Pursuit r-7

by Andy Mangels

  "You need to help Isabel. Her nervous system has been disrupted," Alex explained, crouching beside the young half-alien woman.

  "I can't help her," Kyle said. He knelt next to her and pulled her head up in his hands, then cradled her neck in one hand and pulled open an eyelid with the other.

  "Isabel, wake up!" She didn't respond. Her eyes were rolled back into their sockets, showing nothing but white.

  Almost instinctively, he spread his fingers, positioning one on her cheek, the others splaying out from her forehead to her ear, his thumb coming to rest near her jaw.

  Then Kyle's hand began to glow, faintly at first, but quickly brightening and taking on a silver-blue tint. His mind was filling up with a kaleidoscopic tumble of images: a star pattern; a spaceship; a trio of moons in fragmented multiple colors; the rock formations of the desert beyond Roswell; a series of runelike characters glowing on a glass surface; the fathomless black eyes of a gray-skinned creature leaning over him. Moments later, the visions faded away, and the glow that had engulfed his hand subsided. Kyle felt exhausted.

  "This might take time you don't have," Alex said. "But you can end the suffering. You are the key. “

  "What's happening to me, Alex? “

  Kyle had barely phrased the question before he found himself back in the hallway, standing behind Michael, his hand on Max's shoulder.

  "Alex? What?" Michael asked, looking at Kyle strangely.

  "We've got to get the girls out of there," Max said, obviously focused on the girls and the agents who had apprehended them. "But it's too far to use our powers effectively, and we'll risk them getting hurt. “

  "You three, down on the ground!" the gun-toting agent yelled. Knowing more than a little about law enforcement from his father, Kyle imagined that the man was surprised they hadn't left the girls behind and made a break for it. Most criminals ran, or tried to.

  "Do what he says," Max said, his voice pitched low, clearly intended only for Kyle's and Michael's ears. "But be prepared to fight back. “

  Michael grimaced as he put his arms in the air and began to kneel. Whether it was his background as a soldier on Antar or the stubborn tough-guy personality drilled into him by his abusive stepfather in a trailer park back in Roswell, Kyle knew that Michael clearly was not happy about backing down from a fight. "We can take them, Max. Our shields can stop the bullets. “

  Max was kneeling as well. "We can stop the bullets from hitting us. But we can't shield Isabel or Liz or Maria. Isabel might be able to shield them, but they've done something to her. “

  "They disrupted her system," Kyle explained. "They've got tasers. “

  Behind them, they heard a commotion in the hall. Kyle realized that the other agents and officers had made their way into the back of the corridor. Though it seemed an eternity had passed since he and the others had come to this spot, Kyle knew that, in reality, it had probably only been a minute or two.

  Kyle's mind raced. What do we do? If we can wake Isabel up, she might be able to protect the other girls, or at least give Liz a chance to use her defensive powers.

  The scuffle of shoes and boots behind them grew louder, and Max and Kyle turned their heads to see seven armed men coming toward them. Kyle glanced at Michael, who kept his gaze squarely on the agents who menaced the girls.

  Kyle closed his eyes and tried to go back to the place where he had just come from, where he had seen the unconscious Isabel and had spoken with Alex. He had no idea how he'd gotten himself there in the first place. But he knew that if he could return there, he could change the terrible future that now barreled toward them all like an out-of-control freight train.

  Concentrating hard, Kyle saw Isabel again, lying in the darkness, very far away. As he moved closer, he began shouting to her, his words echoing up and down some back service corridor of his own mind. "Isabel! Isabel, wake up! “

  5 New York City

  "split up!" Rath shouted, coughing. "We'll meet up again tonight, in the usual place. “

  Unfortunately he had already lost track of Lonnie and Ava in all the tumult, and could only hope that they'd heard him. A bedlam of shouts, curses, and weapons fire now filled the gutted warehouse, as did the smoke from the canisters that had fallen at Rath's feet. Enclosed behind an impenetrable veil of caustic vapor, Rath found that he could still move, but it felt as though he were swimming through peanut butter. Unable to draw breath, or see much of anything through his burning eyes, he forced his body forward, away from the din.

  All at once, a wave of dizziness seized him, and he dropped heavily to his knees. Then he noticed that some clear air lingered near the floor. Inhaling deeply, he crawled as quickly as he could toward one of the walls.

  He could breathe now, but his eyes continued to water obscuring his vision. But now he saw light ahead of him. The fire escape has to be around here, he thought, rising in a corner to feel around for a railing he remembered having seen earlier. Focusing past the exhaustion caused by the earlier battle, Rath concentrated on neutralizing the effects of the smoke canisters. Moments later, he felt only marginally better. He was still tired, and he simply wasn't the healer the late Zan the Man had been.

  But at least he could see a little more clearly now. Rath saw that he stood only a few yards away from a wide, cracked window, through which he could see the platform and railings of a rusty metal fire escape. Its ladder led downward toward the street.

  Machine-gun fire perforated the floor near his feet. He bolted toward the fire escape, diving straight for the window. Shutting his eyes tightly and throwing his arms in front of his face, he let his careening body shatter the glass. His heavy leathers protected his forearms, but his cheeks and scalp felt moist from a thousand tiny cuts. He ignored the pain and hurried down the fire escape ladder, which quickly extended toward the pavement in response to his weight.

  He paused, glancing groundward for the first time since he'd gotten clear of the building. A little less than one story below him, ten or fifteen riot cops, decked out in body armor and gas masks, were rushing into the building through one of the street-level loading docks, which the cops apparently had just knocked down with the front end of their armored vehicle. More riot cops seemed to be coming, both from the armored car and also from around the building's corner, while he watched.

  One of the troopers suddenly looked up in Rath's direction, though Rath couldn't see the cop's eyes through his shiny black helmet visor. The policeman pointed at him with a nasty-looking black truncheon and barked an unintelligible command.

  More cops paused momentarily, and each of them looked Rath's way. Several leveled their rifles in his direction. Caught between the hammer and the anvil, Rath thought, quickly moving his muscular body back up the ladder and onto the fire escape platform. Alien-possessed derelicts were one thing. Highly trained armored cops were something else entirely. Even ifLonnie andAva manage to dodge the freaks in there, he thought, they aren't gonna have an easy time getting past these guys.

  As Rath headed back toward the shattered window, one of the riot cops down below bellowed an order to halt. Rath ignored the command, as well as the bullet that struck the masonry near his shoulder. He dived back into the building, wondering exactly how long he had left until the oil furnace that Lonnie had sabotaged finally exploded.

  Moments later, the warehouse reverberated with a deafening roar as gouts of smoke and flame erupted everywhere all at once. Rath couldn't help thinking that he, Lonnie, and Ava probably had very little chance of getting out of this alive.

  "Boom!" Lonnie said, grinning at Ava through the lingering pall of tear gas. The two of them were still lying on the floor, where they had thrown themselves after the cops had entered and started exchanging fire with the armed alien freaks.

  "I hope that explosion took out the freakazoids' machinery," Ava said, coughing. "I was starting to think that boiler you sabotaged was gonna take all day to blow. “

  Lonnie nodded as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Ava tho
ught she looked as utterly exhausted as she herself felt. "You worry too much, O Queen of Antar," Lonnie said, pointing toward a heap of dusty clothing that only moments before had contained a hostile, alien-possessed derelict. "I just gave 'em their one-way ticket home. Without their machinery, they can't hang on to their host bodies. They just crumble away to dust like the Skins in their husks, or those vamps on Buffy. “

  Ava looked at the mortal remains of what had been a human being, and suddenly felt ill. She realized the tear gas was only partly responsible. "Too bad we couldn't have found a better way. “

  "Better them than us," Lonnie said, shrugging. "Now let's get out of here. “

  Ava coughed like a four-pack-a-day smoker as Lonnie helped her to her feet.

  "Great," Ava said as she recovered from her coughing fit. "Now all we have to do is slip past the cops and find Ra… “

  "Freeze! Police!" Fatigued, Ava hadn't noticed the riot cop until it was far too late.

  Should have stayed in freaking Roswell with Max, Ava thought, meekly raising her hands.

  Sergeant Vince Orman had only been forced to draw his weapon in the line of duty on a few prior occasions. Today was the first time he'd been forced to take another human being's life. The unkempt young man who had leaped out at him from behind a storage locker had been young… little more than a boy, really. Despite his riot helmet and gas mask, Orman had seen the gun in his assailant's hand and had ordered him to drop it.

  But the kid had simply kept on coming, a vacant, strung-out look on his face. Now, he lay dead on the warehouse floor as clouds of tear gas quickly engulfed the place. Feeling a bitter upwelfing of regret, Orman looked carefully at the teen's face. He thought of the kid who had tried to exit the building via the fire escape a few minutes earlier, only to be chased back inside by the squad. Though Orman had only caught a glimpse of that kid, he could tell that this wasn't him. Better keep an eye out for that one. I've seen him around on the street, and he looks like trouble.

  Luckily the tear gas canisters seemed to be having a profound effect on the other perps. Like the dead teen, these people carried firearms of various calibers, and represented a fair cross-section of New York 's street dwellers. They were dropping like flies, even as Orman and the men and women of his SWAT team secured the building's perimeter and began methodically handcuffing the at least two dozen people who were now gasping for air on the warehouse floor.

  Orman felt the building shudder as a sound like thunder rattled the floor beneath his boots. "What the hell was that?" he said, turning toward a female officer named Carmody "Sounds like somebody set off a bomb," Carmody said. "Down in the basement. “

  "Go check it out," Orman said, suppressing a nightmare memory of Ground Zero, and all the friends and colleagues he'd lost there. "Let's hope we don't have more terrorists on our hands. “

  "1 don't think it's terrorists, Sarge," Carmody said, pointing toward one of the cuffed thugs who lay on the floor near her feet. Though Orman couldn't see Carmody's face, he could hear an edge of incredulity in her voice.

  Orman studied the perp on the ground and saw that he was decaying into dust right before his eyes. Looking through the haze of gas that still hung in the air, the sergeant saw that the other perps were also rapidly turning to powdery ash, which scattered into the air to mix with the drifting tear gas. All that remained of them was their clothing, weapons, and the handcuffs that had been placed on them during their arrests.

  "I don't think it's terrorists," Carmody repeated, kicking at the now-vacant pile of ragged clothing at her feet. "Unless we just broke up an al-Qaeda sleeper cell from Mars, that is. “

  "Sarge!" called another member of the SWAT team, a burly former bouncer named Richards, who was handcuffing a pair of teenage girls. With their bizarre punk hair and motley riot grrl fashions, they looked like refugees from some eighties-era retro dance club.

  Orman walked quickly toward Richards and the girls. "Bring 'em both in for questioning, Artie. I think these ladies have a bit of explaining to do. “

  Hidden behind a discarded pile of scrap metal, Rath j watched as a phalanx of heavily armed riot cops proceeded to cuff the fallen aliens, who proceeded to turn to dust just moments after Lonnie's carefully arranged boiler-room explosion.

  Rath smiled. The Antarian-possessed freakazoids wouldn't be bothering them, at least for a little while. That was one problem down.

  Then he saw the cops leading Lonnie and Ava away in handcuffs. Both girls were clearly too exhausted to put up any real resistance. And Rath knew he couldn't muster enough power to fight off so many armed cops. Not after having been worn down by the freaks.

  Maybe there's another way, he thought, silently emerging from the shadows. Moving stealthily, he mustered the last dregs of his powers.

  Rath approached one of the riot cops from behind.

  6 Cheyenne, Wyoming

  Max heard Kyle's words reverberating as loudly as a thunderclap. "Isabel! Isabel, wake up! “

  He let out a groan as he turned his head, taking in everything in the space of a heartbeat. Everyone in the hallway who wasn't handcuffed or unconscious was clasping hands to ears, grimacing in pain.

  All except Kyle, Max noted. Kyle knelt beside him, his mouth tightly closed, though his eyes were wide with surprise at everyone else's reaction to his words.

  Max realized only then that Kyle had not spoken the words aloud. Everyone had heard Kyle, but he had not actually uttered Isabel's name aloud.

  Their equilibrium disrupted by the sudden imbalance in their inner ears, the agents and police wobbled a bit. But Max could see that they weren't quite incapacitated.

  Gazing down the corridor, Max saw Isabel move slightly, then saw her turn her head. She's okay, he thought, his spirits buoyed.

  Isabel rolled over and lifted her hand. Though she still appeared weak, she managed to send a power blast into the midsection of the agent nearest to her, tossing him upward and slamming him against the wall. His gun tumbled from his hand as he crumpled to the ground.

  Liz, use your powers, Max thought. In that instant, in his mind, he saw Kyle, then Liz. And he knew that she, too, had heard him, thanks to whatever channel had allowed Kyle to speak directly into their minds.

  Down the hall, Liz gritted her teeth and kicked out toward the second agent. Her foot collided with his leg. It would have been an ineffectual enough blow under normal circumstances, but Max could see from the glow that suffused her that she had charged herself with electrical energy. It was yet another manifestation of her still-developing powers.

  The agent went down as if he himself had been tasered, but Max barely noticed. Moving as one, he and Michael rolled over and extended their hands. "A barrier, not a blast," Max yelled, and in his mind he released energy down from his brain, through his heart, into his arm, and out through his fingers.

  A few feet behind… between the teens and the second group of pursuers… the air shimmered with a slight rainbow effect. Max, Michael, and Kyle got to their feet, and as they did so, the agents charged toward them. And just as quickly, the men bounced off the barely visible energy barrier that Max and Michael had just erected.

  "Get Maria and Liz out of here," Max yelled, keeping most of his attention focused on the barrier-blocked agents even as he looked toward the girls. As Kyle ran toward the girls, Max and Michael began stepping backward; as they did so, the barrier moved backward with them, keeping the agents at bay.

  Max saw that Liz and Isabel were both standing now, and watched as Liz turned around so that Isabel stood behind her. Isabel touched the handcuffs that bound Liz's wrists, and they clicked open and clattered to the floor. Kyle squatted and picked up Maria; she groaned in his arms, but didn't regain consciousness.

  "Come on," Kyle said to Liz, looking off down the hallway toward an exit sign and the stairwell located just beneath it.

  "But Max… “

  "The Pod Squad is going to have to defend themselves, Liz. They're up for it," Kyle said. />
  Max turned slightly as he backed up, and was glad to see that Liz and Kyle were leaving. He called back to Isabel. "Get their weapons and IDs. “

  Moments later, he and Michael were stepping over the two unconscious agents who had nearly captured the girls. Their other pursuers were still hammering forward, trying to batter the force field down with nothing more than brute strength.

  "Isabel, we're going to need one major burst of power here," Max said. "They're just going to follow us out to the exit otherwise. “

  She steeled her gaze at him, and he saw there was a bit of blood on her forehead and coming from her nose. "Where do we aim it? “

  Max judged that they were now maybe ten feet past the fallen agents, and perhaps another fifty from the exit that Kyle, Liz, and Maria were taking.

  Max crouched. "At the floor," he said. Max and Isabel placed their hands on the floor between them and the agents, focusing their powers just underneath the force field that Michael was now maintaining single- handedly.

  With a groan that sounded not unlike a Hollywood sound effect, the floor imploded downward, cracking the plaster-and-cinder-block walls that bounded the corridor, and sending a huge cloud of gray dust everywhere that wasn't blocked by Michaels force field. The agents on the other side of the now-collapsed floor cursed, pinwheeling their arms to avoid falling onto the lower level. Max smiled grimly when he saw that their gyrations couldn't prevent most of them from tumbling away into the dust cloud. He knew they'd be hurt by the fall, but they would survive.

  "Nice one!" Michael exclaimed, as he allowed the force field to collapse, then turned to follow Max and Isabel. The three of them ran together toward the exit door, and Max was pleased to see that the stairway opened onto the mall's parking garage. Even more luckily, they were on the same level where they'd parked the van.

  "Which way to the van?" Michael asked. Kyle and Liz were already out of sight.

  "That way," Isabel said, pointing. "I remember passing that blue Jaguar on our way in. “