"The service is lousy on these alien-class flights," Rath muttered. "You'd think Uncle Sugar could spring for a bag of peanuts, at least. “

Ava ignored him, concentrating instead on the sounds she heard coming from the front of the cabin, just beyond the first-class curtains. Footfalls.

When the curtains opened a moment later, Ava half expected to see the face of their occasional protector.

Instead several hard-faced men in black suits entered the cabin. Guns drawn, they marched purposefully toward the three incapacitated teens.

Feeling naked with her powers knocked out, Ava tried to shrink down into her seat, making herself as small as possible, the way she did whenever Rath and Lonnie browbeat her into going along with whatever they planned to do. All of the helplessness she had felt when she'd watched Zan die came flooding back to her. She wondered if this, too, was an effect of the drugs she'd been given.

And she silently cursed herself for having been foolish enough to hope for rescue, from Langley or anyone else.

So far, so good, Special Agent Matthew Margolin thought.

The armored car and the motorized stairway met them on the tarmac, just as the agents hustled their three prisoners toward the open hatches at the front of the plane.

"I don't get it, Viceroy," Dale Bartolli said, pitching his voice so that no one but Margolin could hear him. "We go to all the trouble of requisitioning a black-windowed car to take them to the West Coast interrogation facility. But on the way to L.A. we let them look out the windows. “

Margolin smiled at his lieutenant, enjoying for a moment the momentary absence of Bartolli's customary sly, wolfish expression. "Just a little mind game, Dale. “

"Those kids are alien beings of some sort, and they have some extraordinary powers," Bartolli said. "We can't afford to take any chances with them. Christ, we aren't even sure yet how many duplicates of them are running around loose. “

"Maybe that's something they'll shed some light on for us," Margolin said. "Particularly if we keep them off balance psychologically." He imagined that this was a condition with which Bartolli was well acquainted.

"We should have taken them to a secure military facility “

Margolin appreciated Bartolli's thorough attention to his duties, but he sometimes thought the man lacked both a certain flair and the good sense not to question his superiors too much. This was such a time.

"They're drugged and therefore disoriented," Margolin said, fixing his deputy with what he calculated to be a dangerous stare. "They're young and therefore relatively easy to intimidate. It's important that they know how completely we've pulled their claws. It's important that they know we're not frightened of them. Just as it's important that you follow my orders. “

Margolin wasn't expecting Bartolli to cower; the man simply wasn't made that way. But he also wasn't expecting what Bartolli said next.

"Understood, sir. Just remember that while success has a thousand fathers, failure is always an orphan. “

Margolin glowered. "What's that supposed to mean? “

Bartolli's dark, predatory eyes took on the businesslike aspect of an undertaker measuring a still-living prospective client for a pine box. "I'm just pointing out that the director will no doubt reward you handsomely if our alien-capture ops all go as per plan. But if they don't, your corner office just might be getting a new tenant soon. “

With that, Bartolli turned and followed the prisoners and their guards to the forward hatch. He hadn't bothered to wait for either a reply or a dismissal.

Alone inside the jet, Margolin shivered involuntarily, as though someone had just stepped on his grave.

Ever since he had awakened on board the jet and discovered that he'd been both drugged and handcuffed, Rath had been thinking as rapidly as his fogged mind would allow.

He considered how oddly rested he felt after the long cross-country flight. If not for all the drugs in his system, he felt he'd be ready to take on the world.

Rath also thought about Zan's healing powers, and about how he'd tried to develop similar abilities of his own. As Zan's military adviser back on Antar, Rath had understood well the value of battlefield medicine. Unfortunately, he'd never attained anything like Zan's proficiency at direct wound-healing; Rath had concluded that this was a talent that required a fundamentally nobler worldview than he possessed.

But Rath had gotten pretty good at neutralizing infectious bioweapons, battlefield toxins, and poisons.

And narcotics.

Rath concentrated first on ordering and focusing his thoughts, at least as much as the junk in his bloodstream would allow. It was difficult at first, like trying to start a fire with nothing more than a pair of wet sticks. But somewhere at the center of his mind, his powers began to spark and smolder. The toxins in his blood responded by clumping together like a multivehicle crash on the highway, stopping and thereby rendering themselves harmless. As his faculties gradually returned, the process accelerated.

He knew that the hard part would be hiding his renewed strength from his captors.

"Move it," said the hard-faced agent who stood almost nose to nose with him shortly after the jet had landed.

Standing in the aisle with Ava ahead of him and Lonnie behind… all of them surrounded by a half-dozen armed MiBs… Rath slowly moved toward the jetway. It took a real effort not to smile as he descended the stairs behind Ava, grabbing the railing to make himself appear weaker than he truly was.

Less than a minute later he stood on the tarmac, watching as several agents pushed a disoriented-looking Ava toward the armored vehicle that awaited them. They had to holster their weapons momentarily as they did so, leaving only three guns trained on both Rath and Lonnie.

The odds were as good as they were ever going to get.

Rath concentrated intensely for a moment, and his wrists glowed like shooting stars. His handcuffs dropped away as he spun toward the agents, raised his hands, and let fly with several tightly focused energy blasts.

As Michael drove the Microbus back toward the hotel where they had left their belongings, Liz looked over at Max. Something was definitely wrong. But he didn't want to talk about it, so she wasn't going to press the issue. Yet.

"So our pictures are on the news then?" Michael asked.

"Just the three of us guys," Kyle said. "They weren't very good shots, though. Looked like they were taken from a security camera at the clothing store or something. It would be hard for anyone to identify us from them. “

"I don't get it," Maria said. "If they want the word out about us, why don't they just release the pictures they have of us from Roswell? “

"What if they don't want word out about us?" Liz asked. "I mean, the Special Unit doesn't seem to want its agenda known to the public. Think how ridiculous they'd sound if they told your average American, 'Aliens are living among you, and they're teenagers.' So, what do they have to gain by releasing information about us? “

Michael nodded, a slight grin on his face as he looked back at them. "Liz has a point. They don't have any reason to expose us. But the media and the local cops don't know that. So maybe these reports came from them. After all, what happened in the mall was pretty public. It's not like it would be easy to cover that up. Even for Special Unit spooks. “

Liz nodded. "It would explain why the news pictures looked like security-camera screen captures instead of photos. “

"We haven't heard enough of the news yet to see if anybody's talking about your astounding displays of power," Maria added. Then, to Michael, she said, "Hey, Spaceboy, eyes on the road. We don't need to get pulled over right now.