Part 3: By the corner
November 2nd, 2011
1 : Liz
2:01pm
T minus 1 hour, 59 minutes
The hotel was gorgeous. As the clerk was filling in her information, Liz had to admit that Maria did know how to pick them. They didn't travel together as much now, and luxury was not something Liz would usually make a priority on her business trips. Even with Max. Usually it was just "grab your things and let's meet there". With Max being on call and she doing her research, that was enough.
Now she was happy Maria had arranged everything, and as the clerk smiled to her and started explaining where her room was and the available amenities, she decided she would try to make luxury a top priority on her next just-the-two-of-us trip.
"Can you tell me if this person has already checked in?" Liz asked before leaving the counter, rummaging in her wallet for the name Max was using this time. They had used so many aliases by now, there was no way she could keep track of all of them. Finally finding it, she gave it to the clerk.
"He checked in earlier today. Would you like to leave him a message?" he politely asked. She smiled. She was anxious to see him, tell him that feeling she'd gotten at seeing the poster on the street, but just knowing he had been in this same spot a few hours before was enough to calm her nerves.
"No, that's okay. Thank you."
"Enjoy your stay."
Oh, I will.
The bellboy took her things, and walked in front of her. Even if they were gathering in the same place, they all always booked separate rooms. Logistics would have them leaving and coming at different days and hours, and although usually each couple would use only one room anyway, it was a standard procedure that Ray demanded be followed. She didn't mind. Max's room was right next to hers, she knew Maria would have taken care of that.
She made small talk with the bellboy as they entered the elevator—How was the weather? How was the city? By the time they reached her room and she was giving the guy a tip, she was getting more and more excited about her time in New York. Their time in New York. She was so glad she had managed to come one full day earlier. Max had to know she was already here. If not here here in the hotel, certainly here in the city.
Taking her phone out, she texted, Already checked in. Where are you? And pressed send. Nothing happened. Her phone brightly displayed unable to send message. She frowned. Well, a little technology malfunction had never been a problem for them.
She reached inside herself, and followed their link. She always imagined it as a silver thread going into the darkness. And then, suddenly, there was light. Or, in a more practical sense, there was Max's presence. She smiled, the feeling going through, reaching him some miles away. He smiled back, and it felt almost as if he were hugging her. Almost. For the hundredth time she wished they could send actual words.
She looked at her phone, waiting for his call. As the minutes went by, his presence dimmed. They couldn't stay connected like that for long at such a distance, plus he was somewhere out in the city. Distractions like this could be dangerous. She frowned when the phone didn't ring, and a minute later, she sighed in resignation. Wherever Max was, he couldn't call her just yet. She couldn't blame him for not expecting her, but she still wanted to hold his hands, watch those eyes, and kiss those lips.
Uneasiness crept over her.
She hadn't had a premonition in years. Her most valuable insight came from dreams that she half remembered when she woke up. But sometimes… sometimes she would get these strong feelings, either foreboding or excitement. It was never anything in between, and never anything else. It was going to be really good, or really bad.
The feeling that was wrapping itself around her soul was not like that. It was stronger. It felt like something was going to happen that she was definitely not going to like. She hugged herself, imagining it was Max who was putting his arms around her waist.
"Hurry up," she whispered to the empty room, trying to mask her anxiousness with impatience at having to wait for him. Just as she couldn't tell when Max was keeping something from her, he couldn't tell either if she was hiding something when they were apart. It was the only way that they both could surprise each other these days, and to keep a certain level of privacy as well.
Her cell phone chirped, the screen coming to life. She had a message from Max, the white letters announced.
Hey! Meet me at 4 at the bistro by the corner of the hotel.
Re-reading the message, she smiled. Glancing at the little clock on the phone, she slightly pouted at seeing she still had 1 hour and 44 minutes before 4:00pm. A long shower was in order, she decided, and that was that.
Not even once did she notice that her cell phone was effectively blocked after that.
2 : Jessie
2:07pm
T minus 1 hour, 53 minutes
"It's always a pleasure doing business with you," the redhead said with a genuine smile as they both finished their transactions and legal paperwork. Jessie smiled back. He loved working with Susseth, Dave's personal assistant,; because she was the most organized person he had ever known. Nothing was forgotten, no detail got lost, and there was no double standard. She wanted what was best for Dave's companies, and Jessie wanted what was best for his wife, himself and their group. It just so happened that both things worked together.
"So, are you going to see Isabel now?" she asked, neatly stacking papers.
"Yeah, and enjoy the city. I can't believe Dave agreed to let them all be in the same place at the same time," he casually remarked.
"It wasn't easy," she conceded, not looking at him but at the legal paper in her hand. "It took no small amount of Jake's powers of persuasion. He always has to battle for them when they are out of the compound."
"You would think by this point, Dave would trust they won't scatter to the winds. They hardly spend any time at all underground now," Jessie pointed out, secretly delighted that Susseth was so willing to open up about their employer. Or jailor, as Maria put it.
Susseth chuckled. "I stopped presuming what Dave would do a long time ago. Whatever he thinks he's doing, is not what you or I think he's doing." She smiled, and Jessie smiled too.
She was in her early forties, and still looked like she was in her early thirties. Although they talked a lot about work and legal papers, they seldom talked about their private lives or what each of them did for Dave that did not need the two of them involved. He wondered what this mighty organizer did in her free time.
She would have told him there was no such thing as free time.
"You're going to stay for vacation, too?" Jessie asked, getting his own paperwork safely tucked in his briefcase. As of right this moment, he was officially on vacation himself.
"Oh, I'm meeting someone else for another project. I'm awfully early, though," she said after consulting her watch.
"I can wait with you. I'm not meeting Isabel for another hour, anyway," he offered. Technically speaking, he was supposed to meet with her in forty five minutes, but Isabel wouldn't forgive him if he had passed up an opportunity to search the inner mind of Susseth and her working relationship with Dave.
"You sure? I wouldn't want to interrupt…" she asked, and Jessie shook his head.
"How about another cup of coffee and something to eat?" Jessie suggested. At 2:15 pm, neither of them had properly eaten anything since their meeting had begun an hour and a half earlier. She didn't like to have food with all their sensitive documents lying around.
He waved the waitress in and asked for menus as Susseth cleared everything off of the table. The luxurious hotel restaurant was crowded, and yet it felt like it wasn't. They were sitting in the corner, a space that was big and private, just the way Susseth liked it when they were doing business in public.
As with everything she did, she was efficient reading the menu and ordering. Jessie pretty much ordered the first thing on the list. It was always a bad idea to make Susseth wait, not because she would get impatient, but because she would move on into the next thing on her mind. And this time, Jessie wanted that next thing to be Dave. He didn't want to lose the topic now that they had begun talking about it.
"So…" Jessie started once the waitress was out of earshot, "How did you meet Dave? I don't think I've ever heard the story." The reaction was instantaneous. She blushed. And then sheepishly smiled.
"Yeah, there's a good reason why I don't think you've heard it…" she responded. Inwardly, Jessie cringed at the fact he was not going to get his answer. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually…" she confessed, her eyes lost somewhere at a point on the table.
"Well, it certainly sounds like a good story," Jessie subtlety pressed, and Susseth's eyes met his, while she bit her lower lip. She looked like a lost, freshman college girl caught by her parents with a difficult question about her first date. Then she laughed, and all her self confidence came back.
"I met him during my last semester of college," she began, getting comfortable with the memory.
"I thought Dave didn't go to college," Jessie said, confused.
"Oh, he wasn't attending college… at least not for academic reasons…" she clarified.
"Wait… Are you trying to tell me this story is heading in the direction I think it is going? You were dating him?"
"Oh no, I didn't have time for that. Plus, Dave would have never picked me…" she trailed off, with a little chuckle. "He was… well dating is a strong word. He spent the night with my roommate."
"Oh… Awkward?" Jessie offered. He never, in a million years, would have pictured Dave as a one-night-stand kind of guy.
"Expected… I mean, not from him, but from my roommate. It was a new guy every Sunday morning for at least three months straight. She generally cleared up her schedule around midterms and finals, but otherwise… They would usually be gone before I woke up, but… there he was, in all his shirtless glory."
Jessie laughed. "Oh, you can spare me those details." She laughed with him.
"Well, you can't blame a girl for noticing. And… I think I was more than noticing, actually. I mean, Janice always picked nice guys, but oh… I came out of my room and stood there wondering if I was dreaming… He's been swimming since he was a little kid for his asthma, and it shows."
"Note to self, take swimming classes," Jessie joked, right on cue with the waitress bringing their beverages.
"So you met him half naked while he was in the kitchen," Jessie resumed. "That's definitely not how I had pictured it."
"No one ever pictures Dave doing mundane stuff like that. Truthfully, he hardly does mundane things as us mortals do them…"
"Really? Do I want to know what you're talking about?" Jessie teased, though internally he was more than willing to keep fanning Susseth's uncharacteristic lustful thoughts. No wonder she had been blushing.
She looked at him as if deciding if she should share this bit of information or not. Slowly moving the straw in her orange juice, she finally relented.
"Dave… goes through phases. And once he's gotten into a subject… you can't shake him out of it for the world."
Jessie frowned. "He was going through a one-night-stand phase?" he inquired. This was definitely not how he had pictured Dave in his twenties. But then again, he hardly ever pictured Dave doing anything but his current job.
"Something like that… I think… He's never told me, and he was getting over that phase, but I think he was done looking for brains and was just trying to see what the world looked like when all you had was looks. Janice was certainly a prime candidate, not for lack of brains, but she did believe partying included a healthy dose of pretending to be dumb. I can't say she wasn't right, seeing her starring weekly record." Susseth stopped playing with the straw and took a sip. Jessie trusted her insight, and if there was more from where that came from, then he had just found a gold mine.
"Anyway, there he was, reading the newspaper while drinking a glass of milk. So domestic…" she half smiled at that, and Jessie returned the smile. Dave always looked anything but domestic, indeed. "We started talking about one thing or another, and next thing I know I'm telling him my big plans for the world and how everything would be better if only there was someone daring enough to change it."
"You impressed him," Jessie said, understanding where this was going now.
"I sure hope I did. Though, to tell you the truth, I thought he was being a jerk when he offered me a job."
"Really?" Jessie said, surprised.
"Well, we'd been talking for three hours, more of a brunch than anything else by that point, and he simply said, 'You should work for me. I'll give you 2% of my net profit and a three million dollar bonus a year for your own projects'. I laughed, obviously. Oh, did I laugh…" Susseth trailed off as the waitress came with their lunches.
"So, what convinced you?" Jessie asked, intrigued. He couldn't imagine himself in Susseth's place and actually believing the guy.
"I graduated a month later and he showed up in a limo, Jake in tow." She went for her fish with a smile on her face. "Once I saw for myself the guy had money, well… it suddenly wasn't so hilarious that he could give me a three million dollar bonus. Good thing Janice was not on campus that day, too… she would have had a heart attack seeing what she had let escape."
"You never thought it was, well…" Jessie trialed off searching for the least offensive word.
"Odd? Risky? Illegal?" she listed, getting to the salad.
"For starters, yeah," Jessie said, a tentative smile on his face as he focused on cutting his steak. He couldn't risk looking her in the eye.
"Well… It wasn't like Dave gave me his agenda and it said 'meeting with terrorists'. I started with the less difficult and more public projects. He eased me into my job. Plus, all I could really think about was the three million dollars and all the things I needed to do with that money. You can get pretty blindsided when you want to save the world," she said with a hint of nostalgia.
"And he kept his side of the deal? You still get the three million?"
Susseth stopped cutting her fish, and very seriously looked Jessie in the eye. "Jessie. He always keeps his deals. You should know that by now."
It was like a wet blanket after all the laughs and information he had managed to get.
"I… I didn't mean it to sound like that. He was young, and you were younger…" he trailed off, racking his brains for a smooth way to get back on track.
"He'd already established himself as one of the best hackers in the world and had been selling his skills for eight years by the time I had breakfast with him that fateful Sunday. By all means, he knew what he was doing," she clarified in case Jessie had any doubt that young didn't necessarily mean idiot.
Jessie dutifully nodded. She sighed, like she had just discovered what it meant to have a nice conversation and was missing that just now.
"So, it never surprised you? Any of what he does?" Jessie asked, in his most casual voice, trying to get the conversation going again.
"Well…" she considered, "He was just starting the foundations of what he has now. I've seen first hand what he can achieve, and… the truth is, he helps me with the causes I want to help, as well. I know he believes my way is too slow and reaches too few, but… well, that's the way I know how to do things. Dave's ideas always seem larger than life to me."
"He sure makes a lot of money 'helping out'," Jessie pointed out, and Susseth broadly grinned.
"That he does. In spades. It kind of makes me want to smack him in the head for making it look so easy," her laugh was back, and Jessie was relieved. Then she got thoughtful, maybe reading between the lines of what Jessie had just implied. "He's no saint, Jessie. To manage that amount of money… He plays with both sides of the greedy companies and shadowy government agendas. He doesn't believe in charity; that he leaves to me. He believes in profound change, and getting things done from scratch if that's what it takes. Although sometimes it feels like he'll hand you a shovel to finish his grand vision, and then leaves in search of another." She chuckled at that.
Because of Michael, Jessie knew that Dave had a wide, wide, wide range of interests, so it wasn't hard to picture him getting something half done just to delegate it and go in search of the next big thing. It would explain how he could have so many things going on at the same time.
"But what about you?" she inquired, "You asked me if I get surprised by Dave's world, and here you are, married to a psychic woman. That must be exciting."
Psychic powers was the official story for anyone who needed to be close to them, but not close enough to actually see a blood sample. Jessie tried not to react at the lie, taking the comment in stride.
"It… it never gets boring, that's for sure," he evasively answered.
"She's such a beautiful woman. And you two look so happy together," she complimented, making it Jessie's turn to smile.
"That she is and that we are/ I'm actually relieved there's no man in this world my Izzy can't deal with," he proudly said, though privately he knew Dave could very well fit that description. And the Special Unit.
"How did you find out about her? It must have been shocking!"
"I'm not gonna lie to you, it wasn't… easy," he honestly said, remembering seeing Isabel on the ground, blood seeping to the asphalt. "It hurt… you know, that she hadn't confided in me, not even after we were married."
"Ah… sorry, I didn't think it… had been like that…" she apologized, looking conflicted.
"No, no, that's okay. We're okay now. We're more than okay," he reassured her. "But before knowing, I was more worried about dealing with her brother and friend, actually," Jessie easily said. That was a safe topic he could talk about, all things considered. Even if Susseth never really got to spend any significant amount of time with Isabel, Max or Michael, she did know about them, and some of the things they could do. This meeting had actually been about their finances, and how much of what Dave had gained from their research over the years translated into profit.
"Oh! You had to deal with Michael?" Susseth said in surprise. Maybe she had never given thought to their family dynamics, but no one ever doubted that dealing with Michael was highly explosive. It was kind of misguided now that Michael had a much better control over his temper, but he wasn't about to point that out.
On the other hand… "Don't think Max is all sweetness and light. He broke my nose right before the wedding..." Jessie winced at the memory; Susseth's eyes went round as saucers.
"Max? You're kidding me?" she exclaimed, half convinced he was joking.
"Not one bit. He had been trying to prove I was up to no good, you know... that I was FBI or whatever else could make me a monster. Turned out I was just a guy who wanted his sister."
"That must have been a great way to start your life together. A broken nose..." she said sympathetically.
"I know better now, what kind of fear he was dealing with. They'd just never done anything that didn't include the three of them, and… separation was always a life or death risk in their eyes. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they were hiding such secret. They had a lot to lose if Isabel had chosen wrong."
Good thing it wasn't like that now. Jessie was not delusional; he knew that the price for staying with Isabel was accepting that she came as a package deal with Max and Michael, and all their troubles. It was a fair price for having her in his life, as far as he was concerned.
They were silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts.
"I can imagine all the cheating I could have done with their kind of powers..." she wistfully said, dragging him out of memories long past.
"You? A cheater? I can hardly imagine that," Jessie said, amazed at the admission.
"I hated art... God, I'm so not artistic... And gym... I mean, I was never really prone to be all that disastrous, but all that time could have been invested in bigger things! I had so many goals then, and those things were just in the way. My mother wanted me to discover the world with a free spirit. Thank God for my father who saw in me a genius for the corporate world and steered me in that direction"
"What do you tell them about your work?"
"Investment with this huge millionaire. I really don't have to stretch the truth all that much. And he's a good boss... Hardly knows where his head is, but... I can't really complain."
"I don't know if I could put up with the hours you do," Jessie confessed. She grinned.
"Dave tells me I work too much. Jake says I need a life. I say things need to be done. I don't know why people think I'm not happy with the way things are. I'm 41, Jessie, I've been on all the continents, seen hundreds of cities. I'm in a position to make things happen."
"Doing what your younger self spoke of doing that morning with Dave?" Jessie asked, contemplating his life under Dave's contract.
"Ideals only take you so far," she smiled, taking a sip of her juice. "But where would we be without Dave and Isabel? Working in an office from 9 to 5, wishing the world was a better place?"
"Safer," Jessie added.
"And with a normal wife?" she asked, teasing.
"Never," Jessie corrected, smiling. Never, indeed.
3 : Isabel
2:13pm
T minus 1 hour, 47 minutes
"How do you confess to blood on your hands?" Isabel asked, her voice trembling. By her side, Max took her hand on his.
"It's not blood on your hands." Max simply said, his gaze lost on some point ahead of them.
If she had to confess to blood on her hands, then he had to confess to having loved someone else. To being married. He'd never wanted that for Liz, for her to feel like she was not the most important part of his life, but it was hard to say that in the face of their past selves.
Isabel had seen him when he had mourned Ava. She'd seen his tears falling as he had simply said, Zan loved her. It had been raw and heartbroken to see her brother coming out of one of those memory flashes and start crying, because Zan had loved Ava, and Max had experienced that, knowing that Ava was going to die, and there was nothing Zan was going to be able to do to stop it.
She'd felt so dirty coming out of them when they had been about her "love" for Khivar. She felt so stupid, so used… knowing what was to come, knowing the price of what she was doing, it had made her physically sick on more than one occasion. Seldom were those memories about happy times that her present self would not hate.
"What are you going to tell Liz?" she whispered, anguish in her voice. Michael had already left them to meet his source and find more clues about Dave's message files.
"The truth," he answered. He made it sound so simple. "That I got half of Zan's memories back, but I'm still me. After that, I'll just take her questions. Liz knows me, just like Jessie knows you. They'll understand, they might feel frustrated and left out… but they'll understand."
"You sound so sure about it… I already hid things from Jessie when we were in Roswell. He hates being lied to. And suddenly here I come, 'oh by the way, I was once in love with a genocidal usurper who is currently ruling in place of my brother, but you already knew that, didn't you?'"
"They all already know most of it, the broad sense of our history back on Antar," Max pointed out, impassive at her outburst. It was in moments like this that he reminded her of Zan. The thought was depressing now more than ever.
"Max, this isn't the same," she snapped, as much for his benefit as for hers. He sighed, looking less regal. Looking like Max.
"As I see it, the only thing that has changed is that we know exactly how it happened. Iz, it's up to us to decide what to make of those memories. It always has been. The only reason we never told them was because it was eating at us alive to think one day we would wake up with no memory or no regard for our human selves. And that never happened. And by the amount of information we already have, it's not going to. Now we're just stalling…"
"Do you really think Liz won't be furious?" she tentatively asked, dreading any answer that was going to come from her brother.
"She'll be disappointed I didn't let her help me. She always knew I was keeping some things to myself. I think she'll be relieved. I hope she'll be relieved…" he amended, the slightest of smiles touching his lips.
"Jessie knows I don't like it. My past… We never talk about it. Maybe I should leave it like that," she proposed, liking the idea more and more by the second.
"Iz…" Max warned.
"No! Listen! He's never asked. He's okay."
"Are you?"
"Yes!" she said too quickly. He simply smiled. "Yes," she said more calmly. "All I ever want is to believe what you do. That it doesn't matter. That those memories are not ours. That I didn't do such hideous things… That I can be happy," she whispered.
Placing his hand around her shoulders, he hugged her sideways. Max, Zan, it didn't matter. He had been and was her brother, in that life and this one. The difference being that she would never, ever betray him here.
"It's going to be okay, Iz," he said, his voice barely audible as he soothed her fears. "It's going to be okay…"
Is it? She didn't want to know. God, she really didn't want to know.
T minus 1 hour, 43 minutes
AN: I've never really done this, but I'm curious to see the response. I'll give you a preview of next week's chapter to my lovely reviewers :)
