She had struggled up to a sitting position. She gazed at him and nodded. "Let's go."
"You can all stop the covert planning," Valenti said, coming back into the living room from wherever he'd been. Max couldn't keep track of everyone. All his thoughts were focused on Liz. Where was she? Was she feeling any better? Were they doing tests on her? Was she afraid? "Why?" he asked Valenti, trying to keep his mind on the
project at hand: figuring out how to break into Meta-chem.
Valenti held up a credit card. "Because Kyle left this in his room."
"You want to bribe them with Kyle's good credit?" Michael asked in a deadpan voice.
"No, you dope, it's a key," Isabel said. "Kyle works at Meta-chem, remember? He has a passkey."
Max snatched it out of Valenti's hand. "Excellent," he said. "Let's go." He started for the door.
"Whoa there, Maxwell!" Michael cried. "We still need a plan."
"Why?" Max snapped. "The plan is, I go there, I open the door, and I start healing."
Isabel put her hand on his arm. "I know you're worried about Liz," she said. "But you can't heal everyone in that place. Even if you didn't get caught, you wouldn't survive it."
"She's right, Max," Michael said. "Remember how wiped you were after you healed those kids on the cancer ward. And there are a lot more people at Meta-chem."
"Well, what's your plan, then?" Max exploded. He knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn't help himself. Why did Liz have to be among the sick people?
"I think it has to be an information-gathering mission," Valenti said. "You go in, you see if those CDC docs have come up with any ideas on what's causing all this. Then we decide how to fix it."
"I go in, I heal Liz and Kyle and Maria's mom," Max said. "With her mom better, Maria will be able to help us without freaking out."
"Uh, I don't know about that," Michael put in. "Maria's dealing with some heavy stuff right now."
Huh? Max shot a surprised look at Michael. He'd assumed that Maria wasn't here because she was upset about her mother. Had he been so wrapped up in his own fears for Liz that he'd missed some big thing happening to Maria? "Is she okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. But count her out on this one," Michael said gruffly.
Max saw the concern in Michael's eyes. I'm not the only one worried about the woman I love, he thought. He clapped Michael on the shoulder. "We'll get through this faster if I can heal Liz and Kyle. Then they can help us from the inside. And Maria's mom, just for good measure."
"Fine. Michael will have to run cover for you," Isabel said. "So I'll do some snooping and see if I can find out what the doctors have discovered."
"What about me?" Valenti asked.
"You stay here," Max said quickly. He held up a hand to stop Valenti's protest. "I know Kyle's in there. But we'll take care of him. You've already gotten in enough trouble trying to help us."
Valenti's expression was worried, but he backed down. Max was relieved… he felt guilty that Valenti had sacrificed his job and his good reputation for them. He didn't want to put him in any more danger.
Michael and Isabel headed out the door, and Max followed. "If we're not back by tomorrow morning, get Maria and come up with Plan B," he told Valenti.
"I won't have to," Valenti said.
Max nodded and stepped out into the night, hoping Valenti was right.
Maris flung open the door to Alan Sosa's lab. As she expected, he was still there, working away. He might not approve of her methods, but he was fascinated by the Healer. Any scientist would be.
"We have to move the evidence," she announced.
Alan whirled around to face her. "What do you mean?"
"The CDC has started narrowing the path of the disease. They're getting close to Liz Parker."
"Already?" he cried.
Maris shrugged. "They're more efficient than I expected. But I've found out something very useful from one of their researchers." She took a few steps closer to Alan just because she knew it would freak him out. He didn't like people invading his personal space. "Apparently someone overheard Liz Parker talking about a chemical spill in your lab. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Alan took a step back. "It was nothing. An inert material. Completely harmless."
"Why did it spill?" Maris advanced on him again.
Alan looked frightened. "I was upset. I didn't want to test the serum on her. Liz took a sip of it and I had a panic attack."
"And?"
"And I started coughing to cover it. I didn't want her to notice that I was upset."
Maris put her hand on his arm. "Go on."
Alan stared down at her hand, his arm twitching with the need to jerk away from her. "Liz was worried about the coughing," he said in a rush. "She hit me on the back, and I jumped and knocked over some test tubes." He yanked
his arm away from Maris and walked quickly to the other side of a lab table. "It was harmless," he repeated.
"No, it wasn't," Maris told him.
His mouth dropped open in surprise. "Sure it was."
"That's not what we're going to tell the CDC," Maris said. "We're going to say the spill caused a mutation in Liz when she cleaned it up. We're going to let them believe that's what started this whole epidemic."
Alan was hyperventilating. "But then they'll think it was my fault. I'll be discredited. I'll be completely ruined!"
"You'll be rich," Maris countered. "You help me hide all the evidence of the Healer from the CDC and I'll give you enough money to buy your own island. You'll never need to work again."
"It's unethical," he whispered. "I can't lie to the CDC."
"Oh, Alan," Maris said in a baby-talk voice, "of course you can. After all, you certainly can't tell them the truth. That would ruin you even more."
He stared at her, wild-eyed. She was right, and he knew it.
"They're coming in a few minutes to empty out your lab," she told him. "They want to figure out exactly what spilled. So you need to make sure they don't find out that it was a harmless substance. And you need to make sure they don't find the serum, the cells you took from Liz Parker, or the cells we have from the Healer. Understood?"
Dr. Sosa sat down heavily on a lab stool. He looked devastated.
"Good," Maris said with a smile.
Maria flipped over to her stomach and pretended to keep reading her book. Who am I kidding? she wondered. No
one else was even watching her. She closed the book and put her head down on the bed. Voices floated in from the kitchen, where her father was cooking dinner for Sadie.
Part of Maria hated the idea of him in there, puttering around, using her mom's pots and pans. And part of her wanted to run out to the kitchen and throw her arms around him.
A tear ran down Maria's cheek. It had been hard enough getting over the fact that he left her. All her life she'd felt like a failure, like she must have done something so horrible that even her own father didn't love her. For years, she'd blamed herself for him leaving, even though Amy had always told her it wasn't her fault. She'd never gotten over it, really. But she'd sort of gotten used to it.
And now here he was again. Maria used to fantasize about reuniting with her father. In her daydreams, of course, he always came back with a good excuse, like he'd been deep-sea diving and he hit his head and had amnesia all these years. In none of her daydreams did he show up and announce that he'd been happily living one state over with his wife and his two real kids.
Anger surged up inside her. How dare he come to her house and refuse to leave?
I should call the cops and make them kick him out, she thought. But of course she couldn't do that. For one thing, the cops were busy trying to quarantine a bizarre disease. And for another, the cops would have to kick Sadie out too. And Maria didn't want Sadie to get hurt. It was bad enough that the kid had a liar for a father.
"Your mother said to tell you that you're grounded for a month," Richard's voice caught Maria's attention.