Melinda Metz - The Intruder

"That's the question we need to decide before we go into the compound," Alex said. "What do you think, Max? Do you think there's any chance he could turn on us?"

Michael paced around his cell. Sometimes only needing two hours of sleep a night totally sucked. In here, he wouldn't mind needing twenty.

Okay, maybe not twenty. Twenty would mean he slept way more than Cameron, and Michael wouldn't want to miss any Cameron time. He shot a quick look into her cell. All he could see was the top of her head as she lay on her cot. He liked her hair, which was kind of weird because he usually went for long hair on girls.

He also usually went for girls with a few more curves. Cameron was long, lean, and had more muscles, well, not more than he did, but she was definitely a hard body.

Don't go any farther in that direction, Michael told himself. It wasn't a good idea for boys who lived in glass cells to think about sex stuff too much.

He flopped down on his bed and stared up at the glass ceiling and the cement ceiling far above it. He wondered how far underground they were. Sometimes the idea of being underground completely creeped him out. It was like being buried alive.

Michael jumped up, suddenly feeling way too much like he was lying in a coffin. He shot another glance over at Cameron. He would let himself look at her a little longer if the guards weren't around. He didn't like the feeling of having people out there going, "Look, Alien Boy wants the human girl."

Was that even true? Did he want Cameron? Oh, yeah.

Okay, harder question, Michael thought. Would you want Cameron if she wasn't the only girl in this place?

The answer came just as fast. Oh, yeah.

Even harder question. Do you want her more than you want Maria or Isabel?

Isabel, whoa. How did she get in that question? Isabel was practically like his sister. He didn't think of Isabel that way.

Except, remember that day you were wrestling over the remote? he asked himself. He'd gotten this flash of what it would be like to see her in the non-almost-like-a-sister category, and it had been… intense. Body-burning intense.

That explained how Isabel got into the question. Michael shoved his hands through his hair. He'd really been trying not to think about Maria down here. He had enough to deal with without trying to decide how he felt about Maria saying she loved him.

The love word. It pretty much freaked him out. It felt too monumental. Maybe it didn't feel that way to people who had real families. Max and Liz had their parents saying "I love you" practically all the time. So it's like they'd had the chance to get used to hearing the words. Michael hadn't.

Okay, here's another question, he thought. Do you love any of them?

Isabel. He definitely loved Isabel, not that he'd ever actually told her that.

Stop right there, he ordered himself. You know we're not talking about an I-love-you-like-a-sister kind of thing. Or the you're-a-great-friend-and-I-love-you kind of thing. So what's your answer? Do you love Maria, Cameron, or Isabel?

Liz flipped her pillow over and pressed her face into the cool side. Why wasn't she asleep? She needed to be asleep.

Tomorrow they were going into the compound, and she couldn't be all fuzzy and out of it.

Well, she could be. She could also be dead if she screwed up.

Oh, there's a thought that would put her right to sleep. Liz decided that as long as her brain was spinning, she'd give it something to focus on. It was periodic chart time. Going over the chart in her mind always calmed her down. She'd do the rare earth elements first.

There was yttrium, symbol Y, atomic number 39, atomic weight 88.9059. It wasn't always classified as a rare earth element. Sometimes it was classified as a transition-

A soft sound from the backyard grabbed Liz's attention. Was Adam moving around down there? She swung herself out of bed and hurried over to the window-just in time to see Adam slipping back into the shed.

Where had he been? Liz pulled on her robe and headed to the back door even while she was telling herself he probably just had to pee or something. She slid open the door, crept over to the shed, and gave a little knock. Adam answered instantly, a huge smile spreading across his face when he saw her.

Oops, Liz thought. By visiting him in the middle of the night, I have now probably destroyed any of the I'm-with-Max hints that did manage to make it into his head.

"Hey, I heard you come back in," she said. "I just wanted to see if you were okay. Is there something you needed? Are you too cold out here or anything?"

"Everything's good," Adam answered. "Do you want to come in for a minute? I could make toast."

Liz smiled. She had gotten him a toaster as sort of a housewarming present. How could a guy whose biggest love in life is making toast be dangerous? she thought. Max has to be wrong about what happened out in the desert. Killing the rabbit had to be an accident.

"I better not. My parents will freak if they notice I'm gone," Liz answered. She turned toward the house, hesitated, and turned back to Adam. "So where'd you go?" she asked.

"Huh?" Adam asked.

"You went out. I just wondered where you went," Liz said.

Adam scrunched his eyebrows together. "Where I went," he repeated softly. "I don't think I went anywhere."

"I'm not mad or anything," Liz assured him. "Although you do need to be careful. I was just curious because, like I said, I saw you coming back home."

Adam stiffened up. "I just went to the minimart for some butter to put on my toast," he answered in a rush.

It made sense. But there was something about the way he said it that made Liz think he was lying. Why? What was he doing in the middle of the night that he needed to lie about?

Liz thought about asking to see the butter, but that seemed way too stupid. And if Adam was lying for some reason, maybe it was better to let him think she believed him. Better and safer.

"Are you sure you don't want me to make you some?" He smiled at her, his lips stretching up over his teeth.

Liz shivered, and involuntarily she took a step away. Max and Alex were right. She didn't know Adam that well.

Adam carried a piece of toast with him to the Jeep. He ate it as he and the others headed out of town. Even though melted butter had seeped into every inch of the bread, the toast tasted dry, scratchy against his mouth and throat.

He was going back to the compound. He was going back to the place without sun. Without grass. Without anything that was real. And yet a part of him was looking forward to it. He was, technically, going home.

"Should we go over the plan again?" Alex asked.

"Please, can we not?" Maria answered. "The more we talk about it, the more I realize there's not much plan in our plan."

"Maybe we should see if we can come up with something better," Liz suggested.

"We already know we can't," Isabel said sharply. "We've gone over every possibility a million times."

Adam didn't say anything. It didn't matter to him one way or the other. He didn't need a plan to know what needed to be done in the compound.

"Isabel's right," Max said. "Let's just use the drive to get focused."

Adam leaned his head against the roll bar and tried to take in every detail about the town as they drove through. If things went wrong, he wanted a lot of real things to remember.

Then he realized that wasn't true. He didn't need a lot of things. He needed one thing. If he ended up locked in the compound again, he wanted to be able to remember every single detail of Liz's face. He turned and studied her, trying to memorize the curve of her upper lip, the exact color of her eyes, the way her hair tumbled alongside her cheek. He stared at her until he was sure he'd never forget even one of her eyelashes, then he closed his eyes.