She thought something in the air felt different, but couldn't yet determine what it was. Dawn was breaking on the horizon, but hadn't yet chased the chill from the air. Her breath steaming in front of her, she looked to the east, just past the ancient factory building the Special Unit called home. Though she was technically doing something useful standing watch, studying the outside of the Unit's lair for any sign of reaction Maria felt distinctly left out. And this was even though Kyle and Isabel had made sure she'd been able to mentally «listen in» as the last-ditch counterattack against the Special Unit was carried out. Carried out by the jew, the proud, the superpowered, she ruminated glumly, thinking how weird it was to overhear the thoughts of Tess, or a pretty darned reasonable facsimile thereof, during the runup right before the attack. What she could see of the building's facade and crumbling loading docks still looked completely peaceful. It was impossible to tell whether the brain- bombing had worked according to the last-minute plan she'd gleaned over the Kyle-O-Phone. If it has, then everybody in the Special Unit is deep in alien hypno-sleep right now. And when they wake up, they won't be able to resist Tess's I mean Ava's Kyle-boosted, delayedaction mindwarp. Then they'll delete every file and shred every hard copy, just before forgetting all about Roswell, alien teenagers, and their ongoing X-Files obsession. And, as Brody might say, I had shag-all to do with making any of it happen. Maria had never felt so useless before in her life. Stretching her legs as she leaned against the front of the Microbus, she glanced eastward again. The ring of news vans had just begun to break up and drive away, as though the people inside them,the aliens inside them, she reminded herself had abruptly become satisfied that there was nothing to report here after all. No stories about aliens, or alien-hunters, or conspiracies to manage or spin. they must have been tuned into Radio-Free Kyle, too. So with any luck, it all adds up to two things: the Special Unit goes down today, and nobody «outs» the Pod Squad in the process. She wasn't quite sure whether she should feel freaked out or reassured by the heavy alien infiltration of the media. I guess it's better for Michael and the others to be spied on by Bug-Eyed Paparazzi from Outer Space than by badly dressed paranoid wackjobsfrom the FBI, she finally decided. Then another, even more chilling, thought suddenly occurred to her: What if the news vans are leaving because the Pod Squad's brain bomb didn't work as advertised? What if they're shoving off now because they know the Special Unit is still alive and kicking and about to come after them as well as us? It was only then that Maria noticed the unaccustomed silence that now reigned inside her head. The mental link that Kyle and Isabel had set up which had come to include her own, non-alien, non-superhuman brain as well as those of Max, Michael, Langley, and just about everydangedbody else who'd gotten swept up into this mess seemed to have just collapsed. Without realizing it, Maria had begun getting used to the constant low-level chatter of the ongoing psionic party-line. Kyle's Psychic Friends Network is off the air, she realized with mounting fear. «Kyle?» she said, and thought; she then paused to listen for his response. None came, either through the air or over her now-silent mental transom. She scrambled back inside the van as quickly as she could manage. She saw that Isabel was in the back, looking dazed by the brain bomb's immediate aftermath as Jesse cradled her in his arms. Shelby, her caffeine overdose now evidently history, snored quietly beside them, oblivious. Kyle lay sprawled across one of the bench seats, an alien communicator orb clutched in each hand. The orbs, which had glowed a fierce orange when Kyle and Isabel had touched them apparently using them as lenses or amplifiers for everyone's interconnected alien powers, possibly even including those possessed by the now-departing members of the press corps were now gray and dead. They looked like so many lumps of desiccated moon rock. The alien compass also lay nearby, looking as inert as the orbs.
And as far as Maria could tell, Kyle wasn't in much better shape. «What happened?» she asked anyone who might answer. Jesse blinked as though he'd been suddenly jolted awake from a strange dream. «I'm… I'm not sure. Isabel and Kyle started concentrating on the orbs and then it was like some sort of psychic feedback went off inside their heads.» Isabel was stirring, and Maria decided she didn't look so bad after all. But Kyle was ashen-faced. She knelt beside him, noticing that he seemed almost comatose. I overheard Liz thinking about the price ojmass-mindwarping the Special Unit just before she and the rest of the Scooby Gang lit the brain bomb's fuse, Maria thought. She was near panic now, but she also felt desperate to make herself useful in any way she could. I hope to heck this wasn't what Liz meant when she was thinking about «sacrifices.» She rummaged around through her duffel until her fingers found the stock of the pistol she had taken off of one of the MiBs they'd eluded back in Wyoming. Isabel now seemed to be fully awake. «Maria, what are you doing?» Maria shrugged. «I have absolutely no idea. But I can't just sit here.» «I think we ought to sit tight until we know exactly what's going on in there,' Jesse said. «That sounds like a good, old-fashioned bad idea,' Maria said, hefting the weapon. «For all any of us know, the MiBs are this minute getting ready to slice Michael up like a Christmas ham.» «If anybody goes in there to look around,' Isabel said, holding up her hand, «it should be somebody with alien powers.» Jesse scowled. «If you think I'm gonna let you march right into the place where Liz saw you being vivisected, you're crazy.» «That wasn't me, Jesse. Remember?» «Right. And I intend to make sure it stays that way, thank you very much.» Married people, Maria thought, shaking her head as she checked the bullets in her gun. «Talk amongst yourselves, lovebirds,' she said aloud. «I'm going in.» It's high time I got to do something around here. Maria leaped out of the van, ignoring Jesse and Isabel as they followed her, protesting. She began striding briskly toward the neglected-looking building as the sun painted the horizon in lapis and gold. She squinted into the waxing light, then paused in her tracks when her eye noticed some motion near the building. Isabel and Jesse had caught up with her. Isabel pointed, evidently having glimpsed the movement as well. «Somebody's coming out.» Maria strained to see who was approaching, keeping the gun at the ready just in case. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea whether she could hit anything at this range. At least it's bound to work better than trying to ElKabong the bad guys over the head with my guitar. One of the approaching figures waved, and a few seconds later Maria could see that this was Liz. The closing distance and the morning light revealed Max walking beside her, followed by Langley, whose forehead gleamed with sweat. Two men and two women, all
