* * *
that Liz saw another figure beyond and partially behind
Michael. Though Max was mostly blocking the figure and
it was not. . . completely intact, Liz was certain that it was
Isabel. And that she was also much more than hurt.
Max got to his feet. He was wobbly, unsteady. He
turned slowly to look at her and the site of her seemed to
steady him—to give him strength. He gestured vaguely to
Michael and Isabel. And she nodded that she understood.
Somehow, she found her voice. "It's coming, Max," she
said, pointing behind him, from where the thing, what-
ever it was, was coming. "You have to get out of the way"
Then Liz realized there was something odd about Max.
"Liz, you look different," he said, speaking her own
thought about him out loud.
He was different. He wasn't the Max who waited for her
back in the band room. He wasn't even the Max who was
sitting beside her in the van, up above the waterline of her
dream.
This Max had not happened yet, and would not happen
for almost fifteen years. Nevertheless, he had come to visit
her. She and Maria had called him Future Max. He had
come to warn her once.
Now it was her turn. "Max, behind you!" she shouted.
He held his eyes on her for a moment. She saw all the
pain and grief in his eyes. And something else. Something
just for her. Then she could see that he was determined.
He would fight for her. He would give everything for her.
It won't be enough, the voice inside her said.
Darkness was racing toward Max as he steeled himself
and lifted his right hand. Liz didn't need her newfound
ability to see the future to know what would happen next.
* * *
She felt it, from someplace older and deeper than the
source of her new powers.
"NO!" Liz screamed.
She didn't want to be here. She wanted to wake up, but
she sensed this was not a dream. She didn't want to watch
what was about to happen. Liz found that she could not
even close her eyes. She watched Max steel himself from
the darkness that was flying toward them now.
When the darkness was almost upon them, energy
flared from Max's hand, and a green defensive shield
appeared in front of them.
It's too big, Liz thought. Too strong.
She knew she had to do something. She had to help
Max, but she knew it was already too late. Then the dark
shape reached the shield and tore through it after less than
a second's pause. There was only a moment now, Liz knew,
and Max used that moment to fire a burst of energy into
the darkness that swallowed it without even hesitating.
"NO!" Liz screamed as she watched the darkness tear
into Max. Finally she was able to turn away, but she didn't
need to see it to know what happened next. Whatever had
raced into Max almost instantly tore him apart, and Liz felt
him die.
Liz Parker screamed.
Liz was stirring.
She's having a bad dream, Max realized. No, not just a bad
dream—a full-on nightmare.
As she tossed in her seat, Max considered waking her.
He couldn't remember if it was better to let someone who
was having a nightmare sleep or to wake them up.
* * *
Maria would know, Max realized.
"No!" Liz practically shouted in her sleep.
"Maria—," Max began, but he was interrupted by Liz
saying, "Max, behind you!" Her voice was clear, and for a
moment Max was certain that she had woken up.
Then she lapsed into unconscious moaning and twist-
ing in her chair. That's it. That's enough, Max decided.
He reached for Liz. Maria did the same and said, "Hey,
Parker."
As they did, Liz let out a terrifying scream and pitched
violently forward in her seat. "NOOOO!" she howled as
she thrust her hands forward.
Her hands would have cracked into the windshield if it
were there. But a burst of white energy exploded from her
hands and shattered the windshield outward. Max
slammed on the brakes and swerved the wheel as the van
skidded.
He was vaguely aware that the blast that came from
Liz's hands traveled down the highway. Hoping there were
no cars in front of them, Max skidded onto the road's
shoulder.
As soon as the van came to a stop, Max turned to Liz,
who was wide awake and reaching for him.
"Max," she sputtered as her hands cupped his face and
she studied him with a wide-eyed stare.
As someone opened the side door of the van, Max
pulled Liz toward him. "It's okay, Liz," he said, fighting to
keep the worry out of his voice.
"No," Liz said forcefully, pulling back from him. "It's
not okay. Oh my God, Max, you died."
She's terrified, Max thought. Completely terrified.
* * *
"No, I didn't, Liz. I'm right here," he said gently.
Max could see that Liz was fighting for control. She
pulled him toward her and started to cry. When her sobs
began to die down, he whispered reassuringly into her ear,
"Liz, it was just a dream."
Pulling away again, Liz looked at him with a new
expression on her face. It wasn't fear this time. It was grief.
"No, Max, it wasn't," she said clearly.
* * *
3
L
iz crumbled into Max's arms as Michael appeared at
Max's side.
"There's a pretty big hole in the ground a few hundred
yards ahead, but I don't think-anyone saw anything. Isabel
is filling the hole now."
Old habits die hard, Max thought. He's making a report.
Max simply nodded and held Liz. The others kept a
respectful distance, though Max could feel Maria's tension.
She was pacing a few yards away. Max was aware of move-
ment in front of the van, and Isabel appeared, joining
Kyle, Michael, and Maria.
As Liz's breathing returned to normal, he noticed for
the thousandth time how small she felt to him. She was
the smallest of the three girls, both in height and stature.
As she nestled under his chin, Max gently stroked her
straight, dark hair and felt a reflexive desire to protect her.
Protect her? Max thought. He had not done a very good
job of that in the last three years. She had suffered too
much because of him.
* * *
When her breathing slowed, he leaned back and said,
"Did you have a premonition?"
Liz nodded. "I watched you die, Max," she said.
Michael stepped forward and said, "Where was it?
What happened? And what do we have to do to stop it?"
Liz shook her head and said, "It's not that simple. . . ."
"Tell us what you can from the beginning," Max said.
Starting from the beginning of the dream, Liz told about
being in school and meeting Max in the band room like
they had the day after he had healed her in the Crashdown.
"I think you touched my cheek while I was sleeping," Liz
said.
Max nodded.
"That's when the dream changed into one of my premoni-
tions," Liz said, and told about seeing Michael and Isabel
dead. And then seeing Max face the unseen force on his own.
"You fought, Max, but. . .," she said as her voice broke.
Max nodded and kept his expression neutral.
"Maybe it was a dream, at least partly," Isabel said.
Liz thought for a moment and then said, "Partly, yes,
but I'm sure I saw Max die, as well as you and Michael."
"Do you have any idea how far in the future this was?"
Max asked.
"Fifteen years," Liz replied immediately.
Max started at that. There was something unnerving
about her certainty. "That is pretty exact. Are you sure?"
Liz nodded and said, "I recognized you ..." Then she
shot a glance at Maria, and something passed between the
two girls.
"Future Max!" Maria exclaimed.
"What?" Michael said. "Who is that?"
* * *
Maria immediately looked sheepish, as if she had said
too much.
Max looked down at Liz and said, "Future Max?"
"Who the hell is Future Max?" Michael said to Maria.
"What are you two talking about?"
"Sorry, Liz," Maria said.
"It's okay," Liz replied. Then she turned to Max and
said, "There's something I have to tell you."
"We'll just give you guys a minute," Maria said.
"No," Max said, raising his hand. "This involves all of
us. No secrets."
"This involves Tess and Kyle and ..." Liz collected her-
self for a moment, and then spoke quickly and clearly. "It
goes back to just before you found Kyle and me together."
The memory of that night came back suddenly, like a
blow. He remembered seeing Kyle and Liz in bed together.
He remembered the shock and the feeling like someone
had reached into his stomach and twisted his insides.
"Max, it wasn't an accident that you saw us. I set that
up for a reason," Liz said.
Max felt the beginnings of understanding and said, "You
wanted to be free of all this. You wanted a normal life."
Shaking her head, Liz said, "No. I did it for you,
because you asked me to."
Max could remember few times in his life when he was
as surprised as he was now. "I asked you to?"
"The night before you came to visit me, but not you,
exactly. It was you from the future, fifteen years in the
future," Liz said.
"How?" Max asked, finding things making less and less
sense.
* * *
"You had used the Granilith. You explained that it had
powers we had not discovered yet. You brought a warning
and asked me to do something," Liz said.
"Go to bed with Kyle?" Max said, feeling even more
confused. He looked over at Kyle, who was keeping his
eyes to the ground. The boy looked as embarrassed as Max
was confused.
"No," Liz replied. "You described a scene similar to the
one in my premonition, where there was a battle and both
Isabel and Michael died. And it was all because Tess had
left and the four of you were not together for the battle.
Max, Tess had left because—"
"Of you and me," Max said, finally beginning to
understand.
"You told me that 1 had to give you up to keep peace
between Tess and the group," Liz said.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" Max said.
"You told me not to. You from the future told me that
you would try to find another way," Liz said. "You said the
only way to be sure was if you believed that it was over
between us."
Then the totality of it hit Max. Liz had given up so
much—all because he had asked her to. Not who he was
now, but some version of him from the future.
"It was all for nothing," Max said finally. "Tess . . ."He
didn't have to say any more. Everyone there knew what
Tess had done. She had killed Alex and betrayed them all.
She had given birth to Max's son and tried to turn him
over to Max's enemy Kevar on their home world. Then,
when Kevar rejected Max's son as heir, she had come back
looking for shelter.
* * *
"You didn't think to mention any of this before?'
Michael asked. Then he turned to Maria and said, "And
you knew?"
"What good would have it have done?" Liz said.
That stopped Michael in his tracks.
"How would you prepare for some mysterious danger
fifteen years in the future?" Liz continued.
Then Max understood the final piece. Liz had taken all
of that on herself. She had once accused him of taking too
much on his shoulders, and now she was doing the same.
She turned to him and said, "I hoped that so many things
had changed that there was a chance that that had changec
too. And I didn't think you needed any more weight to
carry You blame yourself for things that happened on
another planet and in another life. You blame yourself for
Alex and everything that happens to every one of us."
Max shook his head. She didn't think he could have
borne another burden. So she had taken it on herself.
had tried to protect him. Unfortunately she could not pro-
tect him from the truth. He had been responsible for the fall
of their home planet. He had been responsible for Alex's
death and the pain his friends and his sister had suffered.
"What now, Max?" Isabel asked.
Max realized that everyone was looking at him—looking
to him. He knew what they wanted. They wanted him to
lead. To solve the problem. To keep them safe. Well, his
track record on that score hadn't been very good so far. Max
shook his head. "I don't have any answers here," he said.
"So we just chalk it up that in fifteen years we're going to
take second place in a duel to the death?" Michael asked.
* * *
"I told you, Michael—I told you all before we left: I'm
not the leader of this group anymore. And from what Liz is
telling us, it's under my leadership that everything goes to
hell," Max said.
Isabel was looking at him with a look of disbelief in her
face. After a long moment, she said, "Well Max, as a mem-
ber of this group, do you have any thoughts at all?"
"Yes," Max said. "I think it's very important that I not
make all the decisions here. I honestly think that following
me will lead us to ruin again. I brought us there on our
home planet. I bring us there in the future that Liz
describes."
"Maybe third time's a charm, Maxwell," Michael said.
It was a surprising attempt at humor for Michael, and
Max found himself smiling. The effort won Michael a hard
smack in the arm from Maria, however.
"I do have a few other thoughts," Max added. "If what
Liz said was correct, then we lost because all four of us,
including Tess, were not fighting together."
"But Max," Liz said, "Tess is dead. She
died when the air
force base blew."
Max nodded. In perhaps the only selfless act of her life,
Tess had walked into the base instead of endangering the
group further. She had chosen to die fighting instead of
living out the rest of her life in the Special Unit's White
Room. Shuddering from his memory of that place, Max
wondered how much of his youth he had left in that room.
How much had been burned out of him by Agent Pierce
under those bright white lights?
Just about all of it, I guess, Max thought.
Max understood Tess's decision. He had vowed to him-
* * *
self that he would die fighting before he ever went back
there. Oddly, Max had died and had seen things, glimpses
of the other side that he wished he could forget. Neverthe-
less, he would go there before he would go back to the
White Room, because he had seen both death and Hell—
and Hell was white.
"I think the three of us have to become stronger, to
.compensate for Tess's loss," Max said.
"How do we do that?" Isabel asked.
"By doing the opposite of what we have done up until
now," Max said. He saw the light of understanding go on
in Michael's eyes.
"Our powers," Michael said.
"What? What about them?" Isabel said.
"Up until now," Max explained, "we have tried to not
use them, or to do so only when absolutely necessary."
"But not anymore," Michael said.
Max nodded his agreement. "The point of this trip for
me was to do things differently. We've been hiding our
whole lives, denying who we are. Now I'm ready to use
my powers to do whatever good I can. We're not hiding
anymore and we're not exactly running. I think if we can
keep moving we can stay ahead of... our enemies. Maybe
as we use our powers more, well gain extra strength."
"Sounds like a plan, Maxwell," Michael said.
Isabel nodded her agreement, and Max realized that in
spite of what he wanted and in spite of what he had just
said, he had just mapped out their future. And the others
had agreed.
Old habits, he thought. As he approached the van, he
sighed and thought, Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. And if
* * *