I touch him?" Max asked her.
"He's like me, we're the same," Liz whispered. "Aliens…"
Her voice trailed off.
Max shot Michael a questioning look. Michael shrugged. "Maybe you can't heal this," he said.
"How can that be?" Max asked. "She's just sick. They're all just sick. And that's what I do, I heal sick people."
"I don't think we can risk you making anyone else worse," Kyle said.
Max was speechless. It seemed as if his healing power had reversed itself somehow. He looked at his hands… would they really make people sicker?
"We should go find Isabel. If the CDC has figured out what's causing it, maybe that will help you figure out how to heal it," Michael suggested.
Slowly Max nodded. It seemed like their only option.
"… Crashdown Cafe," Dr. Farrell's voice said.
Isabel jerked her head up. She'd almost fallen asleep, stretched out on the ceiling tiles. She had no idea how long she'd been up there, listening to the droning voice of the CDC lab technicians. They were compiling data, trying to find something, anything, that would help them figure out how so many different diseases could crop up at the same time.
But what was that about the Crashdown? Isabel thought. Did I dream that?
"You'd better call Maris Wheeler in here," Dr. Farrell said.
Isabel waited, holding her breath, until she heard the clicking of Maris's heels on the floor.
"Have you found anything useful, doctor?" Maris's cold voice asked.
"We believe we've isolated the identity of Patient Zero," Dr. Farrell said.
"Really?" Maris actually sounded interested now. "So it is a contagion after all?"
"We're not sure how it works once it infects people," Dr. Farrell said. "But yes, it's clearly been spread in a very clean line. A line that starts here in Meta-chem, by the way."
Isabel could hear Maris's little gasp. "Surely you're not suggesting that Meta-chem released some sort of virus," Maris cried.
"I don't know what to think yet," Dr. Farrell said. "But we've figured out that this… bug… is carried in water. It seems to have started with a small group of people who ate at a specific restaurant, the Crashdown Cafe. Our researchers turned up an anomaly in the soup there. Whoever ate the soup became infected, and they in turn infected others by sneezing near them, coughing… basically anything that would pass the bug along in a liquid form."
Great, Michael's cooking strikes again, Isabel thought.
"I don't see what that has to do with Meta-chem," Maris said.
"One of your employees is the daughter of the owner of this restaurant," Dr. Farrell said. "She was overheard talking about a chemical spill here in Alan Sosa's lab. And she herself is ill. Based on all of this, we're considering her Patient Zero."
Liz, thought Isabel.
"Liz Parker," Maris Wheeler said.
"Yes," Dr. Farrell answered. "We'll begin extensive tests on her right away."
11
Liz was crying. She'd been crying ever since Max left. Kyle wished he could comfort her, but his own body was starting to exhibit the symptoms Liz had told him about earlier. Every breath he took, every tiny move he made, seemed to reverberate through his whole body. It's like feeling my body work on a cellular level, he thought.
"Alien," Liz whispered. "It was alien and so am I, so healing doesn't work." She gave a small sob.
Kyle didn't know what she was talking about. She seemed delirious. Normally he would've shushed her when she said the A-word, but if anybody heard her now they would assume it was some fever-dream she was having.
"Kyle," Liz whispered. "You're like me, and we're aliens."
Kyle glanced around. Most people were still sleeping, and the nurses were all down at the nurses' station. With a huge effort, he slid off the side of his cot and onto the floor. Then he crawled across to Liz's bed and leaned
against it. He was exhausted from that small amount of exertion.
"Aliens," Liz whispered again.
"No, Liz, we're not aliens," he said, trying to keep his tone light. "Our friends, maybe. Us, no."
"We are." Suddenly she sounded so lucid. Kyle turned his eyes up to her face. She was looking back at him intently. "We are, you and me. We're different, he changed us. We have alien DNA. That's why we have the same symptoms, and why they're different from everyone else's."
Kyle's heart gave a sickening bounce. "We're aliens because Max healed us?" he repeated.
"When he heals, it changes the person. It changes their DNA," Liz whispered. "We have alien DNA mixed with our own. Not like them, not like the real aliens. But we have a little. And this thing, the virus or whatever, it's affecting our alien DNA."
"It activated our alien genes just like it activated Ms. DeLucas gene for asthma," Kyle said.
"Yes," Liz whispered. "It went to our alien genes because it's alien too."
"What?" Kyle could tell Liz thought this was important, but he didn't really understand everything she was saying.
"In the lab, when I cleaned up the chemical spill," Liz said. "Whatever that chemical was must have changed me."
"Wait, are you saying this virus is alien?" Kyle asked.
"I think so. And it's my fault." She started to cry again. "I did it."
Kyle didn't know what to think. For a second there, Liz had sounded like her old science-nerd self. Now she was
delirious again. "You didn't do anything," he said helplessly.
"The spill. I cleaned it up, and it got on me somehow. It made my alien DNA mutate into this virus. Then I gave it to you. I gave it to everyone. And they'll never find a cure for it because they don't know it's alien."
At that moment a door at the far end of the room swung open. Four doctors with a gurney rushed in. They checked with the nurses' station, and then all four turned… -and looked right at Liz.
"Uh-oh," Kyle said.
"What?"
"Um, a bunch of doctors are coming toward you with a stretcher," Kyle told her.
"They know it's my fault," she whispered. "They have to study me to try to solve the problem."
"What?" Kyle cried. "No! They'll find the alien DNA."
"They won't know what it is," Liz said. "They'll just think it's a mutation."
The doctors had reached Liz's bed. One of them took Kyle by the arm. He gasped in pain; her hand felt like a vise. "You need to be back in bed," she said, helping him to his cot.
The others were lifting Liz onto the gurney. Kyle could see her wincing as they jostled her sensitive body.
"Where are you taking her?" he asked.
"We need to run some tests on Miss Parker to figure out what's wrong with her," the doctor told him, sitting him down on his cot.
"Kyle, you have to tell Max," Liz whispered. "He's the only one who can figure out how to help these other people. Tell him what I told you."
They were pushing Liz away as she said this, and Kyle knew none of the doctors standing right next to her could even hear what she said. But he could, with his alien-enhanced hearing. "Liz, hang in there," he whispered back.
Then they pushed the gurney through the doors and out of the quarantine room. Liz was gone.
Isabel was the last to get back to Valenti's house. Michael and Max had been there only about five minutes when she showed up, looking worried. Michael felt his shoulders slump. He'd been hoping Isabel had some good news, since he and Max certainly didn't. "What did you find out?" Max asked. "Hello to you, too," Isabel retorted. "Where's Valenti?" "On the phone," Michael told her. "Did you find the CDC headquarters?"