"I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving you here alone," he replied. "With your mother not home, I mean."
"You left me alone for years," Maria snapped. "And I'm almost eighteen, though you probably don't know that. I can handle being alone in the house."
"I know exactly how old you are, Maria," he said.
"Oh, that's right," she answered. "You had a whole file on me, that's what Sadie said. So let's see, you know what I look like in sucky school pictures, and you know that I get As in art and C's in math. So I guess you think you know me really well, huh?"
"Maria… "
"Is that your version of being an involved father?" Maria interrupted. "Sending a private investigator to follow me around? I want to know why you had someone spying on me."
Her father blew out a breath. "Because I wanted to know how you were," he said.
"The more established modes of finding that out are to call and ask, or to set up visitation weekends," Maria said sarcastically.
"I know. But I couldn't face you." Richard's eyes were wet.
I will not feel sorry for him, Maria thought. I don't care if he sobs like a baby.
"I felt so guilty," he went on. "For what I did to you. Your mother and I… we were terrible together. But I always loved you. I handled it badly. I abandoned you, sweet pea, and I couldn't stand the guilt."
"Don't call me that," Maria said coldly.
"I'm trying to do it right this time," her dad said. "With Sadie and Junior. I try to be a good father to them because I was such a bad father to you. I'm not saying that it makes up for the way I treated you, but I am a good father now."
"You're right, that doesn't make up for it," Maria said. "I've spent my entire life feeling worthless and unlovable because of you. It's nice that you're good to Sadie, but it doesn't help me."
Richard bowed his head. "Okay," he said. "I had to try. But if you want, I'll take Sadie to a hotel in the morning and we'll stay there until the quarantine is lifted."
"Yes, that's what I want," Maria said. She turned and went into her mother's room and closed the door. And then the tears came.
10
"Valenti said he thinks its private security," Michael said
quietly. He was crouched in the well-manicured bushes that surrounded the Meta-chem property. Isabel and Max knelt next to him. About twenty feet away stood a parked van with a couple of guys in uniform sitting in front. There were similar vans dotted around the parking lot.
"They're not paying close attention," Michael said. "If we distract them, we should be able to run right by."
"Okay," Max said. "We'll aim for that door." He pointed it out. "Be ready to unlock it quickly."
Michael nodded. They could all use their powers to undo locks, but for some reason Michael could do it faster than the others. Exploding lightbulbs, though, was Isabel's specialty. "Iz, would you like to do the honors?" he asked.
She narrowed her eyes at the streetlamp closest to the parked van. It was a big lamp, meant to illuminate all the parking spaces for forty feet around it. Isabel raised her hand, and the lamp exploded in a spectacular display of light.
The uniformed guys whistled and yelled, paying more attention to the burned-out light than to the three teens racing through the darkness just behind the van. Michael reached the door first, and he could feel the heat in his hand even as he reached for the handle. He was never sure quite how he opened locks. He simply knew that he visualized the lock opening, and that's what it did.
He yanked open the door, Max and Isabel ran through, and he followed them inside. The whole thing took less than ten seconds. They stood together in the darkness of an empty Meta-chem hallway, breathing hard.
"Here's where we split up," Michael said. "Maxwell, you and I will head for the quarantine room. Iz, you look for CDC headquarters."
Isabel nodded. "Good luck," she said, and disappeared into the darkness.
"So where's the quarantine room?" Michael asked.
Max shrugged. "It's got to be big; they have a lot of people there."
"I'm thinking they must have a warehouse or something," Michael said. "I guess we just start looking in doors until we find it."
"It's going to be a long night," Max said.
Isabel snuck through the dark hallways at Meta-chem. The place was virtually abandoned. Every so often a security guard would cross a hall in front of her, but she always managed to avoid them.
I wonder where Jesse is, she thought. She knew it was important for one of them to find out what the CDC was up to, but secretly she wanted to find the quarantine room
herself and make sure Jesse was okay. The way he had looked when they wheeled him into the emergency room… so pale, so afraid! It broke Isabel's heart.
"I offered them my facilities," a woman's voice broke into Isabel's thoughts. "They're going to have to play by my rules."
Isabel flattened herself against the wall and waited as the woman approached the crossing in front of her.
"I want full information sharing, and that's that," the woman was saying as she came into view She was small and blond, wearing an expensive outfit. Isabel recognized her from articles she'd read in the paper… Maris Wheeler, the head of Meta-chem. She was with a pasty-faced guy in a lab coat.
Maris had stopped in the middle of the area where the two hallways crossed. Isabel held her breath, wishing she could disappear into the wall behind her. If Maris decided to turn down this hall, Isabel would be found for sure.
"I'll tell them you said no running tests unless you share the results," lab-coat guy said. He started to turn away.
"No, wait," Maris ordered him. "I'll go tell them myself." She turned and clacked down the hall on her high heels.
Isabel let out the breath she'd been holding. What a stroke of luck! It sounded as if Maris was going to talk to the CDC people who were set up at Meta-chem. And that was exactly where Isabel wanted to be. Keeping as quiet as possible, Isabel began to follow them.
Before long they reached an office complex where the lights were bright and people were bustling around. It
seemed strange to see such a busy area within this giant, silent building. Isabel checked her watch. It was nearly two in the morning. But the CDC people were clearly going to work around the clock until they figured out what was going on in Roswell.
Good, she thought. The sooner they find the cause oj all this, the sooner they can help Jesse. She pictured her brother in the quarantine room. She'd wanted to ask him to heal Jesse while he was there. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She'd made a promise to herself never to let Jesse find out the truth about her alien life. And besides, they were broken up. The image of his stricken face came back into her mind. He'd had a heart attack… and that was serious. If he doesn't make it through this, III never forgive myself.
Isabel couldn't walk down the well-lit hall and put her ear to the door. She glanced up at the ceiling. It was made of the typical thin fiberglass tiles. They wouldn't hold much weight. Still, she saw no other option. She'd have to chance it.
There was a lab cart in the hallway where she stood. She climbed up on it, pushed one of the ceiling tiles aside, and pulled herself up into the crawl space above. Immediately she lay flat on her stomach. If she distributed her weight as evenly as possible, she'd be less likely to break through the fragile tiles. Staying on her stomach, she crawled slowly along until she heard voices.
"… believe we've found the trail of the infection," a man was saying. "But we're no closer to knowing its pathology. Frankly, many of my colleagues find it highly unlikely that this sudden outbreak of different diseases is related to a single infection."
"Well, you seem to believe it, Dr. Farrell," Maris Wheeler replied. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come to Roswell so quickly."
Isabel thought that Maris sounded kind of annoyed that they'd come to Roswell at all.
"With all due respect, Ms. Wheeler," Dr. Farrell said. "I'm well aware that Meta-chem is doing DNA research. Once you start messing with things at that level, anything is possible. The one thing these patients have in common is that all are suffering from hereditary disorders. Whatever time bombs were hidden in their DNA, they've all exploded at once. And it's entirely possible that your research could cause such a thing to happen. Accidentally, of course."