Quarantine r-4

by Laura J. Burns

"I don't know how." Michael tried zapping the fabric with his powers, but he only succeeded in burning a tiny hole in the knee.

  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 lik
ed to know the details of these things. That way the assistant could take the fall for it later, if need be.

  "Look, you got what you wanted," Alan was saying. "You saw how the serum works in humans… it's a disaster. It won't help your husband."

  "That's true. I'll have to find the Healer himself. I can't just use his DNA."

  "Well, fine," Alan said. He put down the coffee cup and stood. "Just count me out." He took one step toward the door, then fell flat on his face, dead.

  "I'll do that," Maris said.

  "I simply don't understand it," Diane Evans was saying as Isabel entered the kitchen.

  "None of us does," her husband, Philip, replied. "But I think the firm will be looking at a lot of business in lawsuits from this quarantine."

  Isabel poured herself some coffee and tried to act casual. "Hey, Dad, I thought I saw that new lawyer at the hospital," she said. "Jesse Something?"

  Her father nodded. "Jesse Ramirez."

  "When were you at the hospital?" Diane asked.

  Isabel gulped her coffee. "Um, I went there because Max was there with Liz."

  "Oh, that's right," Diane said. "Poor Liz; she was the first one sick."

  "There's another lawsuit waiting to happen," Philip put in. "I should give Liz's father a call… he's going to be sued by everyone who got sick at the Crashdown. He'll need a good lawyer."

  "What about Jesse?" Isabel blurted out, trying to keep the conversation on track. "He had a heart attack, they said."

  "A heart attack!" Diane exclaimed. "Why, he can't be more than twenty-six!"

  "He's fine now," Philip told her. "His symptoms completely reversed themselves. He told me the doctors said that if they hadn't seen the attack themselves, they wouldn't have even been able to tell he'd had a heart attack."

  "But does that mean he'll have one later on?" Isabel asked, still worried. "When he's older?"

  Philip shook his head. "They ran some tests, can't even find a single warning sign of congenital heart disease. And it runs in his family. It seems that whatever they used to cure him actually reversed the genetic weakness entirely."

  Max's DNA, Isabel thought. It's his healing power, working correctly this time. She smiled. No one in Roswell really understood what had happened… the CDC had taken samples of Liz's DNA, found an anomaly, and used it to create a sort of vaccine. Only Isabel and her friends knew that Liz's DNA had been changed by Max, and that's what had saved them all. "So Jesse is okay?" she asked.

  Her parents both looked at her in surprise.

  "Yes, he's fine," Philip replied. "I never knew you paid so much attention to my employees and their health."

  Isabel gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I'm just looking out for my dad," she chirped. Nothing could ruin her good mood now… Jesse was back to normal!

  "So your mom will be okay?" Sadie asked as she loaded a duffel bag full of Marias old clothes into the car. The city-wide quarantine had been lifted as of this morning, and Sadie and her dad were on their way back to Arizona.

  Maria nodded. "They all will. Liz says they gave everyone the medicine they made from her DNA, and all of those diseases reversed course immediately. Its like everyone was miraculously cured at once. Wild, huh?"

  Her dad shrugged. "I'd forgotten that about Roswell."

  "What?"

  "All the weird stuff that happens here," he said. "Everyone gets sick with hereditary diseases they probably didn't know they had. And then, boom! They're all better and the genes carrying those diseases are gone. It's like some giant lab experiment."

  If only you knew how right you are, Maria thought. "Was it always like that?" she said out loud.

  "Yeah," Richard answered. "There used to be strange murders, and unexplained lights in the sky, and plant life that had unidentifiable DNA. You'd read about it in the paper. But every time something weird would happen, it would just go away a little while later. Nobody ever got an explanation."

  Maria grinned. "I guess that's one thing that will never change."

  Her father smiled back. "Well, I guess we'd better get going," he said.

  "Yeah, I have to get over to Meta-chem to pick up my mom." Maria turned to Sadie and opened her arms.

  "I'm gonna miss you," Sadie said with a sniffle as she threw herself into Maria's embrace.

  "You have my e-mail," Maria told her little sister. "We might not see each other for a while, but you can keep in touch that way."

  Sadie looked up into Maria's eyes. "And we'll always be friends, right?"

  "Right," Maria told her. She felt a pricking at the back of her own eyes. It's amazing how attached I've gotten to her in just a jew days, she thought. She kissed Sadie's cheek and pulled open the passenger door. Sadie climbed into the car and shut the door.

  Maria turned to her father, knowing that they couldn't keep pretending nothing was wrong.

  "Maria," he said. "I know we're not exactly on good terms… "

  "Dad, listen," Maria said. "I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I'm glad that I know where you are and that you're okay. And I'm glad you had Sadie, because she's amazing."

  "I sense a 'but' coming," Richard said sadly.

  "But I'm just not ready to say everything is okay between us," Maria went on. "Because of you, I've spent my whole life feeling worthless. I can't get over that so eas-ily."

  "Okay," her father said quietly.

  "Mom has been my mother and my father for ten years now," Maria said. "And I take her for granted. I'm going to try to make my relationship with her better. Then maybe

  I'll want to make a new relationship with you. I just can't do them both right now. I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm not trying to punish you."

  "I understand that, Maria," Richard said. "For the record, I'd like to be involved in your life. But I'll leave the time frame up to you. Please promise me you'll at least think about it."

  Maria took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll think about it."

  Her father gave her a long, serious look. "I do love you, Maria," he said. Then he turned and climbed into the car.

  Maria watched them pull away from the house. Half of her wanted to run after the car, and the other half of her hoped she would never see him again.

  "You okay?"

  She turned to see Michael standing in the doorway of her house. Maria let out a little sob, and instantly Michael rushed over to hold her.

  Maria buried her face in his chest and let the tears flow for a minute. Then she took a deep breath. "I'll be all right," she said shakily.

  "Good." Michael released her.

  "When did you get here?" she asked.

  "A few minutes ago. I came in the back; I didn't want to interrupt you guys. I don't think your father likes me."

  Maria laughed.

  "You know, your mother doesn't like me either," Michael joked.

  "Who cares?" Maria said. "I like you just fine."

  Liz walked slowly down the stairs to the Crashdown. She'd been home for a full day, but this was the first time

  her father was letting her get out of bed. She hadn't minded the rest, actually. The strange symptoms of her sickness were completely gone, but her body still felt exhausted. She pushed open the swinging door to the dining room.

  "Surprise!"

  Liz gasped and jumped. A little crowd of people had gathered in the Crashdown: Max and Michael, Maria and her mom, Kyle and Valenti, and her own parents. "Hey, everyone," she said.

  "Here's the girl with the magic genes," Amy teased, giving Liz a hug. "Are you as happy to be out of Metachem as I am?"

  "You know it," Liz replied. "I'm never going back there, scholarship or not."

  "Me either," Kyle put in. "I called my boss and quit this morning. I've seen enough of that place to last forever."

  "And I won't mind having you home where I can see you for a while," Valenti said, punching his son on the arm.

  "I'll second that," Maria joked, punching her mother on the arm.

  "Who wants brunch?" Jeff P
arker asked, heading toward the kitchen. "It may be a while before the Board of Health lets us reopen, but I can serve you all cold cereal."

  "That's just what I'm here to talk to you about," Maris Wheeler said from the doorway.

  Liz jumped. She hadn't even heard the bell ring. Maris made her way over to the counter. "I hope you don't mind the intrusion," she said. "I wanted to make sure Liz was feeling better."

  "I am. Thanks, Ms. Wheeler," Liz told her.

  "I keep telling you, call me Maris," she corrected with a smile. "Liz, I have some news. The CDC's investigation has determined that the chemical spill in Dr. Sosa's lab was responsible for creating a mutation in your DNA that led to the virus. Somehow you must have infected the water you were carrying, and then the water spread it to everyone else."

  "That's just what you thought it was," Max said, smiling at Liz.

  "Well, there's a reason she's going to be a brilliant scientist," Maris said. "They still haven't figured out exactly what was in that substance you touched. Dr. Sosa didn't turn it over to the CDC, unfortunately. We were clearly very wrong to trust him with such sensitive research… he was using our labs to conduct his own studies on who knows what."

  "I never did quite trust him," Liz admitted.

  "He's been fired, needless to say," Maris told her. "So I'm afraid we won't have a job for you this summer, Liz. The scholarship money is still yours, of course."

  "That's a relief," Jeff said.

  "Oh, Mr. Parker, I have news for you, too," Maris went on, turning to him. "Since this virus was created at Meta-chem, I've spoken to the CDC on your behalf. We take full responsibility for what happened; your restaurant can hardly be blamed for Liz spreading a disease she didn't know she had. The Board of Health will want to do a routine inspection, but after that you should be free to open again."

  Liz watched her father's face break into a huge grin.

  "Thank you, Ms. Wheeler," he said. "I can't tell you how happy that makes me."

  "It's the least I can do," Maris said. "I'll let you all get back to your celebration."

  "Wow." Liz watched her go with a smile. "She must be the most honest CEO ever."

  Isabel locked the front door behind her and started down the sidewalk. She was supposed to meet up with her friends at the Crashdown. It was a show of support for the Parkers, because everyone was blaming them for the recent epidemic. It was common knowledge that the virus had been spread through the Crashdown.