"Are you all right?" she demanded, loosening her grip. "You looked like you were having a nightmare or something."

Max shoved his blond hair off his forehead. He stared down at the skin of his hands and arms. Completely undamaged. Not even a tinge of redness. "I'm okay."

"And Alex?" Michael asked.

"He's okay, too," Max reassured them. There was nothing the others could do to stop the beings if they moved against Alex. Max promised himself to keep his connection to the consciousness as tight as possible. That way he'd feel if something started to go down, and he could try to intervene… somehow. "Most of the beings have accepted Alex's presence."

"But is our home planet a democracy?" Isabel muttered.

"We can't risk it. We've got to work up another plan to get Alex back," Liz said.

"A plan? Gee, what a great idea," Michael shot back sarcastically. "Let's recap for the viewers who tuned in late. The only power source strong enough to give us a shot at getting Alex back is the Stone of Midnight. Elsevan DuPris, alien psychopath and the killer of my true parents and Isabel and Max's and Adam's, has the Stone."

Isabel took the pepper shaker off her stack of empty packets. She reshuffled them-sweetener packet, sweetener packet, sugar packet, sweetener packet-then put the shaker back in place.

Michael kept talking. Max wished he would shut up, but he knew Michael well enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen.

"Oh yeah, and we have no idea where DuPris is," Michael ranted, his eyes locked on Liz, who was meeting his gaze straight on, "and since he can take on the appearance of anyone he wants, he could be sitting at the next table, getting ready to assassinate us all, and we wouldn't have a clue. He could also be in Africa or on some other planet."

"He could even be in Canada," Maria joked. She glanced from Max to Liz to Isabel to Michael, clearly hoping one of them would laugh. Max tried and gave something that sounded more like a cough.

"And oh yeah," Michael rushed on. "DuPris also has the ship, so we can't even attempt to try and figure out how to use it to go after Alex." Neither he nor Liz blinked, both seeming determined to win their battle of the stares. "All caught up now?"

"Yeah, Michael. Thanks," Liz answered. "I don't know what we'd do if I didn't have you around to explain things. You're so much smarter than everyone else."

"Don't fight, you guys," Maria begged. She wrapped her fingers around Michael's arm, then reached across the table and grabbed Liz's hand. "If you do, I'll have to come up with more lame jokes. Even worse than the Canada attempt."

Max was glad Maria had jumped in. Sometimes he got sick of always being the peacemaker of the group.

"Sorry, Liz. I just-" Michael began.

"I know. Bygones," Liz answered, her brown eyes turning warm again.

"Can't you explain to the beings that it's not Alex's fault that he's there?" Isabel asked.

"I have. A bunch of times," Max told her.

"Well, do it again!" Isabel exclaimed. She swept her little pile of wrappers and the pepper shaker onto the floor.

She was obviously way more upset than Max had realized. "Okay, okay," he said.

He closed his eyes and felt his consciousness, his individuality, get loose and slippery. He let himself slide back into the ocean of beings.

There was something different. The ocean felt cooler, and each time Max's aura touched one of the others, a tingling sensation skittered through him.

It's power, he realized. Power building. A lot of power.

He sent out a wave of confusion and waited for one of the beings to send back an explanation. It didn't come.

The tingling grew to an electric sizzle. The auras around him grew brighter, glowing with an oily phosphorescence. Max's own aura turned from emerald to luminous acid green.

What is-

Before Max could complete the thought, a blast of supercharged power blew him out of the ocean. He hurtled away from the other auras, his being vibrating with the shock until it felt like he would fly apart, heading off in every direction.

He felt his molecules shudder and begin to separate. His vision dimmed. His heart fluttered in his chest. What… what… what-

His mind wasn't functioning properly. The molecules of his brain were too far apart. He couldn't… couldn't…

"Max, come back! Come back!" Liz cried.

He felt something cool and wet on his face. He jerked open his eyes and saw Maria leaning across the table, wiping a wet napkin over his forehead.

"Now what happened?" Michael demanded. He was gripping the edge of the cafeteria table with both hands, his fingers almost white with the strain.

Max took the napkin from Maria and scrubbed his face hard. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "There was a massive explosion of power in the consciousness, and I got basically thrown free."

"Is Alex all right?" Isabel exclaimed. "Did whatever, did it hurt him? Did it kill-"

"I don't know," Max repeated. He felt like some of his neurons were tangled or something. He could feel faint tendrils of shock and grief and pain from the beings, but nothing more.

"So, um, who wants to go with me to my little brother's basketball game after school?" Maria piped up. She gave a short jerk to the left with her chin, and Max saw Kyle Valenti striding up to them.

Kyle Valenti. Son of the late Sheriff Valenti, the man Max and the others had thought was their most dangerous enemy. Until they met DuPris. The very much still alive DuPris.

"So who wants to go?" Maria repeated, her voice edged with a manic cheerfulness.

"I'll go," Michael said. His tone was casual, but Max could see the tension in Michael's body. "Where is it?"

"At the Y," Maria answered. She picked up a baby carrot and stuck the whole thing in her mouth. It looked like she'd suddenly forgotten how to chew. Or like she'd forgotten that's even what you did after you put food in your mouth.

Kyle sat down next to Liz without saying a word. He slammed a stack of photos on the table.

Isabel fanned out the photos, and Max ran his eyes across them. He saw Isabel, Michael, Maria, Alex, Liz, and himself. In various combinations. In various locations. They'd been taken over a period of months, Max realized. Someone had been tracking him and his friends.

Max struggled to keep his face expressionless. He didn't want Kyle to have the satisfaction of any kind of reaction.

"My father took these," Kyle announced, saying each word slowly and deliberately. "He had you under observation. I want to know why. And I want to know where he is. And I want to know now."

For one wild moment Max thought about telling Kyle the truth. It's not like he'd believe it. Max tried to imagine it: See, Kyle, your dad was an agent with an organization called Project Clean Slate, whose mission was to track down aliens on earth, experiment on them, and possibly exterminate them. Somebody in Clean Slate, though not your dad, since he wasn't old enough, found one alien in an incubation pod left on earth after the Roswell Incident-you know, where that spaceship crashed out in the desert in the forties.

Oh, and just FYI, so you have the whole story, Michael, Isabel, and I were in pods just like it, but Clean Slate didn't find us.

Anyway, when the alien in the pod Clean Slate found finally completed the maturation process and broke free more than forty years later, your dad locked it in a secret underground compound. You following me, Kyle? He called the alien Adam, and, oh yeah, he had Adam call him Dad. So I guess that makes Adam like your brother or something.

Anyway, this other alien, DuPris, the big enchilada of aliens, the alien who caused the ship to crash in the first place, he took control of Adam and used Adam to kill your dad. Yeah, Adam, well, really DuPris, blasted him with enough power to turn him into a pile of ashes on the floor. Anything else I can help you with?