The Intruder rh0-5

by Melinda Metz

  She scooted down the sofa and cuddled up closer to Max.

  "Oh no. You guys aren't going to turn into one of that kind of couple, are you?" Maria whined.

  "What kind of couple?" Liz asked.

  "Let me just ask you a few questions," Maria answered. "Have you ever shared a piece of gum with Max-a piece of gum that you've already chewed for a while? Have you ever engaged in any kind of baby talk? Do you often hear shouts of 'get a room' when you're out in public? If you've answered yes to any of the above, it may already be too late. You may already be that kind of couple."

  "Don't worry. We're not going there," Liz promised. "Are we, Maxie-waxie, my little googie face?"

  "Where are Alex and Isabel?" Max asked. "I want to get this done."

  "This" being coming up with the plan to rescue Michael. Which more than explained how distracted Max was.

  "They're only a couple of minutes late. I'm sure they'll be here soon," Maria answered.

  "How can you be sure of that?" Max snapped.

  "I guess we can't. Hey, doesn't Isabel have a cell phone? I could call and see where they are," Liz volunteered.

  "I'll do it," Max answered.

  Before he could stand up, Liz heard the front door open. A moment later Alex and Isabel appeared. Isabel headed for the couch, and Alex perched on the edge of Maria's chair, putting them pretty much as far away from each other as they could get and still be sitting in the living room.

  Spending time alone on the stakeout obviously hadn't led to any kiss-and-make-up action. Liz didn't know if that was good or bad. Isabel's personality always seemed completely opposite to Alex's, but sometimes that could actually work for people.

  "We found nada," Alex announced, obviously eager to get down to business and then get out of there.

  Max checked his watch. "Our parents could get home soon, and this isn't a conversation I want them walking in on. Maybe we should take turns keeping watch for them. Adam, do you mind doing the first one? You can see the driveway from the kitchen window."

  "Okay" Adam stood up and headed out of the room. As he passed behind the couch, Liz felt a whisper-soft touch on her shoulder. Guess Adam needs a stronger hint, she thought.

  As soon as Adam was gone, Isabel turned to her brother. "What's the deal? We both know Mom and Dad are at their office in Clovis. They won't be home for hours."

  "Something happened when Adam and I practiced combining our powers," Max answered.

  His tone jerked Liz out of her thoughts and pulled all her attention to him. Max almost sounded frightened. This wasn't about coming up with a plan to get Michael out. Something else was wrong. Something major.

  "We were trying to set a rock on fire, and this rabbit hopped out," Max continued. "Adam was just about to incinerate the poor thing, until I tackled him. One second its nose was twitching, the next second it was squealing. I think he's got an evil side or something."

  A small sound of distress escaped Maria's lips.

  "Oh, man," Alex muttered.

  No. The word exploded in Liz's brain.

  "It had to be an accident," Isabel exclaimed. "The power slipped out of his control or something."

  Max shook his head. "You weren't there. You didn't see it. The rabbit screamed. It sounded almost like a person, really loud and high. And Adam was smiling like he was watching a good show on TV or something."

  "I can't believe Adam could do that," Maria said.

  "We have no idea what he's capable of," Max answered, his voice flat. "We don't know what they did to him in that place. Maybe they've spent years turning him into some kind of killing machine."

  "Max is right," Alex said. "We've only been around Adam a few days."

  Liz got a flash of Adam spinning in her backyard, laughing as the grass tickled his bare feet. "Adam is about as far from a killing machine as you can get," she told them.

  "Of course you'd say that," Max answered. She felt his body tighten, and he shifted away from her.

  "Of course I'd say that because what?" Liz demanded. "Because Adam has a little crush on me? You really think that's why I'm defending him?"

  "Yeah. I do," Max said bluntly.

  "I'm glad to know you think so highly of me," Liz shot back. She wrapped her arms around her waist.

  "Adam doesn't have a crush on me, and I agree with Liz," Isabel cut in. "He's completely gentle and sweet."

  Maria turned to Max. "Do you think he's dangerous to us?"

  "That's the question we need to decide before we go into the compound," Alex said. "What do you think, Max? Do you think there's any chance he could turn on us?"

  ***

  Michael paced around his cell. Sometimes only needing two hours of sleep a night totally sucked. In here, he wouldn't mind needing twenty.

  Okay, maybe not twenty. Twenty would mean he slept way more than Cameron, and Michael wouldn't want to miss any Cameron time. He shot a quick look into her cell. All he could see was the top of her head as she lay on her cot. He liked her hair, which was kind of weird because he usually went for long hair on girls.

  He also usually went for girls with a few more curves. Cameron was long, lean, and had more muscles, well, not more than he did, but she was definitely a hard body.

  Don't go any farther in that direction, Michael told himself. It wasn't a good idea for boys who lived in glass cells to think about sex stuff too much.

  He flopped down on his bed and stared up at the glass ceiling and the cement ceiling far above it. He wondered how far underground they were. Sometimes the idea of being underground completely creeped him out. It was like being buried alive.

  Michael jumped up, suddenly feeling way too much like he was lying in a coffin. He shot another glance over at Cameron. He would let himself look at her a little longer if the guards weren't around. He didn't like the feeling of having people out there going, "Look, Alien Boy wants the human girl."

  Was that even true? Did he want Cameron? Oh, yeah.

  Okay, harder question, Michael thought. Would you want Cameron if she wasn't the only girl in this place?

  The answer came just as fast. Oh, yeah.

  Even harder question. Do you want her more than you want Maria or Isabel?

  Isabel, whoa. How did she get in that question? Isabel was practically like his sister. He didn't think of Isabel that way.

  Except, remember that day you were wrestling over the remote? he asked himself. He'd gotten this flash of what it would be like to see her in the non-almost-like-a-sister category, and it had been… intense. Body-burning intense.

  That explained how Isabel got into the question. Michael shoved his hands through his hair. He'd really been trying not to think about Maria down here. He had enough to deal with without trying to decide how he felt about Maria saying she loved him.

  The love word. It pretty much freaked him out. It felt too monumental. Maybe it didn't feel that way to people who had real families. Max and Liz had their parents saying "I love you" practically all the time. So it's like they'd had the chance to get used to hearing the words. Michael hadn't.

  Okay, here's another question, he thought. Do you love any of them?

  Isabel. He definitely loved Isabel, not that he'd ever actually told her that.

  Stop right there, he ordered himself. You know we're not talking about an I-love-you-like-a-sister kind of thing. Or the you're-a-great-friend-and-I-love-you kind of thing. So what's your answer? Do you love Maria, Cameron, or Isabel?

  ***

  Liz flipped her pillow over and pressed her face into the cool side. Why wasn't she asleep? She needed to be asleep.

  Tomorrow they were going into the compound, and she couldn't be all fuzzy and out of it.

  Well, she could be. She could also be dead if she screwed up.

  Oh, there's a thought that would put her right to sleep. Liz decided that as long as her brain was spinning, she'd give it something to focus on. It was periodic chart time. Going over the chart in her mind always calmed her d
own. She'd do the rare earth elements first.

  There was yttrium, symbol Y, atomic number 39, atomic weight 88.9059. It wasn't always classified as a rare earth element. Sometimes it was classified as a transition-

  A soft sound from the backyard grabbed Liz's attention. Was Adam moving around down there? She swung herself out of bed and hurried over to the window-just in time to see Adam slipping back into the shed.

  Where had he been? Liz pulled on her robe and headed to the back door even while she was telling herself he probably just had to pee or something. She slid open the door, crept over to the shed, and gave a little knock. Adam answered instantly, a huge smile spreading across his face when he saw her.

  Oops, Liz thought. By visiting him in the middle of the night, I have now probably destroyed any of the I'm-with-Max hints that did manage to make it into his head.

  "Hey, I heard you come back in," she said. "I just wanted to see if you were okay. Is there something you needed? Are you too cold out here or anything?"

  "Everything's good," Adam answered. "Do you want to come in for a minute? I could make toast."

  Liz smiled. She had gotten him a toaster as sort of a housewarming present. How could a guy whose biggest love in life is making toast be dangerous? she thought. Max has to be wrong about what happened out in the desert. Killing the rabbit had to be an accident.

  "I better not. My parents will freak if they notice I'm gone," Liz answered. She turned toward the house, hesitated, and turned back to Adam. "So where'd you go?" she asked.

  "Huh?" Adam asked.

  "You went out. I just wondered where you went," Liz said.

  Adam scrunched his eyebrows together. "Where I went," he repeated softly. "I don't think I went anywhere."

  "I'm not mad or anything," Liz assured him. "Although you do need to be careful. I was just curious because, like I said, I saw you coming back home."

  Adam stiffened up. "I just went to the minimart for some butter to put on my toast," he answered in a rush.

  It made sense. But there was something about the way he said it that made Liz think he was lying. Why? What was he doing in the middle of the night that he needed to lie about?

  Liz thought about asking to see the butter, but that seemed way too stupid. And if Adam was lying for some reason, maybe it was better to let him think she believed him. Better and safer.

  "Are you sure you don't want me to make you some?" He smiled at her, his lips stretching up over his teeth.

  Liz shivered, and involuntarily she took a step away. Max and Alex were right. She didn't know Adam that well.

  *** 13 ***

  Adam carried a piece of toast with him to the Jeep. He ate it as he and the others headed out of town. Even though melted butter had seeped into every inch of the bread, the toast tasted dry, scratchy against his mouth and throat.

  He was going back to the compound. He was going back to the place without sun. Without grass. Without anything that was real. And yet a part of him was looking forward to it. He was, technically, going home.

  "Should we go over the plan again?" Alex asked.

  "Please, can we not?" Maria answered. "The more we talk about it, the more I realize there's not much plan in our plan."

  "Maybe we should see if we can come up with something better," Liz suggested.

  "We already know we can't," Isabel said sharply. "We've gone over every possibility a million times."

  Adam didn't say anything. It didn't matter to him one way or the other. He didn't need a plan to know what needed to be done in the compound.

  "Isabel's right," Max said. "Let's just use the drive to get focused."

  Adam leaned his head against the roll bar and tried to take in every detail about the town as they drove through. If things went wrong, he wanted a lot of real things to remember.

  Then he realized that wasn't true. He didn't need a lot of things. He needed one thing. If he ended up locked in the compound again, he wanted to be able to remember every single detail of Liz's face. He turned and studied her, trying to memorize the curve of her upper lip, the exact color of her eyes, the way her hair tumbled alongside her cheek. He stared at her until he was sure he'd never forget even one of her eyelashes, then he closed his eyes.

  Max said they should get focused, and he was right. Adam tried to picture himself walking into the compound, feeling unafraid.

  Will I see… Daddy? The thought slammed through his brain.

  Sheriff Valenti, Adam told himself. He isn't your father. He's nothing to you. You cannot let him stop you from doing what you need to do. You can't let anything stop you.

  ***

  "You want to finish our game of truth or dare, Mickey?" Cameron asked.

  Today's the day, she promised herself. Today is the day I get the names Valenti wants and get out of here. Pretending to be Michael's friend while she was getting ready to screw him over was eating her guts out. She had to cut to the chase.

  "How do you know when you've finished a game, anyway?" Michael asked. "There are no points. No one wins or anything."

  "Someone loses, though," Cameron answered. "Every game of truth or dare I've ever played, someone breaks down crying. And that pretty much ends the game."

  "Brutal," Michael said.

  You don't know the half of it.

  "Okay, it was my turn," Cameron said. "How did you know you were an alien? Truth or dare."

  There, that should get this going in the right direction. Unless Michael chose a dare. Maybe this whole truth-or-dare ploy was a mistake.

  "Basically I just started realizing I could do things that most people around me couldn't," Michael answered. "Then later I saw pictures of some pieces of metal found around the crash site after the Roswell Incident. The symbols on them matched a few of the symbols from my incubation pod, so that's how I started figuring out the truth."

  "So the Roswell Incident really happened?" Cameron asked. "I thought it was just a way for the town to sell a bunch of T-shirts and, you know, alien pinatas."

  I can't believe we're sitting here talking about the Roswell Incident. This whole thing has got to be a joke, she thought. Or some kind of weird test.

  Yeah, that made sense, actually. Maybe Michael was an actor, and Valenti and that doctor were monitoring her reactions to him, trying to see if she'd really accept what Michael told her as real.

  A test. Of course. That had to be it. Cameron felt herself relax a little. If this was all just a test, then it didn't matter if she gave Valenti the information he wanted once she managed to get it. It's not like he'd round up a bunch of Michael's actor friends and throw them in the compound. No, they'd just bring in the next test subject, and Michael would go through his whole act again while Valenti and the doctor made notes.

  "It really happened," Michael answered.

  "So, are you really, like, more than fifty years old?" she asked. Let's see how you answer that, actor boy, she thought.

  "What, you don't like older guys?" Michael asked, then he shoved his fingers through his spiky black hair. "I actually didn't break out of my pod until about ten years ago. I looked like I was about a seven-year-old kid. So, you tell me how old I am."

  He's not lying, Cameron thought.

  You wanted him to be lying, so you told yourself he was, she thought. That way you wouldn't have to think about your own lies.

  "It's your turn," she told Michael. She had to keep the game moving so she could find out what she needed to know. If she didn't do it fast, she wasn't sure she'd end up being able to do it at all.

  "The other day, you knew I was going to kiss you and you pulled away. Why? Truth or dare," Michael said, his gray eyes intense.

  "Truth," Cameron answered. "I know if you touch people, you can read their thoughts, and I didn't want you to read mine."

  "It's not thoughts, exactly-more like pictures, pieces of memories," Michael answered. "And I wouldn't have."

  "It doesn't just happen automatically?" Cameron asked.

&nbs
p; "Nope. Does yours?"

  "Mine?" Cameron forgot for a second she was supposed to have telepathic powers. "No, uh, I have to decide to use my juice."

  "So is that the only reason you pulled away?" Michael asked.

  If I say yes, he's going to want to kiss me, Cameron thought. And if he kissed her, she didn't know if she'd be able to finish her little spying assignment.

  So say no, she told herself. Say that there's another reason you pulled away. Say you have a boyfriend. Say you have a headache. Say something.

  "Yes," Cameron said.

  Michael leaned toward her. You can still stop this, Cameron thought. Just pull away again. Kissing him is the worst possible thing you could do.

  She reached out, ran her fingers through his hair, and gently pulled his mouth down to hers. And for a long moment she forgot everything but the taste of him.

  Then she pulled away. This was it. This was the moment where he was going to be the most open. She could feel it.

  "I never thought anyone who knew what a total freak I am would want to kiss me," she said. She wasn't even going to have to ask him anything directly. He was going to tell her everything all on his own.

  "You've never met anyone else who's… like you?" Michael asked.

  "No," Cameron answered. Her stomach twisted itself into a knot. She ignored the pain.

  "I had it so much easier than you did," Michael said.

  Bring it to me, Cameron thought.

  "I had Max and Isabel. They're… like me," he continued. "Their parents aren't. They don't know the truth at all. But the Evanses are great. They even call me their other son."

  Game over. Those were the names she needed. Cameron's stomach cramped again.

  "Are you okay?" Michael asked.

  "No… no," Cameron said slowly. She added, "Actually, I'm sort of nauseous," she answered. "I'm going to see if the guard can get me some antacid or something."

  Cameron shoved herself to her feet and knocked on the door. "I'm feeling sort of sick," she told the guard who opened it.

  "Come with me," he said.