by Melinda Metz
"What the hell is wrong with you, Lydick?" Michael exploded.
Projection, Maria thought. Yeah, Steve Lydick had missed a shot that should have been a swish, but Michael had yelled like Steve had personally offended him or something.
Maria slid a little closer and put her hand on Michael's arm. It was either that or smack him. He didn't acknowledge the fact that she was touching him, but she felt his muscles relax a little. Sometimes the only comfort Michael would allow was physical. Maria had no problem with touching him, except for the part where she was tortured by wanting to touch him a lot more. She just wished he would talk to her. He wasn't going to start feeling any better if he didn't let whatever was putrefying in him out.
The band started to play, announcing the start of halftime. "Want to go outside and get some air?" she asked Michael. "It smells like a gym in here."
"I want to watch Izzy do her cheer," Michael answered. Keeping focused on the court.
"We have time," Maria urged, giving his arm a little squeeze. "Unless you really need to hear the patriotic songs medley again."
"Nah. You go if you want. I'm going to stay here." He pulled his arm away from her hand. She had to give him points for trying to be a little subtle about it-he did the head-scratch-arm-pull thing. But Maria knew that her touch had started to irritate him.
Maybe I should read one of those books on massaging auras, she thought. That could be a way to covertly do something for Michael. She didn't need to see auras to know that his was seriously out of whack. It probably had one of those purple grief nets. Plus a whole lot of anger splotches.
"Hey, Maria," Liz called over the loud brass solo section of the medley. "I just found out Adam doesn't have a birthday-or, you know, a day he celebrates as his birthday. They didn't give him one in the compound. You're the astrology guru. What do you think it should be?"
Maria was grateful for a little distraction. "Hmmm. How would you describe Adam?" she asked Liz, curious to hear the answer.
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.
***
"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.
