"I'm not dead!" Max yelled. He couldn't sit there another second, doing nothing while his sister talked about him this way-as if he'd killed himself. He jumped up, pushed his way between Liz and Maria, and grabbed both of Isabel's hands in his.
"What are you doing?" Isabel cried.
"I'm going to show you the consciousness. I'm going to prove that it's nothing to be afraid of," Max answered.
Isabel tried to jerk away when she realized he had begun making the connection with her. Max tightened his grip. He wasn't going to let her go. He was never going to let her go.
Images from Isabel began to flash through Max's mind. A silvery incubation pod, broken open. A dark-haired guy on a motorcycle. A creature that was half Sheriff Valenti and half wolf. Max's face, eyes vacant, mouth slack.
And he was in. He could feel Isabel's heart beating in his body now. Their body. He could feel her breath in his lungs.
As slowly as he could, he allowed the volume of his connection to the consciousness to come back up and slid into the ocean of auras.
He felt a flicker of panic from Isabel as they were surrounded by the billions of beings, as they became part of the one, the whole, the single living entity-made up of many-that was the consciousness.
The panic in Isabel swelled. Her-their-heartbeat began to flutter. Faster. Faster.
Abruptly his connection with Isabel broke. Max's heart caught with fear. He reached for her, but all he felt was blackness.
"I can't even describe how it felt," Isabel said. She pulled her comforter tighter around her shoulders, even though Michael felt it was a little too warm in her bedroom already.
"It's like I was… dissolving," she continued, her eyes wide. "Or like I was being swallowed up. Then I guess I fainted. I've never fainted in my life."
Lightning bolts of yellow fear zigzagged across her aura as she spoke. And when she glanced over at the communication crystals on her bedside table, her entire aura became the color of fear. The yellow light surrounding her gave her face a corpselike appearance.
"I probably would have fainted, too," Michael told her. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to force all the little hairs back down. What she'd described sounded a lot like death to him. Wasn't that what death was-complete loss of self?
A loud knock sounded at the door, and before he or Isabel could answer, Max came in and stood awkwardly at the foot of Isabel's bed.
"I just wanted to see if you were okay," he said.
"You should have thought about that before you forced me into the connection," Isabel told him, her voice cold enough to turn lava to ice.
"I didn't know it would make you feel so-" Max told her.
"So much like I was dying?" Isabel interrupted.
Max picked a little glass kitten off her dresser and turned it over in his hands.
"Most of the time for me, it's like a tropical ocean, with lots of salt in the water, so that you're really buoyant," Max explained. "Sometimes you hit a bad stretch-like a riptide, I guess. But most of the time…" He raised the kitten to his lips and licked one of its glass ears. Michael's stomach turned just watching him. "I really thought you'd see that it was nothing to be so afraid of."
"What are you doing to that thing?" Michael burst out.
Max's eyebrows drew together. "I was just looking at it. So?"
"You were licking it," Michael informed him, his face a mask of disgust. His best friend was getting freakier by the second.
Max put the kitten down fast but didn't offer any explanation.
"Let me guess. Some of the beings wondered how it tasted?" Isabel asked.
"I just wanted to be sure you were okay," Max said. He gave the communication crystals a pointed look. "You should use those before the pain gets too bad." He glanced from Isabel to Michael and seemed to tense up. Then he hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Probably afraid he'd start licking something else and totally push Isabel off the sanity cliff, Michael thought.
"I feel like I don't even have a brother anymore," Isabel whispered, staring at the closed door.
Don't go there, Michael ordered himself. If he started thinking about what Max had become, Michael would go flying off the sanity cliff himself. He had to concentrate on Isabel.
"You know if I-when I-get too weak to stop him, he's going to force those crystals into my hand," Isabel said, sounding like a small child. "He'll make me connect whether I want to or not. Maria and Liz would probably even help him. Maybe even Alex, too, if he was through sampling every girl in the state," Isabel added, still staring at the door.
Michael reached out and took her chin between his fingers. He forced her to look at him. "I'm not letting anybody do anything to you that you don't want done."
Was it right to promise her that? Was it right to agree to help her do something that could possibly kill her? Michael didn't know for sure, but it was necessary. Isabel needed someone on her side, someone who'd go with her through hell and back if that's what she wanted.
Michael had to be that guy. Right or wrong, he was seeing this thing through with her.
"I don't know if you'll be able to stop him," Isabel said. "Not if he gets everyone else on his side. Unless-"
Suddenly her expression became determined, and she looked more like the Isabel he knew and loved than she had in the last few days. She threw off the comforter and swung her legs around so they were hanging off the bed.
"Unless we leave," she said. "Now."
Michael froze. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Isabel said. "If Max can't find me, I'm safe."
EIGHT
Trevor's stomach convulsed as he broke the connection with DuPris. He pulled in a deep breath and blew it out hard, trying to get his revulsion under control. Necessary sacrifices, he told himself. Necessary. Sacrifices. He took another breath, blew it out, then realized DuPris was staring at him with a mix of amusement and condescension.
"My human body still has responses that are difficult to control," Trevor muttered. At least the responses to images of torture and destruction are tough, he thought.
"They are an extremely sensitive race," DuPris commented. "In an episode of Laverne and Shirley, Laverne actually stopped speaking to Shirley just because she thought Shirley was too friendly to her boyfriend."
"Uh, I didn't see that one," Trevor answered.
"I have it on tape," DuPris answered. He picked the purple-green Stone of Midnight off the coffee table and cradled it in his hand. "It's going to reach full strength even earlier than I hoped. Two more charging sessions and we should be there."
Two more. You can deal with two more, Trevor told himself. He rubbed his sweaty palms on the sides of his jeans, hoping DuPris wouldn't notice. There were dozens of members of the Kindred-no, more than that, hundreds-who had desperately wanted to join DuPris on Earth and work side by side with the rebel leader. Trevor had been chosen because of his relationship with Michael, but he was determined to prove that he would have been the best-possible choice under any circumstances. It was his destiny to destroy the consciousness, to finish the crusade that had been so important to his parents, the crusade they had given their lives for.
"I want to get some more work done on the ship today." DuPris began to teleport before Trevor had a chance to respond, clearly assuming that he would follow.
Trevor concentrated on the deserted warehouse they were using for a hangar and allowed his molecules to loosen and then disperse. He welcomed the blackness that overcame him as his brain scattered.
When his body re-formed, DuPris had already begun repairing one of the bashed-in sections of the ship. Trevor chose a deep crater at the opposite end of the craft to work on. He still didn't feel that comfortable around DuPris. With every move Trevor made, every word he spoke, he felt that he was being judged by the leader, judged and found to be somehow lacking.