Author: Liz
E-mail: [email protected]
Rating: Pg-13
Category: M/L
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: Alternate universe, future fic. Liz is married to Kyle, and there was never a shooting at the Crashdown. The aliens never came to Roswell.
Distribution: All back parts can be found at <A HREF="http://www.inficad.com/~jlaw/Liz/Liz.htm">Stories by Liz</A> (Jessi's Page). As far as putting it anywhere else, I think I'm gonna hold off for now.
Feedback: Pretty please :)
Subject: A1 (Part 12)
The hours had flown by, and boredom was setting in. She was still searching for work, for anything to keep her hands and her mind busy. Max had managed to fall into a light sleep, but she knew he was having nightmares by the way he tossed and turned on his cot.
She felt the familiar urge to touch him, followed by the surge of tears that pressed at her face like a heavy weight. This time, she didn't bother to fight them. As the salty tears began to stream down her cheeks, she found herself drawn to look at him.
When she was a small child, and her dreams were still pure, still hers, she used to dream of getting married. Growing up, going to college, living a fabulous life and meeting a gorgeous man. Tall, dark, mysterious. A man who would love her, take care of her, and marry her.
Her visions had been so vivid--their wedding in a huge chapel, flowers everywhere, her dress breathtakingly beautiful with a train that stretched 20 feet behind her as she slowly made her way down the aisle and towards the man of her dreams.
Why had she thrown it all away?
There was so much more she had always wanted for herself. Most of all, happiness. Her dreams forsaken, what did she have left?
She had Max.
He was so much like everything she had wished for as a
child--and then so much the opposite. It seemed that everything
about her life was a contradiction. Why did it still manage to
surprise her?
All that she had left now, after everything else was gone, was
her chance to save him. To pass along that one little bit of hope
to him. He deserved it so much more than she did.
It didn't really matter to her anymore what happened in the
end. Job be damned, she would save him somehow.
When her tears were finally gone and she was only left with the
ache, she turned back to her computer. She needed to think, but
she couldn't manage to clear her head. Her thoughts had grown
thick and groggy, hard to understand. She was sleepy and yet she
knew that she couldn't sleep.
The computer was bright in the dismally dark room, and seemed to draw her in. Moth to a flame. She laughed quietly, for what reason she didn't know why.
The screen saver disappeared and the computer whirred into action, jumping to life before her eyes. She was burned out on card games, and there was no work left to do. She figured that all there was left to do was clear out her outdated files, which had been on the bottom of her to-do list for awhile now. What better opprotunity than now?
Once in the directory, she began to sort through the files, most of them labeled with cryptic codenames, sometimes even numbers. Which meant that she had to open every one, and go through all of the information inside. It was tedious and excrutiatengly boring, but it kept her mind off of things.
Finally, she had made it down to 3. Glancing over at the clock, she groaned inwardly. 3 a.m. What in the hell was she thinking? If she didn't get some sleep, she was going to pass out tomorrow. Today. Whatever.
Looking back at the screen, she contemplated for a moment just leaving the rest for later, after she had rested some. But then the perfectionist in her started to push, and she had herself convinced that it couldn't hurt to go ahead and get it out of the way.
Sighing, she clicked on the third to last file, labeled ADB1-37. The computer stalled for a moment and then the list of documents appeared.
She frowned. There was just one, a database with the same
title as the folder. Clicking on the tiny icon, she waited
another minute while the screen slowly changed, finally morphing
into a database.
For a long minute it didn't even sink in. She just sat there,
staring stupidly at the screen, at the cells filled with names,
with dates. It didn't click, the letters and the numbers and the
whole entire meaning didn't seem to fit together in a brain that
had already been overloaded in these few short days.
It hit her eventually, though. Maybe it took awhile, but she still had eyes. And the title at the top of the screen stood out at her like a blinking neon sign.
"Sector 27--Extra-terrestrials Subjects 1-57"
The names stretched down and down, beyond the limits of her screen. And beside them were more cells, some filled with dates or numbers, some empty. Above each column was a title.
The first--the one with the names. Subject.
The second--Room numbers. Experimental.
The third--More room numbers. Pending Termination.
The fourth--Dates. Terminated.