He'd spent the whole night after he finally reached Liz attempting to reach the others. Max ignored him, as per usual.

Maria...he could get into her dreams, but it was as though she was locked into a tiny corner of her mind. That corner, he finally realized, was grief. She was so consumed by her sadness that a mere dream of him caused her to retreat into herself.

Alex seemed to be a lost cause. No matter what he did, he couldn't reach him. In one of the few times he talked to Isabel, she had said briefly that she had entered a dream, but that he didn't believe she was real. Michael could believe that. He wasn't even sure if Alex had known of their dream-walking abilities.

He had been so surprised to finally reach Liz...in her case, it had been as though she weren't having dreams. He wasn't even certain if she was dead or alive. Then the awful news...he found her pregnancy amazing. The government's attempts to impregnate Isabel with human sperm had failed, despite the use of a new artificial insemination process that was supposedly guaranteed to work. So on her next fertile time, they had tried a different species.

Him.

He hadn't realized what was going on until it was too late. They had drugged him and delivered him to Isabel's room. After that, his next memory was of awakening, naked, next to Isabel as she sobbed. He didn't have to ask what had happened. A few weeks later, a man he knew only as Marcus came to deliver the "joyful" news. Michael was going to be a father. God only knew what Isabel was going through in the next room over. Occasionally Michael would hear her screams, but he had long ago learned it was better not to investigate. When he tried it, they made him watch.

Michael didn't know why Isabel warranted twice as many torturous "tests" as he did, but he was certain that if, by chance, they happened to survive, he'd pay for it in guilt for the rest of his life.

And he didn't need any more guilt than he already had. The last thing he needed was for Max to show up and be tortured along with the rest of them. Or Liz. He felt like smacking himself for not warning her. She was almost certainly a more interesting specimen than Max, now, bearing an alien's child.

He wondered why it hadn't worked with Isabel.

Did an alien child have to be conceived in love?

**** Liz squinted into the sun as she waited at the bus stop. This time, she had decided to shell out the $40 that would get her a ticket to Roswell. If the bus was on time, it would be here in about five minutes. She was happy to be back on her own turf, or, at least, close to it. The dry heat made her feel at home. She'd been to Albuquerque several times. Up until high school, she had even planned to attend the University of New Mexico.

Now her plans were just a little changed.

She sighed in relief as the bus came closer. She was glad that she no longer had to hitchhike, even though a bus felt risky. It felt like she was that much closer to being captured. She had given a false name for her ticket, of course. She hadn't even used Marjorie, making up Valerie Donahue on the spot. The bus hissed to a stop only a few feet away. Liz smiled and stepped on board, inhaling the familiar smell that all buses seemed to carry.

"Let's go, Greyhound," she murmured to herself as the bus pulled away from the curb. As she fell asleep once again, she began to wonder if her whole pregnancy was going to be like this.

****

She awakened to the feeling of an earthquake. The bus was shaking and shuddering so hard that Liz couldn't even see straight. The few passengers on board were screaming in fear.