From: fialka@t-online.de (Fialka)
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 17:05:39 +0100
Subject: NEW: Arizona Highways 2 by Fialka (01/14)
Source: xff


missing parts? <http://welcome.to/TheCandybox>
disclaimers, etc in Book One, Part 0

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ARIZONA HIGHWAYS                           
BOOK TWO: CHILD OF WATER
by Fialka <fialka62@yahoo.com>             

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1/14


SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S CENTER
MARCH 10TH, 3:40 PM


Scully pulled into the parking lot in front of the center and stopped the
car. 

Okay, calm down, she told herself. There was nothing so strange about this.
If Caitlin Jenkins' parents had been killed and there were no known
relatives, it was entirely possible she had been sent to Children's
Services, the way Emily had been. 

Whether Emily would have been conveniently 'adopted' by a Project-approved
family was a question she would never be able to answer. The reasons the
social worker had given for rejecting Scully's petition were valid enough
that she hadn't even considered the possibility that she may never have had
a chance, that a family for Emily had already been chosen. For some reason,
the people who created the girls had wanted their existence to be recorded,
wanted it all to look legal. Which meant that Children's Services might at
least have a record of where Caitlin had been sent. 

Scully looked over at Jane, who was huddled into her own embrace, staring
at the dashboard as if she didn't care where they were or what might happen
next. 

"I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?" Scully said. "I just have to go
check something out."

Jane nodded apathetically. Scully leaned into the back seat, opened the
laptop case and selected a folder. 

Inside, Scully went the official route, using her badge and the voice that
quietly demanded answers. It took only ten minutes before she was sitting
across from the director of the San Diego Children's Center, handing the
woman the photograph of the Jenkins family.

"I'm trying to trace the whereabouts of this little girl--"

"Oh!" the woman interrupted, taking the photograph into her hands. "That's
our Jane Doe."

"She's here?"

"She appeared about a week ago. We called the police, but they haven't been
able to trace any relatives. So, someone *is* looking for her. We assumed
she'd been abandoned."

Scully took a moment to breathe before she continued. "What do you mean she
appeared?"

"Someone rang the bell, and when we opened the door, there she was. People
do actually do that sometimes." The woman looked at the photograph in her
hands. "Funny, they don't look like the type, do they, but you never know."

Scully's eyes flicked to the nameplate on the woman's desk. "Mrs. Osborne,"
she said. "This child was not abandoned. Her name is Caitlin Jenkins and
her parents were killed in a car accident on March 4th."

"Oh my. Well, I suppose we'd better alert the police then."

Scully stood quickly, slipping the file from the woman's hands. "That won't
be necessary. I'm here to take the child into protective custody."

"Oh, I'm sorry." The woman looked up, smiling blandly. "The girl is a ward
of the County until her identity has been officially established. I'm
afraid you'll need a court order to remove her from the premises."

Scully reached into her pocket and showed her badge again. "Mrs. Osborne,
I'm a federal officer. I'm sure the County would have no problem with your
releasing her directly into my care. This child is a material witness in a
murder investigation and we have reason to believe her life may be in
danger if she stays here. I'm sure you understand."

"I understand that you'll need a court order to remove her from the
premises, no matter who you are," the woman repeated, unperturbed. "If
there truly is compelling reason, it should only take a day or so to obtain."

Scully took a deep breath, forcing the irritation down, out of her voice.
"All right, then, I'll do that. In the meantime I would like to see her.
You're aware that I don't need a court order to speak to the child."

The director shook her head. "She's not going to be able to give you any
information."

"You'd be surprised what children notice," Scully answered.

Finally, the woman seemed to have been thrown somewhat off-balance. "No,"
she said. "That's not what I mean. I meant...oh, never mind. See for
yourself."

Mrs. Osborne pressed a button on her intercom. "Adelaide?" she said, to the
answering squawk. "Could you get one of the volunteers to take Agent Scully
over to the Special Needs section?"

Deju vu ran up Scully's spine like a cold finger. The woman she was talking
to must have been appointed since Emily had been there the year before, but
everything else was beginning to play out with frightening repetition.

"That's all right," she said, picking up her file. "I know where it is."


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Caitlin Jenkins was in the daycare room, along with most of the other
pre-school-aged children. Unlike the others, she wasn't playing with the
stacks of brightly colored blocks, the numerous dolls, the clear plastic
containers filled with Lego. Caitlin Jenkins sat in a corner, head down on
her knees, ignoring everything around her. 

"That's her," one of the day care volunteers said. "Poor kid."

Scully watched the little girl rocking herself, a tiny ball of despair.
"Has she been examined by a doctor?" 

"Sure, it's routine when they come in. I heard she went ballistic, had to
be sedated." The woman sighed, making tsk-tsk noises with her tongue. "She
should really be in a psychiatric facility -- we're just not equipped for
kids like that here." 

"But she hasn't been ill?"

"Physically? No, she seems to be okay. No visible signs of abuse." The
woman bit down hard on the word 'visible'. That someone had done something
terrible to Caitlin at some point seemed obvious.

"May I?" Scully gestured to the far corner.

"Go ahead," the woman shrugged. "Be careful though. She's been known to
scratch and bite when she's scared."

Scully approached the child slowly, kneeling down beside her. She stayed
there, silent, for several minutes, giving Caitlin a chance to adjust to
her presence. 

Caitlin made no sign that she was even aware anyone was there. She went on
rocking herself with the same short, fast rhythm. 

Autism would be Scully's preliminary diagnosis, though she had no way of
knowing if it had been induced by recent trauma, or if Caitlin had been
autistic before. Scully could almost feel the pain emanating from the girl. 

She reached out and put a hand lightly on the child's shoulder, prepared to
pull back if Caitlin suddenly turned aggressive. 

The rocking stopped.

"Caitlin?" 

No answer. 

Scully hunkered closer, speaking in a whisper.

"Caitlin? I know you're scared, but I'm not going to hurt you. I just want
you to look at me. Okay, honey? Just pick up your head and look at me, if
you can understand."

No response. Her hand moved tentatively to Caitlin's head, stroking the
fine, tangled hair. It looked as if she hadn't let anyone near enough to
brush it the whole time she'd been here.

"Caitlin? Can you understand what I'm saying?" 

Scully lifted the child's hair away from her face and nearly cried out loud. 

The girl was wearing earrings. Delicate silver earrings, beaten by hand
into a thin disk and etched with black scored lines in the shape of petals,
around a center of polished turquoise. 

"Oh my god," Scully whispered. "Amy?"

The little girl lifted her head, slowly, blinking her eyes as if waking
from a long, horrible nightmare.

"Amy?" Scully's own eyes were just as wide as the child's, disbelief
stealing her breath. "Amy Wallace?"

The little girl nodded, flinging her arms around Scully's neck. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


SOMEWHERE NEAR SWEETWATER RESERVOIR
MARCH 10TH, 3:40 PM


Mulder's back was to the car, pulled haphazardly off the right side of the
road. On the left side, ten or so rows back beyond the orange trees, the
white stucco wall gleamed in the sun. Completely out of place in the middle
of nowhere. 

Mulder's first instinct was to call Scully back. He was sure she thought he
was wasting their time, trying to find a needle in a haystack that had
rotted away a long time ago. 

His thumb had already hit the speed dial when he thought better of it and
clicked off. He didn't know yet what he'd found and Scully's cryptic
warning was so unlike her that he couldn't begin to figure it out.

If she were in danger, if she needed help, she'd have asked for it, he told
himself. And if she didn't want help from him, for whatever reason, she had
Kresge, who certainly would not turn her down. 

Oddly, he found that thought a comfort. 

Mulder grabbed the backpack and the half-bottle of Evian and set out
through the trees. 

The wall was long, enclosing a good ten acres, and Mulder was beginning to
wonder if he was going to have to follow it all the around to the other
side it when he finally came to a door. Not the big wrought iron gate Jane
had described, but a shiny steel door, the stone around it showing evidence
of having been cut and cemented not very long ago. And beside it, not at
all new and far less shiny, stood a large industrial dumpster.

There didn't seem to be any cameras on the outside of the compound, as if
the idea of outside intervention was not worth contemplating. Mulder looked
around, decided there was nothing to lose, and climbed up on the dumpster.

The wall was far higher on the inside, the ground having been dug out when
the compound was built. Too high to simply jump without the chance of
breaking something. 

Mulder climbed down and considered his options. The place had obviously
been built with an eye to keeping things in, rather than keeping them out.
He still had the rope. He could tie it to the dumpster and climb down, but
he would have to leave it hanging on the inside or he would have no way of
getting back over. Not very wise to leave something so easy to notice,
though what he'd seen in his brief glimpse over the wall hadn't convinced
him there would be anyone there to see it. The compound looked abandoned;
nothing but glaring white adobe and dust-whirls glinting in the sun. On the
other hand, the door was new, the dumpster had a small amount of reasonably
fresh garbage in it and a row of trees had been removed from this point
onward, making a dirt road that followed the outside of the wall,
stretching as far as Mulder could see. 

There really was only one option.

Mulder heaved the dumpster a little further from the wall, enough to create
a space he could hide in, and settled down to wait for night. 


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SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S CENTER
MARCH 10TH, 4:32 PM


She was not conscious of making a decision, of following logic or reason.
It was more like the irresistible pull of a magnet, like the game she had
played as a child, inching the magnet closer to the nail, until the nail
leapt across the floor. 

Scully looked up and saw that the volunteer was occupied with an argument
between two small boys hell-bent on clubbing each other to death over a
Tonka truck. She pulled Amy into her arms and stood, the child holding on
as if she never meant to let go again. Scully began to move toward the
door, only one thought in her head.

Don't let them stop us, dear God, don't let them stop us. 

She could feel the holster pressing into her back beneath the weight of
Amy's crossed legs. She didn't want to know if she would pull her gun in
this place, didn't want to find out if she was capable of making that kind
of threat. Scully walked and prayed with a determination that might have
fried the circuitry of the chip if it had still been beneath the skin of
her neck.  

No one tried to stop her. No one even looked twice. She left the Children's
Center, clutching Amy tight, as if God had heard her prayer and made her
invisible to everyone but Himself.

Himself and Jane, gaping at her with horrified eyes.

"Can you drive?" Scully demanded, pulling the passenger door open. 

The other woman nodded, mute. 

"Then do it. Now!"

Jane gulped and scrambled over the gear shift as Scully climbed in with Amy
still wrapped around her. 

"Not too fast," Scully cautioned, as Jane started the car. "Just normal.
Don't attract attention."

"My god, Dana, what have you done?"

Scully dared a glance at Jane, saw a white face with huge eyes, her bottom
lip held tight between her teeth.

"I'm sorry," Scully said. Sorry seemed to be all she could say these days.
Everything seemed to be spinning out of her control. "I didn't expect--"

She cut off her own words and bent her head against the girl's. "I don't
know."

"Is this the one?" Jane asked tightly, "The one you were talking about?
Denise's twin?"

"This is Amy Wallace," Scully said. "The girl we were looking for." 

Amy looked up as she heard her name spoken, confusion written all over her
small face. "I want my mommy," she said to Scully, her lower lip beginning
to swell in a pout.

"I know," Scully answered. She pressed the girl's head back against her
shoulder. "I know."

Amy began to cry, almost without sound, crushing Scully's lapel in one
chubby fist. 

Scully held the girl closer, wanting to cry herself. It was only now
beginning to sink in, the exact magnitude of what she had done. 

She had kidnapped a child. A federal offense. Whatever her life had been
until this moment, it was over. 

"So where am I going?" Jane demanded, her knuckles golden beneath her pale
skin as she strangled the wheel. 

Scully dragged herself out of the well of despair into which she was
rapidly descending. Think. She had to think. 

"You know this part of town?" 

Jane nodded, refusing to take her eyes off the road, her expression grim.

"We need let you off somewhere. A motel, someplace you'll be safe for a
while. My partner will pick you up. Whatever happens now, you can't be
involved."

Jane cast her a long, hard look. "I'm already involved," she said harshly. 

"Jane, that's--"

"Just tell me where to go!"

Scully looked the woman sitting beside her, then down at the child,
sniffling quietly now. 

The decision, it seemed, had already been made.

Scully reached behind her to wrench the holster from her waistband,
stuffing it into the space between the door and the seat. "The interstate
then," she said, adjusting Amy's legs so she could slide back into her
seat, holding the girl close and buckling the seat belt around both of
them. "East. To Arizona."


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NEAR SWEETWATER RESERVOIR, SAN DIEGO COUNTY
MARCH 10TH, 7:22 PM


The compound was shaped like a hacienda, four graceful buildings around a
central courtyard. The oldest and largest was actually part of the far
wall, the graceful arched entrance to the compound built into the center of
the ground floor. It was guarded by an elaborate, wrought-iron gate, rusted
over now with years of neglect. 

Jane had described the central courtyard as a playground, but there was
nothing left to indicate that children had ever played there. Or that
anyone was here now. Up close the whitewashed adobe was dirty and faded,
crumbling in certain places. Abandonment hung over the place like a shroud.
If there had once been children, there had been little joy, of that Mulder
felt certain.

Mulder slipped from building to building, trying doors and dusty windows.
Everything was locked. 

The third building he tried, the one furthest from both entrances, had a
different lock than the first two. This was newer, electronic, maybe ten or
fifteen years old and the dirt in front of the door bore the marks of
having been disturbed recently. It was the first real sign of life Mulder
had seen.

He open his wallet and fished out a credit card and a thin sheet of foil he
kept folded in an inside pocket for just this purpose, covering the card
with the foil. It was an old trick, one Frohike had taught him years ago,
but it would only work on certain kinds of electronics.

He swiped the card through the lock, sure it wouldn't work on this one. 

The door popped open. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 10TH, 7:52 PM


Jane came out of the shower wearing the blue dress, her eyes red, her
manner distant. Scully said nothing. Even if she thought Jane would welcome
some kind of comfort, she wouldn't have known how to give it. Instead she
concentrated on her hands, moving a brush through Amy's tangled hair. 

You go home, she told the girl silently. Be ordinary. Be special to no one
but the people that love you. It's a strange thing to wish for a child, but
for you it will be a miracle.

Finished, she put her hand on the child's shoulder. It seemed unbearably
thin and small, too fragile for the weight of her blessing. Too easily
broken. "All done," she said and the child turned and flung herself into
Scully's arms. 

Not yours, Scully told herself as Amy wriggled against her, wanting to be
hugged. She held the child for one brief moment, then made herself let go. 

"Into bed with you," she said, forcing herself to sound cheery and light.
Amy looked like she didn't believe the cheeriness for a moment, but she
allowed Scully to tuck her into the cradle she had made by pushing the
room's two armchairs together. 

Scully wrapped the girl in a spare blanket, tucking it tight around her
shoulders. She almost leaned over to kiss her goodnight, then made herself
stop. 

"Sleep well," Scully said. Amy nodded, her expression old and tired, then
closed her eyes. She was asleep within moments.

Jane was surfing channels with one hand and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken
with the other, making Scully think desperately of Mulder. She picked up
her phone and tried calling for the third time, but there was still no
answer, not in his room and not on his cell. With Amy in her custody and
Skinner breathing down everybody's neck, all Scully could say was, "Call
me, it's urgent." She didn't dare leave any kind of explanatory message.

Scully sighed and turned her phone off. Angry, worried, or all of the above
-- that was the general choice Mulder left her with when he did this sort
of thing. She didn't really want to return the favor, but she didn't have
her charger and there was no point wasting her cell battery waiting. She'd
check her voicemail in a couple of hours and see if he'd called. 

At last Jane chose a channel and lay back, tossing the bare chicken bone
back into the box. The choice of dinner had been hers and Scully had too
much experience with the horrors of hospital food to say no. 

"You ever seen this movie?" Jane asked, the first words she'd spoken in
hours. "It's pretty good." 

Scully glanced at the TV. Harrison Ford was taking down some craggy blond
extra in a blaze of gunfire. "I've seen too much of that to enjoy it as
entertainment," she said, instantly wishing she hadn't. She didn't like the
expression on Jane's face as the other woman turned to stare at her. 

"We can watch something else," Jane offered, her intonation flat and dull. 

"No, please." Scully bent her head, avoiding Jane's eyes, picking up a
chicken wing of her own to nibble on. "By all means, watch what you like."

"It's okay. I've seen it." 

Scully heard a cacophony of noise that reminded her of Mulder next door in
a hundred motels, then Jane settled on the Sci-Fi Channel. 

"Brain candy," she shrugged, tossing the remote down and rubbing at her
wrists. 

"Those stitches will need to come out in a day or so," Scully informed her.
"Remind me."

"You were the one who wanted to autopsy Denise," Jane stated, making
Scully's stomach suddenly aware of the awful greasiness of its contents.

"Yes," she admitted, pushing the remains of her dinner away. 

Jane sat up abruptly and shut the TV off. "Was it worth it?" she demanded.
"To cut her up like that? Did you learn something you didn't already know?"

Scully sat still, willing the nausea to go away. "It's my job, Jane," she
said quietly. "If a death is suspicious, I try to uncover the story the
body wants to tell me. I can't bring people back to their families, but I
can try to find justice." 

She could feel Jane's eyes on her, frigid now. Blue could be such a cold,
cold color. She wondered if this was how Mulder felt when she was angry
with him. 

"Justice," Jane spat. "Is that what you brought me?"

Scully kept her voice low, refusing to be dragged into an argument. "I
brought you the truth."

"Fuck you! Do you think I needed that kind of truth? Did I ask for it? Who
the hell are you to come in and blow my world to shit? You ought to have to
watch your own kid die like that, you ought to have to hold her hand while
she cries from the pain or see the look in her eyes when the goddamn nurses
come at her with another goddamn needle--"

Scully held her breath and stared at her knee, hands contracting into fists
pressed hard against the mattress. She fought to make her mind a blank, an
empty screen upon which she wrote only the seconds she counted, refusing to
let the image of Emily's terrified face coalesce in her brain. 

"Please," Scully managed, casting a look at the sleeping Amy.

"She won't wake up," Jane answered. "Not if she's anything like--"

She cut her words off, evidently fighting her own internal battle against
things better not remembered. 

Enough, Scully prayed, averting her eyes. 

"I didn't even get to bury her." 

Jane's voice had gone high and thin, all the anger drained out of her now.
A short, harsh sob escaped.. "The funeral is tomorrow and no one will be
there."

Scully glanced up to see Jane wiping a shaking hand across her eyes. She
quickly looked away again, giving whatever privacy she could, breathing
carefully through her mouth as if the anguish in the room could be expelled
with her breath. Focus on a point and breathe, the way a woman is taught to
pant to rise above the pain of giving birth. There must be something
similar to this, Scully thought, a wave that rose and broke and receded
again, but the irony of the thought was bitter. There would be no cry of
life at the end of this. Only empty relief.

She closed her eyes as the moment finally ebbed and her muscles dared to
relax. Dry-eyed and calm now, she rose from the bed, removing her watch and
laying it on the dresser as she went. 

"I'm going to take a shower," she said to Jane. "Don't open the door for
anyone."

"Dana?"

It was the change in Jane's voice that stopped her in her tracks, the shift
from anger to compassion. Scully steeled herself to meet those eyes, to
guard against whatever kindness she might find there. Kindness was not a
gift she could accept tonight. It would be her undoing, and she couldn't
afford the weakness of tears. 

"There were three girls, in the pictures you showed me. What happened to
the third?" 

Scully made herself look at Jane. "She died last year."

"Was she...?" Jane swallowed loudly and left the question hanging in the
air, a presence so strong Scully could almost smell it. It smelled of sand
and antiseptic and the sweat on a small child's skin. 

"Did you know her?"

There was no answer Scully could give. To say yes was to cast herself as
having experienced the same grief Jane had, to have mourned a life she
believed she had carried inside herself. To say no would imply that Emily's
death had meant no more to her than the death of any child. Both were lies.
Anything she could ever say about Emily would be a lie. How could she speak
truthfully about a child she'd lost, but never had?

"I'll be out in a few minutes," she said instead, and escaped into the
bathroom.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Jane padded silently toward the door of the bathroom. The changing pattern
of the water told her that Scully was in the shower and she seemed like the
sort that would stand under the hot spray for a while. Jane figured she'd
have a good ten or fifteen minutes, maybe longer.

She opened Scully's laptop bag, sitting by her bed. 

The bag was big, the kind meant to also hold a portable printer. The first
pocket held the computer, a rolled-up towel wedged beside it, holding it
firmly inside the case. The center one, meant for the printer, was filled
with files. Jane saw her name on one and pulled it out. Lying on top were
the plastic sheets Scully had shown her earlier. Jane shoved it back in.
She didn't want to see those ever again. 

The front pocket held a couple of unlabelled disks, a laplink cable, the
power cord for the laptop and an assortment of things that would usually be
found at the bottom of a woman's purse. A heavy set of keys, a thin
notebook and a couple of pens, a comb, a small, flat case containing basic
makeup, a tube of coral-colored lipstick, and a wallet. Two wallets, in fact. 

Jane opened the first, running her finger over the FBI badge. The woman in
the picture looked much younger than the woman in the bathroom, her face
nearly unlined. Serious, but ready to smile. 

Jane tossed that back in and opened the other wallet. ATM card, credit
cards -- Mastercard and Visa in the name of Dana Katherine Scully, the
other an AmEx made out to DK Scully JTT0331613. Jane considered taking the
Visa and doing a disappearing act, but the consideration was short.
Stealing an FBI agent's credit card could only be listed under
'Phenomenally Stupid' in the classification of illegal acts. 

She looked at the sleeping girl and nodded to herself. Anyway, she was not
ready to go. 

She pulled out Scully's driver's license, noted the Georgetown address with
a snort. Yeah, she could believe the woman made money -- silk suits were
not cheap. 

Scully had gone to the bank on the way out of town, and the money portion
of the wallet now contained several hundred dollars in fifties. This time
Jane gave in to temptation, slipping two of the bills out and folding them
into a size small enough to tuck into her pocket. 

Only if I need to make a break for it, she reasoned. She wouldn't get very
far, would she, with no clothes and no cash? Scully wouldn't even miss a
hundred bucks. And if all went well and she didn't need it, she would find
a way to put the money back. 

Jane slipped her finger into the hidden pocket behind the credit card
flaps. It touched on something smooth and she coaxed it out. 

"Oh, Christ," she said aloud. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


The door opened onto a short hallway that led to a central area, a waiting
room with no outside access. Mulder glided along the edge of the wall and
glanced around before slipping inside.

Had they been so certain no one would never find this place that they had
barely bothered to protect it? 

There were just two guards, young men no more than twenty-one, as clueless
as the night cashier at a convenience store. The consortium must have
really fallen on hard times, Mulder thought, if these were the only foot
soldiers they could afford. 

Slipping up behind one as he watched TV was so easy Mulder almost felt
ashamed of himself. Candy from babies. It didn't stop him from pressing his
gun to the back of the man's head, of course.

"Don't even think about it," he said, as the second guard turned around.
"Just put your hands over your head."

He saw the second one glance towards the control desk and cocked his weapon
behind the head of the first. 

"This is a semi-automatic. I can shoot whether or not I've cocked it, but
now that I have, it will take only point-zero-two pounds of pressure to
release it. That's a twitch of my finger, and I'm feeling pretty twitchy
right now."

The one whose head was threatened swallowed audibly. "Do what he says,
Andy," he hissed at his companion. "I ain't dying for fifteen bucks an hour."

Andy was a little braver. Of course it was easier to be brave when you
weren't the one with the gun to your head. Mulder saw Andy's beady grey
eyes flash, as if the guy were doing the math -- if a man with a
hair-trigger shoots my friend how long does it take him to recover from the
recoil and aim again at me and is that greater than the length of time
required for me to pull my gun and shoot the fucker in the head?

"Yeah," Mulder agreed easily. "You might be fast enough to get me before I
get you, but your friend here will still be dead." 

Mulder regarded the friend -- now beginning to quiver with fear -- as if
appraising a doubtful piece of art. "I don't know, Andy. He seems like a
nice enough guy. What do you say we let him live?" 

Mulder looked back at Andy, putting on his best blank, unreadable
expression. "What do you say we all live? I'm not here to hurt anyone, but
I think you have something that belongs to a friend of mine, and if I have
to kill you to get it back, believe me, I will."

He saw the boy think again and smiled his sweetest come-on-Scully-
you-know-you-want-a-french-fry smile. "Think about it, Andy," he cajoled.
"Fifteen bucks an hour? Is that really worth someone's life?"

"For twenty," Andy replied, raising his hands with surprising equanimity,
"I might have tried." 

Mulder tied the men's wrists behind their backs with their own shoelaces,
and left them sprawled on the couch in front of the TV. No need for the
poor guys to be bored waiting for the next shift to arrive.

It was the third door he opened that yielded the treasure. So innocuous,
yet so enormous a moment, to stand in a windowless room painted
institutional green and gaze down on Scully's child. 

Mulder picked her up, his hand automatically checking for a cyst at the
back of her neck. There was nothing there, only warmth and the smell of a
little girl put to bed in clean pajamas.   

The second bed in the room was empty. Mulder didn't have time to stop and
wonder for whom it might have been intended. 

He shrugged out of his now-empty backpack and put it on from the front,
threading the girl's arms and legs through the straps and pulling them
tight, so that it became a kind of harness. The child must be drugged, he
thought, to sleep through his tugging and nudging, but in a way he was
grateful. Awake, she might have been too frightened to deal with. 

The easiness of it all suddenly hit him. Scully's theory about the handle
of the mug was beginning to make a kind of inexorable, horrible sense. 

Fuck it, Mulder thought. Whether he had been led to rescue the child, or
was being led into a trap, he had her now, and no one was taking her again. 

He wrapped one arm around the girl, gripped his weapon in the other hand
and stepped out into the corridor again.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


2/14


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 10TH, 8:22 PM


Jane was staring at a picture of Denise that was not Denise. This girl had
shoulder-length hair and wore a dress and stood in front of a birthday cake
at a party Jane knew damn well Denise had never had. 

"What are you doing?" said a quiet voice above her head. Jane looked up to
see Scully standing above her, clutching a towel around herself. She'd been
so engrossed in the photo she hadn't heard the water go off, hadn't heard
the other woman come in. 

Jane brazenly held the photo up to Scully's pale face. "You showed me this
picture before. Whose daughter is this?"

Scully blinked twice before taking the photo back, bending to retrieve her
wallet from Jane's hand. 

"May I ask why you're going through my things?" she said coldly, carefully
replacing the photograph in its private pocket. 

"She was yours." 

Scully lifted out the bills and fanned through them quickly. "There's a
hundred dollars missing."

"I know," Jane said, unrepentant. "I took it."

Scully regarded her with glacial eyes. "May I ask why?"

"Because I don't know who you are, I don't know what's happening and I
can't go home and I haven't got a cent." A pause, then Jane added, "Look,
I'm scared, all right? If I live through this, I'll send you a check."

"If you need something, you only have to ask." Scully pulled another two
bills out of the wallet and tossed them in Jane's lap. "I'm not your prison
warden, and you're no longer a murder suspect. You asked me to take you out
of the hospital and you insisted on coming here. I don't care if you stay
or go, but if you stay don't ever touch my things again."

She picked up her bag, dropped the wallet in and retrieved her comb.
Trusting or stupid, Jane wondered, as Scully put the bag down exactly where
it had been beside her bed, and headed back into the bathroom. 

Jane picked up the money Scully had given her, staring at the bills. At
last, she fished the other two bills out of her pocket, smoothing the four
notes together. She glanced in the direction of the little hallway that led
to the bathroom, then at the door to the room. 

And then at Amy, asleep in her cradle of chairs.

Trusting or stupid, Jane asked herself again. She felt suddenly awful, like
a child that knows she's disappointed someone she loves. 

Carefully, she folded the bills in half and put them on Scully's side of
the night stand. She took off her dress, wrapping it tight around her hands. 

A low sob broke from her throat. She saw Denise behind her closed lids, her
baby with her sweet smile and bright blue eyes.

Jane pulled her hands out of the dress and flung it on the floor. She got
into bed and curled up in a ball, pulling the covers over her head.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, SAN DIEGO
MARCH 11TH, 3:04 AM


Mulder lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He'd memorized the shape of the
cracks hours ago, had summoned every image he could from the water stain
above the bed. 

His arms knew the shape of Scully now, and they missed her. 

He looked over at the other occupant of the room, the child sleeping
soundly on what he'd come to think of as Scully's side of the bed. He had
no idea what was supposed to happen next.

He'd been to Scully's room but she wasn't there, and once again her phone
was off. Mulder didn't know what to make of that, didn't even want to try.
The moment he did, his mind would be happy to supply him with all sorts of
unpalatable scenarios -- everything from Scully lying unconscious and
bleeding somewhere to Scully lying in Kresge's bed, legs wrapped around his
waist.

He closed his eyes and instead summoned up the image of Scully as he'd once
known her, round-faced and eager. Imagined her trying not to laugh as he
waved blurry UFO pictures under her nose; pretending to put a live cricket
in her mouth; eating ribs in the days when she still ate like a normal
person, light in her eyes and barbecue sauce in the corner of her mouth. 

He wondered if this was what she did on the nights when she did not know
where he was, could not be certain he was even still alive. If she too ran
through a series of beloved images, as if arranging them in a mental
scrapbook in case he never came back. 

He doubted it. Scully didn't hang on to memories the way he did. She was a
forward-moving person, one who tucked the past away and preferred not to
think about it. Not like he did anyway, mulling and brooding and playing
his mental videotapes over and over, as if this time he could freeze the
frame, rewind just a little, and change the moment when it all went wrong. 

He turned over, blindly groping for the phone. He didn't care how
embarrassing or childish it was any more. He had to know. 

It took five rings before the phone was picked up. 

"Kresge, what?" 

The man sounded pissed off, as if he knew who it was. Mulder ran a hand
through his hair, for one second contemplating hanging up. But then he
would have to go back to staring at the ceiling, wondering if she was safe
in Kresge's arms, finding himself almost hoping she was, because the other
possibilities were so infinitely worse.

"Um, it's Mulder," he finally managed to mutter. "I'm sorry to call at this
hour, but I need to talk to Scully if she's there."

Silence.

"Look, it's none of my business, and that's not why I called. Just put her
on for a second, and then I'll leave you alone."

"Mulder, she's not here."

Mulder had to swallow a couple of times before he could take that in. He
hadn't realized until now how tightly he'd been clinging to the hope that
the explanation for Scully's absence might be so obvious. 

"Well, have you heard from her?"

"No, I haven't. Didn't she tell you? I've been forbidden to talk to either
one of you."

"What do you mean, forbidden?"

"I got yanked. Seems word came down from above. Your above."

Mulder felt his patience beginning to wear thin. "What do you mean, my above?"

"Whoever you take your orders from. Some Assistant Director. They told me
to turn all my files over to the San Diego bureau."

Mulder sat up abruptly, his feet slamming on the floor. "Tell me you didn't."

"No, Scully got pissed off and took them with her."

"Thank god," Mulder breathed, forgetting the phone would pick that up. 

"Yeah, well don't thank god yet. Jane Hampton is missing from the hospital
and apparently the last person she was seen with was your partner."

"When was this?"

"About three this afternoon. And Mulder, I've got to say, the last time I
saw her, she looked like she was hanging on the frayed end of her rope." 

She had called. Scully had called, had wanted to tell him something,
something she was afraid to say over an unsecured line. Now she was out
there somewhere, in trouble, alone.

"Listen, Kresge. We need to talk."

"What are we doing right now? Playing basketball?"

"No. There's something I need to show you and I can't bring it over. Can
you come here?"

"Right now?"

"Yeah."

"Mulder, it's three o'clock in the morning. Can't it wait a couple of hours?"

"No, it can't. Listen to me -- Scully wouldn't just disappear. Something is
wrong, and I may know what it is. You'll understand when you get here."

There was a pause. "I'm on my way," Kresge answered finally, managing to
sound pissed off, tired, and worried all at once.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 3:22 AM


Hands pushing her down, hard, stuffing her mouth with foul bloodied cotton.
Pushing her into darkness, into a space too small, where the air too was
foul, where there was no air. She fought blindly with bound hands, seeing
nothing, hitting nothing, yet the space was too small, there was still no
air, still no--

Scully woke, choking, clawing at the blankets. 


Air. 

She threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her head down between
her knees, breathing into her cupped hands. You're hyperventilating, she
reassured herself. You're perfectly fine. There's plenty of air. 

She concentrated on her breath, big in, little out. Retain that carbon
dioxide. Restore the balance. Slowly, her heartbeat returned to something
more normal. Scully sat up, pulling at her shirt,  clinging like cellophane
to her damp skin. 

"You have some pretty wicked nightmares."

Scully started at the voice. 

"Sorry," Jane added. "Didn't mean to scare you."

She snapped on the light, and Scully flinched from the sudden brightness.
This was not going to do at all, she thought. She was supposed to be the
one in control. Not a trembling bundle of nerves, but a calming presence,
making this woman feel safe.  

She wiped a sleeve across her forehead, shivering as the cool night air
chilled her sweat-damp clothes, wishing she had something else to wear. 

"Take one of those t-shirts you bought for me," Jane offered, as if she
understood nightmares quite well. 

Scully shook her head. "I'm fine, thanks." She got up to check on Amy, who
had started to slip down between the two chairs. 

Not yours, she reminded herself again, lifting the child from her makeshift
cradle and laying her on the bed. Scully untangled Amy's blanket from her
arms and legs and tossed it on the floor, drawing the other covers up over
her. The child took that moment to wake, her gaze drifting over Scully's
face for a moment before she mumbled something indistinguishable and rolled
onto her stomach.

Scully slipped her hand under the pillow and retrieved her weapon, clipping
the holster to the front of her slacks. She snapped off the lamp, picked up
the discarded blanket and wrapped herself in the warm wool, curling into
one of the armchairs with the remote in hand. She turned the TV on,
flipping channels until she found Nick-at-Nite.

"You should sleep," Jane said, her voice soft in the darkness.

"I'm fine," Scully repeated. She turned the captions on and hit the mute
button, resigning herself to another night of reading reruns. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


"Jane's orphanage," Mulder said, unable to hide the slight note of triumph,
even now. "I found it." 

The place had been real. Looking at the child now, still sleepy, but waking
up, Mulder could finally begin to believe that she was real as well. 

Kresge was wiping one hand back and forth through his hair as if trying to
massage his brain into accepting what he saw. 

"You...what?" he finally asked. "You just walked in, picked her up and
walked out?"

"Pretty much." 

Kresge sat down on the bed. The girl's eyes were open, but they were dull
and unfocused. He put a hand on the child's stomach, shaking her slightly,
but she only blinked once in response.

"This isn't right, Mulder. I don't know a lot about kids but if I were four
years old and woke up in a strange place with strange people staring at me,
I'd be screaming my head off."

Mulder bent over, tickling an upturned palm. The child clasped his finger
lightly, but that was all. 

"You're right," he said. "We need Scully."

"Mulder, we need to get this kid to a hospital. You should have done it
immediately. She may have been drugged, even poisoned."

"Scully is a doctor. She'll know what to do."

"What, like she knew with the Sim kid last year?" 

Perversely, his words brought Mulder the faintest glimmer of hope. She had
never told Kresge that Emily was her child. Scully didn't trust him that
much. And if she didn't trust him that much, then maybe Mulder hadn't lost
her after all.

"She's not a magician," Kresge continued, impatient now. "She can't pull
poison out of someone by waving her hands. She can't cure the incurable.
And we don't even know where she is." 

Mulder hesitated. Kresge had a point. Until Mulder remembered Gibson
Praise, the boy who'd disappeared from a hospital bed with Scully not ten
feet away and was never seen again. 

"No," Mulder said firmly. "If it's what Emily Sim had, there's nothing a
hospital can do to help. And considering where I found her, it would be too
dangerous. These people are going to want her back."

"I will be with her every minute," Kresge answered firmly. He pulled back
the blankets and gathered the little girl into his arms. "You better stay
here, in case Scully calls. Try to get a hold of the parents."

Mulder stopped him. "This isn't your decision."

"The hell it's not. You involved me when you made me come over." 

"There are complications you don't understand." 

"Well, who's been keeping me in the dark?" Kresge hissed, holding his voice
down with an effort, mindful of the child in his arms. "Look, I'm willing
to lose my job to help this kid, but I'm not willing to stand around and
watch her die while we try to figure out what the hell is going on!"

Mulder looked at the room phone, willing it to ring. 

"All right," he said at last, bending over to take the girl from Kresge.
"But I'll go. You stay here."

Kresge nodded, standing up to wrap the blanket around the girl, surprising
Mulder by clasping his arm. At first, Mulder had the absurd thought that
they were about to wrestle for the child; then he realized what Kresge was
offering.

"We'll find her," Kresge said, and Mulder reached out with his free hand,
holding tight to that pact.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 5:23 AM


Mulder watched as the girl was taken into an emergency cubicle and settled.
She still seemed unnaturally docile, unresponsive. If it weren't for the
fact that her eyes were open and tracking in a vague way, Mulder would have
thought she was still asleep. 

A small, efficient ER technician bustled behind the curtain, hair in a
ponytail rapidly losing wisps. She looked like a black-haired version of a
much younger Scully and Mulder found an odd comfort in the resemblance.

"You the daddy?" the woman asked.

"Yes," he answered, another lie. He was full of them this morning, every
line on the admissions form full of creative interpretation. 

She set her tray of blood samples down, and looked up at Mulder. 

"What's her name?"

Mulder gave the name he'd filled in on her hospital forms: Amy Williams.

"Just this one little prick, Amy honey," the young woman crooned, smoothing
the hair back from the child's forehead. "That's all, and then it's over." 

She took the girl's wrist and swabbed the inside of her arm. Dull eyes came
to painful life as the nurse held up the needle. The child turned her head
and cast a mournful look at Mulder, actually focusing on him for the first
time.

"Wait." 

He knelt by the bed, wrapping his hand around the girl's chubby fist. For
the first time, he was glad that Scully wasn't here to see this, another
child tortured for the sake of evidence. She'd never forgiven herself for
what she'd put Emily through, trying to save her. 

Mulder put his hand over the top of the girl's head, one finger gently
rubbing her temple. She seemed to like that. Mulder leaned over and
whispered, "Just this, Amy, okay? Just this and it will all be over in a
minute."

He nodded at the nurse, and she deftly slid the needle into the child's arm.

The girl's mouth opened in a silent cry, her eyes once again going
lifeless. She was still now, deathly still, all but the fist inside
Mulder's palm, clenching rhythmically like a tiny, terrified heart. 

Shame, Mulder thought, was like falling down an endless hole. Each time he
thought he'd hit bottom, he rolled off the ledge and found there was
further to fall.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 6:02 AM


She was in a place where the sun was bright and she was walking with her
daughters. Five little girls, bouncing in the tall grass, calling to each
other, painting the air with high baby laughter. It was a dream, she knew,
even as she felt the sun on her face and the soft wind playing with her
hair. She wondered if she could manage never to wake up again. 

One of her daughters tugged on her hand. "I have to go."

Scully looked up and saw clouds gathering on the horizon, towering high
like thick, heavy smoke. She tried to gather her children together, but
they wouldn't listen, running off just as she tried to draw them close.
Then the storm was on her, the grass waving so violently she could no
longer see them. There was only the one that kept pulling at her hand. 

"Dana," the girl demanded. "I have to go." 

She opened her eyes and Emily was standing in front of her, legs tight
together. Scully gasped and sat up, her heart pounding so hard she could
feel it in the back of her head. 

Where was she? 

Motel. Not Emily. Amy Wallace.

"Dana, I have to go." 

"Go? Go where?" Scully swiped at her eyes with her free hand. They felt
like someone had sprayed the inside of her lids with powdered glass. 

"Now," Amy insisted, bobbing up and down. It took Scully a moment to
comprehend what she meant.

"Oh."

"Mommy always comes with me." Amy tugged on her hand again, her little face
twisting with need.

Scully unfolded herself from the chair, back and neck and legs screaming in
protest as she moved. She took the girl into the bathroom, helped her get
her underwear down and lifted her onto the toilet. Amy held on to her
shoulder for balance while she peed, her childish dignity at having a
stranger witness such private functions somehow disconcerting.

Finished, Scully tried to smile encouragingly into the little girl's eyes.
They were like her own on the best of days, a bright, clear blue. Like
Emily's, but the intelligence shining out of Amy's round face was very
different from Emily's shyness. 

"Do you know my mommy?" Amy asked.

"I've met her, yes," Scully answered. "She sent me to look for you." 

She led Amy over to the sink and turned the water on so she could wash her
hands. Amy rubbed her hands together under the flow, over and over as if
mesmerized by the motion. 

"Amy?" Scully knelt by the little girl, tapping her on the shoulder. She
went on washing her hands. 

"Amy, what's the matter? You can tell me, I'm your friend."

Amy shook her head.

Scully shut the water off and turned the girl to face her. "It's okay,
honey. I know you're scared and you want your mommy. But Flagstaff is a
long way from here and we have to drive. It won't be today, but you'll see
your mommy soon." 

She saw the tears start, and wiped them away with a gentle thumb. "You
don't have to be scared anymore, Amy. No one here is going to hurt you."

"What if they hurt my mommy?" Amy whispered. 

"Who?" Scully whispered back, hardly daring to breathe.

"The bad men." 

"Amy...was it the bad men who took you away? Do you remember anything that
happened?"

"They said I shouldn't talk to anybody. They said if I was a good girl they
wouldn't hurt my mommy. But I wasn't a good girl. I talked to you and then
I went away." 

Her small face twisted and she began to cry at last, the way a small child
should cry. 

"Baby, no, shh." Scully gave up any residual pretense at detachment and
gathered the girl in her arms, rocking her until the tears stopped. 

"You are a good girl," she said, kissing Amy's hot forehead. "A very good
girl. And a very brave girl. And I'm sure your mommy is all right."

She let Amy snuffle against her shoulder for a few more minutes before
helping her wash her face and blow her nose. 

God, please, she prayed, leading the girl out of the bathroom. Don't make
me a liar.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, SAN DIEGO
MARCH 11TH, 6:42 AM


It took three rings before Kresge was able to rouse himself to  associate
the noise with the telephone. At some point he'd finally stopped pacing
with impatience and laid down on Mulder's bed for a minute. He must have
fallen asleep. 

He rolled over, picked up the phone and mumbled a greeting.

"Who is this?" A female voice, sharp with distrust. Hers.

"Scully, it's me. Kresge." He sat up, awake now. "Jesus, you've got
everybody in a panic. Are you all right? Where are you?"

A pause, then, "Where's Mulder?"

"He had to go do something. He told me to wait here in case you called."

Another pause. 

"Scully, are you okay? Where are you?"

"No."

"No?"

"You're not supposed to be on this case. You're not supposed to be talking
to us. So what are you doing in Mulder's room?"

The rising note in her voice was unmistakable. He hadn't thought of this,
hadn't imagined his presence would be perceived as a threat. Jesus Christ,
what had happened to her? 

"You're tracing this, aren't you?"

"What? Dana, for god's sake it's me. John. I'm here to help."

Another pause. Oh Jesus, he thought, don't lose her, don't lose her now.

"Dana? I swear to god I'm not tracing this."

He could hear a slight change from the other side, a slowing down of
breath. He tried to keep his voice as level and soothing as possible.
"Listen, you don't want to talk to me, you don't have to. Just call Mulder.
He's worried about you. We both are." 

"I can't call him right now," she answered, her voice a tiny bit calmer, a
tiny bit more like herself. "But you can give him a message."

"What?"

"Tell him it's going like clockwork," she said, and hung up.  

Kresge put the phone down slowly. If there was an inside loop with these
two, he was definitely out of it. 

He dialed Mulder's cell, his hand nervously working back and forth in his
hair. "She called," he announced as soon as Mulder picked it up. 

"Thank god. Is she okay? Did she tell you where she was?"

"No." Kresge sighed. "She sounded strange, Mulder. I think it freaked her
out that I answered the phone."

"I thought she trusted you."

"Well, obviously she doesn't," Kresge replied, annoyed. "She said to give
you a message."

"What was it?"

"She said to tell you it was going like clockwork. That's all. Does that
mean something?"

No answer. "Mulder?"

"Fuck," Mulder whispered. "Fuck. Yeah, it means something."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


DENNY'S RESTAURANT, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 8:43 AM


Scully and Amy sat across from Jane, waiting for the waitress to come take
their order. 

"I want chocolate cake," Amy announced, in the kind of voice that would
have been appropriate for the Queen of Hearts ordering some poor soul's
decapitation. 

"How about something from the breakfast menu?" Scully suggested, ignoring
Amy's tone. "And if you're still hungry after that, you can have some cake." 

Jane looked at the girl over the top of her menu. "I bet you like scrambled
eggs."  

Amy shook her head, making a retching noise.

The end of Jane's nose slowly turned pink, the way Scully's always did when
she wanted to cry. Jane quickly buried her face in the menu again. 

The waitress came and took their order. Scully and Amy bargained on
pancakes, which Scully ordered, along with dry toast for herself. Jane
returned their menus without asking for anything, waving the waitress away. 

"Are you okay?" Scully asked quietly.

"What happens to me when we get to Arizona? What do I do for the rest of my
life?"

The question caught Scully unaware. In truth, she hadn't thought much
further than getting Amy home. There'd been no time to worry about the rest
of anyone's life. 

"We have friends who can arrange certain things. New identities. I can
contact them."

"So I just go some place I've never been and pretend to be someone else.
Forever."

"It's not the worst that could happen, is it? Under the circumstances? To
be honest, I almost envy you the chance."

"Excuse me?" Jane stared at her. "I've just lost everything I ever had --
family, house, money, name, photographs. No big deal. You want that chance?
Go on, take it."

Scully felt her face burning with shame. She looked and saw Amy staring at
her as well. Even a four-year-old had better sense.

"I apologize," Scully murmured, forcing herself to meet Jane's furious
eyes. "I phrased that very badly. I meant only that it would be better than--"

"I know what you meant." Jane reached for her napkin and blew her nose,
wiping it hard. "So call your partner," she said, wadding the napkin into a
damp grey ball. "Let's get on with it."  

Scully nodded, worry flickering at her stomach. It'll be okay, she told
herself, taking a deep breath. You'll talk to Mulder and everything will be
fine. 

Well, she silently added, glancing at the stolen child next to her, as fine
as it's ever going to be again. 

"I've left a message," she told Jane. "He'll call me at nine. Unless he's
still out looking for your orphanage."

Jane's brows twisted downward into an expression of disbelief. "What do you
mean by that?"

"He's looking for the place you grew up. He thinks Amy is being held there."

"Dana, he's not going to find that."

"Oh, you don't know Mulder. He'll find it. But we have Amy right here."

"No, Dana, you don't understand." Jane leaned over the table, lowering her
voice with a wary glance at the child. "He won't find it because it doesn't
exist. I made it up."

Now it was Scully's turn to stare, incredulous. "You lied to him?"

"I tell that story to everyone," Jane pleaded. "I don't remember anything
before I was eleven or twelve."

"But then--"

"They found me wandering around the zoo one day, after it closed. I didn't
know who I was or how I got there. I still don't." 

Scully sat back, stunned. 

"Why would you make up something that elaborate?"

"I had to tell the other kids something when I went to school, about where
I was from. So I made up the orphanage. And then...I don't know, you tell a
story over and over, it takes on a life of its own." 

"What else have you told us that was a lie?" Scully asked, letting her
voice go as hard and cold as she felt. 

"That's all. I swear." Jane shook her head, wiping away the tears that had
slipped her control. "I don't know how to convince you, but please believe
me when I say I never meant to send your partner off on a wild goose chase.
It's just what I say when people ask about my childhood. I've told that
story so often even I believe it by now."

"So you're a thief," Scully said. "And now you're a liar."

Another tear slid down Jane's cheek. "I thought he was asking just to ask,
to get me talking, or trip me up. How the hell was I supposed to know he'd
go off looking for it?"

Scully almost smiled at that. "You'd have to know Mulder." 

"Haven't you ever told a lie because the truth was nobody's business?" Jane
demanded. "Haven't you ever taken something you needed because somebody
else seemed to have enough of it to spare?"

"That seems very self-justifying. You could simply ask."

Jane's gaze fell on Amy, listening open-mouthed to the conversation. 

"Yeah, well, I guess your life has been a lot kinder than mine," Jane said,
her expression drawing in and closing up. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Clockwork. 

In their private code, that was an all systems alert, an elaborate scheme
for reaching each other. 

That meant Scully was in serious trouble.

Mulder jogged out of the hospital at 8:57, looking for a pay phone. By 9am
he was standing in front of a 7-11 a block from the hospital, dialing
Scully on his cell. 

Voicemail. 

He caught his breath. Too soon, too early. Wait two more minutes, she'll
turn it on. 

The litany failed to calm him. If he were sixty he'd be bucking for a heart
attack the way that poor overworked muscle was convulsing inside his chest.
The last time he'd felt so sickly nervous making a phone call he'd been
fifteen years old, trying to get his first date. 

He waited until his digital watch ticked over to 9:02, then hit speed dial
one again. 

One ring. A click. "Scully."

The sound of her voice took his breath away. There was nothing else in the
world at that moment, no other woman but this -- alive, healthy, safe.

"Scully," he breathed, not caring what she picked up from his breathless
pronunciation of her name. "Scully, it's me."

Her voice was tight, repeating the accepted formula. "How's it going?"

"Like clockwork." 

He heard her exhale sharply. What had she expected of him? That he'd ignore
her? Leave her out there alone, hanging over some unknown abyss?

"You ready?" Her voice was normal now, all business. She was okay.
Everything was going to be okay.

"Go." He had a pencil poised in his hand and scribbled down the number she
gave him. 

"760-857-4897," he repeated, writing the last four digits of the phone
number down backward. Double security. Langly's idea. Even if someone
managed to trap the cell signals that quickly, it was unlikely they'd
figure out Scully's actual position by tracing the number she'd given. 

He waited a moment after she hung up, then used the pay phone to dial the
number as he'd written it. She picked it up on the first ring.

"Scully, what the hell is going on? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Where the hell have you been?" she shot back. 

He caught himself about to completely lose his temper, grabbed the phone
cord and wrapped it tight around his fingers. They were both wound up. Now
was not the time to start an argument. 

"Scully," he said in a much more reasonable voice. "I've been trying to
call but your phone was off. Look, where are you? What's going on?"

He waited for her to say something. Maybe she was trying to get hold of her
own temper. 

"Why was Kresge in your room?" she returned, finally. Cold, but calmer. 

"I asked him to wait there. I had to be somewhere else and I was afraid to
miss your call."

"So where were you, Mulder?" Curiosity now. Oh, thank god. That was the
Scully he knew.

"Scully, I found it," he said, unable to keep a note of glee from his
voice. "What we were looking for."

"Mulder, that's impossible." 

Listening so intently, he was able to hear the fear rising beneath the
surface of her voice. 

"Scully, what's going on?" he asked. Kresge was right, she sounded spooked
in a way he'd never heard before. "Look, tell me where you are. I'll come
get you."

There was a pause. Mulder readied the pencil, though he didn't really need
it. 

"Tell me what you found." 

"Scully, this is dangerous. Don't play games. You gave the signal. Did you
mean it?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me where you are."

"First tell me what you've found."

"Scully..." They'd set this up so long ago -- had she forgotten what the
whole clockwork scenario was for? 

"I want to hear you say it." 

"You want me to say it over the phone?" That was against every protocol
they had set up, every precaution they were supposed to take.

"Yes." 

She's scared, he told himself. Do what she wants. "All right. I found Amy
Wallace in the orphanage, just like I thought." 

There was a long pause. 

"Mulder, why are you lying to me?" Her voice was liquid nitrogen, stopping
breath. His world became a frozen lake of fear, and she was there, in the
middle, the ice sagging beneath her feet, and he had to cross, he had to
get to her before she sank.

"Scully, I'm not lying."

"Yes, you are." She was disappearing now, about to hang up.

"Scully! Listen to me, wait!"

"I don't know who you are," she said, in that same arctic voice. "Maybe
you're not even Mulder."

"Scully, it's me. I swear! Ask me anything, just don't hang up."

"Then you're a liar," she spat, the slam of the phone like the last, fatal
crack of ice.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


3/14


DENNY'S, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 9:07 AM


Scully gripped the sides of the phone booth, tiny bursts of light
pinwheeling before her eyes, wondering how the cracking open of the world
could be so silent. 

In all the years she had known him, Mulder had never lied to her like this.
Lies of omission, yes, all the time. Withholding information, haring off
without leaving her a clue, sure, right from the start. But outright, bald
lies? No, not that she could remember. 

He would not turn against her. She could not believe that, not even with
her trust lying at her feet in shards. He must have been told to bring her
in any way he could. He must believe it was the best thing to do. 

Maybe they had arrested him. Maybe she hadn't even talked to Mulder, maybe
it was one of those...those *things* that could look and sound like anyone. 

No. 

She made herself breathe, made herself close that thought and put it away,
not to be looked again. If she started to think like that, she wouldn't be
able to function at all.

Scully fished in her pockets for change. Not enough. Not enough to call
Arizona. 

She drew out her cell and the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled
Jennifer's number. Take a chance, don't? Jennifer's phone was probably
bugged anyway. 

Scully dialed.

"Hello?"

"Is this Jennifer Wallace?" 

"Yes." A pause, then, "Who's calling, please?"

"This is Agent Scully from the FBI," she said. "Do you remember me?"

"Oh, my god. Yes. Did you find anything out about Amy?"

Scully drew in air. Careful. Careful. "Jennifer, I can't talk right now. I
just want to know -- have you been all right out there? Has anything
strange happened?"

"No, no everything's been fine. I mean, apart from Amy being missing."
Scully heard the woman's voice start to tremble. She was only getting
Jennifer scared. 

"Good," Scully said quickly. "Jennifer, listen, I think everything is going
to be fine, but I want you to be very careful today. I'm going to call you
back later tonight with more information. Until then, don't let anyone in
the house you don't know. Okay?"

"Okay." 

"I'll talk to you then," Scully said, and clicked off, looking at her
watch. Two minutes, twelve seconds. How quickly could a cell signal be
trapped?

She hurried back inside, where Jane was staring at the table and Amy was
eating maple syrup by sticking her finger in the plate and licking it clean. 

"We need to go," Scully said tightly. "Now."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


OUTSIDE SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 9:07 AM


Mulder stood in the phone booth, listening to the dial tone.

What the hell just happened?

He swallowed painfully, forcing himself back into the present. He could
replay the conversation later. Actually, he could replay it ad infinitum,
it probably wouldn't help. Lately Scully's emotional landscape was a
minefield -- all he could do was stand in the middle of it and wait for her
to guide him out. 

He dialed the number she'd given him again. 

Please, Scully. Please be there. 

He let the phone ring until a gruff male voice answered. He tried her cell,
left a brief message, but he already knew that would be pointless. It was a
motion he had to go through. All leads followed. All bases covered. 

It wasn't real until he dialed the Gunmen.

"Turn it off," he growled, to whoever picked it up.

"It's off, man. It's off." 

Langly. He didn't want to talk to Langly. He wanted, actually, to tell
Scully all about it but how was he supposed to do that? Hey Scully, listen,
I just talked to Scully and she wigged out and I'm starting to get more
than just a little scared. 

"Put Frohike on, will you?"

"He's leaning over my shoulder. You're on the speaker. What's up?"

"I don't know. Scully's gone..." He let the sentence hang in mid-air, not
knowing how to finish it. Gone away? Gone off? Gone mad, in the quiet way
that only Dana Scully could embrace madness? He would have wound up
screaming in restraints, but Scully would simply crack, polite as ever,
trying not to disturb those around her, trying not to demand anyone's
attention. 

"Mulder?" Byers' voice, calm and boyish. "Is there something going on that
we should know about?"

Mulder swallowed. "She's on the clock."

Stunned silence greeted him from the other side. 

"Scully called it?" Frohike squeaked.

"Yeah. I don't know why. She's been...she's been hard to get anything out
of for a while."

There was a silence on the other end. Mulder could just imagine the looks
they were exchanging. Yeah, fine, he thought. I treated her like shit and
you all saw it. Let's just get on with this, okay? He sighed, lowering his
head to his arm, resting on top of the phone. 

He heard one of them clear his throat, then a shuffling. Someone was
changing places with Langly.

"Hey, Mulder?" 

Frohike. Of course. The guy who wore a tux and brought flowers when Scully
was in the hospital unconscious was not ever going to let Mulder forget
what an asshole he'd been to her. 

"Listen. Yesterday morning, Scully gave us some more names to check out.
Background on your boys. You in a mood to hear this?"

"Yeah," Mulder answered, surprised and deeply grateful for the change of
topic. 

"Hampton and Sim and MacEntyre used to work together, Mulder. Back in the
mid-'80s. Probably their first real jobs." 

"Where?"

"You're not going to like this. They were clerks at the State Department.
They worked in the same division as your father."

Mulder was glad he had his head down for that one. "Does Scully know this?"

"She suspected something like that, but we never had a chance to confirm it
with her. But this she doesn't know, cause we just cracked the files last
night -- your human genome guy, Potts, out at UCSD. He's a consultant for
Roush, right? Guess who was his teaching assistant about ten years ago?"

"Paul Mason."

"Go to the head of the class. Now, guess who was Mason's replacement?
Short-lived replacement, because he seems to have had quite an argument
with Potts, who may actually be on the up-and-up. Potts accused him of
trading certain commodities on the medical black market. Nothing proven,
but it was enough to have him stripped of his fellowship and thrown out.
Any guesses what it was?"

"Fetal material."

"And again, we have a winner. Wanna try for the jackpot?"

"The replacement was John Wallace."

"Bingo."

They both fell silent for a moment. 

"Hey, Mulder?" 

"Yeah."

All the play had gone out of Frohike's voice. "There's something else. Some
of the tissue Wallace was accused of selling? It wasn't exactly fetal."

"What was it?"

"Human ova."

"Jesus Christ. Who was he selling it to?"

"We don't know yet. And before you make a spooky leap, there's one more
megafactoid you need to know. We were trying to hack into some of the stuff
Potts has stored on the university mainframe. Most of it was pretty easy,
your basic password protection. Guy's not clever, his password was genome.
But then we came across this stuff -- 8-bit encryption, Mulder, the kind of
code the military was using twenty, thirty years ago. You know Alan Turing?
The Enigma codes?"

Langly's voice came into the receiver. "Totally cool stuff, Mulder.
Cambridge mathematician, basically invented the computer to crack the
German military codes in World War Two. Pretty much saved our ass, or at
least they'd be speaking English as a second language in London right now.
And you know what His Majesty's government did a couple of years later--"

"Not now, Langly, shut up," said Byers, his voice tinny in the background. 

"And get out of my face," Frohike added. Mulder heard a scramble, as if the
three men were fighting for the mike. He looked up, across the busy street,
and sighed. It wasn't just Scully -- they were all going insane. Kids
soaked in gasoline, throwing lit matches into the air. 

We're going to get burned, Mulder thought. Burned, burned, just like El
Rico. We're never going to get to the bottom of this thing, it's too big,
it goes too far back. It's everywhere, like a cancer, carried from place to
place by the very structures that allow us to function as a society. Attack
it, and society dies. The world descends into anarchy, into chaos. 

Frohike was talking again. Mulder made himself focus. "--classified stuff.
Can't imagine what a guy like Potts is doing with it. Best we can get so
far is that it's some kind of tracking study. Looks like the original test
subjects were coming from Miramar."

"The naval air base down here?"

"Yeah. They might have been looking for pilots for the space program -- the
stuff comes in waves, each one at about the right time. Right after the
war, and again in the mid-'60s. It's a pretty wide range of tests --
everything from motor skills to intelligence to red blood cell counts."

It was like hearing the soft clatter of puzzle pieces falling onto the card
table he and Samantha had set up in his room. His room, because it was
bigger, because he was the one who could sit hunched over a puzzle for hours.

"Kids. They were tracking kids from the base. Listen to me, guys. You've
got to get that stuff cracked. You've got to find out what the purpose of
that study was."

"I don't get how that fits into this," Langly chimed in from a distance.
They must have shoved him to the other side of the desk -- he sounded like
a kid shouting down a tin can. "It was years before Wallace or Mason."

"Because Scully was one of those kids. She grew up at Miramar."

There was a long silence from the other side. It was the quiet Byers who
broke it. 

"We're on it." 

Mulder heard the scrape of a chair. It sounded like Byers was making good
on that statement right then and there.

Mulder swallowed again, his mouth so dry that even the sides of his throat
seemed glued together. He looked quickly at his watch. The girl would still
be with the neurologist. He didn't want to be away any longer than
absolutely necessary.

"Frohike, you still there?"

"I am."

"I need you to do something for me."

"Sure, Mulder, what?" 

"In my apartment, in my nightstand, there's a set of keys. They're for
Scully's apartment. I want you to go there and get her credit card numbers.
She keeps the bills in the bottom drawer of her desk. I want you to track
those cards, see if you can tell me where she is."

"Mulder, she's not going to like that."

"I know." He sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. Any way he looked at
it, he was going to have the wrath of Scully to face when he saw her again. 

God, he was looking forward to it. 

"Is Langly still standing there?" he asked. 

"Nah, he went off with Byers to crack that shit."

"Take me off the speaker."

He heard the click and the sudden quiet as the phone transferred.

"Okay, you're off," Frohike said in his ear. "What's up?"

"Something I don't want published. Not even to Byers. I'm not sure how much
of this is happening because Scully knows something that I don't, but when
I spoke to her today she wasn't--" 

He took a deep breath and made himself say it. "She wasn't herself. She
hasn't been herself since this started. Maybe before. I'm not sure, but
there may be a reason why she's behaving like this. A physical reason."

There was a long silence as Frohike took that in, replaced his euphemisms
with the real words. 

"Tell me what you want me to do," he said finally, more serious than Mulder
had ever heard him.

"Her oncologist is a Dr. Zuckerman. He's at Trinity Hospital. I need you--"

"No way, Mulder, I'm not doing that. The credit cards are bad enough but
that's Scully's private stuff."

"Frohike, I have to know."

The silence on the other end stretched to interminable proportions.
"Please," Mulder added, pressing the heel of his hand into his eye so hard
that fireworks appeared.

"All right, I'll try," Frohike said, at last. "Anything else?"

Mulder stood up straighter, drawing a clean breath. "Just -- if she calls,
don't try to talk her out of anything. Just give her whatever she needs,
try to get her someplace where she feels safe. Someplace I can find her.
And call me as soon as you have anything. I'll be on the clock."

"Jesus, Mulder. What have you guys gotten into out there?"

"I don't know, but it looks like the whole thing's about to come down on
our heads." He closed his eyes, thinking of the strange quality of Scully's
voice on the phone. "Maybe it already has."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


STATE HIGHWAY 95, NEAR LAKE HAVASU, ARIZONA
MARCH 11TH, 4:08 PM


Jane Hampton was driving through the desert, twisting the dial of the
radio, looking for a song to fit her mood. 

She came in halfway through 'Running on Empty' and had to smile. Perfect
soundtrack -- she'd been running her whole goddamn life. Running after
memories that slipped through her fingers like mercury. Running from truths
that rearranged themselves before her eyes, from people who suddenly shed
the mask of normality, revealing the monster beneath. 

Tom had been one of those people. She'd thought he would be the big strong
man she'd always wanted. A rock in the storm of her life, something to tie
a rope around so that she couldn't blow away. 

By the time they met, Jane had been blowing from place to place for almost
four years, the tethers having come loose when her parents died. The men
who took care of their will had given her the creeps, but they had also
given her a generous allowance and a guardian who made sure she finished
school.

From high school, she'd been advised that her parents' will stipulated she
would get an allowance as long as she was in college, and nothing if she
didn't go. Jane believed in her own capacity to take care of herself, and
anyway, these guardians were starting to look at her as if toting up her
value on the open market. 

The creeps turned into the jitters. She turned the money down and choose
freedom in poverty, working an endless series of crappy jobs and going
through an endless chain of equally poor-but-free boyfriends. Not as
romantic as it sounded, and by the time Tom came along, with his nice
apartment and his good job and his promise that everything was going to be
all right, Jane had been so grateful that she fell in love with him almost
at first sight.

Denise had been a year old when Jane found out she'd gone from one set of
guardians to another, that Tom had been put in her path and told to marry
her by the same men who had controlled her parents' money. Whatever they
had on Tom, she never knew. The two of them might have thrown their lot in
together, disappeared with their child, but he laughed when she suggested
it and she knew from that moment on that it had all been a lie. She'd been
trapped by her heart, not once, but twice. She would never leave without
her daughter, and if she took the child away she could never afford the
treatment Denise needed to keep her alive. 

Jane looked in the rearview mirror, at Amy asleep in the back seat,
haphazardly buckled in with Scully's jacket wrapped around her for a
blanket. Her mouth was open and she was snoring quietly, the way Denise had
when she slept on her back. 

Denise and not Denise. 

Jane reached behind her and touched the child's warm cheek. Amy slept on,
her steady rumble supplemented by Scully's harsher, uneven breathing. She'd
fallen asleep with her head against the window, frowning deeply, as if
concentrating hard on her dreams. 

"Whatever," Jane said to no one in particular, glancing out her window. The
sun was just beginning to go down and the sky had turned a rich, iridescent
blue. She'd need to wake Scully soon; her eyes were beginning to smart and
water from the dry air and the hours on the road.

Jane took the map from Scully's sleeping fingers, checked to see how far
they had to go. Scully had gotten all nervous after breakfast, worried
about staying on the direct route from San Diego in a car she'd rented
under her own name. They had chosen a less obvious course, picking up the
state highway out of Yuma and heading directly north. The slower road had
made the trip a few hours longer, but they would be coming in from the west
now instead of the south, and the chances were good that if anyone was
looking for them, it would be on a different road.

Twenty minutes later, they hit the I-40. Jane pulled into the first service
station she saw, cut the engine and reached over to shake Scully's shoulder.

"Hey, sleepyhead. Wake up."

"Go 'way Missy, lemme sleep, okay?" Scully mumbled. There was a moment when
it seemed she had fallen back asleep, then she shot bolt upright, reaching
for her gun.

"It's me, it's me," Jane said quickly, pulling back against the door.
Jesus, she thought, the woman was strung as tight as an overtuned piano.
Some people watched too many damn movies.

Scully looked around, took her hand off the gun.

"Don't do that. You scared me half to death," Jane said, trying to get the
pounding of her heart under control. 

It occurred to her that maybe Scully hadn't seen too many movies, maybe
she'd just seen too much. A frightening thought. Why anyone would choose a
life like that, Jane couldn't imagine. All she'd ever wanted was quiet. A
child and a husband and a little love. 

Well, she'd thought she had it, and it had turned out to be no more real
than a movie after all.

"I'm sorry," Scully said, with a little half smile that seemed to be less
about reassuring Jane than herself. She checked the back seat, where Amy
was still asleep, her mouth a slack circle pointed upward.

"Who's Missy?" Jane asked.

Scully smoothed her hands through her hair, pulling it back from her face.
"No one," she answered unevenly, unlocking her seat belt. "Do we need gas?
I'll pump."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 4:30 PM


Mulder was trying to get the little girl to eat some oatmeal. She was
looking at him, but without interest or comprehension until he tapped the
spoon gently against her lower lip. That signal she seemed to understand.
Her pouty little mouth opened, enough for Mulder to get the spoon in and
deposit the cereal in her mouth. The girl chewed briefly and swallowed, her
eyes drifting back over Mulder's shoulder to the television, where he'd
tuned in the Cartoon Network.

He tried another spoonful. Again the same thing, and again, as soon as she
had swallowed, her face went slack. Mulder turned the television off, but
the girl still went on staring in that direction. He wondered if she
expected it to come back on, if she even registered what it was. 

"Mulder?" 

He turned to see Kresge standing in the doorway, turning a manila envelope
over and over in his hands. 

"Did the doo-doo hit the proverbial fan?" Mulder asked. The man looked like
he'd been hit *with* the fan, and several other heavy objects. 

Kresge came in, leaning over to look at the little girl. "How is she?" he
asked. 

Mulder put the bowl of oatmeal down, and drew the blankets up over the
child's shoulders. He clicked the TV back on, so at least she was staring
at something. It made her face seem less vacant. Less unnerving. 

"No change. And I haven't been able to get a hold of her mother, which is
beginning to worry me as well."

Kresge nodded, looking down at the envelope in his hands. "Did you talk to
Scully?"

"We didn't really...connect," Mulder answered, fishing for a phrase that
would contain the truth while hiding the fact that Scully had freaked out
on him. "I've got friends of ours working on finding her. If she's left any
kind of trail, they will."

"You didn't speak to her at all?"

"I did, but it was very brief. She wasn't able to give me any information." 

Kresge's look grew even stranger. 

"There's something I have to show you, Mulder." He pulled a piece of paper
out of the envelope. "Apparently, a woman posing as an FBI agent walked out
of the San Diego County Children's Center yesterday with one of the kids.
They called me in because the director of the center dictated a composite
that bore a remarkable resemblance to someone I've been seen with at the
station."

He held out the drawing. 

Mulder didn't need to look, but he did anyway. Just for a moment, just to
bring Scully's face back before his eyes again. 

"I had to identify her, Mulder. There was no way out of it."

"He's a good artist," Mulder said, handing the drawing back. 

"I'm suspended, pending review. Probably out of a job, out of my pension. I
just threw away my whole career, Mulder. For what? Would you tell me that,
please? What was she trying to do?"

Mulder looked at the little girl in the bed. He felt like a whole dark
corner of his mind had suddenly been illuminated. 

Maybe they'd been handed this case for just this reason. To drive them
apart, to drive Scully insane, to make her do something that no one at the
Bureau could ever sanction. People had been laughing his theories off for
years, but Scully was too rational, too meticulous to simply dismiss. 

His report on El Rico was full of wild speculation, but hers relied on
proof, on the analysis of cellular damage to the bodies, proving that no
legal, hand-held weapon in the US arsenal was capable of that kind of
incineration. It was same way she had, over the years, documented the
implants, the tagging of civilians through genetic markers, the effect of
an unclassifiable virus on human physiology, scientifically validating
every piece of evidence they'd ever managed to hold on to, right down to
the presence of a chimerical organism in her own blood. 

They'd had the answers for years, but they were always too busy being
themselves to figure it out. Scully denying anything that upset her world
order, him screaming 'alien' every time she came across something strange.
And then he had turned, just as she began to believe, taken the DNA
evidence from Gibson Praise and thrown it all back in her face.

"Mulder." 

Kresge's hand on his shoulder brought him out of his fugue. "Mulder, has
she lost it, or what? Because I've got to say, the last time I saw her, she
looked like she was hanging on the frayed end of her rope." 

Someone else had been watching. Someone who had decided that Scully had
gotten far too close, was far too dangerous. This would be the ultimate
discrediting of all of her careful work -- ignore the message, the
messenger is insane.

His stomach turned as a name came into his mind, one he could not bear to
suspect.  

"No," Mulder answered, pushing those other thoughts aside for the moment.
He now understood why Scully's behavior had been so strange on the phone.
She might be walking the fine edge, but she had not gone over.  

"No," he repeated, his voice gaining strength along with his conviction.
"She was just trying to save her daughter."

"Her what?" 

"The girl Scully took is her biological daughter."

Kresge's mouth opened and slammed shut. He leaned over Mulder, his face
lined with suppressed fury. 

"Listen," he growled, "I just gave you everything that meant anything to
me. Now, once and for all, you are going to tell me what's going on here.
The whole story. You owe me that much."

"Once upon a time there was a bright young FBI agent named Dana Scully, who
was abducted and experimented upon. Three years later she discovered that
as a result of those experiments, a child had been created."

He looked up at Kresge, who was standing straighter now, his eyes searching
Mulder's face. "Emily Sim? Emily Sim was Scully's daughter?"

Mulder nodded. "Biologically speaking, yes."

"Then...?" Kresge looked at the girl lying beside Mulder, the one that was
unmistakably a copy of the other. 

"One year later," Mulder said, watching Kresge's face for signs of
disbelief, "while investigating a routine kidnapping, Agent Scully and her
partner discovered that Emily was actually one of a series."

"Jesus," Kresge breathed.

Mulder nodded again. "There are five, as far as we've been able to
determine. Two, possibly three, are dead of the same illness. The fourth is
the kidnap victim, Amy Wallace. The fifth, the one Scully has, is Caitlin
Jenkins."

"Mulder--" 

He stopped his recitation as Kresge bent over the girl. 

"Say it again."

"What?"

"Caitlin Jenkins."

The girl tilted her head to look at Kresge's face.

The two men stared at each other. 

"The fifth is Caitlin Jenkins," Mulder repeated, sucking in his breath as
the girl's head turned toward him. 



<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


4/14


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 5:15 PM


Mulder was looking at a set of MRIs, wishing that Scully was there to
explain them to him, even while he was grateful that she was not. The
hysterical screaming fit Caitlin had thrown when they put her in the
machine was one memory Scully could certainly live without. 

"How long do you think she has?" he asked the pediatrician. 

"I'm not sure. She could survive with limited brain function for quite some
time, much like a patient in an irreversible coma."

"And there's no treatment, no chance of reversing this?"

"Nerve cells don't regenerate." The pediatrician pointed to the MRI of the
girl's head, tracing the thick lines radiating out from the cerebellum and
down her spine. "This has been growing for quite some time. When did she
begin to show symptoms of brain impairment?"

"I couldn't really say." At the doctor's incredulous glare, Mulder
swallowed nervously, remembering he was supposed to be the child's father.
"I, uh, I haven't seen her for a long time. It's complicated."

"And her mother? Where is she?"

"As I said, it's complicated. She was being treated for autoimmune
hemolytic anemia, I know that."

"Yes, the CBC bears that out, but that's not entirely responsible for what
I'm seeing in this MRI. I'm not sure all the damage she's presenting is a
direct result of her immediate condition."

The doctor clipped another film to the light box and pointed to an area
directly above Caitlin's left ear. 

"See this? That's the most heavily affected area. I'm seeing massive tissue
death across the left hemisphere -- in both the parietal and temporal
lobes. That's consistent with the lowered response to stimuli on her right
side. It may also be why she apparently has no speech and no affect -- this
area governs the ability to learn and to express emotion. But if this is
the reason she has no speech, it's an older injury, probably incurred
during her infancy. She hasn't lost her language -- she never learned to
speak."

"So what caused it?"

The doctor shook her head. "A prior opportunistic infection, a gross
injury? With no medical records, I can't tell without further testing."

"And there's absolutely nothing you can do?"

The woman's face registered a brief moment of despair. "I'm not a
hematologist," she replied, "but as far as I know, there's no successful
treatment for the kind of anemia your daughter has. According to Amy's
blood workup she's already severely hypoxic -- her blood isn't carrying
enough oxygen. Eventually that will begin to kill the surrounding tissue,
and she'll be open to a host of secondary infections. My best
recommendation is that we transfer her to Children's Hospital immediately.
They'll be better able to care for her over there."

She pulled the films from their clips and slipped them back into their
cardboard sleeve. "It's none of my business, I suppose, but I might suggest
you try to put aside whatever differences you have with the child's mother--"

"I'll need those," Mulder said, pointing to the test results. 

The pediatrician looked at him. She too was a redhead, the kind that always
looked hot and bothered, her pink face clashing with the bright orange of
her hair. 

"I'm sorry, I can't release these to you. You're not her doctor."

"Her mother is a doctor. And I'm a federal officer." Mulder held up his
badge. "And I know of two other little girls who have died of a similar
illness." 

"I don't understand. Is this the result of some kind of toxic spill?"

"We don't know what caused it. The records have all disappeared. Just like
these will disappear if I leave here without them. The only thing I know
for sure is that this illness was deliberately engineered. If you give me
those, I may be able to keep them safe long enough to prove that. To get
the men who did this."

He saw the woman hesitate and pressed on. "These are doctors, carrying on
unlicensed experiments on children. Wouldn't you like to see them stopped?"

There was a moment of silence, then the doctor put the envelope down on her
desk and turned her back. 

"I have no idea how they got into your hands."

Mulder grabbed the envelope and took the stairs, two at a time, back to
pediatrics. 

"Any good news?" Kresge asked, as Mulder entered the room, breathless. 

He shook his head and sat down beside Caitlin, leaning over to rub his
fingers through her soft, reddish-blonde hair. Even with her lack of
expression, even through the layer of baby fat, he could still see Scully
in the shape of the child's eyes, in the tracing of her eyebrows, in the
full, soft lips.  

"You said her parents are dead?" Mulder asked. 

"In a car accident, according to the file Scully had."

He lifted the girl from the bed and held her against his chest. Such a tiny
life, not much more than heart and breath. Mulder closed his eyes, holding
the tenderness back with a practiced hand. 

"Fine," he said. "Then there's no one to miss her."

"Where are you going?" Kresge demanded, as Mulder stood, shifting the child
onto his shoulder. "Mulder, you can't just--"

"Yes, I can. I know where Scully went. I have to get to her and I'm not
leaving Caitlin for those bastards to find again." 

The two men stood, challenging each other. "All right," Kresge said at
last, picking up the MRIs. "Then you're going to need a ride."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, ROOM 62
MARCH 11TH, 7:18 PM


Mulder walked around the tiny room, touching Scully's things where she had
left them. A hairbrush in the bathroom, the white robe. A copy of the
latest AMA journal by the bed. Three black suits hanging in the closet
beside five white shirts of roughly the same style. The black sneakers he'd
bought for her lay below them, looking ridiculous sitting next to a pair of
fashionable heels. 

He picked up one of the sneakers and held it against his palm as he had in
the store, measuring so big.

Once, he remembered, Scully had a deep red suit that matched her hair. He
hadn't seen her wear it in years. Couldn't remember the last time he'd seen
her wearing anything but white and black, not even in their off-hours. But
then, they didn't spend much of their off time together. Never had. 

"Mulder?" He looked up to see Kresge standing in the doorway, holding
Caitlin balanced on his hip. 

"I'll be there in a minute," Mulder answered. 

He opened the suitcase on the bed and began to fold Scully's things
carefully into it. She wouldn't want her suits wrinkled when she got them
back. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


BEAVER STREET, FLAGSTAFF
MARCH 11TH, 10:07 PM 


Flagstaff was a strange place, Scully thought, half strip-malls and planned
communities, half the original settlement. The downtown part still looked
like a movie set of the old wild west, especially now, with the snow
obscuring most of the modern details. Parking meters, streetlights,
railroad tracks - all had disappeared beneath the white flakes falling
thickly from the dark grey sky. 

Snow in Arizona. Who'd have expected it?

Macy's European Coffee House appeared on her left, and Scully took it as a
sign to pull over.

"What's up?" Jane asked, sleepy from her turn dozing in the passenger seat.

"Something to eat." Scully glanced into the back seat where Amy was sitting
up as well, rubbing her eyes and yawning. "And I need to make a call."

It was freezing outside, but Macy's was warm, smelling of cinnamon and
ground coffee beans, of a normal life she hadn't been close to in years. It
was the kind of place she and Melissa had sometimes gone on lazy Sunday
afternoons, before the X-Files had taken over every waking moment. 

"I wanna brown muffin," Amy declared, standing on her toes to inspect the
treats set out behind the high glass counter. 

"Please," Jane said automatically.

"Wanna brown muffin please?"

Scully spotted a pay phone over by the toilets. She handed Jane some money
and asked for a large latte.

"You don't want anything to eat?" Jane asked. "I'm starved."

"Dana wants a brown muffin too," Amy said. She turned to smile at Scully,
who felt her throat tighten painfully. 

Not yours, Scully told herself for the fiftieth time. So different than the
days she'd spent gazing at Emily through glass walls, saying the word
'mine' over and over in her head, trying to squeeze some reality out of an
idea that always ended on an upward note, a question. Her attachment to the
girl had been clouded in shock, in disbelief. In brevity. Emily was gone
before words like 'mother' and 'daughter' had found time to take on this
strange, impossible new meaning. It was only later -- months later -- that
she'd begun to understand that she had lost someone, not something. Then
she had not known how to grieve. 

"A brown muffin," Scully agreed. She dared a brief finger along the child's
round cheek, tickling Amy's dimple as her own mother used to tickle hers. 

She left Jane to get their order and headed for the phone. This time, she'd
made sure to get change at the gas station. Everything in order. Every
action planned. 

Except snow in Flagstaff and winter temperatures in March. 

Scully put the money in and dialed, leaning against the wall when she was
done. Wrung out, that was how she felt, body and soul twisted and pulled
tight until there wasn't a drop of energy left. 

Almost there, she consoled herself. She would bring Amy back...and then? 

Her mind skittered away from that thought, as it skittered away from trying
to analyse what had happened with Mulder that morning. She couldn't begin
to think about either. She had to focus what energy she had left on the
task at hand.

Scully turned her back to the phone and looked over the other customers
while she listened to it ring. College students, radical activists, Indians
-- all mixed together, murmuring in soft voices, intent on their own
conversations. Nothing seemed to be out of place. No one seemed to be
watching either her or Jane, giving their order to a young woman with
blonde dreadlocks and the kind of septum ring that made her nose look like
it needed to be wiped. 

"Hello?"

Scully whirled back to face the wall, her attention abruptly shifting. She
bent her head over the phone and spoke softly, one finger in her free ear. 

"Jennifer, it's Agent Scully." 

"Yes. Hello." Scully heard the shaky note in the woman's voice. It might
only be the nerves of a woman whose phone is ringing late at night when her
child has been missing for nearly two weeks. It might. It might also be
that the Wallaces' phone was tapped and Jennifer knew it. 

"Did you find anything more about Amy?" Jennifer asked.

"I have."

"Oh, god. Is she okay?"

That sounded like the first spontaneous thing the woman had said. With all
the noise behind her it was hard for Scully to hear nuance, but Jennifer's
responses were like notes struck on an old piano -- something that
scratched at the back of the brain, a sense of the vibrations being just
slightly out of tune.  

"Yes, she is. Mrs. Wallace, could you come into town to meet me someplace?"
she asked. "I know it's late, but it's urgent."

A pause. "Is Amy with you?"

Someone was there. Not just listening, but telling her what to say.

"She's someplace safe. That's all I can say over the phone. Look, it's very
important that I talk to you. Tonight. Could you meet me in town?"

"I...there's too much snow out here," Jennifer answered, her voice back to
tremolo. "I can't get the car out."

"Are you alone out there?"

Again, the barest hesitation. "Yes."

She definitely was not alone. Now what?

"Mrs. Wallace, I want you to stay by the phone, okay? I'm going to call you
back in an hour or so."

"You'll call me in an hour," Jennifer repeated, in a flat tone that sent
chills up Scully's spine. 
 
"That's correct," Scully lied. "Just lock--" she started to say, but the
phone was already dead.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Kresge drove, while Mulder talked and talked and in the back seat, Caitlin
slept. 

Even sensing as he did that he was being spared some of the wilder details,
Kresge had a hard time making sense of the accusations tumbling from
Mulder's mouth. From secret research projects to Scully's abduction by a
rogue faction of the military or the government, to babies being created
for nefarious medical research -- it was science fiction. It was stuff
right out of the cyberpunk novels that Kresge was so fond of. 

"This thing exists," Mulder insisted. His face, illuminated by the green of
the dashboard light, was haggard with worry and the road and the need to
make Kresge believe him. "I've seen it. Fetuses in jars, waiting for
implantation -- at that nursing home, the one where you breathed the gas
that made you sick. Walls of vaults holding the ova of women who have all
died since. People who go missing, returned with a chip implanted just
under the skin of their neck, a chip that can't be removed without dire
consequences, that we know is somehow controlled by whoever put it there. A
chip that's been used to lure people out to central meeting places--"

"Why Scully?" Kresge interrupted. "Why would these people kidnap a federal
agent? Wouldn't that be stupidly dangerous?"

Mulder thumped the dashboard in frustration. "I don't know. I always
thought it was a warning. To me. To stop what I was doing. Now it looks
like they may have targeted her before we even met."

"And she has one of these chips?"

A muscle flashed in Mulder's jaw. "She did," he answered tightly.

Kresge absorbed that news with a sickening sense that he already knew what
he was about to hear. "And the dire consequences?"

Again, that muscle flashed. "Cancer," Mulder spat, and Kresge could clearly
hear the loathing behind the words, the reluctance to voice the unbearable.
"It's a tumor on the back wall of her sinus cavity, just below the
cerebellum. She went into remission when we were able to replace the chip."

"So she's okay now?"

Mulder paused, clearly wrestling with some heavy, unwelcome thought. "I'm
not sure," he finally admitted. "When she was with you that night...how did
she seem?"

Kresge threw the man a sidelong glance. "Are you asking as a federal agent
or as something else?"

"I'm asking as her friend," Mulder answered in a flat monotone. "As someone
who knows her very well and knows that isn't the kind of behavior she
normally engages in."

Kresge glanced again. The muscle in Mulder's jaw had ceased jumping and was
now permanently flexed. It was not the face of jealousy, but something
deeper, something far more upset. 

"Then I would say she seemed lonely," Kresge answered. "In need of a
certain kind of attention. Normal for a woman who works too hard and hasn't
been involved with anyone in a very long time. She didn't seem unbalanced,
if that's what you're really asking."

Silence. He glanced at Mulder. The jaw was still clenched.

"We didn't have sex," Kresge offered at last, taking pity on the man. "Does
that make you feel better?"

"That wasn't my question."

Kresge let out a long, controlled sigh. Jesus, it was all over him. Didn't
he realize? 

"Look, Mulder, she's a very intriguing woman," Kresge said. "And you spend
most of your time together, under a terrific amount of stress. You know
each other in a way no one else ever can. It's understandable that you
would--"

"Scully's private life is private," Mulder cut him off. "What she does on
her own time is her business."

"It's understandable that you would eventually form a very deep attachment
to each other," Kresge finished. "And that attachment might understandably
grow into something else."

No answer. 

Kresge sighed again. "Once upon a time," he said, "there was a cop who fell
in love with his partner."

Mulder glanced at him, his customary blank expression finally beginning to
falter. "And?"

"They had a short, wonderful time together. And then she was killed."

That silenced them both for several minutes. Kresge looked out the window,
at the desert illuminated by a high blue moon, the familiar pain washing
over him in bitter waves. 

"We had a bust that went bad. I saw her go down. Blew the fucker's head
off. Emptied my entire clip into his face." Kresge let out a harsh breath.
"It didn't help."

"No," Mulder answered. A moment of silence then he added, "But I would do
the same. I know that."

A flash of furious impatience made Kresge grip the wheel so hard he thought
it might break. "Mulder, you're wasting time. Just tell her."

"I have." 

Kresge glanced over. The mask had finally slipped from Mulder's face, and
Kresge wished he'd held his temper. 

Mulder caught the glance and shrugged, his features slowly growing
expressionless again. "She's a smart woman. Most of the time I don't even
make a very good friend."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FLAGSTAFF INN
MARCH 11TH, 10:55 PM


It was late when they finally found a motel, and everyone was edgy and
nervous. Amy fussed and fretted and wanted to go home NOW. Scully couldn't
blame her. She wanted to go home too. 

"You know how you can't drive on the road to your house when there's too
much snow?" Scully asked. 

Amy nodded, still pouting. 

"Well, we're going to have to wait until the snowplow comes, and that's
tomorrow morning. But if you go to sleep now, the morning will be here
before you know it."

"Then I want a story," Amy said. She burrowed under the covers, pulling
them up to her chin. "A big story. With horses and dinosaurs and stuff."

Scully looked hopefully towards the other woman. Jane was standing by the
window, peeking through a crack in the curtains, watching the parking lot.
"Maybe Jane will do the honors?"

"No." She didn't even turn her head. "Not tonight."

"I'm not very good at telling stories."

"She only wants to hear your voice," Jane answered, her tone sharpening. 

Scully tried to dig back into her own childhood, wondering if there was
anything left of innocence in herself to dig out. She managed a wan equine
rendition of the Three Little Pigs. Thankfully, Amy was so tired she fell
asleep before Scully had to figure out where the dinosaur was going to come
in. 

She tucked the covers around the girl's shoulders and began to make her own
preparations. "I'm going to try to get to Amy's mother," she told Jane's
stiff back.

"These people who tried to kill me, they could be waiting there. They could
be waiting for you."

Scully checked her clip before attaching the holster to the waist of her
slacks. "I'm aware of that. I'll be careful."

"And what happens to us," Jane asked harshly, "if something happens to you?"

A point. A point Scully had not thought about. 

She scribbled the Gunmen's number in the margin of a take-out menu sitting
by the phone. "If I don't come back by dawn, you call these people. They're
friends of mine. They'll help you." 

She held out the paper to Jane, who refused to turn around to take it.
Scully laid it on the empty bed, along with most of the money in her wallet.

"Jane," she said. "This is my job, to bring this child home."

"Is it your job to get yourself killed?"

"It's an occupational hazard. We accept that when we accept the badge." She
touched the woman's arm lightly for goodbye. "I have to try. There's
nothing else I can do."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


WALLACE RESIDENCE
MARCH 11TH, 11:52 PM


The house was sitting quiet in the middle of its snow-covered acres. The
clouds had cleared by the time Scully arrived, and the full moon's light
created a bleak, eerie beauty, all shining white earth and twisted black
trees. 

Before her, Scully could just make out the silhouettes of two high hills,
soft and rounded. Behind her the craggy-faced mountain, its white peak
aglow, held up the crisp, starry sky. 

Scully gave herself a moment to take it all in. Such a place of
contradictions. Male and female, harsh and soft. It would have been a
beautiful place to grow up.

The car could go no further than the first house along the dirt road, and
she'd left it there. Dirty and bug-smeared, in the dark it almost matched
the battered van already parked out front. She was on foot now, or rather,
on rapidly freezing feet, her shoes already soaked through from the
ankle-deep snow.

There was no black sedan to be seen, but there were tracks in the road,
lightly covered over. Whoever had come or gone had done it before the snow
stopped about an hour before. There was nothing else to indicate the house
might be watched, but they were here somewhere. She was sure of that now.
Maybe in human form, maybe only in a small bit of electronic gadgetry
hidden in the walls, but here.

She touched the cross at her throat, thinking not of her mother, but of
Mulder. He had worn this for her when she was gone, keeping the faith that
she would return. Mulder the godless, the atheist. Who did he pray to, when
prayer was needed? 

Reluctantly, she pushed the thought of him away. She had left a note inside
the laptop case. Hopefully, if she did not make it back to him, the note
would. Maybe it would matter, maybe not. She could do no more right now.

Scully took a deep breath and moved the hand from her cross to her weapon,
wrapping her fingers around that cold, familiar comfort. Either They had
been waiting for her all along, or she'd succeeded in outwitting them, just
this once. 

It was time to find out.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


INTERSTATE 8, YUMA, ARIZONA
MARCH 12TH, 12:04 AM


There was a terse, angry message from Skinner on Mulder's voicemail when
they stopped to refuel. A small worry compared to the fact that there was
nothing from Scully and her cell was still off. 

Mulder tossed his phone on the dashboard and leaned into the back seat,
putting a hand over Caitlin's forehead. No fever. She'd been out for almost
the entire trip, but he was beginning to think that this coma-like sleep
was normal for her.

He got out of the car, walking around it to calm himself. He would give
anything to jam his sneakers on and run right now. Straight into the
desert, until he passed out and woke in a hospital somewhere with Scully
leaning over his bed, telling him that he'd been drilling holes in his head
again and had hallucinated this entire case.

"The Bureau's been notified," he told Kresge, as the other man came back
with a cardboard tray containing two steaming microwaved burritos and the
largest coffees the Quikstop had to offer. 

Mulder took the driver's seat this time. "Our boss is threatening arrest
and dismissal if we don't identify our location and explain ourselves
immediately."

"Which I take it you're not planning to do?" Kresge climbed into the other
side, handing Mulder his share of the food. 

"To arrest us, they have to find us." Mulder set the coffee between his
legs and tore at the wrapper of the burrito. He'd give anything to have
Scully sitting beside him right now, rolling her eyes as he wolfed down
some pre-processed garbage, while she daintily opened a yogurt for her own
midnight snack. 

"You don't want to leave that coffee there," Kresge said, as Mulder started
the car. "Unless you're bucking to sue Quikstop for millions."

Mulder gave a short grimace, setting his coffee in the cardboard tray at
Kresge's feet. He put the car in gear and headed back out onto the highway.

"If they think that Scully has Caitlin," Mulder said, thinking out loud,
"there's no reason to presume she's left San Diego. And no reason to
presume that I'm not with her. If I talk to Skinner, I'm going to have to
lie to him. So I can't. Scully didn't go for the midnight call window and
I'm not talking to Skinner until I've talked to her. That won't be until at
least 6am."

"Would there be a reason she didn't turn her phone back on?"

"I'm hoping it means she's fast asleep in some safe bed somewhere." 

Kresge's face said he wasn't any more convinced of that than Mulder was. 

Mulder thumbed the wrapper back over his burrito, no longer in the mood for
it. Yes, there had been a misunderstanding, but the one thing Scully had
always given him was a second chance. 
 
He put the pedal down further, speeding into the night, hoping the wrath of
Scully would be the worst thing they ran into on the other end.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


John Wallace opened the door to her knock. 

Scully stepped back, momentarily startled, her hand automatically raising
her gun. 

"Agent Scully," he murmured. He didn't seem surprised to see her, so much
as reluctant. Certainly he was less surprised than she was at the moment.

She thought about it, then let her hand drop to her side. "I've come to see
Jennifer."

Wallace smiled, not a comforting sight.

"You've come too late. She's gone."

"Gone where?"

Wallace's smile just grew colder. 

"It's important that I speak with her," Scully tried, her thumb rubbing
lightly across the safety of her gun. She pulled it back as she spoke,
hoping to hide the quiet click with her voice. 

Wallace took a step forward, still staring down at her with that frigid
smile. It was more than moving forward a few inches. It was about
intimidation, about making her feel small and unprotected. She wondered how
often he'd used that kind of move on Jennifer. 

"Where's my kid, Agent Scully?"

Scully held herself straight, refusing to be cowed. This man was nothing
compared to some of the men she'd dealt with. Kersh in a mood was far more
intimidating, and that had been on a daily basis.

"I thought you went to San Diego to look for her," she replied, matching
him for coldness.

"So did you. And apparently you found her."

He moved so quickly she had no time to raise her gun before his own was
pressed calmly against her forehead.

"I could quite happily kill you, so don't even think about it. It's very
simple, Agent Scully. Tell me where Amy is, I let you live. Make the
slightest move, your body gets auctioned to the highest bidder. And believe
me, there are people who will bid on it."

So, she thought, surprised at her own calm, it doesn't even end with a
bang. The silencer on his Colt would take care of that. There would only be
her own whimper of surprise as the bullet entered her brain, plunging her
into that final darkness. 

It didn't sound half bad, actually. It would be quick. Painless.

"Forward," he ordered, and since she was good at obeying orders, especially
when facing the hollow end of a gun, she complied. He took three steps
backward into the house and kicked the door closed before backing her up
against it.

Scully met his stare with an even icier one of her own. "May I ask who
would be willing to purchase my dead body? Just out of curiosity, since it
can hardly matter."

"This is not a conversation, Agent Scully. Now where is my daughter?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea." 

"You don't lie very well."

"It's not a skill I've tried to develop."

The words came from her mouth in a tone that was almost offhand. She
blinked once, slowly, the way Mulder did when he was trying to throw a
witness off-balance, and saw something flicker in Wallace's eyes. He had
expected her to be stereotypically female -- fragile and easily frightened.
It had just occurred to him that perhaps she was not.

Speed was the key, before he could change mental gears. Speed and knowing
how to use her height -- or rather, her lack thereof -- to her advantage.
Scully simply unlocked her knees and dropped below the trajectory of the
shot, while her left arm flew up to knock Wallace's hand away from her
face. She heard the deadly *whffft* as his gun went off, but her right hand
was already rising. 

Stupid, she thought, stupid man. He'd been so sure of himself he hadn't
even disarmed her. 

She shoved her gun into his ribs but he'd caught up by then. She caught a
flash of movement on the periphery of her vision and pulled the trigger
just as the handle of his gun came smashing down on the top of her head.



<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>