Quarantine

10

"Valenti said he thinks its private security," Michael said

quietly. He was crouched in the well-manicured bushes that surrounded the Meta-chem property. Isabel and Max knelt next to him. About twenty feet away stood a parked van with a couple of guys in uniform sitting in front. There were similar vans dotted around the parking lot.

"They're not paying close attention," Michael said. "If we distract them, we should be able to run right by."

"Okay," Max said. "We'll aim for that door." He pointed it out. "Be ready to unlock it quickly."

Michael nodded. They could all use their powers to undo locks, but for some reason Michael could do it faster than the others. Exploding lightbulbs, though, was Isabel's specialty. "Iz, would you like to do the honors?" he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at the streetlamp closest to the parked van. It was a big lamp, meant to illuminate all the parking spaces for forty feet around it. Isabel raised her hand, and the lamp exploded in a spectacular display of light.

The uniformed guys whistled and yelled, paying more attention to the burned-out light than to the three teens racing through the darkness just behind the van. Michael reached the door first, and he could feel the heat in his hand even as he reached for the handle. He was never sure quite how he opened locks. He simply knew that he visualized the lock opening, and that's what it did.

He yanked open the door, Max and Isabel ran through, and he followed them inside. The whole thing took less than ten seconds. They stood together in the darkness of an empty Meta-chem hallway, breathing hard.

"Here's where we split up," Michael said. "Maxwell, you and I will head for the quarantine room. Iz, you look for CDC headquarters."

Isabel nodded. "Good luck," she said, and disappeared into the darkness.

"So where's the quarantine room?" Michael asked.

Max shrugged. "It's got to be big; they have a lot of people there."

"I'm thinking they must have a warehouse or something," Michael said. "I guess we just start looking in doors until we find it."

"It's going to be a long night," Max said.

Isabel snuck through the dark hallways at Meta-chem. The place was virtually abandoned. Every so often a security guard would cross a hall in front of her, but she always managed to avoid them.

I wonder where Jesse is, she thought. She knew it was important for one of them to find out what the CDC was up to, but secretly she wanted to find the quarantine room

herself and make sure Jesse was okay. The way he had looked when they wheeled him into the emergency room… so pale, so afraid! It broke Isabel's heart.

"I offered them my facilities," a woman's voice broke into Isabel's thoughts. "They're going to have to play by my rules."

Isabel flattened herself against the wall and waited as the woman approached the crossing in front of her.

"I want full information sharing, and that's that," the woman was saying as she came into view She was small and blond, wearing an expensive outfit. Isabel recognized her from articles she'd read in the paper… Maris Wheeler, the head of Meta-chem. She was with a pasty-faced guy in a lab coat.

Maris had stopped in the middle of the area where the two hallways crossed. Isabel held her breath, wishing she could disappear into the wall behind her. If Maris decided to turn down this hall, Isabel would be found for sure.

"I'll tell them you said no running tests unless you share the results," lab-coat guy said. He started to turn away.

"No, wait," Maris ordered him. "I'll go tell them myself." She turned and clacked down the hall on her high heels.

Isabel let out the breath she'd been holding. What a stroke of luck! It sounded as if Maris was going to talk to the CDC people who were set up at Meta-chem. And that was exactly where Isabel wanted to be. Keeping as quiet as possible, Isabel began to follow them.

Before long they reached an office complex where the lights were bright and people were bustling around. It

seemed strange to see such a busy area within this giant, silent building. Isabel checked her watch. It was nearly two in the morning. But the CDC people were clearly going to work around the clock until they figured out what was going on in Roswell.

Good, she thought. The sooner they find the cause oj all this, the sooner they can help Jesse. She pictured her brother in the quarantine room. She'd wanted to ask him to heal Jesse while he was there. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She'd made a promise to herself never to let Jesse find out the truth about her alien life. And besides, they were broken up. The image of his stricken face came back into her mind. He'd had a heart attack… and that was serious. If he doesn't make it through this, III never forgive myself.

Isabel couldn't walk down the well-lit hall and put her ear to the door. She glanced up at the ceiling. It was made of the typical thin fiberglass tiles. They wouldn't hold much weight. Still, she saw no other option. She'd have to chance it.

There was a lab cart in the hallway where she stood. She climbed up on it, pushed one of the ceiling tiles aside, and pulled herself up into the crawl space above. Immediately she lay flat on her stomach. If she distributed her weight as evenly as possible, she'd be less likely to break through the fragile tiles. Staying on her stomach, she crawled slowly along until she heard voices.

"… believe we've found the trail of the infection," a man was saying. "But we're no closer to knowing its pathology. Frankly, many of my colleagues find it highly unlikely that this sudden outbreak of different diseases is related to a single infection."

"Well, you seem to believe it, Dr. Farrell," Maris Wheeler replied. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come to Roswell so quickly."

Isabel thought that Maris sounded kind of annoyed that they'd come to Roswell at all.

"With all due respect, Ms. Wheeler," Dr. Farrell said. "I'm well aware that Meta-chem is doing DNA research. Once you start messing with things at that level, anything is possible. The one thing these patients have in common is that all are suffering from hereditary disorders. Whatever time bombs were hidden in their DNA, they've all exploded at once. And it's entirely possible that your research could cause such a thing to happen. Accidentally, of course."

"Of course," Maris said coldly. "Tell me, doctor, just how could researching DNA lead to an outcome such as this?"

Dr. Farrell coughed and spluttered a bit. Isabel couldn't help smiling. This guy was acting as if he knew what was going on, but he really had no idea. Maris had seen right through him. "Well, we… we need to search through the material from Dr. Sosa's lab before we understand the situation entirely," he finally managed to say.

"Fine," Maris replied. "But since I've been cooperative enough to turn over our research to you, not to mention foot the bill for all these sick people to stay here, the least you can do is share your findings with me. I want copies of any tests you run on those people. Understood?"

"That's highly irregular," Dr. Farrell replied. "But I suppose I can make an exception."

Isabel sighed and rested her cheek on the ceiling tile

beneath her. These people had no idea what was causing the outbreak. It was going to be a long night.

Max lay on his stomach underneath the cot of a sick teenager. Michael lay next to him.

"Now what?" Michael whispered.

Max knew Michael was impatient, but he couldn't be more anxious than Max himself. It had taken almost an hour to find the room where the quarantined people were being kept, and ever since then they'd been hiding, moving slowly from one bed to the next. There weren't many lights on, since most of the patients were asleep. But there were enough nurses and doctors to notice two guys walking around in the middle of the room. At this rate, they were lucky if they found Liz and Kyle by morning.

Michael nudged him. "We're near the nurses' station," he whispered.

Max peered out from under the bed. Michael was right. The makeshift nurses' station was only about five feet away. Even better, there was a fresh pile of linens… clean scrubs, clean sheets… stacked on the edge of a desk, right next to a desk lamp with a tall, thin arm.

"Can you knock over that lamp?" Max asked.

"I can try." Michael squirmed around until he could aim his hand toward the desk. With a quick glance around to make sure no one was coming, Michael flung a burst of power across the room. The lamp toppled forward as if blown by a strong wind, knocking the pile of linens to the floor.

Max shot his hand out and pulled as many scrubs as he could underneath the bed. Then they quickly crawled a

few beds away to make sure no one would find them if they came to check on the fallen lamp. In seconds he and Michael were dressed in scrubs.

"I'll go first," Michael said. "I'll find Liz and I'll stop at her bed. Then you follow me. We'll look more casual if we're not walking around together."

"Okay." Max watched Michael crawl out from under the cot and begin walking slowly up and down the rows of patients. Finally Michael stopped at the foot of one specific bed. He picked up the chart attached to the bed and began flipping through it.

Max shimmied out from under the cot and casually walked over to where Michael stood. In the bed lay Liz, her eyes shut, her body perfectly still.

"Kyle," Michael whispered, nodding to the next cot over.

Max looked. Kyle's eyes were open, but otherwise he lay as still as Liz. Michael made his way over to Kyle's bed. "How are you guys?" he asked in a low voice.

Kyle recoiled from him. "Quiet!" he whispered. "I can't stand loud noises."

Michael shot Max a confused look, but Max understood. "It's the same thing Liz has," he whispered. "Over-sensitivity to noise and light."

"And touch and smell and taste," Kyle whispered. "But Liz is worse than me. She's gotten really sensitive to feelings inside her body. She says that our metabolism is speeding up and that our bodies can't withstand it."

"Well, that's why I'm here," Max said. He sat down on Liz's bed, being careful not to jostle her too much… he knew every single movement could be painful to her.

"He's going to heal Liz, then you, then Marias mom," Michael told Kyle. "Then you and Liz can help us figure out what's going on."

"We did some snooping earlier," Kyle said. "They emptied out that lab where Liz worked. She thinks that Dr. Sosa guy was doing some rogue research. She found alien cells in the lab a few days ago."

"What?" Max cried. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"I didn't want to make a big thing out of it until I knew what was going on," Liz whispered.

Max looked down at her. Her brown eyes were open now, making her pale skin look even whiter. "I didn't think Dr. Sosa knew the cells were alien," she went on. "He thought they were cancer cells that mutated into something else."

"You think he's caused this epidemic somehow?" Max asked.

"I don't know, I can't understand it," Liz murmured. "Max, I feel awful."

His heart swelled with worry and love for her. "Never mind," he whispered. "We'll figure it out once you're better." He placed his hand gently against her cheek and concentrated on healing her.

Power built within him, heating up his hand against Liz's skin. He pictured her healing, becoming whole… but something was wrong. Usually when he healed, he got flashes of the person he was healing. Pieces of their thoughts, their memories, that sort of thing. And with Liz, he got flashes practically every time he touched her. But now there was nothing. Just emptiness.

Liz moaned.

Max concentrated harder, trying to get into Liz's body, trying to heal her from within.

She drew her breath in sharply, as if something had hurt her. Her muscles began to twitch, almost as if she was having a seizure.

"Max. Max, stop!" Kyle cried. "You're making it worse!"

Max pulled his hand away from Liz. He stared down at her. Her mouth was drawn as if in pain, and her eyes were brimming with tears. "It's too much," she whispered. "Whatever you were doing… it put more stress on my system…" Her voice faded, and her eyes fluttered closed.

"Liz?" Max whispered urgently. "Liz!" He felt her wrist, and was astonished at how fast her pulse was.

"Just leave her alone," Kyle said. "Let her calm down. She goes into a… a cocoon state, where she shuts out all the outside stimuli. We both have to do that every so often."

Max couldn't believe that Kyle was telling him this stuff about Liz. Why did Kyle know so much? Max was a healer… he should be able to figure out what was wrong with Liz just by touching her. He felt strangely jealous of Kyle.

"We can't stay here for long," Michael whispered. "Try to heal Kyle."

The blood drained from Kyle's face. "I don't know about that," he said. "I don't want you to make me worse too."

"No! No," Liz whispered frantically. "Don't touch him!"

Her eyes were still closed. Max couldn't tell if she was conscious or if she was just talking in a dream. "Why can't

I touch him?" Max asked her.

"He's like me, we're the same," Liz whispered. "Aliens…"

Her voice trailed off.

Max shot Michael a questioning look. Michael shrugged. "Maybe you can't heal this," he said.

"How can that be?" Max asked. "She's just sick. They're all just sick. And that's what I do, I heal sick people."

"I don't think we can risk you making anyone else worse," Kyle said.

Max was speechless. It seemed as if his healing power had reversed itself somehow. He looked at his hands… would they really make people sicker?

"We should go find Isabel. If the CDC has figured out what's causing it, maybe that will help you figure out how to heal it," Michael suggested.

Slowly Max nodded. It seemed like their only option.

"… Crashdown Cafe," Dr. Farrell's voice said.

Isabel jerked her head up. She'd almost fallen asleep, stretched out on the ceiling tiles. She had no idea how long she'd been up there, listening to the droning voice of the CDC lab technicians. They were compiling data, trying to find something, anything, that would help them figure out how so many different diseases could crop up at the same time.

But what was that about the Crashdown? Isabel thought. Did I dream that?

"You'd better call Maris Wheeler in here," Dr. Farrell said.

Isabel waited, holding her breath, until she heard the clicking of Maris's heels on the floor.

"Have you found anything useful, doctor?" Maris's cold voice asked.

"We believe we've isolated the identity of Patient Zero," Dr. Farrell said.

"Really?" Maris actually sounded interested now. "So it is a contagion after all?"

"We're not sure how it works once it infects people," Dr. Farrell said. "But yes, it's clearly been spread in a very clean line. A line that starts here in Meta-chem, by the way."

Isabel could hear Maris's little gasp. "Surely you're not suggesting that Meta-chem released some sort of virus," Maris cried.

"I don't know what to think yet," Dr. Farrell said. "But we've figured out that this… bug… is carried in water. It seems to have started with a small group of people who ate at a specific restaurant, the Crashdown Cafe. Our researchers turned up an anomaly in the soup there. Whoever ate the soup became infected, and they in turn infected others by sneezing near them, coughing… basically anything that would pass the bug along in a liquid form."

Great, Michael's cooking strikes again, Isabel thought.

"I don't see what that has to do with Meta-chem," Maris said.

"One of your employees is the daughter of the owner of this restaurant," Dr. Farrell said. "She was overheard talking about a chemical spill here in Alan Sosa's lab. And she herself is ill. Based on all of this, we're considering her Patient Zero."

Liz, thought Isabel.

"Liz Parker," Maris Wheeler said.

"Yes," Dr. Farrell answered. "We'll begin extensive tests on her right away."