Quarantine

8

Liz raised herself on her elbows and looked around. She was in a giant room with dark gray walls. There were about thirty cots set up in rows with about ten feet between cots. Already half of them were filled with patients. Liz saw everything from heart monitors to IV drips to defibrillators.

How could so many different illnesses spring up at the same time? she wondered. She took a deep breath and took stock of her own sickness. She was feeling better, she thought. The tiniest sounds still seemed really loud, but it was almost as if her ears had adjusted to it and it now felt normal. More likely, my brain adjusted to it somehow, she thought. The same was true of her heightened vision. The lights no longer seemed too bright. Even her oversensitive skin felt normal now.

But still there was some part of her that knew… that was absolutely positive… that her body couldn't withstand these changes for long. Whatever was going on, she had to find a cure for it. Fast.

More stretchers were being wheeled by every few minutes. On the latest one, she saw a familiar face. "Kyle!" she called.

He turned toward her, and his eyes lit up.

"Hey," she said to the nurse pushing Kyle's gurney. "Can you put my friend next to me? Please?"

The nurse shrugged and steered Kyle over to the empty cot next to Liz. Two other nurses helped lift him from the stretcher onto the bed. After they left, he lay there quietly for a moment, recovering.

"Kyle, can you hear me?" Liz called.

He recoiled. "Yeah, you sound like an air horn."

Was I talking that loudly? she wondered. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Can you hear me now?"

"Yeah, that's better," he said.

Liz narrowed her eyes at him. His cot was ten feet away. How could he hear her if she was only whispering?

Kyle turned slowly onto his side to face Liz. "So what are you in for?"

"I don't know," she replied, still talking in a whisper. "I started feeling weird this afternoon. Noises seemed too loud… "

"And lights seemed too bright," Kyle finished for her. He was whispering too. "Did your skin feel weird? Tingly?"

"Yes!" Liz said excitedly. "Exactly! Kyle, do you think everyone in here feels that way?"

Kyle shrugged. "It doesn't look like it," he said. "Seems as if most of these people have really serious stuff."

Liz thought about it. "Your hearing is as sharp as mine now, right?" she whispered.

"It's practically bionic," Kyle replied.

"So let's just listen for a bit," Liz suggested. "Concentrate on hearing what the nurses and doctors are saying. I want to find out what's wrong with all these other people. I want to know if they feel the same way we do."

"Right," Kyle said. "Because if they do, I have to assume there's some alien connection. This is too freaky to be an Earthly disease."

Liz didn't answer. For a while they both lay quietly. She closed her eyes and concentrated on listening. It was hard to do. Liz felt as if she had to pull strength from the rest of her body in order to focus it all on her heightened hearing. But after a few minutes, she began to pick up conversations from around the room. She couldn't be quite sure where they came from, but that wasn't what mattered.

"Cancer," one male voice said. "Full-blown lymphoma, even though yesterday she had no sign of it."

"Maybe it just hadn't been noticed yet," another man suggested.

"That's what I would think," the first voice answered. "But she'd had a complete physical a week ago for her life insurance company. It can't begin and spread that quickly."

The voices were interrupted by a woman talking more loudly. "… mother's brother had diabetes," she was saying. "But it's never been in my branch of the family. How can I have it now?"

"We're trying to find out," another woman's voice answered her. "Just be patient."

She's a doctor, Liz thought. She decided to try something new. She would mentally attach herself to this particular voice, she'd follow the sound of it. Then she'd be able to

hear everything the doctor said to her patients or to other doctors.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Sharoff?" the doctor's voice asked. The sound of it was fainter now, and Liz had to focus all her energy on listening to that one voice, mentally blocking out all the other voices in the room. It was a little like tuning a radio to the right frequency.

"I feel okay," a man's voice answered. "But I just can't seem to walk straight. It's like my left leg doesn't have any muscles in it."

"And you never noticed this before today?" the doctor asked.

"No, never."

"Mr. Sharoff, is there any multiple sclerosis in your family?" The doctor sounded worried, Liz thought.

"No." Now the patient sounded worried too.

A wave of exhaustion passed over Liz, and she had to stop listening while she rested for a minute or so. When she tuned back in, the doctor was talking to a nurse.

"… woman's symptoms are consistent with Marfan's syndrome. But how can that be? She felt fine up until today."

"It's the same thing all the patients are saying," the nurse replied.

"I've been with the CDC for ten years," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything like this. It's as if something just activated every illness lying dormant in these people's genes."

"Kyle!" Liz whispered, turning her head to look at him.

"I'm here," he whispered back. "What did you find out?"

"All these people have hereditary diseases," Liz told him. "Except they're suddenly full-blown cases. In patients who have never even had symptoms before."

"So they had these diseases in their genes but they wouldn't necessarily have gotten sick?" Kyle asked.

"Right," Liz replied. "It's like something happened that just turned on all these inactive genes."

Kyle was silent for a moment. "Then what dormant genetic disease do we have?"

"I don't know," Liz admitted.

"There's something else," Kyle said. "Do you know where we are?"

"No. It was too bright while they were moving me… I had to sort of shut down," Liz said. In fact, she could barely remember anything that had happened while they'd moved her. All she remembered was a barrage of sensations that had made her feel like passing out. One heightened sense at a time, she could handle. But sound, light, and movement all together? It had been awful.

"I couldn't take it either," Kyle said. "I sort of cocooned all the way here. But I heard some of the nurses talking about it, because they think it's odd."

"What's odd?"

"The fact that we're at Meta-chem," Kyle said.

Liz felt like she'd been slapped. Meta-chem… where she'd found the alien cells. Could there possibly be a connection?

"Liz, didn't you say there was a chemical spill here this morning?" Kyle asked.

She nodded. "Some test tubes got knocked over."

"Do you think there could be any connection between that and this disease outbreak?"

"I don't know," Liz whispered. "But if there is, then this whole thing is my fault."

Maria pulled the Jetta into the driveway and turned it off. She rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. She was worried about her mother, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do about that right now. And in the meantime she'd left Sadie here with Michael hours ago. She'd needed to get Amy to the hospital quickly, so she'd been able to ignore the Sadie dilemma for a while. But she had to face it eventually: She had a half sister. And a half brother, for that matter. And a stepmother. And the worst father in history, she thought bitterly.

But the main problem at the moment was Sadie. Her sister was only a kid, and she'd run away from home. Maria had to get her back to Phoenix somehow, and she had to do it quickly.

With a sigh, she opened the car door and climbed out. Before she had a chance to close the door behind her, Michael came running from the house. "Maria, don't freak out," he said.

She looked him up and down. "You don't even know what's going on," she said. "At the hospital… "

"Hello, Maria."

After all these years, Maria couldn't believe that she recognized his voice. But she did… instantly. Her father was standing behind Michael, in the doorway to her house.

She shot a furious look at Michael. "What is he doing here?" she spat.

"I told you, don't freak out," Michael said lamely.

Maria pushed by him and stormed up to the door. "Get out of my house," she said. "Now."

"No," her father said.

Maria opened her mouth, but no words would come into her brain. She was too filled with fury.

"This house is part mine, you know," he said conversationally. "The down payment was all my money."

"And every single cent since then has been Mom's money," Maria snapped. "The stupid down payment doesn't give you the right to set foot on this property ever again after the way you treated us. Now I said get out."

"And I said no," he replied. "Maria, look… "

"Why did you let him in?" Maria demanded, turning on Michael.

"He was here to pick up Sadie," Michael said. "She called him right after you left for the hospital. Is your mom okay?"

"I don't know," Maria said, the very thought of Amy bringing a lump to her throat. If her mother knew that this awful man was standing here in her house…

"Maria?" said a small voice. Maria swallowed hard and tried to smile at Sadie, who'd appeared in the doorway behind their father.

"Sadie, I'm sorry," she said. "I know he's a good father to you. But I can't stand him, so I really need you guys to leave now."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Michael put in. "They can't leave."

"Why not?"

"Because whatever sickness Amy has seems to have

spread to the whole city," her father said. "There's a quarantine."

"No kidding," Maria said. "I was at the hospital, remember?"

"The entire town is quarantined," Michael said. "They have roadblocks set up. No one can get in, and no one can leave. And that includes Richard."

Richard? "You're on a first-name basis with my father now?" she hissed.

"Maria…," Michael began.

"We tried to go home," Sadie interrupted. "They made us turn around."

"And it's just as well," Richard said. "I wanted to see you, Maria. We have a lot to talk about. Now we'll have the chance."

"I have nothing to say to you," Maria replied. "If you wanted to see me so badly, you could have. Anytime in the past decade."

"I understand why you're angry with me. But I'd like to tell you my side of the story," Richard said. "And since we're stuck here, this seems like a good time to do it."

"You might be stuck in Roswell, but you're not stuck here. Go to a hotel," Maria said.

"No," he replied. "I'm still your father, and I expect you to do me the courtesy of listening to me."

Maria turned to her boyfriend. "Michael, will you make him leave, please?"

Michael took both of her hands in his. "Baby, I think you should talk to him," he said gently. "It might make you feel better."

Maria's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "Excuse me?" she said.

A shrill beeping sound split the air. Michael's cell phone. He grabbed it out of his pocket and flipped it open. "What?" he said into the phone.

But Maria already knew who it was. Isabel, or Max, or maybe Valenti. Someone from their group calling to set up an alien powwow. The quarantine at the hospital had been strange enough; the fact that it was now a city-wide quarantine called for some serious investigation by those who happened to have superhuman powers.

"Fine," Michael barked. He snapped the phone shut and stared pleadingly at Maria. "You're going to kill me."

She sighed. "No. I know you have to go where you're needed."

Michael bit his lip. "I don't want to leave you in the middle of this," he said, nodding toward her father and Sadie.

"Then hurry back," Maria told him. The truth was that she wanted to hurl herself into his arms and beg him not to leave her alone with her father. She desperately needed moral support from him. But giant otherworldly crises always took precedence over her life. She mustered up a smile to make Michael feel better. "Keep me posted."

"I'm so sorry," he said. Then he hurried over to his motorcycle, leaped on, and sped away.

Maria turned back to her father. "This had better be good," she said.

Michael screeched to a stop in front of the Valenti house, jumped off his bike, and stomped up the walkway. He was

seething. What kind of a boyfriend would leave Maria in a situation like that? Her father had abandoned her! And now she was alone with him, without her mom for support. And without her useless boyfriend, he thought angrily. No matter how hard he tried, he never seemed able to be there for Maria when she needed him. He always had to put his alien responsibilities first. He knew he had no choice, but every so often he wished he could be a better boyfriend to Maria.

He slammed through the door and stopped in surprise. Isabel, Max, and Valenti all turned their worried eyes to him. They look like crap, he thought. "Just how bad was it at the hospital?" he said out loud. '"Cause you all look like crap."

Isabel rolled her eyes.

"It's bad," Valenti said. "Half the city is sick. Kyle, Marias mom… "

"And Liz," Max said.

"What?" Michael cried. "They're all sick?"

"They're all in quarantine," Isabel told him. "The CDC said they were taking all the patients over to Metachem to treat them."

Michael was baffled. "Meta-chem? The pharmaceutical company?"

"Yeah," Valenti answered. "They say they've got better labs over there and enough space. They don't want to have to shut the hospital down."

"That's weird," Michael said. "Isn't it?"

"I'm thinking the CDC can control access to the patients better if they don't have other people coming in and out," Max said. "At the hospital, there's a big staff, and there are all the people who are already patients there."

"Well, they definitely want tight control," Michael agreed. "They've shut down the whole town. No one gets in or out."

"This makes me nervous," Isabel said.

"It's not an alien hunt, it's a quarantine," Max told her. "Still, we've got to put an end to it as soon as possible. We have to break into Meta-chem tonight."

"What?" Michael said. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to heal those people," Max announced.