by Andy Mangels
Both Vilandra and Rath made sour faces, but didn't argue further.
"You the man, Zan," Rath said.
Ava found his unpleasant smirk uncomfortably similar to that of the predator he had slain. Bad enough they were encased in unfamiliar human bodies; were they susceptible to a transfer of personality traits as well? How else is this cursed world going to change us?
2 Cheyenne, Wyoming. Fall 2002.
Mom and Dad-Just time to send you a quick e-mail before we get on the road again. Hope all is well with you. I hope business is good at the Crashdown. I figure you're probably doing okay, even *without* your two best waitresses and cook. Ha-ha!;) It's been so long since I've seen either of you. I miss you both. Someday, maybe it will be safe enough for us to come back for a visit, but right now I think it's still way too dangerous. I can't really talk about where we are or what we've been doing lately, since everyone is scared that the bad guys from the government will track us down somehow. Even though all my best friends are here, it's kind of lonely without my family and all the familiar Roswell landmarks. And I've started to realize-well, we all have-how impor- tant it was to be safe at home, and just how much Sheriff Valenti really was our guardian angel.
Speaking of that, please tell him "Hi" for us. Is he still going out with Maria's mom? She's dying to know, but since you guys can't e-mail us back, I guess we won't find out.
Max and I are doing well, though sometimes it's still hard to believe we're actually married. We don't get a lot of privacy or anything, since we're always traveling with the others. I know that Michael and Maria have talked about marriage too, but Michael's so noncommittal (he's gotten a lot more mature over the past few weeks, but Michael is still Michael), and Maria won't commit to someone so noncommittal, so there's not much progress there.;) I feel bad for Isabel, since she's away from Jesse. She and Kyle are the only two "single" members of our group, which doesn't leave Kyle with a lot of choices, and that also means that Isabel is moody a lot of the time. I know I'd be pretty cranky if Max and I were pulled apart the way Iz and Jesse have been.
Some of us look a little different now, to help us hide out from anyone chasing us. But I can't tell you what we look like, just in case anyone is reading this e-mail other than you. I'll just say that all the guys look as good as Brad Pitt now, and we girls look good enough to get modeling contracts. Ha-ha! And if anyone else *is* reading this e-mail leave us alone. Please. None of us have hurt anyone. We just want to live normal lives. Leave us alone.
So anyhow, like last time, I'm only using this e-mail address once, so you won't be able to respond to it, and the Men in Black won't be able to trace us. I know that sometime in the future we'll be able to talk again, and (I hope) even see each other soon, face to Pausing in her typing, Liz Parker looked up. She watched as Maria DeLuca, sitting one stool over from her in the cramped confines of the Cybernet Cafe, composed a hasty electronic note of her own. Liz let herself be hypnotized for a moment by the rhythmically blinking cursor. Then Maria broke the spell by hitting the "Send" button. Maria's e-mail immediately disappeared into cyberspace.
"You're all done?" Liz asked, unnecessarily.
Maria ran her hand through her newly wavy hair and leaned backward in her chair. "Looks that way. There's not much I can really tell Mom. I mean, what am I going to do… talk about encounters with yet another race of 'Czechoslovakians' and haunted mansions full of Skins?" She snorted. "I bet she's probably wearing a whole necklace-full of healing crystals to help with the headaches she must have started getting after our departure from Ros… " She abruptly caught herself, then glanced quickly around the room as though scanning for spies. "From the town, I mean," she finished a beat later.
Seated a few stools away, Kyle Valenti looked up from his computer monitor. His wavy brown hair fell slightly into his angular face as he looked first toward the girls, then focused on a point in space beyond them. From the way he motioned with his head, Liz could see that something had caught his interest. He mouthed something they couldn't hear, but she lip-read two familiar words: Pod Squad.
Liz and Maria turned toward the front of the Cybernet Cafe to see their three companions striding in. Max Evans was in the lead, flanked by his sister, Isabel, and his best friend, Michael Guerin. They always look like they're striding off to war when they walk in as a trio, Liz thought. Maybe it comes naturally to them.
Of course, Liz was well aware that what was natural for these three seemingly ordinary teenagers was, in fact, rather otherworldly. Their true home was a planet called Antar, part of a solar system that had five inhabited planets. Zan had been the ruler of Antar, and his family dynasty had united the five worlds. Although Zan was well respected, there were many who felt his policies and agendas reached too far. One of those who opposed King Zan was Kivar, a general who had become an Antarian senator. Kivar spearheaded the conspiracy that overthrew Zan's empire, killing the king… as well as Zan's sister, Vilandra, his second-in-command, Rath, and his wife, Ava.
Sometime during the war that followed, the DNA of the "Royal Four"… the genetic templates for re- creating Antar's rightful leaders… was brought to Earth. Here, a faction loyal to King Zan had used a semisentient organism called Gan- darium to incorporate human DNA into that of the Royal Four. The resulting hybrid embryos were still clones of Zan, Vilandra, Rath, and Ava… except that they appeared to be human.
But despite outward appearances, Liz could never overlook the fact that her husband, Max… who was heir to the late King Zan's DNA as well as his throne… was not fully human. Neither were Isabel and Michael, who carried in them the genes of Vilandra and Rath. Liz knew she could never escape that knowledge. Four years ago, Max had healed her after she was accidentally shot at the Crashdown Cafe, which her parents operated in Roswell, New Mexico. On that fateful day, Max's healing touch had transferred some of his alien essence into her; as a result, she now sometimes manifested extra-normal powers.
Now they were on the run from the government, after one too many government investigations into the presence of aliens in Roswell had brought to light a host of unusual occurrences. They had been forced to change their appearances, to use fake names, to travel in a van together, and to be constantly on the watch for potential captors.
So, maybe they're right to be walking like they're going to war, Liz thought, still watching Max, Isabel, and Michael. And maybe I should be right there with them, with my husband. But in her heart, Liz knew she already was fighting alongside her husband. She and Maria and Kyle were risking their lives every day, just by remaining with the group.
"Are you almost done?" Max asked, keeping his voice low. He quickly looked around the cafe to see if anyone was paying attention to them. The plump woman in the floral print muumuu wasn't, nor was the counter helper, who seemed to be playing some kind of game on his computer.
"Yeah, just finishing up," Liz said.
"I just sent mine," Maria said, gesturing toward the e-mail program still running on her terminal.
Max looked over at Kyle, who grinned and shrugged slightly. "I finished quite a while ago," he said. "So I've been surfing the free adult sites. “
"How special," Isabel said, her words dripping with sarcasm.
"Would you hurry up, Liz?" Michael said. "We can't afford to be on these things any longer than necessary. “
Liz glared at him and turned back to her screen. She typed quickly, finishing her last sentence: Gotta go. Love you lots. Liz.
Then she clicked "Send." As soon as the system confirmed her message was sent, she hit the quit command, exiting the program…
Liz noticed Isabel pacing behind her. "This isn't fair, you know?" Isabel said, keeping her voice measured and low, but adding just enough venom to make it clear that she was unhappy. "I'm forbidden to talk to Jesse by e-mail or phone, and yet they can talk to their parents. “
"We've talked about this already, Iz," Max said. "Jesse made it seem like he made a clean break from you when he went to Boston.
If he heard from you regularly, it would put him in danger too. “
"I think it's stupid for any of you to be contacting anyone back in Roswell," Michael said. "The parental units can survive without hearing from us for a while. “
"So says the guy who doesn't have any family or friends other than us," Kyle said, half under his breath.
Michael immediately shot Kyle a dirty look, but it was Maria who spoke up in Michael's defense. "Real nice, Mr. Congeniality. Chalk up some sensitivity points on your Buddha-belt for that one. “
"Hey, I said 'other than us,'" Kyle protested. "1 didn't mean anything nasty by it. “
Liz knew that Max was about to step in as peacekeeper, and sure enough, before Kyle had even finished speaking, Max strode forward, hands up, palms out. "Guys, let's cool it. Kyle, are you sure your dad is still keeping that encryption code going? “
"Yeah, I'm sure," Kyle said, clicking down on the docking bar to open an Internet browser window. He quickly typed in a URL, and the Web page for the Roswell Sheriffs Department opened. Clicking on several submenus brought him to a page labeled "Deputy James Valenti," on which a picture of the smiling former head sheriff of Roswell appeared.
Placing the mouse pointer over the badge on his father's chest, Kyle said, "See, here's the portal in." He clicked on the secret link and was sent to another page, this one with an error message on it. He added a slash and the name Kyle to the URL on the error page, and another page popped up. This one showed only text, a string of complicated-looking computer code.
With his finger, Kyle pointed to the code on the string. "Every sixth letter is the code," he said. "He's kept it changed every time we send him something. He's making sure to cover his tracks and ours. No one will find us this way. “
Roswell, New Mexico A few months earlier, shortly after the "incident" at the West Roswell High School graduation ceremonies on June 1, 2002, the members of the federal government's secretive Special Unit had met in a safe house forty miles southwest of Roswell, on the way to the town of Elk. To any member of the public, the clandestine meeting site appeared to be nothing more than a large ranch house whose absentee owners didn't often visit.
In actuality, the dwelling had previously been a tempo- -rary home for several members of the Witness Protection Program, and the acreage behind the house held more than a few secrets… as well as bodies… dating back to 1947.
The de facto leaders of the Unit-… at least those concerned with this particular operation… were the pair who had tried to kill the alien quartet during graduation. Matthew Margolin, code-named "Viceroy," was in his late fifties, his hair gone gray, but his body still strong and whipcord lean. His face bore the scars of past covert missions; he could have had some of them fixed with plastic surgery, but he chose to think of them as a testament to his survival skills. He was alive. His opponents weren't.
Margolin's second-in-command was Dale Bartolli… or at least that was the name he was using these days. Bartolli had the look of a wolverine, with fierce dark eyes, a predatory grin, and slicked-back, thinning hair. In his younger days he had been a Navy SEAL, but he had been recruited for Black Ops wetwork during the late 1980s. Margolin often fancied himself as cool and emotionless about his work as it was possible for an operative to be, but even he sometimes visibly got goose bumps in BartoUi's presence.
At the meeting, various members of the Special Unit presented their surveillance files on the Parker, Evans, DeLuca, and Valenti households, as well as on the UFO Center where Max Evans had worked, and the dossier on Max Evans's boss, Brody Davis, the owner of the UFO Center.
After a thorough review of the files, the group concluded that the six teens who had fled Roswell had likely not had any contact with their families, at least through any conventional methods. All phone lines had been tapped, most of their rooms had been bugged, and every known e-mail address used by any of the families had been trapped with a recursive program. One agent was always on constant surveillance of the spy devices. Just in case, Margolin thought, E. T. tries to phone home.
The one fly in the ointment appeared to be Deputy Valenti, the ex-sheriff of the town. Valenti had already "made" two of the Special Unit's agents, and he clearly knew that surveillance was still ongoing. And although his house had been easy enough to watch, the Roswell Sheriff's station wasn't quite so easy to bug.
Margolin and his agents discussed briefly arranging an "accident" for Valenti… after taking him in to answer a few questions, of course… but the group consensus was that such a course of action was extreme, at least for the moment. After all, none of the parents had made a move to leave town, and although their private conversations and phone calls to one another were often full of expressions of concern for their kids' safety, they never, ever discussed the alien aspects of their "children. “
"It's almost as if they don't even know," one of the agents had said.
But Margolin knew that the evidence just didn't support that. A videotape of Isabel Evans using telekinetic powers had been recovered from the Evans's VCR during an air force search, and the search dogs had tracked the smell of alien blood to the Valenti and Evans homes just prior to the mass destruction of Rogers Air Force Base by the blond girl they had later identified as Tess Harding, the daughter of a former military consultant who had since gone missing. At minimum, Phillip and Diane Evans and Jim Valenti had to know something.
But whether they knew the whole truth was a legitimate question. Of them all, Valenti seemed the most likely to know all there was to know about the alien nature of the Roswell teens, as well as the complicity of their friends. Valenti had been involved in far too many strange and unexplained circumstances with various members of "The Six," as the fugitive kids were now known, to plead ignorance about them and what they were up to now. He had even lost his job as Roswell 's sheriff because of a case related to the teens, although he had eventually been rehired as a deputy.
"If we're going to find them, it will be Valenti who leads us to them," Margolin said to the other members of the Special Unit, most of whom were nodding in agreement.
"Don't forget," Bartolli said, idly gazing at a gleaming, razor-sharp knife he'd carried with him since his navy days. "Valenti stands to lose his son if he does lead us to those kids. He's gonna take precautions. “
Margolin nodded. "Exactly. So this won't be an easy hunt. “
Bartolli put the knife away, his grin saying, Bring it on.
This time it was the other agent's sharklike smile that made the hairs on the back of Margolin's neck stand on end.
Agent Harrison looked up from the magazine when his computer beeped. He quickly scanned the data on the screen. His storefront office, part of what was ostensibly a realty company, faced the west outer wall of the sheriffs station on East Fifth Street; the window overlooked the parking lot, enabling him to keep track of Valenti's departures and arrivals. The signals from the few bugs and traps they had managed to set up inside the sheriff's station were strong enough to be received here.
The programs the Special Unit was using were beyond cutting-edge. They had been developed by a few of the top hackers in the country, each working independently, each hoping that the "help" they gave the federal government's Office of Total Information Awareness (TIA) would mean leniency for whatever computer crimes they had committed. The task was made easier in the post… September 11 world; even hackers were patriots if they thought they could stop terrorists. And while the programs they developed were already in use for the tracking of human-made terrorist threats, the Special Unit was free to deploy the very same technology in its ongoing effort to trap the aliens who lived among an unsuspecting populace.
Today the T1A surveillance programs were working very well indeed. Quickly, Harrison punched a phone button that gave him a direct line to Director Margolin. Simultaneously, he brought up the file he'd need to send and began scanning all the relevant numbers and map coordinates.
"Yes," came the voice on the other end of
the line.
"Sir, I've got them with the encryption trap. They've just transmitted three e-mails from a site in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “
"Good. Alert the FBI field office immediately," Margolin said.
"Already on it," Harrison said. Updated copies of the fugitives' files… which contained photos of the six teens… went to the FBI field office, as well as to both the state and city police departments. Harrison included an e-mail message: To all departments: Suspects in terror plot spotted at "Cybernet Cafe" establishment, 2376 Cypress Avenue, at 1400 hours. Suspects are armed and dangerous, but must be subdued. No lethal force. Use Bags, tranks, or tasers. Do not interrogate. Press blackout. Call 888-555-2938 with confirmation of capture.
"Sent, sir," Harrison said.
"Send me copies of the three e-mails as soon as you can." "Right away," Harrison said, scrambling to do just that. "Let's hope we catch them this time," Margolin said. "Good work, Harrison. “
The young agent grinned. He hadn't been a part of the Special Unit for very long. This would look very good in his files. He began to read the e-mails he had trapped. Deputy Valenti will never know they'd been intercepted.
Cheyenne, Wyoming Sitting in the cafe between Maria and Isabel, Liz watched Kyle and Michael and wondered if any two people could be more different. Kyle sat behind a computer terminal, a model of Zen calm. Like the Buddha, she thought, if he'd ever tried to find nirvana by surfing naughty Web sites.
Michael, however, didn't appear capable of sitting, as far as Liz could see. He was pacing like a caged tiger.
"They're going to intercept those e-mails," he said. "Just like they've probably bugged the phones. “
"Maybe," said Max, who was leaning in a nearby corner, evidently trying to stay out of Michael's way. "Maybe not. “
Liz spoke up, hoping to reassure both Max and Michael. "There's no way they can do that. Deputy Valenti took plenty of precautions. Besides, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to tap and trace e-mail messages anyway. “
