Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 7: Accusations and Consequences
"My God, Max, what were you thinking?
Isabel cried out in disbelief. The jeep, that Max was driving, and that she and Michael were riding in, had just turned off the street where the Crash-Down Café was located. Max ignored her inquiry as he steered the jeep with a dazed expression. His mind was lost in thought. He too was shocked by what he had done.
"Max," Isabel yelled out for his attention. "Tell me what Michael has been saying isn't true."
Michael had been projecting telepathic reports to Isabel from the moment he felt her mind outside of the Crash-Down Café. He too was shocked by Max's actions and expressed his disbelief along with the details of the event in a steady stream of telepathic messages to Isabel. Max was so distracted was by these reports and Isabel's numerous telepathic inquiries that he was frequently taken off guard by a question from the detective that was interviewing him.
I heard you, Max responded telepathically. I don't think we should be discussing this aloud.
"No, Max," Isabel returned angrily. "I'm not doing this mind whispering crap."
"Who's going to hear us?" Michael tossed out in that same moment with annoyed astonishment.
"I feel like yelling, Max," Isabel continued. "I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm not going to waste my time focusing my thoughts into telepathic bursts."
The process of conversing telepathically took the spontaneity out of communicating. A significant amount of effort had to be directed into formulating and broadcasting a specific message. Vocalizing their thoughts was a far simpler way of communicating, and it was the method they commonly used.
"Talk to me, Max," Isabel yelled into his ear.
"I-I," Max fumbled with his thoughts and subsequently his words. "I didn't know what else to do."
"You could have left her alone," Michael roared in response.
"She would have died," Max hollered back without hesitation.
By this time the trio had reached the outskirts of the city. Max steered the vehicle to the side of the road and brought it to a stop. Ahead of them laid a wide-open expanse of wilderness with sparse markings of human development. Behind them, across the horizon, was the skyline of the city of Roswell. Frustrated by the combined assaults of Isabel and Michael, Max applied the brakes to the jeep and shut down the engine in a huff.
"I couldn't let her die," Max insisted in a voice laced with dread.
"So, we get to die in her place," Isabel tossed out sarcastically and with a hint of empathy.
"You don't know that," Max defensively replied.
"Don't give me that, Max," Isabel retaliated against his response. "You're just as terrified as we are about what will happen when people find out about us."
"That's just it," Max reasoned. "It's an irrational fear that we all have. It's not natural. There's something artificial about it."
"Who cares where it came from," Michael retorted angrily. "We're not like everyone else. If they find out about us, then they're going to lock us up. You know that, Max."
Max could not argue with that and held his head down dejectedly. He knew he had let Isabel and Michael down. The protection of their joint secret went beyond being a sacred oath. It was fused into their psyche, and he knew that his affinity for a girl had caused him to overrule that.
"Look, I'm sorry," Max pleaded with a shake of his head.
"Yeah, great," Michael reacted. "You're sorry. That fixes everything."
"You linked with her, Max," Isabel continued a second behind in a tone intermixed with sympathy. "I can't believe you did that."
Max, Isabel and Michael had learned, nearly three years earlier, that they could merge their minds into a single consciousness. This discovery, more so than anything else they learned about themselves, solidified in their minds that they were not like anyone else on the planet. At the moment of that discovery, they learned that this act came with an uncomfortable side-effect. Unlike probing into the minds of people who were not like them, the merger of two or more brains into one collective mind gave each member full access to each-other's thoughts, fears and memories. It is for that reason that the trio elected never to do it again. They were not sure, until this day, that they could blend their minds with someone who was not like themselves, but they instinctively knew better than to try it for fear of divulging all that they are to that other person.
There was never any question in Michael's or Isabel's mind about why Max thought it necessary to link his mind with Liz's. The three of them had long known that they could encourage their bodies to accelerate repairs to itself. This was second nature for them. Phillip and Diane Evans had quipped on past occasions that their children had the healing power of a salamander. Max, Isabel and Michael thought it highly unlikely that they could regrow a limb, but they had entertained the thought that they could reattach one. The severity of Liz's wound seemed minor by comparison to that. They all suspected that by joining their minds with someone other than themselves they could extend that degree of control over their bodies into someone else.
"She was mostly unconscious at the time," Max suggested more than argued. "She may have no memory of it at all."
"And what if she does?" Michael argued to the contrary. "What if she knows all about us?"
"I'll talk to her," Max countered. "Liz won't tell anyone."
"You don't know that, Max," Isabel retorted with incredulity.
"We have to leave," Michael shouted out.
"No," Max quickly, and sternly, countered. "We need to stay here, Michael. You know that."
"Well, Max, you just made that plan obsolete," Michael responded snidely.
The very suggestion of them leaving Roswell frightened Isabel into silence. She shared Max's and Michael's interest in whatever it was in the wilderness around Roswell that was whispering to them when they slept. But the thought that was giving her the most unease was the idea of abandoning her parents. Despite her agreement with the logic in Michael's position, she could not bring herself to vocalize that.
"We don't know that," Max argued back. "If we start running then there won't be any stopping. We need to stay calm and see what happens."
Michael did not care for this reasoning, but he did not have a ready answer for it. In his hesitation to respond, Isabel meekly tossed out her feelings on the debate.
"I think we should wait, Michael."
"Great, that's just great," Michael reacted in an exasperated tone of voice. "We just sit around and wait for them to come and get us."
Max saw no reason to respond to that. He knew that Michael had, in his own way, acquiesced to the majority. He started up the jeep, put it into gear and then turned it back around for the city. The three of them raced back toward Roswell and home in silence. Their emotions, their passions and their arguments had been spent. None of them could think of anything more to add to what they had already said.
Max was not convinced that anything he had said would come to pass. Liz Parker was an unknown quantity to him. He had spoken to her, played with her and sat next to her on numerous occasions in their pasts, but he never truly befriended her well enough to know her mind. From a distance all that he could see was an angel. His mind could not entertain that she would be anything less than that.
Over the years, Max had avoided befriending Liz Parker. This he did out of fear of revealing too much about himself. The secret that he guarded always superseded all other considerations. That was a practice he had in common with Isabel and Michael. They all stayed clear of anyone they liked too much. It was for that reason that Max felt so much guilt over what he had done. He suspected that his feelings for Liz went far beyond anything that Isabel or Michael had experienced with another person. It made him feel weak and a danger to the two people he desperately wanted to protect.
Initially Max had no idea how he would react if Liz began talking about what happened between her and him in the restaurant. And he had no plan for dealing with her if she confronted him about it. He was completely conflicted between his blind affection for her and his devotion to Isabel and Michael. Shortly, his awareness of this inner struggle forced him to choose a course of action. Halfway home he began steeling himself to do something that he very much preferred not to do. If necessary, he would push Liz, into believing it was all just a hallucination.
Pushing a thought into someone's mind was something that Max had never done. He knew that act could create conflicts and confusion within that person's thinking. Large and/or multiple pushes would make these conflicts a suspicious presence within their thinking. If that occurred, he knew it would take repetitive pushes to hide his telepathic footprints in that person's mind. That was something that Max did not want for Liz. He knew that repeated pushes created disjointed fragments of memories that the possessor would struggle to make sense of. He had only to look at Michael's father to see the long-term effects of that.