them to help her in any way he could; he might even impress her a little bit in the process. He felt his brow furrow as he concentrated. How did you find us? he thought, conscious that he was thinking within a psychic space that he had somehow constructed from his own thoughts, as well as from the memories of an alien woman. The background around them changed, and he was once again seeing/experiencing Lucinda holding the pentagonal device, which she pointed toward the second level of the train, where earlier Isabel and Kyle had been eating lunch. The white lights on the device were blinking in a fast, repeating sequence. The ruddy-faced man the Skin who had turned to dust after attacking Isabel was beside Lucinda. Then, the pair walked backward, exiting the train and the train station, entered a car, unparked it, and drove backward away from the train depots garage. Lucinda was holding the device the entire time, studying the changing patterns of lights in its center. «They caught up to us at the Fairfield station," Isabel said. «That thing must be some kind of tracking device.» She turned to Kyle. «Is that how they keep finding us? Where did these gadgets come from?» Kyle pushed his thoughts further toward Lucinda's memories, trying to cleave through them as quickly as possible. He felt her mind rebel against his intrusion, felt her memories rip like crepe paper bunting as he moved through them. He tread as carefully as he could, and felt horrible that he was using violence even violence on an abstract plane such as this was anathema to his Buddhist sensibilities but he knew that innocent lives might depend on his finding out the truth about the aliens who had dogged them just as much as the Special Unit had. And then he saw it, and heard Isabel gasp as she did as well. Lucinda was standing in a parking lot, looking at the pentagonal device, whose white lights were flashing quickly. It beeped as well, as though sounding an alarm. And then Lucinda was running backward, putting the device into her purse; next she was inside a store, closing her purse and putting her groceries back on the counter. She took her check back from the clerk and dated it: May 15, 2000. Isabel looked at Kyle in surprise. «That was the day we activated the communicators.» «And?» Kyle rolled his hands, mimicking a snowball rolling down a hill. «I wasn't there. What happened?» «I was in the cave in the desert, with Max, Michael, and Tess," Isabel said. «We activated the communicators after Nasedo left. We saw a message from Max's and my mother. She talked about our destiny as the Royal Four.» «Well, those communicators must have caused something else to happen too, considering all the close encounters we've all had over the past couple of years," Kyle said. «That must explain how some of the aliens who've attacked us have managed to find us," Isabel said, nodding. «These devices must be tuned in to our bodies somehow. Or our brain waves. Or something.» Kyle nodded. «Or maybe it's your Antarian genes they're tuned to.» Isabel considered that for a moment. «Wouldn't that mean that our New York duplicates would have been tracked too?» «Do we know that they haven't been?» Kyle said. «Good point. Why don't you ask this Skin woman about that.» Kyle pushed again, but didn't find anything this time. «I think we've about tapped her for information," he said, hoping that his inquiries hadn't permanently injured her. A moment later, he and Isabel opened their eyes, and they were back in the train's sleeper car. Lucinda looked as if she had been whacked in the head with a hammer. But her eyes were open, if barely focused. «Damn you, Vilandra!» she spat. «You'll betray everything and everyone around you, no matter how many lives fate grants you! But Kivar won't stop either. He'll keep sending more of us after you as many times as it takes. And finally, one day " Kyle saw Isabel's jaw clench, and she blinked once. Lucinda's body abruptly tumbled into a pile of gray ash, spilling all over the chair and floor. Her empty blue polyester suit collapsed like a deflated balloon, and the electrical cord that had tied her hands dropped limply behind the chair. «Did you do that?» Kyle asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. Isabel turned toward him with eyes like storm clouds. «Kyle, this is war. She would have killed you, and who knows what they wanted to do with me. Michael is right. We cannot keep running. We can't keep showing mercy to our enemies. There may or may not be any more Skins on this train, but who knows how many of them or other aliens, like the ones who kidnapped those girls in Stonewall are tracking us right now? Not to mention the Special Unit.» Kyle considered arguing with her, but the barely restrained fury behind her eyes persuaded him not to try. Instead he turned and looked for something he could use to sweep up the mortal remains of their two Skin attackers. Later Isabel found Kyle sitting up in the trains observation lounge, where he was looking out into the night through the large window. No one else was in the room since there was so little to see on this leg of their voyage to Boston via Chicago, particularly at night. «There you are," Isabel said. «Took me a while to find you.» She felt a pang of remorse for having been so rough with him earlier, after the encounter with the Skins. «Why didn't you just use our psychic link?» Kyle said dryly. «I'm not sure how to activate it," she said, sitting down near him on the padded bench. «I think you have to want it to be activated. Or start it somehow.» «Like I keep saying, I'm kinda new to this whole 'alien powers' thing," Kyle said. «I didn't expect to become a charter member of the Psychic Hotline after I graduated from high school.» Isabel smiled, then reached forward to grab his hand. «Hey, I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to go all Buffyversus-evil on you.» He squeezed her fingers, then withdrew his hand. He offered her a slight smile. «It's okay. Maybe I'm just freaked out because your robe didn't cover very much when I was trying to save your life.» Isabel felt herself blushing, and she glared at Kyle. «Ahhh, I try to make peace, and you try to embarrass me. You'd better watch out, Kyle Valenti. I might dreamwalk you and find a way to make you absolutely terrified of nubile, seminude women.» They sat silently for a while, sneaking looks and smiles at each other. Was this a flirtation? Suddenly, Isabel felt another stab of guilt. Jesse. Kyle was the one who finally broke the silence. «Let's try Jesse.» Isabel raised an eyebrow, wondering if Kyle had tapped into her thoughts again. «Try Jesse how?» Kyle snorted. «Get your mind out of the gutter, Isabel. Let's try contacting him. Use me as your psychic superhighway. It'll be good practice, and;might even make me feel more positive about using these new powers of mine.» Isabel nodded. She looked into Kyle's eyes, then closed hers. She reached out toward Kyle with her mind, but saw nothing but darkness. And then suddenly, she was spinning, traveling down a corridor of multicolored lights, spiraling toward an almost dazzling brightness. «Jesse?» Isabel saw him sitting in the seat of a smallish plane, one of whose jet engines was visible through the window. Jesse was leafing through a stack of manila files that sat in his lap. «Jesse?» He looked up and straight at her, surprise on his face. «Isabel? What? How are you here?» «I'm not," Isabel said, looking around the plane's compact cabin. She actually felt as though she were standing in the aisle beside him, and ducked her head to avoid bonking it on the ceiling. And she noticed that Kyle was apparently standing beside her as well, although Jesse had so far shown no sign of noticing his presence. «It's a long story," Isabel told Jesse. «I'm here courtesy of a friend's emerging new powers. But I'm really not here I'm actually on a train headed toward Chicago. After that, I'll be on my way to see you in Boston.» Jesse looked surprised. «When did this happen?» She opened her mouth to answer, and he interrupted her. «Wait, you can't see me in Boston. I'm flying to Los Angeles.» «Why L.A.? And why now?» Isabel looked around at the surroundings. The only other person in the plane's cramped cabin was a roundish woman who reminded her a bit of one of the lawyers from The Practice. She seemed oblivious to Isabel's presence, and to the fact that Jesse was having an animated discussion with her. «The Special Unit came after me. And I'm not the only one, Isabel. They… they picked up your parents already.» «What?» The image of the plane shifted and stretched, as if Isabel's mental image of it was fracturing. As Jesse filled Isabel in on the day's events, she saw Kyle watching from the back of the cabin. He was frowning. Jesse told her about the abductions that had just taken place in Roswell, his own harrowing close call in Boston, about Valenti and Brody and about the plan Phillip Evans had put in place in case of this very emergency. «It's the only way, Isabel.» "'Outing' us to the world? Seems pretty extreme.» «These are extreme times. Your father understands that. That's why he planned for this eventuality.» She sighed. «So much for any chance we might have had for a normal life once the world hears that Max and Michael and I are aliens. People will freak out from coast to coast. They'll come after us with torches and pitchforks.» Jesse smiled slightly. «Don't be so sure about that, Isabel. How many people do you think will really believe you're from another planet? If America 'freaks out,' then the government will get the worst of it. When people look at you, they'll see a bunch of kids being victimized by an out-of-control agency. Those torches and pitchforks will be for the Special Unit.» Isabel decided to table that issue for the moment. «How were you able to take a private plane?» she asked. «Brody paid for it. He's loaded, Isabel.» At that moment, Isabel made a decision, though she was aware that probably it was exactly the wrong decision. But it was hers to make. «Land in Chicago, Jesse. We'll be there in less than an hour. Kyle and I will come with you to Los Angeles.» Jesse's eyebrows pulled together. «Seriously?» «Seriously.» Isabel saw Kyle's eyes bugging out. He was obviously privy to the conversation. She stared at him for a moment, willing him to stay silent. He seemed to take the hint, or perhaps he didn't want to risk overstraining his new ability by injecting his own thoughts across the mental connection he'd forged between her and Jesse. Still, the look in his eyes asked a clear question: Are you crazy? After all, Liz had had several future flashes of Special Unit doctors slicing her open like a trout. Jesse nodded, and she forced thoughts of Liz's premonitions aside. «Okay," he said. «I'll meet you in the Windy City.» «I'll find you, Jesse.» He looked wounded. «You have to go now?» She nodded. «I don't want to put too much strain on Kyle's new power. But I'll see you soon. I love you.» «I love you too, baby," Jesse said. And then, Isabel was back in the train's car, staring at a very annoyed Kyle. «What are you thinking!» Kyle asked. «You know that if we go to California, you run the risk that Liz's premonition will come true.» «I know," Isabel said. «But I don't want Jesse to know about that.» She gave him a severe look. «I'm serious, Kyle. He doesn't hear about it. At least not until we rejoin the others.» «I think this is a very bad idea," Kyle said. Isabel nodded, then let out a heavy sigh. «Yeah, it probably is. But maybe we've already altered the present enough so that the future Liz saw can't happen.» Kyle lapsed into silence for a moment. «Do you really think this idea that your dad put together to 'out' you guys and the Special Unit will work? It sounds awfully iffy.» «I'm not sure I like it either," Isabel said, waving her hand to one side. «But if we're all together in California, with the resources to make that choice if we need to, then maybe we'll find another option instead.» She brightened for a moment, and placed her hand atop his again. «Hey, there's one good thing about this. Your powers worked pretty well this time.» Kyle snorted. «What exactly are these powers? I don't really have a clue.» «Looks to me like some kind of third-party telepathy thing, except when it comes to those of us who already have powers," Isabel said. «You seem to be amplifying my powers, for instance. I can dreamwalk people when they're asleep, but I think you enabled me to do it while Jesse was awake.» She paused and thought for a moment. «Maybe you're like a psychic road for normal people, but a superhighway for aliens?» «Great," Kyle said, his voice lacking any trace of enthusiasm. «You know, when we took those aptitude tests in high school, I knew there was a reason that I scored so well on the 'psychic highway construction worker'job category.» «Hey, at least it's better than the 'alien-hunting government agent' job," Isabel said. They both laughed, but she thought she heard a brittle edge behind their mirth. Jesse made his way to the pilot's cabin of the private jet. He tapped the pilot and copilot on the shoulders. «We need to go back and land in Chicago.» The pilot looked at him as if he had grown a second head. «What? We're already almost to Colorado.» «That's why I said we need to go back» Jesse said firmly. «We have two more people to pick up there.» «Why didn't you tell us earlier?» the copilot asked. «I didn't know earlier," Jesse said. «Look, you guys are making some good money on this trip. Just accept that this will make your paycheck even bigger, okay?» «You're the boss," the pilot said, giving him a mock salute. Jesse made his way into the back seating area again. Shelby looked up and saw him. «What was all that about?» she asked. «We're going back to Chicago," Jesse said. «My wife and Kyle Valenti are on their way there now. We're taking them to California with us.» Shelby raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue. Jesse sat back in his seat and smiled to himself. After the stress of the last day or so, it would be heavenly to see Isabel again. With her by his side, he was sure that everything was going to work out for the best. 9. City of Industry, California Wight was falling quickly, and Rath was grateful for its concealing shadows. The building he and Lonnie stood before was old, industrial, and had obviously seen better times. Rath thought its best days were probably decades behind it, when it had probably been some sort of factory or cannery. Strangely enough, the crumbling, peeling, three-story edifice was located right in the heart of the aptly named City of Industry just outside of Los Angeles proper along 5 Freeway. As far as he could tell from the outside, the place was abandoned. If the place had ever been equipped with obvious external security cameras or entry keypads, they had been pilfered long ago. Leave it to the MiBs to be sneaky enough to hide their crazy Dr. Evil headquarters right out in plain sight, Rath thought. But this is definitely the place. He wasn't quite sure exactly how he knew that. But he did, and with a conviction he'd never known before. He would have staked his life on it, and supposed that he might already have done so. Lonnie crouched beside Rath in the narrow alley as he peered through the basement-level window. His view was obscured by the iron bars that covered the low window frame, the grime on the panes, and the impenetrable darkness that lay beyond both. «The bad guys might be watching us," she whispered, her breath warm and pleasant against his ear. «They can hide their spy cameras just about anywhere.» Rath nodded silently, then turned to face her. «Maybe they can't watch every little crack we find in their armor," he said with a shrug. «Maybe they're not expecting us to try something like this.» «Maybe," she said, sounding unconvinced. Rath noticed, however, that she wasn't making any move to back away from what they'd decided they had to do. Perhaps the fact that they had used their shapeshifting abilities to darken their hair and alter their clothing to something more MiB-appropriate had bolstered her confidence. Lonnie suddenly put her arm around him and drew him into a moist, languid kiss. «For luck," she said after coming up for air. He smiled wryly as he pushed her gently away. «Let's focus. And try not to start anything we don't have time to finish.» Then he turned his attention back to the window, straining once again to see what lay beyond it. He might as well have been staring into a coal mine at midnight. If we had any brains at all, we'd run like hell and forget all about trying to bust Ava out. With nearly as much conviction as he'd felt that he'd found the place w