"It made me think about how lonely you must be so much of the time," Liz continued. "When we're all at school, you're cooped up in here all by yourself. I never even thought about what you do all day."
Adam found it hard to sit still when Liz looked at him with full-force intensity, the way she was right now. It's not that he didn't like it. He did. But it made him feel like someone was twanging on his neurons, sending wild impulses everywhere in his body.
"So what do you do?" Liz asked, her dark brown eyes intent on his face.
Adam shrugged, increasing the shoulder-to-shoulder contact with Liz.
"I try to learn some stuff," he explained. "I still have some gaps. I read, watch TV, listen to music, surf the net. At lunch I wander around, look in stores. I go to Target a lot."
"Target?" Liz asked, her eyes widening.
"Yeah. Why? Is that bad?" Adam asked, sensing he'd said something wrong.
"Okay. That's it," Liz said, sitting up straight. "Spring break, we all go to New York. We'll drive-see America. And we're going to find you some friends. I mean friends you can hang out with during the day. There must be some people somewhere in this town…" Liz paused, brow furrowing, then rushed on. "Then next year you're going to college. We'll fake you some records somehow. Social services doesn't wonder where your family is when you're in college."
"Wow," Adam murmured, overwhelmed by the passion in her voice.
"You don't need the consciousness not to be alone." Red explosions of anger filled Liz's aura. Adam had noticed she got angry every time the consciousness came up. "You won't need to connect," she added.
Adam didn't mention the fact that the only way to avoid connecting to the consciousness seemed to be death, but the yellow bolts in her aura let him know that Liz was probably thinking about the same thing.
"I'd like to go to New York," Adam said, keeping the conversation light. "Especially the Empire State Building," he added, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.
Liz smiled slightly, a we've-got-a-secret smile, and suddenly Adam wanted to kiss her. He always wanted to kiss her, but the intensity of the urge right now was almost molecule melting.
A kiss in the dream plane would have been awesome. Any kind of kiss with Liz would be awesome. But the textures inside a dream orb were just a tiny bit off, somehow a little too perfect. If he kissed Liz now, it would be real.
Adam leaned toward her, and she didn't pull back. His gaze flicked from her lips to her eyes, her lips to her eyes. Her eyes were warm. Her lips parted slightly.
And Adam kissed her softly. Her lips were warm and sweet. She touched the hair at the back of his neck lightly, and his neurons twanged almost hard enough to snap.
Slowly Liz pulled away. She kissed him on the cheek, then released his hand. Adam had had zero experience with girls, but he knew what Liz was telling him before she spoke the words.
"Adam, you're a wonderful guy. And I… I like you so much," Liz said. "Just seeing your face makes me feel better, no matter what craziness is going on. But-"
"But you're still in love with Max," Adam said, wanting her speech to end.
"I don't think Max…" A net of purple grief wrapped itself around Liz's aura. "Max and I aren't ever going to be together," Liz told him. "But I can't be with anybody else. At least, not-" She shook her head, leaving the rest of her thought unspoken.
"I understand," Adam replied. And he did. Weirdly, one of the things that drew him to Liz was the deep, powerful love she had for Max. To be loved by someone with that capacity for passion and emotion-it had to be the most wonderful thing anyone could possibly imagine.
"That doesn't mean I don't want to be friends," Liz continued, looking him in the eye. "Anytime you feel lonely, anytime you need someone, I'll be here for you." She reached forward and squeezed his hand. "You know that, don't you?"
Before Adam could answer, he heard the apartment's back door fly open.
"We have a way to find Isabel and Michael," Maria cried as she rushed into the living room, Alex right behind her.
"I scored an alien tracking device off my dad," Alex added, green eyes gleaming. "He was actually very cool about it. Although officially he knows nothing."
Adam grinned and scrambled to his feet. Liz followed, wiping her hands on her jeans.
"Maria, do you mind going and, um, waking up our sleeping beauty?" she asked. It was clear she was reluctant to do it herself.
"Sure. Yesterday I mixed up a batch of all the most powerful aromatic oils," Maria answered, pulling a little vial out of her jacket pocket and giving it a quick shake. "It's strong enough to raise the dead."
She slapped her hand over her mouth, shooting a horrified what-did-I-just-say look at Liz.
"Sorry," she said, then bolted for the kitchen.
Alex pulled a thin, square device out of his pocket. "Looks like a PalmPilot, doesn't it?" he asked. "The latest fashion in alien hunting," he added in a mock-announcer voice. "Classic black. And it leaves no unflattering line in the trousers."
He clicked a little button on the side. "Should be easy to use." He stared at the little screen. "Except it's not."
"Can I try?" Adam asked.
"Be my guest." Alex handed over the tracking device with a shrug.
In the Project Clean Slate compound Adam's powers had been tested on everything from starting a blender to defusing a bomb. It hadn't taken him long to learn how to sense the energy pathways in any mechanical or electronic device and figure out exactly how to make it stop or start functioning.
Adam ignored the buttons on the tracker and nudged one of the circuits with his mind. The little screen lit up with a soft green glow. Two black dots blinked in the lower-left corner.
Liz and Alex crowded up to Adam so they could see, too. "I think those two dots are you and Max," Liz said. "Can you make it pull back? You know, extend the range?"
Adam tweaked the tracker until the screen showed the city of Roswell. There were still only the Max and Adam dots on the screen.
"Go wider," Alex urged.
"What've you got?" Max demanded as he and Maria came into the living room.
"So far we've managed to pinpoint the exact location of you and Adam," Alex said sarcastically "And can I just say, it's good to be back on the team." He reached out and clapped Max on the back. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'd been experiencing some kind of ego malfunction."
"Yeah, who could resist the attentions of someone like Stacey Scheinin?" Liz complained. But she reached over and gave Alex a half hug.
"Four more dots," Adam announced, pulling his eyes away from Liz.
"You must have picked up DuPris and Trevor, too," Max said. "How are we going to figure out which is the right location?"
"Doesn't look like it matters," Alex said, leaning over Adam's shoulder. "All four dots are in the same place-about fifty miles outside of Santa Fe. Which means-"
"They're with DuPris," Adam whispered. His fingers spasmed, and the tracker slipped free. Alex caught it before it hit the ground.
"I can't believe this," Max said, pushing his hands up into his hair. "How could Michael be so stupid?"
"Max, he must have had a reason," Maria said, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. "Calm down."
"We have to find them," Liz said, pulling her hair back from her face. "If Michael went to DuPris, Isabel must be pretty sick."
Adam saw Max's eyes flash with hurt, but the thought seemed to bring him back to the matter at hand.
"All right. If we're getting that close to DuPris, we're going to need firepower," he said, looking each of them in the eye. "We have to get that Clean Slate weapon from Kyle."