Michael held his breath as he studied Ray's face. Ray shook his head.
The air whooshed out of Michael's lungs. He felt like a deflated balloon. Too bad, he told himself. No daddy for little Mikey today. It's not like he really cared. Not much.
"The four of you-you two, Isabel, and the boy Sheriff Valenti killed last night-" Ray began.
"Nikolas," Max said.
"You were the children of some of the members of my team. We were scientists assigned to study earth to determine if it would be suitable for colonization," Ray continued. "If it was, we were going to form the first outpost here. But we quickly discovered that humans weren't psychologically ready to share their planet with an alien race."
"And our parents?" Max asked.
Now Michael was finally going to get the answer to the question, the question he'd been asking himself since he first understood what parents were.
"I'm the only survivor of the crash," Ray answered. "I'm sorry."
Michael felt tears sting his eyes. Oh, please. You've been assuming they were dead for years, he reminded himself. But when Ray showed up last night, Michael had started to hope again.
You're almost eighteen, he reminded himself. It's not like you're some little kid. It's not like you need parents. They'd probably just be a pain in the butt.
"So what happened that day?" Michael asked, struggling to keep his tone matter-of-fact. "What caused the crash?"
"Sit down, and I'll tell you," Ray answered.
Max and Michael lowered themselves into a couple of the beanbag chairs. Ray dropped down across from them, the greens and blues in his aura becoming mixed with gray. "We were going home," he told them. "The launch went smoothly. The team gathered at the observation window to take a last look at earth."
Michael noticed a patch of air in between him and Ray and Max begin to vibrate, shimmering the way it did coming off the pavement on really hot days. A blue-and-white basketball appeared in the patch of air, floating at eye level. The earth, Michael realized. How was Ray doing that?
"I thought we could use some visual aids," Ray said.
The earth shrank down to Ping-Pong ball size, and now Michael could see the observation deck and the team staring through the window at the planet. They fit the descriptions of the bodies witnesses had seen at the crash site-small, hairless torsos; long, thin arms; large heads with huge, almond-shaped black eyes.
Except none of the descriptions talked about their skin. How it was absolutely smooth, without even the tiniest wrinkle. And how it almost appeared metallic.
Michael felt his throat tighten as he studied the team members. They're all dead now, he thought. All except Ray. And they were so happy that day, so full of life.
Wait, where did that thought come from? Michael realized Ray wasn't just giving them pictures-he was giving them emotions, too. Michael could feel the pride the group of scientists felt in completing their job, their excitement about going home. And… and their pleasure that their children would be born there.
My mom and dad are in that group, he thought. Part of that excitement is coming from them. They really wanted me. He felt a hard, hot lump form in his throat. He swallowed, trying to get rid of it, but it remained lodged in place. They've been dead more than fifty years, he reminded himself.
"We didn't know that our prisoner had escaped," Ray continued. "Prisoner?" Max asked softly.
"His name was… well, it will be easier if I give him a human name. Let's call him Clyde-I never liked that name. Clyde was a stowaway when we left our planet," Ray explained. "He had stolen one of the Stones of Midnight-at least that's as close a translation as I can give you. The Stones are a source of tremendous power. Only the members of the consortium who govern our planet are allowed to use them. After Clyde stole the Stone, he managed to hide on board our ship. We discovered him on our way here and slapped him in a hibernation cylinder. We planned to leave him there until we could turn him over to the consortium."
"But when you were starting back, this Clyde guy escaped," Michael said. He didn't like the way this story was heading.
Ray didn't answer. Michael glanced at him and saw that his eyes were locked on the image of the team on the observation deck.
"I haven't looked at this one in a long time," he said. Michael had to strain to hear him. It was as if Ray was talking to himself. "I miss my friends," he added slowly.
He's all alone here, Michael thought. I have Max and Isabel and Maria, Alex, and Liz. But he's all alone.
Ray gave himself a little shake. "Yes," he told Michael. "Clyde escaped. I don't know how he did it, but he broke free from the hibernation cylinder, found the Stone, and came looking for us."
Michael leaned forward and watched as Clyde appeared on the observation deck. He looked just like the others, except he held a small stone that pulsed with a green-purple radiance. Two of the team members rushed toward him, but the stone shot out spears of sizzling light that knocked them to the ground.
"Dead?" Max asked. Michael already knew the answer. The grief and fury pouring into him from Ray's holographic image told him everything.
"Dead," Ray said. "He killed the rest of the team the same way. I don't know how I survived. Maybe he tried to kill too many of us at the same time. Even the Stones don't have unlimited power."
The image floating in the air changed to a single figure lying on the floor of the ship. Michael knew it was Ray. And he knew in that moment Ray had been near death. His aura had a deep ring of black around it.
"Clyde turned the ship back to earth. I'm sure he thought it would be a good place to hide out," Ray continued his story. "But he wasn't experienced in flying the ship. And he crashed."
The holographic image wavered, then disappeared. Ray rubbed his face with his fingers. "When I came to, I knew I didn't have much time. I was sure the humans would have seen the ship hit the ground. I hid your incubation pods in the cave. By the time I went back for the last one, the humans were already there. They had the whole ship surrounded. I couldn't get back inside, and I didn't want to lead them to you."
"So what did you do?" Max asked.
"I snuck away as fast as I could in the opposite direction," Ray said. "You know the rest. I opened the UFO museum… and waited for you to find me. If you approached me, I didn't think it would attract any unwanted attention."
"But how did you know it was us?" Max asked. "I couldn't tell you were an alien, so how did you know I was?"
"Well, I knew when you would break out of your pods, more or less," Ray said. "So I knew how old you'd be as a human. And also, I read your mind a little when you were working at the museum."
"What?" Michael cried. "We can't read minds!"
"Be patient," Ray told him. "I can teach you."
"Can you also teach us how to do whatever it was you did to stop Valenti?" Max asked. "If you hadn't helped us last night, he would've found out the truth about us all."
"I can try," Ray said. "But you are the first of us to have grown up on earth. I don't know how that will have changed your powers."
"Is the sheriff going to remember anything that happened?" Max asked.
I should have asked that question, Michael thought. Valenti definitely had seen Liz in the mall last night. He probably had seen me and Maria and Alex, too.
"He probably lost at least five minutes of memory," Ray said.
That was cutting it pretty close. But it was enough. Valenti wouldn't remember much of what happened after he shot Nikolas. He wouldn't remember chasing them out of the mall.
Ray yawned. "I'm going to kick you guys out now. It took a lot of power to hold Valenti like that-I'm still wiped out." He grinned at them. "I'm not as young as I used to be."
Max frowned. "How old are you, anyway? How long do we live?"