Chapter 24
Michael woke up, confused about his surrounded till he looked around and saw that he was still at the observation building. He looked down and saw Tess curled up next to him and they both were naked with their clothes scattered over the place. He lifted his watch and saw that it was getting close to morning before he looked down at Tess, who began to stir.
She looked up at him and smiled.
"Hey," she greeted and Michael smiled back.
"Hey, we better get back," he told her and she nodded as she reached up and kissed him before she started pulling her clothes over to her and pulled them on. Michael did the same before they stood up and made their way out of the observation centre.
Maria moaned as she opened her eyes and found herself staring into familiar brown eyes and she smiled.
"Hey," she whispered and James smiled back.
"Hey, how are you feeling?" he asked and she shifted slightly.
"Great," she told him and he arched an eyebrow before flicking his eyes down over their cover clad bodies.
"I meant lower," he admitted and she smiled as she cupped his cheek.
"A little sore," she admitted. "But it's suppose to happen. Liz told me that it won't last that long." James winced.
"You just had to mention her and that in the same sentence didn't you?" he asked and she laughed.
"Come on James, she's been with Max for over a year now, it obvious they've…" his index finger covered her lips.
"I don't need the image of my cousin, someone I see as a sister, and her boyfriend together thank you very much," James told her and she nodded with a amused smile playing on her lips before she turned onto her side and curled herself into his body, enjoying their closeness.
Michael walked Tess up to the door when it opened, revealing Jim and Kyle standing there.
"Tess, get in," he ordered her, she looked up at him before looking at Michael then stepped into the house. "We are going to have a talk," Jim warned her and she nodded as she walked into her bedroom while Jim turned back to look at Michael before shaking his head and shutting the door in Michael's face.
Tess made her way into the bathroom and she pulled her top off and saw a blue glow start up when her hand touched her stomach, puzzled, she turned back to the mirror and placed her hand on her stomach and saw the blue glow and a soft excited smile lit up her face as understanding dawned on her.
"What are you talking about?" Max asked. He and Liz were sitting on his bed, facing each other.
"The building that Sarah and Leanne are in front of have been destroyed years ago, it means this picture is a fake," Liz explained and Max rubbed his forehead.
"So, that means Sarah was never in Sweden?" Max asked and Liz shrugged.
"It looks like it," Liz admitted and Max sighed.
"Great, with every answer we get, we get more questions," he muttered and Liz nodded in agreement as she moved closer to him.
"So, it looks like alien doesn't it?" she asked and Max nodded.
"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid off because as easy as it is to manipulate a photo, Sarah wouldn't lie about being in Sweden, she obviously cared about Alex too much to lie to him," Max told her and Liz nodded before resting her head on his chest.
"How are we suppose to tell Alex?" she asked but didn't get any answer from Max and she knew that because Max didn't have an answer to that question and she closed her eyes, wishing that the world would disappear for once and leave them alone to be normal couples in love.
"So, what are you saying?" Alex asked and Liz sighed.
"We gonna have to head to Las Crusade, I posted a picture of Sarah on the Internet, letting people know she died and I got a hit, apparently, Sarah was at Las Crusade, half of the pupils are positive they saw her there and even interacted with her but her name wasn't Sarah, it was Ella," Liz explained and Alex sighed.
"Why would she go to Las Crusade?" Alex asked and Liz shrugged.
"That's why we're heading up there, I'm hoping we will get answers," Liz told him and Max nodded in agreement.
"We have to leave this morning, Liz and I have already told our parents that we were heading up to Las Crusade to check out university because there is an opening day up there, are you going to tell you parents anything?" Max asked and Alex shook his head.
"Nah, they're letting me do my own thing at the moment because of Sarah," he told them and they nodded.
"Great, all we need to do is pack up some stuff because it needs to be an over night thing," Max told him and Alex nodded.
"What about Leanne?" Alex asked and Liz sighed.
"I got her phone-number and I called her. I told her about Sarah/Ella and she agreed to meet up with us because she was concerned about Sarah too and she wants to know what photographs I'm talking about because they did get their photographs taken but she was under the impression that they never got to them because she was suppose to get a copy but never did," Liz explained.
"So we think that they cut her out of the loop because it looks like they mind warped Sarah, but we can't be too sure," Max explained.
"Nicholas?" Alex asked and Max shrugged.
"So far yes, he's the only one to gain from us but the question is, why Sarah and why send her to Las Crusade? What is so important there that he needed Sarah?" Max asked.
"I'll guess we'll find out when we arrive there," Alex told them and they nodded. "Right, I better get to the house and pack, meet back out here, say in an hour?" he asked and Max nodded.
"That'll give me time to sort things out with Isabel, Michael and Tess, I haven't told them anything we've found out," Max admitted and Liz winced too.
"I haven't told Kyle, Jim and Maria anything too, everything came to a head yesterday," Liz admitted and Alex nodded in understanding.
"Could we try and keep it between us?" Alex asked and they looked at him. "I don't want them to know, especially if it turns out to be nothing. If it's definitely alien, then we can let them know," Alex explained and Max sighed.
"Sure," Max told him and Liz nodded in agreement.
"No problem." They all stood up. Max and Liz made their way out of the backroom of the Crashdown, up Liz's apartment while Alex made his way out of the Crashdown to his house.
"Have you spoken to your parents yet?" Max asked as they made their way into Liz's bedroom and she shook her head as she shut the door behind them.
"I can't, not right now. Not with everything taking up my time at the moment," Liz explained and Max caught her arm and pulled her over to the bed and sat them both down so they were facing each other.
"Liz, you can't keep this bottled up. You've been sick every night," he reminded and she nodded.
"I know," she whispered before looking into his eyes. "But how can I talk to the people who lied to me all my life?" she asked and Max shook his head as he pulled her into a hug and rested his chin on top of her head.
"Baby, they were doing it to protect you, they tried to tell you but the time wasn't right for them," he explained and Liz shook her head against his chest.
"Still no excuse," she whispered and Max nodded in agreement before he kissed her head and held her closer.
They finally met back up with Alex an hour later and found themselves in front of Las Crusade a few hours later, standing in front of the dormitories that the students were to stay in when Liz looked at her paper that she had written the address on before leading the way into the building and up the stairs till she reached the level she was to reach.
They followed Liz as she made her way over to a room, she knocked on a door and stepped back till she was standing next to Max, who took her hand.
The door opened and a blonde stood there.
"Hi, are you Leanne?" Liz asked and she nodded. "I'm Liz, we spoke on the phone," Liz reminded and Leanne nodded before smiling.
"Oh yes, come in," Leanne told them as she stepped back and let them through before closing the door and led them through into the living room.
"Here's the photos that Sarah had," Liz told Leanne once they all sat down and Liz took out a package from her bags and handed them over to Leanne, who took them and flicked through them.
"I recognise the postures, we posed for the photos but not in those background," Leanne told her and Liz nodded.
"Yeah, it's been determined that they are fake, could you tell me anything about Sarah/Ella about what she was like? When she came back to Roswell, she was acting a little weird and her grades were slipping," Liz explained and Leanne nodded.
"Sure, she was weird too. Her moods were totally unpredictable, one moment she would extremely cheerful, the next she would be in a completely bad mood," Leanne told her. "And she kept writing in weird way, she used numbers instead of letters." Liz looked at her.
"I noticed that she did that in class, when I pointed it out to her, she was confused. It was like she snapped out of whatever daze she was in and realised that she had been doing it," Liz told her and Leanne nodded.
"Same here and she was always ordering spicing food then putting Tabasco in it, which was weird," Leanne told them. "The funny thing, it had to be the same food all the time, if they got an order wrong or added something in that wasn't in the last time, she would blow her temper."
"Did she do anything that seemed out of the ordinary?" Alex asked and Leanne nodded.
"Oh yeah, she was always in the computer room, she rarely ever came out of it," Leanne told him and they nodded.
"What did she seem like?" Liz asked and Leanne looked at her. "I mean, she did seem depressed or something like that?" Leanne shook her head.
"No, not really. I mean, she had a lot of headaches and mood swings but nothing to indicate her unhappiness or anything like that," Leanne told her and Liz nodded as she stood up with Leanne, Alex and Max.
"Thanks for talking with us," Liz told Leanne and both girls shook hands.
"No problem, I hope you'll find out what really happened to Sarah," Leanne told her and Liz nodded as Leanne opened the door and they all stepped out and walked away.
"So, what now?" Max asked.
"We look for where Sarah spent her time, the computer lab. There has to be something on the computers that she used that can tell us what the hell she was doing," Liz told them and they nodded as they headed out of the building.
They headed over to the computer lab and walked in. Liz noticed a guy standing near the printer and walked over to him. "Hi, I'm Liz Parker, I'm here about Sarah/Ella?" she told him and the guy nodded.
"I'm Jack, I saw Ella here in the lab all the time," Jack told her and she nodded.
"I'm looking for information on what Sarah/Ella was working on while she was here, did she use a particular computer or was it all different ones?" Liz asked and Jack pointed to the last one at the far end of the room.
"She was always on that one, no matter what. She even had it reserved so no-one else could go on it," Jack told her and Liz nodded.
"Thanks," she told him and he smiled back.
"No problem, always doing my best to help beautiful women like you," he told her and she grinned before lifting her left hand.
"Sorry, taken," she told him, showing him her promise ring that Max had given her for Christmas before moving over to the men and led them over to the computer that Sarah had been working on.
"This the computer she was working on?" Max asked and Liz nodded as she looked at Alex.
"Can you try and find anything she was working on?" Liz asked and Alex nodded as he sat down in front of the computer and switched it on before searching through the database till he found the dates that Sarah had been in 'Sweden' and brought the files up. He tried accessing them but found that they were locked in another file that was inaccessible from here.
"They're locked," Alex told them. "And not here."
"How do you mean?" Max asked as he looked at the computer.
"Sarah transferred these files to a difference computer in a different location than we're in…and it look like she sent them to a printer in another area too," Alex noticed.
"Can you find out where?" Liz asked as she leaned down and Alex frowned as he thought about it before nodding and started tapping in some codes as Max looked around the room only to see it was nearly empty except from the guy what Liz had gotten information from and saw that he was busy on his computer.
"I can use my powers," Max whispered and Alex looked up at him before nodding. Max leaned in and placed his hand on top of the monitor and the files started popping up and being accessed to till a faint beeping sound started and Max pulled his hand away for Alex to see the location of the printer.
"Got it," Alex told them as Liz pulled out a pad and wrote down the address.
"Let's head out there and see what we can find," Liz told them and they nodded as Alex closed down the files and shut down the computers before they left the computer lab together.
Michael made his way over to the park, near the basketball court and saw Tess sitting at the bench, staring up into the night sky.
"Hey," Michael greeted as he rounded the table and sat down next to her, she looked up at him and smiled.
"Hey," she whispered.
"How did it go with Valenti?" he asked and Tess grinned.
"Just a short warning how I'm not allowed to be out past curfew," she told him and he nodded.
"You called me saying you had something to tell me," Michael told her and she nodded before looking down and Michael looked at her, curious to know what was going on with girlfriend. "Tess?" Michael asked and Tess looked up at him.
"I'm pregnant Michael, with your baby," Tess told him and Michael's smile faded as he looked at Tess in a shock.
Max pulled the jeep to a stop outside the dome that the address had been and the three of them stepped out of the jeep.
"This is where the printer is?" Alex asked and Liz looked at the address on the pad before looking at the map and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm guessing whatever Sarah was working on, it wasn't something she could just stash in her room," Liz told him and they nodded as they moved over to the dome. Max placed his hand over the lock and opened the door before pulling the door opened and let Liz step in before walking in behind her with Alex following them.
They looked around to see the computer was on and working like mad while the printer was filled with a stack of paper and was still printing out more paper.
"She must have transferred everything over here," Alex told them.
Liz made her way over the computer before she spied something familiar.
"Max?" she called out and Max looked over to her as she picked something up and turned it to face Max, who looked at the object in a stunned shock.
"How the hell did she get this?" Max asked as he moved closer to her and took the book into his hands as she picked up sheets of papers and flicked through them.
"Max…she's been decoding the book," Liz told him in a stunned shock as she looked up at him.
Max looked at her before looking at the book in his hands then looking at the papers in her hands and understanding dawned on him.
"Someone wanted her to decode the book so they mind warped her into doing so," Max whispered before looking at Alex. "She was killed for the book."
Alex just stared at Max before looking at the computer that sat there as he tried to comprehend everything that had been revealed to him.
"What are we gonna do now?" Liz asked and Max shook his head.
"We need to get back home," Max told them and Liz nodded as she grabbed all the papers and placed them into a folder before grabbing the book from Max's hand and wrapped it up in a jumper before placing it into her bag.
Alex moved around the room, collecting the disks and cds that were left lying around that Sarah had copied things onto before placing them into his bag while Max looked around for anymore alien artefacts that Sarah might have had accessed to.
"I don't get it though," Liz stated and Max looked at her. "You guys put the book in the cave so no one but you guys would be able to access it and Nicholas doesn't know where it is," Liz told them.
"He did try to access my mind, maybe he saw the cliff and headed out here, he probably didn't access my memories of the Granolith being there," Max guessed and Liz nodded but she wasn't sure about it, there was something off about the whole thing but her instincts were all over the place so she couldn't pin point anything.
"That's everything," Alex told them and they nodded as they followed him out of the building.
They made their way over to the Jeep, Alex looked back at the building once more before closing his eyes, turned away and got into the jeep before Max put it into gear and drove off, leaving the building in the dust.
TBC