CHAPTER 36
"What do you mean, Michael?" Isabel blurted.
He swallowed and avoided her eyes. "I mean that the problem is mental," he told her roughly. "I'm cracking up, okay?"
Maria snorted. "You are not cracking up, Michael," she objected.
He looked at her. "Well, what would you call it?"
"I don't know. Lack of sleep? Some sort of alien post-traumatic stress syndrome?" she sighed, then turned to the others. "Okay, Michael thinks he's losing his admittedly screwy mind. I disagree. What do you think?"
Max looked at the tight-lipped alien who stood there so uneasily. "What's going on, Michael? We can't know if you don't tell us."
Maria silently sent a message. Just tell them, Michael. Let them ask, so I don't have to. As if he could actually hear her, his eyes met hers and his jaw clenched.
He slowly turned to Max, his voice cracking. "I'm hearing things, okay? I've got this voice stuck in my head. That's what's going on. I am totally fucked up. Happy now?" His burning eyes met those of his leader.
"A voice?" Isabel said intently. "Like the one we heard when we dreamwalked you?"
He shrugged, and Maria spoke up. "Yeah. The same voice."
"Whose voice?" Isabel questioned.
"I don't know, all right? I don't know anything any more," he barked. Reaching over, he grabbed his jacket from the counter.
"Michael!" cried Isabel.
"Just...gotta get some air," he managed, pushing past her to the door. His hand on the knob, he kept his back turned as he spoke to Max and Isabel. "Will one of you stay with Maria?"
"Sure, Michael," Max answered without hesitation.
Michael ducked his head in thanks. He paused, teeth gritted, and then turned to Maria, muttering, "You can go ahead and tell them. I don't care. I just...I gotta go." Raising miserable eyes to hers for one fleeting moment, he bolted out the door.
Maria frowned. He very obviously did care. A hell of a lot. He seemed to want them to know, but at the same time he couldn't bear to face them knowing. And whatever he felt, as usual he couldn't bring himself to find the words. "Okay," she said to the door where he had disappeared. She could at least save him from the struggle to tell the others.
"You may as well sit back down," she told the two aliens.
"But Michael..." Isabel whispered.
Maria's voice was confident. "He'll be back. He just needs a little time. And we were kind of closing in on him, so his instinct was to run. But he'll be back."
Realization dawned in Isabel's eyes, and she spoke softly. "You knew he felt like that. That's why you were trying to get us to stop talking about it." It wasn't a question, but Maria nodded. "I'm sorry, Maria. I should have known better, but I--"
"You were just worried about him," Maria finished for her. "We all are."
"So what about this voice?" asked Alex, getting to the point.
"He doesn't know who or what it is," Maria explained. "But it's in his head all the time. Sometimes he can drown it out, and other times...I think that's what happens when he zones out. The voice overpowers him, and he can't handle it." She bit her lip. "On top of all that, he hasn't really been able to deal with killing Agent Pierce, you know? Well, the voice...it calls him a killer."
There was silence from the other four, then "Oh god," whispered Isabel.
Max shut his eyes. Why did this have to happen? Wasn't it enough for Michael to have to deal with his entrapment in his own mind, and the danger Maria was in, not to mention all the problems with Pierce and the FBI last spring? His friend didn't deserve any of that, and now this voice...Max felt a sudden need to destroy something. Anything. Just blast it out of oblivion. Instead he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. They had to do something. Figure this out, and fix it. If Michael would let them.
Hands in his jacket pockets, Michael wandered aimlessly down the chilly streets of Roswell. He felt able to breathe again, after the claustrophobia that had swarmed over him in his apartment. He kicked himself mentally for once again having run out on them. It seemed that, no matter what his intentions, he couldn't help but flee whenever things got too hard or too difficult. And he couldn't bear to stand there and see pity in their eyes. So he ran, like the coward he was.
Trudging along, he allowed his thoughts to drift to Maria. She was the one who'd gotten him to open up as much as he had, so he could say it was all her fault he'd had to leave. His lip curled up in a sneer. Yeah, all her fault and not his own. Sure. God, he couldn't even face himself with the blame. He was weak enough to try and lay it on her. But that was just an excuse. He knew better.
It was his own fault, his own weakness. He'd hidden it from all of them for so long that it had almost become part of who he was. He'd bluffed and blustered through his whole life, hiding his self-doubt under a thick layer of rash action and unconcern. Not even Max and Isabel, who'd known him longer than anyone, had really seen him. And now, with so much out in the open, how could he face them? Who would he be?
A car horn in the distance brought his head up, and he finally noticed his surroundings. He had passed the Crashdown, now closed down for the night, retracing the steps he'd taken earlier that evening. Somehow, without intending to, he'd brought himself back to the park.
Five people sat in an uncomfortable silence in Michael's small apartment, searching for answers. "What do we do, Max?" Isabel asked her bother in a shaky voice.
"I don't know," he answered regretfully. "I'm scared to push him any more, Izzy. I don't know how much more he can take."
"But we have to do something. We can't just let him..." Her voice trailed off, scared to finish the thought.
"We need to find out more about what's going on," he said, "Before we can help him. But I don't know how much more he's going to be able to tell us. If he's even willing to in the first place."
Liz tried to take what little information they had and pull it together into a logical explanation. She didn't get far. "As usual, we don't know enough to get any answers. All we have are bits and pieces that don't make sense," she complained.
"Welcome to Czechoslovakia," Maria put in dryly. "You're the experts here," she said, turning to the two aliens. "Or at least the closest thing we have. So what do you really think?"
Max's forehead wrinkled as he attempted to sort out his thoughts. "I don't know what to think," he admitted. "We've never faced anything like this before."
Alex spoke up thoughtfully. "Well, either Michael's hallucinating, in which case maybe he is cracking up, or else the voice is real. In which case, who is it and where did it come from?"
"I don't think it's a hallucination, Alex," Maria said firmly. "I mean, he didn't tell me about it--Michael just doesn't tell you things, you know?--I heard it myself. In the dreamwalk, and then...well, it was in one of the flashes I got when he connected to me the other night. It felt...let's just say it felt very, very real."
Michael lowered himself into the same swing that Maria sat in earlier that evening, waiting for him. Sometime during then and now, the bulb in the closest street lamp had burned out, leaving the swings sitting in darkness. He didn't mind; the night almost seemed to welcome him.
He wasn't ready to go back and face them all, though he knew he would have to eventually. But for now, he wanted to just sit and be. Not to worry about Maria, or Max and Isabel and his destiny to help them fight for their planet, or his crazy brain that was persisting in dredging up every last bit of guilt and horror and shame over what he was and what he had become. Not to have to think about anything. He just wanted to sit and let the night enfold him in a dark cloak, hiding him from everything and everyone.
He was only partially successful, though. His contrary mind refused to oblige him; it kept winging its way back to the note that Maria had received. To whoever had sent it. Gazing into the darkness, he wrestled with it, trying to define its purpose.
Something about it was bothering him. Contrary to Maria's worries, it had to be targeting her, and not the three aliens. After all, if it were some sort of an alien enemy plot, why would they have bothered to send any sort of a warning? Why not just sneak into town and take the three of them out? Letting your targets know you're there didn't seem like sound military strategy to him. Not that he would know.
So it just seemed to make sense that whoever sent the notes was after Maria, and not Max, Isabel and him.
But if the notes were really directed towards Maria, why? Who could dislike her that much? She couldn't possibly have done anything to hurt someone so badly that they would come after her in this way. As best as he could tell, she was a good, though quirky, person. Not that he was equipped to judge. He frowned. Anyway, there was no reason for her to be a target.
And who would write her a note and sign it 'M'? He didn't buy into the idea that she was intended to think the note was from him. No one except an over-hopeful Maria could possibly take that as his style. So that left everyone else with names beginning with M as suspects, which didn't narrow down the pool all that much. Face it, M was a pretty damn common initial.
He began to run through a list in his head, discarding the obvious rejects. Max wouldn't take a risk with her safety any more than Michael would. And Maria certainly hadn't left it for herself. M could stand for Mom, except that Mrs. DeLuca could have talked to her daughter at home any time; no need to meet in the park of all places. Who else? Michael's jaw clenched as a name popped into his head. A name he had been trying to avoid.
Mark. Mark Blumenthal, the guy in Maria's play. The guy who'd sought her out at lunch, not just today, but the day that his emotionless half had fought with Maria in the middle of the quad. Michael had been across the courtyard, sitting leaning against a tree, keeping away from the whole bunch of them, and she'd crossed over to get him, to talk about making another dreamwalk attempt. He'd been very aware that Mark had stopped her on the way. He remembered it very well--how conscious he'd been of where she was, the emotion that he hadn't wanted to feel breaking through from his other self when she headed towards him...only to be stopped. By Mark.
The guy who'd kissed her. Who she'd kissed back. Even though it was just part of the play. The guy who seemed a little too friendly for Michael's taste.
The guy Michael didn't trust.
Abandoning his speculation, Michael clenched his fists. He needed to get back to the apartment, and see what he could pick up from the note. To see if his suspicions were correct. He had to try the vision thing, even if it meant facing them all first.
He ran a hand across his face, trying to wipe away his reluctance to go back. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and then got up off of the swing determinedly. He had only taken a few steps when a movement across the park stopped him in his tracks. Someone else was in the park.
Slinking back into the pool of darkness surrounding the swings, Michael peered through the night at the tall figure that moved slowly across the grass. He let out a breath as the figure moved close enough into the light of a street lamp to be distinguished.
It was Mark. And he wasn't alone.
TBC...