From: "Trifan Incognito" <trifan_incognito@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 23:54:52 MDT
Subject: All Heart's Desire
Source: direct

Adam didn't usually talk much in Mulder's limited experience, but on the 
trip back to the complex, he talked even less. Mulder was silent himself, 
deep in thought over the meeting. He knew that Adam meant to take the 
assignment himself.

When they were safely inside the compound Mulder turned to him. "I would be 
the logical man to do this."

Adam smirked, almost sarcastically "All guts aren't you?"

Mulder was surprised to find that this comment hurt slightly.

"It makes sense, I have been inside before. This isn't something you can 
send a team in to do. It's been my life's work. I could die happy just 
getting some answers for myself. Besides, it's not like anyone would have to 
mourn me again." He said the last line fastetiously. Adam was hearing none 
of it though.

"You aren't going, no more to say." He was closing off the conversation. He 
turned and punched into the tech room.

"Book, call a meeting of the heads. I'll be in my office." Book stood up and 
grabbed his phone.

By the time the meeting was organized, Mulder had worked himself up to a 
good anger.

*What the hell am I doing here?*

Figuring out the puzzle was what he did best. He could never be a spectator 
in any assignment.

Adam outlined the mission. There was no crack in his professional exterior. 
Mulder listened as he went on. People took notes, each knowing which part of 
the assignment was whose. The crew exchanged some puzzled glances that Adam 
was going himself, but no one questioned him on it.

"I want everything ready in three days." Adam left abruptly.

Everyone got up and headed out of the office with a purpose. Book remained 
behind. Mulder eyed him curiously. There was something on his mind and 
Mulder felt it was somehow connected to the chip on his shoulder. He waited 
for him to speak, each trying to wear the other down with their eyes. It was 
a childish game of who could stare the longest. Book spoke.

"Has he told you why he named you Saint?" Mulder shook his head slightly.

"I have a feeling that you're gonna fill that in for me though."

"He believes that you are the *chosen one*. The one that will pull out the 
magic bandaid and fix the world. He's got almost everyone here convinced of 
that too. I believe that you will get us all killed, that's what I believe."

"I didn't ask for any of this. I am not his savior."

"No, you're not. You're an arrogant, over-zealous hotshot. You've had some 
hits, but you are going to get him killed," he dramatized. "And the rest of 
the world right along with him. I am sure that this assignment was your 
idea. It bugs the hell out of me that you are here. No one on the Council 
wanted you in. Only McDougall and Adam," he scoffed. "Even your supporters 
here thought that bringing you in was an unnecessary risk. I can't think of 
anyone being able to end this all badly quicker than you though."

Mulder had had enough.

"Save your 'holier-than-thou' crap for someone who'll listen to it. I have 
dealt with people like you all my life. You're the ones that want to 
distance yourselves from anyone who thinks even remotely differently than 
you do. We scare you, cause we show you the 'might-have-beens' of your own 
pathetic lives. I'm here now and I am going to do what I can to help. You 
have a lousy attitude and that, more than anything, is fatal in this 
context." He got up to leave.

"It's better than the misguided view that Adam has of you. He *needs* to 
believe in you. He *needs* for you to succeed," he paused knowing that he 
had Mulder's full attention. Mulder had the distinct impression that he'd 
had this conversation planned from their first meeting. "Otherwise....his 
father's death would have been meaningless."

"What the HELL are you talking about?" Mulder turned back to face him.

Book just smiled condescendingly. He had hit a nerve. Now he would just 
grind a bit.

"You mean he hasn't told you?" feigning surprise. "You're the reason his 
father is dead. His father gave his life for you. And for your cause."

With that, he turned and walked past Mulder, leaving him speechless.

===============================

"You and I are going to have an overdue talk," Mulder said to Adam as he 
burst into the bunker. They were alone in the room. Adam was lying fully 
clothed on his bed, apparently deep in thought. He just nodded. He was 
expecting this. He sat up.

"Let's start with why I am here!" Mulder didn't try to mask his anger.

"You're here because I brought you in." Adam spoke carefully.

"Oh cut that shit out! I want to know why you chose me! Why me, of all 
people?! You don't need me here! Why the hell did you pull me out of my 
life?!"

Adam sighed. "Because I believe in you."

"Well, believe this--I am *no* saint. I would prefer 'Fox' to that name! If 
you know me at all, you know how much I hate THAT one! And I am beginning to 
be suspicious of your motives in this. Are you getting some sadistic high 
from what you've done to my life? What you've done to Scully's?"

Mulder was almost sorry that he'd said that. He could see the hurt flash 
across Adam's face. Although he was all business with anyone else, there was 
something to Adam's eyes that just seemed to speak of innocence and an 
almost child-like trust when he looked at Mulder. Mulder had noticed it 
before, but he was seeing it in full again.

He quieted his voice a bit. "Maybe it's time then, that I knew the whole 
truth." Adam nodded.

Although Mulder was too wound up to sit, he forced himself to take a seat on 
the bunk across from Adam. They sat there facing one another.

Mulder said nothing, giving Adam time to compose himself. Adam wore none of 
his professionalism, he just looked tired and whipped. He began slowly.

"My father worked with the CIA, along with your father. Well, they 
officially worked for the State Department, but the Project began through 
the CIA. They had a lot in common. They both helped start up the Syndicate 
and then the Council, working in people above and below them within the 
government. They were careful.

"Things got out of hand for the Syndicate. The aliens needed to secure their 
loyalty. Everyone was going crazy at having to give up someone they loved. I 
was my father's only child." He was staring off into the distance, some 
inner battle being waged against emotion. He cleared his throat.

"He and my mother decided that turning me over to the aliens wasn't an 
option. They sent me away when I was eight. I was sent up to Canada. I lived 
with a family who took good care of me. I never saw my father again until I 
was in my early 20's. My mother had taken my place. She's never returned 
from their ship." Mulder watched the kaleidescope of emotion running across 
his face. He was fighting for control.

"When I saw him again, I knew him instantly." Adam smiled sadly, lost in 
some memory. "He was a wonderful, kind man. He brought me into the 
organization. It was perfect. I didn't exist really anywhere. He was 
preoccupied with the project. It consumed him."

Adam glanced away, dealing with his own guilt. "I just couldn't get into 
it...aw...I mean, I went through the motions, just never really felt the 
passion my father did.

"I knew about you a month after you found the X-files. My father was 
captivated. I guess I was jealous in a way. I dunno...." he trailed off.

"He marveled at how you had built up a castle out of the ashes. You had 
gathered some really good evidence based on snippets of information. You 
were smart enough to figure it out and daring enough not to give a damn 
about what anyone would think. My father sat poised on his seat, he couldn't 
wait for your next move. When things got dangerous for you, he went out of 
his way to protect you...even at the risk of the project....even at risk to 
himself.

"The night he was killed, I knew it was going to happen. He knew it was 
going to happen. We had a long talk. He told me that he loved me and 
that..." his voice cracked almost imperceptibly, "he believed in you. He 
went onto that bridge, taking your partner's place... in the exchange for 
your life."

Mulder's eyes were fixed on Adam. He digested the information.

"Deep Throat," Mulder whispered. Adam nodded.

"Well, it's nice to know you haven't forgotten him." Adam had meant it as a 
poor pitch at humour, but underneath was a vein of truth.

"You must hate me," Mulder said carefully.

Adam was startled by the comment. "Yeah, I did for a while. I watched your 
every move, your every case. I used every string and every resource 
available." He looked down, fiddling with an invisible piece of lint in his 
hand. "I hated you enough to train a high-powered rifle on your head as you 
were out jogging one morning." Mulder studied him intensely.

"Had you in my cross hairs. I almost pulled the trigger too. As I sat there, 
my finger poised to make the strike, our last conversation came to me. He 
believed in you. I guess that I couldn't take that away from him. Pulling 
the trigger would've invalidated my father in some way. I couldn't do it. 
Not because of you but because of him. After that, I took a more conscious 
look of who you were, trying to see what he did. And...after a while...I 
did.

"My whole life is this project. Giving my life for it is nothing. But I 
won't put your life in jeopardy. Maybe part of bringing you in is some form 
of hero worship. But I truly believe that you are the key to success here. I 
really do."

Mulder could see the conviction in his eyes. After years of profiling 
people, Mulder was rarely surprised. Scully surprised him--alot. But now so 
did Adam. He realized that it had something to do with a basic concept--Adam 
was honest to the core. Mulder found that to be an extremely rare quality.

Adam was that simple. But he was also that complex. Everyone under his 
command obviously respected him, even Book. Mulder was quite sure that they 
would follow him to the ends of the earth. He was charismatic, the trait of 
a good leader. But to Mulder, there was something else he was seeing. Mulder 
felt that there was a bond between them. A fraternity of sorts. Like Scully, 
Adam could protect himself just fine. Yet, as with Scully, he felt 
protective of Adam, like a big brother to him. Maybe it was that he was that 
same age as Samantha would have been. He felt priveleged to be the one who 
was trusted by him.

"Then let me go with you. I don't believe in the impossible scenario. This 
is a two man, two way mission." Adam looked intently at him. Finally, he 
nodded, realizing that going it alone had to end.

They sat there for a few minutes, each silent in their thoughts. Adam spoke 
first.

"You ever 'chute before?"

Mulder smiled. "Well, I guess that's not something that I could make a 
mistake twice with." They both smiled.

Mulder lay awake most of the night, still adjusting to sleeping in a bunker 
with a group of strangers. He thought about the evil in the world that had 
killed good men with indifference. For the first time in his new 
surroundings, Mulder didn't think about Scully as he fell asleep.

====================================

Scully stared at the gunmen. They glanced nervously at one another.

"I'm sorry," was all Frohike could manage. His eyes were red rimmed. Scully 
searched her mind for some way to make the findings untrue. She could see 
though by the look on their faces that they had made that search for her and 
had come up short. None of them could look her in the eye.

Byers piped in "Look, if there is anything we can do."

How she was hating that phrase! She wanted to shout, "Yeah, bring him back, 
find a way to turn back the hands of time so that I can make him stay with 
me, do something more productive than looking at me with pity!" But she knew 
that they meant well. She just nodded. Her mind was numb.

So...there it was. Mulder really is dead, proof undeniable in her hands. She 
thought that she could hear something audibly break in her then. She was 
free floating and lost. Nothing in the world seemed to have a hold of her. 
Nothing was real.

Byers and Frohike were at her side, almost carrying her to a chair as her 
knees betrayed her. Langly brought her a glass of water. She sipped at it, 
more to show appreciation than for any sense of need. She felt so hollow 
inside that she was sure the water fell right down to her feet from her 
throat.

"I'm...I'm alright," she pushed their hands away. "I guess it was just a 
shock. I still kinda thought..." She looked down at her hands. "I guess I 
held out hope." She felt a sudden urge to be outside and away from any eyes.

He'd been gone over a week now. The time had been consumed by the process of 
trying to deny it. Now there was this endless black hole as she stood on the 
event horizon. Nothing ahead, nothing behind. Nothingness.

"Thank you for your help," she whispered simply as she stood to leave.

"What about this guy Roberts?" She looked over at Frohike. "Do you want us 
to check into him further? Maybe he had something to do with..." He couldn't 
finish the sentence. In his own way, Melvin Frohike was trying to comfort 
her by helping her focus on a cause.

Scully stopped midway out the door. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing, we just have his information. Thought he would want it. He seemed 
to be in a big hurry for it. But he never picked it up."

Langly could tell that she became suspicious of this. He piped in. "We 
checked him out, he seems to be who he says he is...Oxford and all. Probably 
wouldn't hurt to go a bit deeper. The timing of his arrival can't be all 
coincidence. We have no way of contacting him either."

She pondered this. "I'll see what I can do."

======================================

She drove to Mulder's apartment. In the forefront of her mind, she was going 
to find out how to contact Adam. She was totally unprepared for the emotions 
that would surface as she entered his space.

She stood in the doorway frozen. She'd been inside the day after the 
explosion, looking for clues as to where he might be, but she'd held the 
hope that he was alive then. Now she was standing in a morgue of memories. 
Every tiny scrap of memory and thought seemed to shout his death at her. Her 
mind, which sounded remarkably like Mulder's voice in that moment, whispered 
"hold on Scully, this is going to hurt like hell." She persisted and took a 
step inside.

*Oh God*

The simple things cut deep. His leather jacket was hanging on his tacky 
billiard's tree hook just waiting for him to come in and wear it out.

She closed the door behind her and looked around. A cup sat on the counter, 
waging a silent vigil. A set of keys, a carelessly tossed magazine, the tv 
remote. She moved towards his desk. Every piece of paper, every sharpened 
pencil, every hastily scribbled note, everything was him. Everything was 
acutely tuned into his life. They all waited for him to come home and make 
their existance meaningful.

As Scully stared at the desk, she suddenly couldn't remember why she was 
there, or how she had gotten there. Without conscious thought, she turned to 
leave. She only wanted to stop the pain of the memories. As she got back to 
the door, her hand froze on the knob.

She'd passed his leather jacket again.

She used to wear her cross without thought really. But then, when she'd 
returned from her abduction, Mulder had given it back to her. He had kept it 
safe and sacred while she was lost. Again when she'd been taken from him, he 
had found the cross before he had found her. It seemed like a beacon to him. 
They never spoke of it, but she knew that it was not something she could 
ever stop wearing for him. He would notice.

*He would have noticed.*

Standing there, she realized that the jacket meant that much to her too. It 
was her favorite part of him. It was the embodiment of Fox William Mulder. 
Her Mulder.

She closed her eyes. Tentatively, she reached out and touched it. In her 
mind, she imagined him standing there beside her. Her fingers were careful 
to touch softly, lest the lie in her mind be exposed.

Still with her eyes shut to the world, she let her own coat drop to the 
floor at her feet. She took his jacket down and wrapped herself in it.

*God! I can smell him.*

She inhaled deeply, not wanting to waste any of that beautiful smell to the 
world. Her arms found the sleeves as she crushed it to her face. Her hands 
then went to the pockets. She stopped.

Her uncomprehending hand seized something inside the pocket. In slow motion, 
she pulled out her hand and opened her palm to the light. It held tiny 
sunflower seeds.

She heard her mouth make a soft cry from a distance. Her very essence was 
ripped wide open with a hot searing pain in her chest. She cried with 
abandon now, the tears welling up from the depths of her soul. She crushed 
her fist to her lips, willing her body to absorb the seeds and jacket. He 
was gone and she wanted to be gone with him. Her mind screamed that no one 
could survive the abject torment she was feeling as she cried 
uncontrollably.

When her knees gave out and she crumpled to a sobbing heap on the floor, 
there was no one there to catch her.

==========================

She awoke on his couch in the early morning. How many times had he slept 
here? The pain in her soul had ebbed to a dull ache, threatening to start up 
again at anytime. She pushed the thoughts away as she sat up. Her head 
throbbed. Her eyes were swollen from her tears hours before. She knew she 
looked like hell. She couldn't cry anymore. Emotionally, she was exhausted.

She forced her mind into clarity. She'd come here with a purpose. She stood 
up and stepped over to the desk. She shuffled papers around, looking for 
anything that might offer Adam's information. She found the pad Case had put 
in the bottom drawer. She could still see the indentation of his letter on 
it. She consciously numbed her mind to thoughts of Mulder.

As she straightened out her mess, she uncovered his answering machine. The 
light was blinking messages. She played the tape. There were two messages on 
it.

The first was a recording for an overdue movie. The second was from Adam. 
She jotted down his number quickly. She picked up his phone and dialed. The 
phone rang and rang until the recorded operator chimed in that he was not 
answering, apparently a message for people who couldn't figure that one out 
for themselves.

She didn't wonder about Adam's connection to Mulder's disappearance. She 
only felt she desperately needed to talk to him. She wasn't really sure why, 
but it had become all-important to her.

She removed Mulder's jacket. Carefully keeping her emotions in check, she 
folded it up to take with her. She picked up her own coat from the entrance 
area, put it on and headed home.

===========================

Adam hadn't answered his phone. He knew that it was Scully simply because he 
had been told that she was at Mulder's apartment. He had asked for updates 
on her activities as a precaution. The threat of discovery was fading, but 
he didn't call off her surveillance. He somehow felt responsible for looking 
after her. He knew that he had to run into the gunmen's office to tie up 
that lose thread. He didn't want to see Scully, it would remind him of how 
human he was.

He had performed heinous deeds with a cold calculated air about him. But 
that was not what he felt inside. He'd killed before. But never without the 
click of assurity that what he was doing was for the best. And afterwards, 
he always had to make a conscious effort to not think about the fact that 
the body had been someone's child, someone's brother, someone's father.

He didn't like what he was doing to Scully's life. He'd watched her many 
times. She had a quiet nobility to her. She rarely showed any vulnerability. 
And yet he had seen her vulnerable side...or glimpses of it. Her cold 
exterior belied inner vincibility. She never waivered in her belief system. 
If there could have been a love in his life, Scully would be it.

"I'm going to finish up business with the gunmen," he told Mulder. Mulder 
had been busy in the map room with Stick, trying to figure out the best 
place to land in the Alberta wilderness. He looked up at Adam and nodded. It 
bothered him that Adam could go back to his familiar grounds, but that he 
couldn't. He turned back to Stick, wanting to work the problem and get back 
to life.

==============================

Adam knocked again at the gunmen's door. Still no answer. He sighed, he 
didn't have time to come back again. There was too much to do for the 
reconnaisance mission. As he turned to leave, he was met by Scully coming up 
the steps. His mind worked overtime trying to pick the appropriate greeting. 
Her appearance picked for him.

"Scully....is there something the matter?" She looked, well, like shit. As 
much as Scully could, that is. Her eyes were red and tired. The strain was 
apparent.

"I'm glad that I ran into you. I've been trying to reach you by phone."

"Oh, yeah, sorry I haven't been carrying it. Are you ok?" She searched the 
air above his head. Somehow her standard answer to this Mulderism just 
didn't fit. She chose to ignore the question.

"Can we talk?"

Adam wasn't sure how to get out of this without being out of character and 
arousing her suspicions. At least that's what he told himself later.

"Sure, let's go over here." They moved down the sidewalk towards a nearby 
park. They found a bench and sat down.

"I owe you an apology. I was rude to you the other day. I guess that being 
suspicious of everyone has kind of become an occupational hazard to my 
social graces."

Adam nodded. The sun shone down wonderfully warm on their faces. Kids were 
playing a game of tag across the field.

"Mulder was killed over a week ago." The words just kind of fell out of her 
mouth.

"My god, what happened?"

"I don't know. I mean, it was an explosion. I just...he was involved in 
solving things that no one wanted solved. And...I guess that they just got 
tired of having to play coverup. He was just...following what he felt was 
the truth. Chasing ghosts." Her voice trailed off.

"So you think it was misguided then?" He was analyzing her in a way that he 
was ashamed of, yet he couldn't stop himself.

"I don't know. It got him killed. Was it worth it? I don't think so. I 
mean...at least not in my opinion."  She didn't know why she was telling him 
this, why she was offering so much of herself to a stranger. Maybe it had to 
do with the fact that he would be gone in a short while and she wouldn't 
have to deal with any repercussions. Maybe she just needed to connect with 
someone without the complications of facing them again. More likely she just 
felt that they shared something imaginary.

"Maybe I am just feeling sorry for myself. I miss him, you know? I guess 
that I am feeling more than a little lost." She was leaning forward with her 
elbows on her knees.  She looked up at him then, the pain apparent in her 
eyes. She tried to read something in his.

Hot tears brimmed her eyes suddenly then ran down her cheeks unchecked even 
as she looked at him. Adam lifted his hand and wiped them away gently. He 
knew her so well. He was fully surprised that she was confiding in him, but 
even more surprised that she'd allowed him the intimate gesture. He sat 
there silently mourning with her, afraid to say anything for fear he would 
just lose all composure and tell her everything.

"I don't know quite what to say," he finally managed.

"That's ok. I am glad that you've been able to listen. I'm sorry for 
spilling this all onto you like this." She was in control again.

"No, don't be sorry. I'm glad that I'm here."

"You know, Mulder didn't have any family. His parents and sister are gone."

He reached over and rubbed her back consolingly. "I am sure that he thought 
of you as his family." She nodded. Scully didn't think about the gesture as 
more than comfort, nor did Adam mean it as anything but that. He thought 
nothing of it in fact. As people did with actors on a screen, he tended to 
believe that she should know him just as he knew her. Scully was too lost in 
her pain to think about his familiarity as inappropriate.

Adam was really getting an up close and personal look at the chaos of his 
decisions. He waged an inner battle with his conscience. His mind mantra was 
repetitively voicing itself "she'll be fine, it's for the higher good; 
shellbefineitsforthehighergood" over and over again.

Only, he wasn't so sure. Hurting the ones you are closest to takes away a 
part of you that you can never grow back. And there were few people he was 
more familiar with. Often as he'd watched them both, he had felt that when 
things were all over, that they would all become close friends. Perhaps with 
Scully it could have been more. Their beliefs and  values were very close to 
the same.

Sitting here with her though, he realized with a sudden certainty that she 
would hate him in the end. She'd hate him for this moment of baring her pain 
to him. A pain based on a lie that he could have eased with a few words. He 
withdrew his hand and stood up.

She was surprised by his sudden withdrawal from their conversation. She 
looked at him, hurting doubly at what she perceived as a rejection. They 
shared an awkward look.

"Um...I have your information in my car."

Adam didn't speak as they walked back to her car, not trusting himself.

When he asked about the charge, she just waved it away. He chose not to 
press her. He just rolled the papers up and stuck them in his pocket.

The awkward silence that followed was charged with things unsaid. She felt 
embarrassed about the things she'd shared of herself. He felt guilty over 
the things he hadn't.

"I really do hope that you are okay." Impulsively, he took her hand in his. 
He looked at her with an intensity pregnant with a meaning she couldn't 
grasp. For a split second, Scully was terrified that he would kiss her.

"Things will get better Dana."

Then he was gone.

================================

The night before the operation, Mulder was awoken by an urgent whisper in 
his ear.

"*Come with me*" It was Adam. Mulder followed without question.

The halls were lit as they always were, giving no clue of the hour. He 
looked at the watch he'd been given days before and found it to be 3:04 a.m. 
Everything was quiet. He knew the routine by now. Things shut down around 1 
a.m. They were slinking down the hallway. For some reason, they were trying 
hard to avoid detection. Mulder wondered about that, but followed suit all 
the same.

A guard was making rounds, so they waited around a corner until the coast 
was clear. With stealth movements, they entered a door not far from the tech 
room. Once inside, Adam locked the door. He switched on the light, stuffing 
a blanket along the crack beneath the door to bar light from escaping.

"Sorry...we have some work to do."

Mulder looked around the room. It was a storage room filled with all kinds 
of gear. Adam made his way to the back and pulled out two packs, handing one 
to Mulder.

"Don't ever let anyone pack your 'chute." With those words, he began to show 
him how to take the parachute apart and pack it properly. He explained the 
mechanics of jumping and controlling the descent.

"We will be using a standard modern ram air 'square' parachute. It deploys 
dependably. Very manueverable. You shouldn't have any problems."

He began to explain the logistics of the event.

When they were done and Adam was satisfied that Mulder understood the 
processes properly, Mulder ventured a comment.

"I thought you could trust the people in here." Mulder didn't trust anyone, 
but his belief was that Adam did.

"I do...mostly." He seemed deep in thought. Something was troubling him.

"What?"

Adam took a deep breath and held it. "Lately....I've just had this nagging 
feeling that something isn't right. I can't put my finger on it. It's as if 
I am not seeing the forest for the trees. Like it's something glaringly 
obvious that I am just missing for some reason. At first I thought it just 
that impending doom feeling that comes with the job....but, I don't think 
that's it." He looked to Mulder to understand.

"What do you suppose it is then?"

"I don't know." Adam shook his head slowly, the puzzle apparent in his eyes.

"You think that someone in the compound is leaking information?" Mulder 
ventured, trying to figure out Adam's unease.

"I don't know, but I can't put my finger on it. I feel....as if...as if 
there is a glaring inconsistancy in my reasoning."

Mulder thought about this. "I don't see that. You seem to have your bases 
covered."

"Yeah......probably. Anyway," he pulled out two panic buttons from his 
pocket, "I reconfigured these myself. They won't work with the standard 
three clicks. Hit it once, count to three, then hit it three more times in 
rapid succession."

"I don't understand, why?"

Adam just shook his head, not quite able to explain it. "I just don't want 
anyone but you and I calling anyone to retrieve us. The capsule in your 
mouth could be all-important...." he didn't want to think about it, but it 
had to be said. "They know ways of torture that we don't even have words 
for. If we get caught, use it."

Adam looked troubled by more than their mission.

Mulder's gaze intensified. "You really think something's going on, don't 
you? You think that maybe someone might be looking for this place?"

Adam exhaled wearily. "I want you to take a look at something." He got up 
and walked over to a file cabinet. He pulled out the bottom drawer, then 
reached in behind it. He was holding a manila folder.

"When I went to the gunmen's place, I picked a name out of a hat 
essentially. It was someone who is only peripherally involved in the 
project, but maintains his position in the community. We have hundreds of 
them. They don't know enough to be dangerous to us, but enough to be willing 
to help.

"Drake is supposed to be a drone. He has no real connection to our work. 
Just a simple inside source...you following me?"

"Yeah, so what did you find?"

"Well, not much really. Generic stuff. The things that I would have already 
known. But I was a little curious about what the gunmen could do, so I read 
on. On all his recent information, his next of kin is listed as his wife. 
Nothing remarkable there. But if you look back to his medical file here.... 
his next of kin....you see?"

"Ok, Martin Klass...is that supposed to mean something?"

"Not in and of itself, no."

"What then?"

"Martin Klass is listed as his brother. The name had a familiar ring to it. 
So I ran Klass through our data base...I didn't get anything."

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "How is that significant then?"

Adam shook his head carefully.

"Our data base is extensive. We aren't playing around here. Every man, woman 
and child born, died, married, heck anyone who's gotten a building permit 
since the 50's is on it. It's supposed to list everyone. Why would he lie 
about something as trivial as a next of kin... and the name...it's just 
rattling something in me... I wish that there was more time before we leave 
to take a good look at it all."

Mulder was looking at the folder. There really was nothing remarkable about 
the man in it. A family man apparently, steady job. All the marks of 
normalcy. Everything seemed to be in place.

"What about now? Can't we access the d-base now?"

Adam nodded. "Let's finish this first."

They checked their guns and clips. Nothing says protection like a 
high-capacity compact Sig Saver 40 caliber weapon. When everything was in 
order, Adam took their parachutes and placed them behind the others so that 
he would know exactly where they were. When all was said and done, there was 
not a whole heck of a lot better at staying safe than the child-like actions 
he was taking. They made their way out of the storage room and into the tech 
room unnoticed. Adam led Mulder through the maze to his office.

They closed the door and booted up the computer on his desk. Within half an 
hour they had pulled everything they could up on Klass. On first pass, he 
didn't exist. Mulder suggested that they hack into a data base that was 
off-site. They chose the taxation department. Not only had he existed, but 
it appeared that he worked for a company called Pinck Pharmaceuticals, at 
least up until 4 years ago.

Adam looked over at Mulder, carefully watching the expression on his face 
with that latest revelation.

Then they pulled up everything the system had on Drake. Oddly enough, their 
files didn't include the connection to Klass. They looked at everything 
electronically available on Drake. He liked to eat out at Jack-in-the-box, 
borrow library books and played squash on Thursdays. Nothing to suggest 
anything out of the ordinary.

"So...someone inside had to have erased Klass from our files. But, there 
still really is nothing odd about Drake. What could this all mean? Do you 
think I'm just being paranoid?" Adam suggested. That wasn't a question to 
ask Mulder.

"No...it's not right. There are no coincidences here. Why would Klass be 
listed as a brother early on and then it says here that he has no brothers?" 
Mulder was rolling things over in his mind.

There was nothing remarkable about Drake's credit card purchases, his bank 
accounts, or his phone calls. Mulder stared at the phone bill. His brain 
worked at some mind sliver, he couldn't take his eyes away. Something didn't 
add up.

Adam could see the dawn of some realization on his face.

"The phone record. That's it."

"What? There's nothing on here but a couple of local calls. Business 
calls...Blockbuster Video...nothing out of the ordinary. Just a few calls."

"Yeah, maybe too few. The guy has a wife and two teens."

"Yeah...and?" he asked expectantly.

"Yeah...and wouldn't you expect that there would be more calls coming in and 
going out of a house with two teens living in it?"

Adam looked at the screen again.

"Run Sheila Drake, and the kids." Adam complied. There was no record of her 
existance. Nor was there a marriage certificate. His bio said that she 
worked at Civic Trust...on cross reference, they didn't have any record of 
her. Past or present. The kids didn't exist either.

"He's a made man. What does this mean for us though? He works ostensibly for 
Beaufort Pharmaceuticals which is subcontracted by the government out of 
Fort Stanton  ...according to us, he's had no contact with our organization 
in almost a year. I mean, if he was a mole, wouldn't the contact be 
established? Look, he's still at the job, doing the work."

"I don't know...but it's not something that I like. How was he contacted by 
your organization?"

Adam began typing again.

"Whoever first contacted him went to great trouble to erase that fact. 
That's strange in and of itself. It doesn't make any sense. Whoever brought 
him in would have to be someone within this compound." He looked up at 
Mulder.

"Do you remember where you heard the name?"

"Yeah, sure, he gave us some information on the acquisition of Rousch 
Development--a genetic research firm--by Pinck Pharmaceuticals. It was 
pretty much a one shot deal about a year ago. The information went nowhere. 
It wasn't something we couldn't have found out with a look at the stock 
exchange. That's part of why I used his name with the gunmen."

"I think you may have stumbled onto something bigger here. We should look 
into this further. Pull up their pictures."

Adam typed again. The pictures were identical.

"Martin Klass is Karl Drake."

"We gotta pursue this."

"I agree, but we need to get some more rest. We gotta be frosty tomorrow."

"We can't leave this."

"No, but there is little more we can do tonight. McDougall is coming in in 
the morning. I'll hand it directly to him and see what he can come up with."

Mulder sighed. He wanted to continue but he knew that they could only fight 
one battle at a time.

"Yeah, ok," he resigned.

They shut things down in the office. In the dark, they listened for activity 
outside the door.

====================================

Scully went back into work. She felt somewhat better focused than she had 
the day she met with Adam.

She knew that she would have to face people at the bureau again in all their 
false sympathetic bravado, better to get it over with. Besides, she 
desperately wanted to work the case. Skinner had called her to his office 
that morning.

"Have a seat Agent Scully." This time, she sat down.

"Sir, how is the investigation is going?"

Skinner sat on the edge of his desk. At her question, he looked away.

"They aren't going to find them, are they?"

He would have liked to say that there was hope they would catch Mulder's 
killers. But he recognized a professional hit. This was no exception. He 
doubted that anything would come of it.

"Unless there is some kind of break in the case, then there is not a whole 
lot we can do. I would like you to go over your files, try and find out what 
Mulder could have been working on...maybe on his own."

Scully shook her head. "I've looked. I don't think that there was anything. 
We were just doing some general cleanup." She glanced down at her hands, 
remembering the last work day they had together. What a waste.

"Agent Mulder was not at a loss for enemies." He paused, wondering if he 
should go on. He knew that opening this can of worms would only put her into 
danger if she couldn't control her emotions in this case. She looked in 
control though. When was she not? Her eyes were fixed on his.

"Something came to my attention today. The whereabouts of a certain CGB 
Spender."

Scully stood up. "I want to talk to him."

Skinner motioned her to sit back down. "I knew you would, that's why I 
called you here. I've arranged a meeting. But you aren't going alone. I'll 
go with you, I want to hear what he's got to say too. I am sure that he 
knows something about this if anyone does."

================================

They pulled up to an indoor/outdoor cafe. It was the type one would expect 
on a quiet back street in Florence, but it seemed out of place somehow in 
the busy downtown street of the nation's capitol. They made their way 
through the indoor tables to where he was sitting.

The look of surprise in Cancerman's face was well worth the trip, thought 
Skinner briefly.

"Fancy meeting you here. Agent Scully, I am sorry to hear about your loss." 
Scully wanted to slap the expression off of his face. Instead, she held 
herself in check and decided to follow the assistant director's lead.

"I'm sorry, I am meeting someone, otherwise I would invite you to sit down."

"You're meeting us," Skinner forced out between tight lips. They both sat 
down, invading his space. Skinner loathed the attitude Spender had. The cool 
exterior he possessed seemed to lord over everyone around him. Skinner hated 
secrets, and this man's whole existence was a secret.

"What do you know about the bomb that killed Mulder?" Skinner directed.

"You have me at a loss. I honestly don't know a thing about it," came the 
smooth reply.

Scully couldn't sit idle. "Cut the crap! You had Mulder killed and I want to 
know why!" She raised her voice slightly, causing other patrons to look 
over.

"Tread carefully, Agent Scully. I have tolerated you and your partner for a 
long time, don't test my patience." The very idea that he was chastising her 
was asking too much of her self-control.

Her voice was lower. "Under this table I have a gun pointed right at you. 
Don't underestimate the power of the hatred I have for you right now. I know 
that you had him killed, I just need to know why!"

If Skinner was surprised, he carefully hid that from his adversary, choosing 
instead to allow her the privelege.

"Agent Scully, I know you better than you know yourself. You wouldn't shoot 
an unarmed man in a crowded restaurant."

"I wouldn't stop her if she did. I am sure that we could come up with a 
plausible reason she had to pull the trigger." To punctuate Skinner's 
remarks, Scully pulled back the slide on the top of her Sig 228, cocking the 
weapon, just barely audible beneath the table.

Spender blanched almost imperceptibly. Skinner's face hinted a smile.

"This is the exact reason that I would never have had him killed, the very 
reason he's stayed alive for this long. The crusade for his cause has begun 
I see." He looked pointedly at Scully, then down at the table in front of 
her that hid her weapon. "I will give you one thing though, whoever did this 
went through a great deal of trouble."

"You're not telling us anything we don't know already." Scully challenged. 
She could see that he was trying to calculate something about her. 
Apparently he realized that she would, indeed, pull the trigger. The 
realization was right.

"Then you're not listening. I said that they went to a *great* deal of 
trouble. Trouble to hide even from us."

"What are you talking about?!" Skinner snapped.

Cancerman felt in control again. He slowly lit up a cigarette and took a 
long drag on it. "They took out our man minutes before they took out 
Mulder."

"You were having Mulder followed?" Skinner voiced.

"Does that really surprise you? You constantly chastise him for his 
paranoia. Maybe he's the only one who truly understands the game." He was 
eyeing them both condescendingly once again. They had what they wanted from 
him and yet still nothing.

Neither Skinner nor Scully talked on their way back to the car. They both 
got in and sat in silence for a moment.

"Tell me you heard what I did," Scully breathed out.

Skinner nodded slightly.

"Mulder's alive."

Skinner's head turned towards Scully with a jerk. He almost started his 
"there's-no-way-he's-alive" speech, but he realized that he was beginning to 
believe that there was a remote chance that he actually was. You don't spend 
years as Mulder's boss without expecting the unexpected. He started the car 
and drove back towards the office.

"I think that we have to confirm that he's alive."

"I know just how to do that. I am going to do another DNA test myself. 
Someone in the lab had to have switched the samples." She thought about this 
a minute. "Oh my god!"

"What?" He looked over at her.

"I took...." she was thinking quickly now. "I took a hair sample and some 
tissue from the victim over to the lone gunmen for comparison. They ran it 
with their contacts and it turned up to be a match."

"But...wouldn't that mean that he was the victim then?" Skinner started.

"No, no, no..." she was making sense of it all now, "there was a guy who 
came in. He said that he was a friend of Mulder's, that Mulder had sent him. 
It all seemed to fit then." She was onto something now and talking in rapid 
staccato. "They....they suspected as much, but I thought it was their 
paranoia.  Oh my god! He switched the sample! He knows where Mulder is. I am 
sure of it. He even had a letter from Mulder...proof of who he was. He's 
alive." Her mind was analyzing everything she knew about Adam Roberts. "I am 
sure of it," she repeated.

There was hope again. She grabbed onto it with both hands. He's alive. He's 
alive. He's alive. Every cell in her body seemed to surge forward with that 
truth. Suddenly, she remembered something. As Skinner glanced at her, she 
grabbed a slip of paper from her pocket and reached for her cell phone.

===============================

The tech room was a hive of activity. Everyone was working the last minute 
preparations of the operation.

When McDougall arrived, Adam and Mulder met with him in the office. They 
went over their findings. McDougall didn't seem to be overly impressed with 
the thin thread they'd latched onto, but agreed to look into it right away 
as a precaution.

"But Adam..." McDougall's look was dripping meaning. "Do what you need to to 
stay safe. *Whatever* you need to do. If there is someone within our 
organization supplying the Syndicate or the Aliens with information, it 
would be trouble. Sometimes extreme measures are necessary." Adam nodded his 
understanding. There was a knock on the door. Case poked his head in.

"Sir, the detail phone is ringing...again." Adam caught Mulder's eye.

Scully.

"Turn it off Case." Then as an afterthought, "destroy it."

Case moved to do his bidding.

The day was spent going over maps of the drop area and the game plan. They 
would be miles from the nearest road. That worked for and against them. 
There would be no easy drop off or pick up. But they would only be half a 
mile from the ship on their landing. Mulder seemed sure that they would be 
able to find an entrance.

They would be wearing mikes, receivers and cameras the whole time. If they 
never made it out, whatever they saw would be recorded and hopefully useful.

Mulder had never seen the tech equipment that they were using before. It 
seemed extraterrestrial itself. Adam confirmed that fact by telling him that 
it could penetrate the radio screen surrounding their ship. It had been 
supplied by the Shape Shifters.

McDougall wished them success and left. By late afternoon, Adam called a 
general meeting. This time, it wasn't in his office. He addressed the entire 
tech room.

"As of right now, I want an entire communications blackout over the 
compound. Stick...take care of that."

Stick moved over to a general console and began entering the system. Adam 
had everyone's rapt attention. Mulder could see that they were wondering 
about the blackout, but that it was something they had gone through before. 
They all waited till Stick gave him the go-ahead.

"In one hour, we will be dropping into the general area of the alien ship in 
Virginia." A murmur of protest rose up.

"Sir, all of our plans were for a drop in Alberta....we can't just change 
things that quickly."

"Well...it's done. You have two hours to accomplish what you need to do to 
accomodate the change in location. I want *no one* communicating with the 
outside until you get further messages from me. *No one*."

Everyone moved with a purpose now. They seemed remarkably together for a 
group who had just been told the plans they'd worked on for the last few 
days were for naught.

"Sir, I am assuming that you want the board completely frozen?" Stick asked.

Adam nodded. "Stick, I don't want anyone transmitting anything to any 
outside source. And no one leaves, but I'll give that order myself."

Mulder followed him towards the main entrance where Adam instructed the 
guards of his order. On their way back, they stopped into the storage room, 
retrieved their packs and suited up for the mission.

"You're not making any friends here boss, kinda remindin' me of myself," 
Mulder remarked as they re-entered the tech room in full gear. He used the 
word "boss" in a way that didn't sound at all like he meant it but rather as 
a play on words.

The men who had been assembling their things realized that their work wasn't 
needed anymore. Mulder noted that they looked mildly peturbed.

*Tough luck guys...haven't you heard? Trust no one*

Mulder felt confident that at least the equipment was in good order. Stu 
helped them check out their communication systems. The perturbed crew made 
themselves useful adjusting straps on kevlar and double-checking the pack 
supplies. Adam and Mulder stood still for the process. When it was complete, 
Mulder realized that dust off was in ten minutes. He was glad, he was 
getting hot and ancy in his gear.

Book handed Adam a map. He started to tuck it into a pocket on his fatigues. 
"Don't take any chances there boss, huh?" Mulder thought that he sounded 
sincere. "You are picking a hell of a time to stop trusting us. It's gotta 
be the company you're keeping." He glared at Mulder.

Stu spoke carefully to Adam. "Boss, people are a little out of sorts, you 
gonna say something?" Adam nodded.

It was obvious the way that everyone had gathered around that they expected 
it.

"I just want to say....I know that you have worked hard for this. It's game 
time now. Our operation is in it's green light phase and we need to be 
careful. The danger has increased for all of us. We all knew the risks when 
we came onto the project, but now we have to step precisely. With the 
location change, this should be over by morning. I've taken the precautions 
that I have for a reason. I suggest you all be extra careful from now on."

Their trust in him was clear. Mulder didn't like the "goodbye" ring his 
speech was having. But clearly, the people in the room were on his side and 
trusted him completely. Amid well wishing voices, they started their walk 
down the long corridor to the landing pad. The helicopter took them to an 
air base where they moved on board a Cessna. The entire process took less 
than 15 minutes.

=======================

Scully and Skinner waited until almost everyone left the building. They made 
their way down to the lab. Everything was dark. Scully pulled out the hair 
sample she'd taken from Mulder's apartment.

"This is going to take some time," she told Skinner.

He nodded. He wasn't going anywhere. He wanted to know as much as Scully 
just what the heck was going on. He wasn't really angry with Mulder. He knew 
him well enough to know that whatever he was into was important. Mulder 
would never leave Scully. Not for anything trivial. Certainly not allowing 
her to believe that he was dead. No, he was fairly certain that Mulder was 
either somewhere against his will, or into a very deadly game. Either way he 
needed to figure out for certain that the body wasn't his.

He watched Scully working. He never ceased to be amazed and somewhat envious 
of her dedication to Mulder. He wasn't sure that either of them understood 
her importance to him. She was the only reason that Mulder had not been 
dismissed as a nut years ago. She lent credence to his work. She was his 
only human credential, the only reason that he was still in the bureau and 
certainly the only reason that he had stayed alive as long as he had.

He'd helped when he could, which wasn't often. He believed in their cause, 
but found himself tied to bureaucracy too often. Deep down though, they were 
his star pupils. He trusted them like he trusted no one else. He marvelled 
at their collective genius. He wondered briefly if they knew that when he 
argued with them, he only did it to challenge them into connecting their 
work in a way that the hierarchy could recognize.

Finally, the results of the tests were readable.

Scully stared at him.

"It's not him," she said simply. She'd known that before she'd begun the 
test, yet she was still surprised. She showed him the comparison graphs. 
They looked at one another. Then Scully silently took the results over to a 
Bunsen burner, ignited them and let the pages fall into a sink burning.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. She wasn't sure how to feel exactly. He was 
alive, for that she was eternally grateful.

But there she was, ditched again.

As Scully and Skinner walked down the corridor and out of the building, 
Mulder was running for his life.

===========================

They said nothing as they sat face to face in the aircraft. The butterflies 
in Mulder's stomach were having a combined Mardi Gras and Woodstock.

The sun was setting when they finally made the jump. The Cessna pulled down 
to 3000 feet. Adam had attached Mulder to a static line for safety.  Mulder 
was going first. He worked his way out of the plane, his feet on a 
retrofitted step, his hands on the wing strut. He moved the way Adam had 
told him to. Wind whipped him at 80 km/hour. When he reached his marker, he 
arched his back and let go. The static line pulled tight, dragging out the 
deployment bag. It scared Mulder, but exhilerated him all at the same time. 
He could barely make out Adam in the growing darkness. Like magic, the 
fabric opened above his head, a giant umbrella blackening part of the sky. 
Mulder felt himself being pulled upward with a reassuring tug.

*Good parachute*

The ground looked incredibly far. It was an illusion, he knew. He looked 
around. Adam's parachute was slightly below and to his right. He couldn't 
make his body out against the dark ground. He felt at his neck and pulled up 
his night vision goggles. They lightened up the entire area. He could hear 
Adam in his ear.

"Pull right. We're going for the clearing over there." Mulder pulled the 
cord that steered him closer to Adam. He experimented a little and found 
that he could control his descent pretty accurately. The ground was coming 
up fast. He could see why Adam had told him to steer clear of trees from the 
get-go. Distance contorted itself. It seemed to him that if he just unhooked 
now, he could hop to the ground. Yet he knew as he cleared the tree tops 
that he was still a good seventy feet in the air. The landing went smoothly. 
They unfastened their jump gear.

Adam was consulting a compass. Mulder checked his position locater. They 
were exactly where they were supposed to be.

"So far so good."

"Case, you copy?"

"Loud and clear boss."

"We're down and heading towards our target. It should only be about a 
quarter of a mile."

They made their way in silence through the trees guided by the compass.

Mulder and Adam moved at a slow jog. They were both pumped with adrenalyn. 
They kept their night goggles on and their flashlights off. They didn't know 
who or what might be watching. When they arrived in the general area of the 
ship, there seemed to be nothing but forest. Mulder had known that the ship 
would be underground, but he wasn't prepared for the overgrowth of trees in 
the area. He wondered fleetingly if they were in the right spot.

Then they came across a litter of carcasses scattered across a twenty square 
foot area.

"Someone's been letting the little beasties out."

Mulder kicked at a fresh carcass, turning it over to reveal the head of a 
dead fox.

"That can't be a good sign," noted Mulder.

Adam exhaled sharply. "The entrance has to be around here somewhere."

Mulder was getting cold sweats. His memory was dancing along a certain 
narrow escape in the Antarctic. He thought about the ferocity of the aliens 
as they awoke in their human wombs. He was suddenly very sure that they 
didn't have enough ammunition. He took a deep breath and rubbed at his chin.

"You know, I am getting a bad feeling about this." Adam looked up from where 
he'd been examining the fox. He nodded.

They followed some tracks to a hole in the earth. Mulder pulled out his gun, 
moved his spare clips into his front pocket and started down the hole. It 
was much shorter than the one he had fallen down in the Antarctic. About ten 
feet down, he found himself on a platform. He presumed it was the outside of 
the ship. Adam followed closely on his heels.

There was a narrow corridor of dirt that led to a round steel hole in the 
ground. Mulder went down the hole gun first. He stopped midway. He could 
hear some noise coming from the interior of the ship. He moved tentatively 
the rest of the way down. The sound faded. He landed on his feet in a long 
corridor. Everything was quiet. The ship seemed deserted. Mulder was 
relieved that there were no incubating aliens lining the walls. He pulled 
his goggles down to hang loosely around his neck. There was dim light in the 
ship. Adam dropped out of the vent shaft.

"Which way?" Mulder looked in both directions.

"I dunno. Let's try this one." Their headsets had been quiet, nothing 
unusual, but Adam wanted to make sure this all wasn't for nothing.

"You getting this Case?"

"Yup, everything's coming in great here."

"Ok. I want you to sound off about every three minutes just to let me know 
that you're still with us."

"Copy"

They both carried their guns almost unconsciously in their hands. They were 
moving a little quicker now. The smell hit them at once. They rounded a 
corner and a putrid odour assaulted their nostils.

"Forget the goggles, we should have brought masks," Mulder quipped. It was 
the smell of death and decay. A rotten, rich, coppery smell. They pressed 
on.

As they neared what they guessed was the deep interior of the ship, the 
corridors widened. It seemed to be a maze of hallways with nothing 
descriptive to help them find their way out.

"I hope you're tracking us Case."

"Book's on it boss."

With Case, there was never any question of who was in charge, Mulder 
thought. He always addressed Adam as "Boss". Come to think of it, Stu, Ice 
and Stick all seemed to have a marked respect for his new friend.

Mulder put up a hand to stop Adam.

"There's movement," he whispered. Sure enough, far down the corridor they 
could make out something moving from a door on one side of the hall into a 
doorway on the other side. An alien creature was dragging something. They 
both held their weapons a little higher and continued down the corridor 
towards it.

When they reached the doorway, Mulder looked into one door while Adam looked 
into the other. On Mulder's side, it looked like a repository for alien 
carcasses. He found himself looking at a dump heap of alien bodies. The 
smell was overwhelming. The alien they had seen was in the process of 
working at some strange light board. In spite of himself, Mulder was in awe. 
Just watching the creature moving was holding his interest. It's graceful 
movements belied any evil intentions. He wished fleetingly that Scully was 
here to see it all.

He jumped slightly when he felt Adam tap his arm. Adam motioned him across 
the hall. They moved towards a strange staircase. It was little more than a 
few outcroppings on a slanted wall. But clearly it led somewhere.

They moved up and out onto another level. This one was busier. They could 
hear noises coming from every direction. Mulder took a deep breath. They 
moved steadily into the activity. The area they were in now could best be 
classified as an alien hospital. Inside a room to one side, there were rows 
and rows of aliens on small tables. They all seemed to be alive and in 
various degrees of consciousness. Experimenting on their own kind? He 
couldn't figure it out. Several aliens moved around the tables, touching the 
figures lying there. It was all taking on a surreal atmosphere for Mulder.

They moved on, glancing at the hall behind them to make sure nothing creeped 
up on them. Nothing could have prepared Mulder for the next room. He had to 
blink twice to understand what he was seeing. Inside the room, on a group of 
tables just like the last room, were human beings. There seemed to be 
nothing in common between them other than the fact that they were there 
together. They were all different ages. Lights shone down on them, creating 
strange and intricate patterns on their bodies. There were fourteen in all. 
Four aliens went about from table to table, in the business of some macabre 
experiment on their prey.

The one on the end farthest from the doorway was a small child. She looked 
to be about five. She was strapped onto the table, arms stretched out to the 
side. Her long blonde hair haloed her face. She was entirely naked except 
for her panties and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. He wondered if her 
parents even knew she was missing yet. She turned her head and seemed to be 
looking straight at him. As he watched, the little girl started to cry. The 
aliens didn't seem to even realize it. She was crying for her mother.

"Jesus" he heard Case whisper in his ear. Mulder jumped a little, having 
forgotten that the images were being transmitted back to the compound.

Mulder took a step towards her. Adam's arm came up, blocking his way. Mulder 
looked at him with a mixture of anger and confusion. Adam returned the look, 
beseeching Mulder to stay on task. His look was sympathetic, but he knew 
that they would not get what they needed by saving her, even if they could. 
Mulder shook his head. He knew Adam was right. All the same, he looked back 
at the girl. For an instant she metamorphized into Samantha, calling his 
name.

Adam nearly dragged Mulder further along the corridor.

*Jesus, I am gonna see this race off the planet*

They rounded a corner to see what appeared to be a hangar. It was deep and 
wide. They were standing on a platform that was like a balcony without 
safety railing. They could see at least five smaller ships and what could be 
an opening in the ceiling. At least they could see the seam where huge doors 
met. Catwalks and beams connected everything. They watched for a while as 
aliens walked to and fro in their calm way, doing whatever work was being 
done on the smaller ships.

They turned and continued their search.

They hit paydirt about twenty minutes later. They entered a large room that 
seemed to be something of a factory. The silent machines looked like they 
had been processing a liquid and moving it into storage containers. They 
took a look around.

Mulder took a small glass container off of one of the tables. It was filled 
with an amber liquid. He put it into his pouch.

They continued to poke around in the room for the better part of an hour. 
The machines were filling huge vats with the liquid. But for shipment where? 
Was the virus somehow contained in the liquid? What they knew of the virus 
was that it didn't mix well with water, and this definately looked like a 
water base. It mixed well with oil, in fact that was the best conductor of 
it. So then....what was in the liquid? It didn't look like an oil base. Adam 
couldn't wait for the analysis.

Case continued periodically checking in. From time to time he would make a 
request for them to pan various areas with their cameras. In the middle of 
the room was a container that was reminiscent of a large propane cylinder. 
It was fed by pipes from the ceiling. "Adam, pan up," came the voice in his 
ear. He did as instructed. Along the ceiling was a pipe that led into the 
vat, along the ceiling and out into the hallway.

"Saint...let's go." Mulder had been checking the containers for any markings 
that might indicate their destination. Anything. He looked up at Adam and 
nodded.

They followed the pipe and found that it led back along the ceiling the way 
they'd come. As they passed the hospital area again, Mulder looked into the 
room, fully ready to argue with Adam on the fate of the child. A few of the 
tables that had held people were now empty. The little blonde girl was 
nowhere to be seen. Mulder felt sick to his stomach.

The pipe went on for the entirety of their walk back to the stairway/ladder 
where it traced their return path perfectly. They could hear noises from 
down below. They looked at one another and silently made the decision to 
wait till things got quieter. After a while, the air was heavy and silent 
again. They moved down the stairway/ladder and back along the way they had 
come in. The pipe continued to lead them.

When they reached the junction that led to the alien morgue, their pipe 
trail disappeared within. They looked inside, but couldn't make out which 
one it was in a tangle of pipes. The live alien was no longer there. The 
bodies lay in a heap in various levels of decay. Out of various body 
cavities, they could see the black oil seeping. It ran down and pooled in 
the bottom of the large pan the bodies sat in. They could see the sharp 
teeth and long claws on the mutants. Adam shuddered inwardly.

"I don't understand," started Adam in a whisper, "there are a lot of bodies, 
yet we haven't seen any of the mutants alive."

He hardly had the words out of his mouth when the noise started.

It was a low rumbling, a growl really. The hairs stood up straight on the 
back of Mulder's neck. The sound was coming from an area past the ladder 
they'd just come down.

"Let's go." No argument from Adam. They both hurried down the corridor. The 
ship seemed to be coming alive. They seemed to be surrounded by life. In 
this instant, that wasn't a good thing.

"Case...which way?" Adam breathed desperation into the mike as they found 
themselves at a four way junction.

"Left." They flew left into the hallway. As they came upon another 
crossroad, Adam was slightly annoyed to have to ask again.

"Case..?!"

"Case? You copy?" The transmitter was dead. Adam looked at Mulder. He was 
just as puzzled. Mulder tried to reach Case himself.

"Anyone awake out there?" The receiver was giving them nothing. The hallways 
all looked the same. Only one of them could be the way out. Adam stared at 
him. They heard a noise that sounded vaguely like two alley cats fighting 
down the corridor to the left.

"I know I am not going that way," Mulder offered. "I say we go right."

Adam nodded and they took off, hurrying again in a near run. With nothing 
left to go on, they let their intuitions guide them. In perfect 
synchronicity, they turned corners and navigated themselves to where the 
corridor narrowed. From there it was just a straight sprint to the vent. As 
Mulder pulled himself up behind Adam, the noise level increased. He'd been 
here before, he could hear the alien moving up the vent behind him. As he 
reached the surface, he spun around prepared to fire on whatever came out.

The air was silent. The vent was dark and empty. Mulder replaced his goggles 
over his eyes. They took one look around at the dead animal carcasses again. 
No use wondering why bears or cougars weren't scavenging around in the 
obvious smell.

Adam had no time to react when he caught a glimpse of something in the woods 
coming at him. A shot rang out and an alien mutant lay dead at his feet. He 
took two quick steps backwards. Sheer terror engulphed him as he looked down 
and saw the creature's body twitching. He looked over at Mulder who stood 
with his gun still trained on the animal. They shared a look of agreement 
and took off running in the direction of their landing.

They slowed down when they'd run about half a mile. Mulder realized that he 
was still holding his gun. He holstered it and turned to check on Adam. "You 
ok?" Adam nodded. The mutant had swiped at Adam's chest. The heavy canvass 
of the fatigue hung in strips. He looked inside and saw the kevlar vest, 
designed to stop bullets, neatly parted as well. There was no blood.

"I don't understand what happened to Case." He was still catching his 
breath. His voice held a note of worry.

"Equipment failure?"

"Not likely and not to both our systems. No...something's wrong."

Mulder nodded. "We can't call for evac then."

Adam considered this and agreed.

"I know that I don't want to stay in this forest with those things running 
around. Jesus, did you see the teeth on it?!"

Mulder had, in fact he knew that he would be seeing those teeth in his 
nightmares. Adam took off his pack and rummaged through it. Opening the map 
up, he felt a sinking feeling. They were a good ten miles from the nearest 
road, and that looked like nothing but an old logging trail. They took a 
moment to be sure of their location.

"Well, it's not getting any closer." They started through the forest at a 
slow jog. Neither of them wanted to think about what might be going on in 
the compound.

By mid-morning they had found the road. They followed it another mile or so 
before they came across a farmhouse. No one seemed to be home, although the 
yard was well-kept. They tried knocking, then decided to break in. It was 
important the they get to a hard line. Adam picked up the phone. Mulder's 
hand stopped him.

"Do you think it's safe to call the compound from here?" Mulder asked.

"I'm not calling the compound. If anything happened, there's a safe house 
only select people knew about. They would've gone there." Adam was hoping 
that there wouldn't be an answer. He tilted the phone so that Mulder could 
listen.

The phone was picked up on the first ring. "Jeez boss, we thought we'd lost 
you."

"Tell me what's going on..."

Case's voice was filling with desperation. "Shit Boss, they're all dead. 
Christ, it's just me and eleven others that made it out. Stu's gone. Ice 
didn't make it."

"Stick?"

"He's here, but he's been shot. He ain't doin' too well."

"Tell me what happened."

The words poured out of Case's mouth like an avalanche.

"One minute we were following you, the next thing I knew, our communication 
was cut and there were military guys pouring in from every entrance. The TV 
is saying that we were some doom's day cult or some dumb ass story like 
that. Don't know how much longer I wanna stay here." Case was becoming 
unglued.

"Case, ease down. No one knows about that place but you and I." Adam spoke 
with authority that both consoled and commanded Case. "How bad's Stick 
hurt?"

"Dunno, he's hurt bad, lost a lot of blood."

"Have you contacted anyone?"

"No, we were just thinking about McDougall...I...I don't know."

Mulder piped in "don't contact *anyone* Case. No one. We'll come to you. 
Just hang in there."

With that, they hung up the phone. Adam started pacing.

"There weren't many people who knew the location of the compound who weren't 
restricted to it. McDougall would've stopped an assault if he was able. It's 
our leak. I'm sure of it. I don't *have* anyone to call that I trust 
anymore."

"I do." Mulder looked at him steadfastly. "The time to keep this a secret is 
over. It's obvious that the Syndicate is behind this. You have to protect 
what's left of the Council." Adam's face was drawn and pale. He nodded.

Mulder went to the phone and dialed a number.

"Skinner"

"It's Mulder. I need your help." Skinner let out a long breath.

"Where the hell are you?" Mulder had no time to consider Skinner's lack of 
surprise at the sound of his voice.

"You have to listen for a minute. We don't have a lot of time."

"I'm listening."

"You have to trust me here, sir. The strike against the Carroll County 
compound last night..."

"You mean that religious group?"

"I was a part of that group sir, the only religion it had was truth."

"There were no survivors."

"That's what they'd like you to think. Look, I need you to come and get me. 
I can explain this all better in person. But you have to keep it quiet. 
Anyone knows we're still alive and we won't be for long."

"Tell me where you are."

Mulder picked up an envelope off the counter and read him the rural address. 
When he hung up the phone, Adam was pacing like a caged animal. "You sure 
that we can trust him?"

Mulder shook his head. "I know that he'll try. What choice do we have?"

=======================================

They knew that they would be waiting a while for the pick up. Mulder turned 
on the TV and grabbed something to eat out of the fridge. He looked around 
at the photos of family that lined the walls in the livingroom. If they only 
knew what the ground hid a short few miles away.

"You should eat something," Mulder pushed a sandwich at him. Adam shook his 
head. He was staring at the carnage on the television. The reporter spoke 
about an artillery arsenal, terrorist connections and a plot against the 
American people. The breaking story was the shooting of Senator McDougall 
and presidential aide Chris Porter. Porter was dead.

Mulder watched Adam. His face betrayed none of the emotions he must be 
feeling, he thought. The people who had died were the only family he'd 
known. Mulder was feeling a kinship with Adam, living in a surreal world 
where they were foreigners almost as much as the aliens. There was no 
illusion of normalcy for either of them. Mulder understood exactly what this 
had cost him.

"I'm sorry." It seemed inadequate somehow, yet it was all he could offer.

Adam stared at him as though he had spoken another language. He was looking 
to Mulder to make sense out of it.

"It's not over Adam."

Adam seemed somehow dead inside. He didn't talk or offer any opinions about 
their next course of action. He's in shock, thought Mulder. Mulder took him 
outside and into the bush a bit to wait where they could see the farmhouse. 
Mulder hoped that Skinner would be able to get to them without anyone 
finding out.

=================================

Skinner didn't tell her where they were going. He'd come down to the 
basement and asked her to follow him. They took his car out of the parkade 
and into traffic before he spoke again.

"Mulder contacted me. He needs our help." Scully looked over at him.

"What's the matter, what's happened?"

"I don't know, there wasn't much he could tell me over the phone. We're 
going to charter a helicopter and pick him up." She continued to stare at 
him, lost in her own thoughts.

He hadn't called her. It all seemed so strange to her. She tried to sort out 
what she was feeling. Abandoned was the least of it, that much she knew. 
Somehow, she was hurt so deep down, she was unable to process her feelings 
easily. She had guarded her heart from him, from the world for so long. She 
consciously decided that she needed time to sort out just what she felt. 
Right now, she just needed to act.

As they boarded the helicopter, she carefully built a wall, brick by brick 
around her heart.

==============================

They watched as the helicopter descended. The door opened and Mulder saw a 
familiar head of red hair fighting the wind. They moved out of the trees. 
She was looking around, looking for him. When she saw him, their eyes 
locked. He couldn't read the expression there. Perhaps that was scariest of 
all.

They walked towards one another. Mulder was still in his fatigues, pack on 
his back, jacket undone to reveal his white t-shirt covered by a navy kevlar 
vest. His goggles and headset were hanging loosely around his neck. Scully 
just stared at him. Her eyes were somehow unreadable, vacant. Somehow this 
wasn't the running-through-the-field-towards-one-another-with-open-arms 
greeting he'd imagined. They were within two feet of one another. For a 
moment, he half expected her to land a strong punch onto his unshaven jaw. 
But she just stared at him. Then she looked over at Adam who at least had 
the decency to look down.

"Agents, let's go!" Skinner was shouting over the noise of the helicopter.

They got into the helicopter and it took off. When they were cleared and 
heading back to Washington, Skinner handed Mulder a pair of binoculars and 
pointed out the window. Deep in the distance, barely perceptible even 
through the binoculars, swarmed at least four helicopters. Mulder handed the 
lenses to Adam.

"They're looking for us." Mulder nodded.

Mulder looked over at Scully. She was sitting next to Skinner, across from 
him. She sat with her shoulders slightly raised and her hands tucked between 
her knees. She looked so young. Her eyes caught his. His expression pleaded 
for understanding. She couldn't look at him without risking losing her 
composure. They both knew this, so Mulder didn't push when she looked away 
again. For the trip back, she just stared out the window.

=============================

In the car, Adam seemed to come back to life.

"We need to go to 1510 South Decator Street," he said with some urgency.

"Want to tell me what's going on now?" asked Skinner.

Mulder began to recount the tale from his first meeting with Adam. Scully 
sat in the front seat. He wanted to see her eyes, but she didn't turn 
around. He was sorry that he couldn't read Skinner's face as he spoke, but 
decided that it wasn't important as long as he was following Adam's 
directions. Stopped at a red light, Skinner turned to stare at them. He 
looked directly at Adam.

"Senator McDougall?"

Adam nodded.

Skinner seemed to be working something over in his mind.

"What?" asked Mulder.

"Last year when you were reassigned onto the X-files, the final decision 
came down from someone I can see having direct connections to him. Who are 
your other contacts?" he asked as he moved the car forward again.

"No one that I can trust now. If they aren't dead or dying, they could very 
well be connected to the military that did this."

They were closing in on the address when Adam shouted. "Stop right here!" He 
jumped out and was running before the car came to a complete stop. Both 
Scully and Mulder followed. A man walking along the sidewalk turned and saw 
them, then dropped the suitcase he was carrying and began to run. Mulder 
somehow knew that catching him would be all-important.

They chased him around the corner of an alleyway in the midst of what 
appeared to be hobo central. He seemed to have disappeared. Adam walked down 
slowly, looking at various homeless people. None of them were the man they'd 
been chasing. Adam suddenly lunged at an elderly woman who seemed to be 
asleep amid debris. Mulder was puzzled for an instant until the old woman's 
face changed before his eyes. A Shape Shifter.

"We need your help!" Adam spat out between clenched teeth.

Mulder thought that he himself was quite prepared to kill the alien. Of 
course, a Shape Shifter could not be killed without the stilleto switch, 
which Mulder just happened to be carrying. He pulled it out and was sorely 
tempted to use it. An alien was an alien after all.

Adam had a good grip on the alien. His eyes told Mulder to put the switch 
away. Mulder didn't pay any attention to him. The car pulled up into the 
alley then. Adam pushed the alien into the backseat. Mulder got in on the 
other side.

"This would be one of the Shape Shifters I told you about." Scully was in 
and turned to look at him. She hadn't gotten a good look in the alley.

"Stop...look I haven't done anything. I...I just heard about the compound 
just now. I'm a hunted man!" he pleaded.

"*Don't* ever call yourself a man," stressed Mulder, pushing the weapon 
against the alien's neck. He was quite prepared to search for the exact 
location there that would kill him. The alien changed his appearance over 
and over again in a rapid series of confused panic. Scully gasped. Mulder 
didn't flinch.

"We need him," Adam implored.

Mulder relaxed his grip.

"Look...all I know is that if I was a hunted m...alien before, I am dead on 
sight now," the alien pleaded.

"Saint, this is John Winwood. He has been our main contact with the Shape 
Shifters, haven't you John?" The alien nodded.

"Mr. Skinner, sir, could you please take us to 88 Lexor Avenue?" Skinner 
started out again.

"Can you tell me where we are going this time?" Skinner asked, only it 
wasn't a question really.

Adam shifted uncomfortably. "It's the safehouse. I only hope that it's still 
safe."

=================================

Eighty eight Lexor Avenue looked deserted. It seemed to be an old deserted 
and boarded up warehouse. Adam directed Skinner around the back of the 
building. They saw an old beat up Volkswagon van parked there.

They entered the old building and moved up a back staircase.

"Case?" Adam called.

They heard rustling from down the hall. Case came out of one of the 
doorways. He looked scared. Scully noticed that he was carrying his gun. She 
unconsciously felt for her own, making sure it was close at hand.

"How is he?" Adam asked.

"I don't know, I'm no doctor, but he doesn't look good."

Scully moved forward into the room Case had come from. She was in doctor 
mode, Mulder noted. People were gathered around a bed towards the back. 
Stick was lying unconscious, covered in sweat and blood. He'd been shot once 
in the chest and once in the stomach. Scully removed the makeshift bandage 
from his chest and saw the telltale bubbling that spoke lung puncture to 
her. She couldn't get a radial pulse. The man was in shock and not far from 
death. His breath was coming in short gasps.

"We have to get this man to a hospital or he won't make it," she told them 
with urgency.

Adam pushed Winwood forward. He moved closer to Stick, taking Scully's hands 
gently out of the way. He placed his own over Stick's wounds. They all 
watched in amazement as the holes made by the bullets slowly closed up. He 
kept his hands there a moment longer and Stick's breathing returned to 
normal. His eyes became clear and he looked up in amazement at Winwood. He 
sat up and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Scully looked on in disbelief. She leaned forward and touched where the 
wounds had been. She looked into his eyes and saw an understanding there 
that she herself didn't have. She got up and walked out of the room.

When Mulder found her, she was at the end of the hall, staring out a dirty 
window.

"Are you ok?" he asked softly. She just nodded. It took every ounce of 
composure to resist the urge to pull her into his arms. She needed some 
space to deal with everything. Every degree of normalcy was crumbling for 
her. They stood there a moment before she spoke.

"I guess that I am feeling quintessentially useless right now."

"Scully...." he searched his mind for the words. Nothing seemed adequate.

"I'm sorry, that was selfish of me," she chastised herself.

He moved around to where he could see her profile. She had the very edge of 
her lips twisted upwards in an expression of displeasure and deep thought 
he'd come to recognize. But he also knew that it was an expression that she 
never used around other people. That told him two things. She was unhappy 
with herself and he was still in her inner world.

"Come on, you don't have a selfish bone in your body." She looked over at 
him then. The hurt was raw on her face now and twisting like a knife in his 
heart. He noticed right away.

"Where's your cross?" She'd taken it off days ago in his apartment. Her own 
show of mourning. She'd left it on his desk. Her chin began to quiver. Her 
face began to crumble in pain.

"Com'ere," he pulled her gently to him. She allowed him to draw her albeit 
reluctantly into his arms. She took but one breath, inhaling his scent, and 
she couldn't keep control any longer. Tears flowed as she sobbed into his 
chest. At first she slowly put her arms around him, then her grip tightened 
and finally she clung to him with an intensity he hadn't seen before from 
her.  She seemed to need him for her own life to continue. Scully turned her 
ear to his chest. She needed to hear his heart beating. He held her, 
allowing her what she was feeling, gently stroking her hair, speaking quiet 
words of comfort to her.

"S'okay, I'm here, everything's going to work out."

When her tears and the small hitching of her breath eased, he reached down 
and tenderly lifted her chin so that she was looking at him. She could see 
that he'd been crying too. The questions started afresh in her mind. Why 
hadn't he trusted her? Why was he always trying to draw her lines of 
commitment for her? How could he have made love to her and then allowed her 
to believe he was dead? Mulder lowered his face towards hers. No one was 
more shocked than she was with her next word.

"No."

She said it simply, yet fraught with meaning. When the word was actually out 
and hanging in the air, she found the courage to act in her own best 
interests. She pushed at his chest, looking at him with puzzled eyes, as if 
he had just grown a horn in the middle of his forehead.

Mulder almost laughed, the word seemed so out of place in the moment. He was 
close to asking her to repeat herself. He didn't though because he was 
fairly sure that she would. Instead he just took a step back, trying to 
figure out what was going on in her mind.

Scully was searching the air around his chest as if it were her mind. She 
was looking for the words to express something to him. He probably knew what 
she would say better than she did. He didn't want her to have to say it. So 
he just nodded his understanding.

Skinner came out looking for them.

"We need to figure out what the next move's gonna be here. Join us."

Everyone in the room looked tired and drawn out. They all agreed that the 
first priority was to get to McDougall before the Syndicate took him out. No 
one except Scully, Skinner and Winwood had actually had any sleep in over 32 
hours, yet they were the only ones not really participating in the 
discussion.

Adam was alive once again with ambition. He and Mulder navigated the 
situation with a confidence that seemed almost ludicrous under the 
circumstances.

Skinner would go back to the bureau and stay there, business as usual, where 
they needed his resources. Mulder was vaguely surprised to find that he 
agreed readily to this. In his experience, Skinner needed proof and a solid 
evidence trail before he stuck his neck out for anyone. Of course, watching 
Winwood shift had been somewhat of an evidence trail in and of itself. Come 
to think of it, Mulder thought, Skinner's been pretty quiet since that 
little event.

Scully didn't jump into the talk either. She was feeling like a fifth wheel. 
They spoke with determination and conviction of belief. She wasn't so sure 
just what she believed. Whenever Mulder spoke of aliens, deep down she'd 
always thought that somewhere he'd been misguided. But with everyone in the 
room seeming to take their existance as a given, her world was taking on 
surrealistic overtones. She no longer really knew what to believe.

They needed intelligence before they could get to McDougall, and they needed 
that fast. Skinner left for the bureau. They were losing their day and 
needed to get to the Senator. All they could do is await Skinner's phone 
call with the details of where he was and who was calling the shots 
officially on the compound.

The room was getting quieter. Everyone was either slumped on one of the four 
cots in the room or resting their heads on the table. They'd turned off the 
small television set--no one could watch the deaths of their friends 
anymore. Mulder was across the room. He was giving Scully the space that she 
needed to sort things out.

Skully looked at the faces she could see. They all looked military to some 
extent. She didn't know them, but she could see the different emotions 
flashing across their faces. Whatever they'd done, they believed in it. They 
trusted Adam and even Mulder.

It was strange being in a room with people who looked up to Mulder. He 
wasn't Spooky in here. He had credibility. She could see it in the way they 
hung on the words he said and reacted in their own thoughts without 
questioning him. He was home here in a way he never had been at the bureau.

She felt a small rise of jealousy. For years she'd loved having Mulder to 
herself. It had made her feel special. She knew that she was seeing 
something in a man that for some reason no one else seemed to be able to. 
She'd felt priveleged to be getting something that everyone else seemed to 
miss. It had made her feel smart, not that she needed that particular ego 
stroke, but in a simple way it was the truth. He'd needed her to accept him. 
He'd needed someone to believe in him. Not just someone...but someone who 
had credibility within the bureau. Despite her understanding of his work, 
she'd never lost that credibility for the most part.

But now...now there were a group of people who knew what she did about him. 
She chastised herself yet again for her selfishness. She should have been 
glad that he'd found his niche. She realized then that she was just afraid 
of losing him. She wanted to go across the room and make some sort of 
physical contact. She couldn't do that though. She didn't want him to 
misinterpret her actions. Her heart ached and she needed to protect it and 
let it heal a bit. Adam approached her, speaking in hushed tones.

"Are you ok?" Wasn't that Mulder's line? She nodded.

"Do you trust Skinner?" She held his look then.

"He won't sell you out, if that's what you mean. He's careful. I don't see 
that you have much of a choice. If I'm to believe all of this, you need him 
right now. He's risked his reputation and his life for us before. I don't 
see that having changed. I trust him more than I trust anyone in this room 
at the moment." She surprised herself at her blatant hostility towards the 
group and her defensiveness of the Assistant Director. Adam looked down.

"Look I know that you can't be happy with what's gone on in the last while." 
She scoffed at that statement. He had *no* idea...."But you have to see that 
we were all doing what we could at the time, what we thought was the right 
thing. Your partner included. He wasn't given much of a choice."

"We all have choices Adam. Look, I appreciate you trying to fix Mulder and 
me, but this isn't just about the last few weeks. And...it's really just 
between him and I." Adam was stung by that remark, but he kept his 
composure.

"I have to ask you something. Are you willing to do the job with McDougall?"

Scully was surprised at the question. It spoke volumes to her. Somehow in 
that one little question, Adam had fixed a whole series of inner hurts from 
the day. She'd been feeling left out, underappreciated, and worst of all, 
not trusted. His question addressed all of that. Of course she would get the 
job done. She played it cool though.

"What did you have in mind?"

"You taking Winwood into the hospital and walking out with McDougall. He's 
going to need to get to the White House. This thing has to be blown wide 
open. There's no other way than to expose the Syndicate right now, otherwise 
they can continue to use the military against us." She pondered this. He 
continued.

"But they know that and they are gonna be putting everything into his not 
getting there. It's risky, but everything we do right now is risky."

"I'll do it." She wasn't thinking much at that point. She needed to be 
needed again. She liked that he thought of her as capable. The phone rang as 
she was finishing her thoughts. She noticed Mulder looking at them then. 
Adam picked up the phone and spoke.

Everyone in the room looked up, waiting for him to finish.

"Ok...everyone listen up. Most of the upper council is in hiding, that's 
actually the good part. We know who's yanking the chains and where to find 
McDougall. This is Dana Scully if you haven't met her yet, she's going in 
with Winwood to get McDougall."

"What?!" interjected Mulder. "She can't go in there. Anyone from the 
Syndicate would recognize her. She'd be dead before she got through the 
front doors."

"Nonetheless, we need her medical background and expertise. We are out of 
time for finding someone else. She's agreed to go and she *will* be going." 
Mulder didn't want to challenge Adam in front of everyone, but this wasn't 
over.

"Then I'll go too," he offered. Scully didn't say anything. She knew that 
Adam would settle it all without her help.

"No, they'll be looking for you for sure. We have to assume that they know 
you're alive. We aren't going to take unnecessary risks here. They'll go in 
and get him to safety. They'll go alone, be in and out and back before you 
know it." There was nothing Mulder could credibly add to that. He knew that 
Adam was right, he just didn't like it.

Winwood didn't seem to like the idea too much either. He seemed willing to 
go along with it though, which just begged the question for Mulder....

"How well do you know this alien?" he whispered to Adam as he pushed him 
into the hall.

"I know that he doesn't have much of a choice. I know that he has risked and 
given up everything for us. More than anyone of us has risked. He's betrayed 
his race for our good."

"And what does that tell you? Why was he running from us when we found 
him?!" he forced through clenched teeth. "What if he runs from Scully and 
leaves her standing there holding the bag?!"

"I don't think he'll do that! It wouldn't appear that we have much of a 
choice here Saint!" Adam was equally angry. Mulder was acting for the 
limited good of his own life and not in the interests of the whole.

"It's *Mulder*" he stressed. Adam nodded, then turned to the room and 
addressed Scully.

"Are you ready to go?" She was. Winwood had changed into some military 
fatigues Adam had given him. Scully gave Mulder a meaningful look.

Winwood, Scully, Adam and Mulder headed down the stairs. Adam gave 
instructions as they walked.

"Walk away from here at least four blocks. Hail a cab to Bethesda Naval 
Hospital. You'll find him on the fourth floor. Winwood, I am sure that you 
are aquainted with General Grey." They shared a knowing look. "He's been 
calling the shots officially for the Syndicate and will probably be your 
best in once you're inside the hospital. Try...."

While they chatted, Mulder took the opportunity to pull Scully back a bit in 
order to talk sense into her.

"Scully, you don't have to do this."

"Do what? Risk my life for a cause I believe in?"

"No...show me that you can hurt me the way I hurt you."

She considered denying this, but found her argument would be weak at best.

"My motives hardly matter here. We don't have that much of a choice. At 
least I am saying goodbye to you." Mulder just shook his head, pleading.

"Please don't do this." Scully felt a moment of regret mixed with sadness. 
Her voice softened.

"This isn't all about you Mulder. This is about me. I *need* to do this." He 
nodded reluctant understanding.

"Please be careful then." For some reason, his concern felt more like a lack 
of faith in her.

"Of course," she said wryly, "I wouldn't want you to have to bury me."

The venom she spoke with was so uncharacteristic of her that he couldn't 
think of anything to say. She was usually more direct in her anger and 
didn't play the cheap shots game. She seemed to realize that too and looked 
away slightly embarassed at her own words. She softened and reached out and 
placed her hand flat on his chest.

"We'll work this out when I get back." His eyes looked so sad and longing. 
Her look consoled him that she was okay and that there was hope. He nodded.

================================

In the back of the cab, Scully couldn't help blatantly sizing up Winwood. 
Part of her accepted him being an alien. Another part of her fought with the 
idea. He seemed to understand what she was thinking.

"Yes, I am an alien, although I don't think of myself that way." He spoke 
low out of consideration for the poor cab driver who might not understand 
their conversation. "You're a doctor. I am a doctor of sorts where I come 
from too. Not all of us can heal. I never thought that I would be military 
in any way though."

She looked at him with new eyes.

"You are probably wondering how I do the things I do. It's in our chemistry. 
Our cells rapidly regenerate and divide on demand. I suppose it is where 
your species will be in a million years or sooner, if they survive. In a 
way, I am behind my time. It's not characteristic of us to interfere with 
other planets. We are a very peaceful race. For some reason, I have a strong 
feeling of compassion. That's all but gone from us as a race." She didn't 
like that statement. He continued.

"That's not a bad thing altogether. We aren't hostile, we usually don't have 
emotions. Sort of like bio-machines. My species will only act in order to 
learn." He smiled. "I am somewhat crazy by my government's standards. They 
consider me to be impaired to the higher good. I've been ostrasized for 
years because of my views. They think I am a little crazy. I dunno. Maybe I 
am." He stared out the window, lost in thought. She felt some empathy 
towards him then. An alien version of Mulder.

"It's a good thing for us that you are," she added. He looked at her. She 
desperately needed to know something then. "It wasn't your race then that 
experimented on me was it?"

He shook his head sadly. "No, that was your own government, working with 
another race of aliens. We observe, nothing else. At least as a race, that's 
our philosophy."

Winwood had a quiet peacefulness about him. She found herself confiding in 
him in a way she normally wouldn't. She fiddled with her hands and spoke 
quietly.

"They took something from me that I can never get back." She could feel him 
looking at her as she stared at her hands.

"Your ability to have a child..." he finished for her. "They do that to a 
lot of women. It's part of the genetic experiments. They don't think about 
the consequences to the victim."

She nodded, feeling the emotions rising up in her. It had been a long time 
since she had thought about that...or about Emily and what might have been. 
She hadn't meant to create an awkward moment.

"We heal with our hands." With that, he placed his hand on top of hers. She 
looked up at him. She could feel something like a low-voltage charge in his 
touch. It seemed to race through her body, calming her mind, changing her 
outlook, giving her peace.

"How do you do that?" she whispered more to herself than to him.

"I never thought about the explanation much before I came to this planet. I 
guess we do it the same way we re-arrange our own cells and change our 
appearance."

Scully had a million biology based questions for him, but their drive to the 
hospital was nearing an end.

They entered the hospital using her credentials. There seemed to be soldiers 
everywhere. They ducked into a room where Winwood morphed into someone 
Scully guessed was the general they'd been talking about. The soldiers 
saluted as he walked with an air of authority to where the senator was lying 
in ICU. Everyone appeared to know who the general was, but the two soldiers 
at the Senator's door asked Scully for identification. She produced her FBI 
badge. They took a very careful look at it.

Inside the room, there was another soldier sitting not far from the door. As 
they approached the bed, Winwood/Grey addressed the soldier in the room.

"Corporal, I would like you to check on a car for us...I'd like that done 
discreetly."

"But...sir..." the corporal seemed uncertain. Winwood/Grey wasn't flinching. 
The corporal reluctantly got up from his post.

Winwood morphed back into his original shape. He lowered the blankets and 
layed his hands on the general's body. The bullet had passed through an area 
close to his heart. Scully imagined the sharpshooter had gone for the heart 
but the senator had moved slightly as the shot was taken.

As Winwood worked his god-magic, the Senator began waking up. He immediately 
started gagging and struggling with the tube in his throat.

"Sir, I am going to remove that for you. You need to relax and allow me to 
do that." He tried to relax as Scully worked to free him from his prison of 
tubes. She turned off machines and monitors in the process. The Senator 
watched with fearful eyes.

"Sir, you were shot by someone from the Syndicate. We believe that they will 
be here soon to finish the job. We are here to help you get to safety. Can 
you get up?" He nodded. Winwood shifted back into the General. McDougall 
watched in fascination, an understanding passing over his eyes. The corporal 
re-entered the room.

The corporal almost fell backwards in shock at seeing the senator sitting 
up. He quickly regained his military composure. Scully passed the Senator 
some clothing and turned around. They moved quickly. General Grey addressed 
the corporal.

"We are going to take the two soldiers from outside the door and you. We are 
going to proceed to the vehicle you've arranged without allowing anyone to 
see us. This man's life is in danger. We cannot be seen. Particularly not by 
any press, but not by other military personnel either. We are going to keep 
this very quiet." The corporal didn't understand what was going on, but he 
was all-military and nodded his understanding.

Getting out was easier than Scully would have imagined. The Syndicate 
probably didn't anticipate that there were any survivors of the compound 
massacre. Cancerman, you've made a serious strategic blunder, she thought as 
they all piled into a military vehicle and drove off into the growing 
darkness.

===============================

It was closing on to 1 a.m. and still no word from Scully. Mulder was 
worried. So many things could have gone wrong. Skinner hadn't called. That 
could be both good or bad. Adam was trying to sleep and encouraged Mulder to 
do the same. Waiting was a bitch.

Was this how Scully felt whenever he was off playing Fox Warrior Hero? He 
sat in one of the corners, trying to figure out some sort of comfortable 
position he could get some sleep in. He was doubly tired, the emotional 
exhaustion being the worst.

Just as his eyes were closing, he heard a distinct noise. Someone was on the 
staircase. He drew his weapon and jumped up in one fluid motion. Adam and 
Case followed suit, guns drawn. The room was instantly wide awake, but stony 
quiet. Suddenly there were many bootheels pounding up the steps.

This is it, thought Mulder.

"It's just me, it's Scully," she voiced loudly from the landing.

He had never heard such a sweet sound in all of his life. The three of them 
ventured a look out the door. In the darkness they could see Scully followed 
closely by armed men in combat uniforms. He closed his eyes in silent 
thanksgiving.

They turned on the light in the room. A few of the soldiers entered, most 
stayed out in the hall.

"The Senator is fine and at the White House. We are going to take you out of 
here to a place that is better equiped. Sergeant Major Ross, this is Adam 
Roberts, he's the man the Senator told you about."

"Sir! I've been instructed to take you take you to better facilities and 
follow your command. My squad of twenty is at your disposal sir!" he intoned 
with perfect military precision. Adam acknowledged him with a curt nod. 
Scully continued.

"The Senator wants a meeting early tomorrow afternoon. He said we're to meet 
him at 1 p.m." They all gathered their things together and headed down the 
stairs.

"Mulder," she stopped him with a touch to his arm, "you'll need to come in 
my car, we have a stop to make." Mulder gave a small chuckle.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing, it's just that that's the first time I have heard my own name in a 
while." He smiled a tired smile. "So...where are we going?"

"Would you believe into the office?"

"And why would we go there?"

"We need some of our files. I'll explain in the car."

She never did get to the explanation in the car. Before they'd gone a block, 
Mulder fell into a deep sleep. Some time later they pulled into the 
underground parkade of the Hoover Building. Mulder hadn't woken when the 
guard had checked her ID. Nor had he woken when the guard had had to call 
Skinner for confirmation about his entry to the building. He'd slept through 
the entire process. Scully hardly wanted to wake him, but she needed his 
help.

"We need everything we can get our hands on about the Syndicate. Anything we 
have," she explained once they were in the office.

"I don't understand why we'd need that."

"Geez Mulder, you're really tired." She was genuinely concerned. "We've 
entered a political arena. We are going to have to prove the things they've 
done. From what I understood, Senator McDougall is going to bat in the 
Council's defense. Whoever's been feeding Cancerman his power all of this 
time will be up against him. This is what we've been waiting for Mulder. 
This is where you finally get some validation for the things you've done."

Mulder nodded less enthusiastically than she thought he would and put 
together a bundle of papers and files.

"We have to stop by my apartment."

"Do you think that's safe?"

"The way I see it, we may be trying to get things together here, but the 
Syndicate is scrambling madly. They can't touch us now without losing the 
war."

She had to agree with him on that one. Inside his apartment, the process 
seemed to take a lot longer than she'd thought. Mulder was sorting through a 
system that only he understood. She'd always thought that he was just 
careless and sloppy with his home filing system. She could tell now though 
that it was actually the perfect oxymoron--organized chaos. He easily found 
what he was looking for. There was so much of it though, that he was picking 
and choosing.

She helped him for a while, but he was getting short with her and she didn't 
have the drive to interfere. She got up and made her way into his bedroom. 
She only wanted to lie down for a few minutes.

By the time he was ready to go, he looked around and was surprised to find 
that Scully was no longer at his side. He'd sorted his information into two 
neat boxes. He wandered into his livingroom and then through to the bedroom. 
There she was, sound asleep on the bed. She must have been exhausted.

He leaned against the doorway, resting his head on the frame, his hands 
tucked deep into his pockets. He stared at her sleeping. He considered 
waking her up but she looked so peaceful and angelic. He was so tired.

Without a whole lot of thought, he climbed onto the bed and laid down beside 
her. He thought for a moment, then opted to push his good fortune and 
spooned up to her. His arm draped across her waist and pulled her closer in 
to him. He fully expected her to wake up, turn around and give him a black 
eye to explain to the Council in the morning. She sucked in a short breath 
and opened her eyes. He knew that she wasn't really awake though as her eyes 
melted back into sleep. He was asleep himself in a matter of two minutes, 
his face nestled pleasantly into her hair.

===============================

The first sensation she had when she opened her eyes was panic. Daylight was 
streaming into the bedroom, she was disorientated by it. God, what time was 
it?! She panicked her wrist up and tried to make sense of her watch. It was 
only 9 a.m. She sighed in relief.

The next sensation she was aware of was a heaviness along one side of her 
and covering her stomach below her ribs. She looked down in momentary 
incomprehension. It was Mulder's arm, she realized. She became aware that he 
was curled up to her. She turned herself over under his arm. His face was 
peaceful in sleep. She felt slightly shy about their intimate position.

That's just silly, she rebuked herself. After all, they'd been lovers. But 
what were they now? Lovers? Friends? Simply partners? None of the above? 
Enough analyzing it, she thought. It just was what it was. Definition only 
drew away from it.

She just nestled in the contentment of watching him sleep, shamelessly, in a 
way that she never could when he was awake. His face was unshaven. He had a 
rough mountain man look to him. She smiled. He needed a haircut. Her face 
grew serious again. She stared at his features. His lips were perfect. Very 
kissable. She blushed slightly at the thought. Tentatively, she reached up 
and picked a stray lock of hair and moved it away from his forehead. Unable 
to resist, she allowed her fingers to lightly trail down the side of his 
face to grate roughly against his 5 o'clock two-days-later shadow.

"Tread carefully G-woman, I'm only human."

Scully drew in a quick breath. He opened his eyes and looked at her. Despite 
her embarrassment, she couldn't look away. She found herself lost in his 
eyes. She suddenly remembered to breathe again.

"I'm sorry...I...." she flustered.

"Scully, it's okay," he chastised her. His grip tightened on her as she made 
motions to get up. She relaxed again, probably more on instinct than on a 
desire to stay. "I've missed you," he whispered.

For one panicked second, she was afraid he was going to kiss her. When the 
second passed, she found that she was afraid that he wouldn't. She felt 
incredibly physically drawn to him. She touched her lips with her tongue in 
an unconscious motion born of her growing desire to have him kiss her.

Mulder wasn't going to do that. He wanted her to make any moves in that 
direction. He felt responsible for her feeling confused and hurt. He didn't 
want to impose his intentions on her. He wanted her to want him beyond any 
doubts. Maybe that wouldn't happen this soon. Maybe it would. But it had to 
come from her.

"I thought you were dead," was all she could manage.

He could see the pained way that she spoke. He reached over her to his 
bedside table where he'd put her cross the night before.

"You left this here." He reached around her neck and fastened it, adjusting 
the cross in the center. The jesture was intimate.

He wasn't expecting it when she reached up and continued the trail her 
fingers had started down his jaw. They traced their way to his lips. She 
couldn't take her eyes from those lips. She wanted to press her own to them, 
taste his mouth and share again the feelings of one night long long ago.

"Mulder, I am still feeling numb about all of this. I don't know where we're 
going," she pushed out, needing resolution. It was hard to feel any negative 
emotion though when he was holding her so intimately.

"I understand that Scully, I just don't want to be shut out completely, 
that's all."

"You don't want that, yet that's what you did to me." The words weren't 
spoken harshly, just a simple statement of fact.

"I can't explain my motives exactly. I just didn't want you going where I 
was going. Can you say that even now, with all you've seen in our years 
together and especially in the last twenty-four hours, that you firmly 
believe in the existance of extraterrestrial life here on earth?"

She withdrew her hand from his face. He had her there. She didn't *not* 
believe it, she just didn't know what to think. Her world was all turned 
around and unbelievable. Somewhere deep down, she still held the faint hope 
that there was some other explanation. And there was always the "dream" 
factor.

"What would it take exactly? Would you need one of those *things* running 
out at you in a dark forest? And as its teeth tore into you, would you 
believe then?"

He was hurting her now. He was attacking her ability to reason.

But he was also right.

Hot emotion rose up in her. She pushed at his arm, wanting to get up and out 
of there before she said something she'd regret. He wasn't letting go. He 
wasn't tightening his grip, but he wasn't letting her go either.

"Scully," he continued gently, "you've never wanted to believe. I didn't 
want you to die because I did." He watched her struggling to maintain the 
strength he admired so much about her. "Scully, I love you," he breathed.

Her eyes snapped up to his. The love and yearning flowed from his eyes to 
hers, all the way down into her heart. Loving Mulder seemed to sometimes 
mean pain. What did that say about her?

She moved her face closer, drawn to him by sheer magnetic pull. Their lips 
touched before he returned the kiss. Tears moved down her cheek from closed 
eyes. The intensity and passion of the kiss grew until their breathing 
became deep and quick. Air couldn't get into her lungs fast enough.

With a gasp, Scully tore away her mouth more out of survival instinct than a 
desire to do so. He continued to kiss down her chin to her neck as her hands 
found their way up his own neck. She twisted her fingers in his hair even as 
he continued his trail of moist kisses. His hands were roaming the contours 
of her body, finding her breasts over her shirt. She'd taken off her jacket 
the night before and lay there in a navy sleeveless turtleneck that he was 
pulling at.

She needed no coaxing. They both worked off their clothing somehow without 
losing physical contact. His skin was so hot against hers. His lips 
engulphed her own. His tongue darted out to sword fight with hers for entry 
into her mouth. His hands roamed her body. His touch was electric, igniting 
a fire in her lower belly. She felt a familiar warmth between her legs that 
was quickly growing to an urgent state. He cupped her breasts. She gasped 
even through his kiss, drawing air from his own mouth.

As his fingers felt and teased one of her pink nipples, she moaned. That was 
enough encouragement for him. He moved down, trailing heated stars of kisses 
down her neck, capturing one of her nipples in his mouth. His tongue played 
at the tip as he gently bit. She moaned appreciation. She could feel the 
dampness between her legs becoming more of a flow. She needed to feel him 
there.

Mulder's touch was sheer fire. His fingers moved across her belly to the 
tangle of hair below. She drew in a breath and held it as he found his way 
towards her inner womanhood. She was incredibly wet. He watched her face as 
his fingers slid easily inside. He began to stroke her. Her eyes were shut, 
her brow wrinkled slightly. She was lost in the ecstacy of the sensation. He 
kissed, licked and sucked his way down, needing to taste her. When she felt 
his tongue invade her, she cried out softly.

He was precise in his movements. His tongue flickered across her swollen 
clit. His fingers worked at her, moving inside. His tongue stroked her in a 
way that sent shocks up her body. She could feel her climax rising. The 
pressure in her built up a mass of sensation. Her body tensed and her back 
arched as she felt the first wave of heaven invading her body. She was 
powerless to stop the moan escaping her lips as he sent her over the edge of 
pleasure.

He could feel her contracting around his fingers. He tasted her anew, taking 
pleasure in the effect he had on her body. Her fingers were tangled in his 
hair. As the ripples subsided, she pulled gently at his hair, urging him up.

He paused when he was inches from her face. The look of total lover's bliss 
on her face as the light filtered in through the blinds was incredible. Her 
eyes held that come hither look to them that was intoxicating. His mind and 
mouth worked on their own at words, on their own in truth, apart from the 
here and now somehow. The words were above time and space, they existed 
somehow as an eternal truth.

"God I love you Scully," he breathed.

Her eyes found focus on his face then. She returned his words with a kiss 
that was more sweet than passion. It was the kiss they'd shared in the 
coffee house. It was a kiss that said "more than a lover, you are my 
friend". It spoke volumes to his heart. He thought he would die in the 
intensity of the moment. If he died, he would die complete.

"I want to feel you inside me," she whispered thickly.

He needed no second request there. He moved with purpose. For one still 
second, he poised at her opening, watching the desire in her eyes. As he 
entered her he caught a glimpse of heaven on her face before his eyes closed 
with the sensation. He buried his head in a mass of hair at her neck as his 
movements became rythmic. His mind could think of nothing but that he was 
making love to Scully again. No hesitation, no regrets, nothing but love.

Her movements countered his perfectly. Her hips rose to meet his every 
thrust in the animal instinct they shared. She had become more bold this 
time, wrapping her legs around him, allowing for a deeper penetration.

He loved her shy ways and how he alone seemed to hold the keys to unlocking 
her mysteries.

*Oh my Scully, tough as nails, soft as silk, your depths unfathomable*

He realized within her that he was making love to the whole person. 
Mountains could crumble, the sky could fall, aliens could burst into the 
apartment, the entire building could be swallowed by the ground and he would 
be powerless to do anything but continue making love to Scully.

Her breathing became ragged and soft moans escaped her lips in a way he was 
coming to recognize as a warning that she was reaching climax. He felt her 
body tighten beneath his as she moaned his name in ecstacy. A moment after 
her release, while she was still in the wake of orgasm, he found his own, 
pushing deeply into her and spilling his seed. Oh, he never wanted to let 
her go. He wanted to just absorb her and feel this way forever.

He lifted his head and looked into her face as soon as he could find the 
strength. Her eyes held that certain virginal wonder look to them. You 
couldn't script that look. He knew that she'd had other lovers, but he also 
knew that a maze surrounded her heart and somehow he'd found a way through 
that no one else ever had. No one else ever would. Nor could anyone ever 
love him or touch him the way she had. Every piece of her was given with 
meaning. He cherished that.

*so this is "making love"*

When he moved off of her, he pulled her to his side. Her head was resting on 
his chest. If they could only stay like this, there never would be any 
aliens, never an invasion, never would they die. He tightened his arm around 
her, not wanting it to end.

"We have to get up eventually," she chimed into his thoughts.

He just groaned. Too soon, Scully pushed her body up off the bed.

He allowed her some space to take a shower, then he jumped into one himself. 
When he came back into the bedroom, she was dressed and rifling through his 
closet.

"I think it's understood that you wear the pants in this relationship."

Her face wore that "we are not amused" expression she'd taught the queen.

"I wanted to find something for Adam to wear, he's about your size," she 
replied, deep in thought. Only Scully could be concerned about appearing 
professional when the four horses of the apocalypse were  galloping towards 
Washington. But he knew well the determined resolve in her face.

Mulder gave her comment some thought. He wasn't sure he liked the fact that 
she'd compared Adam to him, but he knew much better than to allow that 
thought a voice. She picked his navy suit, still wrapped from the cleaners. 
He wanted to tell her that that was the one that he wanted to wear, but...he 
was pretty sure that no matter what she picked, that would be what he'd 
wanted to wear. And she would know that. So, he kept his mouth shut and 
picked another.

He hadn't anticipated wearing a suit. But his excuse was basically moot at 
this point as now Adam would be wearing one too. He liked a more casual feel 
to himself. Whenever he managed to reasonably discard his jacket at the 
office during the day, he would roll up his sleeves, wishing to god that he 
could just rip them off. He loathed ties.

*how smart are men anyway when they start every day by tying a noose around 
their necks?*

He noticed that she'd picked up his clothes from the floor. Apparently she 
didn't know the system. He saved those clothes for his off days when he 
could crawl out of bed and do the nose search thing, finding the cleanest of 
his dirty shirts to lie around the apartment in or go out for a jog if the 
mood struck. He knew that she hadn't picked them up out of some maladjusted 
need to prove her domesticity, but simply because she couldn't stand the 
thought that she had made love to such a slob. Ok...change number one. He 
could live with that.

She left the room when he started to dress. He smiled.

*We can make love so long as you don't have to see me naked*

She was a doctor, she knew the human body. It was human intimacy that she 
stumbled over at times. But that was part of the affection. It was like 
peeling an onion. He knew that the time when she could sit and watch him 
would be special. Just like every part of her was. He wasn't going to rush 
anything.

=================================