Isabel, Max, Michael and Tess attempt to revive Nasedo by using the healing stones once again, but this time, the ritual fails. Isabel comforts Tess, and Michael tells them of finding the glove-like skin shedding in the desert. Isabel points to Nasedo’s body, which begins to shrink and then turns to dust.

Back at school, Max reassures Isabel that they’re doing the right thing to stay low until they know what they’re up against. Isabel says she hopes so, since she’s too young to be dust. Later, Max discovers a new power: with his hand, he can now put up a protective force field.

When Max goes to work at the UFO Center, he discovers that his old boss Milton is gone, having been bought out by an Englishman named Brody Davis. Later, he and Tess are concerned when they find some cast off skin at her house. They go to Valenti and ask if Tess can stay with him and Kyle, who has suddenly become a Buddhist since attending football camp over the summer.

Brody is suspicious when he catches Max in the UFO Center after hours, and fires him, but not before Max sees that Brody has a mysterious pentagram device. When Isabel, Max and Michael discuss the device in Brody’s possession, Michael becomes angry, since he thinks Brody may have killed Milton. He suggests breaking into the UFO Center to steal the pentagram, but Max disagrees. Michael and Max argue, and Michael turns to Isabel for support, but she refuses to take sides.

Michael goes to the UFO Center, where he finds Brody with the pentagram in hand. Suddenly, a beam shoots out from the device and knocks Michael against the wall. He escapes before Brody can catch him. Max is furious with Michael for going out on his own like that, but Isabel tells him to back off. She thinks Brody is a Skin, and something must be done about him. She decides that they have to kill Brody, and though Max is clearly still ambivalent, they set their plan in motion. At the last minute, Max changes his mind, and when Michael protests, he sends up his newly acquired force field, astonishing Isabel and Michael. Max goes on to confront Brody by himself, and discovers that Brody is not an alien after all, but claims to be an alien abductee. He doesn’t know much about the pentagram, only that it started pulsing on May 14^th – which Max knows happens to be the day that the four aliens set off the communicators.

Later in the Crashdown, Isabel talks with Alex about Brody and how much money he has, thanks to his involvement with an internet company. The new waitress at the Crashdown, Courtney, flirts openly with Michael, to Maria’s annoyance. But then Courtney excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, where she peels the skin off her face and flushes it down the commode.

Judith Gerber