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
