Max put his hand on Michael's shoulder and looked into his eyes. "Let's do this one thing, and then we'll get out of here. “

Michael took a deep breath through his nose, then let it out slowly through his mouth. Then another breath, in and out again. It was a calming technique that Maria had tried to teach him. Sometimes, it even worked. Finally he nodded his assent, and Max smiled. But inwardly, Michael was not as calm as his exterior suggested. What future is Max leading us to? And will any of us survive to see it? Topeka, Kansas Suzanne Duff awoke with a start, her eyes focusing on the blinking LED lights on the alarm clock on the hotel night-stand. Even in the relative darkness of the room, she could see the ringing cell phone behind the clock, and she picked it up. "Hello? “

The voice on the other end of the line was familiar, but' her mind wasn't quite awake enough to immediately iec-ognize it. "Agent Duff? “

"Yes, this is Agent Duff," she said. "Who's this? “

"It's Frank Kaneko, Suzanne. “

No wonder his voice had sounded familiar. She and Kaneko had gone through Quantico together, and had even dated, twice. But she hadn't seen him for at least a year. They had run into each other at an event in Washington, D.C., and spent several hours at a juice bar, reminiscing about their school days and discussing the various cases they had worked since.

"What can I do for you, Frank? It's 4:17 in the morning, you know. “

"I know," he said in hushed tones. "I'm sorry to wake you, but something weird happened today, and for some reason, you came to mind. “

"Go on," she said, stifling a yawn.

"I'm working out of the Cheyenne, Wyoming, office right now, and we got a very strange alert today. “

Duff's mind almost immediately switched to a fully alert mode. "XMA-94? “

Kaneko sounded surprised. "You know about it? “

"Yeah, I saw a file on it." Duff's mind raced, and she carefully considered her question. "Why are you calling me? What connection do you think I have to it? “

"This is going to sound very strange," Kaneko said, his tone almost apologetic, "but it has something to do with a dream I had. I had contact with three of the suspects in the alert today, and tonight, I dreamed about one of them. A girl. There were elements in my dream that didn't connect, but one of them did somehow. Roswell. “

Suddenly more awake, Duff sat up in bed, switching the phone from one ear to the other. "Go on. “

"Well, 1 remember you talking about a case in Roswell you worked a while back. An abduction or kidnapping case. You didn't tell me very much about it, but for some reason, when I thought about Roswell after I woke up this morning, your name was the only one that came to my mind. “

The feelings of unease that Duff had experienced earlier in the day began to return, fluttering at the edge of her thoughts. Somehow, she was being drawn back into the realm of the Roswell teens with the unusual powers.

"Frank, I want you to tell me everything that happened today. Everything. No matter how weird it was. “

Margolin didn't relish having to listen to Bartolli right now. Or even having to look at him.

"Some battle, eh, Viceroy?" said Bartolli, who stood on the tarmac beside him, near the jetway and the plane. Bar-tolli's I told you so demeanor was insufferable, but hadn't yet crossed the line into outright insubordination.

"What battle?" Margolin said, thinking that the aliens had taken all of five seconds to surprise his men and make off with the armored car. "Looks more like a rout to me. Let's head this off before things get any worse. “

Bartolli grinned in obvious anticipation of another chase and capture. He's in his element, Margolin thought, rejoicing that he was fighting on the same side as this fearsome people-hunter.

Both men trotted quickly from the jetway to the downed agents that their prisoners had left in their wake. Two of the six agents who lay sprawled on the ground were still conscious, though a bit groggy. The others, including the trio of agents who had been aboard the armored prisoner transport vehicle, appeared to be dead. Bartolli looked disgusted.

As he made a couple of quick emergency cell phone calls, Margolin decided that Bartollis recriminations would have to wait for a better time.

Squinting across the sunbaked tarmac, Margolin saw that the prisoner transport… driven, obviously, by the prisoners themselves… was now barreling at high speed straight toward a nearby terminal building.

"The backup reception team will have all three of them back in custody in no time," Margolin said, keeping himself calm with a skill born of long practice. Despite Bar-tolli's worries, the special agent code-named "Viceroy" knew a thing or two about caution. A net composed of some of the finest counterterrorism specialists in the country was already drawing tight around those kids' necks, and they didn't even know it.

And they won't until after it's already too late, Margolin thought. As long as the girls don't shake off the drugs the way the Guerin boy apparently did.

It was the girls, in whom the Bureau's surveillance specialists and alien-profilers had observed certain telepathic abilities, who constituted the most severe potential threat, at least as far as Margolin was concerned. Tess Harding, or a reasonable facsimile of Tess Harding, had blown up an entire military base. And the telekinetic abilities of Isabel Evans… who, like the Guerin boy, now seemed to be in Los Angeles and Wyoming simultaneously… were well documented.

But Margolin believed that these threats would remain safely neutralized so long as the girls remained too drug-addled to marshal their talents.

Margolin felt a chill roll down his spine like ice water. He had absolutely no idea how the Guerin boy had recovered so quickly from the drugs in his system.

He wondered how much other critical information about their subjects the Special Unit had yet to learn. And he hoped that the rest of the Unit's planned alien takedown operations would go more smoothly than this one.

"Vilandra!" Rath was shouting. "Snap to it! “

As lucidity returned to her, Lonnie felt as though a family of woodchucks had taken up residence inside her head.

She realized groggily that she was sitting in the front seat of some sort of truck or SUV Ava was seated at her right, grabbing the dashboard as though her life depended on it.

Looking through the wide windshield, Lonnie could see a huge, flat expanse of blacktop. Two passenger jets and a chain of luggage trams were visible in the distance. In the foreground stood a low, prefabricated- looking building. An airport terminal, she recalled, her level of alertness spiking dramatically Rath must have gotten us away from the MiBs somehow.

She turned her head to the left and saw Rath, who was sitting behind the wheel, driving. He seemed frantic, his spiky Mohawk soaked in sweat. His hand was on her shoulder. Had he jolted her awake with his powers? "You should be awake enough now, Lonnie," he said, slamming the pedal down. The vehicles acceleration increased, and Lonnie felt herself being pressed backward into the middle of the vehicle's single bench seat.

Lonnie blinked at Rath in confusion. "Awake enough for what? “

"Awake enough for this. Take the wheel." And with that, Rath released the controls and clambered into the middle of the seat beside her, nudging her into the drivers position.

Lonnie quickly grabbed the wheel, and her right foot fumbled for a moment before coming to rest on what she hoped was the accelerator pedal. "Hey! Are you crazy? “

"Probably," Rath said. "I have to try to clear Ava's head. We need to get her powers working, at least long enough to get us out of here. Now take us to the terminal building. “