Turnabout

dressed in rumpled civilian clothes, followed Langley. Max and Isabel's parents! Maria realized, happily surprised. And the Parkers! They looked so drawn and haggard from their ordeal that Maria wasn't surprised it had taken her a few moments to recognize them. Thank the gods of Little Green Men that Valenti saved my mom from whatever hell they went through. Behind the four parents walked a slight, narrowshouldered girl dressed in tattered neopunk clothing. She preceded a pair of black-clad people Valenti and Duff, Maria figured who were carrying a limp figure between them. «Michael!» Maria said, her heart skipping a beat. A seeming eternity later, Valenti and Duff carefully laid Michael down beside the van, on a bedroll fetched by Jesse. «So what exactly happened?» Maria asked after she had exchanged tearful hugs with the Evanses and the Parkers. Shelby, who had just awakened, took them aside and proceeded to fill them in on some of the events they had missed since their capture by the Special Unit. «First, the good news,' Duff said, removing her black mask. «The Special Unit is taking a collective nap right now. I guess their subconscious minds need some time to process the posthypnotic commands they've just received.» «And when the agents wake up, they'll act on those orders and erase the whole organization,' Valenti said. «And once they're done with that, they're not supposed to remember a thing.» «What about the… bodies?» Diane Evans asked her husband. «If those agents find what's left of those… clones of Michael and Isabel…» She trailed off, looking as though she was about to be sick. Phillip took her gently into his arms. Maria suddenly felt very glad that she hadn't actually gotten inside the Special Unit compound. «I… already took care of that,' Max said, raising a single glowing hand. His voice was like a dam holding back an ocean's worth of sadness. Maria wondered what it would be like to have to dispose of the corpses of two of the people she cared about most in the world even if they weren't the genuine article. She hoped she'd never have occasion to find out. «Let's just hope nobody's left any secret backup files behind,' Phillip Evans said, evidently speaking from his own special area of expertise; after all, he had been the one who'd gathered the first evidence that could have exposed the Special Unit publicly. «If something like that turns up someday, we could all end up right where we started.» Langley shook his head as he pointed his ken-teej experimentally toward the last of the departing news vans. Maria noticed that not a single blip appeared on the little alien-tracking device. «Like I mentioned before,' Langley said as he pocketed the ken-teef, «I can only do this particular trick once. It won't work without a worldwide network of functioning ken-teefs. And they're all burned out now, all over the planet.» «This old world must be full of some pretty pissed-off aliens,' Valenti observed. «So much for the good news,' Maria said. «As for the bad…,' Duff said, trailing off as she indicated Michael's still form. Maria caught Valenti's eye. «Kyle is in about the same condition,' she said, pointing toward the inside of the Microbus. «Maybe even worse.» Looking worried, Valenti entered the van's side door to check on his son. «What happened to Michael?» Maria asked Max. «I think the Special Unit either stunned him or tranked him just before we brought them down,' he said, his brow deeply furrowed with concern. «I hope that's all it is,' Langley said. «He might be suffering from some sort of mindwarp-induced backlash. He was already unconscious when we did the deed, so that could have left him especially vulnerable to psi-shock.» «It would have been nice if you'd told me about that before we went ahead with the plan,' Max said angrily. «It would have been nice to have sent out for some gourmet vegetarian pizza beforehand too,' Langley quipped, sounding testy. «We all can only do what we can do, Your Highness-ness. We didn't have a lot of other options at the time, as I recall.» Max didn't seem to be in a very forgiving mood. «If I try to heal him without knowing what's wrong, I could end up making it worse.» «Maybe Isabel could dreamwalk him first,' Jesse said, sounding hopeful. «She can diagnose him. Then Max can try the laying-on-of-hands.» Maria knelt beside Michael, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. Despite the reassuring weight of the pistol against her hip, her earlier sense of helplessness returned in full measure. There has to be something I can do. She lowered her face to Michael's. He lay motionless, and seemed barely to be breathing at all. Then, impulsively, she kissed him. He grunted once, and his eyes quickly fluttered open. Her own eyes wide with surprise, Maria fell backward onto the gravel-strewn pavement beside the bedroll, stopping her motion with her backside and both hands. Michael raised himself onto his elbows, blinking in confusion at everyone who was looking down at him. «What are you all staring at? I feel like I just wandered into the last reel of The Wizard ofOz» Maria grinned as she wiped away a tear with her palm. «You gave us quite a scare, Dorothy,' she said. «Thought for a moment we were going to lose you.» Max gave his old friend a wry grin. «I think you and Maria both have the wrong movie in mind, Michael.» «And what's the right one?» «King Kong» Max said. Turning to Maria, he added, '«Twas Beauty who cured the Beast.'' «You're both wrong,' Maria said. «That's a misquote. And the right movie is Sleeping Beauty.» Michael sat up completely. His long hair floated about his shoulders as he shook his head. «The kiss wasn't what brought me back, doll-face. It was that Lancome lip stuff you put on back at Langley's. Pretty funkadelic. I swear, it could raise the dead.» She punched him in the arm as hard as she could, shoving him back onto the bedroll. «Hey! What did I say?» That boy is definitely sleeping alone tonight, Maria thought, fuming as she rose to return to the van. Valenti emerged from the Microbus at that very moment, his craggy face almost as ashen as his son's. «Max, I need your help. It's Kyle.» Standing near Deputy Valenti and her parents just outside the Microbus, Liz concentrated, trying once again to visualize Kyle's near future. Once again, she saw nothing. All she could do was watch anxiously as Max gently placed his glowing palm against Kyle's forehead. Isabel's dreamwalk had yielded only a few incoherent images, drawn mostly from kung fu flicks and old comic books, as near as Isabel had been able to tell. Max is flying blind, Liz thought. And no one can tell if Kyle is going to survive it not even Little Miss Dead Zone. Kyle tensed but remained unconscious as Max removed his hand. Staring at the glowing silver handprint that lingered on Kyle's forehead, Liz recalled what Max had just said about the dangers of trying to heal those whose ailments he didn't fully understand. We're just assuming that our little psi-bomb sent Kyle into some sort of shock, since he was its main conduit. Even with Langley's help and the alien orbs that Eddie had given them, she knew that the group couldn't have done it at all without access to Kyle's powers. Kyle's powers, she thought. And mine. Maybe that's it. The reason I can't even catch a glimpse of how all this is going to work out. Maybe our powers are the price of our gigundo mindwarp. Maybe they're our sacrifice. Maybe this little exercise has burned all the superpowers right out of us non-aliens. Kyle's sudden return to consciousness interrupted Liz's reverie. When he opened his eyes, he looked about as confused as Michael had when he'd awakened. But he wasted no time getting up and emerging from the van, whereupon his father clasped him in a bear hug that the Roswell Sheriff's Departments Jaws of Life couldn't have pulled apart. «Dad…,' Kyle said, groaning in mock pain. «Ribs… flexing… need… oxygen… passing… out…» Valenti released his son, holding him by the shoulders at arm's length. Liz hadn't seen the deputy so close to tears since the day he'd said farewell to Kyle, just before the group's hurried departure from Roswell only a step or two ahead of the Special Unit a few months earlier. «It's really good to have you back, son,' Valenti said. «Good to be back, Dad,' Kyle said, smiling. «But I really think you can lose the Batman suit now.» Valenti looked down at his body armor, suddenly selfconscious. He suddenly seemed to want nothing more than to find his cowboy hat and sheriff's department jacket. Still attired in her own black battle gear minus the mask Duff grinned and stood as erect as a runway model. «These old rags? They're all the rage where I work. Speaking of which, I have a top-secret government-issue black helicopter to return to where it belongs before the Special Unit people wake up. Anybody need a ride in the meantime?» As her parents and some of the others began figuring out the travel arrangements, Liz approached Max and took his hand. No fireworks or future flashes erupted when their fingers made contact. She turned to Kyle. «How do you feel, Kyle?» «Tired. I want to sleep until the Superbowl.» Isabel, Jesse, Maria, and Michael approached them as well, as if on cue. Have we really paid the price I think we have for getting the Special Unit out of our lives? Liz wondered. Turning to Isabel, she said, «I want you to touch Kyle.» «Come again?» Isabel said. «Indulge me.» Isabel shrugged, then placed a hand tentatively on the shoulder of a confused-looking Kyle. «Kyle, I want you to try to fire up your Psychic Friends power right now,' Liz said. «Try to make mental contact with me.» With a shrug of his own, he obliged her. A moment later, a look of surprise crossed his face. «Nothing. Not even a dial tone. I'll be damned.» Liz grinned. «You'll be normal, you mean.» «Must be side effect of what we did to the Special Unit,' Max said. «I wonder if it's permanent?» Liz pointed to the silver handprint that was still visible on Kyle's forehead. «You just healed him again, so who knows?» Kyle grinned, touching his forehead. He rushed to the side of the van to examine his reflection in the side mirror. «So I might get some new powers? And a new origin?» «Maybe even a new costume, too,' Michael offered, deadpan. «Don't get a cape, though,' Kyle nodded seriously. «Right. They'd just get caught in the doors of the Kylemobile.» «You two should read more books that don't have pictures in them,' Maria said, scowling at them both. Liz noticed then that Max was looking soulfully into her eyes. «What about your powers, Liz?» When she tried to marshal her powers, Liz felt a brief stabbing pain of loss. She wondered if this was what the stump of a severed limb felt like. She glanced up at the sky; the new day was turning bright and beautiful. In the distance, Liz heard a helicopter lifting off. She knew Duff and Valenti would get her parents, and Max's, safely home. That cheered her greatly. She decided that if she had indeed traded her alien abilities for the safety of her family, it would be a worthy exchange and one she