She stole a sideways glace at him. Why did he have to be so infuriating? Why couldn't he just be ... normal? Not that he'd ever really be normal of course, she corrected herself, but it was almost like Michael went out of his way to be abnormal. Which Maria thought was a shame, because the night before she was sure she had caught a glimpse of something else. Something that defied all the rough edges and hard corners he deliberately projected. Something that cut through the abrasion and sarcasm and attitude as spiky as his hair. Something a little more ... human. Maria sighed almost inaudibly. If she was truthful with herself, she had to admit that while Michael might have needed a lot of work on his human interior, his human exterior was undeniably fine.

He could feel her eyes on him. It unnerved him. She unnerved him. She was so ... irritating. Why couldn't she just leave him alone, like everyone else did? Michael preferred it that way. He was used to blending into the background and being ignored. It suited him fine, there was less suspicion. He didn't even mind the 'outcast' and 'loner' labels bestowed on him, not really. But what he did mind was this complete stranger, this girl, invading his mind and thoughts, and pushing all his buttons. He wasn't used to the personal questions and heartfelt confessions they had begun to delve into in the motel room the night before, nor did he want to get used to them. He couldn't afford any distractions, especially not now that they had discovered something at Atherton's. They were close. He knew it. He wouldn't let anything -- anyone -- jeopardize that, least of all a motormouthed blonde.

Michael frowned. It had to be just him, Max and Isabel against the world. Literally. But then, of course, it wasn't just them anymore, was it? Max had gotten distracted. Max had gone and ruined it, jeopardizing their entire existences by dragging Liz, and even worse, her annoying little friend there, into their secret. At least Liz had the good sense to back off and be cautious about the whole matter -- Michael had established that when he read her journal -- but Maria, Maria was something altogether different. She was flighty, and argumentative, and hyper, and just plain weird, even if she was kind of ... hot.

He tried to shake the thought from his head, but it lingered. Against his better judgment, Michael stole a furtive glance at the passenger's seat. Maria was still staring at him, studying him as if he should be wedged between two slides beneath a microscope. She had a strange smile on her face, which he found vaguely discomforting. Frowning, Michael quickly refocused on the road, but then just as quickly glanced back over at her, in spite of himself.

"What?"

"No, it's just kind of funny how surprising things can get," Maria mused, praying that mind-reading wasn't one of his hidden powers. "All this time that I've known you, I've just always thought of you as, like, this guy, you know? Like this weird guy from the other side of the tracks going nowhere in life -- which, of course, you know, you still are that --" Michael fired daggers at her with his eyes "-- but what I didn't realize was that there was this whole other side to you."

"What, that I'm from --" He gestured upwards with his thumb.

"Oh, well, clearly there's that," she agreed. "But putting that aside ... underneath that, um ... weird, poorly-bathed exterior," Michael closed his eyes and shook his head in disgust as Maria let her eyes trail over his tousled hair and wrinkled clothes, "... there's, like, this whole ... deeply wounded, vulnerable guy."

He bristled almost imperceptibly at her words. "Listen. All right? In terms of what happened yesterday between us? That was just ... we were on the road. All right? We talked. That's all over."

"Of course," Maria agreed hurriedly. Her face was full of indignantion but it melted after a milisecond, morphing into the same strange smile from a few minutes earlier. "Wait ... you think something happened between us?"

Flustered, Michael did a double-take. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Cursing himself silently for his subconscious choice of words, and Maria for her perceptiveness at picking up on them, hel looked at her again, a smirk playing on his lips. "In your dreams."

"What do you know about my dreams?" There was more panic in her voice than she'd intended.

He rolled his eyes. "Will you relax? Trust me, I have better things to do than poke about in your subconscious."

"Oh. Well ... good," she replied matter-of-factly. Just then, a thought crossed her mind. "Um, speaking of better things to do ... what are you going to do about the stuff you, uh, ... liberated ... from Atherton's?"

"I don't know until we look through it," Michael answered, adjusting the air conditioning absently.

"We?"

"Max and Isabel and me," he clarified.

"Oh," Maria said, a visible measure of disappointment creeping into her voice. "Right." They settled into a momentary silence. "Cause I was thinking, you know, that, um ... there's a fair amount of stuff to sort through there, and, um, if you guys needed any extra help, I could, you know, lend a hand. Liz, too," she added quickly.

"That won't be necessary," Michael replied in cool, measured tones. "We've got it covered."

Nodding, she bit her bottom lip. "Yeah." They continued to drive along in silence for a few minutes. Maria watched the cacti and tall grass as the car raced along, struggling to articulate what she was feeling. "Yeah ... It's just that ..." Michael looked over at her expectantly. She sighed. "It's just that Liz and I are a part of this now ... like it or not."

"Not," he answered curtly.

"But we are," she insisted. "We know what's going on, we were there with you. We know about Valenti's office and the stolen key and the dome and the papers --"

"Yeah, great," Michael interrupted harshly. "You're a regular little know-it-all. It still doesn't make it any of your business, so just stay out of it."

"Well, it's a little bit late for that, don't you think?" She spat the words out, then exhaled in disgust at his surliness. "Look. I got dragged into this, I never asked to be involved. Trust me, my life was a lot less bizzare before you ... invaded ... it, and I'd be perfectly happy to go back to the days where I didn't know you were a distant cousin of Marvin the Martian, but I can't. I can't un-know it! So now I have to live with this ... this thing, this huge secret, forever, and well ... sometimes that's a lot of pressure to be under!"

"Oh, big deal. You have to live with a secret ... my heart bleeds," Michael glared at her. "My whole life is a secret! Although it probably won't be for much longer. My whole life -- my entire existence -- is dangling by a thread because you're not sure if you can handle the pressure of keeping your mouth shut!"

"I didn't say that!" she shouted. "I'm not going to tell anyone, okay? And neither is Liz -- we wouldn't do that! Besides, we could get in just as much trouble if anyone finds ou--"

"Just as much trouble?" Michael exploded like a firecracker. "Where the hell doyou get off saying you could get in 'just as much trouble?' What exactly do you stand to lose if this whole thing blows up in our faces, huh?" He let the words sink in a minute before continuing. "Do you even know what could happen to us if anyone found out? We'd lose everything if we get caught! Everything! Including our lives! Do you not see that?"

Michael's spontaneous combustion was contagious. The fury that seethed out of him ignited an inner rage Maria didn't even know she possessed. How dare he accuse her of saying things without thinking about them first, when he was just as guilty of the same crime? "All I see is a hot-headed, paranoid jerk, who is clearly in need of a refill on his Valium prescription!" she yelled.

Abruptly, he steered the car off the highway and onto the dirt road alongside it, shoving the gear into park violently. Maria's eyes grew wide. "What ... what are you ... Have you lost what little is left of your mind?" she demanded. "We're supposed to be following Max!"

Michael ran one hand through his hair in exasperation and squeezed his eyes shut. Why did he let her get to him like that? No one -- not even Hank on his most drunken, abusive binges -- had ever gotten him as riled up s this girl had juts done. He tried hard to contain his thoughts amid Maria's shrieking and when he finally spoke, his words were calm but laced with ice.

"Look. You want to help? Well, you can't. You can't help. All right? You can't. There's nothing you can do except try and forget what you already know. Because contrary to what you might think, we aren't in this together. This only concerns Max, Isabel and me. Anyone else is a liability, an unnecessary complication."

"I am not the enemy!" Maria hollered, her voice filled with frustration. "Don't you get that? I'm not the FBI or the CIA or any other three-lettered governmental acronym, okay? I want to help you! So you can just freeze it with this Fox-Mulder-trust-no-one routine -- it's getting tiresome." She sighed, drained of all energy from the argument. "Listen, you don't really know how long it's gonna be before you can go back to wherever it is you're from. It could be weeks, months ... years. But in the meantime, pal, you're stuck here on planet Earth with six billion of the rest of us, so you might as well try and make the best of it and stop fighting the only people who are on your side."

Michael was taken aback, not hving expected her to be that passionate. He figured if he pushed, she'd back down, but instead she pushed back even harder. He blinked at her silently, finding himself at a loss for words for the first time in a long time.

The lack of some sort of caustic reply was not lost on Maria. Where were the sarcastic comments she had grown so accustomed to? It wasn't like Michael -- what little she knew of him -- to back down from a verbal battle, especially one he felt so strongly about. The chasm of silence which filled the car did not sit well with her, so she babbled on inanely to fill up the void. "I mean, trust me, there's nothing I'd personally like better than for you to find your way back home and out of my life. Maybe you should just go hang around NASA and try to hitch a ride on the next flight."

She may have won the battle, but he wasn't going to let her win the war. "Maybe I'll just use your broomstick instead," he muttered in reply, as he glanced over his left shoulder and manoeuvred the car back onto the highway.