He had definitely seemed concerned about her when he had asked her to walk with him. It was helping her to work up the nerve to talk to him about how she felt.

Now if only she could spit it out!

"I’m sorry about what you saw Tess." Kyle said abruptly, just as Tess had opened her mouth to speak. She blinked.

He must be talking about the cheerleaders from earlier today Tess reflected. She wondered how he had known that she had seen him with Lisa Talbot on his lap in study hall.

"Oh, well…" She said quietly.

"I don’t know what you expect though." Kyle continued, sounding upset. "You know how they feel about each other. Max is never going to feel for you what he feels for Liz, no matter how hard you throw yourself at him."

Tess stopped in her tracks. "What on Earth are you talking about?" He couldn’t STILL think that she was in love with Max? Was he insane? "Kyle…"

But Kyle wasn’t listening to her. Tess realized that he too had stopped, but that he was staring at the wall, a perplexed expression on his face. "What the…" He turned to look at her. "Look at this!"

Tess frowned, wanted to set him straight about Max, but the insistent expression on his face made her go look at the whatever he was tracing with his index finger. "What?" She demanded.

She couldn’t see anything. All she saw was Kyle’s hand tracing a blank wall. "What Kyle? There’s nothing there."

Kyle whipped his head around, stared at her. "You can’t see it? I don’t understand…it’s so clear!"

"What is it?" Tess demanded, peering more closely. Still nothing.

"It’s a window Tess!" Kyle exclaimed, tapping on something he could obviously see clearly but she couldn’t see at all. "It’s a small window." Kyle was standing about two inches from the wall at this point, his noise almost pressed against the wall. "There are a bunch of bookcases in there!"

Tess wondered if he was going crazy. She pushed him aside, traced her hand over the spot he had been looking. All she felt was solid rock.

Kyle was standing further back now, scanning the whole wall. "There’s got to be a way in there…" He began to run his hands over the walls. Tess stared at him for a moment, shrugged and started to do the same.

A silver hand-print suddenly popped out of the wall under Kyle’s hand. "AHA!" He sounded triumphant. "Would you care to do the honours?" He asked, gesturing towards the wall.

Tess sighed, realized that there was apparently no way Kyle was going to listen to her when there was a mystery to solve. Men! She stepped forward, placed her hand firmly against the hand-print.

Nothing happened.

Tess frowned. She lifted her hand, replaced it carefully on the hand-print. Again nothing.

"I don’t understand." Tess said, looking back at Kyle. He was scowling in annoyance.

"Here. Let me try." Just as Kyle moved to put his hand on the familiar insignia, a piercing noise erupted from the direction in which they had come. "What is that?" Kyle demanded, momentarily distracted from his discovery.

Tess threw her hands over her ears. "I think it’s coming from the transformation chamber. We better get back there!" She yelled at him. The noise was reaching a crescendo, too loud to talk over comfortably.

She saw Kyle glance at the hand-print once more. He pressed his lips together, nodded. "Lead on!"

**********************************************************************************

"Max! What’s going on?" Liz shrieked at her boyfriend. They had both bolted for the pod once they realized that the piercing noise was coming from Jennetta’s incubator. The noise was becoming more and more high-pitched, causing Liz to throw her hands over her ears. Max was doing the same. Apparently he couldn’t hear her question because he didn’t even look at her.

Liz forced her hands down, began to run them over the pod. Everything seemed normal. She stared in at Jennetta. Michael and Maria’s daughter’s expression was the same as it had been for months - serene and unaware.

And then she felt it. A tear in the organic material that made up the pod. It was small, but it was there. Liz could feel a thin thread of gooey liquid sliding over her hand as she tried to plug the hole.

"Max!" Liz yelled, causing him to whip around to stare at her. He had been running his own hands over the far side of the pod. "There’s a hole!"

Max was at her side in an instant. Liz grabbed his hand, showed him exactly where the tear was. She watched his hand begin to glow as he tried to mold the molecules that composed the pod to repair the hole.

The high-pitched squeal stopped abruptly as the pod closed under Max’s hand.

Liz sighed with relief. "Max! What just happened?"

Max was still running his hands over the pod, clearly searching for other tears. "I have no idea. I think that was an alarm of some sort - to let us know that something was wrong."

Liz felt a frisson of fear descend her spine. She traced Jennetta’s face through the transparent pod. Was the pod damaged after all? What was going to happen to Jennetta if something happened to the pod before the transformation was complete?

Tess and Kyle came barreling into the chamber moments later. "What the hell happened?" Kyle demanded breathlessly.

"Something’s wrong with the pod." Max replied evenly. "Liz, can you and Kyle go find Ren? I don’t want to leave in case I need to fix it again."

Liz didn’t have to be asked twice. She was out of the transformation chamber in a flash, Kyle on her heels.

She was not at all surprised to find Ren sprinting down the corridor towards them several minutes later. "What happened?" The shape-shifter demanded, grabbing Liz by the shoulders so that she wouldn’t fall when they practically ran into each other. Liz had never heard the stoic Ren sound so upset.

"The pod is leaking!" Liz explained as they hurried back in the direction from which they had just come. "Max fixed it, but I don’t know if it’s going to hold."

Ren took off at a dead run, leaving she and Kyle far behind. They both stumbled to a halt, breathing heavily. Even Kyle, who was in excellent shape, had no chance of keeping up with Jennetta’s bodyguard.

"Is she going to be okay Liz?" Kyle asked as they hurried back down the corridor. He sounded kind of weird. Liz turned to look at him. His expression was unreadable, but Liz thought she saw a flash of frustration pass over it.

"I don’t know." Liz replied, feeling scared again. What on Earth were they going to tell Maria and Michael if something happened to Jennetta?

Maria! She had to call Maria!

Liz stopped abruptly, knowing that she should go back to the surface to call Maria on her cell phone. And yet she was torn. She didn’t want to call and worry her friend if Jennetta was going to be okay.

Kyle had stopped, was staring back at her. "Liz?"

Liz’s decision was made for her when Max appeared suddenly, a worried look on his face. He came up to Liz directly, pulled her into his arms. He looked incredibly exhausted. Liz could feel his heart beating a mile a minute where he had pressed her up against his chest.

"Max! What’s happening?" Liz demanded, pulling back.

"Sorry." Max said, releasing her. "I just really needed to do that. I almost had a heart attack back there."

"What’s going on Evans?" Kyle asked.

"The pod is starting to decompose." Max replied tiredly, rubbing his eyes wearily.

Liz gasped. "But the transformation is nowhere near being complete!" She exclaimed.

"Isn’t that a good thing?" Kyle interjected. "The kid’s like only thirteen or fourteen right now. If we can pull her out, Michael and Maria can still have some time with her while she’s growing up."

Max just shook his head. "Ren says that if she comes out of the pod before the transformation is complete…" He trailed off, clearly not wanting to say it.

"She’ll die." Liz finished for him, feeling the wave of sadness that had passed through Max.

Max took her hand. "We need to go get them Liz - in person. Tess and Ren are there to keep the pod going as long as possible…or at least until we can get Michael and Maria back here."

Liz felt a pang of horror. How was she going to tell her best friend that her daughter was going to die?

Part 50

When destiny calls you, you must be strong I may not be with you, but you’ve got to hold on…

Phil Collins

Kyle rubbed his temples in frustration. He was leaning against the stone wall of the corridor where Max and Liz had left him several minutes before.

He had no idea what to do.

An hour ago he had known EXACTLY what he was going to do. He had been coming to sit through his last shift of pod-watching and then he was going back to his normal life. He was going to forget about aliens and planets in the midst of civil wars and chosen ones in pods and blondes with lips that looked just too damn kissable.

And now he had that same blonde actually speaking to him again, he had the kid in the pod likely on the verge of death and he had an extra-terrestrial library that might actually be a figment of his imagination.

He was trapped. Again.

Why the hell did he actually have to have a conscience? It was all his dad’s fault - him and his stupid ideas of loyalty and commitment to a cause.

Why couldn’t Kyle just have inherited his dad’s keen fashion sense?

Kyle sighed. He knew now that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was irreversibly stuck.

The least he could do was go satisfy his curiosity. If he wasn’t going to regain his freedom, well, he could at least prove to himself - and Tess - that he wasn’t bonkers.

He had seen the way she had looked at him when he had been staring through that window…the window that was completely invisible to her. She thought he was crazy.

He was definitely crazy, but not for the reason she thought. He was crazy in love with her and wasn’t going to be able to distance himself from her again.

And so maybe he could get some information for her.

Kyle took off down the corridor back towards the transformation chamber. As he passed the spot where the entrance to that room was, he wondered if he should go see if Jennetta was okay. But then, there wasn’t anything he could do if she wasn’t. It was better for him to find out what was in that room.

Maybe there was even something that would be able to help them save Michael and Maria’s daughter.

He kept going.

It took longer than he had expected to get back to the spot where the window was, still as plain as day to him. He must have been too preoccupied to actually be in Tess’ presence to realize how far they had walked together before they had stumbled across it.

The hand-print he had managed to reveal still shone out from the wall, not having faded back into obscurity yet.

Kyle stared at it for a moment. It seemed unlikely that it was going to work for him. If Tess, a full-fledged hybrid, hadn’t been able to open it, why would he, only an alien by proxy, be able to?

And yet somehow he knew that he could.

He narrowed his eyes, lifted his hand and placed it squarely on the hand-print.

The wall slid away without a sound.

Kyle swallowed. It was point of no return time here. If he stepped through this doorway, he was committed. Whether he and Tess ever worked out or not…he would have made his choice.

He took a deep breath. There was really no choice to be made. Kyle entered the room, his eyes wide. ************************************************************************************* The ride back to the alien desert compound was deadly silent.

Michael and Maria were in the back-seat of the Jeep, both staring out the windows into the black desert night. Neither had said anything since Max and Liz had found them having dinner at Maria’s mom’s house., surprisingly with the Sheriff as a guest. They had been playing "normal" teenagers tonight and had even seemed to be having a good time.

Until Max and Liz had come to the door. One look at Liz’s stricken face and Maria had known. She had grabbed Michael’s hand and had hauled him out the door without a word. The Sheriff and Amy Deluca had stared after them, perplexed. Liz had managed to come up with an excuse that Alex was sick but, although Mrs. Deluca seemed to buy it, the Sheriff had looked even more suspicious.

They were now so entangled in a web of lies with their parents, Max had just shrugged and followed Liz out to the Jeep, where their friends had been waiting impatiently.

Now Max glanced at Michael and Maria worriedly in the rear-view mirror.

Michael’s lips were pressed tightly together. He looked like he was about to explode. Maria, on the other hand, was as white as a sheet. She had not fallen into her usual hysterics when they had been alone. Instead she had just clammed up, refusing to say a word until she knew for sure that there was no hope. It was more worrisome than any crazy Maria hysteria would have been.

They both looked like they had given up - like they were resigned that their daughter was truly lost to them this time. And it almost killed Max that he couldn’t tell them differently.

He felt Liz take his hand, knew that she could feel how upset he was. He knew it because he could feel how sad SHE was. Their emotions were so heightened by the tragedy about to take place, the connection between them seemed more intense then ever. Just being with her made him feel better.

And yet - his little sister was dying.

Max glanced in the rear-view mirror again, saw that Alex and Izzy, in Alex’s parent’s car, were still close behind them. Liz had called them on her cell phone. It had seemed crucial that they should all be at the transformation chamber if this truly was the end for Jennetta.

The little girl - not so little anymore - had become such a huge part of all of their lives. They had barely known her - even Max had really only known her for a week before she had gone into the pod - and yet the imprint she had left on their lives would never be duplicated.

She was the living representation of everything great that the bond between three humans and three aliens had created.

She was the miraculous result of a day which seemed so long ago now - of a day that a secret had been revealed and had opened up a whole new world for them all - a world of new horizons for the humans, a world of acceptance for the aliens. If Max and Liz had not connected through near-tragedy two and half years ago, none of them would be where they were now.

They were bonded - a unit. They were on the verge of saving a whole divided planet.

And they were about to lose the saviour of that planet. Even worse, they were about to lose the symbol of what a bond of friendship and love could create.

It was too much to bear.

Max felt a wave of pain hit him, felt Liz squeeze his hand as she felt it too.

God - they couldn’t lose her. It was just unfair. Not after all they had been through…

The silence of despair in the Jeep remained unbroken. ************************************************************************************* Kyle stared around the room, barely breathing. There were shelves everywhere, extending back into the stone chamber as far as his eyes could see. And they were all full to bursting…with books and scrolls and things he didn’t recognize at all.

He moved forward slowly, barely noticed the wall sliding shut behind him. He picked up a volume on the nearest shelf, blinked at the strange material which the book was made from. It was some sort of silvery metal, felt cool to the touch.

Kyle flipped open the cover, stared down at the strange markings on the pages, which were made of the same hard metallic stuff. He frowned, wished for once that he DID understand Czechoslovakian. He put the book back on the shelf where he found it, sneezed as it stirred up a thick cloud of dust.

And then he saw them. Footprints on the floor, leading down one of the aisles…

This place had obviously been closed for years if the dust everywhere was any sort of indication. Those footprints could have been there for years, undisturbed in the stillness of the subterranean library.

But somehow Kyle knew that they had NOT been there for years.

He followed them slowly, swiping his hand across shining hand-prints here and there on the shelves. These activated the lights in the room as he proceeded. He could feel excitement building within him. It seemed impossible that there wouldn’t be some sort of answer in this treasure throve of alien information - there had to be something here that could help Jennetta!

As quickly as his hope came, it deflated. It would take millennia to sift through all the crap in here. How on Earth was anyone supposed to zero in on the exact volume that MIGHT be able to help them?

Kyle continued to follow the footprints, at least determined to find out what whoever had been here had been looking for.

When he stumbled across it he found that he was strangely unsurprised.

At the end of the long aisle between book-shelves sat a table - and upon the table was a brown leather book that looked entirely out of place in this chamber full of alien lore on alien paper.

It could only be one thing. And when Kyle picked it up, flipped open to the first page, it was confirmed.

September 23rd. Journal entry one. I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. After that, things got really weird.... ************************************************************************************* Isabel sat tensely beside Alex in his parents’ Volvo, her hands clenched in her lap. She could feel Alex glancing worriedly at her every few minutes or so, but if she looked back she knew that the sympathetic expression on his face would cause her to burst into tears.

Something was wrong. She had known it all day. And it was something beyond Jennetta.

She should have felt relief when Liz had called her to tell her that the pod was decomposing. It should have been the answer for why she had felt like she was about to jump out of her skin all day, but instead Isabel had just become even more on edge…like Jennetta was only the beginning…

It was something else. Something bigger - something inherently more terrible.

Isabel heaved a sigh of relief as Alex finally took a sharp right, following Max and the others in the Jeep across the moon-lit desert. She grimaced slightly at the familiar bumps, but kept her thoughts inward.

What the heck was the matter with her? What was wrong?

Alex pulled the car to a stop near the big boulder guarding the entrance to the compound. He reached over, stroked her neck. "Isabel. She’s going to be okay."

Of course Alex thought this was about Jennetta. What else could it be about? And yet Isabel had never bonded with Jennetta the way the others had…in the short time she had known the little girl, briefly her sister and then not, she had been insanely jealous of her…hating her for having Max’s love, for replacing her as his sister, for being the sister he remembered, the sister he loved…

She and Max had been gradually working their relationship back to the closeness they had shared before the anti-Max episode which had led to the whole Illyria catastrophe. Isabel knew that Max’s guilt over how he had treated her, how he had HATED her, was intense. Isabel’s guilt over her poor treatment of Jennetta had been just as deep. She had blamed a situation on the little girl that had had nothing to do with her…and she had never had the chance to make it up to the kid before she had been podded.

And yet this was not what troubled Isabel. It was something else, something just beyond her reach…

Isabel smiled weakly at Alex now, opened the door and climbed out. She could already see Michael’s spiky head disappearing down the hole. Max was swiping his hand over the silver hand-print, turning the lights on at the entrance. Liz and Maria were standing nearby, Liz with her arm around her best friend.

When it happened it was as sudden as it had been the last time. One minute Isabel was standing near the car, completely fine…the next she felt like her head was about to explode.

This time Alex didn’t catch her when she collapsed, although she caught a glimpse of his horrified face before her eyes rolled up into her head…

Flash*

*MIIIRRAAANNNAAA!!!!*

Flash*

*I NEED YOU!!!!*

Flash*

*MIIIIRRAAAANNNAAAA!!!*

As quickly as the flashes had come, they were gone. Isabel opened her eyes, realized that she was cradled in Alex’s arms, that Michael had come back out of the compound, that Max and Maria and Liz were all staring down at her in terror.

Max fell to his knees beside Isabel and Alex, pushed her hair out of her face. "Izzy! What happened? Are you okay?"

Isabel nodded, pushed herself away from Alex, who grunted in annoyance, but didn’t even bother to try and stop her from climbing to her feet. He knew better by now, but he did keep his hands firmly on her arms as she rose unsteadily.

"Was it your mother again?" Liz asked, her face concerned, but excitement beginning to enter her eyes. Isabel saw Maria perk up as well.

Isabel shook her head, stared at Michael who was staring back at her.