Max reached over and grabbed the hem of one leg. He ripped the stitching and pulled the hem down. Now the leg was only about an inch too short. "Oh," Michael said. He pulled down the hem on the other leg.
"If anyone asks, I'm looking for a job and you're taking me in to meet your boss," Max said.
"Right. And my name is Kyle from Housekeeping," Michael said. "Let's go."
They climbed out of Kyle's pickup, which Valenti had lent them, and walked up to the employee entrance of the Meta-chem building. Michael unlocked the door with Kyle's passkey and held the door open for Max to enter.
A bored-looking security guard sat at a small desk inside.
"You mind if I bring my friend in for an interview?" Michael asked gruffly.
The guard shrugged. Michael led Max past him, pretending that he knew where they were going. Once they were around the corner from the guard, they stopped. Michael pulled out the map Isabel had drawn of where the CDC headquarters were. "This way," he said. "It's not far from here."
"I hope that's where Liz is," Max said.
"Only one way to find out. Look sharp." They headed deeper into Meta-chem, and Michael tried not to think about what was waiting for them. Because after this, they had no plan. How to find Liz, how to save her… Max would just have to handle that part.
"Liz? Can you hear me?"
The voice vibrated through Liz's body slowly. It's weird that my metabolism is speeding up when everything else feels so much slower, Liz thought. Light hit her eyes in slow-moving waves, and so did sound. Is this what the aliens feel like all the time? she wondered. It truly was an alien experience.
"Liz?" It was Maris Wheeler's voice. Some part of Liz knew that. She forced her eyelids to open.
The room was dark. They kept it dark and quiet because they knew what Liz's symptoms were. All in all, they'd been pretty nice. Of course, she'd had lots of blood taken, and they did tests frequently. How did they get all the medical equipment to Meta-chem so fast? she wondered. They even had an MRI machine.
"You have an MRI," she murmured, trying to focus on Maris's face.
"Yes. My husband is very ill. We treat him here." The voice swam down to Liz through layers of white noise… the hum of the monitors she was hooked up to, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights out in the hallway, the murmur of voices from the CDC headquarters nearby. If Liz wanted to, she could focus on any one of these sounds and block out the others. But that took a lot of energy, and she felt so weak…,
"Liz, do you know why you're here?" Marts asked.
"Because I cleaned up the spill," Liz murmured. "It mutated me."
"That's right." Marts smiled widely. "That's exactly right."
The lights went out. But Liz barely registered that, because the siren that started to ring was so loud that she thought the sound would burst her eardrums. There was nothing in the world but that piercing sound, and the pain it caused. Pain like nothing Liz had ever felt before; pain she seemed to feel on a molecular level.
"Liz? Can you hear me?" This time the voice was Max's. Liz slowly became aware that the piercing alarm sound was gone. The lights were still off.
"What happened?" she whispered.
"Michael pulled the fire alarm. We had to get everyone out of here. They'll be back in a matter of minutes." Max was talking very fast. Liz listened to the sound of his voice, but she couldn't follow the words.
"I'm going to try to heal you. It won't be like last time. I'm going to look for one specific gene," Max was saying. "This gene turned off, and I need to turn it back on."
Liz was aware of two things: fear and love. She'd never experienced emotions like this before, with her whole body. The fear came from somewhere in her spine, sending tiny tremors up through the muscles of her back. She was afraid for Max to touch her, because last time it had hurt so much. The love came from the pit of her stomach and sent waves of heat radiating through her chest. The love made all the parts of her body call out for Max. "Max," she whispered. "I love you. I feel it in every single cell. I can hardly bear how much I love you."
"I love you the same way," he told her.
"I know you do," Liz murmured. "You told me about it once, about how we loved each other so much that nothing else mattered. We got married and we were happy, but then Tess felt left out… "
"Liz!" Max sounded worried. "Stay with me."
She hated the concern in his voice. She didn't want him to worry. She had to comfort him.
"It's okay, Max," she told him. "I did what you wanted. I made you fall out of love with me, and now the future is different."
"What are you talking about?" Max asked. Then he went on quickly. "Never mind. Just focus on me touching you."
Then his hand was on her cheek. She felt warmth coming from his hand, but this time there was no pain. The warmth traveled throughout her body. It was seeking something, she knew, searching through her cells. And then it stopped and turned suddenly cold. The warmth had found what it was looking for. The new cold feeling spread out from where it started, filling her body and her mind.
To Liz, it seemed that everything went backward. The sounds of her monitors decreased as if someone had turned a giant volume knob in her head. The room, which had been as bright as noon, sunk into darkness. Her heartbeat, which had been filling her ears for almost a day now, suddenly became inaudible.
Liz sat up and looked around a small, dark room. Max was watching her. "Are you back?"
She mentally took stock of herself. Sounds were normal, sight was normal. "I'm back," she said. "I feel completely fine."
Max reached out again and touched her cheek. "Liz…"
Then he collapsed.
"Max!" Liz cried.
The door burst open. Michael rushed in, dressed in a tight-fitting jumpsuit. He looked at Liz, then at Max lying on the floor. "What happened?"
"He healed me," Liz said. "And then… "
"It drained his energy," Michael interrupted. "I've seen him like this before." He bent down and heaved Max onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry.
"Is he okay?" Liz asked anxiously.
Michael nodded impatiently. "They're coming back," he
said. "You have to explain it somehow." He turned and ran, carrying Max.
Liz took a deep breath and waited…
The door flew open again, and about five doctors stopped in astonishment when they saw her sitting up. Liz gave them a smile. Maris Wheeler pushed her way through the doctors and rushed over to Liz. "What happened?" she asked, taking Liz's hand.
"I'm not exactly sure," Liz said. "I think it was a miracle." And she wasn't even lying.
13
“She's okay?" Alan Sosa asked.
Maris narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes, she's fine. Though how it happened will remain a mystery, at least to the CDC."
"What do you mean?" he said. "Surely they studied her afterward."
"Yes, they studied her. They used her DNA to fashion a cure for the rest of the people you infected. I just mean that they don't understand what happened… either why it began, or why it ended. There are only two of us who know that, Alan. You and me."
He looked paler than usual, she thought. His hand shook as he lifted the cup of coffee her assistant had brought him. "I'm done with Meta-chem," he said. "I don't want trouble between us, but I think you'll agree that I have more dirt to blackmail you with now than what you have on me. I want to call it even."
"Alan, you spread a dangerous virus around the whole city."
"A virus that you created out of DNA you got from God knows where! I won't let you pin this on me," he said. "I didn't want to test that serum on humans and you know it."
"Nevertheless, you did give it to Liz Parker."
"You forced me to!" His shaking was getting more violent. Maris wondered idly what kind of poison her assistant had put in the coffee. She herself never liked to know the details of these things. That way the assistant could take the fall for it later, if need be.