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Chilled droplets of sweat broke out on my forehead. Suddenly the air seemed too thick and heavy to breathe. I started to back away from the image on the screen as if she were standing in front of me. Blood rushed past my ears, filling them with a high-pitched ringing.

I stumbled out from behind the counter, desperate to get away from those strange eyes that seemed to be watching me and me alone. My ankle caught the metal leg of a chair, and I started to 34

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fall. Hands grasped me just before I hit the floor, lifting me up and settling me in the very chair that had nearly taken me out. I looked up through the little spots clouding my vision to see Jeff Rosen, Silver Springs' only lawyer and one of my customers, crouching in front of me with a worried look. A second later, Lucy came around, a dripping wet dishrag in her hand. She forced my head down between my knees, and then dropped that sopping rag at the back of my neck. I shivered as the cold water soaked my shirt and ran down my spine.

"I'm fine," I protested. But the tremor in my voice said otherwise.

"Quiet, she's talking now." Lucy's hand on the top of my head kept me from looking up.

"...monitoring this situation on your planet from orbit. We can stop this destruction, if you wish." The alien's words drifted through the silence of the room, causing me to shiver again. No one else seemed this affected. All the whispering near me seemed to be discussion as to whether she was for real or not. That didn't concern me–I knew she was all too real. I just didn't know how I knew.

Her name, she said, was Amaranta. She was leader of a research mission designed to document primitive societies, those yet untainted by extra-planetary influences. Generally, they avoided all contact with such societies, in order to accomplish their mission. But in this case, to save an entire race, they would make an exception...if we wished.

I still don't know how we got word to them. Maybe the President stood outside on the White House lawn with a big sign that said, "Yes, please!" Regardless of the method, they got the message, and with seven minutes to spare, they intercepted the missile and disarmed it. Actually, the missile just flat out disappeared from radar or whatever they use to track those things. For almost a week afterward, the news was filled with stories of 35

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the great benevolent Observers and interviews with grateful humans from all countries. Even the leaders of the two countries who'd started this mess got into the act, thanking the Observers for saving us from a horrible "accident." Yeah, right. But then the Observer research teams landed on Earth, and attitudes changed quickly. In return for their help, the Observers had asked to land for a limited amount of time, five years, to allow their research teams to obtain more in-depth observations. Though the data would be skewed by our knowledge of their presence, they hoped to use the opportunity to gain a new level of detail that would not have otherwise been possible.

Our government, still high from the adrenaline rush of a neardeath experience, had agreed. But in place of warm, fuzzy ET

stories, reports started emerging of riots, mob action, and suspicion of the Observers in general for all things including Roswell, inflation in the 1970s, crop circles, and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Apparently, we were all good with the aliens, as long as they remained a few miles up.

It didn't help that the Observers were so secretive, either. They refused to share technology or information about what existed outside our own solar system on the principle that it might inhibit or alter our natural development, heaven forbid. How did they think those button-happy countries got the nukes in the first place? Humans aren't above using someone else's knowledge to get a higher foothold in the world–in fact, it's our preferred method.

And that was pretty much the whole story–the official version, anyway. As for me, I closed the diner early that first night without anyone the wiser to what exactly had triggered my inaugural panic attack. It wasn't really an unusual reaction, given all that had gone on, but I knew it was more than that. I'd kept my cool during the threat of death by nuclear fallout, but freaked out when the avenging aliens showed up to save us? It didn't make 36

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sense, so I did my best to bury it. But my secret wouldn't keep, due to no lack of trying on my part, mind you. By the end of that next week, I was on the front lawn, doing my best imitation of fish trying to breathe on a respirator, scaring the crap out of my brother and everyone else. I began to think I was crazy, my own mental stability having abandoned me without my realizing it. I remember reading somewhere that people who wonder if they're crazy usually aren't, just by the act of questioning their own sanity. Crazy people, apparently, think they are the only sane ones left in the world. But somehow, I thought, looking over at the Observer in the passenger seat next to me, that didn't make me feel any better right now. Because between the two of us...

"So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?" I asked. We'd managed to get away from my house and out of town without interference, and it had been easier than I'd thought it would be. Mike had gone in my house through the front door while we walked out the back. Then we cut through yards until reaching the cross street where Caelan had parked his car, an ancient Impala. He'd given me the keys, which I would have insisted on anyway, and we'd pulled out without anyone seeing us. When Caelan didn't respond to my question, I took my eyes from the road to glance again in his direction. Even in the dim light provided by the dashboard gauges, I could see he wasn't well. He'd leaned his head against the side window, fogging up the glass. His face was damp with sweat, making his hair stick to his forehead and his skin shine. If possible, he shook more violently than he had before.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, feeling the uncertainty of all this clutching at my chest again. What was I doing here? Out in the middle of nowhere...with him. The temptation to pull over and walk away almost consumed me. But a little voice in the back of my head kept whispering,
he has the answers
. To what questions, I didn't know.

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I let go of my death grip on the wheel long enough to turn the heater up. The vents spat out more super-heated air that smelled of burning dust and old car. Sweat trickled down my back. "Are you all right?" I asked.

He turned his head toward me, eyes flashing silver as he blinked. "I will be fine," he said. But his breathing sounded strained, and his voice shook with the tremors racking his body.

"My body temperature does not respond well to such a cool environment and..."

A cool environment? It was still at least sixty-five degrees outside and pushing ninety in here. "And what?" I prompted.

"Nothing," he said. "Keep going north."

"Look, you've got twenty miles to tell me what's going on. By that time, we'll be in Findlay and if I don't like what I'm hearing, I'm out of here. Got it?" I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. Out here, the houses appeared only every half mile or so, and the rest was empty country. So, I was all alone with an alien who had just demonstrated some fairly remarkable and frightening powers. Findlay might be the end of the road as far as I was concerned, but who knew what he had in mind? Maybe leaving with him had not been the best idea. But waiting around for that Nevan guy to come back hadn't been any prize option either. I struggled for my inhaler in my jeans pocket, while trying to keep the car steady on the road.

"I have no intention of harming you," Caelan said, startling me. "And I will tell you everything, though you will not believe." I considered all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and beyond that, the last two years. "You'd be surprised what I would believe."

I hated hearing the words aloud, how crazy they sounded. Scott would have flinched if he'd been here, another good reason for keeping him in the dark, at least for now. I'd always thought people who were unbalanced should've been able to recognize and adjust that quality about themselves, if only by the negative 38

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reactions of those around them. But from personal experience, I now knew that disapproval and condemnation only intensified your convictions, instead of changing them.

A long moment of silence passed. Then he said, "Here is the truth–you are the only hope for our freedom against Nevan, which is why he fears you. You are the one prophesied to bring about his downfall, and I have been searching for you for nearly two years." Little bits of a bigger picture, like the glass beads that melted to form a stained glass window, began rolling together in my mind. The dreams, Nevan...I forced a laugh. "You're kidding, right?"

His silence answered that question.

"Oh, come on." I started to get angry. "Somebody told you about my little dream problem, and you decided to–"

"What dream problem?" He turned his head sharply to look at me.

"Nothing. Never mind." I shifted uneasily in my seat behind the wheel. He didn't know about me and the dreams. His reaction was way too...intense. "So what else? You said something about freeing you. Free you from what? You guys are on a research mission, right?" Bait, bait, bait. Here fishie, fishie. He didn't bite. "It is not that simple," he said.

"Okay, so then tell me what's really going on. Are you planning to take over the world, kidnap humans, and use them as slaves, what?" The conspiracy chat rooms I belonged to had come up with every possible scenario.

I felt him watching me. His stare raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

"I will tell you the truth, but you are not yet ready to hear it," he said.

"Hey, I came with you because you said you would tell me what you knew. I'm here, so follow through on your end of the bargain."

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"You came with me because you recognized that I spoke the truth when I told you of Nevan's desire to see you dead." Without thinking I took one hand from the wheel, and started to point an accusing finger at him. "Now, look..." Pain arced up through my chest, making nausea swirl inside me. In my anger, I'd forgotten the injury, most likely one hell of a bruise on my ribs, which had dulled down to a slow burn. Even if Caelan was crazy with this whole prophecy thing, Nevan apparently thought he was onto something.

"Nevan will continue his attempts to eliminate you until he succeeds," Caelan said, as if he'd read my mind.

"Why? I've never even met one of you until tonight. And I have to say, based on this experience, I hope I never do again."

"You will bring about the end of Nevan's power. He fears that."

"Right. Did you not see the guy?" I asked. "He was ready to turn my head into a twist-off lid."

When Caelan didn't respond, I started to explain, "It means he could've killed me with little or no eff–"

"I understand what you mean from your thoughts, if not your words," he said.

"You can read my mind?" My fists tightened on the wheel again as I attempted to stave off the surge of panic pouring through my veins.

"Some, but not all. Usually it is only your uppermost thoughts," he said. "But if I touch you–"

"Keep your hands to yourself," I said immediately. He let out a soft breath of air, something close to a sigh, probably of exasperation. Tough. He wasn't the one being led around on this wild ride, I was.

"We don't know exactly how the prophecy will unfold. Only the end is clear," he said, returning to our earlier conversation. He looked over at me. "You standing triumphant with us against 40

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Nevan."

"Yeah, okay. Listen, the next time you guys decide on your prophesied savior, you might want to check your facts first. Because there's no way that I–"

He reached over and closed his hand over my wrist, his long fingers overlapping one another. "What are you–" I started to ask. The jolt of electricity took me as much by surprise as it had the first time. It felt like the fillings in my teeth were sizzling. My vision and hearing disappeared, and I could no longer feel my hands on the wheel. Instead, I felt the tiny bones of a wrist inside my grasp, and someone else's fear prickling at my skin. Then a nauseating, throbbing pain in my back filled me until I thought it would burst through my body and leave me a shredded heap. And in the midst of that chaos, images appeared, disjointed and fuzzy.
Crouching outside in the dark, listening to the noise, like a
million voices speaking at once. The smell of human refuse all
around me. Then bright lights, cold metal biting into my wrists,
and the sharp hatred of several around me. A short human female
with skin so pale it almost glowed and red gold hair pulled back
from her face approaches me. I've seen her before, many times,
but never in front of me.

But before I can speak to her, I hear another voice in the
distance. The thoughts of one close to madness press in. The rage
in him seeps out, flowing in her direction, surrounding her, though
she does not feel it. I warn her, but she does not believe. Then
there is no more time. A weapon is pointed at me, so close the
acrid smell of smoke makes my tongue pull back. I see the terrified
look on the woman's face the instant before I pull her to the
ground beneath me.

Abruptly, the strange images and ideas stopped. My hearing returned, and my sight cleared in time to see Caelan removing his hand from my wrist and gesturing toward the windshield. I looked up, hands still locked in place around the steering wheel, to see a 41

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large tree approaching us. Actually, we were coming up on the tree and fast. After a second of fumbling–I hit the gas pedal by mistake first–I squashed the brake pedal to the floor and cranked the wheel hard to the right.

The world spun and then settled into place with a teethjarring crash that I suspected was the side of the rear bumper slamming into the tree. The seat belt kept me from hitting the steering wheel, but my ribs screamed in protest.