Maria looks upward again, this time with an eye roll and a shake of her head. It's frustrating beyond belief that she doesn't know the full story, but she'll tell him what she's got.

"We're not entirely sure," she says. "Everything came from mom, by which I mean Isobel went into her head and tried to pull things from her. Carefully. But Liz's mom and Flint Manes were working together. Sort of."

She looks at Kyle with an expression of empathy. "She never got over what happened to your dad, I guess. Complicated story I'm not entirely solid on? Flint was developing a bio-weapon that attacked alien DNA. She was helping, so that she could develop her own bio-weapon that attacked Manes DNA."