Eve (begonia9508) - Let's hope that Max wouldn't actually do that with Tess... Thank you for the feedback!
L-J-L 76 - Thank you for the feedback! (and the bump
)
Carolyn (keepsmiling7) - Thank you for the feedback!
Helen (roswelllostcause) - Yes, Tess is probably involved in this mess somehow... Thank you for the feedback!
saori_1902 - Thank you
Natalie36 - Hehe... possibly
Thank you for the feedback!
Previously on "Lethal Whispers"...
Max was having premonitions about Liz being taken by FBI. With FBI snooping around, the gang decided that they needed to go on the run. While on the run, Liz has been having nightmares that have disturbed the sleep of the ones she has shared a room with. So it was recently decided that Max would share room with Liz, since he seems to be the only one able to wake her up from the nightmares and comfort her. And in the previous chapter, Liz caught Max and Tess - making out in a rather undressed state - in Max and Liz's room. As she ran outside, distraught, someone attacked her...
CHAPTER 42
Max
The first sign that something was wrong came with the wrongness of his body.
It was as if he had been clogged without actually having been in a fight. His body felt heavy, his head filled with cotton. He blinked slowly, grabbing for the edge of the small bedside table for support. He was somewhat aware of the odd look his sister was giving him before he closed his eyes and with a lowered head tried to get his bearings.
What’s happening?
He swallowed deeply and was just about to force his eyes open when the thought hit him with brutality.
Liz.
“Where’s Liz?” he ignored the garbled quality to his voice and tried to discount why it felt so difficult to form coherent words. “She should be here by now.” He squinted at Tess who had been rather distracted throughout the discussion.
Why is the light so bright? “Did you leave her the note?”
“Of course I did,” Tess answered, slightly defensive.
Max felt the prickle of apprehension run up his spine and he shook his head. “Something’s wrong.”
“Are you okay?” Isabel asked, but her question was overrun by Michael stating, “It’s only been ten minutes. She probably just needed a break from all the alienness.”
Max took a deep breath and closed his eyes for another second. His mind was getting clearer and encouraged, he took another deep breath. Max knew that Liz didn’t need ‘a break from all the alienness’. Max hadn’t failed to notice how jittery Liz had grown these last couple of days and even though she tried not to show it, she rarely wanted to be alone for more than two minutes.
Ten minutes was a long time for Liz to be alone. Too long.
Max was feeling more normal by the second and when he opened his eyes again, Maria was getting up from her seat. “I’ll go and look for her.”
Michael was quick to follow. “I’ll come along. If something
has happened, no way I’m letting you go there on your own.”
“I’m not staying here,” Max said, already at the door (although it had taken some wobbly effort).
Isabel sighed and brushed a hand through her blonde long hair. “I guess that means we’ll all go.”
Max honestly didn’t care who stayed and who came along, he needed to get to Liz. Needed to make sure that she was alright. Because he was terrified that what he had just felt the tip of the iceberg of what was affecting Liz at that very moment. Finding the door ajar to his and Liz’s shared room made the apprehension he was feeling spike.
“She wouldn’t leave the door open, would she?” Maria whispered behind Max and he put a finger to his lips to gesture silence as he remained by the hinges of the door as he pushed it open with his foot. If he’d had a gun he would be holding it against his chest right now, prepared to aim it in front of him as he swiveled around the corner. Instead, he held his hand out, ready to blast energy from his palm if he came upon an intruder.
The well-used hinges of the door gave a elongated moan as the door slowly swung open. Max took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing pulse, before quickly turning the corner with his right hand stretched out in front of him and his left reaching out to hit the light switch.
The room instantly bathed in light and the tension in Max’s body eased back as he scanned the room. There was no one there. The room was empty.
“Liz?” he called out softly as he strode towards the bathroom. “Liz? Are you in there?”
With the same caution that had been applied to the front door, Max pushed the door to the small bathroom open. The bright white light of the room flickered on with a brush of his hand and its interior stared back at him mutely.
“Is she there?” Isabel called from the front door.
Max brushed the shower curtain to the side. It was ridiculous. Of course she wouldn’t be standing behind it, but he was desperately hoping that she was. His heart was quickly hardening, his breathing becoming ragged and strained in his ears as he croaked in reply, “No.”
She was gone.
“Maybe she’s outside,” Maria suggested. But her voice sounded wrong. Not like the strong, confident best friend he knew and loved. “Maybe she needed some fresh air.”
He nodded, even though they probably couldn’t see him inside the bathroom. He heard the shuffle of movements which suggested that someone had gone out to check. He spun and left the bathroom.
As he crossed the wooden floor, his eyes skittered around the room, trying to find signs of a struggle, any clues as to what might have happened. But the beds were still made and their bags were still at the door, right where they had left them two hours before when checking in. He couldn’t meet the eyes of his friends as he reached the front door. He felt himself shake with anger and fear. The feeling of failure was melting through his veins like acid, making it difficult to breathe.
Keep it together.
He looked up and met his sister’s worried eyes.
“Max,” she breathed, concern dripping through that single syllable. She reached out to touch his arm in comfort, but he shied away from it, brushing through the small crowd of his closest ones at the door and hurried towards the front door of the building. The cool air hit him in the face, putting a welcoming damper on the fire raging inside of him.
“Max!”
He turned to see Michael crossing the parking lot. He was breathless, as if he had been running. If circumstances had been different, Max had felt gratitude. He had been grateful that Michael seemed to have rushed around the parking lot, looking for a girl that he barely approved of. But Max was emptied of positive emotions.
Michael jogged up to him and Max could detect worry from his friend, which made his heart slam harder in his chest. If
Michael was worried it was bad. That was a
really bad sign.
“I can’t find her. I checked in the reception, asked the clerk, but he hadn’t seen her. She’s not at the vending machines at the back or by the car.”
Max managed a nod and he felt the tightness wind him up again. “They’ve taken her.”
He could hear how flat his statement sounded, which drained him further. Michael put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“We’ll find her, okay?”
Max nodded in an attempt to show his gratitude, but all he felt was darkness. And failure. He had failed to protect her.
*****
Special FBI Agent Joel Martin
Elizabeth Parker was a beautiful girl and, based on the records, she was also smart. The complete package. Why she would decide to associate herself with a bunch of aliens was beyond him.
The white laboratory light flickered above him, the bulb needed changing, as he looked over at the unconscious girl restrained to the chair in the middle of the room. He tapped a pencil to his bottom lip as he considered Ms. Parker’s agenda. If there even was one.
Maybe she was just one of those girls catching onto a pop culture hype? Like the teenage girls who wanted their boyfriends to suck their blood just because the ‘Twilight’-books had romanticized blood as a primary source of sustenance. Maybe she was just in for the thrill of it; to see if they would hurt her or if she would be special and spared. Maybe she wanted a free ticket off this planet.
Liz groaned softly, her slack head lolling imperceptibly to the side. He pushed off the metallic table he had been leaning against and stepped up to the metal chair. Not the most comfortable chair, but it fulfilled the requirements.
He casually approached the chair and stepped on a pedal by its foot, an arrow indication ‘Down’. The back of the chair started to recline, the whirring mechanical sound of the motion bouncing off the cold white tiled walls. He looked at her face closely as her eyes were moving rapidly behind her closed eyelids, waiting for her eyes to open.
As the chair stopped in an almost 180 degree angle, making her more or less horizontal, her eyelids fluttered and blinked open. Only to close again with a soft moan.
“Wake up, Ms. Parker,” Joel cooed. But to his disappointment, her head lolled heavily to the side, her body relaxing into unconsciousness.
He repressed a groan of frustration, impatiently tapped his pen against the top of her hand, before he left the room in search of the doctor.
He wanted her awake. Now.
*****
Liz
When she came to she thought she was dreaming, because she had been there before.
The scene was eerily familiar with its imposing stark white walls and her inability to move her arms and legs. Then she remembered the sting in her neck and the sensation of falling. Instinctively, she pulled at the restraints even though she knew it was pointless. The hard metallic restraints were digging into her wrists and moving around was only making the unyielding material dig into her soft skin.
She let out a frustrated scream and it bounced back at her from the hard walls, taunting and teasing her. With the realization of her situation came the hot angry tears. She had put herself in a vulnerable situation. She had gone outside, unprotected, at a time when she had been off guard.
Her thoughts immediately flickered to the scene that had made her lose track of her surroundings. Max and Tess, together, and the tears came harder. This was not like the dream at all or Max’s premonition.
Max wouldn’t come for her this time, he was too busy with Tess.
The bitterness of her thoughts made her bite down on her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. This was not the time to feel sorry for herself. She had to get out of here. Tending a broken heart was furthest down on her list of priorities.
In the midst of her arguing with herself, the door opened and a wave of déjà-vu hit her as Agent Martin and a white clad man entered the room. She bit back her anger and repressed the urge to trash against her restraints and spit at the men, and aimed at vulnerability instead. Maybe if they could see that she was nothing but a frail human girl, they would let her go.
She removed the restraint on her tears and let them roll down her cheeks.
“Let me go, please,” Liz sobbed. “I’ve told you everything I know. Please.”
“Now now, Ms. Parker,” Agent Martin said, a calculated look on his face. “This won’t hurt a bit. And after I get what I need, I’ll let you go.”
The recital of her dream word by word scared her more than his words. She felt her own mouth move to form the words that were meant to follow. “I’ve told you everything already.”
Agent Martin gestured towards the doctor, ignoring her plea. “This is the doctor that will assist us today.”
The doctor was old, probably well into retirement, but it was the look of complete indifference on his face that ignited her anger again. He was a
doctor. He had sworn by an oath to ‘do no harm’ and here he was nonchalantly staring down at a girl restrained to a chair. This was a free country. Alien suspicions or not, they had no right to do this.
“I will report you,” Liz threatened, her voice gathering strength through the tears. “This is against my rights. You can’t keep me like this. You can’t treat me this way.”
Agent Martin barely blinked at the venom in her voice. “You are correct, Ms. Parker. Which is why the good doctor here has brought something that will help you forget. You’ll wake up in that bed in your motel room none the wiser.”
Liz paused.
There. That was different. Last time there had been no motel room. Which meant that they
had influenced the future, changed the future, but mostly postponed it. It still happened, just slightly different. The fear was struggling to break free in her body, the fear of betraying her new-found friends and of not remembering that she had done so.
She struggled against the restraints (maybe they would come loose if she jiggled them enough) and spit out, “You bastard! I will remember. I will remember.”
Agent Martin smiled sweetly and Liz felt the nausea rise in her esophagus. “I’m pretty positive you won’t. This is great stuff. Excellent at causing both retrograde and anterograde amnesia.” Agent Martin gave the doctor a nod. “Proceed, doctor.”
The doctor nodded and stepped up to Liz with a syringe. Liz felt the tug on her wrist as the doctor picked up the IV-line. Knowing that she could affect the future, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of reading her fear. “Leave me alone!”
She collected a ball of spit in her mouth and directed it at the old man. Her warm spit ended up on his cheek, but the doctor barely flinched and Liz’s anger hitched. She got the ominous sensation that the doctor was used to this; this wasn’t his first prisoner.
Her pause gave him plenty of time to inject the yellow-tinted liquid into her cephalic vein and while the agent handed the doctor a paper towel to wipe her anger off his face, Agent Martin gave the answer to the question she had never asked (not in this version of the future at least), as if stubbornly refusing to go off script.
“The good doctor here just injected you with, well, the colloquial term would be ‘truth serum’. This is the refined version of hypnotics - something that the Army has been working on - that has a much higher degree of…success.”
His voice sounded funny, like someone had dulled the clarity, and she was starting to feel dizzy, the white room around her was beginning to tilt.
The agent’s voice rolled between highs and lows, like a teenage boy going through puberty, as he filled in, “To you, Ms. Parker, it will just be a pleasant high.”
“Max,” she said quietly, the words slurring as if she was intoxicated, and her eyelids felt very heavy. “Help me.”
The last minutes of conversation were slowly being erased as she gradually disappeared into darkness, yet again.
TBC...
EVE