Walking past the car rental area, Special Agent Billings glanced down at his handheld EM detector, knowing that the odds were very much against his finding the three fugitives before they made it out of the terminal. There were simply too many exits, and there just wasn't time to seal them all. Once outside, the aliens could easily get their hands on a car and make a clean getaway.
Then Billings saw the energy spike on the detector's small LED readout. He understood immediately that the Harding girl must be expending a great deal of psionic energy at the moment, no doubt using her mindwarp talent to alter the appearance of herself and her two friends.
And she's somewhere nearby, he thought, examining the readings more closely. Following the GPS coordinates as they scrolled onto his screen, he pressed a couple of buttons to display the range and distance of his prey, relative to his present position. Then he trotted quickly across the concourse and through the large glass doors that led to the curbside.
The readout on his device was going crazy. / must be right on top of them, he thought.
Straight ahead, beside the curb, a yellow taxicab waited. Two smartly dressed men and a woman approached it, their flights evidently having just landed, and started to get in.
Billings recalled what the files on the Harding girl had said about her powers. She evidently possessed at least a limited ability to reach into people's minds and manipulate what they saw. Or what they thought they saw.
Maybe she should have whipped up an illusion of some luggage, he thought. Strange that not one of them has any. He consulted the range and distance data again on his device one last time, making absolutely sure.
It's them, he thought, then sprinted toward the cab before the trio finished closing its doors. Dropping the detector, he pulled his gun, grabbed the rear passenger door, and flung it open.
"Freeze! FBI!" he shouted.
With surprising strength, the slight woman seated in the center of the backseat shoved the man at her right, throwing him straight into Billings.
The agent and the other man fell backward onto the curbside. Billings felt the wind rush out of his body. The man looked confused, but it was obvious that he intended to run. Travelers stepped around them. Someone cursed, then moved on.
Billings rolled into a crouch and brought the smaller man down with a quick rabbit punch. The man slumped toward the sidewalk, unconscious.
By the time he hit the ground, he had transformed into a slightly built teenage female with dyed-blue hair and hardcore alt-rock clothing.
Someone screamed. Billings heard an engine roar and the squeal of tires quickly laying part of their treads on the roadway. He looked up from the unconscious Harding girl to see the taxicab streak away. A dark- skinned man, who appeared to have been its driver, lay unconscious on the sidewalk.
Noting the cab's plate numbers, Billings grabbed his radio and called for backup, though he doubted anyone could move fast enough now to keep the perps from getting out of the airport.
One down. Just two more to go, he thought, handcuffing his sole prisoner. He knew that this one, Tess Harding, was the one his superiors wanted captured most of all.
As another pair of agents and a large black sedan arrived to help him whisk her away, he wondered why the other aliens had sacrificed one of their own.
"That was really smart, Rath," Lonnie said sardonically She noticed immediately that her appearance had now returned to normal.
Rath slammed the accelerator down, as though the entire airport, and the roads that led into and out of it, were his own private video arcade.
"Ava was just dead weight," he said.
She scowled, holding on to the dash as Rath swerved around a hotel shuttle. People dived out of the crosswalk, their luggage scattering in all directions. "Hello? Ava was the only thing that kept our magic makeovers from disappearing! “
Rath turned into a parking garage, almost going up onto two wheels in the process. "She was also a bell around our necks. “
"What are you talking about? “
"Ever wonder why the MiBs only seem to come after us when Ava is nearby, using her Obi-Wan whammy? And how come we never had much of an alien-hunter problem until after she came back from wherever it was she disappeared to for all those months after we went to Roswell to drag Zan Lite off to the Antarian Summit? “
Lonnie had never given those matters much thought. But now she had to admit, at least to herself, that what Rath was saying was at least possible. But possible wasn't the same as likely.
"Might be a coincidence," was all she could think of to say. "Remember, the cops and the Feds might have captured us because we were having that noisy fight with those alien-possessed freaks. “
"The freaks chased us into the warehouse because they followed Ava there. “
"Still might be a coincidence. “
Rath brought the cab to a stop across a pair of handicapped parking spaces and threw his door open. It crunched into the side of the neighboring car.
"Yeah," he said. "And monkeys might fly out of my butt. I think the MiBs know how to track her by her powers. So now they can have her. “
It took Lonnie a moment to wrap her mind around what Rath had just told her. Ava wasn't likely to survive for long on her own in some FBI interrogation/dissection room. First Zan, now Ava. Gone.
Lonnie knew that for all intents and purposes the two of them were all that remained of the Royal Four. At least this version of the Royal Four.
But the approaching whine of a siren reminded her that there was no time to dwell on that. Rath got out of the cab first, and Lonnie followed him over to a nearby BMW Rath knelt behind the rear bumper, altering the plates with a wave of his hand. A moment later, he repeated the procedure on the car's front end.
Their powers got the doors on both sides open in seconds. Lonnie watched from the passenger seat as Rath quickly hot-wired the ignition using a single glowing finger as a stand-in for a strand of copper.
"Yupmobiles," Rath said as he drove the BMW toward the parking lot's exit. "Gotta love 'em. “
The whine of the siren… or was it more than one?… grew steadily louder in Lonnies ears. "What about our disguises? “
"We'll do 'em ourselves. It'll just take a lot of energy. “
Lonnie sighed. She was almost starting to get used to being tired and depleted.
Almost. "You first," she said.
Rath nodded. As Lonnie watched, his hair slowly turned gray, then migrated from the top of his head to the back and sides, forming a long ponytail that hung down his back. His leathers morphed into a disgustingly retro velour shirt, which opened almost to the navel and exposed a chest covered with wiry white hair.
"How do I look?" Rath wanted to know.
She shrugged. "Like Patrick Stewart having a midlife crisis." Concentrating intensely, Lonnie began to change her own features and clothing, hoping they could get clear of their pursuers before her energies were once again depleted. She chose a familiar face to base her image on, complementing Rath's actorly looks.
Rath drove on in silence, leaving the airport behind and taking an on-ramp for the northbound 405 freeway. Like Ava, the sirens were already becoming a distant memory. Their pursuers no longer knew where to look.
Rath glanced at her, evidently done pouting over her earlier insult. "Nice look, Counselor Troi. If the cops pull us over, they'll probably ask for our autographs. “
Lonnie snorted. "So, where to, Captain? Are we going to try to track down Langley? “
He shook his head. "I know Ava always had a lot of faith in Langley, but she believed in Santa Claus, too.
What's Langley done for us lately? I'm not sure I trust him any more than I trust Ava. “
"Good point," Lonnie said, thinking, If Langley had done a better job looking after us, we wouldn't have had to grow up in the sewers. "So where are we going, then? “