I know, I know, it's been more than two months now... so it's only fair I post at least one chapter... But chap. 25 is almost done, and 26 is half written, so... those shouldn't take too long now
Ti88 Dave's plan is worrying you? hhhmmm...
IslandBreeze, oh, how I miss posting!!! It took me a while to figure out why Isabel would marry Jesse in such a hurry. Hopefully, I come up with something coherent enough :D Now, what Dave thinks he can or can't do is a matter of discussion... But I can tell you this: whatever he thinks he knows, he's certain about it.
XXIV
Looking Back
“So,” Liz said as she and Maria were heading for the showers, “What did Michael say?”
“Like he could say anything,” Maria answered, arching one eyebrow in a defiant gesture. Both friends locked eyes for a second and then they… giggled. It felt good. For some strange reason Liz thought that it felt good to giggle under all this pressure and under this particular roof. Liz and Maria had talked for almost three hours the night before, and that, too, had felt good.
“Did he like it?” Liz asked as they both resumed their walking.
“I didn’t give him a choice,” Maria said, a mischievous smile on her lips.
“Come on, Maria!” Liz said, playfully punching her, “What did he say?”
“He’s worried,” Maria finally said, her smile waning a little. “He finally admitted that he’s scared.”
“Took you a lot of time?”
“Some ignoring too, but he finally said out loud that he’s afraid of this place.”
“He was probably fretting about what was going on with you before,” Liz said as they entered the shower room.
“Yeah, I know. But if he didn’t say it out loud soon he was going to explode... I swear, Michael’s handle on pressure for long periods of time… pretending he doesn’t care… This place is too small for that kind of blast. So, point one for me. And besides, I got to inform him about our little plan of not staying behind when things get creepy. Anyway, we seriously need a shower,” Maria said as she was reaching for a towel. “Then you can give me all the details about what Max said.”
Because Maria had turned, she didn’t see Liz flinching as she was reaching for her own towel. Yeah… Max… Sure, she had planned on telling him about how she and Maria had decided that, since they were going to be stuck with nothing to do while Max, Michael and Isabel were at the lab, they could ask Ray for some non-powers related escapes. And they knew Ray was aching for something else to do besides playing gym teacher.
And Liz also knew that Max was going to agree. Well, she was 85% sure he was going to agree without freaking out. Without thinking that she would be in more danger if she knew personal defense or something… Because, come on! It was for everybody’s benefit. And Max would see that… Right.
She smiled to herself. Of course Max was going to see that, -sooner or later- and of course she was going to learn whatever Ray could teach. They hadn’t filled in Kyle yet, but she saw no reason for her ex-boyfriend to not agree to their plan. No, Liz was not doubting if Max was going to like the idea or not, she had just not told him because she was still waiting to see how things were going with their connection. So far, so good. In fact, she was beginning to think that she might have over-reacted to whatever it had been in the morning. Liz was still going to ask Max if he had felt anything –and then she was going to tell him about their plan- but that would wait ‘til later that day.
It was now close to midday and, as usual, things had gone pretty smoothly at the Gym. Ray had seemed concerned about something though, and had been talking to someone over the phone for a while. Besides, with Michael and Max here, he had barely been more than a shadow the entire day.
It had been weird to have Max and Michael around. Even Ray, who had loosened up a little with Maria, Kyle and her over the past three days, had been more serious and careful. There was a certain… how had Maria described it earlier? There was a certain wall that Ray put up around the alien trio. She would never say that Ray was afraid of them, but there was this… respect. Funny, because that was exactly what she had felt when Jake had called her “Miss Elizabeth” the day before, and she knew that he had never called Isabel “Miss”.
Getting into the shower, Liz thought that hot water at high pressure had never felt better before. She was sorer than she was letting Max know; she was sweaty, tired, hungry, sleepy and worried, but somehow her hot shower made it all seemed like a vague dream. She could stay under that shower forever.
It was like Maria had said the night before: This place wasn’t so bad if you forgot a couple of dozen things. Like windows, sunshine and freedom. Liz let go an ironic laugh. They had had all the freedom in the world up there, except for the little detail that they were being chased –hunted, really- and now, here… well, here she was enjoying a much deserved hot shower, even without windows, sunshine and freedom. Guess I can’t win them all… she murmured reaching for the soap.
Yet the thing that was still a constant through both “life styles” was this fear of the unknown. She felt blinded now, unable to see the future anymore, unable to guide the whole group out of danger. She felt responsible for it, though she knew the feeling was misplaced. It was just that, after being able to see things that would happen and after having the power to alter those outcomes, she now felt… blind. She couldn’t get that word out of her mind. She couldn’t see anything but darkness ahead of her. An unknown future.
So, now that the possibility of getting her power back was looming on the horizon, Liz felt a little bit thrilled. She knew that Max was worried about Jake or Dave discovering her, but… if she got it back, she would probably know, at the very least, if staying here was a good choice or not.
None of that mattered now, though. She was here and she couldn’t see the future. Period. She closed her eyes and let the water wash away all the nonsense that was having a field day in her mind.
Still, even if she couldn’t really see the future, she tried to think ahead. She tried to think about next week and if they were going to still be expected to go to the gym and the lab. What were they going to do in the afternoons, anyway? She wondered if she should go and talk to Jake about some biology or genetics classes. She thought about Dave’s words to Kyle about going to engineering, and about Michael’s plan about going to the Network Keepers’ Base.
How were their lives going to be from now on? And when were they going to start having those lives as well? They were just stuck in this week until Dave left. Their thoughts were still going around that man, which was odd, because even if Dave would leave them, and the interviews would be over, they were still on this man’s grounds. He was leaving, not them.
Besides, when was Dave going to return, anyway? The man was not just going to finish this and then forget about them. She felt frustration creeping all over her spine. She groaned. She truly wanted to get lost in this shower, and for ten minutes forget the world existed.
But if she didn’t want to think about the future or the present, the only thing left was her past. A past that Dave had skillfully recounted, she couldn’t deny that. It had been strange. He would one minute be questioning her decisions and the next one sort of praising her actions.
“You didn’t run,” Dave had said, his hazel eyes pinned on her, “and you had more than a few reasons to stay very far away.”
Maria had puzzled about that the night before. Was Dave going to ask her why she had stuck with Michael? Because then, as Maria had said, that would be a very long talk. They had both laughed. In fact, the memory made Liz laugh at that moment as well. It had been a very long and stressful day yesterday, and Maria still had her own interview pending, so they both had wanted to get rid of all that extra energy. Maria wanted Liz to tell her all about her interview, and Liz wanted Maria to tell her all about what was going on with her and her sudden change of mood.
“Michael is on this quest to find anything about this man, but he’s not letting himself see that he’s a scared rabbit like the rest of us,” Maria had said matter of factly. “He’s distant,” she had continued, with a worried expression on her face. “He thinks the walls are going to collapse on us or that he’s dragged me into some hole and that it’s all his fault.” Maria had sighed then, as they were both letting themselves fall seated on Liz’s couch. “And I can’t say a thing, because the only way to deal with this is for Michael to figure it out for himself.”
So, Liz hadn’t been sure of how exactly Maria’s plan of being quiet and somehow ignoring Michael would work to get Michael’s attention, but by the sound of it, it had worked. And she was happy about it, for them both. Because Liz knew that Michael being frustrated and scared was not a good Michael for anyone, including himself.
Now she had to work on Max’s worries and on convincing him to get some sleep. Kyle was right, Max had never been as stressed out as these past days, which would be a really good explanation as to why their connection had been low earlier that day. But first of all, she had to work on her own worries, because she was as stressed out as her husband.
The word echoed in her mind. Husband. For almost a year she had been sure that was never going to happen. Not after his future self had come and trashed all her dreams in an attempt to save the world’s destiny. She had tried to find herself another life. Hadn’t she kissed Sean after all? Hadn’t she laughed with him for a while? She had gotten to see what else was out there, as far away from Max and his world as anyone could find. Sean was the total opposite from the love of her life. He was a normal guy to begin with… and to end with too. And though deep down Sean had been a very nice guy who got to let her see a part of herself she didn’t even know existed, Sean wasn’t Max. Plain and simple.
No one could say she hadn’t tried to get away from the alien abyss. Even going to Vermont had been to see if maybe some order, some discipline and a well defined world was what she was missing. And she had sort of bought it all up to the night that Max had died. Nope, what she was missing was the prospect of a future with Max. But at that point in life Max himself was lacking a clear view of his own future, so…
Max dying and then coming back had made both of them realize that they could very well spend their respective lives apart, but both had seen their dreams become ashes in an instant. They both had had a clear vision of what they were missing by not being with each other. For Max, life had been too short, and he had missed everything he could have had with Liz. For Liz, it had been the prospect of a very long and lonely life. She might have been drunk for most of it, but she clearly remembered being devastated.
Though she had been cautious in the beginning of their relationship after Vermont –after all, how many times could her heart be broken time and again?- she had begun to really see her future. College was on the horizon, and she wasn’t thinking of attending Las Cruces. Were Max, Michael, and Isabel trapped in Roswell forever? She didn’t think so, but not even they were sure of what to do. That was why when Max had said that he wanted to go to Northwestern she had been… unsure.
How would things have turned out had they continued with their normal lives? Where would they be now? All of them? What if Max had not gone with her? All of this was nonsense, she knew, but she sometimes did wonder, and deep down she knew that as long as Max and she were alive, they were inevitably going to end up together. Maybe they would marry at the Elvis Chapel, maybe on a side road little town with the cutest of Churches. Or maybe even on another planet. But for her, all roads led to Max, and to calling him husband.
Thinking about Max as her husband always brought a smile to her lips, and the hot water running over her aching muscles was just the perfect combination to calm her down. After all, if she had married Max after all the chaos, lies, doubts, mistakes and pain that had plagued the last three years of High School –of which Dave had asked a lot- there was no force in this or any other world that could make her believe she couldn’t do impossible things. Heck, she had even ended up with powers, for crying out loud!
Except that, to be honest, Dave was a force she hadn’t encountered before.
Pierce had taken away their innocence. Tess had taken away their sense of trust and –by killing Alex- she had finally blasted away that thin bubble where they had thought that no matter what, everyone was going to be alive by the end of it all. Fighting her parents –as Max had been fighting his- had stripped her of her last childhood feelings. And now, here was Dave… who was threatening to take away her future.
Her instincts told her that he wasn’t an enemy, but she wasn’t getting the feeling that he was a friend either. Maybe they were reading too much into this and Dave was just some eccentric genius who really just wanted to study their powers…
Yeah, right…
But there was a certain… reassurance in Dave. The way he talked and the way he would give snippets of his own life. Even the way he was so casual while he was stirring his hot chocolate. What puzzled her the most was the way he carefully treaded over some subjects. He knew what he wanted to ask, but he also knew some things weren’t exactly for public knowledge. Especially if the subject was Tess.
She had been expecting it. As closed a chapter as it was, it still brought some dark emotions to her, and she knew that she had to remain calm because, well… you never knew when those green sparks would come again. But Dave had been very cautious about the whole thing.
“So, it all fell apart but… you still stuck around?” Dave had asked with a sidelong glance as they were both watching outside.
“Guess I did,” she had answered nonchalantly, wishing she still wasn’t so angry at everything that had happened then.
“Not many young women your age would have…” Dave had hesitated then, as if he had been unsure what word to use, “stayed by Max’s side after all those events.”
Events. How nicely put. “I knew…” Liz had whispered back, “I knew that if I wanted Max’s future, a future with him, I had to leave his past behind. It wasn’t easy. Hell I— I almost threw Tess when I saw her again,” she had amended at the last minute.
It had been like Maria had said: Forgive Max, or get him out of her life. Liz sighed. Getting Max out of her life was not only difficult, but practically impossible. Impossible if she was planning to move on and have a happy life. Granted, running for her life didn’t exactly qualify as a real life fairytale, but for those perfect moments with Max… For all those times she had awakened and had found him staring at her… For each and every embrace, every word of comfort, every dream she had seen in his soul… For all the acceptance he had shown for her own mistakes and flaws… It hadn’t been easy, and it certainly hadn’t been over night, but Liz had left Max’s past where it belonged: The past.
And she had told that to the man that held hers and Max’s future. Somehow she had known that Dave was not going to push for details on that. He hadn’t wanted her angry. He had wanted her answers, and that had meant taking it nice and easy. Or that had been what Maria had concluded, anyway. So it was that care, that attention to details, like the hot chocolate, or telling her to bring a sweater, or that he had blushed when she had busted him with his puzzle, that made her feel that he wasn’t after them with all these evil intentions. It all could very well be an act, she knew, but… Maybe she just wanted to believe he was a good guy.
Because if he was the bad guy they feared him to be, then he had already taken away their future.
* * *
It was the silence that was making Ray nervous.
The laws of nature being what they were, the girls were bound to take forever in the showers, while the boys would only take about 1/4 of the same time. So now Ray was alone with Michael, Max and Kyle, all four expectantly looking in the girls’ showers’ direction. Though they could very well be discussing future plans, or Jake’s idea, or just filling him in on what they were expecting, they had all leaned back against the first wall that had crossed their path and had silently waited. And waited… and waited. Hence the silence.
“Did we have a chance?” Michael asked out of the blue, making the other three men turn to look at him a little too fast. “Dave said when we arrived that you tracked us down and that you were the one who caught us too, so I want to know. What did we do wrong?”
Ray suddenly preferred the silence.
This was turning out to be one day full of weird events. First, Jake’s call at the ungodly hour of 4:36 a.m. about Dave having an asthma attack –did those guys actually sleep?- and then the subsequent argument between those two. Ray knew that Dave hated to even acknowledge he was asthmatic, but he had never seen Jake so furious with Dave for not having his inhaler nearby.
Then a tense calm had settled between the whizzes as Dave was recovering at the infirmary, until Dave had told Ray to set his meeting with Isabel at 8:30. Jake had told Ray to leave them alone then, and Ray had more than gladly complied. There was something eating Jake up, Ray knew, but what was it? Why was Jake so eager to corner Dave about the kids? Why hadn’t he done so when Dave had first presented the project seven months ago?
Then Michael had written back about changing the hour to 8:30 for their Gym appointment, which Ray had thought a little daring, but okay. He saw more advantage to giving them that, than by making them show up at 7:00. Building trust and that kind of thing.
And last but not least, Jake had called him later in the morning to ask him what his plans with the kids were and then he had ranted for about an hour about what was with Dave and this stupid idea that he could survive without his inhaler.
Weird. Jake just didn’t rant.… What was next? Samantha inviting him to dinner?
Now three pairs of eyes looked intently at him, curious, anxious, and even a little fearful. Waiting for him to tell them how they had been trapped. It wasn’t nice to look at your captor while standing beside him, he guessed, but Ray knew that he had to get along with these kids. He also knew that he had to get a grip on himself and stop worrying that any of them was going to blast him into oblivion. Besides, if they were going to learn his craft, they had to know what they had done wrong. Michael certainly had a good reason to ask this. He certainly had impressed Ray.
“No, you never had a chance,” Ray finally said, making Michael tense a little, while Max’s shoulders slightly sagged and Kyle’s eyes returned to the showers. “You did several things right and few wrong, but that was all that it took, really.”
“How did you find us?” Kyle asked, turning worried eyes to him. “We were picking routes randomly, flipping coins… How could you find us?” Kyle asked again. Flipping coins? No wonder their paths had been so illogical. Points that obviously had more advantages had been dismissed for creepy little towns.
“I don’t know how exactly Dave tracked you. He hacked into systems, he knew what the Special Unit knew. Satellite confirmation of your whereabouts was a sure thing when we could pin you down. It wasn’t easy. You did right by traveling in different numbers and at different times.”
“But we still didn’t have a chance,” Michael sullenly remarked. Ray thought for a moment how exactly was best to answer Michael.
“Listen, kids, you stayed out there, without protection, for seven months. That’s no small thing. You survived, you stayed together, and you did everything you could. It wasn’t easy to get you. It took months of planning.”
“So,” Max said, crossing his arms in front of his chest, narrowing his eyes a little, “no matter what… you would have… trapped us?”
“Or the Special Unit,” Ray said. All three visibly tensed at that. “The Special Unit’s problem was that they were chasing you as if you were humans. They weren’t factoring in that you could blow objects 200 feet away. That you could vanish walls, produce shields. They thought they could point a gun at you and render you defenseless that way. They knew you weren’t humans, of course, but they were going about tracking you and trying to ambush you by the book.”
“What did you do differently then?” Michael asked, concerned. How many ambushes had they escaped? Ray wondered for the first time. A few times, there had been very close calls. Sometimes Ray thought that they had some sixth sense to sense danger around the corner.
“We didn’t use the SWAT team and surround you with 35 men, that’s for sure. From the beginning we knew that a frontal attack was a no go.”
“‘We’?” Kyle asked. Ray turned to look at him.
“‘We’ as in Dave, Jake, and myself.”
“How was it done, then?” Michael pressed.
“With three men, a sedative gas, a clever story and… a lot of luck actually,” Ray summed it up. His mind wandered to the past, when they were trying to come up with a plan to trap them. How to lure them into the ambush. Who to take first?
“The aliens,” Ray had pointed out at the board where all six were pinned on their own column. Information about each one of them was neatly written below each picture. “They are the fire power; the humans would be left defenseless.”
Dave had thought about it for a second, and then he had tried to see a different approach. “If you take the humans first, you put the aliens in an impossible situation about fleeing and leaving their friends behind, or staying and fighting.”
“If they are fighting like that, it might become a very difficult scenario,” Jake had pointed out. Ray had nodded, knowing that the good doc had a point.
“No, you are right Jake,” Dave had said, thoughtful, “I don’t want to bring them here by force. At least not open force.”
“It has to be a small team,” Ray had started to form a plan, “less than five men. They have to be able to approach them without being suspicious.”
“Why not six?” Jake had asked, curious, “one for each of them.”
“I think that would be too many,” Ray had contradicted out loud, “though it might work.” The three of them had turned to look at the board. “I still believe that picking them two by two would be easier,” Ray had ended.
“No, that cannot be,” Dave had emphasized, his eyes still glued to the board. “If we want to show them how vulnerable they are they have to be taken at the same time, all of them.”
“And you don’t want them to be aware of what is happening until it’s too late…” Ray had finished for Dave.
“I don’t want them aware. Period.” Dave had corrected Ray.
“That’s a very intriguing puzzle,” Jake had interceded, “You want to take them under their own noses. Their special abilities are your biggest problem, you know?” Dave had absently nodded.
“We could use darts… snipers… all six of them getting out of a breakfast place…” Ray had offered.
“It might be, but it’s still too violent, and probably too public,” Dave had said, frowning. “There has to be a way of getting those kids without them realizing it’s happening… while they are unaware…”
“Sleeping?” Jake had guessed. Ray and Dave had turned to look at him. “The only time of the day you are truly unaware is when you are sleeping,” Jake had logically concluded, explaining his train of thought.
“If we could get them while they are sleeping, then they would be taken unaware and all together,” Ray had seen, “but we still have problems with that scenario.”
“Yeah, many,” Jake had agreed.
“You see,” Ray was now explaining to them, “too many circumstances had to be in place for the plan to work at its best. We had Dave’s damned conditions of you being all taken at the same time and unaware.”
“But that’s stupid. It would have been easier to take us two at a time,” Michael said.
“I know. Though it was more difficult to take you all at the same time, it wasn’t impossible.”
“It was all calculated,” Max said, in that quiet tone of his, “he wanted to trap us in the hardest conditions, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Ray agreed, locking eyes with Max. Calculated was definitely a word that described Dave’s actions to perfection. “He wanted to prove his point to you,” Ray explained. He didn’t need to add and he did.
“How hard was it?” Michael asked, crossing his arms as Max had done a minute before.
“Hard. First, to make a sedative gas work it has to be released in an enclosed environment,” Ray started, “A motel room is hardly an enclosed environment with its windows and ventilation systems, and doors, and cracks. It was hardly a sealed place,” Ray pointed out. “We assumed you had a look out, it only made sense, so to by-pass he or she, whoever was administrating the gas had to be able to get close to you without you being suspicious.”
“You chose small numbers,” Michael said, “that’s why you only sent three men.”
Ray nodded. “Though there were other things to take into consideration. Jake jumped in with his own problems. How much is too much sedative gas? He was concerned about your health. Different heights, weights, species… his concerns were shared by Dave.”
They had kept making plans, but in the end, it was the sedative idea that always seemed to be the best. At least on covering Dave’s points: Unaware and together. Jake concluded that all they really needed was to lightly sedate them, enough for them to not awake when being moved, but not enough to keep them out cold for an hour.
At some point the gas-leak story had come up. How to get six persons out without anyone being suspicious? How to administrate the real sedative that would last hours? Jake had still been concerned. He said that sedating a person should never be taken lightly.
“But in the end, we worked it out,” Ray ended. “It was hard, but…” he trailed off.
“But here we are,” Kyle said, trying to joke. Michael just scowled, while Max got a thoughtful look.
“What should we have done differently?” Michael finally asked.
“Dave was an enemy you couldn’t foresee,” Ray said, “even if you had had a lookout that night, we would have gotten you. If not with the gas, we would have used plan B, and you would have been taken that morning one way or another, following Dave’s conditions or not.”
“He told Liz that it took you six weeks to be able to do so,” Max said, still concentrated on his own thoughts. As if snapping out of it, he leveled his eyes to Ray’s. “Why couldn’t you wait any longer?”
Because Dave said so, Ray silently thought. “The Special Unit was going to try to take you that day. We couldn’t keep taking the risk that they would actually succeed. It was really close the last time you ran into them, you know?”
Michael almost unconsciously rubbed his right hand over his left shoulder. “We know,” he simply said, annoyed at something that Ray couldn’t figure out.
“And what if they had succeeded?” Max asked, “if we had been trapped by them? What would Dave have done?”
“I don’t know,” Ray lied. It was odd enough that Dave had told Liz how much time it had taken them to trap them, but Ray wasn’t entirely sure if it was a good thing that Max and company knew exactly how far Dave was willing to go to get them here. If Dave wanted them to know, then fine, but Ray was not going to comment on plan C. That plan that played the worst case scenario, where the kids were actually trapped by the Special Unit, and where he had to see how to get them out.
For one moment Ray truly contemplated the idea. If Dave had rescued them, would the kids still be so suspicious of him? Had the events not played out according to Dave’s first plan, would they be here? He shook the thought off. It didn’t matter. What mattered was earning their trust and staying in one piece every day, for as long as it would take.
As the girls finally emerged from the showers, and Max and Kyle went to meet them, Michael held back just a second longer.
“Maria told me she has this idea about you training her,” Michael quietly said, with a fury inside those brown eyes that made Ray stop in his tracks, “but if you so much as break one of her fingernails…” Michael trailed off as now Maria was closing in, yet the warning had been well implied.
Those were going to be the longest eight years of Ray’s life.
* * *
“They just looked at us, expectant…” Isabel was saying, now standing at the far end of the window, at the opposite extreme from the shattered glass. She was unconsciously playing with her necklace, moving it slowly side to side. “And we didn’t know what to say… where to begin…”
“Must have been a relief, though…” Dave said while Isabel was still lost in memories about telling their parents the truth, “you must have thought about it a million times.”
Isabel let go a small sarcastic laugh. “You were keeping count on that too?” she said, her eyes fixed on the trees outside. The sky was deep gray. Soon a storm was bound to hit.
“I’m not that good,” he answered, though she remained still, as if she hadn’t heard him. “You told them everything?” Dave continued, as if nothing had been said out of place. He crossed his arms and comfortably lay against the cupboard, his black numbers hanging on the opposite wall.
“We told them everything they needed to know…” Isabel said, her voice getting lower with each word. So, the answer was “no”. They hadn’t told them everything. She kept playing with her necklace, slower than before though. “There were things they really didn’t need to hear about then… And Max and I thought that with time we would… eventually fill in the gaps. After all, they are our parents.”
Something in Isabel’s voice, an undertone of loss and homesickness, made Dave miss his parents too.
”Look Mom! I can count to a million!” And that he had done… the entire week… He let go of the thought with a slight smile. His Mom had certainly been patient.
“And they didn’t run,” Isabel was saying now. “For all the times I knew they wouldn’t… it was really, really good to know I had been right all that time.”
“It must have been unsettling to know how much you had done under their own roof,” Dave said, “without them having the slightest clue.”
Isabel turned to look at him, as if she were about to say something not exactly nice, but she thought better of it at the last second. Instead, she turned to look at the puzzle, her back to the window now.
“Mom wouldn’t stop asking questions and Dad wouldn’t stop staring at us. On some level they felt betrayed,” she conceded, “but there was no avoiding that… We couldn’t take the risk before…” Isabel trailed off.
“They never noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Dave asked, raising one of his eyebrows. He wished now he could interview Diane and Phillip Evans.
“Max and I were sent to the shrink, what do you think?” Isabel sharply asked, her eyes still on the puzzle pieces, her hand reaching for the nearest ones and carefully flipping them up.
It could have been worse… Dave absently thought. Now, this was interesting. What exactly had the Evans’ noticed to send both their children into therapy? Not something alien related –at least not from their perspective- but something more… human. Yet before he could say anything about that, Isabel stopped flipping pieces, her eyes at some point on the table.
“Max was having nightmares, waking the entire house at times,” she barely said above a whisper, “how could you keep something like that from them?” She briefly closed her eyes, as if trying to shake the thought off. Her voice sent chills down Dave’s spine.
For a second, he felt like a little kid again. Distant echoes of screams in his mind. Old memories. He knew that the only way Max could have woken up the entire house was if he had screamed out of fear. Dave couldn’t stand the image. Something in someone’s scream touched something deep inside of him, something that made him want to put his hands on his ears and shrink. It was a childish feeling, a childish reflex, but up until this day Dave had avoided hospitals or situations where people would be screaming like the plague. If he couldn’t avoid it, he would swallow it, of course, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel cold inside.
And Isabel had heard Max scream. The way her voice had almost whispered it and her eyes had gotten that lost look. It had been a pain that she herself had felt when she had heard her brother at night. Screams had that quality: They made you feel. Feel the other’s pain as your own.
He found himself without words. What was he supposed to say? “I’m sorry”? His silence didn’t seem to bother Isabel though, since she just kept talking. “They had noticed things over the years… small things… things that didn’t quite add up but that they had both let go. For some reason or another, they just had let them go.”
“So when you told them the truth, it all made sense,” Dave said rather than asked.
Isabel suppressed an ironic laugh. “They had more questions than you,” she said, as if it should be obvious that things didn’t make sense for her parents. At least not that fast. “But at least they know now…” she said with a small smile, a sad smile. It didn’t linger though, as she faced up one last puzzle piece and turned to look at him, her expression in control again, serious.
“How much do you know about them?” she asked, standing now, the puzzle forgotten.
Dave slightly shrugged and took his hot chocolate mug from his cupboard. What he didn’t know about them, was more likely the question. “That Child Services always thought they had made the perfect choice by placing you with them,” Dave said after sipping the now cold chocolate. Someone had once told him “Never say anything wrong about anyone’s parents, even if they themselves do”, and boy, had he been right. So, start with the sweet and stay with the sweet. For the first time since this conversation had started, Dave got Isabel’s first real –if short- smile.
It really didn’t last. Her seriousness returned, expecting him to continue. “I know your dad loves to win in court, but he also takes losing his cases with dignity. He always plays by the rules. He’s a good boss, likes things neat, clear and certainly on time. He can be a little inflexible on some matters though, and once his mind is set on something, there’s no turning him back.”
“His secretary?” Isabel asked, her eyes slightly narrowing. Dave nodded. All this information had been obtained first hand by Philip Evans’ secretary, who had been working for Dave for almost two years now. “What about Mom? Who did you have tracking her?”
“Your mom loves to experiment with food, and she certainly loves to take pictures as well. Likes old movies, and has a soft spot for the Italian restaurant where she and your dad had their first date. She also loves to talk about her kids,” Isabel slightly glared at him. “Community Service meetings, every two weeks. She really likes to talk about her family life when she’s talking with other mothers, you know. It was easier to set up random meetings and random talks than to get one specific person to get close to her.”
“Was the information good?” Isabel asked, with no small hint of sarcasm.
Not as good as yours, Dave almost said, but he bit his tongue. That was not what he should say. “I needed to know,” he simply answered. “I needed to know what kind of… kids everyone thought you were. So yeah, the information was good. For invading aliens, you had way too many earthly things to worry about: School, curfews at home, social responsibilities, jobs.” Even boyfriends and girlfriends, Dave had almost slipped as well. He kept the thought to himself. Alex was certainly a very sore point here.
“So you thought we were here to invade?” Isabel asked, as if she couldn’t believe him.
“I didn’t know what to think, that’s why I watched. I kept wondering and wondering. Asking questions. Because without questions, there are no answers.”
“And the more you watched…” Isabel purposefully trailed off, so he could fill in the blanks.
“The more you didn’t make sense,” he said, making Isabel frown a little. “If you were invaders, then you could very well have been scouts. But it didn’t add up to your brother’s behavior. Why risk your cover by healing those kids in Phoenix? As far as we could see, those kids had no significance or importance to anything related to you. Except for Brody’s daughter. Maybe it had been blackmail: Brody threatened you in exchange for healing his daughter, and the other kids were healed just to not single Sydney out.”
“You believed that?” Isabel asked, a little bit offended.
“For a short while. But it was done too carelessly, the silver handprints left behind, the security videos not taken care of. What Max did he did on the spur of the moment. And probably without your knowledge, let alone your approval.”
“So we were too good to be invaders?” she said, leaning against the table again, the puzzle at her back, crossing her arms.
“Max was too good to be an invader,” Dave corrected her, “I didn’t know about the rest of you. I had just found out about who you were. Maybe you were colonizing. Maybe you were scientists. Maybe you were refugees. There are only so many options to choose from, and they all have to do with social, economic or political reasons.”
“How long did it take you to reach a conclusion, then?” Isabel asked, sounding genuinely interested.
Way too long, Dave silently thought, and I was almost too late. Instead, he shrugged. “I got the pieces one by one. To make a time frame, I first got your adoption records. From that point I kept updating it with your friend’s and family’s bits. Later, it was the outside sources that helped shape what I got. School. The Special Unit Agent. The MetaChem research. Police records. So all together, I would say that it has taken me every single day from the moment I found that video at Phoenix ‘til this very instant. And it’s still a work in progress.”
Isabel slightly glared at him. “You haven’t reached a conclusion yet?” she asked, rather coldly.
I have reached many conclusions, Dave thought as he sipped the last of his chocolate. “There are a lot of details to take into consideration,” he said at length, “but you certainly don’t let me get bored.”
Isabel raised one of her eyebrows, slightly moving her head to her left, as a way of impatiently saying “is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”
“Almost,” he finally said, as the tall girl slightly snorted and turned away. Dave left his mug over the cupboard and went to the closest side of the table, being opposite to Isabel who now was staring again at the outside, her arms still crossed. “There are still many things that don’t make sense,” he casually said, looking at the pieces he had already placed together, recalling the mental image he had of the complete puzzle. “With every detail that I get, the fewer blanks there are to fill in,” he continued, pausing for a second on the space he had in front. In his mind, he rotated the picture 180° since now he was facing the puzzle backwards. Jake usually was the one doing this side. “More and more pieces shift in my mind, but I still can’t tell how the entire picture will be.”
Isabel’s eyes met with his. “If anything,” he said, “I’ve learned that things with you kids rarely stay the same way, and are barely predictable at all. So I just keep a mental inventory of all the facts I have come across… and so I keep watching.”
Silence met his words for what felt like forever.
“It must be tiring to remember everything you see and hear,” Isabel finally said as Dave started to flip puzzle pieces face up, separating them with a master’s experience. He stopped in mid-air and smiled at her, despite the sarcasm implied in her last statement.
“I don’t keep everything in my mind, just what I need,” he corrected her. He suddenly felt way too self-conscious as Isabel just stared at him, weighing him. He flipped one last piece. Though he had told Liz that he was not going to keep putting his puzzle together while she was there because women felt offended if they didn’t have your whole attention, flipping the pieces face up calmed him down and made his ideas go in order again. Especially since Isabel was still wearing that patterned sweater.
She had looked at the puzzle pieces with interest all morning long, and had even flipped one or two when he had stood up to go for a snack, and a few just now. Though she hadn’t been restless, her eyes had taken in his whole office. Efficiently and effectively. With her very sharp mind, she had been silently cataloguing this room. He knew because he was used to doing so when he was in other people’s rooms.
He knew too she was the type of person who would notice if he was wearing brand clothes, brand shoes, brand cologne, or how long ago his office had been dusted. She noticed those things. The question was, did she know what to do with that kind of information?
“It must be lonely to not have any pictures of those you care about,” Isabel said out of the blue, leaving the previous subject behind, taking him by surprise. He was so used to not having pictures of anyone by now that the comment seemed out of place. Like she should know he didn’t keep any.
“The most valuable things are stored in my mind,” he said, leaving his puzzle alone and walking to the opposite corner from Isabel’s position. He stood facing the window, his leather chair separating them both. So now was the moment when Isabel was openly fishing for her own answers.
“It’s gotta be easy to be a genius,” Isabel said, still looking out of the window.
“It has its moments,” he said with a small smile. What would Jake say to the same question? Would Jake see first the bright side and next the dark one? “It’s gotta be easy to be able to do all you can do,” he stated back. Isabel turned to look at him, and her eyes moved to a spot beside him. To the window. To the shattered window.
“It has its moments,” she repeated his own words, returning her gaze to him. He let go the smallest of laughs, his eyes turning to the outside. What a subtle reminder that his safety around these people was all but an illusion.
“Are they really okay? Our parents?” she asked after a long pause, turning to look at him, her eyes as expectant as Dave had imagined her parents’ had been when they were listening to Isabel’s and Max’s story. And he also saw fear in them. Fear that he was lying to her, to them all.
For someone who had lost both their kids and didn’t know if they were alive or not, yeah… he had seen worse. “They are okay,” he answered her instead. They both held each other’s eyes for a moment. She wanted proof, he knew, but the kind of proof she wanted she would only get when she talked with her parents herself. And that wouldn’t happen ‘til the end of the month because the Special Unit was just too close to their parents now since Maria’s birthday was the next day. Oh no, special dates like birthdays and holidays were just about the worst case scenario to set up the kids with their families.
“Once it’s safer for you to call them… you know, between Maria’s and Max’s birthdays…” Dave trailed off. He had already explained this to Liz. Surely Isabel was aware of it by now.
“Speaking of that,” Isabel said, all her seriousness returning, with more than a hint of determination in her eyes, “there’s something we need to change about your idea for Maria’s present.”
Dave regarded her for a moment. Why did he suddenly feel like she was not going to give him a choice about this?
TBC…
Why indeed! 
Remember the Blue Rooms for instance? hehehe But yeah, imagine his surprise when he found out these aliens had more problems than your average teenage human 
That would be at