Chapter 12

Liz and Kyle sat side by side in Kyle’s Mustang, staring up at the dorm room looming over them. Neither of them spoke, but both had the same question running through their heads. What answers were waiting for them within Alex’s one time prison?

Taking a deep breath, Liz forced herself to make the first move, slowly opening her car door and climbing out, her eyes never once turning away from the building looming over them. Kyle followed her lead, climbing out and standing beside the car as he let his door close with a soft click. Only at the soft noise did Liz finally break her locked gaze from the dorm, and turn to meet Kyle’s eyes nervously.

"Let’s go in." She suggested simply.

Kyle nodded his agreement as side by side, they headed up the walkway and through the double doors.

Like most dorm rooms, the walls were drab, dim as the two friends headed through the gray hallways, up the tiled stairs that lead to the upstairs dorm rooms. Liz counted down the numbers as they passed a dozen rooms, before finally finding themselves standing before the number that matched the paper from Tess’s room.

Liz took a deep breath, meeting Kyle’s eyes intensely one last time, before placing her hand over the lock, and focusing. It still took Liz by surprise to feel the energy surge up from deep within her, to see her own hand glowing, as a click rang out through the air.

Summoning up her inner strength, Liz put her hand on the knob, and quickly turned it. She almost fell over though, when the door quickly opened before she could push. Liz’s jaw dropped and she gaped openly at the sight of Alex’s "Swedish girlfriend", Leanna, standing less than two feet in front of her. Leanna was staring right back at her, her own mouth hanging open in shock.

"Oh my God, it’s you!" Leanna exclaimed loudly. "I am so glad to see you! Do you know where Ray is? He disappeared about a month ago without a word, and I haven’t seen him since!"

"Do you know me?" Liz stammered, completely thrown off guard by not only Leanna’s presence, but her immediate recognition of Tess.

Leanna stared at her for a long moment, before throwing back her head and laughing loudly. "Do I know you? What kind of a stupid question is that? Of course I know you…you were working with Ray on that computer project he was holed up on for all those weeks. Are you okay?"

Liz shook her head, pretending to be trying to clear it and regain focus. "Right…I’m sorry. I’ve had a really bad migraine all day. I’ve been a bit out of it."

"It’s okay." Leanna smiled warmly at her. "So do you know where Ray is?"

Liz sucked in her breath as Kyle leaned down and muttered under his breath so that just Liz could hear. "Ray is probably Alex."

"Oh yeah," Liz continued quickly, focusing on Leanna. "We finished the project so he packed up and headed home. The problem is some of the stuff is missing, so I thought I’d come back down here and see if we forgot any of it."

"Oh!" Leanna blinked. "Well, I’ve been hanging around in here a lot, doing my homework while waiting to see if Ray would come back or not, you know. I haven’t seen anything, but you’re welcome to come in and take a look around!"

"Thanks." Liz warmly replied as she stepped past Leanna and into Alex’s room. "I’ve sort of got a problem though, and I was hoping you would be able to help me with it. The thing is, Ray has been really busy, and he hasn’t really gone over everything with me yet. I never saw the finished product. Did he tell you anything about it when he finished?"

Leanna furrowed her brow in concentration. "I didn’t know he finished it either…" Her voice trailed off as she shrugged reluctantly.

"What about the last thing you saw him working on. Do you remember what it looked like or anything?" Liz pressed insistently.

"It was the same as always." Leanna insisted in frustration. "He had that weird metal book with him with all those odd symbols engraved in it. He was always fiddling with that thing…uploading the images into the computer…that kind of thing."

Liz’s eyes widened and she whirled around to face Kyle in surprise. "The destiny book!" Liz exclaimed.

Kyle shot Liz a warning look, reminding her that they couldn’t say anything in front of Leanna, and Liz nodded, turning back to the blonde girl with a smile.

"Thank you…you’ve helped us more than you know. I’ll tell Ray that you’re looking for him the next time I see him."

"Thanks." Leanna smiled.

"See you around." Liz called back, as she rushed out of the room, Kyle at her back.

~~~~~ ~~~~

Isabel eyed Tess nervously out of the corner of her eye.

Tess, not Liz. She kept having to remind herself of that fact. Her eyes kept belaying what she already knew to be true. The sight of Max and Liz sitting plastered together across the table from her, their hands intertwined on the table was such a normal occurrence. A year earlier she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But Isabel was the only person in the room who knew what she knew…she was going to have to put up a good front.

Michael and Maria walked into the restaurant and quickly took the two of the three empty chairs remaining.

"So what’s this meeting about?" Michael demanded, his eyes rushing between Max and Isabel, focused on the alien element in the room as always.

"Just wait for Alex to get here." Max reminded him. "Most of this is about him, after all."

Isabel sighed in relief when Alex finally walked through the doors of the Crashdown. He instantly froze, his eyes searching the room wildly in fear.

"Alex?" Isabel called out, recognizing the look of panic on his face. It was the same look he had the other day when he broke down and had to leave school, right after coming out of the mindwarp. "Are you okay?" She pressed in concern.

Alex closed his eyes, shaking his head as if trying to push the fear away. "Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. I just thought I felt…" He paused before shaking his head again. "It’s nothing." Alex slowly crossed the room, taking the empty seat beside Isabel. "Let’s get this party started!" He joked with a weak smile.

Max nodded slowly before hesitantly calling things to order. "As most of you already know, I healed Alex yesterday of the damages Tess’s mindwarp wreaked on his mind. What some of you don’t know, is how bad it was. It was almost beyond my ability to heal. If we hadn’t learned about this when we did, Alex would have surely died."

Maria gasped loudly. "What? How is that possible?"

"Apparently none of us, possibly Tess included knew enough about the mindwarps to know how damaging they can be. Either way, we need to find some way to ensure that she doesn’t do this to anyone else."

"I’m going to take care of that." Isabel added in quickly, shooting a warning look at her brother. "I’m going to confront Tess about this. What she has done to Alex is completely unforgivable."

"I agree." Max continued. "What we still need to figure out is why."

"Actually, I have a lead on that already." Isabel quickly continued, trying to get as much information to them without giving away the true source of it all. "I talked to Kyle last night. He’s been searching through Tess’s stuff undercover, looking for clues, that kind of thing. He found a newspaper clipping about a supercomputer at the University of Las Crueces. Its specialty is cryptography."

Isabel turned her attention to Alex, meeting his eyes apologetically. "I know I didn’t ask first, and I’m sorry, Alex, but I dreamwalked you last night to see if your subconscious mind could give me any leads as to what you were doing there. It worked…I think I know what Tess was up to." Isabel took a deep breath before laying the facts out for everyone. "I think she was trying to decode the Destiny Book."

There was a long moment of silence while everyone let the new information soak in. Isabel, meanwhile, continued to nervously eye Alex, afraid that he would be angry with her for betraying his trust.

Alex cleared his throat for attention, turning and giving Isabel a small smile.

"Don’t worry, Isabel. I trust you with my mind. Dreamwalking me was the right thing to do."

"I’m glad." Isabel breathed, trying to blink away the tears that were forming in her eyes. Alex’s trust was so important to her.

"Also, I want you guys to know that my memories have been sorting out bit by bit all day. Everything that happened with Tess has been coming back to me in bits and pieces. Isabel’s right, I did decode the Destiny Book."

"You finished?" Michael exclaimed in excitement, and Isabel couldn’t help rolling her eyes at him, always enthused when it came to the possibility of more answers.

"I finished." Alex confirmed. "It was why Tess let me come home."

"So she has the translation just lying around somewhere, and she hasn’t shown it to us?" Max asked, his brow furrowing in disbelief.

"No, actually she doesn’t!" Alex disputed with a pleased smile. "That was the one place where I managed to stay strong. I didn’t give her the translation. I hid it. I don’t know why she hasn’t come after me to get it yet…maybe she’s been searching at Las Crueces or something, but I know where it is." Alex turned to Max, his eyes shining proudly. "I’ll give you directions. You can go there tomorrow."

"We can go there tomorrow!" Tess suddenly spoke up, Liz’s voice dancing from her throat in excitement, as she squeezed Max’s hand gently.

Isabel turned and met Tess’s eyes, her own expression masked, as she realized what a huge mistake Alex had just made.

He had just handed Tess exactly what she wanted.