“Still no answer.” Tess slammed down the phone and crossed her arms over her chest. She was going to kill them when they came back. How difficult was it to pick up and phone when they were in the middle of a life and death situation?
Liz shifted on her bed, still running a cloth over Max’s head. With her free hand, she felt the bare skin over his heart. It had stopped beating erratically a few minutes after he’d passed out, but that had been an hour ago and he’d yet to regain consciousness.
“Kyle, have you put that slide together yet?” Liz knew that she should have done it herself, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Max’s side. His condition seemed to have stabled when she sat with him and she wasn’t ready to figure out why. She simply accepted it for now and sat by his side.
“Uh, yeah.” Kyle tried not to fumble with the slides. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten the job, but he didn’t want to let Liz down by doing it wrong or mixing the other slides up.
“Well? What changed?”
“Nothing.” Kyle examined the slide through the microscope again, trying to make it look like he knew what he was doing. “He’s the same as far as I can tell. I mean, his cells are still changing, but no quicker.”
Liz looked at Kyle sharply. “That’s not possible. You saw him collapse. Something had to have triggered it.” Liz swung off the bed and walked to her desk where Kyle sat. “Show me.”
From the corner of her eye, Tess saw Max’s head roll on his pillow in clear agitation. She resumed Liz’s place beside him and ran the icy towel across his forehead. He moaned in gratitude, but his face didn’t relax as completely as when Liz did it. Tess couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing it wrong.
Liz switched through the slides they’d prepared with Max’s cells earlier in the morning. Then she looked at the slide Kyle had prepared. She searched for any small differences that could amount for Max’s newest collapse. It seemed worse than the others, causing him physical pain. One minute he’d looked as though he were about to kiss her and the next he had been clutching at his chest and gasping for air. Guilt consumed her when she thought about how she’d been ready to send him to Kyle’s house for the night. She knew she still should, that it might be the only chance left to make sure the horrible wars of the future never happened. But she also knew that if she spent another night with Max, she wouldn’t be able to go back to pretending she didn’t love him.
With a sigh of frustration, Liz sat back in the chair. Kyle had been right. “There’s no change.” She bit on her lower lip, thinking over the possibilities. “Something had to have triggered it. If we can figure out what it is, maybe we can slow down whatever is happening in him. At least until the others get back with the device.”
“If they ever decide to come back,” Kyle snorted.
Liz glared at Kyle. “They’ll be back. And they’ll have the device. Max is going to make it through this.”
“Liz? I think you’d better come over here.”
Liz rose from her chair and went back to her bed. “What’s wrong?” Max was beginning to thrash on the bed and he looked as if he were in the throes of a nightmare.
“What was Max’s temperature earlier?” Tess struggled to keep the cool towel on Max’s forehead, but he was moving too much.
“A hundred and two this morning. Why?” Not waiting for an answer, she touched a hand to his neck and automatically gauged his temperature. Raising her eyes, she met Tess’s worried gaze. “He’s burning up again. He wasn’t like this just a few minutes ago.” Liz let her eyes drop back to Max’s prone form. “What’s going on?”
Kyle joined them by the bed. “Is he having a nightmare?”
“It looks like it.” Liz resumed laying the icy towels against Max’s chest again. She could all but feel the weariness sinking into her bones. She was exhausted. It seemed as if nothing she did was good enough. She could work for hours to get his temperature down and it took absolutely nothing she could see to skyrocket it up again.
Kyle stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Even when he’s sleeping he can’t get a moment’s peace.”
“What?” Liz’s head snapped up. A thought was forming in her head, struggling to take shape within her mind.
“Do you have something?” Tess caught the glimmer in her eye.
“I don’t know. Something…Kyle, you said he couldn’t have a moment’s peace, but that’s not true. He’s had moments when he’s calm…” Her thoughts raced, trying to find the words to what she knew in her heart was right. “Emotions.”
“What?” Kyle had seen Liz’s mind in work before, and he had trouble following her on a good day. “What about emotions?”
“His symptoms get worse when he’s emotional,” Tess deduced incredulously, picking up on Liz’s thoughts. “He’s having a nightmare and his temperature just raised a couple of degrees.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Kyle, we’re talking about an alien transformation. I think we shouldn’t use words like impossible.” Liz ran her hand down the side of Max’s face. Suddenly it all made sense. “Last night, I came back into the room and he was passed out on the bed like he is now. I never stopped to think about it before, but I’ll bet he went through all the slides we’ve been working on. And this morning, the healing stones failed and it upset him.” Her words came quicker as her brain put it all together. Every time he’d been worked up about something, he got sick. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
“Are you sure it was the healing stones that got him worked up?” Tess asked quietly.
Liz looked at Tess sharply. “What do you mean?” Did Tess know that Max had been ready to kiss her? She had been across the room doing something at the time. Had she ruined everything she’d spent the last few weeks trying to build? Max and Tess had to be together or everyone was going to die.
The whole thing would have been funny if it wasn’t so dire. How could Liz and Max really think that they were fooling anyone? “Liz, Max was going to kiss you. You know it and I know it.”
“Tess…no.” Liz shook her head quickly to reassure Tess. She couldn’t let Tess think there was anything going on between them. “Max and I aren’t…we’re not together. He doesn’t want me anymore.”
Kyle watched Liz try to protest and he shook his head in disbelief. Liz honestly believed that Max didn’t love her. He had to assume that she had her reasons for keeping Max away from her. “Ladies, I think we’re getting off topic. Max was emotional for whatever reason and he passed out. So now we have a reason for the semi-catatonic state he’s been in for the last hour. But why does he fall asleep if nothing out of the ordinary is happening to his body? He’s not changing quicker.”
Liz shifted away from Tess and rose from the bed, needing to put distance between her and Max. “He hasn’t been sleeping. He pretends, but I don’t think he sleeps unless he passes out. So, maybe his body is re-energizing?”
Tess watched Liz’s movements, trying to examine her own feelings. Why wasn’t she more upset by what was obviously still going on between Max and Liz? The only real emotion she could muster up was anger that Liz had hurt Max by using Kyle. Did Liz even know that she’d stamped out any hope of something between her and Kyle? But she pushed her emotions deep down the way Nasedo had taught her years ago. They wouldn’t help the situation. Her King needed her to be level headed and help. “The only reason Max would pass out this heavily is if he were using an extraordinary amount of his powers. Has he done anything? Used them at all?”
Liz thought about it and shook her head. “No. I haven’t seen a thing.”
“Maybe there’s another angle to this,” Kyle offered. “What if Max is meant to stay asleep during this whole transformation thing? And he’s using his powers to stay awake? That would tire him out pretty quick. Maybe his infamous control slips when he’s worked up.”
The last pieces of the puzzle slid into place. “Of course. It makes sense.”
Tess looked down where Max was still moving around on the bed. “But then we don’t want him to sleep. Do we? If he’s having nightmares he’ll only make himself physically sicker.”
Liz thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “No. He needs to sleep, at least for right now. I don’t think he’s slept at all lately and how is he supposed to fight off this thing if he’s exhausted?”
“When’s the last time you really slept, Liz?” Kyle brushed a hand over Liz’s forehead, making sure she wasn’t making herself sick helping Max. She was a martyr that way and Max had been the only other person to keep an eye on her.
Liz smiled at Kyle, but it was weak. “I slept some last night. Don’t worry about me.”
Tess watched the exchange between Liz and Kyle with narrowed eyes. There was something in the way he spoke to Liz, some measure of concern that he had never used on her. What was it about the brunette that drove men crazy with concern? “If you two think you can handle things for awhile, I need air.” Without waiting for a reply, Tess climbed through the window and disappeared.
Liz looked at Kyle and was surprised to find Kyle watching Tess’s departure. “She’s upset.”
Kyle scrubbed his hands over his face and wished he knew what the right response was for once in his life. “Yeah, but she’s not upset at you. I know that tone of voice. She usually reserves that particular frosty tone just for me.”
“You? Why? I thought you two were getting along.”
“We were. That’s the problem. Look, Liz. It really isn’t anything to be worried about.” Kyle moved to grab the towel Tess had laid aside. He dipped it in the bowl of ice water and tried not to focus on the fact that he was dabbing at Max Evans’s head with a towel. This was the sort of thing he would make sure Liz and Tess took to their graves or he would put them there himself.
Liz narrowed her eyes; sure she was missing something. Kyle looked…miserable. “Kyle, talk to me. What’s going on between you and Tess?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.”
“What do you mean…oh.” Liz clamped her mouth shut in surprise. Kyle and Tess? “I didn’t know you two were…”
Sensing that he wasn’t going to get out of this without telling her something, Kyle sighed. “We’re not. But we were sort of headed that way…before.”
Realization hit Liz over the head hard and fast. “God, Kyle. Why didn’t you say something to me? You two are fighting because of me? Because of what I asked you to do?”
“We’re not exactly fighting. We’d have to be talking first.” Kyle slumped down on the bed wearily. “I know you had a good reason for wanting Evans to walk in on us in bed together, and I never asked why. But just tell me it was for a good reason. Tell me this whole mess is worth lying to everyone about that night.”
She considered lying to him then, considered hedging the question. He would let her, but she owed him something. “Is the end of the world a big enough reason for you?”
Kyle watched her incredulously for a second before he barked out a laugh. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it Parker? It couldn’t be something like he forgot your birthday and you wanted to make him jealous.” He shook his head. “You know what? I don’t want to know anymore. I trust you. If you say it was worth all the pain I’ve seen in your eyes, then I believe you.” He averted his eyes and watched Max sleep for a second. “But don’t you wish things could be easy for once?”
“Every day,” Liz confessed softly.
Kyle rose from the bed. “It looks like Max is calming down. If you think you’ve got this, I’m going to see if I can find Tess and…I don’t even know what I’ll do. I just need to find her.”
Liz nodded. Strangely, she understood. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Kyle leapt out the window and padded across the concrete floor towards the ladder. He had his foot on the first rung when he saw Tess sitting in Liz’s lawn chair by the window. He froze, locking eyes with her for a moment. “Tess?”
Tess shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest until she was hugging herself. “I came out here for air and I realized how childish it was to storm off in the middle of all this, so I was going to come apologize.” She was appalled to discover that she was close to tears. “I heard you two talking, Kyle.”
“Tess, what you heard--“
“Did you sleep with her?” She didn’t want to hear any more platitudes. She needed to hear the truth whatever it was and she wasn’t letting him leave until she got it. “Did you walk out of the house that night, walk away from me and the plans we’d made to come here and crawl into bed with her?”
Kyle saw how tightly she was holding onto her emotions and he was surprised she hadn’t broken from the sheer strain yet. He wanted to tell her the truth, but Liz’s words rang in his ears.
“I heard what Liz said,” Tess continued. She could see the war waging within him for the first time. “I don’t understand any of it, but I don’t know how the end of the world could come about if you two didn’t pretend to sleep together.” She eyed him carefully and when she saw a flicker of agreement in his eyes, she knew she was on the right track. “There has to be another way.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Kyle offered. Maybe Tess was right. The schisms that had formed as a result of their lies couldn’t be good for the group or for the future. Tess seemed to be at the heart of the whole mess as much as anyone. Maybe she deserved the truth. “We need to talk.”
Tess let out a deep breath and unfolded herself from the lawn chair. A weight lifted from her chest and the world didn’t seem as dark and bleak as it had when she’d woken that morning. Whatever else Kyle said to her, she had the answer she needed. Slowly, she walked closer to him until she stood a foot from the ladder; close enough to see that the only desire swirling in his eyes was for still for her. “Talking is one idea. But I can think of another.”
Shock managed to take over Kyle’s vocal cords for a full thirty seconds. Then he grinned at her wolfishly. “Let’s go.”
*~*~
Liz heard the roar of Kyle’s car from the alley below and she sighed. She had gotten used to being alone with Max and talking tired her out. Things were simpler without words to muck everything up.
She hadn’t been lying to Kyle when she’d told him that she had slept some last night. But it hadn’t been enough. Taking care of Max had started taking its toll on her and she knew that she would sleep for a week when everything was back to normal.
For now, she decided to pick up her room. Organizing soothed her and Kyle tended to leave a trail wherever he went. For awhile, she’d been convinced that he messed up her orderly systems on purpose. But as she’d gotten to know him better, she’d discovered that Kyle was simply messy. And she tried not to think about how it was just another thing she had in common with Max. Max understood her compulsions to organize her life.
She checked Max one last time and noted that with the end of his nightmare, his temperature had dropped another degree. Taking her time, she picked up the slides from her desk and reorganized them into neat stacks. She straightened her books, pausing to frown when she couldn’t find her tape recorder. Deciding Kyle must have moved it; she didn’t give it a second thought.
Beside her trashcan on the floor, a half dozen pieces of crumpled paper were scattered on the carpet. Frowning, she bent to pick them up. She couldn’t remember when they had been left there. She picked up the first one and was confused to find pen strokes scattered sporadically. The next two sheets of paper produced the same markings. But as she smoothed out the fourth sheet of paper, Liz’s knees gave out and she crumbled to the floor with a cry.
With crooked, but unmistakable lines, Max had written her name.
A tear coursed down her cheek as she traced the letters with her fingertip. When had he done this? He had struggled to write this. She could see it in every stroke. Max hadn’t had the ability to speak or understand anything around him, yet he had been able to write her name. It shamed her. He had been thinking of her, trying to prove something to himself. And she’d followed it by trying to get him out of her room.
Liz smoothed out the paper until no crinkled marks remained. The letters were crude, but they were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. If she kept no other keepsake from her time together with Max, she would keep that sheet of paper. It was a testament to what he felt for her, that he was able to overcome the block in his brain by sheer willpower.
Turning from the paper, Liz glanced at Max. He was still sleeping. The path Liz had felt sure she should travel on was uncertain now. Was it truly the best thing to leave Max? To push him away and do her best to convince him that she didn’t love him anymore? It seemed as incomprehensible now as it did when the other Max had stood in her room and told her she had to do something drastic to change the future. But there was no one around to offer her advice now.
She loved Max. No matter what else she did in her life, she would love him above everyone else. The memories from last night when she’d collapsed in his arms were still fresh and raw. Max had broken his rule and had spoken to her, words straight from his heart, and she had understood them. He’d been so sick last night, she hadn’t even considered stepping back from him then. She’d promised herself she would do it when the sun rose, but she hadn’t been able to do it then either. Every time she was supposed to leave him, she ended up taking another step closer and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do it. Had her decision to push him away done this to him or was it something that happened to the other Max in the other timeline too?
Liz rose from the floor slowly. She needed to talk to Max. She needed to see the truth in his eyes, needed him to convince her that it was all worth it, that there could be another way to fix it all that wouldn’t kill their friends and family. She was weak in that moment as she walked toward where Max lay on her bed. All she had to do was lean in close and kiss him. Would he awaken like the princesses did in the fairy tale stories? Was it possible for the princess to wake up the king with the kiss of true love? Could all the love she had tucked inside of her heal all the damage she’d done? Or was it already too late for them?
She had to know.
Slowly, she approached the bed. Her attention was entirely focused on the man before her. If she managed to wake him, would he welcome her kisses?
Her heart filled, soaring with the possibilities of what could be. It occurred to her for the first time that she might be able to communicate with Max though the connection they’d once shared. And though it meant he would see into her heart, it was worth it now. How could she deny him the chance to resume his life if she had the power in her hands?
She heard a scuffling sound from the window behind her, but she didn’t turn. She had to kiss Max now, before she lost her nerve. Kyle would just have to come back later. He would understand. Hadn’t he told her that Max was still in love with her? A smile touched her lips when she thought about the perplexed way Kyle had told her, as if it had been the most obvious thing in the world that Max loved her.
The first indication of trouble came too late.
One minute, Liz had been on her way towards Max and the next she found a hand closing around her throat. She gasped for air but the hand only tightened, lifting her off the ground as she was attacked from behind. She kicked and clawed, but only succeeded in knocking over furniture. She thought she heard her lamp fall to the floor and break, but there was a ringing in her ears that was drowning out all sound but the pulse of her own heartbeat.
She clutched at the hand around her throat one last time, trying to dislodge it and gasp in one more breath of air. A fuzzy blackness was creeping along the edges of her vision and she fought against it. But she was already weak; tired from the ordeals of the past few days, and too quickly she felt her body giving out.
As the blackness claimed her, the last thought she had was that she had failed Max.
