Quatrain 15, Century 5. ""The message precedes the messenger, a sudden link to darkness. Betwixt the glare and the chasm, the child is freed with shadows behind.""

The Paranoid Times gets thousands of hits a week, all from the growing contingent of believers who know that aliens threaten our world. Most of these e-mails voice support, but when one tipped us to a Gua bomb set outside a United States Federal Office, we had to check it out. That e-mail saved hundreds of human lives, but who sent it? A disgruntled alien, a human with knowledge of Gua plans?

The e-mail was traced to a residential address. With backup courtesy of Jordan's Raven Nation, I set out to see if our mysterious cyber-tipper was truly a friend ... or possibly a foe.

Posing as Timothy Murray, a Compustar Internet Service employee I met Anne Berman, Aunt and guardian to Emily ­ the intense little girl who lived at the house and the only one to ever use the computer. Made no headway, Anne said Emily was sick and she wasn'

The Gua have struck hard. Mabus has entered the body of Jordan and taken over. The army of the Raven Nation has fallen. Its generals are dead, the survivors scattered. Even after everything we've worked for, I can't expect defeat. I choose to believe in the future. In spite of everything, we can still win this fight.

I have to believe it. They're the words I posted right before we were attacked. The entire Airstream was taken down in a hail of bullets and I was suddenly on my way to a specially planned visitation with my one time partner and friend - Jordan Radcliffe. A woman we now call Mabus.

I'd been hit in the attack on the trailer but a Gua Empiricist healed me. Couldn't figure it out, Mabus wanted me dead, so why were they fixing me up ... even I knew the truth -- I was on my way to hell. The answer came from the Guahead himself -- my journey had come full circle. He wanted to have the pleasure of breaking me. It was the conclusion of the same human will experiment that had sta