(continued from previous)

***

It came howling through the canyon and woke him from his sleep. He sat up, looked over at Vernon. His partner, like him, was stitting bolt upright in the passenger side of the Land Rover, his face drawn. Vernon didn't show emotion, even now. Even when they'd just heard the shriek of a waking hybrid echo through the valley.

"Where, do you think?"

Hunter Vernon cocked his head to one side, cheeks puffed out. "Not here. East. New Mexico, Arizona...California's the wrong place."

"Fucking DeLuca." Hunter Warren had recently picked up the human habit of swearing, and he found that he quite enjoyed it. "He's been leading us around for too many years now, Vernon. We've finally got permission from Council to use force. I say we move in for the kill and screw the stake-out song-and-dance."

"But what about the hybrid?" Vernon wiped his thick-framed glasses with a hankerchief and squinted. "How will we know who he his, or even if he's with DeLuca?"

"Did you just hear what I heard?" Vernon could be so goddamned annoying sometimes. It rankled Warren to no end that the younger man was in reality the ranking officer. "That was the sound of a hybrid coming into its own. Pretty soon it'll meltdown and start ripping out people's throats without even touching them, just like the one in Des Moines. You wanna risk that?"

"To be perfectly honest with you, Warren, I don't give a shit about these Earthbound. I couldn't care less how many the fucking hybrid takes out, I just wan to go back to Amsar and rejoin the All. I don't like being shut up in this body, cut off from the others. So I say we play this one carefully, make sure we get the right mutant. Then we collar the three crash kids, haul 'em all off the the Roswell Station, and kiss this bumpkin mudball planet goodbye." Vernon replaced his glasses, his eyes shrinking down to the size of dimes through the fat slices of glass. "We give the Council exactly what they want, we go home."

Warren smirked. "You don't really think that do you? Vernon, I've been on Terra three years longer than you, and I can tell you that a Hunting assignment here means that the Council wants you out of the way and is prepared to bury you in a pile of shit so deep you'll never get out of it."

The younger Fold glared at him, his human body ridiculous in the red sweater and argyle socks. Like Mr. Fucking Rogers' Anal-Retentive Neighbor Alien, Warren fumed. Warren hadn't known Vernon back on Amsar, but he was willing to bet the guy had been a total dick back home as well as Earthside. And they'd been working together on this DeLuca thing since 1984. It was getting to be too much for Warren, and as much as he understood the need to do things the right way, the Council way, he wanted nothing more than to beat the living hell out of DeLuca for forcing him to put up with this putz for so long. Then he'd take a nice vacation to Fiji and start tailing other mutant leads with less irritating Hunters, maybe in Asia this time.

"I don't care what your experience in the past may have led you to believe. We will be bringing in DeLuca and his hybrid by Christmas, and I will be going home, or else I will personally see to it that Council knows about your lady friend in Saratoga Springs."

Warren's stomach growled angrily. How the hell did Vernon know about Katey? "Doesn't matter," he bluffed, "there's no issue, and no rule says you can't, you know...mingle with the Terrans."

"Mingle? Is that what you're calling it these days?" Vernon's face, for all that it wasn't really his, looked like a grizzled badger's. Warren decided to give up before the hard words escalated into full-scale violence, as it had in Dallas eight years ago. He'd informed the Council of the apparent lack of communication between Vernon and humanity as a whole, not to mention between the two of them, but he'd pissed off a few well-placed Council members in his day and he had a feeling that they were thouroughly enjoying his suffering.

"Fine." Warren started up the Land Rover and pulled back onto the interstate heading east. "I'll drive, you keep yourself alert for more homing signals from the mutant."

"By Christmas, Hunter Warren."

"By Christmas, Vernon. And happy fucking New Year."

****

More than anything in his life, more than anything he could imagine, Michael hated hospitals. The smell, the colors, the suspicious looks from the staff, if they looked at you at all. He'd been sitting in the waiting room at Roswell Regional by himsef for nearly ten hours now. Even Liz and Maria's parents, both of them, had come and gone. They were all supposed to be back in six hours. And he'd be here, very likely still in this chair, since they wouldn't let him see her. She'd been diagnosed wih exhaustion.

Not that he needed to see her. He could have felt her a mile a way. It wasn't the same as the assault on his senses during the lunch incident, but a softer, richer tremor that seemed to surround him on all sides. He'd never experienced anything like it, and he didn't want it to end yet. She had been sedated, but she spoke to him. It sounded as though she were hovering right behind him, whispering into his ear. He told her stories to make her feel better, to make her dreams brighter.

Leaning back, eyes closed, Michael sat among the ill and infirm waiting for treatment and listened to her speak through her dreams, her voice like honey all over his judgement. He was angry, he reminded himself. Very angry and very confused by what was happening. He'd heard DeLuca's account of the crash, and its aftermath. He'd heard abut Maria's special gifts as a hybrid, and how Hunters wanted the DeLuca's dead. He didn't know what to make of it. A hybrid.

"Fascinating," Max and Liz had said at the same time. Isabel had actually smiled. And Alex...well, Alex smiled when Isabel smiled. And he was stuck standing there having to wall up his thoughts because the only thing that kept popping into his head was that the coast was now clear to chain Maria into his bed and never let her out of his sight again. He'd been attracted to her before, practically against his will it seemed, but now that it was revealed that she was some kind cross between human and alien...that she shared their power and then some...something in him, something desperately lonely that he would not examine too closely, had fixated on this new information and given it some kind of special meaning. It was though his brain had gone haywire and decided that 'hybrid' was synonymous with some sort of 'woman, want' caveman reaction that was a close to human as he'd felt in a while.

At the same time, however, as he was drifting off to sleep while Maria's mind mumbled to his through her own dreamscape, he couldn't ignore the heavy feeling of dissapointment, of failure. His people, the Fold, didn't want him to come home. They wanted him to stay as part of the 'Terran Project', of which Michael had understood little when DeLuca had described it. Not to mention the fact that it had been a very bizarre two hours while DeLuca informed them all of everything they'd ever wanted to know, in the parking lot beside an ambulance. Not the revelation setting he'd always imagined, but it was certainly less straining than other information extraction methods he'd tried before. Add that to the fact that Marcos DeLuca was an alien pilot and was the father of Maria, who looked more than just a little bit like him, and it was all a little more than Michael could take in.

So he'd stayed here with Maria, stepping into her dreams only when they became darker, looming, frightening her. He'd caught a glimpse of himself in her dream, himself with softer eyes and a ready smile. The way Maria had wanted him to be. It had depressed him. He had been cold to Maria, even after they had kissed, had touched, because he'd wanted to stay focused on getting home and making sure that there were no strings attached when it was time to go to his own planet. And now it sounded as if the people he'd wanted so desperately to rejoin suffered from a fairly serious case of God complex. Not that the humans were innocent of that charge, but their crimes were limited by their resources. The Fold, on the other hand, made worlds dance to their marionette musical comedy routines.

'Michael?'

He opened his eyes, then closed them again. She was awake. Even her mind's voice sounded groggy. He found that cute somehow, which alarmed him. He sent his thoughts to her: 'I'm here.'

'Thank you for staying. I saw you in my dreams a few times, but I...I guess I liked knowing you were around. Has everyone else gone home?'

'Yeah, but they've all sworn to be back here in a few hours, ready to stay with you in shifts.'

'Wait...how long have you been here?'

She'd know if he was lying, so he opted to tell the truth. 'I don't know really. Fifteen, sixteen hours.'

'Michael! You should go home and go to sleep!'

'Screw sleep. And stop ordering me around, woman.'

'Sorry Mr. Manly. I hope I didn't step on any testosterone. Did you talk to my father?'

'Yeah, for a while, all of us did. It's weird knowing all this stuff. I thought it was gonna take me at least until I graduated to learn that my species are morally corrupt Social Darwinists who exist in a Borg-like collective and send Hunters after pretty little girls like you.'

There was a pause. He had the feeling that she was blushing and it pleased him. She was a very special creature. Not that he would ever say anything about it to Maria, but DeLuca had confided to the group that most hybrids were psychotic and highly volatile, usually going on massive killing spress before being gunned down by Hunters or Feds. The hybrids who managed to achieve an equilibrium between their two sides, the human and the Fold, were called Zeniths, and were considered by some Fold Scientists to be superior to either species alone. Maria was just such a rarity.

'I'm sure the Fold aren't really that bad. From their perpective, it's probably like humans working with an ant hill.'

'Don't try to cheer me up. You can't breed with an ant and make this fantastc human-ant cross that looks cute in little skirts and tells an entire high school cafeteria of people that they don't see what's going right in front of them, and they believe her. There is no comparison I can think of that lets the Fold off the hook, and I for one am glad that they were never planning on coming back for us.'

'Michael?'

'Yeah?'

'I want you to move into my house. There's a spare room across from mine, you can have it. You have to get away from your stepfather.'

'What? Where did this come from?'

'You've spent your whole life wanting something that didn't turn out to be what you wanted at all. You need to be in a place now where you can start living for today again, and I want to help you.'

Now it was his turn for a moment of silence. She was right, he knew that. A few more weeks of living with Stepdad and he'd be ready to drag the DeLucas in himself if that was the only way he could escape. But live with Maria? God, that was playing with fire. He had a feeling though, something told him that she knew exactly what she was doing. And he couldn't deny that he'd run out of excuses when it came to Maria DeLuca. He and Maria were connected somehow, there was no denying it.

'What about your Mom?'

'My father is staying with us for a while, too. She wants another man in the house so she doesn't feel outnumbered.'

'That makes no sense whatsoever. I'll start moving my stuff to your place tomorrow morning.'

****

A hard yellow autumn evening in Roswell, a poor excuse for a town and only a slighty better excuse for a tourist attraction. At 5667 Vista, the Evans' Tacoma was parked in the driveway, a few cardboard boxes representing all of Michael Guerin's earthly belongings. Dressed in ragged T-shirts and shorts, Maria and Max were unloading the boxes off of the flatbed, while Liz, Isabel, and Michael were inside clearing out the DeLuca guest room so that Michael's bed and dresser could fit.

"There's not much here, is there?" Maria wondered aloud, taking a box from Max and feeling how light it was.

"Well," Max straightened and wiped the sweat from his brow, "I don't think Mr. Guerin was the biggest Christmas shopper. I remember last year. Michael got a six-pack of Natural Light and a candy cane."

Maria shook her head. "That guy is such an asshole. I'm glad that Michael didn't put up a fight when I asked him to move in."

"You know something?" Max sat down on the lowered tail gate. "When I was ten, I cried every night for a whole month because my parents told me that they didn't want to adopt Michael. They said that three kids was one two many, and that Michael seemed to have an attitude problem. I think the word Dad used was 'sullen'."

"I can't blame him for being sullen." Maria laid down on the poorly cut grass and stared up into the sky, studying a streaking stratus cloud. "I can only imagine what I'd feel like if my two podmates were picked up by a nice couple and I ended up a ward of the state."

"Yeah, it sucks. It always sucked. I've wondered many times how Michael ended up apart from Isabel and me that night and didn't get picked up with us." Max leaned forward and tossed a piece of ripped cardboard at the reclining girl. "Podmates?"

"What else would you call you guys?" Maria giggled and threw the cardboard back at him.

"How about 'divine buddies'? Or 'star kids'?"

"'Star kids'? Sounds like a Disney movie."

"Only if that kid from 'Jerry Maguire' plays the young Max Evans."

"You had me at hello!" Michael bellowed from the doorway. "What are you two doing? Communing with nature while the rest of us slave away in here?"

"Don't listen to him." Liz emerged from the house and crossed the lawn to sit down beside Maria. "We've been eating milk and cookies with your Mom for the last ten minutes. Actually, some of us were eating cookies with Tabasco Sauce, and some of us were gagging."

Michael jogged to the truck and hoisted himself into the back. "Trucks are cool," he offered, feeling nearly light-headed with happiness and relief. He was free. His foster father had consented as long as he still received the checks from the state, and had even torn himself away from ESPN to wish him well. All in all, this was very likely the best day of his life.

"Yeah." Maria's smile was bright; she could feel Michael's joy radiating from him, and it warmed her. "And syphilis is bad."

"Maybe syph is just misunderstood." Isabel sat down on one of the sturdier boxes. She too could sense her best friend's vibrant mood. "Maybe it's just trying to help."

Liz rolled her eyes. "You're all seriously flawed. Do you know what syph can do to you?"

"Stay up all night and force you to play drinking games?" Max laughed aloud at look of disgust Liz shot him. "So, is the DeLuca house ready for invasion?"

"Ready as any split-level on this planet will ever be." Michael lept out of the truck and offered his hand to Maria. "Shall we direct the boxes indoors, mi'lady?"

"That is by far the worst British accent I've ever heard." Maria accepted his grasp and let herself be pulled up, her face suddenly inches away from his chest. Coughing to cover the sudden tingle that wiggled up her spine, she backed up and picked up a box. "Let's get this thing started."

While the girls took the boxes inside, Michael and Max took on the task of assembling the bed frame in the small but cheerful guest room.

"I don't get this," Michael grunted, trying to fit a screw inside of one of the beams. "It came apart right? It did form a bed at one time, didn't it? So why the hell won't this thing go back together?"

Max skimmed over the bed's instructions for what must have been the eighteenth time. "I feel like a poor excuse for a man right now," he admitted. "I'm glad the girls are setting up the boxes in the hall and can't see this."

"I'm telling you, these screws are the wrong size. They're like, ten times the size of the holes they're supposed to go into."

"How can they be the wrong size? They came with the bed. Unless some fiend switched screws on us, I'm thinking there's got to be a way to do this." Max grabbed two of the beams and lowered his eyes. With a faint hissing, the stubborn joints fused together. "There. Now all you have to do is never, ever take this thing apart again."

Michael smiled wistfully as Max proceeded to sauter the rest of the frame together. "A lifetime at Maria's house. I would go absolutely mad."

"And love every second of it." Max gave his friend a knowing glance. "You really like her, don't you?"

"I'm still trying to get my mind around the fact that she's one of us, even if it's only half of her. It seems like, I don't know. Fate, or something."

"While we're on the subject of fate, where the hell were you the night that we came out of the ship? It's all kind of fuzzy, but it seems like you were with us one second, then gone the next."

Michael frowned. "I don't really remember. It seems like...something was pulling me away. I was really out of it at the time. We'd been in the ship for, what...twenty years or so? Maybe I just got confused. I thought that I felt something, and I didn't even realize that I'd left you guys behind until that state trooper pulled up and got me."

"It's so weird. Where did they find you anyway?"

"Um...I think I was about three miles outside of Whitney Park. I'd been walking for a really long time, but I was in some kind of trance."

"Whitney Park?" Max's mind was racing. Surely that didn't mean..."Michael, you do realize that Whitney Park is three blocks away from here, don't you?"

Michael leaned back, his head suddenly buzzing fiercely. "What are you saying?" It was almost a whisper.

"Well." Max took a deep breath. "What if...somehow, you were could feel another alien and it called to you? What if you were trying to reach Maria?"

(to be continued...)

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