<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 5/14 WALLACE RESIDENCE MARCH 12TH, 4:12 AM She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't see even the red of her own blood moving through the delicate skin over her eyes. She's not gone, she's not gone, she's not gone. -Mulder? She could feel him like a flame, like a fire, and she wanted to huddle by him. He would make her warm. "Dana, I know you can hear me. I know you want to sleep, but you have to wake up." -Missy...you're so...far It was green where she was, and quiet and the light was soft. She was floating in grey water. There was no pain, but she was so cold, and he was warm and so close. He would hold her if she could only reach out, if she could only move and he was going no Mulder no don't go don't go don't go don't-- She woke with her hand over her mouth, as if some part of her remembered that it would not help to cry out. "That's good, Dana. Come on now, try to stand up." She tried to move and her stomach heaved. She closed her eyes, willing it to settle back down. "No. You have to get up, get up, get up." Her ears were ringing now, Melissa's voice tolling in and out. Scully rolled over, made it to her knees. She licked her lips and tasted blood. Blood. There was blood. He had punched her right through the window and she was so surprised he was on her before she could react and he slammed her head into the table and it was dark and she woke up in the trunk of her car and she had to get up or he would take her again and They would put things in and tear things out and she would die this time if only she could if oh god anything but the white light and the pain and the babies inside that would never be hers that would never-- "Get up. People will come. Please, Dana, get up." -Can't. Scene of the crime, can't leave. "Yes, you can. You have to. You have to get back to Jane and Amy. You've left them alone." She clutched on to Melissa and stood, shaking with nausea. Her doctor's mind took in her chill, the cold sweat running down her face and beneath her arms. She reached up and touched the painful lump on her head, her testing fingers coming away covered with blood. Concussion. Shock. Danger. Scully looked down. She was leaning against the wall, alone, and John Wallace lay sprawled at her feet, blood soaking through his clothes. Don't hold the wall. Fingerprints. Bloody handprints. Too late. Head wounds bleed. She was covered in blood, leaving evidence everywhere she touched. Scully sank to her knees as the dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. There was blood in her eyes now, running down her face and into her mouth. She rode up the crest of another wave of nausea and knew that next time it was going to slam her into the ground. Hand, knee, hand, knee, Scully crawled painfully towards the bathroom. She needed water. A towel. Someplace to be sick. She got there, eventually. She saw that John Wallace had not been lying. Lying in a bath of her own blood, Jennifer was well and truly gone. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ROUTE 66, FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA MARCH 12TH, 7:05 AM It was morning when they finally reached Flagstaff, and both Kresge and Caitlin were snoring. Mulder pulled into the empty parking lot of a huge bookstore and stopped in front of a pay phone. Banks of snow greeted him, not compressed and dirty, as they would have been back in DC, but pristine, glittering softly in the early light. Now what? It was not safe to take the girl out to the Wallaces', certainly not safe to leave her behind. He nudged Kresge. "We're here." Kresge grunted as he woke, rubbing his hands hard over his face. "Sorry. I tried to stay awake." "I'm used to it," Mulder observed, with the pang in his stomach that was starting to become habitual whenever he thought of Scully. He checked his watch again -- 6:07, California time. Trust me, partner, please, he thought, hitting the speed dial. Just put the phone back on. Voicemail. "Damn it," Mulder snapped, one breath away from chucking the phone out the window. "What?" Kresge asked, looking around. "Her fucking phone is still off. Damn it." He threw his door open and stalked towards the pay phone, grabbing the receiver off the hook as he stuffed coins into the slot. His finger ached from the force he used to stab the buttons, but it was not enough pain to take away his fear. Kiss her or kill her when he saw her again, right now it was even money which he would choose. "It's Mulder," he said, as soon as the phone picked up. "Mulder," Frohike repeated, sluggish, as if drunk. "I know my name, Frohike. Any news?" Silence was not something he was used to hearing from the Gunmen's den. There was always something going on in the background -- the hum of computers, Langly droning on, Frohike fidgeting with whatever was in front of him. Silence was unnerving, coming from them. His anger evaporated, changing to panic. The heart-in-the-throat, Scully's disappeared, collapsed in a meeting, been shot in New York, ohgodjustletmegetthere kind of panic he never wanted to feel again. "Frohike? What the hell is going on?" "Mulder." "Spill it, Frohike," he hissed, sucking icy air between his clenched teeth, making them ache. "A woman named Jane Hampton called us, about an hour ago. She said Scully went out to the Wallaces' last night. She gave Jane our number to call if she didn't come back." Mulder rubbed away the pictures his mind wanted to form. "Where was Jane calling from?" "She wouldn't say. We tried tracing it back and she was using Scully's cell. She's supposed to call again at nine." Frohike drew a loud breath. "The good news is nothing's been called in on Scully's medical insurance, and no five-foot two-inch hundred pound Jane Does have turned up anywhere in Northern Arizona. I thought that might make you feel better." "Not really, Frohike, but thanks." "Mulder, I don't think you should go out there." "The hell I'm not." "Mulder, listen to me. Byers has been at those files all night. This is big shit you're into--" "Tell me later, Frohike. I gotta go find my partner." He hung up, silencing the man's final protest. Mulder got back into the car and sat for a moment, not knowing where to begin, warming his hands in his armpits. "Bad news?" "There's a string of motels down this road. I'm going to drive a little way out of town and drop you and Caitlin at one of them." Kresge blinked at him twice before replying. "No, you're not. I didn't come this far to play babysitter." "We don't have a choice. Someone's got to watch her." "Then take her to a hospital." "No." Mulder looked over the seat just as Caitlin's soft little mouth stretched in a sleepy yawn. She rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her oddly uncoordinated hands, then blinked at him. For a moment, he could swear she saw him and knew him, before she blinked again and her eyes lost their focus. "No," Mulder repeated. "No more hospitals. No more tests." He looked back out the windshield. He needed to start the car, needed to get on with this. Needed not to find what he was afraid to find out there. "Mulder." Kresge put a hand on his arm to get his attention. "What's going on?" "Scully went to the Wallace's last night. She didn't come back." Kresge's hand dropped away as he settled back into his seat to take that in. "All right," he said finally. "We're going to hope for the best. But just in case, you'd better let me be the one to go out there. You stay with Caitlin." "I can't do that." "Mulder, it could already be a crime scene. Your people could already be there. You can't get arrested. If you do, I'm helpless out here -- I have no gun, no badge, no contacts. And they'll have my car. How am I going to protect this kid with nothing?" "I have to find Scully." "And I have a better chance of doing that right now. You've been driving all night and you're way too close to this. You don't know what you'll be walking into out there. You're not fit." No, Mulder thought, I'm not fit. How can anyone ever be fit for something like this? <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> FLAGSTAFF INN MARCH 12TH, 7:10 AM Jane sat up, reaching out for something on the nightstand as Scully opened the door. "It's me," Scully whispered. Jane recognized her and relaxed, put the heavy glass ashtray down. Not much of a weapon, but something. Jane wouldn't go down without a fight, that was for sure. The dull grey light of a snowy morning was seeping through the curtains and Scully could see that Jane had Amy in bed with her. It looked as if they were both fully dressed. "Dana?" Jane was already getting out of bed, her voice shrill with long-repressed panic. "Are you okay? Where have you been? What happened?" "I'll tell you in a minute." She needed to clean up. Fast. Scully went into the bathroom and flicked on the light. Too bright too bright too bright. The room was upside down and the light was in her eyes, and her blood was frozen, her breath stopped. She heard the whir of the drill and she would not look down down, she would not, she would not, she did not want to see what they were doing to her. A familiar voice came to her ear, hoarse and gentle, melting the fear and letting her breathe again. "Dana? It's okay, I'm here." She forced her eyes open and Penny Northern was gathering her close, lifting her from the cold tile. -Oh god, what have they done to me, what have they done? "Dana!" A hand slapped her cheek, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to hurt. Scully blinked and Penny's face had become Melissa's. -Missy? What...what... "Dana, look at me! Who am I?" Scully looked. Not good. Oh god, this was not good. "Jane," she managed to whisper. "Jane Hampton." "Oh, thank god." The room swirled again as Jane's arms tightened around her. "You were babbling like I was someone else. Oh Jesus, Dana, what happened?" "Jane, listen." She tried to lick her lips, but there was no moisture in her mouth. "If I pass out, if you can't wake me...don't take me to the hospital yourself. Just leave me someplace and send an ambulance." "I'm not leaving you anywhere. Forget it." "No. Listen to me. You cannot get caught." She struggled to sit up, prepared for nausea, but the room remained gratifyingly steady, Jane's face clearly in focus. "Amy's parents are both dead. If something should happen to me, you are all she has left. Just take her, go hide somewhere and call that number I gave you." "Dana." "Promise." "Okay, I promise, now just tell me -- is all this blood yours?" Scully looked down to where Jane's hands were tugging at her clothing. Her jacket and shirt were marked with spatter and residue from the shot, and her slacks were soaked through at the knees where she must have knelt in the pool of blood. Her hands, when she lifted them, were also stained and spattered and powder-burnt. There would be blood on her holster, on her gun, inside the car. She was a forensic team's dream suspect, a walking crime scene. She'd left them a dozen points of irrefutable evidence on which to convict. "No, it's not all mine." Scully closed her eyes and leaned back against the tub. The pounding in her head was sapping her strength with each heartbeat and she was so cold, so goddamn cold. "I'm getting you a blanket," Jane said. "Don't move. I'll be right back." If she sat here like this, she would pass out. Scully struggled to her feet, leaning over the sink to look into the mirror. No wonder Jane looked so appalled. Her face was the color of ash, streaked with blood and dirt, her skin shining with a thin, oily veneer. She shivered at her own icy fingers as she parted her hair to reveal an inch-long gash at the top of her head, already swollen into a large, ugly lump. Right side. Frontal lobe. Scully held her hands out and touched her thumb to each of her fingers. Fine motor coordination intact, large motor functions working reasonably well. She felt no more clumsy than she did anytime she was tired beyond endurance, and surely her present level of disorientation was as much the result of two nights without sleep as the blow to her head. Her speech was not slurred and her vision, moments of hallucination aside, was normal. She leaned closer to the mirror, closing her eyes and opening them one at time, trying to get an indication of whether the pupils were dilating properly. As long as they were, the chances were good that Wallace hadn't cracked her skull, though she wouldn't be able to discount that possibility for several hours. "Dana, you're in shock," Jane scolded, coming back into the room. "Sit down, before you fall down again." "I know what I'm doing, I'm a doctor." "If you're a doctor, then you ought to know you're being an idiot." Jane threw a blanket around her shoulders. "You are so stubborn," she chided, turning Scully around to wrap her up like a child. "Why can't you let someone help?" Scully blinked hard, her throat suddenly too thick for words. She let Jane lower her back to the floor, huddling deep inside the blanket while the other woman ran the bath. "As soon as we've got you fixed up, we need to get out of here," she said, when Scully had managed to get undressed and into the hot water. "Yes." Jane was looking at the pile of ruined clothing. "What do we do with these? Burn them?" "No. I'm a federal agent, I can't destroy evidence. And I might need them to prove self-defense." "You killed someone." Jane sat heavily on the closed toilet, pale and suddenly frightened. Scully looked up and saw Jane staring at her body through the water. She followed the woman's gaze to her own abdomen, to the fresh scar that ran from just below her ribs almost to her navel. The exit wound was far uglier than the neat surgical scar, but she sat up anyway, hugging her knees to her chest. Nothing like waking up in one of your own spy thrillers, Scully thought. "Amy's stepfather," she said at last. "He killed her mother, then he tried to kill me. He must have been there when I called. If I hadn't-- I don't know." She leaned her head against the wall of the bath, suddenly nauseous again. The hot water was making the headache worse, and not warming her at all. Scully closed her eyes and clenched her teeth as Jane took her right hand and began rubbing it with soap. With all the time Scully had spent in hospitals in the last few years she should have grown accustomed to this, learned to endure the necessary indignity of being touched and bathed by strangers, but she never had. "I can do that," she started to say, but the truth was, she couldn't. She was only a few shades of grey from falling into darkness again. "Dana," Jane said slowly, moving the washcloth to the other hand, "when you didn't come back, I got scared. I called that number you gave me." "Oh, god." "I'm sorry. I thought--" Jane stopped herself with an audible swallow. "The man there, he sounded really upset when I told him where you went." "It's all right. I'll call them." She managed to open her eyes to see Jane's face as the other woman took the shower nozzle down to rinse the blood and dirt out of her hair. Her expression was concerned, a little frightened but no longer panicked. Jane Hampton could take care of herself. She was strong enough to take care of Amy too, if it came down to that. "Close your eyes," Jane said softly, and for the few brief moments it took for Jane to wash the blood from her face, Scully allowed herself the indulgence of tears. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> They didn't have to wait long at the entrance to the highway. Not much threat, picking up two women and a child. The threat, Jane thought, was far more likely to be toward them. "We'll ride in the back," Jane told the driver, an older Navajo man, as weather-beaten as his pickup. She'd been expecting a stetson and a silver concho hatband, but the man wore a blue t-shirt and a battered baseball cap of his own, the insignia so threadbare she couldn't read it. Only his long greying ponytail fit her idea of what an Indian should look like. "You don't want to do that," the man said. "It gets pretty cold with the wind and all. Not good for the little one." "It's okay," Scully reassured Jane. She climbed into the cab, leaving Jane no choice but to hand Amy up and follow. It had been Scully's idea to leave the car in Flagstaff and hitchhike out; she'd insisted they'd be safe enough accepting rides from the Navajo since the men in black were almost always white. Jane hadn't hitchhiked in a long time, but what she remembered from her rebel days was that assholes came in every color. She closed the door and got Amy settled on her lap, watching warily as the driver offered Scully a hand to shake. Jane was surprised at the lightness of the man's grip when it was her turn -- the thick, rough fingers looked like he would have a crusher. She sighed and tried to relax. Maybe a federal agent knew an honest man when she saw one. "Where to?" he asked, when the brief formalities were finished and they were back out on the highway. "How far east do you go?" Scully's voice was as worn-down as the truck, a sound which made Jane hold Amy even tighter. The woman was obviously in pain, moving more slowly than normal, holding her head as still as she could. "Oh, I'll stay on the 40 till Gallup," the man was answering, "then head back onto the rez. I live in Window Rock, but it's a mess over by Ganado. Pony here don't do so good on them dirt roads. Road from Gallup's paved, so I got a better chance." "Gallup sounds good," Scully agreed. "How far is that?" "Coupla hours." The man popped a cassette into a tape deck a good fifteen years younger than the rest of the truck and fiddled with the volume. 'Nights in White Satin' filled the cab with surprising clarity over the whirr and clank of the ancient heater. He gave the women a bright smile missing two bottom teeth and turned his attention back to the road, humming along as they went. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ARROW WHEEL MOTEL MARCH 11TH, 8:25 AM Waiting was not something Mulder did well. He was, however, an excellent observer and after the first near-miss he learned that a certain short, high whine meant that Caitlin needed the bathroom. He learned that she liked to pat her hands on the surface of the water when having a bath. A quick trip to the convenience store across the street taught him that she liked Gerber baby food, even strained carrots, which he had to hold at arm's length because he couldn't stand the smell; that her attention could be caught by movement, especially of something colorful; and though she couldn't hold a spoon, she could grip bigger things. The ears of a stuffed rabbit, a plastic ring, a banana -- though it was a bit hard on the banana, he conceded, wiping the mess off her fingers. He had learned one other thing by the time the phone rang, shattering the fragile quiet. Caitlin Jenkins remembered how to hug. Mulder picked up the phone, still holding the child with one arm, a prayer to no one whispered on his breath. "It's Kresge. I'm in. I'm gonna talk fast cause I think I need to get out of here soon, but I didn't find her. I'd be hopeful about that, considering what I'm looking at." Mulder tried to swallow, found he could not. "Which is?" "I'm standing in a crime scene, Mulder. I got a man and a woman, both dead. The woman's in the bath with her wrists slit. Dark skin, black hair. Looks Indian." "Shit. That's Jennifer Wallace." He sat down on the bed, shifting Caitlin to his lap. She put her head against his chest as if listening to his heart, beating hard and fast against her tiny ear. "What about the man?" "Shot just inside the front door. There's a lot of blood here, Mulder. Three, maybe four pints spilled. I think they got him in the heart, but I'm not turning him over to check. The angle of the shot looks extremely low, judging by the exit and the spatter on the walls. They might have been struggling for the murder weapon." "What does he look like?" "About six feet, one-eighty, trim. Long hair, dark brown, almost black. Can't tell about the face, he's lying on it." "Jesus Christ. Is he wearing a big silver bracelet?" "Yeah. You know who it is?" "I think it's the husband, but he's supposed to be back in San Diego. Anything else?" "Oh yeah. Lots of else. We got a bullet in the door, another in the wall, we got something dragged across the living room carpet. We got another small pool of blood about three feet from Wallace, and I'll bet you good money it isn't his. We got prints all over the place, on the walls, the furniture. All over the bathroom, where somebody got sick." Kresge sighed, and Mulder held the child closer, his free hand over her ear as if he could protect her from whatever the detective would say next. "I wish I didn't have to tell you this, Mulder, but we've got two clear palms on the bathroom floor. Small. About the size of Scully's hands." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> SHELL SERVICE STATION, I-40 MARCH 12TH, 9:00 AM Scully listened to the phone ring, the words from an old song going through her mind. Winslow, Arizona was not a nice place to be standing on the corner. It was, in fact, a damn ugly town. Her hand rose self-consciously to check her hat. She hated to have anything on her head, but she needed something to hide the wound. She was now the not-so-proud owner of a very touristy Northern Arizona University baseball cap. Maybe Mulder would like to have it, if she ever saw him again. Scully bit down hard on her bottom lip. Her chances of ever seeing Mulder again were getting exponentially smaller by the minute. Answer, damn it, she told the phone. How late could the Gunmen sleep? "Hello?" Scully felt an unexpected surge of warmth at the sound of Frohike's voice. She cut it off, harsh as her hand strangling the metal-encased phone cord. This was not the time to get sentimental. "Frohike. It's me." "Scully? Jesus!" She heard a scrabbling, as if the sound of her voice had actually made Frohike fall off his chair. "It's her! It's Scully!" he shouted, voice distorted by his hand haphazardly covering the mouthpiece. That was followed by more crashing, and a chorus of heavy breathing. Byers' voice came into the phone, vibrating with concern. "Agent Scully, are you okay? Where are you?" My god, she'd never thought she could engender such excitement in anyone, let alone the reticent Byers. "I'm fine," she assured him. "But you need to call me back. I don't have any more change." "Okay, what's the number?" "I don't know. There's nothing on the pay phone." "You couldn't find one with a number?" Langly now. Oh good. Glad to know she was entertaining them all. "I'm lucky to find one that works. Don't you have some hi-tech toy to trace your last caller?" "Yeah, yeah we do," Frohike assured her. "Just hang there, Scully, we'll be back in minute." "Don't go anywhere. Swear to it." Byers' normally quiet tenor was breaking like an adolescent. "I'll be right here." She hung up, hoping that Jane's earlier call was sufficient explanation for their panicked reaction. Surely it was too soon for them to have heard what happened at the Wallaces'. Scully pressed her fingers to her temples, but it didn't help alleviate the pain. At least the headache was keeping her awake. Drowsiness had moved in where adrenaline should have lived, making her feel thick and sluggish. She was past exhausted and into the place where sleeping forever was beginning to sound like a wonderful idea. This was how people slipped, made fatal mistakes. When they were so tired that death didn't sound half bad. She couldn't mess up with Jane and Amy's lives at stake. She had to stay alert. "Dana." Jane sounded low and controlled, but fear shimmered just below the surface. Their '70s-music-loving driver had finished paying for his gas and was getting back into his pickup, just as a Winslow cruiser was pulling in to the station. Scully looked at the cruiser, then back at the phone. "It could be a coincidence. It could be nothing." "It could," Jane agreed, already beginning to back toward the truck, pulling a confused Amy by the hand. Two cops got out of the cruiser and looked around. Jane swung Amy up into her arms. The child had a strange, glassy look to her eyes, as if she'd been here before, had felt fear radiating through the body of the adult that held her and knew to stay silent. For the first time it struck Scully that this morning, Amy had not once asked to go home. The phone began to ring. Behind Jane, one of the cops had reached through the window of the cruiser and was talking on his CB. The other, leaning against the car, seemed to be watching their every move. "Dana, get in the truck," Jane hissed, beginning to panic. The phone rang again. Scully reached behind her and picked it up. "The clock is broken. New Mexico." She hung up before they could say anything else. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 6/14 ARROW WHEEL MOTEL MARCH 12TH, 9:15 AM Mulder wondered how many years it took for people to rub off on one another. Feeding Caitlin her breakfast, making airplane noises to get her distracted attention, he felt like he was channeling Scully. Fox Mulder wouldn't know how to take care of this child. Finished, he wiped Caitlin's mouth and hands and went to throw the towel into the bathroom sink. An inarticulate cry from behind him made him turn around again. Caitlin was making the sound, a desolate wailing, reaching out across the table to where Mulder had been sitting, her chubby fists clenching on air. "Hey, there," he said. "I'm right here." She didn't react, didn't appear to hear his voice. It wasn't until Mulder came around the table and leaned over the chair he had been sitting in that she seemed to understand he hadn't disappeared. "Oh, hey, shh," he crooned, gathering the girl up. The wailing stopped immediately as she gave his neck her unique, stiff-armed hug, butting his cheek with the top of her head. Something inside Mulder broke open, spilled over. This was not a life that had grown coiled and safe inside her mother's body. Not a child made with love. And yet there was love in her. Like grass growing through a crack in the pavement, it still reached for the light to make itself known. "They're not going to hurt you again," he swore, fitting his hand around the back of the girl's head. "I'm not going to let them." Caitlin sighed into his neck, her face hot against his skin. This is what I learned from your mother, he silently told her, rubbing the wetness from his eyes. Isn't that funny? That I learned to love by loving her, when she finds it so hard to let herself love anyone? Caitlin, of course, didn't answer. His cell phone began to ring and Mulder laid the girl down on the bed, leaning over to kiss her forehead. It brought forth an opening of her mouth that was almost a smile. He let her hold onto his finger while he reached over to the nightstand. "It's me," Frohike said. "I've got news. Gimme a number." Mulder read him the number of the room phone, the last four digits backward, drumming the fingers of his free hand on the nightstand until it rang. "Okay," Frohike launched in. "She called. She *said* she was okay. She's in Winslow -- or she was. I think she's heading east on the I-40." "Thank god. What about the other thing I asked you to trace?" "No go from where I sit. Doc keeps those files the old-fashioned way." A pause, then, "She said the clock is broken, Mulder. What do you want me to do?" Mulder bowed his head, gently disengaging his finger from Caitlin's hand, replacing it with the stuffed rabbit. She seemed blissfully unaware of the difference. It was supposed to be him going underground, him running away from some terrible danger. Not Scully. Not alone, anyway. He heard Frohike sigh, a sound very unlike him. "Mulder, these people I'll be sending her to...once she's with them it's out of my hands. You won't be able to find her unless she contacts you herself." "Well, she's obviously not going to contact me," Mulder said, "or she'd have done it by now." "She may just be trying to keep you out of it." "Well, I'm in it no matter what she wants," Mulder snapped. "All right, fine, give me the address. I'll catch her there." "No way, Mulder, I can't do that. You know, there's more to what I do than just waiting around for you to call. You show up on these people's doorstep and I'm dogmeat out here. I'll lose every contact I have. And I'm no help to either one of you then." "Frohike, she's out there and she's hurt and I don't know what's going through her head. At least give me a chance. Let me talk to her before she disappears." Silence. He heard a distant cough and realized that Byers and Langly were there, hearing the entire conversation, but he didn't care. "Frohike," he pleaded. "Just tell me where you're sending the papers." "Albuquerque. And that's all I'm going to tell you." "Okay." Mulder drew a shaky breath, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He sat down on the bed beside Caitlin, who had rolled onto her stomach and was now curled up with three fingers in her mouth, her eyes unfocused again. "Tell me about the other stuff," he said, calming himself by rubbing Caitlin's back. "What have you got decoded so far?" Chairs scraping. Crisis averted, people sitting down. Business as usual now. "We had to stop digging around on the mainframe, so we don't have it all." "Why'd you stop?" A nervous, all around rattle. "We got into some stuff...Mulder, this thing, this study they were doing. It links back to another study started in 1940, just before we got involved in the war. It looks like that was suspended for the duration, then picked up again and continued into the early fifties. The one that Scully was part of is Phase Two. Which supposedly stopped in 1985." "Okay, so remember how at first we thought they were testing for pilots for the space program?" Langly picked it up. Sometimes Mulder wondered if Frohike sat there like a symphony conductor with a note sheet, directing their little trio of off-key instruments. "Well," Langly went on, "that's because the stuff these kids were being tested for is the same kind of criteria they were using for potential astronauts. Strength, agility, inner-ear equilibrium. Everything right down to how long they could hold their breath. Then you have your standard Stanford-Binet IQ, combined with imaginary spatial-perception and a whole bunch of problem solving questions. Then there's an ethical component. It goes into stuff like if you and your best friend wound up on opposite sides of a war could you kill him, which is a hell of a lot to throw at a little kid, I think." Mulder sighed. "Can we cut to the chase, guys?" Byers came on the line. "There's something else, Mulder. Another file, the one we almost got caught trying to hack. The aggregate scores from this study, combined with aggregate scores from a bunch of other studies done at different times in different places, all cross-indexed. It's huge. Close to 250,000 entries." "But what is it for?" Mulder stressed the last word, running out of patience. "And where does Scully fit in?" "We're working on that," Byers answered defensively. "Mulder, these tests are so extensive it's impossible to figure out exactly what they were hoping to find." "Yeah, the scoring is insane," Langly chimed in. "It looks like the freaking Olympics." "Here's a question I want to ask," Byers continued over him. "Scully's mother. Do you know her maiden name?" "O'Donnell. Margaret Ellen, I think." "Okay. And yours?" "My mother? What does my mother have to do with it?" "Humour me, Mulder." "Christine Elizabeth Holt." "Hang on." Mulder listened to the distorted sound of the keyboard clicking. "Nothing there," Frohike reported. "Trying O'Donnell." "Oh wow," Mulder heard Langly whine. "They had how many kids in that family?" "Nine," Mulder supplied. "Old-time Catholic." "Their poor mother," Frohike remarked. "Okay, Margaret Ellen O'Donnell is not a primary subject but three of her siblings are. They're part of the first segment." "Hey Frohike?" Mulder was hunched over now with his elbows on his knees, head hanging heavy on his neck. "Try my mother again, under Holtzmann. H-o-l-t-z, two n's." Another pause during which he barely dared breathe. Then, "Yeah, she's here, Mulder. What's up with that?" "Her father was Jewish, he changed the name in '41. Apparently he was a little paranoid about the Nazis attacking the US. I seem to have inherited the paranoia along with the nose." "Well, she must have been entered into the pre-war study, because she's listed as Holtzmann. What did your grandfather do, Mulder?" "I don't know. He died when she was about seventeen. She never talks about him. Frohike, what is all this?" "Weirdness. Mulder, your father and Scully's father? They're both in Phase One. And Scully and all her siblings are in Phase Two, but she's the only primary subject. Out of a possible aggregate of ten, she's listed as a nine-point-six." "Must have lost a point or two on height," Mulder tried, but nobody laughed. "And my family?" "Well, this is weird. You're a secondary subject. You're down as having a female sibling, primary subject, but there's no cross-reference to your sister's file and she's not listed at all. It looks like they purged her record." "And by the way," Langly added, "Scully beat you by a mile. You're only a nine-point-two." "What the hell does this all mean?" Mulder asked, getting up and beginning to pace. "I never took a series of tests like the ones Scully described." "But you took tests in school, didn't you? Think back, Mulder. You must have been tested for IQ. What else? What about Samantha -- she was the primary subject, not you." "Oh, god." "What?" "My parents had us in a private school. We both had go through an evaluation to get in -- I think we must have been four or five. I remember my mother was upset when Samantha had hers because the whole thing took twice as long as mine." "That could have been it," Langly agreed. "Also, Mulder, some of this coding we haven't been able to figure out looks a lot like some other stuff we got into a few years ago. You know what files I'm talking about?" "The funky poaching?" "No, Mulder. Before that. Remember our friend who liked Rodin?" Rodin? The sculptor? Mulder's mind abruptly made the leap: The Thinker. The guy who got killed after hacking the MJ files and giving them to Mulder on a DAT. The very thing that had sent Scully and himself running in the desert the first time. Mulder turned around as if seeking someplace to run now. "Are you telling me this is it? This is part of that?" "Maybe," Byers answered. "Mulder, I don't think this has stopped. I think Phase Three may be going on right now." Mulder sat down on the bed again, pulling Caitlin into his lap with his free arm. She looked up at him with her vacant smile and shook her rabbit. "Listen to me, guys. Scully's name was in those other files. I want you to try something. Someone got a pen?" He rattled off the names he could remember. Penny Northern. Edna O'Brien. Lottie Holloway, Diane Frazier, Marnette Lawson, Betsy Hagopian. There were five more in the group that had been taken with Scully, but his mind couldn't summon them. Mulder felt ashamed of that, ashamed of the fact that they had never gone back to talk to those women while they were alive, to find the truth of what they remembered. Not until Scully herself was dying and all but Penny were gone. We never tried to save them, he thought, rubbing his cheek against the top of Caitlin's head. We ignored them because we couldn't bear to hear what they had to say. And now I can't even remember who they were. "Mulder?" Frohike's voice had that note he was coming to dread. "They're all there. Primary subjects, nine-point-five and over. Every one." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> Scully needed to get off the road. The sun glaring off the hood of the truck was piercing her brain even with her eyes closed, every bump a small explosion. Jane had said nothing, but Scully felt the woman's eyes on her, and she knew that Jane was scared. There didn't seem to be much Scully could do about that. Any words of reassurance she might have spoken had long ago dissolved into the white noise inside her head. Their Navajo driver popped another cassette into the tape deck and the first strains of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' drilled their way into her skull. Scully tried not to think about how nice it would be to stop somewhere, to take a long bath and sleep until she was herself again. Farmington, where Albert Hosteen lived, was not too far north from where they were right now. Maybe she could stop there? No. Albert was an old man, let him live his life in peace. He was a known quantity to anyone who might be looking for her out here and it didn't seem fair to bring their nightmare to his doorstep again. Just keep heading east. It reminded her of a very strange case they'd had a few months ago, a man who'd needed to be driven west so his inner ear wouldn't burst. Scully had the opposite problem -- her head might explode if they didn't stop. What do we do when we run out of east? Do we turn around and head west again? Frohike would send the papers she needed to Albuquerque. She'd had no destination when they left Flagstaff, but that would do for now. She'd figure something out tomorrow, when the pain was gone and she could think again. She was drifting now, tears in the back of her throat. Freddie Mercury was wailing that he'd killed a man, thrown his life away. "Please," she managed to say. "Would you mind if we listened to something else?" The driver looked at her, then ejected the cassette, flipped it and popped it back in again. Elton John. Scully relaxed. "Dana?" Amy was leaning over to tug on Scully's shirt. Scully looked down and tried to find a smile for the girl. "You need to go?" Amy shook her head. She pointed out the window, to a thin road coming down to meet the highway from a beautiful stretch of red and gold desert. "That's where Gramma lives," she announced, her head turning, trying to follow the road as they passed it. She turned back to Scully, her lower lip starting to wobble a bit. "Can we go to Gramma's?" Amy whispered. "Maybe Mommy is there." Scully closed her eyes against the renewed pounding in her head, ashamed to have forgotten. Amy still had a family. A great-grandmother, a woman who needed to be told of her granddaughter's death. "Do you know how to get to your Gramma's?" Scully asked. Amy looked doubtful. "You go up and up and around the mountain and then down three tires." Scully patted the girl's leg. "We'll find it, okay?" she promised. Amy nodded and smiled, sitting back against Jane, who fixed Scully with a worried look and curled the child closer into her arms. "Excuse me. You said you were going to Window Rock?" Scully asked their driver, interrupting his rather good attempt to harmonize with 'Rocket Man.' "Could you drop us there, instead of Gallup?" "Ho," he nodded, immediately picking up the chorus again. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA MARCH 12TH, 11:52 AM Leonora Hattaway looked over the top of her reading glasses as Scully and Jane and Amy entered the trailer. "You're back. And on your feet this time." "Yes. We never got to meet properly." Scully summoned up her official smile, that mirthless curve of lips the best she could do right now. She reached into her pocket to draw out her badge and held it up for Leonora to see. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully. I'm with the FBI." "Ah." The woman's demeanor changed, her warmth instantly withdrawn. "Well, that explains the silly black suit you were wearing before." Scully closed the badge, feeling as if she'd just tripped over an invisible rock. "I was hoping you might be able to help me with a case I'm on." Leonora's thick eyebrow did a reasonable imitation of Scully's own this-better-be-good-Mulder one-sided lift. "I can't imagine that I know anything that would interest the FBI. My area is health and education. I don't involve myself in intertribal politics." "I'm only trying to locate someone. This little girl's great-grandmother. She lives somewhere on the reservation." Leonora took a look at Amy, nestled in Jane's arms. Noted the porcelain skin, the reddish blond hair, the round blue eyes. She shifted her attention back to the sheaf of papers strewn across her desk, picking up her pen again. "We don't keep track of white people up here. I'm sorry I couldn't help." "Actually, her family is Navajo." Leonora looked up over the top of her reading glasses. "This child is Dineh?" she asked, disbelief written all over her features. "Her adoptive mother is, and it's the mother's grandmother that we're looking for." Leonora's eyebrow went even higher. "Well, that's the first case I've ever heard of Indians adopting a white kid. Usually it's the other way around." She took off her glasses and folded them neatly into a beaded leather case, regarding Scully with eyes that were distinctly more friendly. "I'm not the tribal registry. That's over in the council building. Do you know the grandmother's Indian name?" "Bima," Amy supplied helpfully. Scully felt a moment of hope. "Is that a common name?" Leonora's mouth twisted in a half smile. "If you're old enough. It means grandmother." Scully's hope sank heavily into the pit of her stomach, just as a flow of incomprehensible syllables came out of Amy's mouth. They all turned to look at the little girl, who continued to babble earnestly in Leonora's direction. In Dineh, Scully realized. Amy was speaking Dineh. Leonora rose, an odd look on her face. She spoke to Amy in the same language. Amy nodded and answered. Leonora looked at the two women. "She says the bad men took her away," Leonora translated. "And she thinks maybe they took her mother away too, but maybe she went up to Grandma's like she does whenever the bad men come. What does that mean? Which bad men are she talking about?" The other two women exchanged glances. "I'll take her outside," Jane said. "I think that's better." Scully nodded. She watched Jane go, murmuring softly to Amy. When she turned back, Leonora was still standing. Her expression was still somewhat wary, but she came out from behind the desk and walked over to the couch. "Sit," Leonora said firmly. "I think you have a story to tell." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ROUTE 66, FLAGSTAFF MARCH 12TH, 12:22 PM Mulder and Kresge were walking toward a diner around the corner from the motel. The sun finally had some warmth to it and Mulder might have actually felt good were it not for the sweaty weight of Caitlin, half balanced on his shoulder, and the news he was receiving from Kresge. "The coroner figures the time of death was about eleven PM. The husband appears to have been shot about the same time, maybe a little later. Point blank to the upper abdomen. Whoever it was must have been wounded in that struggle and spent some time lying in the same place before they went to the bathroom to clean themselves up. They're not going to have a hard time getting an ID on the shooter." "What did you tell the local PD?" "I didn't. I called from a pay phone, then wandered back over half an hour later like a curious neighbor. I didn't ask a lot of questions. Mostly just stood around and listened." Mulder held his breath a moment. "What do you think?" he finally managed to ask. Kresge's answer was equally long in coming. "Yeah. I think it was her." Mulder swallowed painfully. "Friends of ours...they swear they talked to her this morning. They said she sounded fine." He hugged Caitlin a little tighter, taking a strange comfort in her empty presence. Fine, for Scully, could describe any number of physical states short of death. It really didn't help allay his worry. "She may not have been that badly hurt," Kresge agreed, sounding as if he didn't believe it much either. "And she is a doctor." "And the world's second lousiest patient after me," Mulder muttered, just loud enough to be heard. "I'll be honest with you, Mulder. I believe it was self-defense, but she's made it questionable by running. I don't know how long I can withhold my information from the locals before I'm in danger of obstruction. And your own people are all over this. I have a feeling they already know it's her." "Was there a big bald guy with glasses? About forty-five, built like a boxer, probably running the show?" "Yeah, there was. And Mulder, I've seen him before. In San Diego, the day they pulled me from the case. I saw him coming out of my chief's office." "Shit." Mulder stopped walking. The implications were impossible to assess. Sending Skinner could be merely damage control -- the FBI wouldn't want the media to get hold of this story, so of course they would want her direct superior out there to look into it. Skinner had not always been a solid ally, but he would never betray Scully. Not voluntarily. Mulder had to believe that. Then what was Skinner doing in San Diego, before they'd found either one of the girls? Mulder shivered in the warm sun, hoisting Caitlin further onto his shoulder. "Was there an older guy hanging around, chain-smoking cigarettes?" he asked. "Or a young one, good-looking, with a fake arm?" "No, not that I saw." "Well, that may be the first good news so far." "Mulder." Kresge put his hand on Mulder's arm to stop him before he could start walking again. "I have to tell you -- if I didn't know her, I would believe the scenario they're putting together. They're saying she killed the parents using the MO from the case so she can disappear with the kid." "Why would she do that?" "Because she thinks the girl is hers. They're saying she's snapped." Fury began to swirl inside Mulder's chest. Here it was, then. A truth sandwiched between two lies and this time they were going to shove that sandwich down Scully's throat and choke her with it. "Amy *is* her daughter," Mulder retorted, "But there's no way anyone at the Bureau should suspect she even thinks that." "How can you be so sure?" "Because we never told Skinner. We never filed a report. Even if someone went through her confidential personnel records and found she'd filed a petition to adopt a child, there's nothing on that form to indicate that Emily was biologically hers. And the lab guy who ran the tests did it as a personal favor. Nothing was ever officially logged. Someone is setting her up. Someone who knows exactly what we were looking into in San Diego." "Why would somebody want to take Scully down?" "To discredit her work. To get her fired, or killed, or land her in prison. To split us up for good, without launching a murder investigation. I think someone set a trap with that girl, and Scully fell right into it. And now the Bureau has legal cause to go after her with everything they've got." Caitlin began an odd mewling, struggling in Mulder's arms as if picking up his agitation. He switched her to his right side, making an effort to calm down, nuzzling his stubbled cheek against her head. "So what do we do?" Kresge asked. Mulder sighed, rubbing the girl's back in small circles. What do you say, Cait? he silently asked her. Do we trade ourselves for Scully and your sister? A life for a life, a heart for a heart? Caitlin remained stiff for a few moments, then slowly relaxed against him again, as if giving her assent. He said, "Scully took that girl because she knew if she tried to go through normal channels, Amy wouldn't be there by the time the authorization came through. She's risked everything to save that child. Maybe I can explain that to Skinner." "Okay," Kresge agreed, "but wait before you go clanking off to play the knight in shining armor. You go talk to Skinner right now, you may be the one walking into a trap, and Caitlin falls back into their hands." Kresge pulled out his cell phone and hit his own speed dial one. "Who are you calling?" "My partner. Scully had a rental car. Let's see if he can track it down while we're getting some food. Right now I'm so hungry my head's starting to spin." Mulder's arms tightened around the child he held. "Thank you," he said quietly, and began to walk again. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 7/14 WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA MARCH 12TH, 12:32 PM To an Easterner born in a small state, the Navajo reservation was huge. With 180,000 people spread over an area about the size of Virginia, Scully couldn't imagine how it could ever be considered crowded. "Math," Leonora explained, "is different for Dineh." Living space wasn't divided among people, but sheep. Twenty-five sheep made a bare living for a small family and twenty-five sheep needed a lot of land to graze. Ella Boy, Amy's great-grandmother, had -- according to Amy -- 'alottamany' sheep. And lived in an old hogan. And didn't speak English. "I figured she'd be on the Hopi Partition Lands." Leonora ran her finger up the road Amy had shown Scully, colored yellow on the reservation map. "The southern part of the rez is mostly prefab housing, but up there most of the people still live traditionally. And Amy speaks a dialect of Dineh that's only found on the HPL." Leonora pointed to a rectangle in the middle of the map. "This is the Hopi Reservation. The Hopi live up on the mesas, here around Oraibi. This big triangle inside the rectangle is all theirs. We live in the surrounding areas, or did, until the government decided to move us out. Which helped me find Ella Boy pretty quickly, because the Land Commission office has every inch of this area mapped out." "This here," she pointed now to a small settlement just below the bottom of the rectangle, "is Teesto. That's the nearest town. The Boy land is about twelve miles further out, behind Star Mountain, on a dirt road. You might make it after dark or early in the morning when the ground is still frozen, but right now we have snow melting all over the place. That means our roads turn into nice oily clay. And there's no one out there to help you if you get stuck -- Star Mountain area has pretty much been cleared out by relocation." She handed the map to Scully, who accepted it with a grimace. "You want my advice?" "Please," Scully answered, beating off a wave of both exhaustion and despair. "Go back to Winslow, rent a four-wheel drive, and start out on the 87 just before dawn tomorrow. You should make it up there before everything melts, but you'll have to wait until after dark to come back. I can draw you a vague map, but you'll need to stop at the chapter house in Teesto -- you can't miss it, it's a big building, like a town meeting hall. Ask around there and you should be able to find someone who can give you exact directions. My other advice is don't wear a suit and don't show your badge. The FBI doesn't have a good name in Indian Country no matter where you go, but out there you'll scare people to death. They'll think you're coming to impound their livestock. If you're just two women and a baby, you'll get a lot more help." Scully stole a glance at Amy, who had found two little wood-and-wool sheep to play with, and was sitting on the floor happily making them converse in Dineh. It was the first time she'd seen Amy break her solemnity and act like a normal little girl. "I don't think we can wait another day," Scully said. "Maybe we could rent a jeep in Gallup and go tonight." "No, you can't. First, it would take you four or five hours at night, even if you knew where you were going, which you don't," Leonora said, brusquely. "Second, it's set to snow again, and I doubt you've brought sleeping bags or winter clothing. You'll freeze to death if you get stuck or lost. And third, you can't just go knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night. We don't do things that way." Scully walked over to the couch and sat down, letting her head fall into her hands. The constant dull throb was making it hard to concentrate on anything but how good it would feel to be unconscious right now. She was at the end of her rope, for once willing to admit it. Even to Mulder, if he had only been there. God, what she wouldn't give to talk to him, to hear his voice again. Whatever his reason for lying, she could forgive him. She reached into her pocket, fingertips tracing the outline of her phone, but she already knew she wouldn't call. She'd gone too far to ask for Mulder's help. She was not going to drag him into this. "Dana." Jane's voice was soft, almost seductive. "You need to sleep. I need to sleep. I can't do five hours in the dark on bad roads tonight, and neither can you. It's too dangerous." "I know," Scully said, rubbing her thumbs against the pressure points just below her eyebrows. This time it was no help at all. It only made the pain spread deeper into her skull. Hands closing around her wrists made her lift her head. "You're not well," Leonora said, kneeling to look into her eyes. "I'm okay." Scully made herself smile, though her lips felt stiff. "You just keep meeting me on bad days." Leonora shook her head. She drew the baseball cap carefully off Scully's head, wincing as she uncovered the gash. "I thought this wasn't quite your style." Scully reached up and touched the lump at the top of her head. It was noticeably bigger than it had been earlier. "What happened?" "The bad men," came a small, angry voice. "The bad men hurt Dana." Scully looked around to see Amy starting to curl in on herself again, the wooden sheep clutched to her chest. Jane immediately went and picked Amy up, smoothing the child's back until she relaxed and put her arms around Jane's neck. "I'm all right," Scully said faintly. She had a terrible urge to put her arms around someone's neck too, and be carried off to bed. "There's been no sign of anything serious. It's just a bump and a headache." "Uh-huh," Leonora agreed sarcastically, taking the cap out of Scully's hands and gently replacing it. "You're still not going anywhere tonight." Scully glanced at Jane, who was watching her with real concern. "There's brave and then there's stupid," Leonora said, catching that exchange. "You're bordering on the second, and I'm not impressed." "Why are you doing this?" Scully asked. "You must realize it's dangerous." "My mother taught me if you see what needs doing, do it." Leonora slipped one hand around Scully's upper arm and drew her up, her grasp light, but unyielding. Her eyes spoke inarguably of warm dark places, and hours of safe rest. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> HATTAWAY RESIDENCE MARCH 12TH, 2:17 PM Scully barely managed to stay awake on the short journey to Leonora's house on the outskirts of Window Rock. Leonora talked on anyway, explaining the land dispute to Jane, sitting quietly in the back seat with Amy. "We're from the HPL ourselves," Leonora was saying as she parked her car on a bed of coarse gravel. Scully opened her door and managed to pull herself out of the car, gazing up at the house. It was a BIA-built prefab rectangle, but it stood just below a pine-covered hill, hidden from the town, so that it seemed more isolated than it was. "I had a sister with rheumatoid arthritis," Leonora continued, coming around to Scully's side of the car. "So when the first wave of relocation came, back in the '70s, some suits knocked on our door and convinced my mother to take advantage and get a modern house with hot running water." She took Scully by the upper arm again, leading her slowly up a path made of boards set over the still-soft ground. "My mother didn't speak English very well, so she didn't realize she was signing away the whole family's land. We have some stubborn cousins still hanging on up there. It's a hard life, but it's how they want to live. I'm too spoiled for that." Leonora threw open the front door, which led right into the living room. She paused by a faded La-Z-Boy recliner to murmur something to the old woman lounging there, watching 'Jerry Springer' and flipping through a worn copy of Cosmo, her feet in stretched-out woolen socks comfortably crossed on the footrest. "Too much like white people, she'll tell you," Leonora added, patting the woman's shoulder. The woman responded in Dineh, calmly licking a finger to turn a page. Leonora laughed, but didn't translate. She indicated the long, overstuffed sofa in the living room. "Make yourselves comfortable, I'll be right back." The sofa faced a huge television in an old-fashioned console, the kind of thing Scully hadn't seen since she was a teenager. In fact, the whole house, what she could see of it through the living room arch, reminded her of her teenaged years, from the boxy layout to the oversized furniture to the extra-thin walls papered in a tiny fleur-de-lys pattern. Government housing was government housing, no matter for whom it was intended. Scully laid back against the sofa. Not having to hold her head up any longer helped alleviate the pain, but not by much. There was a great welcoming chasm opening below her feet, a merciful darkness she longed for, but she was afraid that if she fell into it now, she would never climb out. "Not yet," came a distant voice. Scully opened her eyes to see Leonora leaning over her. "Let me have a look at you, and then we can decide if it's safe for you to sleep." Scully cast a look at Jane, who returned it with a worried frown. Amy was sitting on the floor at Jane's feet, already mesmerized by the people arguing on the TV, watching with huge eyes and a half-open mouth. They would be all right for now. Scully allowed Leonora to guide her into one of the bedrooms, and sat obediently on the bed as ordered. She was surprised at the feeling of relief that flooded her body as Leonora removed the baseball cap. It had fit when Jane bought it for her. Could her entire scalp be that swollen? "How long ago did this happen?" Leonora asked, touching around the lump with the gentlest of fingers. "Sometime around midnight last night." Leonora felt Scully's forehead and frowned. "You've got a fever. And one hell of a headache, I bet." Her calloused hand felt wonderfully cool and Scully stifled the urge to lean into it. "Yes." "And you're worried there might be bleeding beneath the bone. Subdural." Scully tried to hide her surprise at Leonora's ease with the terminology. "I think I'm okay, really. I just need some rest." "Let's see about that." Leonora picked up a small flashlight. Scully's mouth filled with the taste of vague, unpleasant memories as the light hit her full in each eye. "I think you may be in luck." Leonora said, putting the flashlight down. "Your pupils are reacting fine. And you seem too coordinated, too lucid to have been hemorrhaging since last night. But you do have an infection starting to take hold in the wound itself. That's probably causing the worst of the headache." "You sound like a doctor." Scully smiled faintly. Leonora smiled back, patting Scully's folded hands. "No, but my mother had a good understanding of plants and how to heal with them. She taught me a lot." She pointed to the other side of the bed, to a bookshelf filled with medical texts, guides to herbs, a huge homeopathic materia medica. "That's the rest of my training. When my sons were little I ran for the books and dosed them with something vile every time they coughed. Now that they're grown, they'd have to be dying to admit they're sick. To me anyway." She had been moving about as she spoke, making a pallet of folded blankets on the floor. Now she came to stand over Scully, her face soft with compassion. "This is going to hurt like hell. I can give you some whisky to take the edge off, but it would probably be better if you could get through it sober." "You're going to open the wound and clean it, yes?" "Yes, but I'll use a sage brew instead of alcohol. It's a natural disinfectant. Works better and hurts a lot less." Scully drew in a shaky breath and nodded. "I can get through it." Leonora patted her arm. "I'll get Jane to come hold your head. You'll need to stay very still." "Please, no." The thought of anyone else witnessing this was more frightening than the procedure itself. "I can lie still." Leonora regarded her for a long moment. "You all think we're so stoic. Indians don't have a problem asking people for help." "I'm not an Indian," Scully answered softly. She laid down on the pallet Leonora had made, folded her hands against her waist and set herself to endure what she knew was coming next. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> She was lying on her back, the lights bright in her eyes, and they were taking something out, they were inside her mind-- "Dana? Hey, Dana, are you with me?" Scully opened her eyes to find Leonora's dark face blocking the light. "You were starting to move around. Are you sure you don't want Jane here?" "I'm fine," Scully breathed. "I'm fine. I was just drifting away somewhere." "Try to keep your eyes open, then. Keep looking at me." Leonora directed the jointed lamp she was using for extra light away from Scully's eyes. "Better? Good. Look at me and listen to my voice. Okay?" "Okay." "So, long ago the people were camping." She gave Scully an encouraging smile and a quick pat on the cheek. Scully heard the sound of scissors snipping, her hair being cut away from the wound. "That's Indian for once upon a time. Long ago, First Man and First Woman came to Giant Spruce Mountain to hide from the alien monsters who had come from the sky and destroyed all their people." Scully's sharp intake of breath had less to do with the pain of Leonora probing at the infected area than the memory invoked by words she'd just spoken. That day on the rocks seemed so far away now. Another Mulder, another Scully. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, and Leonora wiped them away with a pad of soft gauze. Scully tried to concentrate on the soft sound of Leonora's voice as it wove the story of Changing Woman and White Shell Woman, of Sun and Water and the birth of the two children who were meant to save the world. She was almost drifting away again when Leonora did something that sent comet-tails streaking across Scully's vision. She opened her mouth to scream, but managed to remain silent. "So, Monster Slayer and Child of Water knew that they were born to slay the alien monsters, so that First Man and First Woman could have children and they could all live safely between the four sacred mountains." Leonora words came more slowly as she worked, the rhythmic, emphatic quality of her voice making a rope for Scully to hold on to as she dangled over the abyss of unconsciousness. "Now the alien monsters knew that Monster Slayer and Child of Water had been born to kill them. So the monsters came and tried to kill the children while they were still young and not very strong. And the children ran away, so the monsters would come after them and their mothers and First Man and First Woman wouldn't be hurt. But they ran along the path of the rainbow, which was forbidden to all but the holy people. And so they were in great trouble." The fire beneath Scully's scalp was slowly being quenched by the warm, pungent liquid Leonora was pouring through her hair. "This is the sage," Leonora interrupted herself to explain. "It will also help protect you from bad dreams, but you probably don't believe that." "Anyway, in time, the children found Spider Woman and they told their story and she believed them. She told them they would have to go to Sun, to the father of Monster Slayer, to learn the skills they needed to defeat the monsters, but the way was very dangerous and they were young and not very strong. So she gave them a hoop to hold out in front of them, to protect themselves on the journey. So it was many years later when Monster Slayer finally found his father, and they were grown men by then, and all their adventures to reach the Sun had made them ready." Leonora lifted Scully's head and removed the low tin bowl that had caught the liquid. She wrapped Scully's wet hair in a towel, leaving the injured area clear. "And so Monster Slayer passed his father's tests, which is another very long story. And then Sun gave Monster Slayer his own special weapons, and Child of Water was given his own special weapons and they were taught the way to defeat the monsters." Scully shuddered slightly as she watched Leonora thread a suture needle. She had put stitches into people herself, but her patients tended to be beyond feeling. She could only dread having it done to her, awake. "So when Monster Slayer and Child of Water had learned all they needed to know, they went back to the land of First Man and First Woman and were able to slay the monsters. Except the ones that Changing Woman told them to leave. Necessary evils you might call them -- and I'm going to put the stitches in now so please hold very still." Scully spread her hands wide on the carpet and made herself breathe to counts of four. "So the first monster that was allowed to live was Poverty, because without Poverty no one would think of anything new to improve our lives and so the people's minds would not grow. And Hunger was the second because without Hunger no one would learn to raise and share food, and the third was Cold because without Cold the Sun would scorch the earth, and -- just one more -- without Old Age there would be no need for children. And First Man and First Woman danced in celebration and soon there were children among them, and more children and more, and these are the Dineh people." Leonora put her hands firmly on Scully's cheeks and leaned over to smile at her, upside down. "And there. I'm done. You did well." "And Monster Slayer and Child of Water?" Scully asked weakly. "What happened to them once the alien monsters were gone?" "They did what we all should do. Find someone to love, and build a hogan, and care for the earth and the sheep and the elderlies and the children." She laid Scully's head down and wiped the last tears from her face. "Sleep now," Leonora finished, getting up and covering Scully with a soft woven blanket. She began to move around the room, clearing away her things, singing softly as she worked. Scully let go of the rope, and found herself not tumbling down into darkness, but floating someplace warm and safe, rocked gently in the cadence of a strange melody, in a soft breeze of burning sage. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ARROW WHEEL MOTEL MARCH 12TH, 6:04 PM Mulder had learned one other thing during a long, interminable day of waiting, a thing he found very surprising. Given a set of six large brightly-colored crayons and a pad, Caitlin could draw. He only had to remember to stop pacing now and again to change the paper or she would continue to draw right over the earlier images. Her drawings were no different than one might expect from a child of four -- shapes only vaguely discernible as houses, cars, people. What was remarkable was that she was able to convey anything at all. Mulder spread the pages out on the floor, walking around and over and through them. They were Caitlin's words, he realized, a story she wanted to tell him, but she was as hampered by her four-year-old fingers as by the effects of her illness. It was as if he had to explain his life to a Russian, using only the thirty or so words he knew of that language. One of them, he thought, looking at a balloon-headed figure that kept appearing over and over again, might be alien. He imagined Scully standing there, arms folded beneath her breasts, obstinate as ever, telling him that he was just seeing what he wanted to see. Was this going to be the rest of his life, having arguments with Scully in his head? By the time Kresge came back, Mulder was once again seated at the table, the girl perched on his knee. Caitlin was still drawing pictures while he stared off into space, pen poised above a piece of paper half covered with his scribbled notes. Another dozen or so pages sat beneath his elbow. "That looks homey," Kresge observed, closing the door behind him and fitting the chain into the lock. Mulder had to blink several times before he could shift his focus onto the man standing in front of him. "What's up?" the detective asked, coming closer to look at Caitlin's work. "Picasso is creating masterpieces," Mulder answered. He slid the paper out from under Caitlin's hands and replaced it with a blank page from his pad. Caitlin stared down at it for a moment, as if envisioning the great art she would make, then proceeded to put the worn tip of her red crayon to the page and draw an uneven circle. Mulder's eyes felt about as wobbly as he looked around and realized he'd been sitting in the same place for hours. The street outside the window was already growing dark. A whole day wasted. He looked down at Caitlin again, ruffling his hand through her hair. "Pretty amazing, huh?" "It is," Kresge nodded. He glanced at the floor, littered with dozens of similar pages, and back to the pile of Mulder's notes. "What have you got?" "I've been trying to profile John Wallace." Mulder tossed his pen down and rubbed his free hand over his face, up and down as if trying to get the circulation going again. "Is there a point, now that he's dead?" "Yeah. First, we haven't begun to figure out the answer to all this. How Amy got to the Children's Center. How Caitlin got to the orphanage where I found her. Who's behind this whole thing, how Wallace fits into it. Second, it's keeping me sane." Kresge nodded. That he obviously understood. He leaned over and helped himself to a swig of water from the bottle sitting open on the table. "Well, I have good and bad news here. We found the car. That was easy. Scully apparently phoned the rental company and told them where to pick it up." Good old Scully, ever the law-abiding citizen, even when she was breaking the law. "Is that the good or the bad news?" Mulder asked. "I guess it's the good. The bad is, I took that composite drawing to every used car lot and rental agency within five miles of where she left it. No one's seen her." "My people haven't had any luck either," Mulder said. "Nothing on her credit cards, no ATM withdrawals. She's too clever to leave a trail, she knows exactly where we'd look." "Well, the silver lining in that cloud would be that if you can't trace her, neither can anybody else." Kresge pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and spread it on the table. The Arizona Daily Sun. He pointed to an article right on the front page, next to a picture of Amy Wallace and the headline: Hunt for Suspect in Double Murder. "They haven't named her," he said. "Yet." Mulder stood, swinging Caitlin up with him. She seemed momentarily confused at the change of scenery, then laid her head down on his shoulder, the crayon falling from her hand as her body relaxed. She felt hot, even through his t-shirt, a condition that had been coming and going over the last day. "Mulder, put the kid down for a second," Kresge said. "We need to talk seriously here." "She's fine," Mulder answered mechanically. "She likes the contact." Kresge gave an exasperated sigh. "You have this clockwork thing going, right? A call window every three hours. Did Scully use that window any time today?" Mulder didn't answer. "No, I didn't think so. If she's not calling, Mulder, it's only one of two reasons. She either can't, or she's chosen not to. My guess would be she's chosen not to, and you know why." Kresge moved closer, his face growing kind and sympathetic now. Mulder recognized it as the good cop persona and wondered if Kresge's partner normally took the other role. "Mulder, I know you want to protect her. Believe me, I do too. But if you're going to continue to withhold information, you're on your own. I can't help you." Mulder spread his free hand wide, as if to show it was empty of secrets. "What do you think I'm withholding?" "What's the code she gave to your friends?" Mulder sighed. "She's going underground. She's picking up a new set of identity papers in Albuquerque tomorrow. I'm going to try to head her off." Kresge was doing a slow boil now, holding it in with admirable control. "And what? You're going to go with her, disappear into the sunset with your twins like some happy family and leave me holding the bag?" "No. That's not my plan. I don't have a plan, but I can't just let her disappear." Mulder shook his head, turning away. "I'm sorry. We should never have involved you in this." "Well, I am involved, Mulder. Up to my eyeballs. It's about time you started acknowledging that." Caitlin began to whimper in Mulder's arms, sensing his distress. He laid her on the bed, tickling her stomach until she grew calm again. Caitlin rewarded him with her funny, open-mouthed version of a grin, her eyes focused on the ceiling. He gave the girl her rabbit and turned around, making himself face Kresge again. The look on the detective's face wasn't quite what Mulder expected. It was the same expression that Scully often had when she was turning pieces of evidence around in her head, trying to find the edges that fit. "What?" he asked. "Scully found some stuff before she disappeared." Kresge licked his lips and swallowed some more water. "Information on the families of two of the other girls. The parents of this one," he said, indicating Caitlin, "were killed a couple of days before Tom Hampton. And the other couple, the MacEntyres -- it went to another division, so I didn't know about it until Scully dug it up. But it was the same MO. Husband shot, wife cut. Same day as the Hamptons." "A cleanup operation," Mulder supplied, coming back to take the chair across from Kresge. "Maybe. Maybe Caitlin's parents knew it was coming and tried to run. One of the houses Scully and I checked out the night we divided up those addresses was closed up like the people had gone away for awhile. It was probably theirs." At last, Mulder felt the spark of a lead ignite his mental engine. "Do you have those files? Can we get your partner to check out the address?" "Scully has them. She took it all with her when I was pulled from the case." "Damn it." Mulder spat, starting to pace again. "There was one girl we never found," he suddenly remembered, turning back to Kresge. "Bethany MacEntyre. Was there something in those files about her?" "I don't know. I never got a complete look at them." "When I found Caitlin, there was another bed in her room." He thought of something then, dropping to his knees, searching through the papers he'd tossed on the floor until he found the one he remembered. Two rectangles, one next to the other, with sticks coming out of the bottom, and a flattened red circle at the top. "The circle is her, I've figured that much out. But look at this." Mulder spread the drawing flat on the table in front of Kresge, pointing first to one rectangle, then another. "Two circles. Two Caitlins. Or rather, one Caitlin, one Bethany. She saw Bethany in that place." "Oh my god," Kresge said, picking up the drawing and staring at it in disbelief. "She is trying to tell you something." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 8/14 HATTAWAY RESIDENCE MARCH 13TH, 8:07 AM Light, white light. She could hear whimpering, and hated herself. She couldn't stop the soft cries any more than she could stop the hot tears she felt dribbling down from the corners of her eyes into her hair. -Oh God, why? Why are they doing this to me? A face appeared above hers, a woman's face, gentle and concerned. The woman looked grey and worn, as if she too had been subjected to whatever was happening to Scully now. "Shh," she whispered, laying a soothing hand on Scully's forehead. "The worst is almost over. There's only one more procedure. Then you can sleep." -Penny? "It's okay, Dana. I'm here to take care of you." -What are they doing? "Shh." Penny's eyes flicked upward, fear freezing her features as the other voices began to argue, but the hand on Scully's forehead never stopped its rhythmic caress. "I don't see the point in waking her. There's nothing she can do." "She needs to know." "She needs to sleep." -What? What do I need to know? Scully swallowed, paralyzed, hearing her own voice in her ears, not certain if she had opened her mouth. "Dana, you need to wake up now." She managed to open her eyes long enough to see Jane bending over her, shaking her shoulder. Above them, there was no light. Only acoustic tile. A ceiling. A house. Leonora's house. Scully filled her lungs with air. She was safe. "How do you feel?" Leonora asked, as Scully looked around. She let her awareness drift back to herself, running through the ritual she had developed, waking up in countless hospitals over the years. Arms and legs, check. Belly -- no pain, no nausea, check. Lungs working easily, heart beating at a normal pace. Nothing down her throat or up her nose. Her scalp still burned, but the pounding fullness of her head was gone. She felt a general lassitude, a blurred heaviness she associated with having recently been unconscious, but nothing more. "Better," she answered, and managed a weak smile. "Dana?" Jane's voice was quiet, but urgent. "We need to talk. Something's happened." She was alert enough to catch the warning look Leonora bestowed on Jane. "If you think you can sit up," Leonora added. Scully considered the possibility, thought she might be able to do it. She let the two of them raise her up and maneuver her around to lean against the headboard. Only then did she notice that she was lying in a bed. Leonora's bed, she guessed, judging by the collection of family photos sitting on the dresser against the opposite wall. Leonora took the opportunity to remove the bandage tied around Scully's head, prodding gently around the outer edges of the wound. "It's much better. You want to see?" Leonora asked. Scully nodded and was presented with a small hand mirror. She steeled herself and looked. It was excellent work. The swelling was nearly gone now and the cut itself looked pink and clean, crossed over with four neat, tidy stitches. "Sage compress," Leonora smiled, holding up the damp, stained pad that had been inside the bandage. "Works every time." Jane was staring at Scully's head, unconsciously rubbing at her own right wrist. Scully reached for Jane's hand, remembering now that she had never taken the stitches out. "Done," Jane said, pulling up her sleeve. "You should have been the doctor," Scully said to Leonora, letting the mirror and the hand that held it fall back to her lap. She suddenly felt drained in every sense. Even her voice sounded like air blowing through a hollow reed. Leonora put her hand on Scully's cheek for a brief, warm moment. "I'm going make you a nice echinacea tea. It won't taste very good, but it will help you get your immune system back up." She threw a quick hard look at Jane as she left. "You'd better tell her, since you woke her up." "Tell me what?" Scully asked, when Leonora was gone. She'd closed the door quietly, but Scully could sense an anger that wanted to slam it hard enough to rock the flimsy house. "Leonora sent her son out to Ella Boy's place early this morning. He just called from the chapter house in Teesto." "And?" "And. She's dead, Dana. Remember the snow we saw the night we got to Flagstaff? Apparently, up here it was one hell of a blizzard. It looks like she went out to find her sheep when the storm came up. She froze to death, not twenty yards from her house." Scully closed her eyes. An old woman got lost in a snowstorm. An old Indian woman who'd lived in the same place her whole life and probably knew a storm was coming days before it got there. Accidents like that happened, surely they did. Was it only paranoia that made her sense the hand of someone else? "We need to go," she said. "They probably haven't tracked us this far, but I'm not taking any chances. I don't want these people hurt for their kindness." Her legs, when she stood, were much steadier than she expected. In fact, now that she was moving, getting her blood flowing again, she almost felt rested. Not for long, she suspected, looking around for the jeans she'd been wearing, but long enough to deal with Albuquerque. Once she had those papers, everything would be easier. She'd be official again, able to move around without worrying that every cop out there was looking for Dana Scully. She would be someone else. She looked in the mirror and wondered what it would be like to have brown hair. "Sit down," said a cold voice. Scully turned, shocked to see Jane raising her hand, aiming at her with her own weapon. Scully sat down right where she was, her back scraping along the dresser. She couldn't have done much else at that point; her legs would no longer hold her. "I could kill you so easily," Jane said. "You could," Scully agreed after a moment. She drew in a careful breath, trying to take in this new situation. "Whatever you have a mind to do," Scully said tightly, "please don't involve Leonora. You've got hundreds of miles of desert to shoot me in. Don't do it here." "Why won't you tell me the truth?" Jane asked, the end of her nose beginning to go red. She sounded like she might cry at any moment. "I will if you will." "The truth about what?" If Jane only knew how many truths Scully hadn't told, she'd probably be lying on the floor dead right now. "Who is Amy's mother? And don't say Jennifer Wallace, you know that's not what I'm asking." The gun wavered in Jane's hand and Scully knew that the moment of danger had passed. She could take her weapon back, refuse to answer. Pick up Amy and leave, get a new name and disappear forever, leave Jane to fend for herself. Scully let her breath out in a sharp sigh, her head falling back against the dresser. She could. If only she were the kind of person who would do that. "Is it you?" Jane demanded. "Yes," Scully said, surprised at the relief she felt, finally admitting it. "How could you just let them take your children like that?" "I didn't. I didn't give them life. They were created, without my knowledge or consent. I didn't know any of them existed until last year, until I found Emily." "So where is she?" "I told you. She died. Of the same illness Denise had." Scully swallowed hard, as the relief quickly turned to something else and congealed in her throat. "It's a complicated story. One I'll tell you another time. Not now." They stared at each other. Not a contest of wills between them, Scully realized, but a contest within Jane. Truth or dare. "A man came to me," Jane said, her eyes full now, but still not spilling over. "When Denise got sick again. He promised he could make her well, they way they did before. He said he would come back for her when the treatment was ready. But she died before he did." So, truth. "Let me guess. An older man, who smelled like cigarettes?" Jane nodded. "You know him?" She gave Jane a grim little nod. Finally, the smoker had reared his ugly head. "Had you ever seen him before? Or since?" "Not before. But he came back later, when I was in the hospital. He said the people who killed Tom would come for me again and I should ask you to take me into protective custody. He was very specific about that. Ask Agent Scully." "Why me? Why not Mulder?" "He wanted me to watch you. To stay with you as much as possible. To call him whenever I could and tell him what you were doing. Where you went, or if you had bad dreams." Scully's hand flew automatically to the back of her neck. No. It was gone. There was no way. The man was making an educated guess based on what he knew about the functioning of the chip. Which meant he knew that she'd removed it and that after a certain time, her memories would begin to seep back. She put that thought away to look at later. "And what were you supposed to get out of this? Apart from your life, obviously." Jane raised her head, eyes full of tears. Scully's stomach clenched tight. "They promised you your daughter back." "He told me Denise had a twin, that she'd been taken when she was born, and he knew where she was. He said that if I did what he said, he would arrange a new life for us. A house and a job, anywhere I wanted. He said he'd see to it that we were so well hidden no one would ever be able to come after us." Her face crumpled, but the tears still didn't fall. "He showed me a picture. But it's not the girl in the one you have. And it's not Amy. I don't know who it is." Scully covered her own face with her hands. Fool. She'd been a fool. How could she have been so blind? She'd thought she was being overly paranoid. She hadn't been paranoid enough. "Tell me you never told him we were here," Scully said. "I, I called him from Flagstaff. When you went to get Jennifer," Jane sniffed, wiping at her eyes. "Then I thought you were dead and I thought I did it. I thought I killed you." The tears broke free at last and Jane sat heavily on the bed. Scully moved quietly across the room, and reached out to snake a finger through the trigger of her weapon, carefully sliding it out of the woman's hands. "You can shoot me, I don't care," Jane cried. "But I swear to god, Dana, I never thought they would hurt you. I'm not a bad person. I just wanted Denise back so badly I wasn't thinking straight." Scully moved away, holding the gun low, her finger off the trigger now. "Do you have that picture?" she asked. "The one he showed you?" Jane nodded miserably. She reached into the top of her dress and drew out a folded rectangle. Scully opened it against her hip, still gripping the gun in the other hand. The girl in this picture had hair to her waist, parted in the middle and growing thinner towards the ends, as if it had never been cut. Longer than Amy's. Closer to red than any of the others. It was Bethany MacEntyre, the girl Scully had seen when she blacked out in the morgue. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ARROW WHEEL MOTEL, FLAGSTAFF MARCH 13TH, 8:32 AM Kresge woke with a start, surprised to find the sun well up. Yesterday had been exhausting, fruitless stomping from used car lot to used car lot, and he'd fallen dead asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. People who thought police work was glamorous watched too much television. During Kresge's now abruptly terminated career, solving crimes had been about 40% footwork, 50% sitting around shuffling papers of one sort or another, and 10% excitement. Some of which he definitely could have done without. He rolled over and found Mulder sitting in one of the vinyl armchairs, holding the girl. "I thought we were going to Albuquerque," Kresge said. Mulder didn't answer. "Hey, Mulder," Kresge repeated, louder. "I thought--" "Caitlin's sick." Kresge sat up, staring at the man. "She was running a low fever all day yesterday," Mulder went on, without inflection. "I checked on her at about midnight and she was burning up. She started having trouble breathing a couple of hours ago." "Mulder." Kresge rolled off the bed, padding in his socks to where Mulder sat. The man must be in shock. Kresge felt like he was looking at himself, kneeling by Elizabeth's body, wanting to scream to the heavens to bring her back, unable to even open his mouth. He looked into Mulder's eyes, sharp and hollow at the same time. Yes, Kresge thought, that's what I must have looked like. "Let me take her to the hospital," he said quietly, reaching to slip his hands beneath the girl's back and legs. "No." Mulder held the child closer. "I promised no one would hurt her again." He stood, adjusting Caitlin so her head was cradled on his shoulder. She looked so much like she always had, asleep or simply not there, that it was hard for Kresge to feel any grief. Ending that poor life could only be a blessing. "They could keep her comfortable until it's over," he tried again. "I saw what they did for Emily. It didn't help." "Mulder, we need to get to Scully. If we miss her now, we may lose her for good." "I know." Mulder moved to the table, where Caitlin's toys were still laid out. A stuffed rabbit, some crayons and a thick pile of drawings. He selected one of the pictures, a scribbled forest of red with a blue sun and a balloon-headed stick figure down in the corner, and held it out. "You go. Give this to Scully, if you find her," he said. "Tell her that there *was* an orphanage. And there was a child. Tell her--" He cut himself off, shoving the paper roughly at Kresge. "Here. Just take it." Kresge accepted the drawing reluctantly, turning it over and over in his hands. "What are you going to do?" he finally asked. Mulder had laid Caitlin down on the bed and her eyes were fluttering open then closed, in time with her labored breath. He tugged her t-shirt back into place, arranging her arms and legs before drawing the covers up around her and tucking it beneath her chin. The care with which he touched the child was heart-rending in its reverence and Kresge found he had to turn away from them. "I'm going to stay with Caitlin until it's over," Mulder answered, "and then I'm calling Skinner." Kresge turned around. "Mulder, you'll be arrested." "I don't care," he answered harshly. "If I can prove what those bastards did to her, I don't really give a shit what else happens." Mulder sat beside the girl again, ignoring Kresge, cradling Caitlin's small fist in his huge hand. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> Jane had been sitting on the back porch for the last half-hour, watching Amy run around with Leonora's five-year-old grandson. For her entire life -- what she could remember of it -- she had been fascinated by the similarities of siblings, of parents and their children. Until Denise was born, Jane had never known what it meant to be part of another person. She had never tired of looking at her daughter. It made her feel real, to see a few pieces of herself in the shape and color of Denise's eyes, in her tiny rosebud mouth. Now Jane knew that Dana Scully had those same eyes, that same mouth -- even the same slight, delicate curve to her nose that Jane had always assumed came from Tom. Resemblances, she guessed, were easy to find when you were so desperately looking for them. Here, then, was the truth. Denise had never been a part of her. The promised child would never appear. And Amy belonged to someone else. They would go to Albuquerque, Jane decided, and that would be the end of her journey. It was as good a place as any to try to start again. She had no need for protection now that there would be no child to protect. Maybe They would forget about her. And if They didn't, well, to whom would it matter? She would pass through the world as if her entire life had been a clerical error. No more than that. Jane stood and brushed the dirt off the back of her dress. Might as well get on with it. The kitchen was the largest room in Leonora's house, a long bright rectangle divided into cooking and dining areas by a waist high-counter. Leonora was standing over a long table sprinkled with flour, working with a fist-sized ball of dough, pressing it flat and spinning it over the heel of her hand like a miniature pizza. Scully, perching on a stool across from Leonora, had another ball, but seemed to be doing little more than rolling it around between her hands. The two women fell silent as Jane entered, though at least Leonora looked up and gave Jane a smile. "You ever had frybread?" she asked. Jane shook her head. The old woman, Leonora's great-aunt, was working an old-fashioned loom in the corner of the dining room, and the clack of the shuttle sounded like intermittent gunfire in the quiet room. "Mine's pretty good, I'm told," Leonora said, laying her slab of dough down on the table, where it joined the ones she'd already done. She pulled another hunk off the big batch sitting in a wooden bowl by her elbow. "But my mother's was better." "My mother makes an Irish stew I've been trying my whole life to duplicate," Scully offered. "You can have the exact recipe, it just isn't quite the same." "The secret of mothers," Leonora smiled. "I bet our kids will say the same of us." Silence fell again, easy from Leonora's side, less so from Scully's. Jane reached for the bowl, avoiding looking at either woman. "How do I do this?" she asked. "Flour your hands first." Leonora looked up as gravel crunched outside the house. Through the dining room window, a shiny green pickup could be seen pulling into the yard. She shot a significant look at Scully and left, pulling the dishtowel she'd been using as an apron out of the waist of her jeans and wiping her hands as she went. Scully was still turning the ball of dough around and around in her hands, not rolling it out so much as squeezing it in. "Leonora has a hogan on the Hopi side of the partition," she said, keeping her head down. "She's going to go out there this afternoon. I want you and Amy to go with her." Scully glanced up, then quickly dropped her gaze again. "They're looking for two red-haired women and a child. It'll be safer for all of us right now if I go to New Mexico alone." Jane watched Scully's hands flattening the dough, replaying the words in her head to make sure she hadn't gotten something wrong. "Why would you trust me with Amy?" she finally managed to ask. "After everything I just told you?" "Because," Scully said quietly, laying her lumpy attempt next to Leonora's thin, evenly stretched circles. "I don't believe you would do anything to hurt her. And because you know if you try to disappear with her, we will all come after you. Myself, my partner, the FBI and whoever wants you dead. You won't stand a chance." "I would never do that." Jane pressed her hands flat on the table to hold them steady, staring at the top of Scully's head, at the gauze pad poking out from beneath the bandana she was using to hide the bandage. "Amy is your flesh and blood. I would never try to steal her from you." Scully looked up again, fixing Jane with an intense blue stare. "I'm trusting you with my life," she said. "If you call that man, he'll have me killed." Jane met those familiar eyes with a strength she hadn't thought she could still summon. "I know." She understood now why something about Scully had always drawn her, though the recognition had been subconscious. Part of Denise was still here, in this woman whose child Jane had fed from her own breasts. It was a connection she couldn't begin to fathom. "I'll go to Albuquerque and pick up my papers," Scully was saying. "As soon as everything is arranged, I'll come back." "And what about me?" Jane asked softly. "Where do I go then?" Scully reached over and clasped Jane's hand. "Just trust me, Jane. You will be taken care of." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 9/14 INTERSTATE 40 MARCH 13TH, 12:02 PM Robert Hattaway was a tall, stocky 25-year-old, with his mother's round face and curly black hair but little of her eloquence. He seemed content to listen to the wind blowing through the open windows of his pickup as they rode past the trading posts and filling stations that lined the highway to Albuquerque. The endless thrum was almost enough to make Scully miss their first driver and his faded collection of tapes. She tugged the baseball cap down over her face and sank into her seat, trying not to think about what might be waiting. A package, a squadron of police, a sleek dark sedan with men in suits and thin black ties. One night, years ago, she had driven down an empty road from Farmington, on her way to connect with this very highway. They had come from nowhere, jeeps and helicopters and the bright white light. If her abduction had left her with any trace of her former faith in the government she served, They took it with them that night when They took her files, disappearing as abruptly as They'd arrived. And she drove back to DC, alone, her hands empty of all but the fear that Mulder was dead, that she had somehow failed to protect him. She'd been given another responsibility now, not only for him, but for two other lives. Whatever she had to do to protect them, she was not going to fail this time. "Could we pull over soon?" she asked, tilting her head up so that she could look at Robert. "I need to make a call. And I could do with some coffee." Robert smiled. He was a man who liked his coffee, she'd seen that at breakfast. "Laguna," he offered. "Got a pay phone too." <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> LAGUNA, NEW MEXICO MARCH 13TH, 12:12 PM Scully stood at the phone booth, hand on the receiver, wondering if They would be tapping her mother's phone, if their surveillance could really be as thorough as that. She could just imagine trying the clockwork scenario on her mother. Here Mom, I'm going to give you a number. Write the last four digits down backward. Now go to a pay phone and dial the number as you wrote it. Not as I read it, that's for the mean old men who are listening so they can run a trace and drive out to that phone while I'm nice and safe somewhere else. Now we're going to do this on the hour, every three hours, from 6 AM till midnight, until I can surface again. Out of the question. By the time Scully got her mother to understand what she was asking and worked through the resulting maternal anxiety attack, there would be cigarette smoke and someone forcing her into one of those featureless black sedans. "Hello?" Scully blinked in surprise at her mother's warm, familiar voice. She didn't remember dialing. "Mom? Hi, it's me." Gone were the days when that might be answered with "Which me?" Scully had not thought that she and her sister sounded much alike, but her mother had never been able to tell them apart on the phone. "Hi, sweetie. How are you? Are you home?" "No, I'm not. I'm still on a case." "Bill said you came by to see him. I didn't know you were out in San Diego." Great. Trust her brother to tell their mother everything, and probably a few opinions of his own on top of that. It was hard to believe that once upon a time they had kept each other's secrets. "I wasn't planning on being there." Well at least that was the truth, Scully thought, and took a stabilizing breath. "Mom, there's something I need to ask." "Okay." She heard a veil of wariness fall over her mother's voice. So light, only one of Maggie's children would pick it up. It was the sound of her mother when she knew she was going be asked something she didn't want to answer. Mom, how come you're mad at Daddy? I'm not mad at Daddy, sweetie, I'm mad at the Navy. Are we moving again, Mom? Nothing lasts forever, Dana, only the earth and God's love. "Dana? Honey, are you still there?" "Mom, this is going to sound really strange, but...I've been having these dreams." Dreams, yes, better than visions. Dreams, Maggie Scully understood. Talk to her about visions and her mother was likely to haul her off to Father McCue the moment she got home. If she got home. No, don't think about that. "Dreams about what?" her mother was asking. "I've been dreaming...Mom, I don't know how to ask this, but was Melissa a twin?" "A twin?" The veil of wariness lifted completely now, a note almost of relief in her mother's voice. "No, Dana, she wasn't. Where on earth did you get that idea?" "But were you awake when she was born?" "Awake? No, not for Melissa. They did tend to knock us out in those days. You, I was awake for. We were having dinner with Admiral Burdock -- well, he was still a Captain then -- and we were laughing so hard. I guess you wanted to see what all the fun was about because suddenly there you were, on your way. And your father couldn't get the car to start, he was so nervous--" "Mom." She didn't need to hear the story of her birth, practically on the Burdock's dining room table, one more time. "Okay, okay. So, what exactly were you dreaming?" Scully could almost see her mother settling back, phone caught between her shoulder and her ear, hands wrapped around a nice warm cup of coffee. It was a picture she'd seen a million times as Maggie consoled herself in new surroundings, talking to friends thousands of miles away. It had never really occurred to Scully before how hard her mother must have found their life. All the usual agonies of starting over in new places, compounded by four kids grumbling and whining and their father usually sent straight off to sea. "Mom, I love you." The words she spoke so rarely popped out of her mouth and she understood that this was really all she had called to say. "Dana?" Concern now, mother-radar on alert. Thirty-five years old and the damn thing still worked. "Honey, is everything okay?" Scully reached for the phone as if she could reach through it, stroke her mother's familiar face. She closed her eyes and bit her lip against the words she wanted to say. No, Mom. No, it's not okay. I've done everything wrong, screwed up with Mulder, screwed up with you, and Bill, and Missy, and if Dad were here he'd be reading me the same riot act he read Charlie when he got Marilyn pregnant. Responsibility for one's actions. The need for family. I did want a family, Mom, but I wanted a career too and now all the choices seem to keep making themselves and I don't know what's right, I don't know what to do. Like you used to say, the world will go as it will and not as you or I would have it. I know you always said you looked forward to my children, and I have one now but how can I raise a child on the run, how can I not run, how can I stick around, waiting for Them to take her, if I were even allowed to keep her after what I've done, and I've done things that you and Dad would not be proud of, things that can't be taken back, and even if I could, if I could just be what I was, then I'm just getting older, and I'm going to be alone and I know that you are too, but it's one thing when you've had your husband and raised your kids and another when you've always been alone and I know you can't live forever, Mom, and when you're gone I'll have no one, there'll be no one who knows me, who knows the real Dana -- and don't say Bill or Charlie because they haven't been part of my life for years and you know it. Or maybe there'll be no Dana left after this, I'll just be Scully FBI, I'll be like Skinner, like Nancy Spiller, my forensics instructor they call the Iron Maiden, all those people who work and work and work because there's no reason to go home, there's nothing else in their lives, and who am I fooling? I already am one of those people, and I don't want to be, Mom, but I don't know how to be anything else anymore, I don't know how to be with someone, I waited too long and there's something wrong with me now and I tried, I tried with Mulder and I destroyed everything that we ever had between us and I don't know if I'll ever see him again, and even if I do, I don't know how to make it right, and I'm scared, Mom, I'm scared, I don't know if I can ever come home and this may be the last time I even get to hear your voice-- "Dana? Honey, come on. Talk to me. What's the matter?" Scully forced her voice into a higher, brighter register. "It's okay, Mom. I'm okay. I need to go now." "You don't sound okay, Dana." "I am, I'm just tired. It's been a hard case." She paused, trying to gather herself back together. "I don't think I'm going to be home anytime soon, so don't worry if I'm not. Okay?" "You'll call when you are?" Scully swallowed hard. "Of course." "You know, Dana, you can call just to talk. You used to do that all the time." "I know, Mom. I've got to go." She slipped the phone gently back into its cradle, standing before it as she'd stood before her sister's casket, unable to turn around and walk away. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> CENTRAL POST OFFICE, ALBUQUERQUE MARCH 13TH, 1:37 PM He would not have found her, he was certain, if he had not seen the short woman standing near the held mail window lift a card to her face and squint at it in a way that was suddenly familiar. Even up close, Scully was almost unrecognizable. In cheap jeans and a grubby t-shirt, her bright hair pushed mostly under a baseball cap that didn't suit her face at all, she looked scrawny and waifish. More like a strung-out kid from the streets than the well-groomed federal agent he knew. He slipped up behind her and wrapped a hand around her upper arm. "It's me, Dana. Please. Don't run." Perhaps it was the fact that his voice carried a plea and not an order that stayed her feet. "I'm not here to hurt you," Kresge said. "I just have a message from Mulder." Her body relaxed a little, enough for him to believe that it would be okay to let go. At last she looked up and he could see what the days had done to her. She was not insane, not in the way he or Mulder would understand it, but something inside her had definitely cracked. This was not the same woman who stood in his living room a week ago, rising on her toes to kiss him. Not even the one who was so strange and distant over breakfast two days later. This was Scully stripped down to her bare essence, running on nothing but fierce determination. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and drew out the paper Mulder had given him. Scully spread it open between her hands like a king's proclamation, her face unreadable, her eyes flicking sharply from image to image. "What is this?" she demanded at last. "There was an orphanage, Scully. And there was a child. Her name is Caitlin." "Oh, god." She closed her eyes and swayed. He stepped forward without thinking, catching her around the waist and pulling her to lean against him. She did not hug him back, but she made no move to break away either. "Let's get out of here," he said, bending his head to pitch his voice only for her ears. "We have a lot to talk about." She didn't answer. "Scully?" He moved back to see her face, and she slid to the ground. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> She was on the grey plain, featureless but for a dim shape on the horizon. Scully hurried toward it, urgency moving her across the vast expanse of nothing in giant, level steps. At last she was close enough to see the shape for what it was -- Mulder, sitting in an armchair, cradling a child. Scully took the last steps and knelt at his feet, gazing upward into his face. Something cracked open inside her, everything she had hidden for so long spilling out, sending the grey mist whirling wildly around them. Mulder and her daughter, so beautiful together, his hand cradling the back of the child's head, slender fingers softly rubbing at her scalp. For a moment, she was certain he saw her and she whispered his name, reaching for him, but her arms would not bridge the distance. Mulder closed his eyes, holding the child closer, tears spilling from beneath his lashes. And there were hands at her shoulders, moving her away. Melissa took her place, bending to lift the child from Mulder's arms. She moved in the direction from which Scully had come, whispering something that was lost in the wind. -Melissa? Her sister turned, face wan with disappointment. The girl yawned and stretched and looked around, rubbing her eyes as if waking from a long sleep. "This is Caitlin," Melissa said. -No. No, Missy, I tried. "That's not it, Dana. This is right." She indicated the girl in her arms. -Then what was it about? If they were all meant to die, what was this all about? "Look inside yourself, Dana. Feel yourself. Feel your heart." -My...? She turned around, but Mulder was gone. There was nothing left but a great heaviness in her chest. And then she was moving through space at a sickening speed. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> At last her eyes flew open. She saw whirling, opened her eyes again and saw the bottom of a man's chin, needing a shave. She wondered why she had bothered to notice something so mundane when Kresge looked down, and all motion stopped. "Dana?" He was carrying her, she realized. Carrying her and walking as fast as he could with her limp weight in his arms. "Just lie still," he said, hitching her up higher. "I've got you, you're safe." She swallowed and breathed, trying to force air into her stiff lungs. "You can put me down," she answered, her voice rough, but strong enough to carry. "I'm okay now." "The hell you are," Kresge retorted, but he set her back on her feet, holding her against his side as they slowly walked to his car. Kresge dug in his pocket for the keys, got them out and unlocked the passenger door. "You don't move," he ordered, putting his hand on her shoulder as she lowered herself into the seat. "I'm going to get you some water. I want you here when I get back." She nodded, still disoriented. Water sounded like a wonderful idea, the clear coolness of it running down her throat, washing away the last of the sediment lodged in her chest. Scully reached up and felt her head. The hat was gone, fallen off she guessed, but the bandana she had tied over the gauze bandage was still in place. She flipped down the mirror and adjusted the blue cloth, making sure the bandage was completely covered, frowning briefly at the awful picture she made. The papers, thank god, were still in her back pocket, where she had stuffed them after Kresge grabbed her arm. They were a bit bent now, but that only contributed to their authenticity. Birth certificate, driver's license, Visa card, social security, all in the name of Mary Margaret Wilson. The documents were clipped neatly inside a passbook for a savings account containing $5,000. Scully thumbed through the papers quickly. It was all as she'd expected. The only thing that had not been there when they put the package together years ago was the extra birth certificate. Mary Wilson now had a daughter -- Sarah Louise, father unknown. It was Frohike's blessing; the name of his mother, many years gone. Scully blinked away her tears and shoved the documents back into the package, pulling out a small blue envelope. It contained a postcard of the Washington monument. On the back, where the address should be, Frohike had written 'Truth or Consequences'. She was still trying to puzzle that one out when Kresge returned. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> Truth or Consequences, Scully finally remembered, was a place, not a challenge. A small town on the highway heading south from Albuquerque, toward El Paso. "Just the place for me to retire, eh, Scully?" Mulder had said, and she had laughed. She was driving, god knows where, and he was playing his favorite road game, pulling strange names off the map. "Hey, Uravan! Urabus, Uracar! Loveland, now that would be the place. Flasher, where all the old men go." Scully stared out the window as the road wound south, but the scenery didn't change and her chest ached with missing him. She and Kresge arrived at the post office just before it closed. This time she showed Mary Wilson's driver's license when she was asked for ID. The clerk glanced at it, nodded, and handed over another blue envelope. Scully put it in her back pocket without looking at it. "This is where we part," she said, rejoining Kresge, who was leaning against his dusty car, arms folded as he stared off down the quiet main street of the town. "Dana, I'm not leaving you here alone." "John." She let herself move closer, touching her fingertips to the hair that fell over his forehead. She dropped her hand as he looked down at her, a curious hurt written in his eyes. "It's all been arranged," she said. "I'm not alone." "What do I tell Mulder?" he asked, his eyes still searching hers for clues. She held her expression carefully neutral. "Just tell him I'm safe. That he should do whatever he needs to do to save himself." "What about saving you? Scully, if you disappear now, it's like admitting that you're guilty. Forget about Mulder, about your work. What about your family? Do you want them to believe you went crazy and started killing people?" "No, I don't," she said heavily, "but I'm beyond believing that the truth will save me. These people will make sure that the evidence I need to prove the truth disappears. They'll have Amy and I'll be a cop doing life in a maximum security prison. Exactly how long do you think either one of us will last?" "Can you live like that? Without any of the people that love you? Lying every single minute of your life?" She closed her eyes as a wave of despair broke over her head. Just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going, she heard her sister say. You'll know where you are when you get there. Despair ebbed, then disappeared. "If it keeps Amy alive and out of Their hands, yes," she answered. "Yes, I can live like that." She rose on the balls of her feet and touched her lips to Kresge's cheek, surprising both of them. "Thank you for trying," she murmured. "You've been a good friend." She turned then, and made herself walk away from him. <<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> ARROW WHEEL MOTEL MARCH 13TH, 5:58 PM The motel was a slight cut above their usual fare, fancy enough for a paper strip over each towel, assuring him of its hygienic cleanliness. Mulder ran a washcloth under cold water and pressed it against his swollen eyes, wishing for Scully in yet another way, wishing to see the satisfied little smile she sometimes gave when his choice of accommodation actually showed a bit of taste. The irony of it was unbearable. Six years he'd spent bringing a beautiful woman to one motel after another and never making love. He straightened abruptly and stared at himself in the mirror. Four days unshaven, eyes rheumy, his uncombed hair sticking up on one side of his head -- he looked like he was living in hell. He had illegal custody of a child who was never meant to exist and Scully was out there somewhere, possibly wounded, possibly dead herself, while he stood here like an idiot thinking about taking her to a motel. His capacity for brain farts in the face of disaster was truly disgusting. He threw the washcloth back in the basin and retraced his steps to the bed where Caitlin lay. Mulder wished he had some faith, some ritual to guide him through what he had to do now. He drew the blanket up, but he could not bear to cover her face. All he could do was fold it beneath Caitlin's arms, lay her hands upon her chest. After a moment, he reached over and picked up the rabbit, already grey around the ears, and tucked it in the curve of her elbow. They would cut her up now, poke and prod and test. She was no longer a child, a life, however stunted. Only a body. Evidence. Mulder walked away from the bed and yanked the curtains open to the sunset, his eyes stinging with bitterness. Watching Caitlin's dim light fade out, he had begun to understand Scully at last. Where was there to put a rage so huge that it left no room to breathe, no room to think? Give him a target right now and he would lash out, unburden himself through violence. Scully, having a gentler soul, had directed it inward, stamping it down until it had coated everything with a thick black tar, leaving her no ability to feel anything else. The cell phone ringing in the pocket of his jacket effectively derailed his train of thought. He couldn't remember if he'd left it on after making the call to Skinner. "Mulder, it's me." For a moment, he couldn't breathe, stunned as he was to hear her soft alto on the other end. In that moment he knew he'd given up the hope of ever hearing her voice again. "Scully," he crooned, unable to hide the relief singing out of him. "Scully, are you all right?" "Fine. It's going like clockwork." He looked around frantically for a pen. Saw nothing. "Okay, give it to me. I'll remember." "505-575-8982." He repeated it back and hung up, then dialed from the motel phone, reversing the last four digits. "Hi," she answered. "Hi." A moment of silence, while he tried to assemble his thoughts, tangled inside his brain like a pile of pick-up sticks. He extracted the first, the most important. "How are you?" "I'm fine." Yes, of course she was fine. What else had he expected? Next question. "Where are you?" "It's okay, everything's fine." "Scully..." He listened to the silence, imagined he could hear her breathe. "Scully, the Wallaces are both dead." "I know." He let that thought sink in, followed it to its end. If she knew, she'd been there; if she'd been there, the blood was hers; if the blood was hers, she was not fine. Ergo, if she knew, she was not fine. He was proud of himself, able to pull such clear logic out of the mess inside his head. "Mulder," she was saying. "Listen. I can't talk. I just wanted you to know, whatever they tell you, whatever they try to make you believe -- I always knew what I was doing. Always, Mulder. Everything." Her use of the past tense sent him hurtling into panic. He gripped the bedspread as if it were her hand, desperate to hold on to that fragile connection. "Scully, please." He was begging now, a violation of her dignity as well as his own, but he didn't care. "Let me come with you." He heard her sigh, a long, shaky exhalation. He could picture her face, pale as plaster and just as lifeless. Except for her eyes. She could blank her face, but she could never blank her eyes. "No, Mulder. That would make you an accessory." "Damn it, Scully, do you think I care about that?" "Mulder...Mulder, you know how you once said that lines had to be drawn? Well, it's my turn to draw one, for you. You've always had your holy grail. This one is mine." "Scully--" "Please, Mulder. This time you have to let me go." She took a breath, as if there was something else she wanted to say, then there was a soft click, and she was gone.