Ah! We're now entering the beginning of the end
But don't worry, it's all mapped out
Journal entry #20, September 1st, 2011
It’s been three weeks since Max walked out that door, and soon after, Alex and John went their separate ways as well. I don't know if I've become an adrenaline junkie, or if it's just that I miss having friends around, but with Alex back in Norway and John back with his wife, it's become painfully obvious that Max is not coming back. This chapter of my life is over. I have to let it go, treasure it in the back of my mind, never to speak of it ever again.
But the truth is, I don't want to let go.
Chapter Forty-Five
Shattered
Something was wrong.
She didn't know what, but the feeling was growing. For the hundredth time that night, she bit her lip.
Looking at the doorframe, she hoped against hope that Max would be there. Or that Max would call her. Or John. Or someone. It was a depressing thought to know Max could disappear from everyone's life without a trace.
She stood up and walked to the window. Starbucks was about to close and nothing looked out of place—yet something
was. In any case, it didn't look as if Max was there.
Of course he isn't, silly. He's fine. He has to be.
She kept watching, hugging herself.
Funny how things she took for granted had changed so drastically, and still had left her life intact. How aliens were real, but she still had to go grocery shopping and pay the bills. How Alex had hacked one of the most classified projects ever, and yet he flew coach to Norway because his business partners' were starting to get angsty at his prolonged absence. How John had all these incredible powers, but still had bought a dozen red roses on his way to his wife, who had the amazing mundane power of banishing him to the couch.
These thoughts did little to distract her. Rationally, she had a million reasons to be worried about Max: he could be on the other side of the world being shot at. He could be dying of a reaction to her counter-drug. He could be lying on a metal table somewhere, being dissected by that sadistic Summers.
Stop it, she ordered herself, closing her eyes. The tug in her mind didn't stop, feeble as it was. Maybe all she needed was to go home, take a shower, and go to bed. Max would be fine. Life would go on. It was time for her life to do the same.
Finally, she left the lab, the clock reading 10:31 p.m. She got into her car in a hurry, a growing sense of dread filling her. Her stomach ached and her heartbeat accelerated—she just didn't know why.
Still parked, she turned to look around. Part of her wanted to run; part of her wanted to fight. The more she looked on Max's direction, the more she wanted to go there.
Be realistic. What are you going to do? Storm a military base all by yourself? Because you think something is wrong with Max? For real?
Gripping the wheel, she started her drive home at barely 10 miles per hour. The lab building and Starbucks were still visible in her rearview mirror when she stopped. She bit her lip once more, and made a decision. A stupid one, maybe, but she had to know if this tug was real.
Cutting a U-turn, she headed in the opposite direction from her apartment, and in the general direction of Max’s base.
Just a few miles, she promised herself. Whatever she felt, it was coming from that direction, and damn if she was not going to check it out.
Driving slowly, Liz scanned the road illuminated by the headlights, trying to peer past their limits into the darkness that obscured the woods beyond. One mile became two, became four, became ten. A few cars passed her by.
At a random point, she pulled over and stopped. She'd arrived to nowhere, logic told her, but that mental tug was strongest here.
Stop, it seemed to tell her,
stop right here.
Cold sweat broke on her forehead.
I'm not imagining things, she told herself, her knuckles turning white on the wheel. Nodding once, she got out of the car with her flashlight, her breath condensing.
The only rational explanation to why she was here had a name, and she whispered it now:
"Max?"
She looked straight ahead at the dark road. "If you're there, I'm here..." She stood still, straining her senses to catch anything, but heard nothing, saw nothing. The silence oppressed her.
"Max!" she shouted, wanting to reach him on some level and only knowing her powerless voice. "It's me! Liz!—Parker!" she amended. The day Max said her name was the day hell would freeze over.
She pointed her flashlight everywhere. Right, left, up, and down. Overhead, rainy clouds collided, full of cold and misery.
"Max!" she shouted again, desperation taking hold of her. Was he really calling her? Could he even do that?
Was she losing her mind?
She barely heard it then: a branch breaking.
Please don't be a bear, she thought as she turned the flashlight in the direction of the sound.
Another branch broke at her right. Eagerly, she spun her flashlight there, and promptly found what she was looking for: Max.
Hardly able to stand against a tree trunk, he was completely disoriented, barely able to close his eyes at the glaring light. His breathing was labored, and he looked lost and exhausted. She scrambled frantically to reach him, as a few falling drops gave warning that the clouds were about to burst.
"Oh my God, Max! Max! What happened to you?!"
Before, Liz would never have dared to touch him without permission, but right now, that was the furthest thing from her mind. Her hands went to his cold cheeks to get his attention, calling his name. He was disoriented, like someone with a concussion.
Or someone who's been drugged, she thought with mounting fear. His eyes could not focus on her, even if he was trying his hardest. When she touched him, her stomach clenched, nausea overcoming her.
She let Max go, and the feeling receded. "We have to get you out of here," she stated, draping his arm over her shoulders. She knew it was going to be difficult, but she wasn't anticipating Max's almost dead weight on her a moment later. She stumbled, her back and knees protesting the sudden burden.
Ten agonizing steps later, she opened the passenger door. Once Max was seated, she went around the front of the car and got into the driver's seat. The door made a thunderous sound when she closed it, but as Liz placed her hands on the wheel, she realized something was on them. Something dark.
Blood.
"Oh my—" she didn't finish her thought, turning to look at Max who stared blindly ahead. Her eyes went to his hands, and sure enough, blood coated them, too. She reached for his chest, opening his jacket.
"Please, tell me this isn't your blood,
please, please, please." She couldn't find the source of the bleeding. Maybe on his back, maybe on his legs.
Maybe whoever did it is still out there.
The thought paralyzed her searching fingers, crystalizing her priorities in a second: Get him out of danger, get him to safety. If he was bleeding, the last place he was going to get help was in the middle of the road in the middle of the night.
Cutting another U-turn and flooring it, Liz went as fast as she could, not caring about how Max's body slid to the right, leaning against the door. He didn't even grunt.
"Once we're out off this road, we'll get you checked, okay?"
No answer. She looked at his profile, willing him to voice what had happened, who had done it. How had he called her?
She didn't know what to do. "Think, Liz.
Think!" she told herself through clenched teeth, devouring the miles she'd covered not ten minutes ago.
Rain fell harder, giving everything a sense of urgency. The wipers that hypnotized Max's eyes were the only sound her nerves could stand right now.
The Starbucks logo was of little comfort as she zoomed past it, leaving behind her building, her job, her
life—all part of some world where aliens didn't exist and she wasn't carrying a hybrid into the vast unknown.
"What they did to you?" she asked in despair. Max turned to look in her general direction.
"Are you a dream?" he asked slowly, almost slurring.
"More like a nightmare," she muttered, shaking her head. "I knew something was wrong with you, and I just went looking on your direction. I didn't know you were there—I mean, I
did know, sort of… Maybe like a hunch? I—I
hoped you would be there, and that it wasn't all in my head. And you—you were there, except—except I didn't really
know—"
She stopped. Max closed his eyes and winced.
If I keep babbling my mind out, he's not going to understand a thing.
"Sorry. Max, can you tell me why you were out there?"
"No," he said, opening his eyes and looking at his lap. "Well..." he thought harder, making an incredible effort to hold on to his thoughts. "Maggs... she said to wait for her..." A beat, "Are you Maggs?"
"I'm Parker," she stated.
The girl you spied on, bullied into helping you, and who ultimately gave you the magic cure. She laughed at that, and felt rather silly doing it, too. "I'm Liz Parker, your friend." Max would probably recognize her better as Dr. Parker, but if this was their last conversation, she wanted him to know her as something more personal than a lab technician. "We've had Thai food together," she added. It seemed to ring a bell somewhere in his foggy brain.
"I don't... want food," he said, getting slightly pale.
"Did someone hit you?" she asked, reading the sign for the interstate.
If you have a concussion, I should be driving you to the nearest hospital. She mentally checked his symptoms, and whatever this was, it wasn't pretty.
"They tried," Max said with a sincerity that didn't leave any room for doubt. "I hit them instead."
Screw this, Liz thought, veering to the right and parking the car, its flashers ticking as she unbuckled Max's seatbelt. Miles away, lightning stroke.
"Here, let me see," she said, reaching for the back of his head. With light fingers, she prodded his skin looking for any lumps or—worse—any blood. As she went from one side to the other, she watched him carefully for any reaction. He complied without saying a word, without wincing, without doing much of anything really, except blinking lethargically.
Finding nothing, her hands explored down his torso.
"Okay, help me out here, Max," she said, unzipping his leather jacket. "We have to get this off you," she murmured, as Max strained feebly to comply while she fought with the sleeves in the constricted space. He leaned his forehead on hers as she gave one last pulled on his sleeve, and Liz froze.
"I'm so tired," he murmured, the words sending her vivid images of a lab that wasn't her own, of a man she'd never seen but knew immediately was the Summers he'd talked about a few times. He'd done something to him.
Other images came, faster and faster, emotions and memories colliding in a dizzying carrousel. Duty and secrecy warred with the need to escape and leave this place. She felt his fierce loyalty and his deeper isolation, the conflict of wanting to belong to his life and the need to find what love really was about. He was so tired of being lied to, of being used. He was so tired of believing he had nothing good to offer—so tired of wanting to have a normal life.
She pressed Max's chest gently back to the seat, barely nodding. Her mind was stretched in ten different directions, trying to understand how Max's mind worked, what kind of life he had, and what to do with all this information now. Most importantly, she needed to know where they should go.
Concentrating on the first image, she finally understood what his mind had told her first: "It was Summers," she whispered, feeling Max's muscles tense. "Max... what did he do to you? All this time?" she asked, for one moment looking at his face. He didn't just look tired, he looked exhausted to the point of oblivion.
His shirt had bloody spots all over, and she hastily lifted it so she could take a good look at his body. The blood had stained his skin, but no wounds were open, nothing bleeding.
At least nothing vital, she thought, taking a look at his arms. She patted him down the legs to look for fresh blood, but everything seemed to be good.
No concussion, no loss of blood. All good news, yes, but that left her with an unknown drug running in his system.
Another unknown drug, that is, she thought with despair. When had he had his last dose? Was he off the original drug?
No, no, that would be too soon.
Maybe Maggs improved my formula... It didn't matter. She needed Max coherent to answer these questions, which was the furthest from happening right about now.
"Okay, okay..." she said to herself, looking at the emergency flashers, as if somehow the answer to her problems lay there.
"Max?" she asked, still looking at the display, "Do you know what drug they gave you?"
"I don't… remember. I've never... felt this way... before..." She turned to look at him, and caught him before he could hit the dashboard in front.
"I think you need to buckle up again," she said, some part of her finding this both incredibly stupid and absurd. Once she grabbed him images came back. She saw Maggs, urging him to get out. She saw soldiers, maybe doing a perimeter, maybe coming for him. She broke the connection when she was about to see how Max had dealt with that particular problem.
At least now I know who this blood belongs to, she thought, as she carefully avoided touching Max again.
"It hurt," Max said, trying his hardest to keep his head up.
"When they drugged you?" she asked, safely on her side of the car. She turned the emergency lights off, and pulled onto the road again.
"When they shot you," he stated simply. She hit the breaks of the car abruptly enough to leave marks on the pavement.
"What?"
"They shot you," he said, signaling his abdomen, roughly around where she'd been shot a lifetime ago.
"How do you know that?"
"I had a flash... I do that now," he explained, frowning.
Of course, if I could see something from him, he could see something from me. She blushed at some of the things she had thought over the months. What if he saw some of that and totally misunderstood it?
"What else... did you see?" she asked tentatively, resuming their trip. The silent road was eerie enough without having an alien confessing his mind-reading abilities via touch.
"Cupcakes," he murmured, frowning. "Boy, you were embarrassed." The ghost of a smile came with that memory, and Liz's heart sang at that. Maybe the effect of the drug was starting to wear off.
Keep him talking.
"I was, God, I hated that dress,"
but I was 5 years-old, how long ago did you see?
"You're scared of me," he said then, turning to look at her, for the first time almost looking at her eyes.
She shook her head. "I was in the beginning. Who wouldn't be? And that's what you wanted, right? Me, out of my wits, unable to refuse your offer?"
"I would have left you alone," he whispered, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Yeah well, no alien powers here. I had nothing to go on but your words. You can be pretty scary when you want to be." She glanced at him, seeing if he was smiling at her joke, but his eyes were glazy again, hardly any awareness left.
"Max... it might be wrong, but you really do need a hospital. Whatever they gave you—I don't want you to die..." she whispered. She turned to look at him, to hear him say that it was okay, that he understood. That going to an ER and being tested and his secret blown wide open was worth the risk. Unfortunately, he was already unconscious, leaving the decision-making to her.
What would you do in this situation? She was no spy, she was no special black ops agent. She didn't deal with this kind of stuff.
John did. Maybe I don't know how to call you, but I sure as hell know where you might be.
In her mind, a plan formed. Taking a right, she went into the interstate. Last he'd told her, John's home was in Oregon. She might not know how to find
him, but with a little luck, she was going to find Mrs. Herschel.
