Maria and Liz are the first to arrive at the Reservoir and are sitting in the Jetta listening to the radio. The song ends and Maria turns off the ignition.

“Out with it Liz.” Maria turns to her friend both hands still on the steering wheel.

Liz looks away and pretends she doesn’t know what Maria is talking about. “Out with what Maria?”

A sly gleam comes to her eyes, “You and Max did the wild thing, didn’t you. It’s written all over you.”

“Maria.” Liz fends indignation, smiles and closes her eyes and is flooded with memories of being with Max.

“Liz,” Maria gently shakes her to bring her out of her reverie. “Are you okay?” She stares at Liz with questioning eyes.

“Yea, Maria. I’m better than okay. This is probably one of the best days in my life.”

Maria continues to stare at her friend. “Then why are you glowing? I mean literally glowing.”

Liz pulls down the visor to have a look in the mirror and to her dismay finds her body softly framed by the golden glow previously evident only in the throes of passion.

“Maria,” Liz reaches for and pats Maria’s arm with affection. “Its okay, I have got to learn how to control this.”

“Arrggh…It makes me so mad when you are so cool about this.” Maria hands imitate a strangle hold.

Liz bits her lips and slyly looks at her friend before breaking out into an enormous grin. “Maria, it was so wonderful, I can’t describe it. Just thinking about it…well you’ve just witnessed what thinking about it does.”

Maria is looking at Liz with incredulity, “I told you they would ruin it for us with anyone else. How can a mere human compete with their ability to make a girl florescent?”

“Golden aura’s aside, Max was so sweet, so gentle and so loving. There were times when I would forget to breath.” Liz lets out a heavy sigh.

“Anatomically?” Maria nods her head pressing for details.

“Maria,” Playfully shoves Maria away from her. “Without going into details I will say that he is more than adequate in all the right places.”

Maria nibbles on her lower lip, “What do you mean more than adequate?”

Liz arches an eyebrow and looks towards the approaching vehicles. “They’re here,” as she sprints from the car.

“Liz what do you mean by more?” She follows her friend out of the car and towards the rest of the group who are now standing at their usual meeting place.

“Sssh Maria, we’ll talk about it later.” Liz quiets her with a look.

“You bet your glowing arse we will Missy.”

Max’s smile at seeing Liz soon diminish when she stops short of running into his arms and turns away from him to greet the others.

He comes up behind her and she moves away only to have him grab her arm and turn her around to face him.

“She’s afraid she’ll start glowing again.” Maria blurts out and everyone turns to look at her.

“Don’t look at me.” Maria crosses her arms and nods towards Liz. “Just thinking about him had her glowing like a firefly in the car right before you guys showed up.”

Liz puts her face in her hands and then hides in Max’s armpit with humiliation. Max starts to laugh and pulls her away from him and try’s to pry her hands away from her face.

“Hon, it’s okay.” He looks to everyone begging them with his eyes not to tease her about this.

He leans down to whisper something in her ear that must give her some comfort because she pulls her hands away from her face and looks towards the others if not into their eyes.

(Max whispered for Liz’s ears only. “Guest what part of my body was glowing as I took a shower before coming here knowing that I was to see you my love.”)

Alex blurts, “I knew there was something different about you when I saw you earlier.”

“Alex,” Isabel elbows him in the ribs to quiet him.

“Oh hmm – sorry,” stammers an embarrassed Alex.

Michael hasn’t said a word since their arrival but hasn’t taken his eyes off of Maria. “Can we get on to the business at hand?”

Max notices the edge to Michaels voice and feels the need to address what he knows has to be the question uppermost in his friends mind.

Max takes Liz’s hand in his and looks to her for approval, which she gives with a nod.

“Under normal circumstances, as a couple we probably wouldn’t talk about this. But what’s so great about being normal?”

“Michael and Liz were witness to a vision of sorts which revealed Liz and I together, older and with a child. We can only assume at this point that we can safely reproduce with humans.”

“Liz and I made love and aside from her afterglow and my split eardrums (Liz hits him on the arm) everything was relatively textbook…well maybe not textbook but pretty normal. I think when the time comes for any of you (he pointedly looks at Michael and Isabel) are ready to pursue a physical relationship that it will be okay.”

Max pulls Liz into his side and looks down into her eyes. “We didn’t enter into this blindly. We talked, took precautions and discussed consequences. I strongly advise everyone here to do the same.”

Michael looks relieved, Isabel and Maria embarrassed and Alex has the silliest look on his face until Isabel elbows him again.

The six are standing around just as they have done so many times before when they needed an isolated place to talk without fear of being overheard. So much has happened since the last time they were here and what safety they should have felt is marred by the fact that a new enemy may be on the horizon.

Max, Michael and Liz fill Isabel, Maria and Alex in on what they’ve learned about Liz’s connection to the aliens and even though it may sound like a fairy tale all evidence points to Liz playing a major role in their quest to combat the enemy.

They tell of the metal chest and it’s contents but decided to leave it at the lake house until they can safely go over everything together. The fact that Max and Liz are back together is so obvious that no mention of how and why they ended up spending the night at the lake ever arises.

The most pressing item at this moment is to decide if Tess can be trusted as one of them and if Kyle’s knowledge of their alien status poses a threat.

“Personally I will have a hard time trusting her now if she was Mother Teressa reincarnated.” Maria throws her opinion into the arena to get the ball rolling.

“I understand her need to be discreet in contacting us but what was with all the mind control. I’m still not sure if the dreams Michael and I had were our awakening or if she put them there.” The anger and discuss is evident is Isabel’s voice.

“She never did reveal to us everything that Nasedo has taught her so we still don’t know the full extent of her powers.” Isabel adds as an afterthought.

“Max,” Michael looks away and hesitates before continueing.”I lied to you about how I knew the Pod Chamber’s location. Tess came to me at my apartment or at least I think she was there and suggested that I had been there before. But I felt weird afterwards like I wasn’t sure if it were real or not.” It’s hard for Michael to reveal his gullibility but he knows that it’s vital now not to keep things from the others.

“Michael we both lied that night. I didn’t want you guys to know about the book that Tess retrieved from the library because I was afraid of what it would tell us about ourselves and I wanted to protect what we’ve always had.” He looks down and away from them as he concludes his reasoning.

Liz is reluctant to speak but forges ahead knowing that her friends may think her deranged. “I think we should give her a chance.”

They all look at her waiting for an explanation for they can’t fathom what it could be especially after the doubts and distrust Tess created in Liz’s and Max relationship.

“I have seen Nasado’s true self and have concluded that he’s different from you and possibly different than your race as a whole.” She looks at each of the aliens. “He is void of human feelings and I feel sorry for Tess he being her soul nurturing vehicle.

“Max,” Isabel suddenly has tears in her eyes as she reaches out to her brother.

Max steps closer to her and grasps her arms and tries to get her to look at him, “What’s wrong?”

“All this talk about how deceitful Tess has been, do you think it’s possible that she made us see the vision of our mother?”

“I thought about that too but wanted to believe the vision too much to question it’s authenticity. But knowing that Tess can make more than one person at a time see what she wants them to see. I don’t know what to think.” Max’s voice trails off.

Max pulls Isabel into his arms and she lets the tears fall.

Alex soon comes over to her and is able to get her to stop crying but he is unsuccessful at erasing the doubt from her mind.

“Max…Liz, didn’t you guys find another Orb in that chest. Maybe you guys can try and activate them again without Tess being there.” Alex looks up from his comforting of Isabel to interject this idea.

“But what about Nasado’s warning that we may alert others to our whereabouts. Michael is running one hand through his hair when Maria joins him and places her arms around his waist.

Maria interjects, “Are you guys willing to chance that right now? Maybe you should wait a couple of weeks to make sure that there is no fallout from the first transmission.”

“In the mean time we don’t mention the chest or it’s contents to Tess, agreed.” Max looks to the others for their nod of approval.

“Max,” What do we tell Tess about us?” Liz reaches for his hand and is gently pulled into his arms.

Max kisses her on the top of her head before replying. “I’ll talk to her and let her know that I choose you.” He shrugs his shoulders. “She has no choice but to accept it.”

“I will also make it clear that she is not to use her mind control or any other power that she has on any of us, which includes our parents and friends.” He looks to everyone in the group.

Michael looks to Max and then to the others before stating. “What do we do about Kyle?”

“His father assures me that Kyle will keep our secret. I know I’m not his favorite person but Liz trusts him and I feel we should include him on all discussions in the future.” He looks down at Liz and smiles and then to the others for their reaction.

“So, what do you guys say to going over to Michael’s and ordering Pizza. We can call Kyle to see if he wants to join us.” Max concludes and they all start to walk to their cars.

“Tomorrow is soon enough to deal with Tess.

“Maybe we can just shave her head, look for the three sixes and call in a priest,” interjects Alex to the accompaniment of his friends laughter.