The Dark One

TWELVE

Relax, damn it. Just relax, Michael ordered himself. He needed to enter the dream plane. It was his only shot of finding Trevor, but he was too tense to concentrate. When he closed his eyes, the sound of Isabel's tortured breathing seemed to get louder until it filled the room. Her breaths were coming farther apart, so there were these heart-stopping moments of silence when Michael kept thinking Isabel had died.

Which was the big reason he couldn't remotely relax. Relax, hell, he could hardly stop himself from shoving his fist through the wall or ripping his hair out in bloody clumps. Isabel was dying. Isabel was dying. Isabel was dying. The thought flashed through his mind again and again, like a blinking neon billboard.

I need Maria. The realization surprised him, sneaking in between two of the Isabel-is-dying thoughts. But it was true. Maria could get him in the right mental state to enter the dream plane. She'd done it before.

Michael shoved his hands behind his head so he wouldn't be tempted to pick up the phone and dial Maria's number. It was too dangerous to call her. He was so close to breaking his promise to Isabel as it was, so close to teleporting to get the crystals and forcing them into her hand.

Yeah, it would be a walking, breathing nightmare to be connected to the consciousness. But at least Isabel would be alive, and as long as she was alive, there was hope, hope that maybe somehow they'd figure out how to break her-and Max-out of the connection.

He turned his head and glanced at Isabel. Her eyes were slitted open, and she was staring back at him. Her lips parted as she strained to say something.

"Tre… vor," she gasped.

"I'm going to find him," Michael promised her. He closed his eyes again.

What had Maria done that time he needed to get to the dream plane and couldn't? Michael let his mind go back to that night. First she'd made him smell some flower oil-lavender, he thought. It didn't do a thing except make his nose itch.

But then she'd talked to him. Just talked in a low, soft voice. Something about drawing everything with a purple crayon when she was a little girl.

Michael tried to imagine Maria was sitting next to him right there in the fleabag motel in Hobbs, talking to him. Gradually the sound of Isabel's ragged breathing faded into the background, overpowered by the imaginary Maria voice. A few minutes later Michael slipped into the dream plane.

The dream orbs whirled around him, glimmering with iridescent colors. Michael had never seen Trevor's dream orb. He didn't know what its music sounded like.

"So how am I supposed to find it?" he muttered, frustration slashing through him. The dream orbs started to fade when he distracted himself, and Michael quickly tightened his concentration on them, then began to hum the low note his own dream orb made. Trevor was his brother, however much Michael hated that fact. Maybe his dream orb was similar enough to Michael's that it would respond to the sound.

In the distance Michael saw a metallic gray orb moving toward him. The other orbs spun out of its way as it picked up speed, flying faster and faster. Michael jerked to the left too late-the orb whacked him on the side of the head and knocked him on his butt.

It doubled in size, without any prompting from Michael, and hovered above him, emitting a deep, resonating note of music. Michael had never seen a dream orb behave the way this one just had, and that made him pretty sure he'd found the one he was looking for. It made sense that Trevor's orb would be unlike that of anyone born on Earth.

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.

"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."

"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."