by Melinda Metz
Michael bent back his legs and kicked the orb with both feet so he could scramble out from under it. Immediately he tried to step through its wall. But it wasn't permeable the way other dream orbs were. Michael took a few steps back and lunged at it, trying to force himself inside. No dice.
Isabel didn't have a lot of time left. Michael had to find a way to break into the orb-now. He circled it, looking for any sign of weakness in its smooth walls. Nothing. He let out his breath with a hiss and circled the orb again.
He noticed it turning an opaque, smoky gray and stopped to figure out what was going on. He could see something moving inside, but he couldn't make out exactly what it was. He gave the wall a poke with one finger. Still as strong as steel.
The orb grew clearer and clearer until its walls were like untinted glass. Trevor stood in the center of the orb and locked eyes with Michael, but he didn't make a move. All he did was raise a curious eyebrow.
Isn't he going to let me in? Michael thought, clenching his hands into fists. It didn't look that way. Trevor just kept staring at him.
Okay, he wants me to beg, I'll beg, Michael thought. He cupped his hands around his mouth.
"I need to talk to you," he shouted. "Please!"
Trevor didn't reply for a long moment, then he reached through the wall of the orb and pulled Michael inside, the wall suddenly as soft as a soap bubble.
"Okay, talk," Trevor ordered.
Michael wasn't crazy about the guy's tone. Especially since Trevor was the one who'd done all the lying. But he pushed aside his anger. It was not the time.
"It's Isabel," he told his brother. "She's going through her akino. She doesn't want to join the consciousness-"
"Don't let anybody force her," Trevor interrupted, his gray eyes darkening.
"I won't. I promised her I wouldn't," Michael answered. "But-" The words were harder to say than he thought they should be.
"But what?" Trevor asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
Michael was sure that Trevor knew what he wanted to ask. Clearly his brother was going to make him actually spit it out. Fine. He could swallow his pride. For Isabel's sake.
"We-I mean I… I need your help," Michael admitted.
***
"Do you think we should try to bring Max out of the connection?" Adam asked. He and Liz sat side by side on his living-room floor, leaning against the wall, their fingers still laced together.
Liz shook her head. "Let's leave him in the kitchen. Right now there's nothing for any of us to do but wait."
Adam shifted the tiniest bit so that his shoulder was just touching hers. Liz didn't pull away. But he wasn't sure if that was because she hadn't noticed or because she liked it. Or because she was just tolerating it to be nice to the mole boy.
"Hey, Adam. You know what you were saying the other day-about the consciousness not sounding so bad because you'd never be alone?" Liz asked.
"Uh-huh," he said, savoring the way the heat from her shoulder soaked into his. It felt like Liz's body was about ten degrees wanner than his was, but he knew that couldn't be possible. It was just that everything about Liz affected him in a magnified way. All she had to do was smile at him, and it was like he'd been set free from the compound all over again.
"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.
"S
orry," 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."
"Yeah, he knows the threat of exposing the truth is over. It was incredibly easy to get rid of the reporters he dragged here," Liz said.
"I guess you guys haven't heard," Alex said, his gaze locked on the tracker. "The girl I was with today, she told me that Kyle is getting shipped to a very nice, very quiet hospital in Albuquerque for a 'Boy, Interrupted' kind of deal. He's not going until tomorrow, but there's no way he's going to be left alone tonight, even for a minute."
So not only were they going to have to face DuPris again. They were going in pretty much unarmed. Their powers were useless against DuPris and the Stones. Adam tried to steel himself, but he couldn't help feeling small and pathetic, as helpless as he had been in the compound.
"Okay, plan B," Max said. "I get the crystals and teleport to give them to Isabel."
"Not by yourself," Liz told him. "You might-"
"Might what?" Max demanded.
"You might, um, stop to smell the roses." Maria started giggling and didn't stop until she pinched her own arm so hard, the skin turned white. "Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry," she said.
"I can't believe you guys think I would zone out," Max said harshly. "This is Isabel we're-"
"Max," Liz said firmly. "Wake up already. You can't always control it."
"I am so sick-"
"They're right," Adam interrupted. It didn't feel like his place to contradict Max, but he had to. "I'll go-"
"We'll all go," Liz said, her dark eyes on Adam. "This isn't something you have to do alone."
THIRTEEN
Trevor knelt next to Isabel and placed his hands on the cement floor beside her. He tapped the molecules with his mind, urging them apart just enough for the floor to turn spongy.
"Better?" he asked.
But he wasn't expecting an answer. Isabel was deep in the akino, nearing the moment of crisis.
Michael hovered above them, pacing quickly. "If you're lying to me about her being able to survive-"
Trevor jerked up his head. "If you don't think you can trust me, why did you even come to me for help?" he exploded. Then he saw the fear in his brother's eyes. It spiked through his aura. "She's going to be fine, Michael," he said, his anger instantly gone.
"When I connected with her, I could see her organs, and they were all about to disintegrate," Michael said, his voice rough with emotion. He knelt next to Trevor. "Is that normal?"
"It's normal," Trevor reassured him. He reached out and pushed a strand of sweaty hair off Isabel's face. He didn't think he'd have recognized her as the vibrant, gorgeous girl he'd danced with such a short time ago.
"And her breathing. It's so… it's like it's going to stop any second." Michael shoved himself to his feet and started walking again, this time in a tight circle. Every few moments he stopped and looked down at Isabel, his hands curled in fists in front of his mouth.
He was so worried, Trevor could feel it coming off Michael in waves.
"It's normal," Trevor assured him.
Michael stopped pacing and sat down on the other side of Isabel. He took her hand gently.
"Hey, my Izzy lizard," he said quietly. "Hang in there. It's almost over."
It was clear that seeing Isabel in pain was torture for Michael. Trevor would bet anything that Michael would rather be the one going through the akino if he could spare Isabel.
Michael had been willing to give him that same loyalty. He'd stood by Trevor one hundred percent. When his friends accused Trevor of coming to Earth to steal the Stone, Michael had backed him without hesitation, even though he'd known Trevor for only a few days. The fact that Trevor was Michael's brother was enough. Or it had been enough until Trevor had completely betrayed his trust. Trevor didn't know if he'd ever be able to make it up to his brother.
A low groan from Isabel pulled him away from his thoughts. "The amount of pain-that is unusual," Trevor admitted.
"What?" Michael demanded. "Why?" He tightened his grip on Isabel's hand.
Trevor reached over and loosened his fingers a little.
"Oh, very nice," Michael muttered. "She's in agony, and I decide to break a few bones in her hand."
"You didn't break them," Trevor corrected him. He took Isabel's other hand and held it gently, stroking her feverish skin with his thumb.
"So how she's feeling-it's not normal," Michael said. He swallowed hard, as if his throat was too dry to produce saliva. "What does that mean?"
Trevor moved his thumb to Isabel's wrist, checking her pulse. It was weak and erratic. She was very close now. "I think it's just that the human body responds in a different way to-"
"A different way?" Michael interrupted. "So are you telling me she could die? Why didn't you say that? I trusted you. I didn't even bring the communication crystals."
"You can trust me," Trevor insisted. "She's not going to die." But a tiny seed of doubt had sprouted inside him. Why the hell had he been so completely sure her akino would operate the same way his had? The human body was so different. Maybe it wouldn't be able to stand the strain.
Isabel twisted her head from side to side, maki
ng horrible mewling sounds. Trevor sprang to his feet.
"Where are you going?" Michael cried.
"I'm going to get one of the Stones from DuPris," he answered. "If she holds one, its power will ease the pain." He turned and sprinted to the center of the hangar. When he touched the solid wall of the ship, a doorway appeared, and Trevor rushed inside.
"Leader!" he called as he ran down the narrow corridor, feet crunching the metal mesh of the floor. "I need you."
DuPris didn't answer, but Trevor could hear him singing to himself. It sounded like he was in the control room.
Trevor took a right and pounded down the corridor, keeping his head down. The ship wasn't designed for beings his size, and he had to constantly remind himself to stay low. One more turn and the corridor widened into the control room. DuPris didn't turn around or even flinch as Trevor ran up behind him.
"Leader, I need to borrow one of the Stones," Trevor blurted out. "Isabel and Michael have arrived, and her human body is not responding well to the akino. She's going through all the usual stages, but there's so much pain."
DuPris continued fiddling with the switches in front of him as if Trevor had never spoken. "I told you you could have your little friends over, but they aren't allowed to play with my things," he answered.
"What?" Trevor cried. He grabbed DuPris by the shoulder and spun the leader toward him. "You don't understand-"
Trevor stopped abruptly, realizing what he had just done. He quickly removed his hand from the leader's arm. "Forgive me. I had no right," he said. "I request that I be given permission to use one of the Stones."
DuPris reached into the pocket of his pleated pants and pulled out the fully charged Stone. He turned it back and forth in his fingers.
What is he waiting for? Trevor thought. Why isn't he giving it to me? He knew better than to ask the questions aloud. He'd overstepped once. He would not do it again.
"You request," DuPris repeated. "You request. Haven't you realized yet that you are not in the position to request? I am the leader. I command. You obey."
