Liz studied Adam for a moment, and a blush began to creep up his neck. She better look away before he achieves meltdown, Maria thought.
"I'd say Adam is empathetic, intelligent, and sweet," Liz answered.
Interesting. Liz definitely didn't seem to be ga-ish over Adam. But it did sound like she liked him a lot and like she saw him as someone safe, someone who would never break her heart. Maria could see why that could appeal to Liz right now.
"I hope you're not going to stand for that," Michael told Adam. "Never let a girl call you sweet. It means they think you have no-"
"Don't worry. No one's ever going to call you sweet," Maria told Michael. Although deep down in the core of him, Maria suspected Michael was one of the sweetest people around. No one cared more about the people he loved than Michael, not that he'd admit he loved anybody at all.
"So what am I?" Adam asked.
"I'd say you're a Pisces, a sweet dream boy," Maria answered. "So you could pick any day between February nineteenth and March twentieth."
"When's your birthday, Liz?" Adam said. Michael gave a snort of derision, and Maria gave in to her impulse to smack him.
"May sixteenth," Liz answered. She released her long, dark hair from its ponytail and let it fall around her shoulders.
"I want to be March sixteenth," Adam announced. Maria shot Michael a warning look. He ignored her and rolled his eyes.
"So whipped," Michael muttered, but not loud enough for Adam to hear.
"You are definitely a Sagittarius in one big way," Maria said in his ear. "You're completely tactless."
"You don't even know when my birthday is," Michael shot back.
"December twentieth," Maria said, causing Michael to narrow his eyes at her. "At least that's the day social services chose for you," Maria said, a little too quickly.
"And you know this because?" Michael prodded.
"I asked Max once," Maria answered lamely.
Michael raised his eyebrow, and his mouth twisted into a conceited smile. Maria thought she was going to have to smack him again, but the medley wrapped up, and the cheerleaders trotted onto the polished wood floor of the basketball court.
"Go, Isabel!" Maria cried, clapping.
The cheerleaders launched into a new routine, one that was half what you'd see on a dance floor and half what you'd see during a gymnastics meet. Isabel was perfectly in sync as she did a double back flip, but when she came out of it, Maria couldn't help noticing that she looked exhausted. All of her usual Isabel-goddess-glow was gone.
Maria reached around Adam and nudged Liz. "Does Isabel look okay to you?" she asked as the cheerleaders began to form a pyramid.
Liz didn't answer. Her eyes were locked on the cheerleaders, her expression grim. Maria jerked her gaze over to them. Isabel stood in the top position. And she was teetering ever so slightly.
Maria grabbed Michael's hand, holding her breath. The gym went perfectly silent.
Isabel repositioned her feet slightly. She raised her arms. She smiled.
She's going to be all right, Maria thought.
But a moment later Isabel plummeted to the floor. Maria let out a loud gasp along with the rest of the spectators and jumped to her feet. Then the entire place became eerily silent.
Isabel was splayed out on the floor.
And she wasn't moving.
SEVEN
"I'm not saying it again. It was Stacey's fault. She was wobbly, so I was wobbly, and that's why I fell," Isabel repeated. She picked a tiny piece of dead skin off her lower lip, and a droplet of blood appeared.
Max glanced around Michael and Adam's living room. Michael, Adam, Liz, and Maria were all looking at Isabel with varying degrees of disbelief. Clearly no one was buying her story completely. Max sure as hell wasn't.
"I wasn't even hurt. Just let it go already," Isabel added. She licked the droplet of blood away.
A cluster of beings in the consciousness shot Max a question about a cartoon on the muted TV. Max ignored it, forcing his connection to the consciousness as low as it would go. He needed to concentrate on his sister.
"Okay, so you fell, and you weren't hurt. Fine," Max said. "But what about the rest of it-the cracked lips, the way your face is all pale?"
"Oh, God. You sound exactly like Michael," Isabel exclaimed, burying her face in her hands.
Max glared over at Michael. "You know something you aren't saying?" he demanded. But he didn't even need Michael to answer. His aura said it all. There were sickly yellow snakes of fear all through it.
I should have seen it before, Max thought. No, forget that. He shouldn't have needed to see anything in Michael's aura. One good look at Isabel should have told him everything he needed to know.
"It's the akino," he said flatly.
"Whether it is or it isn't is my business," Isabel shot back, her voice suddenly stronger. "It isn't open for group discussion."
Maybe he should have caught it earlier, but there was still time to do what needed to be done. Max pushed himself up from the floor. He strode over to Isabel and pulled her to her feet. "We're going home," he said firmly. "I'm getting the communication crystals, and you're making the connection to the consciousness."
Isabel jerked away her arm, blue eyes burning feverishly. "No."
That's all she said. Just "no." But the threads of gunmetal gray crisscrossing her aura told him that she had no intention of backing down.
Max's gaze flicked briefly to the TV screen. The beings were more insistent now, pushing him to give the cartoon his whole attention so they could experience it.
Not now! Max thought. He ordered his eyes back to Isabel. "Izzy, if you don't-" His eyes sought out the TV again. He gave up, allowing the beings to watch the cartoon while he continued to talk to his sister. "If you don't connect, you'll die. I know. It almost happened to me. I was in the tunnel of light. Another few seconds and I'd have been gone."
Liz leaned over and snapped off the TV "Thanks," Max told her. She didn't respond. She didn't even look at him.
"Maybe Max is right," Michael said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
"Maybe? Maybe!" Max exploded. "There's no maybe about it."
"Hey, Trevor said-" Michael began.
"Trevor? As in the guy who tried to kill me?" Max snapped, his ire raising at an alarming rate. "That's who you're-" Another cluster of beings in the consciousness prodded Max, wanting to know what the smell coming from Adam was. Max ignored the question. "That's who you're going to listen to?"
"And who are we listening to right now, Max?" Isabel demanded, narrowing her eyes. "Is that you talking or a million little voices in your head?"
"Not that bull again," Max burst out, his hands clenching into fists. "All of you have this idea that I'm not myself anymore just because I'm connected to the consciousness."
"You're not you," Isabel told him, tears welling up in her eyes. "My brother Max would never have been watching cartoons while he was talking to me about the possibility that I might die." Her last words came out as a shriek.
"She's right," Liz said from her spot on the floor. She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, as if preparing to ward off a blow. "You are-were-the most caring, considerate person I'd ever met. You couldn't even walk past a mouse in the bio lab if you knew it was in pain. Remember that day you healed that mouse, Fred?" This time Liz met his gaze steadily. "I think that was the day I fell in love with you."
The beings blasted another question about the Adam smell. Max scrubbed his face with his fingers. "Adam, what kind of gum are you chewing?"
"One piece banana. One piece cinnamon," Adam answered, without blinking an eye.
"Do you even listen to yourself, Max?" Michael burst out. "We're talking about Isabel's life, and you're babbling about bubble gum."
Max sat down on the floor again and closed his eyes, trying to block out as much sensation as possible so the consciousness would have less to respond to.
"I don't know what Trevor's deal is," Max said through gritted teeth. "I don't know why he'd say it's possible to survive the akino without making the connection. But I experienced it. I'm the only one of us who has." He took a deep breath and emphasized every word, hoping they would take him seriously. "It. Can. Not. Be. Survived."
"I remember standing by your bed near… near what we thought was the end," Maria jumped in. "Remember? We didn't just think Max was going to die-we thought he had died. He actually stopped breathing."
Max opened his eyes just a touch and peered up at Isabel. "Are you listening?" he asked, then he closed his eyes again, resisting the urge to run his fingers across the plastic of the closest beanbag chair to allow the beings of the consciousness to feel it.
"If I have to choose between dying or being like Max is now, I'd rather die," Isabel spat out.
"Don't say that," Maria exclaimed.
"I don't think it sounds too bad to be part of the consciousness," Adam said matter-of-factly. "You'd never be alone."
"You'd be a puppet," Isabel cried. "And you know what that feels like, right, Adam? You killed Valenti while you were-"
"It's not the same," Max protested, keeping his eyes closed. "The consciousness doesn't make me kill. It doesn't-"
"It tried to make you kill DuPris," Liz reminded him, voice harsh. "You might not always be a puppet. But the consciousness can pull your strings whenever."
Max heard footsteps pass in front of him. "Isabel, you have to do it," he heard Maria say. He risked a brief squint and saw that Maria had wrapped Isabel in her arms. "I can't lose my frister," she added.
"What's a frister?" Adam asked.
"It's more than a friend, almost a sister," Liz answered. She sprang to her feet and joined the Isabel-Maria knot.
"Listen to them," Max begged. "If you can't listen to me, listen to them." He felt like he'd swallowed something alive, something with claws. It tore at his guts as he waited to hear Isabel's response.
"If I join the consciousness, you will lose me," Isabel explained. "If I take the risk, if I go through the akino without making the connection, you might lose me. But I might survive. At least I'll have the chance of surviving."
"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.