Liz woke up with a start. Her eyes roamed the forest around her, the tall trees up above and the clouds that obscured their uppermost branches. She was lying on the ground of this chalky, tranquil world. But now she knew, she could appreciate it for what it was.

Her mind was anesthetizing her, not letting her process the pain her body was going through. So she just laid there and enjoyed the peace, the absence of pain and fear for a few minutes.

The air was so still, as if the whole world was waiting...

And she waited with it, for whatever might happen...

for rescue... for more pain... for ultimate relief...

Her eyes teared up. If only she could feel Max one more time.

She raised her eyes desperately to the sky, the solid, cloudy ceiling of her little world and prayed brokenly.

“Please, just one more time. I’ve never asked for anything so selfish in my life, but you owe me. This is enough. Just enough. Please, let me see him, or feel him, and tell him I love him. Please.”

She let the tears leak out of her eyes and waited...

This time, for an answer.

******

Joey peeked around the corner, trying hard to contain the nervous frenzy in her stomach. It was almost time. She looked back at Kyle, or what she knew was Kyle behind her, buried underneath all that neon yellow plastic She sighed and pushed him back into the room. “Get back! If someone sees you now, we’re dead.”

Kyle pulled off his helmet with a scowl. “Could you please use a better choice of words?”

Joey’s eyes filled with unexplainable tears and she turned away. “Fine. If someone sees you now, we’re-”

She cut off as Kyle grabbed her, turned her around and crushed her in a slick, plastic embrace. It took her a moment to relax within the circle of neon, but eventually she looked into his eyes with a slight smile. “Please be careful.”

His bright blue eyes were suddenly twinkling. She loved how quickly they did that. “And miss the opportunity to have you come to my rescue? I always had a secret thing for Wonder Woman, you know.”

Joey laughed. She had never even heard of Wonder Woman before meeting Kyle, but he seemed to associate her with that superhero. It was kinda’ sweet.

The hall door slammed open and Joey flinched in Kyle’s arms. She looked up into his eyes and leaned in to kiss him quickly. The footsteps went down the hall and that meant it was almost time.

Kyle had no intention of letting this kiss go, obviously. Joey’s mind was half on the noises in the hallway, but his soft lips on hers were pulling her in slowly. Her body was humming, even though she couldn’t feel a bit of his skin through that suit. Then he pulled away. The noise was louder this time, footsteps walking back down the hall, away from the ICU. The old shift of workers was leaving, right on time. Joey moved away from Kyle without another thought. She couldn’t think; she just had to do it.

“Good luck,” Kyle whispered.

She took a deep breath and walked out in the hallway toward the group of seven plastic yellow men. Her steps started to weave a bit, then she stopped and swayed. A few of the men halted and one stepped toward her.

She started to speak, “I- I-”

And then she fell over in a faint.

Hands grabbed her before she hit the floor, which she was extremely thankful for. She kept her eyes closed and listened to the men discussing the situation. After a moment, she moaned as pitifully as she could manage while grasping at the suit of the man who held her. She found his tag clip with one hand and dug the fake one out of her pocket with her other, hoping the voluminous folds of plastic from his suit shielded the movement. Quickly, she faked a small panic attack, hitting against him and using the distraction to switch the tags. Then she pushed out of his arms and stood to her feet, hiding the hand with the tag under her armpit. She didn’t have to pretend fear. She was truly trembling as the man in front asked her repeatedly if she was okay. Joey just nodded and stepped out of the way. The faceless men hesitated and then walked on out the door with the others. She watched for a moment and then slipped back inside the office where Kyle was waiting with open arms.

She enjoyed his hug, but the concerned look in his eyes even more. She smiled at him. “Well, now I know I got the suit just right. Ugh,“ she shuddered. “And here,” she said, holding up the i.d. tag.

“Did I say Wonder Woman,” Kyle teased. “I meant to say Nancy Drew.”

Joey smiled a mile wide. “Now I know all about Nancy-”

The door slammed again and footsteps sounded in the hallway.

Kyle withdrew his arms and nodded at her. “Time to go.” He pulled the helmet back on and watched from behind the door as the men walked by. Joey wanted to stop him, keep him safe with her. But then he was gone.

******

Kyle fell into step with the group of men and hoped like hell that they didn‘t count the number of men in the group. They were marching toward the ICU like they were in the freakin‘ army. Any second, Kyle expected to hear a drill sergeant attacking them for being slow, or out of formation, or just for being so freakin’ yellow. Not that he would hear him very well in this suit. Everything was muffled. The weird thing was, it wasn’t hot at all. There was this little tiny motor built into the front that somehow managed to cool the air. Joey had even gotten that right. Man, they gotta’ put these in football uniforms.

They were almost there, passing the reporters and mourners and busybodies. The lobby was now crawling with people. Kyle couldn’t even see the Whitmans or Mr. Parker now. Or his Dad, who was last seen frantically trying to get his back-up folks where he wanted them.

The phone conversation Kyle had overheard had really put his Dad over the top when he told him about it. Dad was determined to catch them red-handed trying to get rid of the next body. If he could, he could pull the whole operation apart and send ole’ Smoking Man to the pound. Right where he belonged.

And then, maybe they could beat out of him where the real Liz and Alex were. Kyle would sure like to give it a go.

Now he was walking through the plastic divider, getting his first look inside the hallway. It was pretty freaky stuff. No walls anywhere, just shifting, clear plastic covering everything. There was one checkpoint down the hallway. As they walked into the tunnel of plastic, the sounds became muted and a soft humming sound became more noticeable.

Somehow, Kyle suddenly found himself at the front of the line, not where he wanted to be. But there was one of the yellows standing guard ahead and he didn’t want to call attention to himself. So he walked right up and stopped. The guy touched his tag with a little gun and a nice, reassuring “beep” told him that he’d been approved.

Kyle took a deep breath, nodded at the faceless guard and walked forward. Now, he took note of the rooms ahead. Roswell Memorial wasn’t very large, so this ICU had only four rooms to operate in. The one dead ahead was a large, wide-open space, originally made to be a surgical space with three off-shooting rooms. Now it was crammed full of gurneys, which Kyle assumed would be the seven victims still left in here, although he wasn’t close enough to count.

It was the room off to the left that he wanted to investigate. That was the official quarantined space for the infected victims. That was where they had Alex and Liz, according to Mr. Parker. And, unless Kyle had already missed the pick-up somehow, that would be where “Liz’s” dead body would still be.

As far as he and Joey saw it, this was it, the only way to prove that Liz and Alex weren’t in here and that there was no deadly virus. He had to get proof and then get back out.

Kyle steered off to the left, away from the group. Immediately, someone called after him. “Sims! Where are you going? Sims?”

Kyle didn’t stop. He walked even more quickly down the short hallway as though he hadn’t heard and slammed through the swinging metal doors. The doors shut behind him and he surveyed the quiet room.

Ahead were two gurneys, each covered with a plastic shroud which hung from the i.v. stand overhead. The heart monitors were switched off. These two were dead.

Kyle forced himself toward the nearest one. His heart was pounding painfully loud and time seemed to slow to a crawl as he finally caught a glimpse of the first body. Dark hair, olive skin- she could have been Liz’s long lost sister- but it WASN’T LIZ!

“I knew it!” Kyle pointed at the body as though it was to blame. “YES!” Then he ran to the other gurney.

Definitely not Alex. This guy was practically a foot shorter and whole hell of a lot fatter.

Kyle just stood there in disbelief. How did they expect to get away with this? You can’t just switch bodies and lie to people. It’s just- wrong.

Then the door swung open and a yellow guy stood there all tense. “What are you doing in here?” His sounded muffled and ridiculously anal.

Kyle reached up and pulled off his helmet. “Proving that there’s no virus.” He took a deep breath with a smarmy grin on his face.

“What the hell are you doing, Sims? Put your helmet back on!”

Oh, this was rich, these guys didn’t even know what each other looked like. “Stick with me here, okay? There. is. no. virus. Everyone’s been lying their asses off and I can prove it.”

“How?”

“That is not Liz Parker.”

“Look, you’d better come with me and talk to Dr. Schiffly. They’ll probably want to contain you now.”

Fear shot through Kyle. He cursed his stupidity. He could come up with no better plan than to fake agreement. “Yeah, you’re right. I’d better put my top back on.”

The other guy nodded his big, dumb helmet and backed out of the way. There were two other plastics waiting on the other side of the door and they all watched as Kyle walked between them. They were close enough to grab him. He held his breath.

No one touched him.

He was almost to the hallway when he heard a whispered conversation behind him. He turned to see a yellow talking to someone in a green suit, must be a doctor. The doctor took one look at Kyle/Sims and barked out an order. “He’s been exposed! Detain him!”

Kyle took off around the corner. An alarm went off and two plastics stepped in about five feet ahead. Kyle bent low, jutted out his elbows and sped up. “Low and hard, low and hard,” he coached himself and then rammed them with a grunt.

Both men went down, but one got a hand on Kyle’s suit. He was still three yards from the plastic hallway.

“DAD! JOEY! It‘s not Liz!! They don‘t-”

Hands were all over him and plastic was drowning him on every side.

His yells became a roar as something sharp was jammed into his butt.

He thought he saw a commotion outside the plastic walls, but everything was going dim.

“It’s not Liz,” he managed to get out one more time before collapsing.

He hated being stupid.

******

White.

Alex hated white.

If he ever got out of this alive, he was never going to live anywhere with white walls.... or own a white car... or let Isabel wear white on their wedding day.

Oh no, she was going to wear a more happy color, like... what the hell was the name of that color?

Alex huffed out a breath in frustration. He had the name of it just a second ago. Pink. Pink. That was it.

Isabel would wear a pink-colored dress on their wedding day.

The beautiful vision in his mind came complete with bride, friends, church, even pink flowers. After only-God-knew how many hours of this hell, the picture was pret-ty damn complete. But it faded quickly, and the burning took back over.

Alex shifted weakly to one side. Immediately, the room started tilting crazily. Gravity pulled at him until he finally closed his eyes and felt everything spin. He barely kept from emptying the contents of his stomach- again.

Radiation therapy sucked. Especially when you know they’re just trying to kill you, anyway.

Alex moaned. Why were they going to all this trouble just to kill him? They must be overstating their case. If he truly was transformed, like Liz, then he would be exhibit-A in the case of U.S.A. versus aliens.

Right?

They’d have to keep him alive.

Footsteps again. Oh, goody. Time to up the dosage.

Alex put his “game face” in place, privately praying that Cliiiive would stay away just a little longer. That guy was evil and if he kept trying to mess with his head, Alex might be forced to try a little projectile vomiting on him, which seemed to be his only weapon at the moment.

Of course, the footsteps were softer than Clive’s. Maybe it was Simpson, the monotone doctor from the dark underbelly of oncology. But the sliding door revealed Dr. Agbayani. What was he doing here?

Alex watched him putter around the room with his exact, soft pacing. With his dark skin and halting speech, it was obvious that he was from India, one of those usual disciplined, overachieving brilliant doctors that took to medicine like hackers to a new security system. Dr. Agbayani actually treated Alex like a person, not a lab rat.

Alex cleared his throat and tried to straighten up on the table without puking. “So, this stem cell transplant thing, could you maybe explain it a little to me? I mean, it is an actual medical procedure and not just some sicko‘s idea of a good time, right?” He tried to keep the fear out of his voice, but, oh well, Dr. Agbayani still came over and patted him on the hand.

“I know this is hard for you, Alex.“ Actually, he pronounced it more like “Ah-lecks,” which brought a brief smile to Alex’s face. “It is always hard for the pioneers of any new treatment. But you will be fine. You are in good hands. Is the pain too great?”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “No, actually, it’s manageable at the moment. It’s the nausea I could do without.”

“Ah,” Dr. Agbayani’s eyes lit up with understanding. “We can give you something for that.” He walked back over to the clipboard and scribbled on it.

Alex was waiting for an “April Fool’s” or some other sign that this was a perverse joke, but there was none forthcoming. “So, the blood stem cell thing?”

The doctor squinted at him and then hung the clipboard back up on the wall. “Ah, yes.” He assumed a lecturing posture, feet spread apart, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing occasionally. “Blood stem cells are the virgin cells in the bone marrow that haven’t made up their mind yet whether to become oxygen-carrying red blood cells, blood-clotting platelets or infection-fighting white blood cells. Are you familiar with those terms?”

Alex nodded.

“Once we have cleared out your immune system, we will inject alien stem cells and let them take over. They should mature rapidly, to regenerate your immune system, and the transformation may happen as quickly as a week or two. We have already harvested the alien stem cells and stored them in a freezer.”

Alex grimaced. “Is that what they were doing to Liz?”

“Sorry?” The doctor’s train of thought was derailed. He looked slightly vague.

“When I saw Liz, down there, they were... digging into her hip-bone.” Alex felt his throat tighten at the memory. “Was that how they harvested the stem cells?”

“Liz?”

“Liz Parker.” Alex shook his head. Was this guy just pretending to be an idiot, or was he really that forgetful? “The hybrid downstairs that they’ve been...” He didn’t want to finish the sentence, and he was grateful when the doctor finally jumped in.

“Oh, the hybrid! No, no we are not using her stem cells. They probably would be more human than alien. Although, it might be interesting to find out exactly how much of each... hmmm...” As he stared off into space, Alex tried to get him on track again.

“No. Wait, I don’t understand. If the cells didn’t come from Liz, where did they come from?”

The doctor looked at him like Alex had completely lost his mind. “From the alien, Subject FA-2.”

“You-you have another alien here?”

“Had. Unfortunately, she did not survive our testing. Now then, we will take the blood stem cells and inject them...”

Alex was so nauseous, he couldn’t even listen anymore.