And as far as Maria could tell, Kyle wasn't in much better shape. «What happened?» she asked anyone who might answer. Jesse blinked as though he'd been suddenly jolted awake from a strange dream. «I'm… I'm not sure. Isabel and Kyle started concentrating on the orbs and then it was like some sort of psychic feedback went off inside their heads.» Isabel was stirring, and Maria decided she didn't look so bad after all. But Kyle was ashen-faced. She knelt beside him, noticing that he seemed almost comatose. I overheard Liz thinking about the price ojmass-mindwarping the Special Unit just before she and the rest of the Scooby Gang lit the brain bomb's fuse, Maria thought. She was near panic now, but she also felt desperate to make herself useful in any way she could. I hope to heck this wasn't what Liz meant when she was thinking about «sacrifices.» She rummaged around through her duffel until her fingers found the stock of the pistol she had taken off of one of the MiBs they'd eluded back in Wyoming. Isabel now seemed to be fully awake. «Maria, what are you doing?» Maria shrugged. «I have absolutely no idea. But I can't just sit here.» «I think we ought to sit tight until we know exactly what's going on in there," Jesse said. «That sounds like a good, old-fashioned bad idea," Maria said, hefting the weapon. «For all any of us know, the MiBs are this minute getting ready to slice Michael up like a Christmas ham.» «If anybody goes in there to look around," Isabel said, holding up her hand, «it should be somebody with alien powers.» Jesse scowled. «If you think I'm gonna let you march right into the place where Liz saw you being vivisected, you're crazy.» «That wasn't me, Jesse. Remember?» «Right. And I intend to make sure it stays that way, thank you very much.» Married people, Maria thought, shaking her head as she checked the bullets in her gun. «Talk amongst yourselves, lovebirds," she said aloud. «I'm going in.» It's high time I got to do something around here. Maria leaped out of the van, ignoring Jesse and Isabel as they followed her, protesting. She began striding briskly toward the neglected-looking building as the sun painted the horizon in lapis and gold. She squinted into the waxing light, then paused in her tracks when her eye noticed some motion near the building. Isabel and Jesse had caught up with her. Isabel pointed, evidently having glimpsed the movement as well. «Somebody's coming out.» Maria strained to see who was approaching, keeping the gun at the ready just in case. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea whether she could hit anything at this range. At least it's bound to work better than trying to ElKabong the bad guys over the head with my guitar. One of the approaching figures waved, and a few seconds later Maria could see that this was Liz. The closing distance and the morning light revealed Max walking beside her, followed by Langley, whose forehead gleamed with sweat. Two men and two women, all dressed in rumpled civilian clothes, followed Langley. Max and Isabel's parents! Maria realized, happily surprised. And the Parkers! They looked so drawn and haggard from their ordeal that Maria wasn't surprised it had taken her a few moments to recognize them. Thank the gods of Little Green Men that Valenti saved my mom from whatever hell they went through. Behind the four parents walked a slight, narrowshouldered girl dressed in tattered neopunk clothing. She preceded a pair of black-clad people Valenti and Duff, Maria figured who were carrying a limp figure between them. «Michael!» Maria said, her heart skipping a beat. A seeming eternity later, Valenti and Duff carefully laid Michael down beside the van, on a bedroll fetched by Jesse. «So what exactly happened?» Maria asked after she had exchanged tearful hugs with the Evanses and the Parkers. Shelby, who had just awakened, took them aside and proceeded to fill them in on some of the events they had missed since their capture by the Special Unit. «First, the good news," Duff said, removing her black mask. «The Special Unit is taking a collective nap right now. I guess their subconscious minds need some time to process the posthypnotic commands they've just received.» «And when the agents wake up, they'll act on those orders and erase the whole organization," Valenti said. «And once they're done with that, they're not supposed to remember a thing.» «What about the… bodies?» Diane Evans asked her husband. «If those agents find what's left of those… clones of Michael and Isabel…» She trailed off, looking as though she was about to be sick. Phillip took her gently into his arms. Maria suddenly felt very glad that she hadn't actually gotten inside the Special Unit compound. «I… already took care of that," Max said, raising a single glowing hand. His voice was like a dam holding back an ocean's worth of sadness. Maria wondered what it would be like to have to dispose of the corpses of two of the people she cared about most in the world even if they weren't the genuine article. She hoped she'd never have occasion to find out. «Let's just hope nobody's left any secret backup files behind," Phillip Evans said, evidently speaking from his own special area of expertise; after all, he had been the one who'd gathered the first evidence that could have exposed the Special Unit publicly. «If something like that turns up someday, we could all end up right where we started.» Langley shook his head as he pointed his ken-teej experimentally toward the last of the departing news vans. Maria noticed that not a single blip appeared on the little alien-tracking device. «Like I mentioned before," Langley said as he pocketed the ken-teef, «I can only do this particular trick once. It won't work without a worldwide network of functioning ken-teefs. And they're all burned out now, all over the planet.» «This old world must be full of some pretty pissed-off aliens," Valenti observed. «So much for the good news," Maria said. «As for the bad…," Duff said, trailing off as she indicated Michael's still form. Maria caught Valenti's eye. «Kyle is in about the same condition," she said, pointing toward the inside of the Microbus. «Maybe even worse.» Looking worried, Valenti entered the van's side door to check on his son. «What happened to Michael?» Maria asked Max. «I think the Special Unit either stunned him or tranked him just before we brought them down," he said, his brow deeply furrowed with concern. «I hope that's all it is," Langley said. «He might be suffering from some sort of mindwarp-induced backlash. He was already unconscious when we did the deed, so that could have left him especially vulnerable to psi-shock.» «It would have been nice if you'd told me about that before we went ahead with the plan," Max said angrily. «It would have been nice to have sent out for some gourmet vegetarian pizza beforehand too," Langley quipped, sounding testy. «We all can only do what we can do, Your Highness-ness. We didn't have a lot of other options at the time, as I recall.» Max didn't seem to be in a very forgiving mood. «If I try to heal him without knowing what's wrong, I could end up making it worse.» «Maybe Isabel could dreamwalk him first," Jesse said, sounding hopeful. «She can diagnose him. Then Max can try the laying-on-of-hands.» Maria knelt beside Michael, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. Despite the reassuring weight of the pistol against her hip, her earlier sense of helplessness returned in full measure. There has to be something I can do. She lowered her face to Michael's. He lay motionless, and seemed barely to be breathing at all. Then, impulsively, she kissed him. He grunted once, and his eyes quickly fluttered open. Her own eyes wide with surprise, Maria fell backward onto the gravel-strewn pavement beside the bedroll, stopping her motion with her backside and both hands. Michael raised himself onto his elbows, blinking in confusion at everyone who was looking down at him. «What are you all staring at? I feel like I just wandered into the last reel of The Wizard ofOz» Maria grinned as she wiped away a tear with her palm. «You gave us quite a scare, Dorothy," she said. «Thought for a moment we were going to lose you.» Max gave his old friend a wry grin. «I think you and Maria both have the wrong movie in mind, Michael.» «And what's the right one?» «King Kong» Max said. Turning to Maria, he added, "«Twas Beauty who cured the Beast.'" «You're both wrong," Maria said. «That's a misquote. And the right movie is Sleeping Beauty.» Michael sat up completely. His long hair floated about his shoulders as he shook his head. «The kiss wasn't what brought me back, doll-face. It was that Lancome lip stuff you put on back at Langley's. Pretty funkadelic. I swear, it could raise the dead.» She punched him in the arm as hard as she could, shoving him back onto the bedroll. «Hey! What did I say?» That boy is definitely sleeping alone tonight, Maria thought, fuming as she rose to return to the van. Valenti emerged from the Microbus at that very moment, his craggy face almost as ashen as his son's. «Max, I need your help. It's Kyle.» Standing near Deputy Valenti and her parents just outside the Microbus, Liz concentrated, trying once again to visualize Kyle's near future. Once again, she saw nothing. All she could do was watch anxiously as Max gently placed his glowing palm against Kyle's forehead. Isabel's dreamwalk had yielded only a few incoherent images, drawn mostly from kung fu flicks and old comic books, as near as Isabel had been able to tell. Max is flying blind, Liz thought. And no one can tell if Kyle is going to survive it not even Little Miss D