Quarantine

9

"Liz! You awake?" Kyle whispered.

In the bed next to him, Liz stirred. "Yeah," she said. "I don't really feel like I can sleep anymore. All my senses just keep racing."

"I know what you mean," he said. "I keep hearing things even when I don't want to." That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was how much his skin hurt wherever the thin cotton sheet touched him… which was everywhere. But he didn't want to complain. He knew Liz must be bothered by it too. "What do you say we blow this joint?" he suggested.

"How?" Liz asked skeptically.

"Look around," Kyle said. "Everyone's asleep. And the doctors all went to some big doctor meeting about five minutes ago. I heard them talking."

Liz sat up in bed and glanced around. "Wow. I'm really out of it," she said. "I didn't even notice."

How could she not notice? Kyle thought. It's so much quieter in here without all the doctors asking questions.

"I feel like it's getting more internal," Liz went on. "Before, I was feeling things and hearing things that were going on around me. Now I keep hearing stuff inside me. You know, my heartbeat, and the sound of my own breathing."

Okay, Liz is tripping out, Kyle thought, worried. He needed her to be alert so that they could find an answer to all this. "Well, then, we need to take a little walk before you slip into a coma or something."

"Where?" Liz asked. "You want to try to sneak outside?"

"No, I was thinking we'd visit that lab again, the one you work in. I'm more interested in what's behind those locked doors than I used to be."

"You might be right," Liz said. "If I see what materials Dr. Sosa was working with, maybe I can figure out what it was that I spilled. And then we'll be able to tell if it could be causing all these diseases to spring up."

Suddenly Liz sank back on her pillow, as if all her energy had been drained just by sitting up for half a minute. She lay there exhausted, just staring up at the ceiling.

"Liz, you okay?" Kyle asked.

"I don't get it," Liz murmured, as if she was talking to herself. "How could one tiny spill do all this? I mean, I cleaned it up right away. It was like spilling a cup of coffee or something. There was hardly anything in those test tubes. That can't be what's causing this. Can't be."

He was really getting worried about her. They might share the same symptoms, but this sickness was obviously hitting Liz a lot harder than it was hitting him. She sounded practically delirious, and he couldn't tell whether she even remembered he was there. "Think about it," he told her. "This guy has been doing research on alien

cells… you saw them yourself. He's not to be trusted. How do you know he wasn't developing some kind of… alien repellent or something?"

Kyle knew he sounded like an idiot. But he wanted to keep Liz focused on the problem at hand. And as far as he was concerned, there was something fishy about a scientist who was mean to Liz Parker, had alien cells on a slide, and kept his supply closet locked.

Liz was giggling now. "If that was alien repellent, it sure didn't work," she said loudly. "You and I are the closest things to aliens in here, and we're not nearly as sick as everyone else."

"Shh!" Kyle said. He didn't want to be talking about aliens in anything other than a whisper. And besides, he heard footsteps approaching their beds. He and Liz both lay silently, pretending to sleep, while a nurse came and checked on them. Only when the footsteps had died away again did Kyle stir. He slowly swung his legs over the side of the cot and raised himself to his feet. He could actually feel the air rush over his skin as he moved. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it took some getting used to. "You ready, Liz?"

She had struggled up to a sitting position. She gazed at him and nodded. "Let's go."

"You can all stop the covert planning," Valenti said, coming back into the living room from wherever he'd been. Max couldn't keep track of everyone. All his thoughts were focused on Liz. Where was she? Was she feeling any better? Were they doing tests on her? Was she afraid? "Why?" he asked Valenti, trying to keep his mind on the

project at hand: figuring out how to break into Meta-chem.

Valenti held up a credit card. "Because Kyle left this in his room."

"You want to bribe them with Kyle's good credit?" Michael asked in a deadpan voice.

"No, you dope, it's a key," Isabel said. "Kyle works at Meta-chem, remember? He has a passkey."

Max snatched it out of Valenti's hand. "Excellent," he said. "Let's go." He started for the door.

"Whoa there, Maxwell!" Michael cried. "We still need a plan."

"Why?" Max snapped. "The plan is, I go there, I open the door, and I start healing."

Isabel put her hand on his arm. "I know you're worried about Liz," she said. "But you can't heal everyone in that place. Even if you didn't get caught, you wouldn't survive it."

"She's right, Max," Michael said. "Remember how wiped you were after you healed those kids on the cancer ward. And there are a lot more people at Meta-chem."

"Well, what's your plan, then?" Max exploded. He knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn't help himself. Why did Liz have to be among the sick people?

"I think it has to be an information-gathering mission," Valenti said. "You go in, you see if those CDC docs have come up with any ideas on what's causing all this. Then we decide how to fix it."

"I go in, I heal Liz and Kyle and Maria's mom," Max said. "With her mom better, Maria will be able to help us without freaking out."

"Uh, I don't know about that," Michael put in. "Maria's dealing with some heavy stuff right now."

Huh? Max shot a surprised look at Michael. He'd assumed that Maria wasn't here because she was upset about her mother. Had he been so wrapped up in his own fears for Liz that he'd missed some big thing happening to Maria? "Is she okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. But count her out on this one," Michael said gruffly.

Max saw the concern in Michael's eyes. I'm not the only one worried about the woman I love, he thought. He clapped Michael on the shoulder. "We'll get through this faster if I can heal Liz and Kyle. Then they can help us from the inside. And Maria's mom, just for good measure."

"Fine. Michael will have to run cover for you," Isabel said. "So I'll do some snooping and see if I can find out what the doctors have discovered."

"What about me?" Valenti asked.

"You stay here," Max said quickly. He held up a hand to stop Valenti's protest. "I know Kyle's in there. But we'll take care of him. You've already gotten in enough trouble trying to help us."

Valenti's expression was worried, but he backed down. Max was relieved… he felt guilty that Valenti had sacrificed his job and his good reputation for them. He didn't want to put him in any more danger.

Michael and Isabel headed out the door, and Max followed. "If we're not back by tomorrow morning, get Maria and come up with Plan B," he told Valenti.

"I won't have to," Valenti said.

Max nodded and stepped out into the night, hoping Valenti was right.

Maris flung open the door to Alan Sosa's lab. As she expected, he was still there, working away. He might not approve of her methods, but he was fascinated by the Healer. Any scientist would be.

"We have to move the evidence," she announced.

Alan whirled around to face her. "What do you mean?"

"The CDC has started narrowing the path of the disease. They're getting close to Liz Parker."

"Already?" he cried.

Maris shrugged. "They're more efficient than I expected. But I've found out something very useful from one of their researchers." She took a few steps closer to Alan just because she knew it would freak him out. He didn't like people invading his personal space. "Apparently someone overheard Liz Parker talking about a chemical spill in your lab. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Alan took a step back. "It was nothing. An inert material. Completely harmless."

"Why did it spill?" Maris advanced on him again.

Alan looked frightened. "I was upset. I didn't want to test the serum on her. Liz took a sip of it and I had a panic attack."

"And?"

"And I started coughing to cover it. I didn't want her to notice that I was upset."

Maris put her hand on his arm. "Go on."

Alan stared down at her hand, his arm twitching with the need to jerk away from her. "Liz was worried about the coughing," he said in a rush. "She hit me on the back, and I jumped and knocked over some test tubes." He yanked

his arm away from Maris and walked quickly to the other side of a lab table. "It was harmless," he repeated.

"No, it wasn't," Maris told him.

His mouth dropped open in surprise. "Sure it was."

"That's not what we're going to tell the CDC," Maris said. "We're going to say the spill caused a mutation in Liz when she cleaned it up. We're going to let them believe that's what started this whole epidemic."

Alan was hyperventilating. "But then they'll think it was my fault. I'll be discredited. I'll be completely ruined!"

"You'll be rich," Maris countered. "You help me hide all the evidence of the Healer from the CDC and I'll give you enough money to buy your own island. You'll never need to work again."

"It's unethical," he whispered. "I can't lie to the CDC."

"Oh, Alan," Maris said in a baby-talk voice, "of course you can. After all, you certainly can't tell them the truth. That would ruin you even more."

He stared at her, wild-eyed. She was right, and he knew it.

"They're coming in a few minutes to empty out your lab," she told him. "They want to figure out exactly what spilled. So you need to make sure they don't find out that it was a harmless substance. And you need to make sure they don't find the serum, the cells you took from Liz Parker, or the cells we have from the Healer. Understood?"

Dr. Sosa sat down heavily on a lab stool. He looked devastated.

"Good," Maris said with a smile.

Maria flipped over to her stomach and pretended to keep reading her book. Who am I kidding? she wondered. No

one else was even watching her. She closed the book and put her head down on the bed. Voices floated in from the kitchen, where her father was cooking dinner for Sadie.

Part of Maria hated the idea of him in there, puttering around, using her mom's pots and pans. And part of her wanted to run out to the kitchen and throw her arms around him.

A tear ran down Maria's cheek. It had been hard enough getting over the fact that he left her. All her life she'd felt like a failure, like she must have done something so horrible that even her own father didn't love her. For years, she'd blamed herself for him leaving, even though Amy had always told her it wasn't her fault. She'd never gotten over it, really. But she'd sort of gotten used to it.

And now here he was again. Maria used to fantasize about reuniting with her father. In her daydreams, of course, he always came back with a good excuse, like he'd been deep-sea diving and he hit his head and had amnesia all these years. In none of her daydreams did he show up and announce that he'd been happily living one state over with his wife and his two real kids.

Anger surged up inside her. How dare he come to her house and refuse to leave?

I should call the cops and make them kick him out, she thought. But of course she couldn't do that. For one thing, the cops were busy trying to quarantine a bizarre disease. And for another, the cops would have to kick Sadie out too. And Maria didn't want Sadie to get hurt. It was bad enough that the kid had a liar for a father.

"Your mother said to tell you that you're grounded for a month," Richard's voice caught Maria's attention.

Sadie groaned expressively, and Maria smiled.

"None of that," Richard said. "You ran away to another state, young lady. You deserve to be grounded."

"You didn't tell me I had a sister," Sadie retorted. "You deserve to be grounded too."

You tell him, pipsqueak! Maria thought.

"I agree," Richard said. "I'll be grounded for as long as you are. I definitely should have told you about Maria, and I'm sorry I didn't. But I wasn't in touch with her myself, and I didn't know how to explain that to you."

"So explain it now," Sadie said.

Maria bolted upright. She wanted to hear this too. But her father just sighed. "I don't think you'll understand it, sweet pea," he said. "Maybe when you're older."

Maria felt as if he'd stabbed her. 'Sweet pea' had been his pet name for her. It was one of the only things she remembered about him. He just replaced me with another sweet pea, she thought.

"Are you going to leave me and Junior and Mom the way you left Maria and her mother?" Sadie asked.

"No," Richard said firmly. "No, I am not. I would never leave you."

That's because he loves you, Sadie, Maria thought as tears spilled down her face. He just didn't love me that much.

"You still feel spacey?" Kyle asked.

Liz shook her head. She didn't trust herself to talk, because what she actually felt was nauseated. This was the first time she'd tried to walk since she'd gotten sick at the bowling alley. She kept getting so distracted by the feeling of her muscles working… pulling against one another to

propel her forward… that she forgot to actually put one foot in front of the other. And the ground looked really far away. It was hard to balance. I wonder if this is how I felt when I was first learning to walk, she thought.

Kyle slipped his arm around her waist. "Just hang on to me. I'll get us there."

"Aren't you sick too?" she whispered.

"Not like you," he replied. "I still have the thing where noises are loud and lights hurt my eyes. But I'm not hearing my heartbeat or anything like you are."

"I feel my muscles working," she whispered. "I feel the oxygen being pumped into my blood." Even in her hypersensitive state, Liz recognized the fear in Kyle's eyes. "Don't worry about me. I can still think clearly. I just have to concentrate."

"Okay, but I'm getting scared," he said. "I don't know if I want such an intimate knowledge of my body's workings."

Liz smiled and focused on walking. They were almost to Dr. Sosa's lab. Getting out of the quarantine room had been easy; there weren't even guards at the doors. Clearly they weren't expecting anyone to get up and leave. Most of the other people were way too sick. And with the acute hearing she and Kyle now had, they were able to avoid being found. They heard people coming a good minute before they saw them.

In fact, Liz heard something now… the sound of metal scraping against the floor. She glanced at Kyle. He heard it too. "There's a janitor's closet across from Dr. Sosa's lab," he whispered.

Liz nodded. The door to the lab was about ten feet away on the left, and the janitor's closet was maybe six feet

away on the right. "Let's go fast," she whispered back. Kyle pulled her forward, and soon they were safely hidden in the closet. Kyle kept the door open a tiny bit, and through the sliver of space, they had a good view of the door to the lab.

It was opening.

"Looks like we got here just in time," Kyle whispered. Liz nodded silently. She had no idea what would happen if they were found wandering around Meta-chem, and she didn't particularly want to find out.

Two big guys were dragging a large metal dram out into the hallway from the lab.

"Wait! One more thing." To Liz's surprise, Dr. Sosa walked out of the lab. He was carrying a small plastic box. One of the guys opened the top of the metal dram, and Dr. Sosa placed the box inside. "That's everything."

The guys loaded the metal dram onto a hand track that stood in the hallway, and as they pushed it away down the hall, Liz noticed that they wore jackets with CDC printed on the back. Dr. Sosa watched them go. Liz could hear his heavy breathing from here.

Maris Wheeler appeared in the doorway behind him. "I trust the CDC will find exactly what they should find, Alan?"

Dr. Sosa didn't answer. He turned and stormed down the hall in the other direction.

Maris Wheeler shook her head. Then she followed the CDC guys, leaving the lab door wide open.

"These people are weird," Kyle whispered after all the footsteps had died away. He pushed open the closet door and helped Liz across the hall and into Dr. Sosa's lab.

Liz glanced around. The lab was empty. "Everything is gone," she told Kyle.

"That's for sure." He pointed to the back of the room. The door to Dr. Sosa's locked closet hung open, and the shelves inside were bare.

"It's all in that metal drum they took away," Liz said. "Dr. Sosa had to turn over the whole lab to the CDC."

"Why?" Kyle asked.

"I think he's been doing something wrong," Liz guessed. "Some kind of rogue research, maybe with those alien cells I saw. That would explain why he didn't want me in his lab. And then Ms. Wheeler found out about it, and she made him give everything to the CDC."

"Because she thinks he started the epidemic with his chemical spill?" Kyle asked.,

Liz nodded. Kyle thought about it for a minute. "Well, that's good work, Nancy Drew," he said. "But what was the chemical that spilled, and why is it making everyone, sick?"

"I don't know," Liz admitted.

They stood silently for a moment. This trip through Meta-chem hadn't really provided any new leads, but it had taken a lot out of them. "I think my symptoms are starting to change too," Kyle said finally. "I'm starting to feel… never mind."

"What?" Liz asked.

"Well, strong. Like I have superpowers or something… superheating, sharp vision, I can feel all my muscles working. But my body can't handle it."

"I know what you mean," Liz said. "I think our bodies are burning through a lot of energy. Our metabolism is

speeding up. There's only so long we'll be able to take it." "Let's get back to bed while we still can," Kyle said.

"Maria?" Sadie peeked her head around the bedroom door. "I'm going to bed."

Maria jumped. She hadn't heard Sadie coming. She hastily shoved the diary she'd been writing in underneath her pillow. "Um, okay."

"Is it all right if I sleep in your mom's bed?" Sadie asked. "Dad's going to sleep on the couch."

Just the mention of her mother got Maria hyperventilating again. She hadn't heard from Michael, so she didn't know what the pod squad was up to. And she hadn't been able to get anyone at the hospital to tell her what was going on with the quarantined patients. Every hour that passed made her more frantic about her mom. "You know what?" she said. "Why don't you sleep in my bed? I kinda want to stay in my mom's room tonight."

"Really?" Sadie cried happily. "I can stay in your room? Cool!"

Maria laughed. "Let me get my things." She snatched a nightshirt from her top drawer. The she pulled her diary out from under the pillow and stuffed it into the shirt. "Okay, it's all yours."

Sadie launched herself at the bed like an eager puppy. "Your room is so pretty," she said, bouncing up and down.

"G'night," Maria told her, pulling the door closed behind her.

"Good night, Maria!" Sadie sang after her.

Still smiling, Maria padded down the hallway toward her mother's room.

"Change of plans?" Richard asked from the kitchen. Maria froze. She didn't want to talk to him. She hadn't even acknowledged his presence since Michael left. But she couldn't really avoid him now.

She went into the kitchen. "I want to sleep in my mother's room because I miss her and I'm worried about her," she said.

Her dad nodded. "That makes sense. This quarantine is very stressful."

"Well, it would be less stressful if you would leave," Maria said. "I don't want you here, and I think you should respect my wishes."

"I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving you here alone," he replied. "With your mother not home, I mean."

"You left me alone for years," Maria snapped. "And I'm almost eighteen, though you probably don't know that. I can handle being alone in the house."

"I know exactly how old you are, Maria," he said.

"Oh, that's right," she answered. "You had a whole file on me, that's what Sadie said. So let's see, you know what I look like in sucky school pictures, and you know that I get As in art and C's in math. So I guess you think you know me really well, huh?"

"Maria… "

"Is that your version of being an involved father?" Maria interrupted. "Sending a private investigator to follow me around? I want to know why you had someone spying on me."

Her father blew out a breath. "Because I wanted to know how you were," he said.

"The more established modes of finding that out are to call and ask, or to set up visitation weekends," Maria said sarcastically.

"I know. But I couldn't face you." Richard's eyes were wet.

I will not feel sorry for him, Maria thought. I don't care if he sobs like a baby.

"I felt so guilty," he went on. "For what I did to you. Your mother and I… we were terrible together. But I always loved you. I handled it badly. I abandoned you, sweet pea, and I couldn't stand the guilt."

"Don't call me that," Maria said coldly.

"I'm trying to do it right this time," her dad said. "With Sadie and Junior. I try to be a good father to them because I was such a bad father to you. I'm not saying that it makes up for the way I treated you, but I am a good father now."

"You're right, that doesn't make up for it," Maria said. "I've spent my entire life feeling worthless and unlovable because of you. It's nice that you're good to Sadie, but it doesn't help me."

Richard bowed his head. "Okay," he said. "I had to try. But if you want, I'll take Sadie to a hotel in the morning and we'll stay there until the quarantine is lifted."

"Yes, that's what I want," Maria said. She turned and went into her mother's room and closed the door. And then the tears came.