To Liz, it seemed that everything went backward. The sounds of her monitors decreased as if someone had turned a giant volume knob in her head. The room, which had been as bright as noon, sunk into darkness. Her heartbeat, which had been filling her ears for almost a day now, suddenly became inaudible.
Liz sat up and looked around a small, dark room. Max was watching her. "Are you back?"
She mentally took stock of herself. Sounds were normal, sight was normal. "I'm back," she said. "I feel completely fine."
Max reached out again and touched her cheek. "Liz…"
Then he collapsed.
"Max!" Liz cried.
The door burst open. Michael rushed in, dressed in a tight-fitting jumpsuit. He looked at Liz, then at Max lying on the floor. "What happened?"
"He healed me," Liz said. "And then… "
"It drained his energy," Michael interrupted. "I've seen him like this before." He bent down and heaved Max onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry.
"Is he okay?" Liz asked anxiously.
Michael nodded impatiently. "They're coming back," he
said. "You have to explain it somehow." He turned and ran, carrying Max.
Liz took a deep breath and waited…
The door flew open again, and about five doctors stopped in astonishment when they saw her sitting up. Liz gave them a smile. Maris Wheeler pushed her way through the doctors and rushed over to Liz. "What happened?" she asked, taking Liz's hand.
"I'm not exactly sure," Liz said. "I think it was a miracle." And she wasn't even lying.
13
“She's okay?" Alan Sosa asked.
Maris narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes, she's fine. Though how it happened will remain a mystery, at least to the CDC."
"What do you mean?" he said. "Surely they studied her afterward."
"Yes, they studied her. They used her DNA to fashion a cure for the rest of the people you infected. I just mean that they don't understand what happened… either why it began, or why it ended. There are only two of us who know that, Alan. You and me."
He looked paler than usual, she thought. His hand shook as he lifted the cup of coffee her assistant had brought him. "I'm done with Meta-chem," he said. "I don't want trouble between us, but I think you'll agree that I have more dirt to blackmail you with now than what you have on me. I want to call it even."
"Alan, you spread a dangerous virus around the whole city."
"A virus that you created out of DNA you got from God knows where! I won't let you pin this on me," he said. "I didn't want to test that serum on humans and you know it."
"Nevertheless, you did give it to Liz Parker."
"You forced me to!" His shaking was getting more violent. Maris wondered idly what kind of poison her assistant had put in the coffee. She herself never liked to know the details of these things. That way the assistant could take the fall for it later, if need be.
"Look, you got what you wanted," Alan was saying. "You saw how the serum works in humans… it's a disaster. It won't help your husband."
"That's true. I'll have to find the Healer himself. I can't just use his DNA."
"Well, fine," Alan said. He put down the coffee cup and stood. "Just count me out." He took one step toward the door, then fell flat on his face, dead.
"I'll do that," Maris said.
"I simply don't understand it," Diane Evans was saying as Isabel entered the kitchen.
"None of us does," her husband, Philip, replied. "But I think the firm will be looking at a lot of business in lawsuits from this quarantine."
Isabel poured herself some coffee and tried to act casual. "Hey, Dad, I thought I saw that new lawyer at the hospital," she said. "Jesse Something?"
Her father nodded. "Jesse Ramirez."
"When were you at the hospital?" Diane asked.
Isabel gulped her coffee. "Um, I went there because Max was there with Liz."
"Oh, that's right," Diane said. "Poor Liz; she was the first one sick."
"There's another lawsuit waiting to happen," Philip put in. "I should give Liz's father a call… he's going to be sued by everyone who got sick at the Crashdown. He'll need a good lawyer."
"What about Jesse?" Isabel blurted out, trying to keep the conversation on track. "He had a heart attack, they said."
"A heart attack!" Diane exclaimed. "Why, he can't be more than twenty-six!"
"He's fine now," Philip told her. "His symptoms completely reversed themselves. He told me the doctors said that if they hadn't seen the attack themselves, they wouldn't have even been able to tell he'd had a heart attack."
"But does that mean he'll have one later on?" Isabel asked, still worried. "When he's older?"
Philip shook his head. "They ran some tests, can't even find a single warning sign of congenital heart disease. And it runs in his family. It seems that whatever they used to cure him actually reversed the genetic weakness entirely."
Max's DNA, Isabel thought. It's his healing power, working correctly this time. She smiled. No one in Roswell really understood what had happened… the CDC had taken samples of Liz's DNA, found an anomaly, and used it to create a sort of vaccine. Only Isabel and her friends knew that Liz's DNA had been changed by Max, and that's what had saved them all. "So Jesse is okay?" she asked.
Her parents both looked at her in surprise.
"Yes, he's fine," Philip replied. "I never knew you paid so much attention to my employees and their health."
Isabel gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I'm just looking out for my dad," she chirped. Nothing could ruin her good mood now… Jesse was back to normal!
"So your mom will be okay?" Sadie asked as she loaded a duffel bag full of Marias old clothes into the car. The city-wide quarantine had been lifted as of this morning, and Sadie and her dad were on their way back to Arizona.
Maria nodded. "They all will. Liz says they gave everyone the medicine they made from her DNA, and all of those diseases reversed course immediately. Its like everyone was miraculously cured at once. Wild, huh?"
Her dad shrugged. "I'd forgotten that about Roswell."
"What?"
"All the weird stuff that happens here," he said. "Everyone gets sick with hereditary diseases they probably didn't know they had. And then, boom! They're all better and the genes carrying those diseases are gone. It's like some giant lab experiment."
If only you knew how right you are, Maria thought. "Was it always like that?" she said out loud.
"Yeah," Richard answered. "There used to be strange murders, and unexplained lights in the sky, and plant life that had unidentifiable DNA. You'd read about it in the paper. But every time something weird would happen, it would just go away a little while later. Nobody ever got an explanation."
Maria grinned. "I guess that's one thing that will never change."
Her father smiled back. "Well, I guess we'd better get going," he said.
"Yeah, I have to get over to Meta-chem to pick up my mom." Maria turned to Sadie and opened her arms.
"I'm gonna miss you," Sadie said with a sniffle as she threw herself into Maria's embrace.
"You have my e-mail," Maria told her little sister. "We might not see each other for a while, but you can keep in touch that way."
Sadie looked up into Maria's eyes. "And we'll always be friends, right?"
"Right," Maria told her. She felt a pricking at the back of her own eyes. It's amazing how attached I've gotten to her in just a jew days, she thought. She kissed Sadie's cheek and pulled open the passenger door. Sadie climbed into the car and shut the door.