Journal entry #24, still September 2nd, 2011

Rationality has officially left my life, ladies and gentlemen. I should call Maria, she'd be thrilled to know I'm rescuing some guy who looks like a model and can melt anything in his hands.

Including my heart.


Chapter Fifty
The Other Half


Anne Herschel was not a happy woman.

The basement was actually a very well equipped lab, where the basics where more than covered. There was only one computer, and it was easy for Liz to imagine Anne working late here, while John brought a cup of coffee or a sandwich or both. He was the kind of guy who would quietly read besides his working wife, and then teasingly tell her it was too late and please come back to bed.

"I can't—I can't believe it! After all this time, he still thinks about that place?!"

"I—I don't know what to say..."

"Oh, but I do. Start at the beginning. Where did you meet my husband? Where did you even find Max? Do you have any idea how long John has been looking for that place?"

She fired questions at the same rate Liz's heart beat. On the other corner, Max shivered and moaned, going through a hell of his own. She wanted to go back to him, but not while their host's hospitability was in jeopardy.

"I met Max back in January. He was looking for a doctor—a biochemist who could solve the puzzle—"

"They drugged him, too," Anne said, for the first time looking up at Max's tortured form with something other than dismay.

"Yes. John—I have no idea how John found about me. He bought the lab where I work, and then he knew. Just like that, he knew I had seen Max because I recognized him but then I didn't."

"He's been buying small companies for six years now, wondering if Max would catch up. Oh, he has other interests, of course, and I agree with what he does, but I never thought... He just stumbled onto him?"

"Maybe. Yeah, maybe that's how he did it. Maybe they share a connection beyond what we can understand. Ms. Herschel, John has been helping Max out for the past two months. He changed places with Max about a month ago, went to the base, met his handler, or however you call those men."

"He didn't. Oh, tell me he just didn't!"

"I'm sorry," Liz whispered, as Anne looked at the ceiling, clearly torn between wanting to strangle her husband and worried sick about his safety.

"He's been looking for a way in for ages, you know," she confided, turning her computer on.

"Looking for a way in where?" Liz asked, confused.

"The base. Sure, he's worried about Max, he feels guilty for essentially abandoning his younger self to an even harsher environment. But that has never been his end goal. He wants to go back. He's always wanted that, from the day he left."

For God's sake, what kind of trauma makes one want to go back to one's jailers?

"Why would he do that?" Liz asked, bewildered. "I mean, the way he talks about you, and this life, and getting Max out..." Liz trailed off, unsure if she was threading on thin ice. "I mean… he looks so happy."

"That's exactly why he wants to go back. To protect that life. Did he ever tell you about the ship?"

"You mean the space ship?"

"The one and only. Well, I certainly hope the only."

"Yeah. He said—he said he'd been obsessed with it when he was a teen?"

"They couldn't take him away from it for days on end. And they were happy, because if someone had a shot at cracking that thing, that was my John. And he did crack it, right around the time they started drugging him."

"Wait—he cracked it? What exactly did he crack? How to fly it?"

"How to communicate. Or more exactly: he cracked the logs of the ship. He just didn't tell anyone."

"What did it say?"

"Nonsense."

On the computer, Anne was opening file after file, already paying more attention to what she was doing than what she was telling Liz. "I keep John's formula just in case."

"They changed the drug."

"I bet. But they wouldn't change it too much. After all, they only had Max left as a guinea pig. They already knew John's drug worked pretty well, and trust me, they don't have the easiest of metabolism to be able to find something to make them addicts."

Don't say that word! Liz wanted to shout. Her eyes went to Max, and she searched for something to get him more comfortable.

"Max asked me to produce a counterdrug," Liz said instead. "I worked on a formula, and it might work. I just never got the results from the first trial." Anne raised a disapproval eyebrow. "It's complicated, okay?" Liz said, anxiously fidgeting with her blouse. It was almost 4:00 a.m. and she was starting to feel exhausted.

"With alien beings, it always is." Anne called her notes, and then nodded to herself. "I have everything I need in here to reproduce John's drug. Do you have the formula so I can produce Max's drug? Or his counterdrug?"

"I have my notes in the car."

"Well, then, go! I'll prepare the equipment... Maybe make sure Max doesn't die on us while we try to save his life."

By the time Liz came back, Anne was sitting by Max's side, murmuring encouraging words. Liz had never seen an addict go through withdrawal symptoms before, and it scared her how small he looked, how vulnerable. Keep in mind, Liz, he can do anything to get his next dose. He's not out of the woods yet, and neither are you.

The warning came in Alex's voice—or maybe her father's voice. Someone with authority and love, she guessed, someone who didn't know she already didn't give a damn whatever Max needed or asked of her, she would do it gladly.

"Here. I have more detailed notes at my lab, but I keep the most important facts here."

She handed her agenda and was relieved to see there was a thick comforter on Max. His eyes were closed, but his breathing was agitated.

"A journal?" Anne asked curiously as she started shifting through the pages.

"It might have some stray thoughts..." Liz said under her breath, taking the journal out of Anne's hands and searching for the right date. With five exclamation points, she'd written beside the formula: Freedom.

"Here. This is what Max is getting. This is what I did to counter it."

Anne took the journal back and hungrily went through them.

"Hmm… Let me work at this problem. He needs someone to distract him, and I doubt he wants a stranger holding his head when he starts throwing up."

Max… Liz's heart broke at the idea of what was Max going through. A man who never got sick, facing his worst fear.

Life is so unfair.

"Do you think—I mean, based on what John went through, that Max is going to be all right?"

"I can tell you they're not idiots who would let their prize possession randomly die because he missed a dose, but Max here has gone through multiple drugs in the past few hours. I'll get him his drug, it's the only safe way to go, but it's going to take me a few hours to put it together."

"Do you need any help?"

"Not more than your friend does, Ms. Parker. I'm going to be right there, young lady. Call me if you need help."

It was weird to be dismissed like that, especially when it was her formula and her work what was going to save Max. But Anne had a point: she was the only one Max knew.

"Hey… We really should get some water into you," she said, touching his feverish forehead.

"You keep a journal?" he asked instead, his voice barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"The woman—she said—is it a journal?"

She blushed. "You heard that…"

"I don't want to be in John's mind. Not right now… Is it a journal?"

His fixation with her personal writings aside, he sounded like Max. Not drugged, not addicted, just a very sick Max who wanted someone to distract his mind.

"I—I'm not really—I mean…there are some personal thoughts but—"

"I keep a journal," he confided, looking at her with those wide honey eyes of his that led her straight into his soul. A soul that was scared to the bone. "I mean…in my head. I can't risk writing it, but every day…I wake up, and I have these thoughts…"

"A journal," she said with a smile. "Then mine is a journal, too."

He smiled shyly, the first actual smile he'd given her since she'd found him in the woods hours ago.

"What do you write in it?" he asked, holding the comforter closer as he shivered.

"Well, lately…it seems to include a lot of stuff—a lot of stuff about you, actually."

"Mine, too."

She bit her lip at the unexpected confession. "You're going to be all right, Max," she whispered, sitting next to him.

"Would you keep writing about me—if I'm not all right at the end of this?"

"Don't say that," she chided him, the giddy feeling replaced by cold uncertainty.

"Would you?" Max pressed, now serious. "I don't want to be remembered as nothing more than an experiment—I'm more than that, right? Parker, would you write about me?"

Desperation bled into his words, and his hand found hers.

"Tell you what, Max. When you make it through this, I'll let you read my journal. I'll let you see how much more you are. How much more you are to me."

She didn't get an answer. He started coughing instead, and all hell broke loose.