Liz gave her friend a look, cocking an eyebrow. "He's your boyfriend. You should be able to tame the wild beast. “

"Oh, we've all had so much time for beast-taming, living in the back of the van together and driving across the scenic wilds of the Southwest," Maria said. "I bet Max will start getting just as cranky as Michael if the two of you keep getting as little, um, quality time together as Michael and I get. “

Isabel made a pained face and put her hands up, palms out. "Ewwww, okay? I don't need to hear about it. I haven't even seen my husband for four months, so your problems seem minimal compared with mine. “

"I don't want to hear about it either," Kyle said with a mischievous grin. "Why do you think I'm surfing the adult sites? “

Isabel smacked him in the back of the head as she walked past. "Come on, guys, let's pay up and get out of here. “

Maria turned back to her computer and her mouth shaped into an O of surprise. "Whoops, forgot to log off." Liz gave her a scolding glance as Maria clicked around on her terminal, exited the e-mail program, then erased the temporary files, cache memory, and history from the machine.

"You girls go ahead. I've got three more minutes on my card," Kyle said. He turned back to the computer.

Liz joined Isabel up at the counter, where she noticed that Max's sister had put on her "flirty" face. She smiled engagingly at the male clerk and said, "Hi," in a singsong voice. "How much do my friends owe for their time on the computers? “

The clerk, a skinny, bespectacled, computer-geek type who appeared to be in his late teens, blushed and stammered slightly. "Ummm, six dollars each. “

Isabel fished in her small pocketbook, pulling out two twenty-dollar bills. "We need some ones. Would you mind changing this for me? “

The clerk took the two bills and punched numbers into the cash register. He looked up at Isabel. "Anyone ever tell you that you look like Lara Croft? “

"Only when I wear my hair like this," Isabel said, running her hand under the long French braid into which she'd fashioned her newly darkened hair. "Thanks for noticing." She flashed him a toothy smile.

Liz turned away, rolling her eyes, as the clerk counted out change for Isabel. She looked toward the front of the store, where Maria was standing and looking outside.

Maria turned quickly toward Liz, who saw the alarm on her friend's face immediately. "Liz, we've got trouble! “

Liz rushed over toward the window. Kyle got to his feet and moved forward as well.

Maria pointed down to the lower level of the mall which lay beyond the balcony. There, Liz saw several men dressed in dark suits… as well as several police officers and security guards… moving quickly through the crowd of afternoon shoppers.

"Oh no," Liz said under her breath. She looked down the balcony toward the coffee shop and saw Max and Michael waiting in line, oblivious to the looming danger. Three stores down, the wall opened up, making way for an escalator. An "up" escalator, Liz observed.

As Isabel came toward the group, Liz said, "We've got to get out of here. And we have to warn Max! “

Then Liz saw a mixed quartet of federal agents and cops coming down the balcony, heading directly toward the Cybernet Cafe. All of them had already drawn their guns.

Liz turned quickly and looked toward the rear of the cafe, searching for a rear exit that wasn't immediately apparent. Her heart lay leaden in her chest.

We're trapped!

V et another bullet whined near Rath, singeing his spiky Mohawk haircut as it passed just an inch or so from his partially shaved skull. The shell's impact sprayed plaster dust through the darkness, making him cough. He dove for cover behind a tall metal rack that was covered with discarded boxes, the mortal remains of automotive parts or plumbing fixtures, or whatever this abandoned warehouse had trafficked in during better days. He knew the flimsy, collapsing shelves and old packages wouldn't provide much protection against the heat those freaks were packing.

He couldn't see them, but he knew they were closing in. Come on, Lonnie, he thought, using the name Vilandra had chosen on Earth. Find the gadget that brought them to Earth, blow it up, and let's all get the hell out of here.

Rath wanted nothing more than to hit the nearest exit… assuming he could find it with the lights off… and run like a rat for the safety of the Manhattan sewers. But if the information Lonnie had given him after her last dreamwalk could be trusted, then they were in the right place. If we can just find the right thing to blow up, he thought, then we can send these bastards back to wherever they came from.

He wondered how the freaks had found and cornered them so quickly. Surely they hadn't traced Lonnie's dreamwalk. As far as he knew, nobody had ever done that before.

Ava had to be the one at fault, he realized. She had never been as good at covering her psionic tracks as Lonnie was. And although Ava had a real knack for reaching inside individual minds and "nudging" them into seeing the world her way, she had always had a tough time handling large, hostile groups. On top of that, Rath couldn't help but wonder whether Ava was still on the same side as he and Lonnie. Ever since Lonnie and 1 tossed Zan in front of that truck, Ava's been harder and harder to keep in line, he thought. Letting her get close to that Evans guy, that other Zan, was a huge mistake.

Or perhaps letting her come back to them months later had been his real mistake.

A moment later, Rath found Ava, nearly tripping over her in the darkness. In the brief illumination of a muzzle flash, he saw her crouching behind one of the metal storage racks, her usually immaculate platinum-and-blue hair now thoroughly mussed and covered with a dusting of white plaster debris from the nearby bullet impacts.

Rath snarled at her. "How fabulous is this? You led them straight to us! “

He felt plaster dust against his skin as she shook her head. "Evil Emperor Zurg's minions are doing their damnedest to blow us away and you're blaming me for it? “

"You must have set off an alarm when you brainwiped those guards outside," he said, crouching close to the floor himself. Fortunately, the sun hadn't yet risen, and darkness had always been his friend. But Rath knew they wouldn't stand a chance of escaping if they were still pinned down inside this warehouse after daybreak.

"No way. Lonnie must have set us up," Ava hissed.

Rath didn't want to think about that. After all, Lonnie was his lover as well as his accomplice in Zan's murder. He and Lonnie had no choice but to trust each other. Ava, though, had spent enough time away from both Rath and Lonnie over the past year to place her loyalties in doubt.

"You're a walking bull's-eye, Queenie," Rath said, his jaw set into a hard line. "These bums must've locked onto your latest Jedi mind trick somehow." Whether she'd intended to or not, Rath was certain that Ava had gotten the three of them into a lot of trouble… maybe more than even they could handle.

Another bullet chewed up the wall immediately behind Rath and Ava, coming even more uncomfortably close than any of the others.

"These 'bums' are about to blow great big holes through us, Rath-man," Ava said. "Think we could bookmark this argument for later? “

Rath had to admit that she had a point. Their attackers, of course, were anything but "bums." There were any number of warring political factions back home on Antar, many of whom temporarily occupied the bodies of Earth humans in order to parley on neutral ground with their adversaries. Some of these Antarians liked to take over the bodies of derelicts or street criminals… people who, like the East Coast Royal Three, weren't likely to be missed by the locals.