Quotes: Tess, Lies, and Videotape
Chapter Four: The Odd One Out

"Are you sure about this Parker?" Brian asks holding the door open for me. "You don't need to be here; besides, you're looking a little pale."

"Stop worrying. I really don't think Pierce is going to be lurking around the lab at two in the morning."

His frown only deepens.

Hoping to distract him, I reach out to straighten his tie. Yet, it still looks like a mess. Undoing the loop, I start to make a new knot.

Brian touches my wrists, "he was asking about your parents."

The pieces of fabric slip momentarily out of my hands. "I can...handle it." Now go to your meeting and play nice with the other bureaucrats. I've got some cells to look at."

"Yes ma'am. If anything happens, I want you to page me."

Standing on my tiptoes, I smooth a blonde fly away down.

"Are you done dressing me mom?"

"If I had been dressing you, I would have never put the tie with that shirt."

He looks down at his tie.

"Kidding." I kiss a tanned cheek and push him toward the door. "You're going to be late."

"You know I think you're trying purposely to get rid of me."

"I guess I might as well come clean. Mani and I are having a fling."

"That would be the day," he snorts. "See you."

I lean up against the wall and watch him leave.

"I'm sorry that you had to come down and do this Ms. Parker. It's just that only family can claim the remains. If you just initial here, I can send them off to the funeral home for cremation."
"I want to see them."
"I beg you to reconsider. Their injuries--."
"I want to see them."

I wipe at something in my eye. Stopping at the security desk, I hand the guard my credentials.

"Everything seems to be in order," he pauses, "where did you get your necklace?"

"It's Pueblo."

"That crest is all over the Mayan temples at Chichen Itza. I'm studying archeology at the university," he explains.

"Do you know what the Mayans used it for?"

"They believed it would protect them against the Nzaran."

"Nzaran?"

"They were a mythological people that came from the sky. Mayan priests thought they would bring about the end of the world. Senorita are you all right? You look as a white as a ghost."

"I'm fine."

He opens the security door. Turning the corner, a very red slightly over weight man blocks my way into the haz-mat facilities.

"Mani."

"The stain image shows the sample is a filovirus. Why are you questioning my findings? He grimaces, "you're doing that witch thing again aren't you? It's how you always seem to know what the virus is before anyone else."

"It's actually an Antarian thing."

"What?" He fondles a box of Marlboro's peeking out of his shirt pocket.

"Go have your cigarette Mani." I duck underneath his arms and begin to slide a blue protective suit up over my clothes. My attention falls on large TV feeding images of the virus's cultures. "It's beautiful." I trace the u shaped design. "The body is almost perfectly symmetrical."

"How did you know I wanted a cigarette?"

"You're starting to get irritable."

"You sound like my wife."

Poor woman.

"It's just that Brian wanted me to fill in as your lab partner."

"I always work alone. You know that." I snap away from my study and begin to zip up the front of my suit. " He wanted you stay with me because of Pierce didn't he?"

Mani suddenly finds an interesting spot over my head to study.

"What is this guy built like a linebacker?"

"No, more like an evil Ronald Regan."

"He's old?"

"Yeah, like sixty. He's got these black beady eyes, and he likes to get up in everyone's face. A real pendejo," he mumbles.

I pull my hair back into a ponytail.

"And he had the nerve to tell me that smoking is bad."

"Smoking is bad for you Mani. Can you help me put the mask on?"

"He didn't have to give me a lecture on it." He slips the large spaceman contraption over my head. "For such a little woman, you have a giant head."

"God decided to give me a big head to make up for the other areas he left me lacking in." I take a deep breath of the filtered air.

"Hey don't listen to what Max told you."

"Does everyone know his name now?"

"I was ease dropping at your New Year's Eve Party. Maria threatened to have him drawn, quartered, castrated, and have his remains eaten by a tribe of cannibals. Kyle said he just planned to shoot him in the head. Brian offered to expose him to small pox. We're all going to tack team if he ever shows up here."

I roll my eyes, "you might want to rethink that scenario."

"What does he have super powers?"

"Sort of it. Now go smoke please."

"I'll be back in five minutes Isabella."

"I told you not to call me that."

"It's your name in Spanish," he shrugs.

Trudging to the next door, I punch in the clearance code. A loud suction sounds as the hermetically sealed door opens to reveal a world of white. Ivory tiles gleam while a large clear pod and microscope sits in the center of the room. The sight triggers a sudden bout of nostalgia.

His sienna eyes look up from the microscope in frustration. "I can't find anything."

"Let me try." Placing my eye to the lens, I watch a spindly filament move across the slide. "You have to see this Max," I tap his hand excitedly.

"I see it now."

"Isn't it incredible? No matter how big or small or whatever our genetic makeup we're just living our lives out day by day. We're all the same."

He turns his face to mine.

"You must think I'm the biggest nerd."

"No," he says solemnly. Something flits across his face but is gone before I can make sense of it. "I don't think Liz Parker and nerd even belong in the same sentence. You see things in a way few people do. Science is your passions don't ever apologize for it."

I blink.

He blushes.

I can feel him closing up on me again. "I like that I can loose myself in it no matter what is happening."

"That and the order it gives," he adds, "in science there are no gray areas."

"How did you know that was what I thought?"

"I'm your lab partner after all until you decide to trade me in for a new one," he smiles.

"I won't ever do that," I blurt out. "I mean you might want a new one next year."

"Never."

I bite down on my bottom lip trying to halt my walk down memory lane.

Since you're obviously so eager, Mr. Evans, I'd like you to come up and be Miss Harding's lab partner. I'm sure with your help, she'll be caught up in no time.

A warmth drips down my lip. I wipe the red liquid away.

It's just that we used to have an even number of students, and now that Tess is here, it's odd... it's an odd number. So, someone is going to be stuck without a partner, you know, mathematically.

Enough!!!

I approach the clear container that houses several virus cultures. Opening it up, I scrape of a sample, stain it with a drop of iodine, and then place it underneath the microscope. Seconds later an image appears on the computer screen of a u shaped structure. "A textbook filovirus."

"There's nothing textbook about it Liz."

"Could you please not sneak up on me Khivar when I'm handling a deadly virus?" Quickly, I put the sample back into the pod and turn to face him. "How did you get in here anyway?"

"Magic." He gives the room the once over. "I have to say I'm not impressed. There is no way you're going to stop me with such inferior equipment. You know you were doing something remarkably similar when Max realized he was in love with you. He found your empathy infectious and in that moment all he wanted to do was take you in front of the whole class." Khivar flicks a piece of imaginary dust of his fingers, "no sorry that was Tess."

"Then I'm glad he got what he wanted. Why don't you give me what I want and leave? " I point to the cameras, "before someone comes and makes you."

"No one makes me do anything, besides, the guard is otherwise distracted for the time being. Take the hat off. It makes you sound like Darth Vader. You don't need it. The virus isn't airborne."

"I am not..."

His black eyes lock with mine.

A hot and confined feeling settles over me, and I rip the mask off.

"Isn't that better?" He reaches out to stroke my cheek.

I brush his hand away. "Don't you have some small animals to torture and children to terrorize?"

He crosses his arms, and his full lips fall into a pout. "I happen to like animals. As for children, how about having mine?"

"It's not happening."

"So what you're going to have blondie's children then?"

"I never said that."

"I knew it. You're still hung up on Max."

"I never said that either."

A predatory look appears on his face, "you know I could make you want me. A couple of suggestions you would be begging for it."

I swallow.

"What no pithy comeback?"

Keep one step ahead of him my brain screams. I lick my lips and watch his eyes follow my tongue's path. "You won't use your powers on me."

"Why? I used the same tactic to seduce Vilandra."

"Because you're all about the chase. You get nothing if I don't commit myself fully to you without manipulation."

"Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that you will only commit yourself fully to one man?"

Reaching up, I loosen my hair. "Why do we have to always talk about him?"

His pupils dilate and practically obscure the black of his iris. "Max loved you hair. He thought it felt like silk." His head dips down to mine, but I dart away.

"Honeyed words worked when I was sixteen." I struggle to keep the anger out of my voice, "those aren't even your memories."

"Sometimes they feel like it," he mutters. "Then tell me, what works with you now?"

I point to the virus. "You said it wasn't textbook. How so?"

"Fishing are we?"

"I'm a scientist and behind that guard is the first known extraterrestrial virus. You want me appeal to my mind."

"Alright. What do you think you know?"

"It's filovirus. There's one strain in Chiapas and another in Acapulco. It's not being spread naturally."

"Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You aren't really presenting me with the challenge that I thought you would."

"I know you're releasing it. There's no contagion in the bordering states."

"And?" A gleam enters his jet black eyes.

"That just doesn't happen with a naturally occurring virus."

"Think outside of the box Elizabeth," his fingers walk up the base of a microscope. "What do you know about mitochondria?"

"It converts ATP into energy in cells. Scientists theorize it used to be parasite that a cell's nucleus has since made harmless."

He looks down at the cultures, "now imagine if the mitochondria decided to reassert its control over the situation."

"I don't see the connection. Hypothetically, it might be able to live outside of its host due to being organic, but a virus' inorganic state would make that impossible."

"Outside of the box," he mummers over my shoulder. "You smell so good."

"You're in my space," I push him away. "Outside of the box. I don't under-- Oh my God. It doesn't need a host does it? Somehow you've engineered a virus to have a body of its own, but there's still the dead. I don't get it."

A Cheshire Cat like grin spreads over his face, "come over here and sit on my lap like a good little girl and maybe I tell you some more."

"The Russians were trying to do something like that during the Cold War, but they never succeeded. I always thought it was completely theoretically."

"I'm glad you're impressed. It took me years of trials to achieve. Of course, I've always enjoyed science. No other discipline can provide one with so many varied ways to end life."

"That's not what science is about at all."

Grabbing my shoulders, he shoves me up against the wall.

"You dare to judge me? They're two types of life forms in this universe predator and prey. I decided long ago I was most certainly not going to be anyone's prey."

My pulse throbs in my neck. I've overplayed my advantage. A stinging begins in my palms. "Let go of me."

He pins my wrist over my head. "We could have so much fun together Liz if you would just stop fighting me. Do you really think that bumbling blonde idiot has any idea who you are?"

"And you do?"

"I know you in a way that no will ever know you. I've seen your love and passion lying dormant just waiting to be tapped by the right person."

"You've seen nothing," I struggle in vain to free my hands. "All you've done is take memories that were never yours in the first place.

"I've taken a lot more than that from Max."

"Stopping playing with me and tell me the truth. Is he....dead?"

"Dead is a word with multiple connotations Liz. Let's just say Max has been irreversibly changed by his time with me." A sticky tongue licks the side of my face," just like strawberries and crème."

I wince as the pain in my palms intensifies into a full-blown burn.

"Pity, you're not ready."

"Let me go and I'll show you how ready I am," I purr rubbing my legs against his thighs.

"What are you doing?" he hisses.

Probably getting myself killed. "Bowing to the inevitable. Anyone everyone tell you that power is an incredible turn on. How much do the planet do you actually control?" I whisper into his ear.

"Half," he croaks.

"Only half."

"Seventy-five percent," he corrects quickly.

"What will you give me?" I drag my lips across the side of his jaw ignoring my need to throw up.

"Anything," he swallows.

"I want Tess' head on a platter."

"I never really liked her that much anyway," he releases one of my hands. "I'll throw in their whelp to."

My fingers trail down his arms. "You're too good to me."

"Seth takes too much after his father anyway."

My hand stops.

"Something wrong? You wouldn't being playing me would you Liz?" He crushes my remaining captive hand.

YES, YOU ARROGANT BASTARD!!! "No, I would never be that stupid. I'm harmless to someone of your stature," my lips hover inches from his causing a new infusion of bile to rise in my throat.

"You are far from harmless," his eyes land on my mouth.

I can't do this.
I have to do this.
I need flashes. If I got them from Nasedo, it should work on him.

He licks his lips.

I imagine a super size bottle of Listerine.

"You could stab me in the back at anytime."

"If you want safe Khivar, I suggest going back to Antar and find a nice girl you can dominate. I don't do docile."

He releases my other hand.

I clear my head of any thoughts.

"I've had docile. Docile is predictable."

"There's nothing predictable about me." I punctuate my statement by ramming my lips into his.

His tongue throttles mine, but I get nothing.

He pulls at my hair.

Great Plan. Next time you get a bright idea don't ----.

Khivar's mauling becomes non-existent. I feel my mind falling past bone and muscle, past the night when he strangled Zan with his bare hands, and to the day when Nicholas dropped a bloodied Max at his feet. Khivar can't stop laughing about how a lying woman brought him to this point.

I didn't know. I thought I was helping you. I was only doing what Future Max told me to.

"See what happens when you let your heart guide your way Max," Khivar needles.

"I never loved her," he states flatly.

Max never loved me.

Another memory quickly replaces the last.

Khivar walks purposely through a winding corridor. Entering a room, Nicholas hands him a towel.
"Who would think humans could be so messy? I barely touch him. He spurts all over me."
"Your highness, why must we continue to speak this disgusting language? You have mastered English. Could we please move on to something else?"
"It's Liz's language," Khivar crouches down beside a bed. "How is he?"
"He was born two hours ago. Genetically, he's an exact duplicate of the deceased host except for..."
"He's carrying a deadly plague. You can spare me the summary of my own work." He nudges the figure, "It's time for you to wake up Alex."

An angry storm snatches the image away, and two simmering black eyes come back into focus. "You have been a very naughty girl."

I sink down into the corner.
Max never loved me and Alex...
My mind can't even begin to think about Alex.

"If you had been anyone else, you'd be dead by now."

He never loved me.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shakes me.

He never loved..

"Look at me dammit."

He never...

Khivar slaps me across the face.

He....

"Still beating up women," the guard's voice comes from the doorway, " I have to say it was an interesting maneuver locking me out from my regular emissary. I miscalculated your over zealousness. It will not be happening again."

"Look Liz, Max sent his personal lackey to protect to you." Roughly, he hauls me up from the floor. "Take another step Larek, and I'll kill her."

"Do you really want to spend the rest of your life running? Max would hunt you down and rip you from limb to limb then after that maybe then he put you of your misery."

"Larek paints a pretty grim picture, but he always was a pessimist. What do you think dear?"

"He never loved me. He never loved me."

"She seems to be quite adamant on that subject.

"What did you do to her?"

"Nothing, yet," he groans, "I couldn't figure how to get this damn suit off of her. Next time Liz wear a dress." His fingers trace a line up the inside of my thigh. "It will show off those nice legs of yours."

I cork up my hurt. Think. It's three feet to the door and Larek. "Then you wouldn't be able to see my tattoo."

"You have a tattoo. I never saw that when..."

"I got it on my twenty first birthday." I turn around in his arm. "You might know how he saw me, but a lot has changed in that time."

"Like what?"

"I'm a lot angrier than I used to be." I trail my burning fingers down his neck until I find his windpipe.

"You're hands feel like they're on fire."

"It's all for you."

Seth is too much like his father.

I never loved her.

Do you love her?
Not like I love you.

It's time to wake up Alex.

Webs of green shoot out of my fingers and wrap around his neck in an emerald chokehold.

I take off running for the door. I'm vaguely aware of Larek shoving me behind him and a yellow shield expanding around us.

On the other side, Khivar eyes me. "An interesting little trick. It would be even more effective if you could hold it for more than two seconds."

"I recall your last mistress saying something remarkably similar," Larek quips.

"This isn't over Liz."

Grabbing me, Larek covers my eyes. Seconds later he lets me go. "Sorry."

Dumbly, I look at the empty room. Khivar isn't here.

"Liz, you have to focus."

"He disappeared. I thought he might be able to, but thinking and witnessing are totally different."

"It's very important that you never look directly at him when he's doing it."

"I don't want to look directly at him period." I drop my head.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't breath."

"You overdid it with your powers. Lean on me. We need to go."

"Go. I can't go. I may be infected."

"You're fine. We stole the viral strain."

"Then what's in there?" I point to the pod.

"Nothing. It's a mindwarp."

"That's just great. How are we supposed to figure out how the virus works if you're making off with all of the samples?"

He opens the door.

"The cameras and Mani."

"It's been handled."

"Do you know how to stop the virus then?"

He doesn't answer me.

"Larek."

"We don't have a clue," he answers bluntly. "I was hoping you could help us with that."

"I need to get very drunk right now."

He riffles through his pockets and pulls out a set of car keys. "It appears that I have a car."

"I think you might be my new favorite alien."