Max, Liz, Isabel, Michael, Maria, and Kyle now travel the country, trying to help others along the way. Max and Liz have finally married, but their happiness is tinged with hardship. They are all still pursued by the Special Unit, the Skins, and other aliens hidden among the human race.

Even though they escaped Roswell, they cannot escape the forces currently arrayed against them…

In Pursuit, the Special Unit has moved in on several fronts.

In New York City, the surviving three duplicates Rath, Lonnie, and Ava were attacked by enemy aliens.

Although they emerged victorious, the trio was captured by the police, and turned over to the Special Unit. Rath and Lonnie soon escaped federal custody in Los Angeles, leaving Ava behind in the Special Unit's clutches.

In Wyoming, the Roswell teens also faced trouble with the Special Unit, who cornered them at a mall. Forced to use their powers publicly to escape, the teens were more on the run than ever, especially when images of them hit the news.

As the Roswell teens attempted to rectify the harm their escape caused to some innocent bystanders, the Special Unit struck back at those closest to them. Jeff and Nancy Parker and Phillip and Diane Evans were taken, but not before they managed to warn the other parents. Deputy Jim Valenti and Amy DeLuca narrowly escaped town, and learned that FBI Special Agent Suzanne Duff was planning to help them. UFO Museum owner Brody Davis was on his own, though, as was Jesse Ramirez in Boston.

The Roswell teens have now come to a crossroads. Liz has seen terrifying visions of Isabel's future death, while Kyle is experiencing the awakening of strange new powers. Unaware as yet of their parents' abductions, Max and the others have come to a critical decision: They will stand their ground and fight the Special Unit, to the death if necessary, in the hopes of recovering some semblance of a normal life…

Uovernment agents are about to break down our door. I think they've already captured the Parkers. I don't know about the others.» Phillip Evans's voice sounded panicked and calm at the same time. «Contact Jesse Ramirez, and then go ahead with the plans I put in place.» For a fleeting moment, Shelby Tremaine didn't know what to say. She had pulled her car into a parking lot the moment she saw the Roswell area code on the special cell phone she carried with her most of the time. And then she had answered the call she never truly expected to get.

With a quick shake of her head, she asked, «Are you sure about this, Phillip?» «Yes. An unmarked black car and van just pulled up the street, right after we got a call from the Parkers.» His voice sounded more strained now.

«How do you know they're coming for " «I know," Phillip said, interrupting her. «I'm setting up the cam feed to record everything that happens in our living room. Whatever they do to us here will be recorded.

You know where the signal goes.» «I've got it in my files," Shelby said.

«Good. Get the video as soon as you can. That way, you'll know whether we're still alive. And find out " Phillip stopped speaking then, and Shelby heard a loud, splintering crash, as if something wooden had been blown up.

The door? Shelby thought just before the cell phone's connection went dead. She felt a chill coursing down her spine, and noticed goose bumps popping up on her arms.

What the hell is happening in Roswell? Shelby had known Phillip Evans since the third grade, back when both of their families were living in Flagstaff, Arizona. She was a chubby child, and was often teased mercilessly by the other kids. Phillip had come to her rescue one day when three of her classmates were holding her down behind the playground fort, trying to make her eat some bugs. She still remembered seeing him standing there, the sun behind him like a halo. After chasing them off, he had helped her up, then walked her back inside the classroom.

As they grew older, Phillip was always on the edge of being popular in school. He wasn't a jock, but he was big enough to discourage the jocks from messing with him.

He was smart enough to hang with the nerds, but not so geeky that he was considered one of the «brainiacs.» His good looks won him lots of attention from the girls, but he generally only went out with the ones who displayed more substance than style. As far as Shelby could tell, she had changed a good deal less than Phillip had since grade school; even as a high school senior, she remained chubby and victimized.

But Shelby remained devoted to Phillip through the years, and he remained as her protector. For a short time, she'd had a romantic crush on him, and they'd even dated briefly in high school, but they soon discovered that the dynamics of their friendship were immutable; they were fated to be best friends forever, and lovers never.

In college, Phillip had chosen his major early on, his fascination with the law leading him into the prelaw program at the University of New Mexico. Shelby puttered around at U.N.M. for two years, mainly taking general-ed and elective courses before deciding that she, too, wanted to take on the legal system from within. Phillip was able to help her with her studies, and she benefited from his classroom experience and natural legal talent. In the early 1970s, most women working in the field of law were legal assistants; in those early days it seemed to Shelby that very few of them aspired to become lawyers themselves. But by then, she had stopped playing the victim, and was strongly taking charge of her own life.

Though they now lived far apart, Shelby and Phillip had stayed in touch with each other over the years since graduating from law school, passing their respective bar exams, and becoming practicing attorneys. Their respective spouses understood their friendship at least until Shelby's marriage had fallen apart, prompting her to spend more time with some of her oldest and dearest friends.

Shelby very much liked Diane Evans, and she absolutely adored Max and Isabel, who had come into Phillip's and Diane's lives so unexpectedly in 1989. Phillip had confided that he and Diane had been unable to conceive children on their own; the two apparent orphans were a godsend.

Shelby had joked more than a few times that Max and Isabel might be Kryptonian children, rocketed to Earth like Superman. After all, the Evanses had found them wandering in the desert, with no knowledge of their past.

In the months that followed, after no one had laid claim to the pair, Phillip and Diane had adopted Max and Isabel.

Thirteen years later, in the spring of 2002, Shelby learned that her comic-book-oriented jests held more truth than she ever could have imagined at the time. She now specialized in family law and adoption, and Phillip had called to ask for a special professional favor. He told her that Max had fathered a child, and that he needed her help to get the child to safety and placed into a good home.

No matter how much she trusted her oldest friend, Shelby wasn't about to just take the child without further explanation. And so Phillip told her everything: about Max and Isabel's true origins; about the baby's interstellar parentage; about the government agents who were hunting for further evidence that aliens did indeed live among the humans of Roswell.

Shelby might not have believed Phillip if he hadn't shown her the videotape. He and Diane had used a nannycam to spy on Isabel, and had caught footage of her using her extraordinary telekinetic powers to levitate objects in her bedroom. The government agents had apparently confiscated the original tape, but the Evanses had duplicated it earlier, leaving the copy with Shelby, along with little Zan.

Phillip informed Shelby that they didn't want to know with whom she had placed Zan; he had even lied to Max, telling him that a male law school buddy in New York would take care of the matter. «If we ever want to know the truth about where the baby is placed, we'll ask you," Phillip told Shelby. «But this child deserves a future free from fear.» A few weeks later, Shelby had gotten a second visit from Phillip, and this one was filled with more portent than the previous one. He presented her with all the data he had gathered on the secret government intelligence group called the Special Unit, as well as every bit of information about his children and the others in Roswell who were involved in evading the government's alien-hunting conspiracy.