*He can't possibly know who I am,* she reasoned. *He only had a file with your name on it in his car,* another voice countered.

"Tess?"

Liz looked up suddenly. How long had he been speaking to her?

"Oh, I'm sorry. I was somewhere else."

He grinned at her. "Anywhere has got to be better then here."

She smiled. He seemed so nice, but then again so did Agent Pearce at first.

"Yeah, so, um, do you think the people that were shooting at you didn't want you to make it to Roswell?"

"Possibly. People tend to shoot at me wherever I go. I have even worse luck in deserts."

"Then maybe I shouldn't be hanging around with you."

"Probably not."

"Exactly why were you going there?"

"I received a report from someone about an alien healing a waitress after a shooting."

"That was more then a year ago," she blurted before she could stop herself. "It was all over the news. The shooting I mean."

"Well, the source wasn't exactly reliable, but I've noticed increased activity in this area since then so I decided to check it out. All my files were in the car, I hadn't had time to review them before your car got Swiss cheesed."

Liz let out a sigh of relief. So he really didn't know who she was.

"I didn't think the FBI really looked into stuff like that," she said carefully.

"From the size of my office you might say that they don't."

"But you don't really believe that stuff do you? I mean, the possibility that there are other creatures in the universe, not only as complex as the human being but more so, who have technology to traverse space--it seems scientifically implausible." Agent Mulder turned and looked at her strangely.

"What?"

"You don't look like Scully but I could swear you just channeled her."

"Scully?"

"My partner."

"Oh."

They marched on. Liz looked around and thought things were looking more familiar.

"So, you didn't answer my question," she persisted.

"Do I believe in aliens?"

"Yes."

"I want to believe," he replied.

"But why? I mean, it's not just because it's your job, is it?"

"No. I want to know because of Samantha." When she didn't ask the follow up question he turned and looked at her. She had a raised eyebrow like the question should have been obvious. "She's my sister. She was abducted when I was young."

She didn't say anything after that and they walked a little further until he decided to rest for a minute. He sat down on a rock and pulled his cell phone out again. There was still no service.

"You must hate them then."

He looked up at Tess, startled by the question. He just assumed she got quiet because she was mulling over the possibility that she was under the protection of a lunatic. Mulder was use to the assumption so he wasn't really offended by it anymore. The people that knew him, knew better.

"I thought you didn't believe in aliens."

She shrugged but he thought she looked upset.

"Say I do. What would you do if you ever found one?"

"What would I do?" It wasn't a question he was asked very often. Most people just dismissed him immediately. It wasn't a question he asked himself very often. "Are there really secret labs where they do alien autopsies," she made a strange sound when she said the word autopsies. "Would you do experiments and things like they do in movies?"

Mulder studied her for a moment. She looked very calm but she was staring at him with unnerving intensity. That's why he considered his answer and found himself telling her the truth.

"I believe that there are places like that, yes. There are branches of the government that know more about aliens then I do and that they may have done 'experiments', but they're not who I work for. They're not why I look. If I found an alien, I would want to know what happened to my sister. Dissecting one wouldn't do me much good."

She nodded and seemed to think hard on the subject.

"Why--," he began when they heard a scream. * * * * * * * * "I don't get it," Michael said.

"Which part?" Maria asked.

"All of it."

They were sitting in a booth at the Crashdown, totally ignoring the malts in front of them. Michael was even ignoring Courtney who was batting her eyes at him with all the subtlety of a vampire bat.

"Who," he continued, "is this FM guy? And what did he do to Liz to convince her to turn on Max?"

"You read what I did, he threatened you and Isabel."

"Then why was she so gone on him? She talked about marrying him!"

"She also talked about how much she loved Max."

"See that's it--it makes no sense. And why did she get Kyle to fake that whole thing when she had this Don Juan she could have done the real thing with?"

"You're assuming a lot. She's obviously not sleeping with FM, whoever he is. Not everyone has his mind in the same gutter as you."

"So you're defending the old guy that seduced your best friend into betraying my best friend?"

"She didn't betray him, that was the point. At least I think so. I don't know. Maybe we should ask Liz about it. that's a conversation I want to have: Hey girlfriend, I did the creepiest thing I could think of by going into your private journal but I'm puzzled by what I read, can you clarify?"

"We don't go to Liz, we go to Max."

"Max? The only thing that was clear in her journal is that she didn't want Max to know!"

"Know what?"

They looked up and sure enough there was Max. * * * * * * * Isabel was standing in her backyard clutching a baseball bat.

* Oh sure, this will be effective,* she thought.

"I know you're out here," she shouted. "I want you to leave me alone! I don't know what you think I did in the past but it's not going to happen again. Do you hear me?!"

She whirled around. In the dark every object took on a sinister shape.

"Do you hear me?!"

"I hear you, my love."

She whirled around but there was no one there. She felt like a wild animal, surrounded by predators. She knew she'd bite anything that came near her.

"But I know better," the voice continued. It was a deep, thrilling voice. It made her skin tingle just to hear it. "We are destined to be together."

"No!"

"Soon, my darling. Soon."