From: Neoxphile@aol.com
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 21:17:21 EDT
Subject: The Family G-Man Season Five - chapters 49-55 by Neoxphile and FelineFemme 
Source: direct

Title: The Family G-Man Season Five - chapters 49-55
Authors: Neoxphile and FelineFemme
Feedback: Feedback: neoxphile@aol.com, be8opcat1013@yahoo.com
Rating: mostly R with NC-17 moments
Spoilers: Seasons 1-9
Category: Alternate Reality, Snark, Family Fic, plus a dollop Angst
for the beginning (and despite what chapter one leads you to believe,
this is *not* a character death story)
Disclaimer: So yeah, we're going to be borrowing CC's characters, and
the idea behind "The Family Man," which put a twist on "It's a Wonderful
 Life" 
which blatantly copied "A Christmas Carol." We hope the print doesn't get
blurry from being a copy of a copy of...

Website: with pictures! http://www.mulderscreek.com/familygman.html

Summary: In season five Mulder discovers that a child he doesn't think 
should exist in this timeline does, and it changes everyone's lives.

~*~*~
Season Five - chapters 49-55
~*~*~

Chapter Forty-Nine

August 1997

It's a hot summer day on the outskirts of DC, and the Lone Gunmen
are feeling the heat more than usual. The cause could be the
different environs and company they keep, a large mansion-like home
and three small children, that's causing their armpits to sweat more
than normal and tempers to flare. Even the normally-affable Byers has
gotten to the point where he'd rather sweep the Mulder house for
surveillance devices than spend another minute with his friends or
Mulder's kids. Frohike has sought refuge in the kitchen doing
repairs, which leaves Langly with munchkin duty. Finally, even he
gives in as he runs into the kitchen.

"Dude, one more second with that stupid purple dinosaur and I'm gonna
blow my brains out!" he exclaims to a pair of legs poking out from
under the sink.

"I thought you said you could handle it," Frohike's muffled voice
comes eerily through the pipes.

"Yeah, but Barney's no Cap'n Toby," the long-haired blond man scowls.

"Come on, I'll fix the pipes, you can listen to some inane dude in a
costume sing."

"No, thanks," Frohike replies, "I don't want the lovely Scully to
blame me if the sink suddenly turns on when she starts the
microwave."

"It was just that one time!" Langly sputters, his forthcoming
argument cut short by a new arrival. "Oh, you."

Byers ignores the venom dripping from his compatriot's words or
glare. "Top to bottom, there are no bugs," he says briskly, "at least
surveillance-wise." Due to the heat, his jacket is draped on his arm,
but he is still clad in his trademark buttoned-up shirt, tie and
dress slacks.

"Greaaaaaaat," Langly drawls, "it's your turn to look after the
rugrats."

The bearded man looks shocked when he sees Frohike's legs from under
the sink. "If we're all in here, who's looking after the children?"

Frohike bangs his head as he gets out of the sink. "What? You guys!"
he yells when April starts crying.

The three men look at each other. "Not me!" they all chorus. Then
they point at each other, "You do it!"

~*~*~

"Fine, fine," Frohike mumbles, giving up trying to decipher Mulder's
messy handwritten instructions, "I swear decrypting top secret
documents is easier than reading that chicken scratch." Still, he
must've done something right, because April is finally quiet, sucking
noisily away at a bottle, her diaper fresh and clean.

"You two look good together," Langly says in the calm following the
storm, "even if you guys aren't related."

"She could've been," Frohike says, as he carries the littlest one
with her bald head and dark brown eyes. "April's got my eyes." He
beams down at her proudly as if he had a hand in her creation.

"You better not let Mulder hear you say that," Langly smirks, until
Sammy smears some baby food on his shirt. "Ugh, gross," he says,
making a face as he wipes it off, making Page and Sammy laugh. "I
can't believe the one day they decide to take a little 'me-time' is
the same one their babysitter does the same."

"Nannies are people, too," Byers says, unperturbed when Page grabs
the remote to turn on the TV. He frowns when the remote doesn't turn
the set on, then walks over to manually press the power button.
Nothing. He checks in the back to see if everything's hooked up
properly, and they are. Having already checked the set for bugs, he
realizes it's not the fault of some shadowy third party, but rather
an internal problem. "I think it's broken," he says finally.

Page's face crumples, and it isn't long before the house is filled
with the sound of wailing. Not just from the three Mulder and Scully
children, but also at least one Gunman.

~*~*~

Frohike's panicked mind thinks of a number of solutions to the
problem, all of which would result in their getting jailed, or at
least, on the FBI's most wanted. Bitterly, he puts aside thoughts of
rope and duct tape, multi-purpose childcare machines, and simple
abandonment, looking desperately at his friends. Okay, so it's his
fault that he got them into this mess, but does it always have to be
him to get them out? "Byers," he pleads under the incessant crying.
How is it possible for such little kids to have such big lungs?

Even Byers is looking panicky, which isn't good. But the sight of
Langly losing it with the kids has caused something within the
suit-and-tie man to snap, and in a tone rarely heard from the
normally-sanguine man, he says sharply, "All of you, QUIET!"
Startled, Page subsides with a startled hiccup, Sammy's mouth hangs
open, and Langly freezes. "Langly, I want you to go into the kitchen
and get snacks and drinks. Page, I want you to be a big girl and put
the toys away. Sammy, stay there. And Frohike," he pauses.

"Yeah?" the balding man asks uneasily, shifting the baby girl in his
arms as he rocks her.

"You've got storytelling detail." 

Frohike's bulging eyes behind his glasses make him resemble a comical
frog. "What?" 

"There's no brewskis, so everybody gets fruit juice," the blond man
comes strolling in with colorful sippy cups and a box of donuts.
"Hey, are donuts cool?" he looks speculatively at the little
redheaded boy. In reply, Sammy grabs a donut and promptly powders his
face with the white sugar. "I'll take that as a yes," Langly notes,
handing out drinks and donuts.

Frohike's wracking his brains for something suitable to talk about,
although most of what comes to mind are conspiracy theories, which
would probably go over the kids' heads, or hot chicks, which would
get him in trouble with the luscious and unfortunately-married
Scully. He looks at Byers, who shrugs, and an evil thought comes to
mind. "Okay, boys and girls," he says in a storytelling voice, and
everyone perks up, "Uncle Frohike's gonna tell you about how we saved
a pretty lady called Susanne, met your father, and saved the world."

"Oh, no," Byers sighs, while Langly grins, "Oh, yeah." 

"You saved the world?" Page asks.

"Of course," Frohike beams, but his smile droops when he sees Byers
glare. "Well, maybe just Baltimore," he amends, and is about to go on when
the blonde girl interrupts again.

"Who's Susanne?" Page wonders.

The Lone Gunmen look at each other. "Once upon a time, well, about
eight years ago, on a lovely May afternoon, Uncle Byers met a
beautiful blonde lady named Susanne," Frohike says, ignoring the fact
that he's drinking from a sippy cup, "at a computer convention in
nearby Baltimore. All sorts of people were there, but somehow, your
straightlaced Uncle Byers managed to catch the attention of the
damsel in distress."

"I didn't know that yet," Byers corrects him, and Frohike shoves a
donut into his mouth.

~*~*~

"Anyways," Frohike ignores the interruption, "Uncle Byers followed
the lady with the sunglasses all the way to where the dashing and
debonair Uncle Frohike, that's yours truly," he makes a little bow,
"was working hard at his cable company booth." He ignores his
compatriot's coughing and goes on. "Unfortunately, Uncle Langly was
in the next booth, trying to sell Susanne a terrible version of
cable, which was very, very bad."

"Very, very bad," Page repeats, and Sammy mumbles "Bad bad." 

"Hey!" Langly yelps. "You were the one who was selling crappy coax
cable-"

"When Uncle Langly butted in, we both lost a sale," Frohike glares at
him behind his glasses, holding up a fist, "and Uncle Byers kept
following Susanne like a stalker. Susanne let him bump into her and
she dropped her purse. Because he's actually got some manners, he
said sorry and saw a picture of a little girl fall out of her purse."

"Susanne was a mommy?" 

Frohike makes a face. "Well, that's what she wanted ol' Uncle Byers
to think. So she told Uncle Byers about some crazy and very, very bad
ex-boyfriend who stole her little girl named Susanne."

"Susanne and Susanne!" Page laughs, delighted.

"Not quite," Frohike says as Byers sighs, "she told Uncle Byers her
name was Holly." 

"Like sugar?" Sammy asks, reaching for another donut.

"Like the sugar," Frohike agrees, wondering how the little boy knows
the brand name.

"Who was the bad man?" Page asks.

~*~*~

The Lone Gunmen exchange glances. "We're getting there," Frohike
says. "Anyways, Susanne-who-called-herself-Holly said she needed help 
with computer stuff that would help her find her fake-daughter-called-Susa
nne, 
so they went back to where Uncle Byers was working. And you know what?"

"What?" Sammy falls for the prompt.

The short man has an evil grin on his face. "It was the first time Uncle
Byers hacked into a system! Aren't you proud?" 

"Yay, Uncle!" the children cheer, while Byers puts a hand over his
face and Langly shares an evil grin with Frohike.

"It wasn't like that," Byers says half-heartedly.

"Hey, take the kudos while you can," Frohike says blithely, "so anyway, 
Uncle Byers found Susanne's file and printed it out. Unfortunately,
it was encrypted, which means that it was in a special computer
language."

The little girl blinks. "Co'puters can talk?" 

"Of course." Frohike nods. "Anything smart can talk. Just when Uncle
Byers realized he needed help turning this computer language into
English, Susanne saw her scary ex-boyfriend."

"Oh no!" 

"That's right," the short man says with relish. "And they realized
they needed more help than ever, so they went to the man with the
plan, the hero when you're zero, senor numero uno." He pats his
leather-vested chest. "Uncle Frohike!"

"Yaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!" 

~*~*~

"Really," Byers says, rolling his eyes.

"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em," Frohike says, enjoying the
adulation from the mini-Mulders. "So anyways, I was ready to do the
hero thing and beat the guy up so we could save the little girl, but
Susanne said the bad guy was not only bad, he was dangerous, so we
had to be very, very careful."

Both kids are nodding, and Byers, wishing his friend would skip over
this part, says, "Frohike, could you check on April?"

"Sure," the balding man says, holding up the baby girl and takes a
careful sniff near the general direction of her diapers. "All clear,"
he says, not bothering to hide his relief. "So anyways, me and Uncle
Byers decide to check out the scary boyfriend, just in case, see what
he's like. Problem was, it's hard to do the secret agent thing with
Mr. Boy Scout here," and Byers purses his lips, "so the bad guy saw
us."

"Run away!" Sammy yells, as if he could change past events.

"In a way, it was a good thing," Frohike says, inadvertently putting
both feet in his mouth, "because the bad guy turned out to be your
father."

"NOOOOOOO!!! My daddy's good!" Page promptly starts crying, her
siblings following suit for at least the second time that day.

~*~*~

"Hey, hey, hey," Frohike panics, handing April and her bottle over to
Byers and hugging the little girl, "Page, you're right, you're right,
your daddy's a good guy. But back then, we didn't know, okay? We
didn't know him, and that why we thought he wasn't."

"Uncles are dum-dums," Page sniffles. It takes a little while longer,
but Sammy and April calm down as well, much to the Gunmen's relief.

"Yeah, well, like the man said, we didn't know," Frohike continues in
a placating tone. "But he didn't know Susanne was our friend first
and said he was the bad guy. So we said we were lost and were looking
for the bathroom," and is relieved when the girl giggles at the word.
"So he told us where it was, then showed us his FBI badge, and then
he showed us a picture of Susanne."

"Uh-oh," Page says. "Susanne bad girl." 

"You said it," Frohike agrees, overriding Byers' indignant "Hey!" "So
we went back to the booth to talk to Susanne, but when we got there,
they were arresting Uncle Byers' friend."

"They got the bad lady?" Page asks.

"Uh, not quite," Frohike says, "they got his coworker, Ken. Susanne
was already gone."

''Uh-oh," Sammy says, and Page agrees. They notice that their
sometimes-invisible friends have joined them, but none of the
grownups see extra children wander in the room. All the Gunmen can
sense is that the room has gotten slightly, but thankfully, cooler,
and Byers feels comfortable donning his suit jacket again.

"Yeah, and Uncle Byers was about to make another dumb move and turn
himself in." Frohike pauses and adopts a teacherly tone. "Hackers
never, ever turn themselves in. Got that?"

"Got it." Page nods solemnly, and so does Sammy.

"I don't think we should be telling them that," Byers argues, but
Langly kicks his leg. "Ow," he frowns, glad the children are paying
attention to Frohike than to himself.

"Anyway, that's when I suggested that we hack into the FBI database
to do a little checkup on Susanne and your daddy. Uncle Byers didn't
want to at first, but then he saw the light. And that's when he
officially became a hacker."

"Yay, Uncle Byers!" 

~*~*~

"So, even though your Uncle Frohike's kung foo is pretty good, I
figured we needed someone else to cover our bases, just in case,"
Frohike goes on, "and that's where Uncle Langly comes in." The short
man smirks as he does a mock Vanna White-like wave at the blond
hacker, who bows. "Me and Uncle Byers saved him from a mind-numbing
D&D game to get into a class hack."

"Hey!" Langly protests. "You ladies came asking for *my* help, even
though I was on a hot streak, got it? Hey, you even had to tell me my
kung foo was the best."

"Anyways," Frohike says, clearly disgruntled, "we didn't have the
cool digs we do now, so we rented a hotel room to hide all of
Langly's questionable equipment in."

"Watch it," Langly growls.

"Ooh, I'm scared," Frohike says, mocking him, and Page laughs. "But
the scary part's yet to come. So we look up your daddy, and what do
we find? That not only is he FBI, but he's a really smart good guy,
and that the person he's chasing down is Holly, whose real name is
Susanne Modeski. According to the computer, it said Susanne was
crazy, killed lots of people and lied a lot, too."

"Ohhhhhhh," Page says. "Susanne's a bad girl." 

"Got that right," Langly says, only to be elbowed by Byers. "Hey!" 

"And that's when Susanne walked into the room." 

"Uh-oh." 

~*~*~

"Okay, so there we were," Frohike says, and they're all practically
touching foreheads, they're leaning so close to hear his words, "we
just found out that Susanne was a bad guy, and she walks into the
room. We planned on playing it cool, but she reached into her purse,
and a gun fell out!"

"How come she had a gun?" Sammy asks.

"She had it for her own protection against the real villains," Byers
explains.

"Hey, who's telling the story, you or me?" the short man glares, and
his friend subsides. "So Susanne was waving the gun around, saying
she's innocent, that she's being framed and people are following her,
and you know what happened next?"

"What?" 

"She said people knew where she was through her teeth!" Frohike's
eyes are huge. "So she grabbed some pliers, ran into the bathroom,
and pulled her tooth out without any medicine!"

"Owie!" Page puts her hand to her mouth. The other day Sammy ran into
her and her front teeth hit the floor. She can't imagine anyone
wanting to pull their teeth out on purpose.

"But you know what? There was a little radio transmitter inside her
tooth, kinda what you'd find in there," he points to the stereo
system, "and so we flushed it down the toilet so the bad guys
wouldn't find us."

"Susanne not the bad guy?" Sammy is confused now, along with his
older sister.

"Nope," Frohike shrugs, earning another glower from his suited
friend. "There were bad guys who made her cook up some crazy gas that
wanted to spray it on innocent Americans. So we decided to help her
and go to the warehouse where the real bad guys put the real weapon.
We tracked it down to a bunch of boxes full of asthma inhalers and we
were ready to share the story with the world. And then the bad guys
showed up."

~*~*~

The leftover donuts are forgotten now that Frohike's rolling towards
the end of the story. "The bad guys grabbed Susanne and pointed their
guns at us. And then your dad showed up."

"Daddyyyyyyyyyy!" the kids crow, bouncing up and down on the couch.

"Whoa, whoa," Frohike says, wanting to keep the baby in his arms on
the quiet level, "okay, so yeah, your dad came in with his own gun.
Unfortunately, the bad guys started shooting, he shot back, everybody
was shooting, and so, being smart, we got out of the way."

"Okay, and now we sound like chickens," Langly drawls.

"Shut up, Langly," the short man mutters, "we were making a tactical
rendezvous, that's all."

"Like the kids know what that means." The blond man rolls his eyes.

"ANYways," Frohike plows on, "everybody was shooting, boxes were
being ripped apart, everything was crazy, and then one of the boxes
with the secret weapon got shot open and sprayed your daddy with the
gas! He started screaming and tearing off his clothes, the gas was
too much for him!"

"Oh, no!" Sammy's eyes are wide.

"Oh, yes!" Frohike shouts, forgetting about the baby in his arms. As
he absently rocks her, he says, "So your father was down for the
count, and the bad guys had us surrounded. They were just about to
shoot us, but they got shot instead." He pauses, looking at Byers.
"Susanne saved us."

"Yay, Susanne!" the kids yell, forgetful of the fact that only ten
minutes ago, she was the bad guy.

"Uh, yeah," the leather-vested man says, bouncing the baby in his
arms to keep her happy. "So, uh, she got out of there, because it
wasn't safe, and your uncles thought we'd grab some bottles of the
secret weapon for evidence, you know, but more bad guys came in. The
bad guys cleaned up most of the mess, took out the first set of bad
guys, and were about to shoot your daddy-"

"NO!" 

"Whoa," Langly rushes in to calm the older kids, "look, your dad's
alive, and you guys are here. That means there's gonna be a happy
ending soon, right?"

Frohike's relieved when Page doesn't fuss anymore, and goes on.
"Yeah, so this tall black guy with a beard and moustache tells his
goons not to shoot your dad. So your dad was a little nuts with the
gas, but he was alive. Bad news, the black dude saw us, lined us up
to kill us, and pulled the trigger." The kids are silent, wide-eyed.
"Good news, even though your Uncle Byers had a big mouth, the black
guy was cool enough to let us live, even gave us our nickname. The
Lone Gunmen."

"He was cool?" Byers frowns.

Frohike rolls his eyes. "All the evidence was gone, cleaned up by the
bad guys, but we were alive. Our luck went down again, because the
cops came in and arrested us. We spent a loooooooong night in the
stinking joint, but luckily, your dad sprang us the next morning. And
we've been friends ever since. The End."

"What about Susanne?" Page asks.

Byers pauses before he answers. "We don't know," he says honestly,
"we saw her not long after we left the police station, but the black
man took her away in a black car. She's probably still working for
the bad guys, against her will, maybe planning another escape from
the wicked men as we speak." He doesn't look at anyone, his gaze
drifting out the window, the sky darkening to a rich orange as the
sun sets. Behind him, ghostly children of another time fade away, and
the temperature warms, but only slightly.

~*~*~

Later that night, Scully is trying to put her still-excitable
children to bed. She's fairly certain that, despite her instructions,
Mulder had forgotten to put "no sugary snacks or drinks" on the list
they gave the Gunmen. "Uncles saved the world," Page insists
sleepily, even as her mother struggles to pull her nightgown over her
head.

"Of course," Scully says in a placating tone, freeing her daughter's
blonde hair from the neckline.

"And Daddy's not a bad guy, he's a good guy," she argues, her face a
miniature of her mother's when debating with her father.

"What have the Gun-, I mean, what have your uncles been telling you?"
Scully frowns, sitting next to her daughter.

"There was guns, an' bad guys, an' a lady los' her toot', an' Daddy,
an' uncles," Sammy says breathlessly, at the same time trying to free
himself from the hot nightclothes.

Scully sighs, re-clothing her squirmy little boy. "What lady lost her
tooth?" she asks.

"Susanne," Page answers, as if the answer is obvious. "Uncle Byers'
girlfriend."

"Really?" Scully's jaw drops.

"Uncle Langly said so," the little blonde girl says, oblivious to any
bomb-dropping she may have caused to her mother's perception of the
Gunmen. "'Cause she's smart and pretty."

The redhead smiles, noting the order of the compliment. "Well, Uncle
Byers is a smart man," she says, "so when can we meet her?"

"Susanne not here," Sammy says, kicking his feet as if that would
free his legs from the cotton pajama pants. "Bad guys got her."

"Oh," Scully says, absently hitting the button for the ceiling fan.
"That's sad."

"Uh-huh," Page agrees. She's under her thin sheet, her body still as
if ready for sleep, but her eyes are wide open. "Mommy, I wanna be a
hacker when I grow up," she says, her hands holding the blanket under
her chin.

"Why?" her startled mother asks.

"So I can talk to co'puters and rescue Susanne," the blonde girl says
practically.

"Me, too!" Sammy echoes, also diving under his sheet. If his sister's
going to sleep, he doesn't want her to beat him.

I may not understand them sometimes, Scully thinks, but I know
they've got good hearts. "Good night." She smiles and kisses her
daughter's forehead, who exhales peacefully. "Goooooood night," she
tells Sammy, who's still a squirmy worm under the sheet, holding his
forehead in place so she can kiss it. He giggles, still squirming,
but squeezes his eyes tightly shut as if to hasten sleep.

"Sweet dreams," she says softly, clicking off the overhead light, but
leaving the plug-in light on. She's going to ask Mulder about this
"Susanne," and what on earth happened that the Gunmen supposedly
saved the world, but weren't able to save their friend.

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty

 August 10th, 1997

There's a horrible yelp from downstairs, and Mulder nearly drops
April in shock. His older daughter looks at him with wide eyes,
seeming a little frightened too. "Daddy, what's that?"

Mulder pats her on the head with his free hand, as much to reassure
himself as her. "I'm not sure, I'm going to go see. Here, I'm putting
April in her crib, you keep an eye on her, okay?"

"Okay!" She seems pleased by the responsibility, not realizing that
her sister is way too young to get out on her own.

He misses a couple of steps on his way down the stairs and nearly
breaks his ankle. When he skitters to a stop in the living room,
ready to come to Scully's aide against whatever's attacking her, he
pauses in confusion.

Scully is alone except for Sammy, without an adversary, and she's
just on the phone. Her face is all smiles. Sammy doesn't even look up
from playing with his wooden blocks.

"I love you too, Bill." She hangs up with a happy sigh.

"What's going on? Page and I heard you scream..."

"It's finally happened, Mulder. Tara's going to have a baby around
Christmas."

"Wow, that's great," he says in a daze. ::Bill as a father. That's
scary every time you think of it:: "That's not too long from now,
though."

"They wanted to wait until it was safe before they got everyone's
hopes up," Scully tells him. "Bill said they found out today that
it's going to be a boy."

He nods, thinking about the "until it was safe" part. When she'd been
carrying William, had she waited to tell people, too? He didn't know,
because he hadn't been around, and she'd never said. "Your brother
must be thrilled."

"Oh, they both are. They've wanted a baby for so long..." Scully sighs.
"Thank god we've never had that problem."

She doesn't notice when he winces. "Your sister better watch out,
now. She's the only one who hasn't given your mother a grandchild.
Maggie will buy her a clock now."

"A clock?" Scully looks puzzled.

"Since she doesn't have a biological clock of her own." 

"Bad joke, Mulder." Even so, she smiles. "I can't believe I'm going
to have another nephew."

"And maybe this one won't be obsessed with movies about barnyard
animals."

"One can only hope." 

~*~*~

August 14th, 1997
8 a.m.

"Hey Page, wake up." Mulder gently pulls the sheet off of his
daughter.

She rubs her eyes and gives him a sleepy smile. "Hi, Daddy! Where's
Mommy?"

"Mommy and April are sleeping. Here, let's dress you in this first."
Mulder shows her a purple bathing suit; purple is currently her
favorite color. "Then we'll put on your coveralls and t-shirt on."

"How come?" 

"It's a surprise." 

Once she's dressed, Mulder heads for Sammy's bed. Since the
two-year-old isn't quite potty-trained, Mulder puts him in the new
disposable swim trunks for toddlers, then dresses him in coveralls
and a t-shirt too.

When he hands them buckets and shovels, Page figures out their
destination. "Going to beach, Daddy?"

"Yup." 

A huge smile breaks out on Sammy's face, and he runs for the closet
and tries to open the door. Curious as to what he wants, Mulder opens
it for him. After peering in for a moment, Sammy grabs something on a
hanger and tugs it.

It's the wet suit that he'd bought during the last Max case. His son
gives him an expectant look. "Daddy wear it."

The idea of wearing a wetsuit to the beach for no apparent reason
strikes him as silly and slightly embarrassing both, but it's easier
to give in than to disappoint his little boy. "Okay. I'll put it on
when we get there."

 Sammy tilts his head. "How come?" 

"Daddy can't drive if he wears it in the car." 

"Oh!" 

Mulder quickly scrawls a note for Scully - Took the kids to the
beach, be back in two or three hours. Love ya - gathers the wetsuit
under one arm, and opens the front door.

He shepherds the two children out the door, taking a moment to notice
again that Page is just a few inches taller than her brother despite
being nearly a year older. It seems as though she'll be petite like
their mother. And Sammy won't.

*

Once he lifts a rock, a small armored creature scurries out. Sammy
yells in surprise and lands on his bottom in the sand, giggling.
Page, on the other hand is nearly as inquisitive as her mother, so
she squats down and looks closely at the little creature in the tide
pool. "Whatzit called?"

"It's a crab," Mulder informs her.

Puzzlement fills her face. "Don't look like Nanna," she mumbles.

"What?" 

"Mommy says Nanna a crab," she explains while raking the sand next to
her with a seashell.

In spite of himself, he laughs. "She told you that, huh? And after
I've had nothing but nice things to say about your Grandma."

Page nods sagely. "You has different mommies." 

"That's an understatement." 

By this point Sammy has regained his courage and peers into the pool
on hands and knees. "My birthdee, Daddy?"

Smiling down at him, Mulder ruffles his son's coppery hair. "That's
right, Big guy. Today you're two."

Sammy looks somber for a moment. "Where cake?" 

"I think it's time to go home," Mulder announces. "I'm pretty sure
that there will be cake when we get there."

"Yay!" 

~*~*~

When they get back to the house Mulder finds Scully nursing the baby
in their bedroom. She gives him a sleepy smile. "How was the beach?"

Standing there he remembers the sound of ocean waves as Sammy's boat
floated on them, the squeal of both children as they chased after the
bouncing beach ball and away from him as the three of them pretended
that he was a wetsuit-clad monster...

"Great. They really seemed to enjoy it. And I brought you something."
He holds a Polaroid picture out to her. "I conned a kind soul into
taking it."

"You're right, it's clear that they had a good time. But why are you
wearing a wetsuit in the picture?"

He just smiles broadly. "I think there's a little boy downstairs
who'll give you that information if you deluge the location of his
cake."

"This ought to be good." She hands him the now fed baby to burp, and
goes to find her answer.

Mulder looks down at his youngest. "You know, what Mommy doesn't know
is that your brother didn't tell me why he wanted me to wear it, so I
couldn't answer her even if I wanted to."

April, for one, seems bored of the idea and closes her dark eyes
before they get downstairs to sing Happy Birthday to Sammy.

~*~*~

Route 43 Leon County 
North Florida 
October 1997

Mulder stares out the window as they drive down the lonely road,
wondering what he'd done to make God angry enough to subject him to
this for the second time. Maybe he ought to have learned his lesson
this time around and not have blown off the opportunities to do other
seminars, but he really thought that diaper rash on three kids was a
real good excuse to sway Skinner. Apparently the AD has never
considered the heartbreak that uncomfortable children suffer when
parted from their loving parents. Or maybe someone narc'd on them,
mentioning Scully's pride at Page being dry over night now.

Never one to waste a captive audience, Agent Kinsley blathers on and
on about past seminars. "Last year was something of a personal
revelation. We were doing an exercise called team builders? Where we
were given two minutes to build a tower out of ordinary office
furniture."

Not to be outdone, Agent Stonecypher concludes, "When I stood on
Mike's shoulders and I put that electric pencil sharpener on top of
the pile, we both knew, we could never have done it alone."

Mulder leans over and whispers in his wife's ear. "Kill me now." He
can tell that she's trying not to smile, so he pouts.

"You ever been to one of these team seminars, Agent Scully?" Kinsley
asks.

"Ummm...I think I went to a constructive problem solving course when
I first joined the Bureau."

This seems to excite Stonecypher for reasons Mulder can't fathom.
"Oh, did you play that game where, um, you can't use any negative
words?"

"I couldn't believe how hard it was not to use the word 'but.'"
Kinsley confesses.

"I'm having that same problem right now," Mulder says, causing Scully
to turn red from the effort of not cracking a smile.

"Have you ever been to a team seminar, Agent Mulder?" Stonecypher now
wants to know.

"No, you know unfortunately around this time of year I always develop
a severe hemorrhoidal condition," he replies, ducking out of Scully's
reach.

"Well, it builds muscles you didn't even know you had," Kinsley tells
him.

"Communication. That's the key," Stonecypher adds.

Mulder nods gamely, but says, "I find that communication doesn't take
that much effort when you're engaged in a carnal relationship with
your partner." Scully's eyes widen at his daring, so he quickly adds.
"Once you're married, I mean. What about you two, you're both single
aren't you? Maybe you ought to give a relationship a shot."

Interestingly enough, both agents turn red and can't seem to get any
words out, so he wonders if he's hit on something he hadn't suspected
about the seemingly straight-laced pair. Before either of them can
think of a way to respond, the car rolls up to a familiar looking
road block.

The officer who approaches the car gives them a mild look. "Sorry,
folks, it'll be a few minutes."

Kinsley looks desperately pleased at the change of topic. "What's
going on, officer?"

"Got a little situation is all." 

Before anyone can stop him, Mulder opens car door and gets out
quickly. "Free at last, free at last." The others watch him from the
car, but no one makes a move to get out.

As Mulder's stretching his cramped legs, he's approached by Mrs.
Asekoff. "Oh, excuse me. Are you from search and rescue?"

"No, I'm sorry, I'm not. I'm just stretching my legs." 

"They said they'd have word for us about what happened to my husband.
I need somebody to tell me what's going on." The woman looks like
she's about to cry.

"Just slow down," Mulder says soothingly. "I - I don't know what
you're talking about."

"My husband, Michael, he was teaching our son to shoot, and he said
the dog got spooked and then he heard gunshots and now he's said
they've found a jacket with blood on it, but they won't tell me
anything about my husband..."

"I'll try to find out who's in charge, all right?" 

"Oh, thank you." She looks so grateful he almost tears up himself.

 ~*~*~

Scully scrambles out of the car when she spots Mulder heading for the
woods. The other agents get out too, but get distracted by a tree, so
she leaves them behind. He's in the middle of explaining to officer
Michele Fazekas that he's with the FBI when Scully catches up to him.

"FBI? Who called you guys out?" 

Mulder puts his badge back into his pocket. "Nobody. We just got
stopped at your roadblock. It sounds like you had a shooting."

"Shots were reported, but we have no evidence of anyone being shot." 

"Well, what do you have evidence of?" Mulder asks, trying not to
catch his impatient wife's eye, so he can ignore the "we've got to
go" signal she's trying to send him.

"A survey team working these woods didn't report in last night We
found one man's bloody jacket pretty torn up. And this morning, a boy
got separated from his father."

"Separated by what?" 

"It looks, maybe, like some kind of animal attack." 

"What kind of animal?" 

"I'm not sure yet. I followed good tracks for the two surveyors but
the trails became confused as they moved into the brush. There was a
third set of tracks leading away. I...I couldn't identify." Michelle
says reluctantly.

"Couldn't identify as the surveyors'?" 

"As man or animal." 

"Mulder?" Scully asks.

"Oh, just, uh..." She gives him "come on" look." "Hold on a
second...What about the boy's father?"

"I tracked him all the way down to where he fired the shots. The
ground's rocky, but from the depressions in the underlying soil, I
can tell you that he entered the bushes from over there where I pick
up another set of tracks - two distinctly different sets of tracks
that from the way the ground's upset that is probably where the man
was attacked."

"But no other sign of him? Do you have panther in these woods?" 

"There's panther. Bear, too." 

"But these tracks look like neither of those." 

"No, sir." 

"You know of a good motel in the area?" She's about to protest when
he smoothly continues. "My partner and I have worked on several wild
animal cases in the past, so if you could use a couple extra sets of
eyes..."

To his surprise, Michelle doesn't bristle this time. "You're not the
agents who dealt with that thing they called the 'Flukeman' are you?
Even the news stations out her covered that. And the tabloids of
course."

Scully shudders. "This better not be another flukeman, one was
enough."

"So it was you!" Michelle gives them an admiring look. "If you could
spare the time, I'd love to have your help."

"I think-" Mulder begins.

His reply is interrupted when Scully pulls him out of earshot. "What
gives, Mulder? We've got this conference. They're waiting."

"Yeah. How do I say this without using any negative words, Scully?" 

"You want me to tell them that we're not going to make it to this
year's teamwork seminar."

"Yeah, you see that?" He puts his hands on her arms. "We don't need
that conference. We have communication like that, unspoken. You know
what I'm thinking."

She shakes her head and starts to walk off, but he calls to her.
"Besides, I think that Kinsley and Stonecypher would be happier if
they had the rest of the trip to be alone."

"You don't know that," Scully protests.

He taps the side of his head. "Call it ESP." 

~*~*~

Hotel

Mulder is looking at websites about predators when Scully returns to
their room carrying a tray of cheese and mini bottle of wine. "You're
the one who cut the cheese?" he asks with an immature grin.

"Since we won't be making it to the conference for the wine and
cheese reception..."

"Partaaayyy!" he crows, making her laugh. "And unlike our esteemed
traveling companions we don't even have to worry about that Tailhook
crap. See? There are some advantages to being married to your
partner."

"Sure are..." Scully says, climbing onto the bed next to him.

"Pop quiz. What animal will attack the strongest leaving the weakest
to escape? The answer is none. Not one of the over 4,000 species
native to North America will attack the strongest when the weak is
vulnerable."

"Well, what does that have to do with anything?" 

"It makes me think that what we're dealing with here is no ordinary
predator."

"I thought this was just a ploy to get out of the conference." 

"I think what we stumbled upon here is something more than what local
authorities realize. The scenario described by that boy sounds to me
like a primitive culling technique."

"Mulder, we're in Western Florida. The closest thing to primitive
down here is living in a beachfront retirement condo."

"Funny, I thought you'd be more sympathetic to a child in anguish,"
He chides, and she doesn't look contrite. "Those woods are as old as
anything in the south and there's 800 square miles of them. There's
no telling what's alive out there." He stands up.

"Where are you going?" 

"I've got to check something out." 

"You know, Mulder, sometimes I think some work on your communication
skills wouldn't be such a bad idea," Scully says with a smirk.

"I'll be back soon, and we can build a tower of furniture. 'Kay?" He
smiles at her.

"Nope." She slides of the bed too. "I'm coming too." 

He shrugs. "That works, too." 

~*~*~

 Asekoff House
Early Morning

Scully takes the tape of the classic Invisible Man film out of the
VCR in Louis' room.
"How's the boy?" she asks as she rejoins him in the living room.

"He's still freaked out." 

"I think I might have some insight into this invisible creature he
said was chasing him." She hands him the video tape.

"The Invisible Man was invisible," he protests.

"Right." 

"Yeah, he said he was chased by a creature with glowing red eyes."
Scully rolls her own eyes. "Let me show you something." They go to
the door. "Mrs. Asekoff said she went outside with the dog, right?"

"Mm hmm." 

"But when she came back, the door was locked from the inside." 

"And?" 

"Look at this. We got some tracks here." 

"Where?" 

"Here, and here..." He points at the floor. "Dried mud against the
tile, tracked in from the outside."

"That could have been brought in by the dog." 

"No, no. You see, uh, the ball of the foot here? A large foot and I
count five toes."

"Wait a minute. I thought you said it wasn't human." 

"Well, I'm not saying it is. The weight distribution is all wrong.
People walk heel to toe. Whatever this thing is it walks on the ball
of its foot."

"You're putting me on." 

"No. My dad and I were Indian Guides. I know these things." 

"So, if it's not man and it's not animal, what the hell is it?" 

Michelle enters just as he shrugs. "Guess I'm a little late to this
dance." She remarks.

"I found some tracks - right here." 

"Same as I saw before," Michelle confirms.

"Where was that?" Scully asks.

"In the woods. Weight distribution's strange. They appear to be
human, but whoever left these uses the balls of his feet more like an
animal." Scully glares at his triumphant look.

"Well, whatever it is, it's attacked three grown men, presumably in
broad daylight disposing of its prey without detection. And it wasn't
shy last night about coming out of the woods to try again. What we've
got here is a predator with low visibility and a high degree of
motivation. And it's got one advantage we don't have - the entire
Apilachacola National Forest," Mulder says.

"Then how do you stop it?" Michelle asks.

"By identifying it. Finding it before it finds somebody else." 

~*~*~

Mulder balks when the women indicate that they'd like to get going
quickly. "These things are dangerous. There's a possibility that we
could end up here overnight like the missing men - assuming they're
still alive. We need to bring warm clothes and sleeping bags if we're
to have a chance of survival in that case."

"Agent Mulder, we don't want to be carrying that sort of extra weight
with us," Michelle protests, and Scully nods her agreement.

"We won't carry it then, but better safe than sorry. Look, I saw a
documentary recently in which having the proper equipment might have
allowed the three missing people to survive -"Realizing that he's
beginning to describe the plot to the Blair Witch Project, which
won't be out for another two years, he opts for vagueness. "I just
don't want it to be us, okay?"

They grumble, but do spare the twenty minutes at a sporting goods
store to buy what he wants before they go and meet the other member
of the team in the woods.
 
~*~*~

On The Edge of The Woods

Jeff Glaser the tech expert Michelle called in shows them how the
heat sensor's camera and monitor reveals the presence of warm bodies.
"It's called FLIR for Forward Looking InfraRed. It was developed for
chopper pilots in Vietnam. Detects body heat at 300 yards."

"That's pretty sophisticated for government issue," Mulder remarks.

"Some people prefer searching with dogs, I prefer an extra pair of
hands if I get in trouble." Michelle explains. "Are we ready to go,
here? Once we start in, you can put away your cell phones. The only
communication in these woods is with short-wave radios. So stay
close, maintain visual contact. If you get lost, initiate oral
contact. That means holler. If nobody responds, sit down - don't
move. I will find you. Don't go looking for me. I know it sounds
obvious, but folks still get lost."

Scully hangs up her phone, which is just as well, because the signal
is fading out. "Local PD has all their resources looking out for a
transient, a drifter who's wanted for a double homicide in Gasden,
Alabama. They were amused when I told them what we were doing."

"I don't think it's a drifter, Scully, and we may be looking for two
individuals."

"Why do you say that?" 

"Well, that thing lured that woman out of the house last night to
separate her from her son."

"But for what purpose?" 

"Divide and conquer. If your enemy has greater numbers than you, you
divide and conquer it to diminish those numbers."

"What enemy would that be?" 

"Humans invading their niche. Encroaching development. That's what I
suspected when I went to check on Louis and his mother."

"You think this is about a housing tract?" 

"That survey team was staking out a new 100,000 acre plot.
Civilization is pushing very hard into these woods. Maybe something
in these woods is pushing back."

"Anything?" Scully asks, looking over Jeff's shoulder at the blank
monitor.

"No. No, nothing at all. Not even wildlife." 

"Isn't that a little strange?" 

"Yeah. This forest is usually alive with sound. I'm not like an
expert, but I've never seen it like this before."

"Well, it sure is beautiful, though." 

"That's what happens. People get to looking around, next thing they
know, something eats 'em."

"What do you think killed those men?" 

"Nature is populated by creatures either trying to kill something
they need to survive, or trying to avoid being killed by something
that needs them to survive. If we become blinded by the beauty of
nature, we may fail to see its cruelty and violence."

"Walt Whitman?" Scully guesses.

"No. When Animals Attack on the Fox Network." 

~*~*~

Despite Michelle's caution, two hours later they're again minus one
police officer. Once she disappears Jeff becomes semi-hysterical, and
Mulder gives in to his demands that he lead the way only to keep him
from cracking up.

Jeff walks ahead, holding the device like it's their salvation.

Hanging back a bit, Scully speaks to her husband. "I don't have much
faith that this device will do us any good."

"So far all it's done is split us up." 

"Whatever it is that we were chasing did show up on the screen at
first."

"What does that tell you?" 

"Nothing," Scully concedes.

"Mm hmm." 

"Except that we're going in the right direction." 

"Maybe it can regulate its temperature. Do you know of any animal
that can?"

"Ticks. I've heard that they can halt their metabolism for up to 18
years, essentially going into suspended animation until something
warm-blooded comes along."

"That's interesting." 

"Why is that interesting?" 

"Thirty years ago, the, uh, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia
was terrorized for over a year by something - killing livestock and
terrorizing the people. Witnesses described them as primitive looking
men with red piercing eyes. Became known as the 'moth men.' I've got
an X-File dating back to 1952 on it."

"What would that be filed next to...'The Cockroach That Ate
Cincinnati?'"

"No, 'The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati' is in the C's. 'Moth Men's
over in the M's."

Jeff interrupts their conversation to inform them that they must have
gotten off the trail.

Scully sees movement in the trees. "Everybody stand still. There's
something out there."

She and Mulder pull their guns out. "Where?" 

"About 40 or 50 yards out." 

They give chase for a while and Scully fires at it, hitting nothing.

"Don't fire again unless you're sure you're gonna hit it. It may be
trying to spend our advantage," Mulder warns her after she admits she
only has one clip.

She's shaken. "What the hell is it, Mulder?" 

"I don't know. But what ever it is, it's smarter than us - at least
out here." No sooner have the woods left his mouth is he pulled out
of Scully's view.

Running towards where he was, she screams his name until she hears
his pain-filled voice. As she nears she sees him wresting with a
creature that keeps wandering in and out of her sight. She fires
several shots at it, missing each time but driving it off. Mulder is
bleeding from a deep shoulder laceration when she finally reaches
him.

"You okay?" she asks breathlessly. 

Mulder winces and nods weakly. "Jeff's gone now too." 

Whirling on her heel she sees that he's right. They're alone in the
quiet woods.

~*~*~

The Forest
 After Dark

Since Michelle isn't around to scold them, they wander in the woods a
bit trying to locate where they dropped the sleeping bags.
Unfortunately, they don't stumble across them.

When they eventually give up, Mulder huddles up against a log while
Scully tries to start a fire with rocks.

"You were an Indian Guide. Help me out here." 

"Indian Guide says maybe you should run to the store and get some
matches."

"I would, but I left my wallet in the car. Wherever we left that..."
She sits next to him and picks up her gun.

"What are you doing?" Mulder asks listlessly. 

"Trying to open my gun. If I can separate the shell from the casing
maybe I can get the powder to ignite."

"Oh. And maybe it'll start raining weenies and marshmallows." 

"Do I detect a hint of negativity?" 

"No. Yes...actually. Yeah. And I'm more concerned about being able to
shoot at that thing if necessary, than about an unlikely fire."

"Mulder, you need to keep warm," she protests. "Your body's still in
shock."

He looks over his shoulder at something she can't see before saying,
"I was told once that the best way to regenerate body heat was to
crawl naked into a sleeping bag with somebody else who's already
naked."

"Well, maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you'll get lucky." 

He flips one of the sleeping bags that she hadn't noticed until then
up in the air, making her laugh. "Do I get lucky now?"

"It's worse than I thought. Not only are you in shock, you're
delirious." He snorts. "Have you thought seriously about dying?"

"Yeah, once, when I was at the Ice Capades." 

"When my dad died unexpectedly like that, I was angry at the
injustice of it and its meaninglessness. And then I realized that
that was the struggle - to give it meaning. To make sense of it. It's
like life."

"I think Nature is supremely indifferent to whether we live or die. I
mean, if you're lucky you get 75 years. If you're really lucky you
get 80 years. And if you're extraordinarily lucky, you get to have 50
of those years with a decent head of hair."

"I guess it's like Las Vegas. The house always wins." 

"Hey, who did you identify with when you were a kid? Wilma or Betty?"


"I identified with Betty's bustline," Scully tells him as she unzips
the sleeping bag.

"Yes! I did, too." He stares at her chest. "At least one of us
outgrew the likeness."

"Could never have been married to Barney, though. The kids were
cute."

"But where are they today?" Mulder asks. "And our kids are way
cuter."

"Moth Men? Really?" 

He nods. "Yeah. But there seem to be only two of them." Scully tries
to pull him onto her lap. "I don't wanna wrestle."

"Get over here. I'm going to try and keep you warm." Mulder complies
but she accidentally rubs his wounded shoulder. It makes him hiss in
pain. "Sorry."

"One of us has got to stay awake, Scully," he protests as she wraps
the sleeping bag around them both.

"You sleep, Mulder." 

"If you get tired, you wake me." 

"I'm not going to get tired." 

"Why don't you sing something." 

"No...Mulder." 

"You sing to the kids." He pouts. "I've heard you. Well, if you sing
something, I'll know you're awake."

"Mulder, you don't want me to sing. I can't carry a tune." 

"It doesn't matter. Just sing anything." 

Scully looks around, making sure there are no other witnesses, and
then begins to sing slightly off key and without enthusiasm.
"Jeremiah was a bull frog..."Her voice wavers when his eyes pop open
"...was a good friend of mine. Never understood a single word he
said. but I helped him drink his wine." She pauses.

"Chorus," he demands

"Joy...to the world. All the boys and girls. Joy to the fishes in the
deep blue sea. Joy to you and me." She looks down at him. "I...I can't
sing any more. Were you serious about wanting to get lucky?" After a
moment of investigation under the sleeping bag her eyes widen. "Ah,
you were."

"I was." 

"Well, that'll keep me awake for a while..."

"And you're better at *that* than singing," he agrees, knowing that
she hasn't the heart to hit him. For now. Instead of smacking him she
laughs and pulls the sleeping bag over their heads, figuring the
noise will scare away any less than voyeuristic animal.

~*~*~

Morning

Mulder wakes up slightly panicked when he realizes he's alone.
"Scully?!"

"Mmmm...over here." She's about 20 yards away, apparently eating
something.

"What are you doing?" 

"I'm looking for food. I found some wild berries." 

"That sounds like a good way to get the wild runs," he tells her.
"Please don't go far."

"Mulder, you never left my sight," she reassures him, right before
disappearing from sight.

"Scully?" He gets up painfully and goes to where she was. "Scully?
Scully! Scully!?"

A voice near his feet says, "I'm down here".

"Where?" 

"I fell down a hole." 

He looks and sees her getting to her feet at the bottom of a hole ten
feet deep. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I landed on soft dirt . kind of." 

"What's down there?" 

"I don't know. It's pretty dark." Scully steps out of view. "Oh!" 

"Scully, what's going on? Are you okay?" 

"I found Michelle." 

"Is she alive?" 

"Not for much longer. Mulder, we have to get her out of here." 

"Is there a way out?" 

"I don't know. I . I'm in some kind of a chamber. There's, there's
like some kind of network. Mulder..."

"Yeah?" 

"I'm not alone. I don't have my weapon. Mulder!?" 

"Hold on, I'm going to drop my gun down." 

He drops gun, then hears rustling behind him. As Scully bends to pick
up his gun, Mulder dives into the hole too. "Jeez!! Mulder, are you
okay?"

Groaning, he holds his shoulder, and ground in pain. "Don't mind me."


The creature begins to move towards them, and he shouts a warning.
"Scully!"

Scully fires three or four shots and it drops to the ground,
seemingly dead. They look at creature's body. It looks like a person
carved out of wood.

"Mulder, look. There has to be a scientific explanation for this." 

~*~*~

Mulder looks up at Scully as they work to stack bodies of long-dead
victims up under the hole. "Too bad we don't have any office
furniture."

"If they could see us now." 

"Go, team. Twenty more bodies and we'll win the Honey-Baked Ham."

A familiar voice calls out, "Agent Mulder?" 

"We're down here!" 

Agent Kinsley peers down at them. "What're you doing down there?" 

To Mulder's surprise, it's Scully who has the smart remark. "Seemed
like a good place for our second honeymoon."

"We've got injured people down here," Mulder tells Kinsley.

"We need a ladder," Scully adds, waving with her hand to indicate
they're too deep under ground to climb out.

"Right away." 

~*~*~

Ambulances load Michelle, Jeff and Mr. Asekoff, while another EMT
bandages Mulder's injured shoulder.

As soon as Mulder is released, Kinsley comes over to him. "Well, we
just got all the thanks when you did all the work."

"No, on the contrary, Agent Kinsley, we would never have gotten
involved in this if not for you."

"Really?" 

Mulder points at a tab on the crosscut - 1521 Ponce De Leon Lands
Looking for Fountain of Youth. "Yeah, you see this?"

"Oh, yeah. I pointed that out to Agent Stonecypher on the drive
down."

"There was something in the cave that Scully fell into, an
inscription - Ad Noctum."

"That's, uh -"

"It means 'into darkness'. The Spanish Conquistadors used to carve it
on the posts that they would lash the natives to as a warning,"
Mulder explains.

"So who're you saying wrote this?" 

"Ponce De Leon came here 450 years ago looking for the Fountain of
Youth."

"You mean you think that these...that - that - that- that body the
one that Agent Scully shot? No -"

"After 400 years in the woods don't you think they might have adapted
perfectly to their environment?"

"You're just making this up." 

"Why do you say that?" 

The other agent laughs uncomfortably. "'Cause, you work on the
X-Files, and you just want to write off your motel." He looks over
his shoulder quickly before adding. "And earlier? You were right."

"About what?" Mulder asks blankly.

"About us giving the couple thing a shot." Kinsley blushes when they
see Stonecypher approaching.

"Search and Rescue are still unable to find one of the surveyors or
the second predator that you reported," she tells them.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't find either one of them,"
Mulder replies.

"Agent Mulder, I'm confused about one thing. Why would they come
after the boy in the house that night?"

"These predators have been in these woods for a long, long time. They
would have perceived any encroachment on their territory as an enemy,
even a little kid like that."

"But that would mean that they'd come after any one of us that had
gone into the woods, wouldn't it?"

He nods, then looks around. "Where's Scully?" 

"Oh, she got a lift back to the motel to pack up both your things,"
Stonecypher says.

"She did? Excuse me." Before either agent can protest, he hops into
their car and drives off.

~*~*~

Motel

"Scully!? Scully!!!??" 

Scully leans out of the bathroom. "Mulder, what's going on?" 

"Let's get out of here," he says, picking up his suitcase and bumping
gently against her until she gets moving.

"'Kay," she says, picking up the other suitcase.

"You pack everything?" 

"Yeah." 

As he closes the door he catches a glimpse of red eyes under the bed.
Scully thinks he's shivering from pain, and wraps her arm around his
waist, having no idea that he's praying that the manager doesn't rent
out the room in the next few hours.

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty-One

 Halloween 1997

Although agent Brandywine doesn't have children, his sick partner
Jerry Stone does, so he's not terribly surprised to find himself
roped into chaperoning. This isn't his ideal way to spend the day,
because as much as he dislikes his partner, he dislikes his kids even
more. Luckily, only the youngest goes to the preschool.

On the other hand, it's only a few minutes after he gets there that
he's got little Reese demanding his attention - just like his father.

"Uncle Bobby!" Reese whines, tugging on his sleeve. Brandywine tries
not to shudder; he really hates being called Bobby, and is still
pissed that his partner encourages his kids to. "Tell Page that she's
a liar!"

A small blonde girl scowls at Reese. "Am not." 

"Uh huh!" the little boy insists, quickly sticking his tongue out at
the little girl. "Page says her daddy and mommy work with monsters."

"They do!" the girl insists.

Sighing, Brandywine looks down at the girl. Her parents are almost
certainly FBI agents, but he can't think of any blonde agents off the
top of his head that would refer to criminals as monsters. Not that
the parents need to be blondes. "What's your name?"

"Page." 

"Page what?" 

"Page Nicole Mulder," the child chirps.

"Oh..." Brandywine can't help but smile. The child's parents were
being literal, if they told her about who they've been involved with.
"Your mom and dad are agents Mulder and Scully, aren't they?"

"Yup." 

The agent looks down at his partner's son. "Page isn't lying, Reese.
Her parents do work with monsters."

Reese's eyes widen in shock. "Mommy and Daddy say monsters ain't
real!"

"That's because your parents are narrow-minded and over protective,"
Brandywine explains.

"Daddy!" The little girl runs towards a tall smiling man.

His partner's brat is still staring at Brandywine with a dumbfounded
expression on his face, making the agent feel a bit self-satisfied.
Maybe when the little brat tattles his father will request a new
partner and he'd be able to wash his hands of the whole family.

~*~*~

At first Page was very excited that her Daddy is going to be at
school, but now she's not so sure. Not everyone's parents are there,
so she has to share her Daddy with three other kids. Megan is a
witch, Hannah - who has the same name as her parents' friend's little
girl - is a kitten, and Hunter is Batman. Page is a princess, and
Daddy says that she's one even when she's not all dressed up. But
he's silly like that.

"So," Her Daddy says, looking at the four of them. "Are you guys
ready to go to the haunted house?"

"Yeah!" they all scream, but Page thinks that Hannah is a scardy-cat,
'cause she doesn't look as happy as the rest of them.

"Looks like it's time to get on the bus," Daddy notes before ushering
them out to the line. Page is very careful to tell him where the best
seats are, and they're real lucky to get to them first before Reese
and his friend do. Daddy tells them all to sit down safely, and they
do.

The drive doesn't take too long, but Page wishes it was longer. That
way she could make more faces at Reese, who is pouting with his arms
crossed, and not listening to anything the grown up friend of his is
saying.

"Let's go," Daddy says. "We're going to have lots of fun today,
right?"

"Yeah!" they say again, but Page looks at her three friends. She has
no idea what a haunted house is, and she wonders if any of them do.

~*~*~

As far as Mulder is concerned, this is the best Halloween ever. At
least the best one since he was a little kid, anyway. His parents
didn't believe in letting kids go trick o treating as teenagers - not
that he really wanted to after Samantha disappeared. Before then
there were some good Halloweens, but they're bittersweet to remember,
so he usually tries not to.

This is better. His little girl and her three remarkably well-behaved
classmates are completely wide-eyed as they begin to go into the
haunted house. He has the sense that no one told any of the kids what
a haunted house was, given that they seem perpetually surprised by
what's going on.

**

"Hannah and Hunter, you come back now," he demands, beginning to
become exasperated by his duty as kid-herder. The two kids squeal and
run back to where he's standing with Page and Megan.

If this is the "less scary" version of the haunted house like the
preschool claimed, he's really glad that they didn't choose to go to
the scarier version late in the day. The kids are getting a bit less
well-behaved because they're scared. It's not as though he can blame
them, he knows his own behavior goes to pot when he's got a scary
case. Although to be honest, his cases are considerably scarier than
the things that fall or jump out at the kids.

He scarcely has gotten those two back when Page and Megan take off.
Before he quite knows it, the only one still near him is Hannah.
"Hey, Hannah, why don't we go catch up with the rest of them," he
says cheerfully.

Before they do he hears a familiar little voice shout. "Ah, it's a
monster! Daddy, come kill it!"

Rounding the corner he almost screams himself...with laughter. Three
tiny people have cornered a much larger one, and they're swinging the
plastic sacks full of candy from the trick-o-treating back at the
preschool at the poor cowering figure.

"Page's Daddy kills monsters. You gonna be in trouble," Hunter says
in what is probably supposed to be a warning tone.

"You three, here, now," Mulder demands sternly.

His tone of voice doesn't have quite the desired effect, because
instead of being contrite, three little faces look up him
expectantly. "Kill the monster."

"Yeah, kill it!" 

Across the room the figure struggles to its feet, and it's impossible
to tell if he or she is alarmed because his or her face is covered by
a hideous mask. It reminds Mulder a bit of the Flukeman, but greener.

"That's not a monster," Mulder tells them.

"Is too!" 
"Yeah huh!" 

Trying not to roll his eyes, Mulder raises his voice instead. "Would
you mind taking off your mask, please, and showing them you're not a
monster?"

"I'm not supposed to," is the muffled reply.

Mulder looks down at the knee-high but bloodthirsty quartet. "Are you
sure you want them to continue thinking you're a monster?"

The "Monster" seems to consider this for a moment, then peals off the
mask, revealing a woman around eighteen or so.

The kids look a bit disappointed, and scowl when Mulder tells them,
"Now apologize for hitting the nice lady and calling her a monster."

"We're sorry," they chorus, then Page walks over to her and holds out
a Snickers bar, which Mulder knows is her favorite. "Want some
candy?"

The woman takes it and they soon leave her behind. No one else is hit
the rest of the day.

~*~*~

December 1997 
 
A family is driving through the deep heartland of America, taking an
all-American trip in an All-American Taurus, looking for all the
world like a car commercial in motion. "Mommy, where are we going?" a
plaintive voice from the back asks.
 
"Read 'em the letter, Scully," Mulder says as his wife glares daggers
at him.
 
"Sure. Fine. Whatever," the redhead digs through her work purse,
designated as such so that nobody stuffs Cheerios into it. It doesn't
stop Mulder from putting discarded sunflower shells into it, however,
she grimaces as she pulls the envelope from among the said shells.
"Dear Special Agent Mulder," she twists somewhat in her seat to face
her inquisitive little girl, squirming boy and sleeping baby, "I'm
writing to you for help. Several years ago I had an experience I
could not explain. I was lying in my bed when I felt a presence in
the room. Though I was awake, I felt that something had taken control
over my body. I don't remember much else but I woke up three days
later pregnant with my son, Izzy."
 
"Izzy!" Page laughs, and Sammy repeats the name several times before
Scully can continue reading.
 
"That was 18 years ago, but now it happened again. I was in bed and
could swear I heard Cher singing... The one who was married to Sonny."
Scully indulges herself in an eyeroll as Mulder smirks behind the
wheel. "Then the room got all smoky, and I saw some kind of monster.
He had a really gross face with lumps all over his head. I was too
scared to scream. Then I got all groggy and conked out fro three
days. Guess what happened when I woke up? I got your name off the TV.
Some lady on the Jerry Springer show who had a werewolf baby said you
came to her house." She pauses. "You did what?"
 
Mulder is careful to keep his eyes on the road. "Just a consulting
job, you do that sometimes, don't you, honey?"
 
"Sure, poopyhead," she shakes her head, then looks at her kids.
"Don't repeat that." As they blink, she finishes the letter quickly.
"Well, I got her story beat by a mile so maybe you'll want to come
see me, too. Sincerely, Shaineh Berkowitz." Hurriedly, she stuffs the
letter back into her purse. "You brought us all the way out here
for," she's waving her hands, unsure of how best to describe it
without using negative words her children will repeat later,
"*this*?"
 
He glances at her, then grins widely. "With our casefiles, *we* got
Springer beat by a mile. You think we should get a show together and
make some real money?"
 
She smiles a fuck-you smile, then looks at her sweet babies. "Daddy's
silly, isn't he?"
 
As their children giggle, Mulder shakes his head. "No, no, Daddy's
*brilliant*," he argues, but knows it's a losing battle.
 
~*~*~ 
 
As Mulder and Scully walk through the Berkowitz home, Mulder's
careful to hoist his wall-climbing son on his shoulders and carry the
diaper bag, while Scully has April strapped to her front and holding
on to goggle-eyed Page. Mrs. Berkowitz looked at them oddly at first,
but let them in, explaining, "Sorry, I thought you were them
preachin' people at first. Well, until you showed my your badges
instead of Bibles."
 
"Uh, yeah," Scully says, wrestling with balance between her two
daughters. "I understand you reported both the intruders' break-in
and the union to the police."
 
"Well, I don't know about no union, but I sure woke up in a
condition." The heavyset woman nods.
 
"And what did the police report say?" Scully asks, both to Mrs.
Berkowitz and Mulder.
 
"Uh, nothin'," Mrs. Berkowitz replies, "nobody here ever locks their
doors, and it took me a month or two to figure it out...I mean, that
I was pregnant, you know?" She raises her eyebrows at Scully, mother
to mother.
 
Yeah, I should talk, if it wasn't for that FBI-mandated exam, I
wouldn't've known I was pregnant as early as I did, either, Scully
reluctantly nods. "So, you're pregnant now?" she says.
 
The curly-haired woman nods, "Uh-huh, but as I told Agent Mulder,
that's what takes the cake."
 
"Figure of speech, she doesn't have cake," Mulder cuts off his
children's whining before it starts, and to his wife, "she had a
tubal ligation two years ago."
 
"You can't plant a seed in a barren field," Mrs. Berkowitz delivers
this with a pragmatism learned and leads them to her kitchen, where
the two older children still hold out hope for cake. She holds up a
frying pan, then hands it over to Scully. "They were cooking
something on the range. Took me two days of scrubbin' to clean the
skillet." She watches the red-haired woman inspect the pan, then
glance at her husband before setting the skillet down. "I don't know
how many of them there were. I only saw the one, but they ate almost
a whole damn jar of peanut butter." She holds aloft the empty jar,
then hands it over when Sammy starts reaching for it.
 
Mulder smothers a smile at both his son and his wife as she tries to
salvage what she believes is a complete waste of their time. "You
were gone for three days but nobody noticed?"
 
Mrs. Berkowitz crosses her arms. "I know what you're thinkin'." 
 
Always straightforward when she has to be, Scully asks, "Do you
drink, Mrs. Berkowitz?"
 
"No," Mrs. Berkowitz replies in the same tone, "but I'm not so sure
my intruders, as you call them, didn't have a few." She walks over
and points to two ring-shaped watermarks on an old cabinet. "Somebody
set a tumbler here and didn't use no coaster." She notes Scully's
look and adds, "And don't you think my boy did that. He don't have
much brains, but he does value his life." She waves at an open door.
"That pigsty there is his room."
 
Page laughs. "That's what Mommy calls Daddy's office." 
 
"Page," Scully sighs as Mrs. Berkowitz chuckles and Mulder gives his
wife a mock-outraged look. She doesn't hear her husband's muttered
conversation with the woman, since Page has picked up a comic book.
"Page, you shouldn't touch other people's things," she says, but then
frowns at the cover. "Honey? Mommy wants to look at that," she says,
taking it from her daughter. Besides, she'd rather flip through the
black-and-white funnybook than go through the well-described pigsty.
"Mrs. Berkowitz? You gave a description of the intruder. You said
that he had a gross face and lumps on his head?"
 
Mrs. Berkowitz nods enthusiastically. "And two mouths. I don't know
if I mentioned that."
 
Scully almost takes it in stride. "Funny. Sounds just like this." She
holds up the comic book. Mulder joins her and peers at the familiar
comic book, making sure his son's peanut butter-stained hands don't
touch the evidence.
 
"Oh, that?" The curly-haired woman blinks, then explains, "That's the
Great Mutato." In a proud voice, she adds, "That's a comic book
character my kid Izzy created."
 
They all turn when they hear the door slam. "What's going on?" a
heavyset young man with a blank expression asks.
 
His mother gives him a scolding look about the door, then explains,
"These are agents Mulder and Scully from the FBI. They brought their
kids."
 
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation?" Izzy asks, less blank but no
less confused as to how a perfectly normal-looking family is standing
in his house.
 
"We were wondering how this suspect in your mother's case looks
exactly like this?" Scully asks, then nudges her husband.
 
Mulder closes the comic book and holds it up. "The Great Mutato." 
 
"Because I," the young man says hesitantly, "I've seen him, too." 
 
"You've seen the Great Mutato?" Scully says the name in the same tone
she reserves for aliens, Elvis, and Big Blue sightings.
 
"Yeah, a lot of people around here have," he says, more eager now. 
 
The redhead is trying not to scream. It wouldn't look very good for
her kids or the FBI, and she's long given up on Mulder. "Has it
crossed neither of your minds that what you say you saw that night
fits perfectly with this creature that your son created?"
 
Now the curly-haired woman is somewhat defensive. "Well, yeah. But,"
she looks at each of them, "that don't mean it didn't happen."
 
Mulder and Scully share a look, but each with their own thoughts. 
 
~*~*~ 
 
Later that night, after they have tucked their kids in the motel bed
for the umpteenth time, Scully looks at Mulder. "Okay, what the hell
is this?" she asks, careful to keep her voice down just in case.
 
Mulder looks up, then looks back down at the casefile he's hastily
assembled and spread out on their bed. "What's what?" he asks back.
 
She sits on the bed, then leans in so he can't avoid looking at her.
"Why the hell are we out here?" she asks. "It's a classic rape case,
with a neighborhood scientist in the area, nothing unusual or
paranormal about it."
 
"But doesn't Doctor Pollidori scream 'Frankenstein' to you?" Mulder
really looks at her. "And what about that creature we saw in the
woods? You saw it, didn't you?" he frowns.
 
"I saw," she sighs loudly, "something. But it could've been a normal
person taking two quick bites, not a monster," she adds quickly.
 
He grins, then sobers, his eyes crinkling with his forehead. "I also
think Shaineh Berkowitz deserves to know who raped her, don't you?"
 
His wife nods. "Then that's for the local police to investigate,"
Scully kisses her mildly insane husband's forehead. "Not an FBI
matter," she tries to put the papers away.
 
He shakes his head. "No, there's something more here," he insists,
brushing away her hands, knowing that saying "Because we've lived
through this before and there is a monster and a Frankenstein" won't
help his case.
 
"Mulder, stop," she says, putting her hands on his, "please. There's
nothing for us here."
 
"There is," he repeats, but the sight of Scully unbuttoning her
FBI-approved blouse has him mildly distracted. "Really, there is," he
tries again, but his hands are unfastening her bra while she kisses
and fondles him. "Scully."
 
"Shut up, Mulder," she whispers in his ear, wriggling out of her
pants, "the kids are asleep and I'm fuckin' horny."
 
"Isn't 'fuckin' horny' repetitive?" Mulder asks, giving in to both
their lusts, lying against the wall and trying like hell to get his
fly undone.
 
She smirks and promptly unzips him with an aplomb that will never
cease to amaze him. "If you don't want repetitive, I guess it'll be
just a one-orgasm night," she says, mock-regretfully as she pulls off
his pants.
 
"Hell, no," Mulder hugs her to him, and she giggles. "We're gonna
have as much fun as we can until somebody wakes up."
 
Her hand on his crotch, Scully grins wickedly. "Somebody's up, I
guess it's over," she says, reaching for her blouse.
 
She giggles again when he grabs her wrist and blocks her with his
leg. "I do believe there was a fuckin' horny woman, and I'll be
damned if I'm gonna disappoint her," he says, grinning back, taking
off his shirt.
 
They spend the rest of the night repeating some very pleasurable acts
and positions, and managing, by some miracle, not to wake their
children while indulging in the original process of procreation.
 
~*~*~ 
 
The FBI couple pull up to JJ's Country Diner, absently rubbing each
other's shoulders. They've still got a bit of an afterglow, which
their children have unfairly taken advantage of, so they've got to a
bit of a late start. "Coffee?" Scully asks as she opens the back door
to unbuckle their kids.
 
"Two sugars, no cream," he says, and she gives him a relieved smile
before he walks inside. And this time, he welcomes the massive spread
the waitress sets before him, since it'll save him time ordering for
the kids. He half-grins as the strange woman rattles off the large
repast, including the "monster grapefruits." If she only knew, he
thinks, and yawns briefly before asking, "Excuse me, could I have
some coffee? We'd appreciate it."
 
"Sure." The waitress nods, deftly filling a coffee mug, "on the
house. Compliments of JJ." Mulder nods as JJ calls out, "That's with
two Js!" Then the woman blinks. "Did you say we?"
 
No, I was speaking French, Mulder's about to say as he dumps two
sugars in the cup, when his family troops in, settles around him and
helps themselves to the food. "Another cup of coffee," he says,
pushing the first filled mug to his wife.
 
"Thanks." Scully smiles, sipping her coffee. Despite the bustle that
a small family brings, surprisingly nobody seems to pay them too much
attention. "Guess what," she says, handing over the newspaper while
keeping an eye on the kids and feeding April. "Amazingly, last
night's entire conversation is front page news."
 
~*~*~ 
 
After Shaineh Berkowitz reams out her son Izzy for recording and
giving the conversation over to the newspaper, Mulder and Scully step
out of the Berkowitz house, children in tow. "Where are we going
now?" Scully asks, shifting April on her hip.
 
Mulder holds up the tape. "To messenger this to the Bureau. I want
special audio to filter the tracks and ten I want to go back to see
the professor."
 
"Mulder, it's just some stupid hoax," Scully argues, then bounces
April onto her shoulder when she starts fussing. "Shhhh, shhhh, it's
okay, Daddy's got another wild goose chase," she coos.
 
"What goose?" Page asks. "I don't see goose." She and her brother
start peering back at the neighbors who are watching them.
 
"Figure of speech, Page," Mulder says by rote. "And something
recorded its voice on this, Scully."
 
His wife shoots him a wry look. "And you think Doctor Pollidori has
something to do with it?"
 
He grins and squats down to his older children's height, but still
towers over them. "When Victor Frankenstein asks himself, 'Whence did
the principle of life proceed?' and then as a gratifying summit to
his toils creates a hideous phantasm of a man, he prefigures the
Postmodern Prometheus. The genetic engineer whose power to reanimate
matter - genes into life - is only as limited as his imagination is."
Then he takes Sammy's chubby little wrists and waves them around in a
parody of a monster, making the boy rock back and forth rather than
walk. "Loiiiife," he cackles in a horrible Boris Karloff imitation,
"I have created liiiiiiife."
 
Two of the Scully girls laugh while the third is drooling on her
mother's shoulder. The eldest Scully shakes her head and adjusts the
towel on her shoulder. "I can't believe you'd reduce this man to a
literary stereotype, a mad scientist."
 
Still playing monster with his boy, Mulder replies, "Who else would
go to such trouble to impregnate Shaineh Berkowitz?" Grinning at his
oldest daughter, he adds, "Bwuhahahahaha!" and makes as if Sammy the
Monster is going to attack.
 
Page squeals and laughs as Scully rolls her eyes. Honestly, he may
quote classic literature, but will he never grow up? As Sammy growls
and roars along with his father, she sighs. Never mind.
 
~*~*~ 
 
The trip to the hospital was complicated only by the fact that the
obstetrician thought they were coming in for themselves rather than
for Mrs. Berkowitz. Once they had that miscommunication straightened
out, Scully got her hot little hands on the subject's file and never
took her eyes off it. That left Mulder to shepherd the kids into the
backseat and buckle them in, while his partner peaceable peruses the
contents of the folder. Driving down the road of this somewhat bland
neighborhood, he glances at his wife, then his kids. Strange to think
we're actually the most normal people in this town, he thinks, and
smiles, returning his eyes to the road.
 
"I have to admit, Mulder, everything looks in order. Mrs. Berkowitz
had a tubal ligation in 1993 and two months ago, she had two
pregnancy tests both with positive results."
 
When he sees the tented house, Mulder formulates a plan of action. He
stops the car and reverses it, with amazingly no cars to hit either
way.
 
"What are you doing?" Scully frowns as the scenery goes by backwards.

 
"Mrs. Berkowitz said in her letter that when she saw her intruder,
there was a gaseous white cloud and then when she woke up three days
later, nobody knew that she'd been gone."
 
Scully's staring at her husband like he's lost his mind. Not a new
expression, but still. "Yeah. So?"
 
He pulls up to the Pollidori house, covered in a bug extermination
tent. "So," he says, unbuckling himself, "if I'm not out in fifteen
minutes, call an ambulance. I don't want you or the kids inhaling any
of that stuff."
 
She shoots him an indignant look and unlocks her seatbelt. "What
about you inhaling that stuff? What about backup?"
 
He kisses her on the forehead and puts his hand on her shoulder,
keeping her in her seat. "Fifteen minutes," he says, unholstering his
gun and running towards the house.
 
She exhales, then looks at her kids. "He's right, but it's still
stupid to run in there without backup," she tells them.
 
Page nods. "Silly Daddy." 
 
Scully nods back. "Exactly." 
 
~*~*~ 
 
Exactly eighteen minutes later, paramedics are dragging out not only
a seemingly hung over Mulder, but also a thin, unconscious woman,
while an unmarked car releases a birdlike woman with glasses onto the
scene. Scully grabs April and flashes her badge. The paramedics dump
her husband in the back seat of their rental, giving Scully a small
oxygen canister with a plastic mask attached to it while they attend
the thin woman.
 
"Mulder," Scully says, forcing her medical side to take over as she
fastens the mask to his face, saving him the trouble of holding it
himself. Her children, however, have no compunction about throwing
themselves at their red-eyed, coughing, and rather smelly father.
 
Weakly, he puts his arms around his children and leans against the
carseat. "How is she?" he asks in a muffled voice behind the mask.
 
She watches as the ambulance pulls out and the birdlike woman joins
them. "Mrs. Pollidori is unconscious, but fine," the woman with the
glasses replies. "I do believe she'll be treated for that nasty gas
inhalation and put under observation."
 
"Who are you?" Scully asks, and now the kids look up at the strange
lady.
 
The woman pushes up her glasses nervously. "I'm with the newspaper,"
she says, her large eyes darting at the adults and children with the
same nervous glance.
 
"We gotta go back in," Mulder mutters, taking off the oxygen mask and
lurching out of the car, only to be caught by his wife.
 
"We aren't going anywhere but to a hospital," Scully says firmly
while their kids grab his jacket.
 
He rolls his bleary eyes at his beloved, heavenly wife. "You say the
sexiest things, G-Woman," he says, closing his eyes.
 
Scully rolls her eyes heavenward, then looks at the reporter. "This
is all off-the-record, understand?" she says, buckling April back
into her car seat. "That was Mrs. Pollidori?"
 
The reporter nods jerkily. "Yes, her husband is out of town for a
conference. It's a good thing you got here when you did, that poor
woman might be dead otherwise. How did you know?"
 
"A hunch," Scully mutters, finally wrestling her too-tall husband
into the backseat. "I'm sorry, your name is?"
 
"Here's my card," the reporter says, proffering a small rectangle,
and the distracted FBI agent pockets it while reseating Page in the
front passenger seat. "Give me a call when you find anything."
 
"Likewise," Scully says, locking her door. 
 
As the redhead speeds off, putting some serious distance between
themselves and the tented house, Mulder mumbles, "Pans're violated."
 
"What?" 
 
"She's pregnant," Mulder says, his eyes still closed with his head
drooping forward, "th' pans is violated."
 
"Mulder," Scully says in a no-nonsense voice, "put on the mask, lie
back, and shut up."
 
"Ooh, Mommy said shut up," Page says, her eyes wide. 
 
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Sammy crows, bouncing in his own car
seat.
 
"Samuel Taylor Scully Mulder, not another word," his mother says with
steel in her voice.
 
Nobody says a thing for the rest of the trip to the hospital. 
 
~*~*~ 
 
The next day, Scully and her children are in Mrs. Pollidori's room,
the children being given an exemption as long as they stay by the
door. "How old are they?" Mrs. Pollidori asks, smiling in spite of
her weariness.
 
"Page is three, Sammy's two, and April is nine months," Scully says,
shifting her youngest daughter on her shoulder.
 
"You're so lucky." The thin woman smiles, and the FBI agent finds
herself smiling back. "I've always wanted children."
 
"It may be your lucky day," Mulder's voice drawls from the doorway,
"according to the doctors, you are with child."
 
"Mulder, aren't you supposed to be in bed?" Scully whips around,
missing Mrs. Pollidori's ecstatic smile.
 
He's dressed in his FBI suit and tie, but that was only due to great
effort and concentration. "I was, but I got bored," he says, sitting
on his haunches to be close to his kids and to give his unsteady legs
a break. "Are you two being good to Mommy?"
 
"Uh-huh," they chorus, pretending not to notice their mother's
watchful eyes.
 
"I see," he says, grinning up at his wife. "We need to get back to
the house to look for clues."
 
"Are you in any condition to do that?" Scully looks at him more
carefully.
 
"The cops are airing out the house right now," he says, as much to
his partner as to the woman in the bed, "and if they've inhaled
anything, they might miss something."
 
"Mrs. Pollidori, did you see anything?" Scully turns around to face
the now-pale woman.
 
The thin woman's eyes have gotten larger in the space of a couple of
seconds. "The thi-, he, he had this face with these hideous tumors,
and," she shudders, her eyes staring at nothing in particular, "and
two mouths, not just one."
 
"I see," Mulder says, rising too fast and lurching against the
doorframe. "Well, we better get going. Daylight's burning."
 
"Not so fast," Scully says, walking over and pinning her husband to
the doorway. "You stay here. I'll go and check it out."
 
"No, we all go together," Mulder says, using Page and Sammy as
giggling leg braces, "strength in numbers."
 
"Right," Scully sighs, then turns around. "Thank you, Mrs.
Pollidori."
 
The thin woman shakes her head. "No, thank you." A smile lights up
her drawn features. "I'm going to be a mother!"
 
~*~*~ 
 
At the Pollidori house, they are greeted by an irate scientist and
some rattled policemen. "What are you doing in my house?" Doctor
Pollidori thunders as the local PD scatters while the FBI agents and
their children head to the kitchen.
 
Mulder and Scully flash their badges, Mulder less smoothly than
Scully. "Doctor Pollidori, is there something you'd like to tell us?"
the tall agent asks, glaring at the doctor glaring at his kids.
 
"Are you accusing me of knowing something about this, this mess?" the
white-haired man throws his hands dramatically at the fingerprint
dust coating almost every other surface in the kitchen.
 
"I'm accusing you that your wife may have been impregnated." 
 
"How? By whom?" the scientist looks genuinely baffled. 
 
"Oh, I think you know," Mulder says, attempting to lean forward
menacingly, but managing only to lurch forward like a drunk and catch
himself on the counter.
 
"This could all be part of an elaborate hoax," Scully offers, then
grabs Sammy's hand before he puts it into his mouth. "No, it's not
sugar," she says, dusting off his hands as best she can.
 
"A hoax?" Doctor Pollidori frowns. 
 
"Doctor Pollidori," Mulder says, holding up the frying pan with some
whitish, non-fingerprint dust residue. "The other victims had their
frying pans... violated." He puts the pan down before he falls over,
stumbling and catching himself on the counter again. "Do you know
what that is?"
 
The scientist purses his lips. "No, I don't." 
 
Mulder staggers over to the trashcan and pulls out a large,
partially-emptied peanut butter jar. "I think we have our smoking
gun," he declaims, setting it on the table and sitting himself on a
chair. "We must've interrupted the intruder before he could finish it
off."
 
"Of course," Doctor Pollidori says in a smug, indulgent tone. "But it
does rather sound more like an elaborate hoax than anything, yes?" He
raises his eyebrows to include Scully. "In the meantime, please have
this place cleaned up while I visit my wife. Elizabeth is in a very
delicate state right now, and if I were to bring her home to this,
she may have a relapse." He strides out the door, slamming it
decisively shut behind him.
 
"She's in a delicate state, all right," Mulder mutters, then looks at
his family. "What?"
 
"Mulder, I thought you'd behave," Scully says, "or at least sit down
sooner than you did."
 
"Hey, I was fine," he protests. "It's Doctor Frankenstein there that has
a problem."
 
"He may be an insensitive, egotistical pompous jerk, but that doesn't
necessarily mean he's the culprit," Scully grunts, helping her
husband to his feet. "Otherwise, you'd've been a bad guy a long time
ago."
 
"Hey!" Mulder says, pouting even as Page and Sammy resume their role
of leg braces. "I was never that bad!"
 
"Uh-huh," Scully says, leading the march back to the car. 
 
~*~*~ 
 
Fortunately, there was never a headline with the FBI declaring the
Great Mutato to be a hoax, but the postman still fanned the flames of
distrust when he showed Izzy Berkowitz off as a false representative
of his comic book creation. Still, Mulder's uneasy about the fate of
the elder Mr. Pollidori as they research the origins of the frying
pan residue. He tries not to snap impatiently as he asks, "Is there
someone registered locally?"
 
As expected, his wife nods, and he strides towards the car.
Unfortunately, his legs are still a bit on the wobbly side, and
Scully grabs the keys. "Until you stop weaving like a drunken sailor,
I'm driving," she says, and buckles everyone in with a firmness that
forbids argument.
 
Once they reach the barn, Mulder's got a sinking feeling in his
stomach, and he's sure it's not from the anesthetic gas. They uncover
not only the freshly-dug grave, but also the birdlike reporter. What
is up with this lady? Mulder thinks as they try to escort her from
the premises, but instead she joins them into the kitchen. There,
they find the photo album, and behind the shorter women and the small
children peering at the photos, the tall agent's face shows a sadness
rarely seen by even his wife as they flip through pictures of a
shared life with father and son, however hideous the son may look.
 
"That's it," the reporter finally says, her head bobbing with a
jerk-like motion, "that's the thing that buried the old man in the
barn."
 
"How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am,"
Mulder mutters as the birdlike reporter leaves to scribble furiously
and privately.
 
"Who said that?" Scully turns around to look up at her husband. 
 
"Justine Moritz, an innocent woman who died for the sins of a
madman," he replies, "at least in the book."
 
"Frankenstein?" she asks. "I must've missed that." 
 
He shrugs a little, a half-grin on his face. "Yeah, well, your
literary appreciation's incomplete with only Moby Dick," he says.
 
She draws herself up to her full height, which is still not very
tall. "That which is in Melville's classic is the sum of what
literature has to offer," she says in stentorian tones, "all else is
superfluous."
 
"And you passed your undergraduate how?" he asks, only to be swatted
by his partner. "Ow."
 
"What's that?" Scully frowns as sounds of a large crowd and sights of
torches lighting up the night begin to fill the farm grounds.
 
"Oh, no," Mulder says, unconsciously holding his family to him.
"They're here."
 
~*~*~ 
 
As before, the FBI couple tries to calm the worked-up crowd, but Doctor
Pollidori plays them like a fiddle, and Mulder and Scully are forced
to retreat back to the house for their children's safety while the
townspeople unwisely go through the wooden barn with torches. Mulder
hates that his kids should have to see the dark side of human
behavior before they even hit kindergarten. Not to say that preschool
isn't an education in the dark side, but anyways...
 
"Daddy, are they mad at us?" Page asks. 
 
"No, sweetie," Mulder picks her up, keeping an eye on the barn.
"They're scared."
 
"Why?" Sammy asks. 
 
"Because they think being ugly means being bad," he says, squatting
down to his son. "And we know that's not true."
 
"It's not?" Scully raises an eyebrow. 
 
He looks up at her. "Hey, the Lone Gunmen aren't the prettiest people
on the planet, but they're definitely the good guys," he says, then
grins.
 
"I don't know about that Frohike," she mutters, but grins back
anyways. Then she hugs April to herself. "Besides, the only way
Pollidori could've seen the monster was if he was out here himself."
As she muses, she notes Page waving. "What is it, honey?"
 
"It's a ghost!" Page smiles as the cellar doors close. "See, gone
now."
 
"I don't think so," Mulder says, putting her down to pull out a
flashlight while Scully pulls out her gun. "Let's go check it out."
 
And check it out they do, with Mulder leading and Scully and the kids
hanging behind. They find the Great Mutato, and it's the kids, rather
than the agents, who coax him out of hiding, to Mulder's surprise. He
would've thought Mutato would be less inclined to scare little kids,
but apparently, his kids are harder to scare than others. And as
before, the thoughtless crowd burns down the barn, even as the small
family tries to make their escape quietly this time. Again, they
retreat into the cellar, and Page screams as people break the cellar
windows with pitchforks and rocks. He picks her up and holds Sammy to
his leg, while Scully holds onto both April and the Great Mutato, his
jaw working as his children bury their faces into his clothes. He's
pretty sure that if he weren't an FBI agent, he'd shoot every last
one of those idiots scaring his children, laws be damned.
 
As the hysterical crowd force their way into the cellar, Mulder and
Scully stand in front of the Great Mutato protectively, and they lock
eyes as well as hands before facing the crowd. Here we go, the tall
man thinks, as Doctor Pollidori swaggers to the forefront.
 
~*~*~ 
 
If this man even touches my kids, there'll be a bloodbath tonight,
Mulder thinks as Doctor Pollidori, Shaineh Berkowitz, and the crowd
demand to have a look at the "monster." Reluctantly, the agents do
so, but only because they really have no other choice. The so-called
monster acquits himself quite well once he's allowed to speak, and
finally says in his hoarse voice, "Suffice it to say, his experiments
failed and... my father is dead. I am alone... and miserable. But as one
deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me." He
looks pleadingly at the monster who created him, "If this being you
can create, then I will take blame as the murderer."
 
The scientist, true to form, sneers as he says, "I don't know how to
recreate you. You were a mistake!"
 
Mulder forces himself not to punch the guy out, and is pretty sure
his molars will be dust by the way he's grinding his teeth. "What we
did was wrong," the Great Mutato hangs his head, "but in our
trespasses we gave you a loving son and in your homes I went places
I'd never dreamed of. With your books, and your records and home
media centers, I learned of the world and of a mother's love that
I'll never know." He smiles sadly, and Mulder's almost shocked to see
he can recognize that expression on such a warped face. "Cher loved
that boy so much."
 
As Page reaches out to pat the deformed man's shoulder, Izzy
Berkowitz looks at the crowd. "Hey, he's no monster," he says, and
the crowd murmurs.
 
His piece said, the Great Mutato nods at the little girl before
holding out his wrists. "Arrest me, then, as you will."
 
"No!" Sammy shouts, peeling himself off his father's leg and
attaching himself to the deformed man's. "Not bad guy!"
 
Scully blinks at her son, then at her husband, then at the crowd. And
somehow, she's not surprised to find Mulder and herself beaming at
their boy, nor the crowd wearing similar expressions, save for Doctor
Pollidori. But she is surprised when the Great Mutato smiles on both
faces and bends down, hugging the boy back. "Thank you," he says in
his soft voice, clumsily patting the small child's back.
 
Now what do we do, she thinks, looking up only to find Mulder with
the same look on his face.
 
~*~*~ 
 
"Saw the ghost of Elvis 
On Union Avenue 
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland 
Then I watched him walk right through 
Now security they did not see him 
They just hovered 'round his tomb 
But there's a pretty little thing 
Waiting for the King 
Down in the Jungle Room"
 
As Cher belts out the chorus of "Walking in Memphis" to the crowded
nightclub, Mulder's again amazed at what a little FBI finagling can
do, as he, his family, and the Great Mutato are sitting in the front
row. That, and the fact that most of the people who were ready to
kill the poor man less than a couple hours ago are now sitting behind
him and enjoying the show. He shakes his head, then laughs as the
Great Mutato is all but spazzing in the chair, then high-fives the
crazy guy. Sammy is standing on his lap and bouncing as energetically
as Mutato, making Mulder a little careful about his boy falling off.
When Cher steps down and takes the two-faced man by the hand, Mulder
gives him a helpful push and Scully smiles while Page dances between
her parents' legs and April's lying peaceably in her mother's arms,
thanks to earplugs.
 
"They've got catfish on the table 
They've got gospel in the air 
And Reverend Green be glad to see you 
When you haven't got a prayer"
 
"Dance with me, Daddy, dance!" Page says, tugging at her father's
pants leg.
 
He shrugs, then puts Sammy on his chair before picking up Page and
joining Cher and the Great Mutato on the dance floor. Both Mutato's
faces are grinning from ear to ear, and Mulder smiles back. Then he
spins back to his wife, sitting next to a jumping little boy with a
dozing baby in her arms. He puts out a free hand to her, and she
raises an eyebrow.
 
"My hands are full," she says, shrugging helplessly. 
 
"So are mine," he says, pulling her up by the elbow. "Come on." 
 
"Fine," she says, gingerly shifting April to accommodate not only
Mulder, but Page in his arms. "You are a silly man."
 
"And you love me, don't you?" He grins, and she grins back as they
slowly balance their daughters between them, allowing Sammy full
reign of their chairs to jump all over.
 
"And I'm walking in Memphis 
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale 
Walking in Memphis 
But do I really feel the way I feel?" 
 
"Yes." Scully smiles, and leans against her husband. 
 
"Yes?" He blinks as the song winds down. 
 
"Yes," she repeats, "I really feel like my feet are ten feet off of
Beale."
 
"Does that mean we're going to Graceland next?" 
 
She snorts. "When it starts raining sleeping bags." Then she looks
up, half-expecting an unseasonal shower of camping equipment, then
laughs when he looks up, too. "Keep dreaming."
 
"I already am," Mulder says, pulling his family close to him. 
 
* 
"Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn. ~*~*~

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty-Two

 Bill Scully's House 
US Naval Station 
 San Diego, Ca 
 December 21st, 1997 

Tara looks up from arranging the cr=E8che on the mantle when she hears
voices outside. Before she can leave the living room, the front door
opens.

"Hello? Merry Christmas!" Scully calls from the entryway.

"Hello!" Tara cries. "Is that my niece and nephew behind Dana?"
Playing shy, Sammy and Page hide behind their mother.

Before they run to throw their arms around Tara's legs. "We tricked
you!" Page tells her. "We're not shy."

"That's for sure," Scully tells Tara with a smirk as she works to
herd the children into a corner where she can remove their coats.

Maggie Scully comes in too and looks thrilled to see Tara. "Oh, my
God. Look at you." She hugs her very pregnant sister-in-law.

"Can you believe it?" Tara asks with a happy grin. 

"How am I going to get my arms around you?" 

"Sammy, where are you going?" Scully asks as he bolts with his
snowsuit still hanging off him.

"Gettin' the door," Sammy explains as he pulls it open for Mulder and
Bill. Bill has suitcases, and Mulder's arms are full with April and
the children's belongings.

"Thanks, Buddy," Bill tells his nephew.

After dropping the bags onto the floor near the stairs, Bill turns to
his mother. "Sorry about the digs, Mom. I know you hoped like hell
you didn't have to spend another night in base housing."

"Are you kidding? This is wonderful."

Scully looks up in wonder. "This is the exact same layout as our old
house."

"That's the Navy for ya."

"Yeah. Bill tells me, Mom, that you'll be staying in your old room.
And the nursery is going to be in Dana and Melissa's room."

Bill nods. "That's right. Dana and Fox will have 'my' room and the
little ones will be in what would be Charlie's."

"Let's bring these bags up stairs, Bill. So no one trips over them,"
Tara says pointedly. Scully doesn't blame her, because her brother's
wife probably can't see her own feet.

"Aye, captain." He gives her a mock solute before grabbing up all the
heavy bags, leaving her the baby bags. "Fox, why don't I show you the
rooms?" Bill adds, and Mulder suppresses a wince. He's going to be
Fox all week, he can tell.

"Sure, thanks. Come on, Brats, let's see where we're sleeping." 

"We're not brats," Page complains, but she and her brother beat
Mulder up the stairs.

Still in the living room, Scully catches Maggie looks at the tree
with a wistful look.

"Mom? You okay?" 

"Oh, yeah. I was just thinking about your Dad...and Melissa...and how
much I miss them." She gives a bitter little shake of her head. "I
couldn't even get a hold of Missy."

She walks past Scully to the stairs. Scully is about to follow her
when the phone rings. She looks upstairs.

"Bill?" Scully calls, unsure if she should answer. When there's no
response, she picks it up. "Scully residence..."

"Dana?" a familiar male voice asks. 

"Yes, sorry, who is this?" 

"Dana...she needs your help. She needs you, Dana. Go to her." 

"Who...who is this?" 

Giving the receiver a puzzled look, Scully hangs up and calls a
number. "FBI, San Diego."

"This is Special Agent, Dana Scully. My badge number is 2317616. Can
you transfer me to your sound agent, please? I would like to trace
the last number that was dialed into this phone."

"Who was that?" Mulder asks as he climbs down the stairs.

"I don't know. Feel like going for a ride?" 

"Sure, just let me ask your Mom to keep an eye on the kids." 

~*~*~ 

The Sims Residence
30 Minutes Later

There are people mingling and an ambulance parked outside when Scully
and Mulder arrive. Taking in the crowd, she asks Mulder to wait in
the car, which he agrees to with a shrug. Scully shows her badge to a
cop and walks into the house. A photographer is taking pictures of a
phone off the hook. She goes past the photographer up to the bathroom
where there are policemen.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who are you?" Officer Kresge asks irritably.

"Agent Scully, FBI. Can you tell me what's going on here?" 

"Well, no offense, Scully, FBI, but what's it to you?" 

"I received a phone call from this address. It was an older man's
voice. He said that somebody here needed help."

"When was this?" 

"About 20 minutes ago." 

"I've been here 30 minutes. Guarantee you no one's called out to you
or anyone else. Phone's off the hook."

Scully is confused. She looks to the bathroom. "Please, can you tell
me what happened here?" Kresge brings her into the bathroom. A
photographer is taking pictures of the crime scene. Kresge allows
Scully take a look at the body. A woman naked in a bathtub. Wrists
slashed, blood pooled on the floor and staining the water pink in the
tub.

"This is Mrs. Roberta Sims. Age 40. Suicide. She's been dead at least
three hours."

"I guess she's beyond help now," Scully agrees.

"What's going on in there?" Mulder asks as she comes to the passenger
side window.

"A suicide from the looks of it." 

"Why are we here?" Mulder asks. ::I thought that this wouldn't
happen. Scully was never abducted, so how could Emily exist?:: His
forehead creases as he tries to puzzle it out.

"A man called and told me that a 'she' here needed my help." Scully
pauses. "And I'm pretty sure the man calling was my father."

He blinks in surprise. "You got a call from 1-800-the great beyond?" 

"Don't joke, Mulder. This is serious." 

Mulder stares out the window at the police cruisers. He's not sure he
that he was joking.

~*~*~

When Scully goes back into the house a few minutes later, she brings
Mulder with her. They stop in the hallway to wait for officer Kresge,
and Mulder notices something in the kitchen that makes his belly feel
like it's full of lead. Emily.

Neither Scully nor the officer notices his stricken look, but instead
tall about the call Scully got. "I don't know what to tell you. Pac
Bell confirms that a call came in from this address to your brother's
house, but from this end, they show no outgoing call. Plus they
confirm that the phone here had been off the hook for the last three
hours."

"What was their explanation?" Scully asks.

::Your dead father called to tell you that you need to help a child
who shouldn't even exist in this reality.:: Mulder thinks, and it
takes all of his self-control not to release the insane laugh that's
bubbling just below the surface. ::Get a hold of yourself, Mulder.
There's some other explanation, because that kid isn't Scully's. It's
not possible.::

"Records mix-up, software glitch. It was obviously some kind of
mistake. Anyway, I've got to wrap this up. Talk with the husband.
Listen, weird phone calls aside, this is looking pretty
straightforward. A lot of people check themselves out around
Christmas time."

Kresge goes to talk to Marshal Sims, and Mulder stares until the
officer swings the door closed. "Mulder, what were you looking at?"
Scully asks.

"The little girl. She reminds me of Page." 

"It must be because they're the same age, since they don't look
alike." Mulder nods, but he's not really inclined to agree. True,
Page's hair is platinum and halfway down her back while Emily's is
sandy and short, but they both have the same ocean blue eyes that are
common to Scully's family. Strangers might think they were sisters.

~*~*~ 

Scully misses dinner that night, because she and officer Kresge
discover that the dead woman was drugged before she died. This leaves
Mulder alone in what he considers hostile territory. It isn't as bad
as before when Bill Jr. laid a number of sins at his feet, but he and
his brother-in-law are anything but close, so Mulder spends the
entire dinner huddled near Maggie and saying nothing other than
things that'll encourage his two older children to eat.

Needless to say, he's completely exhausted by the time Scully finally
gets back. She doesn't seem to notice. "Mulder, look at this." Scully
shoves a picture at him.

It's Emily. "How'd you get this?" 

"Officer Kresge let me have it." 

He's afraid to ask, but he does. "Why did you want it?" 

"I thought about you saying that the little girl reminds you of
Page."

::crap::

Scully goes over to a bookshelf and pulls out a photo album. "I think
you're right. She does look a little like Page. But she looks more
like Missy did at that age. Take a look at this. This was taken when
my dad was stationed in Japan. Missy was three." She places Emily's
picture next to it. "They're identical."

"What does that prove?" Mulder asks reasonably. 

"That there's something I'm missing. Did you bring your laptop?" 

"Do you really need to ask that?" 

Mulder leaves the room long enough to put the kids to bed, and when
he comes back in, Scully has an excited look on her face.

"Look, Mulder. Emily's adopted." 

"And?" he asks, already knowing what's coming next.

"And she might be Missy's daughter." 

"That's a long shot," he objects.

"Since when are you one to scoff at long shots?" she asks. "Dial
Danny for me, would you?"

He wants to refuse the request, and hope that she forgets, but he
decides that it wouldn't be fair to the little girl, so he pulls out
his cell phone and punches in the numbers before handing it to her.
::I hope this doesn't end as badly as it did the last time.:: he can
already feel himself becoming depressed.

"Hi Danny, it's me, Dana...Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too...I, ah,
I'm wondering if you can do me a favor...Back when I was in med
school my sister volunteered to be part of a genetics project I was
conducting, so I ran a set of PCRs. Do you think you could get a hold
of a copy for me? If you can, I need you to send them to the San
Diego field office. As soon as possible. Ok. Thanks, Danny."

~*~*~

The Next Night

Most of Scully's day is spent doing an autopsy of Roberta Sims.
Mulder has yet again stayed behind, and seemed to her to be fairly
eager not to get involved with the case.

The house is dark when she gets in. a cursory peek upstairs tells her
that her husband and children are asleep, so she doesn't feel guilty
about her intention to do more work since they don't need her
attention at the moment. There's a manila envelope on the table. She
opens it and sits down. She takes the PCR screen of Melissa out of
the report and matches it to Emily's PCR results from the lab, and
she's on the verge of crying when she sees they match.

"Dana? Are you alright?" Maggie asks, startling her by approaching
from behind." It's two o'clock in the morning. Where have you been
all day? We were expecting you at lunch." From her mother's
reproachful tone, Scully senses that the kids were not happy.
Mulder's probably been miserable too. "Your husband went to bed two
hours ago, not that you can blame him since for all he knew he'd be
the only one who'd be getting up with the baby tonight."

It's on the tip of Scully's tongue to point out that April has been
sleeping through the night for two months, but it's not the
discussion she's interesting in having. "Mom...sit down." Giving her
daughter a wary look, Maggie does. "The woman who committed suicide
has an adopted daughter, a three-year-old named Emily. I got a sample
of Emily's blood and I had the lab run a test on her DNA. It's called
a PCR test. This..." She hands her one of the screens "is Emily's."
She hands over the other one. "And this, is Melissa's which we ran
for that experiment I did in college. They match."

"What does it mean, they match?" 

"It means, that this little girl Emily...is Melissa's daughter."

Scully finds the pictures and shows them to her mother, sure that
she'll concede to the truth when she sees the resemblance.

Maggie shakes her head. "It's impossible." 

"You can't deny that there is a remarkable resemblance." 

"Melissa was three years old when this picture was taken. She was
practically a baby. All kids can look the same at that age."

"Mom, it's uncanny. Emily looked exactly like Melissa. That's why I
ordered the PCR test. Because her face may change, but her DNA
can't."

"And the test is accurate?" 

"There's a 60% chance that Melissa is Emily's mother. I'll order a
more comprehensive test, a RFLP. It'll take a couple of days, then
we'll be sure. "

"Well, I'm already sure your sister did not have a baby. She would
have told me."

"Mom, remember about four years ago and Melissa took off? She
traveled up and down the west coast, we didn't know where she was
half the time."

"You're saying she was pregnant and she didn't want us to know?" 

"That was 1994. Emily was born that November. She could have given it
up for adoption and none of us would have ever known."

"I don't know..." Maggie sounds highly doubtful.

"Mom. Page was four months old before Missy bothered to meet her.
Haven't you ever wondered about that?" Maggie nods reluctantly. "If
you were planning to give up your baby, wouldn't it make you not want
to meet a niece? At least until the baby was old enough that it
wouldn't look like the one you gave away?"

Maggie sighed deeply. "Maybe." 

~*~*~

Even though it's painful, Mulder spends most of Christmas Eve
trailing after his wife. First to visit doctor Calderon to discuss
Emily's treatment and find out that the drugs in Roberta's system
were at easy access to Marshal Sims; then to assist in the arrest of
Marshal Sims on suspicion of murder, then to see Scully fall in love
with Emily as she's taken away to the childen's home, and last to go
and frown over Marshal Sims' murder, which happens despite Mulder's
insistence that he be closely guarded on suicide watch.

Since Scully never told him about her long ago conversation with
Bill, he didn't know that it was going to happen, and went up to take
a nap before Bill and Tara's party.
 
Tara and Maggie are putting final touches on the tree while Scully
watches listlessly - at least until Bill taps her on the shoulder."
Ah, Dana, could you give me a hand in the kitchen?"

She looks around and doesn't see anything that needs to be done, so
she suspects that he was luring her away for another agenda. "What's
up?"

"I need you to tell me what's going on." 

"What do you mean?" 

"You're not here, you're a million miles away. I thought you came to
see the family."

"I did." 

"I'm not sure you did. My brother-in-law and nieces and nephew have
been here for the holidays, but not you. I thought this other thing
was resolved. I thought you caught the guy that murdered that woman."

"We did." She frowns. 

"Then it's about that little girl, isn't it? Mom told me. You really
think Melissa had a baby?"

"Yes, I do." 

"Dad called you from beyond the grave to tell you that? Sounds like
something your husband would say, and even he's been saner than that
lately."

"It does not matter where that phone call came from. What matters is
that there is a little girl who needs my help."

"This isn't about any little girl, Dana. This is about you. It's
about some...maternal instinct gone haywire. You have kids, so now
you think you need to save every one you encounter."

Scully mentally winces, thinking fleetingly of Kevin Kryder. "Bill, I
don't expect you to understand but I am not going to stand here and
justify my motive."

"Dana, I have to show you something." 

Bill opens a drawer and takes out a picture. He hands it to Scully.
It's a picture of Melissa. "Look at the date on the back." Scully
turns it and it says October 7th, 1994. "Does Melissa look pregnant
to you in that picture? It's about four weeks before the girl was
born."

"Bill, that doesn't prove anything. All that date is when the film
was developed. You know as well as I do that mom herself held onto
film for as long as a year before finally dropping it off. Even if
the date is accurate, Melissa didn't have to be pregnant to have a
baby. There's...there's invitro fertilization, there's surrogate
motherhood."

"Dana, listen to yourself. You're creating this whole scenario to
fulfill a dream."

"What dream?" 

Bill shrugs with a frustrated look. "You tell me. If you want another
kid, make one. But don't try to make this child our flesh and blood
when she isn't."

Scully bites back a scathing remark and stomps upstairs. 

~*~*~

Mulder wakes from a nap when he feels Scully sit down on the bed.
"What's up?" he mumbles sleepily, struggling to sit up. She thwarts
his attempt by pushing him back down on the pillow.

He wonders why she did it until she puts her thumbs into the
waistband of his boxer shorts and yanks them down. Once she strips
over her own clothes with the same lack of care and settles onto his
waist, he doesn't wonder about much else, except the fact that she's
making no attempt whatsoever to keep quiet, as if she would be happy
for people down stairs to know what they were doing. Even that
concern is lost under a wave of sensation as she grinds her hips into
him.

 ~*~*~

December 25th, 1997
6:30 a.m.
 
Maggie Scully looks happy as she plays with her three very excited
grandchildren while the rest of the sleepy adults lounge around the
room.

Bill yawns a little, then gives the kids a smile. "Did Santa come?" 

"Yes!!" To their surprise it's Sammy who is the most vocal about it,
and Mulder puts his hands out to keep the boy from tumbling into the
fireplace when he attempts to tackle a brightly wrapped package.

"Your mom always was the first downstairs at Christmas. Couldn't wait
to get those presents."

"That one has my name on it," Page says confidentially as she points
to a package.

"She can't really read that, can she?" Tara asks, attempting to look
down where the child is pointing.

"She can really read it." Scully assures her. "And several other
words as well."

"Three years old, and already reading. What a smart kid." 

Bill hugs his wife from behind. "It's the Scully genes," he says
smugly, looking at Mulder as he says it. Mulder just smiles.

They're helping the kids open their gifts when the doorbell rings.
"Excuse me. I'll be right back." Bill says, earning a grateful look
from Mulder whose hands are full of baby April and wrapping paper.

The visitor's voice drifts towards them. "FBI Courier. Package for
Agent Dana Scully."

"I bet that one's not from Santa," Mulder whispers to Maggie, who
just raises an eyebrow.

"I'll sign for it," Bill says. 

"No, no. I need Agent Scully's signature, sir." 

"Oh, all right. Dana?" Scully goes to the door, and shivers when a
cold blast of air hits her pajamas.

"I need you to sign for this," the courier says, holding out a
clipboard to Scully. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas." She opens the package, skims the contents and
stumbles to the living room. The others look at her. Mulder stands up
and goes to her side, because he's suddenly sure she's going to
faint.

"What is it?" Maggie asks. 

"It's the DNA test on Emily Sims' blood." 

"What does it say?" Bill demands to know. 

"It says, definitely, that Melissa is Emily's mother." Her face is as
pale as milk.

Mulder gives Scully a searching look. "There's more. I can tell from
the look in your eyes."

Scully nods, and tries to clear her throat. "The person who did the
test thought it had a lot in common with another sample he'd recently
looked at, so he did another test. They matched."

"Who was the other sample from?" ::Please God, don't let her say me.
I know I was missing those nine minutes, and who knows what they did
to me at Ellens airbase years ago...::

His fear mounts when Scully refuses to look up at him until he lifts
her chin. "Alex Krycek."

::It fits:: Stunned, Mulder sits heavily in a chair and doesn't
answer Bill and Maggie's alarmed questions.

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty-Three

"Answer me!" Maggie cries. "I can tell from your reaction that this
is horrible. I need to know why. Why would you look that way when you
learned who my grandchild's father is?"

Mulder shakes his head, but Scully answers in a husky voice. "He's
not a good person, Mom."

"Not a good person how?" 

"He used to work with us, but he was a double agent. People, innocent
people, have died because of the men he's mixed up with."

Maggie covers her mouth to suppress a gasp. "Oh God." 

"We need to find Melissa," Mulder says quietly. "Find out what her
side of the story is." He shoots Scully a look - find out if she
knows what she's done.

"I couldn't get in touch with her to ask her to come today," Maggie
frets.

"Leave it to me," Mulder says grimly. "I know people who can find her
for us."

~*~*~

Nine Hours Later

Sitting in Mulder's parked rental car, Missy's face is bewildered as
she looks from her sister to her brother-in-law. "I never had a baby,
Dana. Look, you could examine me if you want to, and you'll just find
that I've never been pregnant."

Scully shakes her head. "The DNA tests prove that this little girl is
yours, Missy. How do you explain that?"

"The test is wrong." 

"It's not, I had them run it twice." 

A look of horror crosses Missy's face suddenly. "How old did you say
the kid is?"

"Three. She's just a couple of months younger than Page." 

"I know how this happened..." Missy moans, wrapping her arms around
herself.

Mulder steels himself for her confession that she's an alien
abductee, but that's not what comes out of her mouth. "It was in one
of the university papers out in California, and it seemed like a good
idea."

"What was?" Scully asks, confused.

"An ad begging women to donate eggs to science. They have trouble
freezing them, you know, but one of the cutting edge science schools
was working on a method that would be more successful than previous
attempts. I thought of all the women like Tara who wanted babies but
couldn't have them...how could I not help?" Missy's eyes were teary.

"It was just to experiment with freezing them, not to use them for
anything. There weren't supposed to be any babies. How could they do
this?"

"There are a lot of ruthless people in the world," Mulder says
gently.

To his surprise, Scully looks relieved. "So you didn't knowingly have
a child with Alex Krycek?"

Missy's head whips up. "What does this have to do with Alex?" 

"You know him??" 

"He's my...um..." Missy looks like she's unsure of what to say. "We know
each other."

Scully and Mulder look at her like she has two heads. "Oh
Missy..."Scully groans, "I always knew you had horrible taste in men,
but this takes the cake."

"Alex Krycek is probably working for the people who used your eggs,
Missy," Mulder tells her.

"No." 

Scully shakes her head, as if to clear it. "That aside, we need to
figure out what to do with Emily. She doesn't have anyone right now,
and you're her mother. The ball's in your court."

"Do you want to go with us to meet her?" Mulder asks.

He expects her to decline, but she nods wordlessly, her lips
compressed into a thin line. Saying nothing else, he starts the car
and heads towards their destination.

~*~*~

 San Diego County Children's Center 
An Hour Later
 
The three of them are pointed in the direction of the playroom, which
is where they find the child. Emily sits on the floor, coloring.

Scully decides to make introductions, since of the three of them, the
girl has met her before. "Emily? I'd like you to meet my husband and
my sister. His name is Mulder and hers is Missy."

 Emily doesn't look up at them. "Uh hum." 

"She's a little shy," Scully says, and looks at her sister. Missy is
shy and silent too.

"What are you coloring?" Mulder asks.

"A potato." 

"Have you ever seen Mr. Potato Head? He looks like this." He gives a
pretty goofy impersonation of Mr. Potato Head that never fails to
make his children laugh. "Doesn't it?" Emily nods.

::My niece.:: Mulder thinks. ::If she lives, she'll be my children's
cousin, my wife's niece....::

The three of them watch Emily color a little longer, until Mulder
gets a phone call and excuses himself. He's frowning when he comes
back in.

"I'll be right back," Scully tells her sister and her niece. Missy's
eyes look panicked, but she doesn't say anything as they walk away.
Out of earshot, Scully asks, "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"I've found Emily's surrogate mother. I had Frohike hack into the
California Social Services Adoption database."

"You got a name?" 

"Yeah, her mother of record is one Anna Fugazzi." 

"Fugazzi?" 

"Yeah, as in slang term for fake." 

"I don't understand. Why create a false record?" 

"Because there are no true records. Emily didn't come into this world
through any system that keeps them."

"How did she come into this world?"

"Have you asked yourself that?" 

"Well, she was born to someone, she...she has to belong to someone
other than Missy, who has only just learned she exists."

"Someone, who's proven that they'll do anything to protect her or
their interest in her."

"Our family can protect her too." 

"Yeah, but who's going to protect you? Emily's adoptive parents are
both dead, by no accident."

"I know...I've considered that, but I've also considered that there's
only one right thing to do." She looks over to her sister, who is
still staring at Emily without making an attempt to interact with
her. "If Missy is strong enough to do it."

"And if she isn't?" Mulder presses.

"Then we'll think of another way." The far away look in her eyes
promises that the 'other way' is something she's thought through and
is going to discuss with him later.

Another woman comes into the room then to talk to the girl, and they
know it's their cue to leave, so they go and get Missy.

"Good-bye, Emily," Missy whispers, speaking to her daughter for the
first time.

 ~*~*~

 Bill Scully Residence 
10:16 p.m. 

Mulder is lying on the bed feeding April a bottle when Scully climbs
up next to them.

"It takes two of us just to get Tara into bed these days," she tells
him with a tired smile.

"When's she due?" 

"Two weeks ago. I guess I ought to thank my lucky stars that none of
our babies have ever been overdue." There's a long pause as they both
watch April rub her fingers over the side of the bottle. "What
happens to Emily if Missy doesn't want her?"

Mulder shrugs. "I don't know." 

"She has family, Mulder. We shouldn't just send her away to people
who aren't even blood relations." She shivers a little. "And I sure
as hell don't want her to end up in Krycek's hands - and don't you
dare use the 'but he's her father' line," she warns him.

"Wouldn't dream of it." 

"If Missy doesn't want her, do we?" Scully gives him a questioning
look.

"I...I think we need to find out what Missy wants before we start
making contingency plans," Mulder says evasively.

The phone rings. ::Saved by the bell.::

 Scully answers it and speaks to someone who sounds confused. "That's
the children's center. Emily's sick."

~*~*~

 San Diego County Children's Center 

To Scully's dismay, Missy doesn't go with them when they go to check
on Emily. It upsets Mulder too, because he's hoping that his
sister-in-law will surprise them by showing some responsibility, and
this doesn't bode well for that.

A worker lets them in and they go upstairs. Scully goes to the girls'
dormitory. She opens the door and Emily is in her bed sleeping with
the other girls. Scully sits on the edge of her bed and turns on the
light. Scully touches her forehead.

"She's burning up." 

"I'll call 911." Scully lifts the covers and Mulder picks her up.

"Scully? There's something on her neck. "

Scully lowers the back of Emily's nightgown and pushes her hair
aside, revealing a patch of green." Oh, my God."

~*~*~

 Hospital 

In a room with a window to the hall, two doctors hover over Emily who
is lying in bed. The doctor is talking softly to Emily about what
he's going to do. Scully looks up when a doctor comes out to talk to
her.

"How is she?" 

"Well, we've put her on a saline drip to rehydrate her. She's running
a fever of about 102. It's a good thing you got her here when you
did. "

"Do you know what's causing it?" 

"Some kind of infection, probably related to the cyst on her neck." 

"Do you know what that is?" 

"No. I'm having it biopsied. I'll get it off to the lab right away.
Now, are you two the parents?"

"I'm her aunt." 

"Oh, okay. Can you give me any history that might help?" 

Mulder looks in the window to watch Emily and the female doctor
preparing for the biopsy. If he speaks up too soon they'll ignore him
or think he's nuts, but if he waits too long to intervene...

"I know that she was being treated for anemia." 

"You know what type?" 

"I was told that it was some kind of auto immune hemolytic anemia.
Her treatment was experimental."

"Who's her doctor?" 

"His name is Calderon." 

"I don't know him." 

Inside the room, the female doctor bends to Emily." I'm just going to
roll you onto your side, Sweetie."

::Let's see if I can help this doctor.:: Mulder watches as she
reaches for an alcohol swab, then pounds on the window.

"Wait! Stop!" The doctor ignores Mulder and puts the needle in, Emily
flinches. "Move away from her! Get away from her! At least cover your
eyes!"

The only part of Mulder's warning that the woman heeds is to cover
her eyes as the cyst explodes and green blood flows out. Coughing,
she makes her way to the door and lets herself out. Emily sits up in
bed to see what's happening, with a stream of green blood flowing
down her back.

~*~*~

Quarantine Ward 
7:31 a.m.

Missy tears down the hallway, and skitters to a stop outside the
quarantine ward, where Mulder has been waiting for Scully to come
back with information on the child's condition.

"Fox, can I go in there?" 

"I don't know." He taps on the glass to get Scully's attention,
which makes her look up and see them. She waves them in.

"She's still sleeping?" Mulder notes with surprise, since Scully and
the Doctor's bodies had blocked their view of the girl up until then.

"They have her under a mild sedative." 

"The ER doctor is doing okay now," Mulder tells her. "She heard me
and didn't get any in her eyes, so it's not as bad as it could be."

"How did you know?" Scully whispers, before realizing that her sister
isn't paying attention to their conversation.

"If Emily was someone's creation, then it occurred to me that she
might share the same body chemistry that we've seen before. So I had
them put the ER doctor in a cooling bath like you did when I was
exposed to this."

"So what now? She's still just a little girl. You say I can't protect
her, but I can't let this be her life. Just a few days ago she was
fine."

"She was also being treated." 

Missy looks up at them, fear plain on her face. "I want to keep her.
We have to get her better."

Mulder feels a twinge in his stomach as he remembers how hard it was
for Scully to prove she was a fit parent. "We'll do what we can to
help you get custody."

"It won't be hard," Missy says, leaning down to stroke Emily's hair.

"It won't?" He fails to keep the surprise from his voice.

"We're going to call the police in a few minutes and report a
kidnapping with a happy ending," Missy tells him. "My baby was stolen
from me and now that her kidnappers have died, we've been
miraculously reunited. The police were so derelict of duty that they
never even filed a kidnapping report, but DNA proves that the child
is mine. Since they don't want me to sue the station, they'll fall
over themselves to help me find a judge willing to grant an immediate
custody order." Missy wears a calculating expression. "You've got
friends who can produce a birth certificate, don't you?"

"Yeah, sure." Mulder blinks in surprise. Missy's plan would probably
work. Unlike Scully, who has been anchored in DC for years, Missy's
flightiness works in her favor since there are few people who could
come forward and say with certainty that she hadn't had a child
that'd been kidnapped.

"I'll help you work on Bill and Mom," Scully tells her, putting her
hand over her sister's. "They'll be upset that you never told them
you 'had a baby' but they'll get over it."

~*~*~

A Doctor enters a half hour later wearing a worried frown. "Um, I
just need some advice. With everything that's happening here, I'm a
little at sea. This Doctor Calderon you say is Emily's physician? He's
refusing to transfer her medical records."

"He can't do that. He's endangering her life."

"He said Emily was in his care, and if you're the one who's stopping
that, then you're the one endangering her."

"It's an ethical violation." 

"He said she was part of a double blind medical trial and that he's
spoken to you about it. He also says you have no authority over this
child."

"Well, authority or not, I'm not leaving her side." 

"It's beyond me, I'm afraid."

"Yeah, but it's not beyond Doctor Calderon," Mulder replies.

~*~*~

A couple of minutes later they're thrown out of the room while a
nurse takes Emily's vitals and changes her bedding. Missy, Scully,
and Mulder stand in a silent line and look at Emily through a window
in the ICU. Even from that distance, they can see how much the child
is sweating.

When the nurse leaves Mulder gives Scully a hug. "I need to talk to
your sister, so why don't you go keep Emily company?" he invites. She
frowns a little, but goes into the girl's room, and turns to watch
their unheard conversation.

"Fox?" Missy's voice is uncertain.

"I have something important you have to make a decision about, and
you have to do it quickly, so listen carefully."

"Okay." 

"Emily's been receiving a treatment that has kept her going - or she
was up until her adoptive parents died. If you want me to, I'm fairly
certain that I can get her back on the treatment. Doing so will mean
that you'll have to have an association with unsavory characters from
now until Emily is old enough to deal with them on her own."

"And if she's not on the treatment?" 

"She will die," he says grimly. "I met another child with this
disease, who was taken off the treatment. She died within weeks. It
wasn't an easy death."

"Then you have to get them to put her back on the treatment." 

Mulder puts a gentle hand on her arm. "If I do this, I'm serious
about being involved with unsavory characters. And you might have to
live near the clinic from now on," he adds, thinking of her
wanderlust.

A look of grim determination is on Missy's face. "I understand. Do
what you have to do to make her well."

Scully pokes her head out of the door. "What were you talking about?"


"Just making sure we were on the same page about what we want to
happen next," he says blandly. "The gunmen said they can have the
birth certificate couriered here within a couple of hours, so be
ready to call the police when it arrives."

Scully picks up on his unsaid message. "What will you be doing,
Mulder?"

"Attempting to reason with Doctor Calderon." 

~*~*~

 Transgen Pharmaceuticals

Doctor Calderon sits behind his desk, and gives Mulder a sad smile. 

"I'd like to say right up front that I know Emily Sims as your
partner probably told you. My God, I...never met a sweeter,
courageous little girl. I'm so sorry to hear about her downturn. My
hope is these custody matters can be resolved so she may resume her
treatment here. I'm afraid I can't release any information that
relates to our company's experimental drug trials."

"What can I say to convince you?" 

Calderon chuckles "It's really not about convincing me. This is
something that I - well, we...simply cannot do. It's purely a
business reality. It has to do with Transgen's exposure to litigation
and of course, our need to protect our research which frankly,
represents a significant dollar investment."

Mulder steeples his fingers. "My sister-in-law is keen to cooperate
with you. She's willing to do whatever is necessary to get Emily
healthy again."

"She's aware that the treatment will probably have to continue on a
monthly basis throughout Emily's childhood?"

Mulder nods. "She's working on the custody arrangement as we speak so
she'll be able to ensure that Emily can come here as often as
necessary."

"Actually, she doesn't have to come here," Calderon corrects.

"She doesn't?" 

"No. We have several children in our study group throughout the
country. We have five clinics, and if it's not possible for the
parents to travel to one of them for treatment, we can make home
visits as well."

"And they say doctors no longer make house calls." Mulder smiles a
little. He's making a deal with a devil, but it's with the blessing
of the child's mother, and he knows the alternative, so he's not
ashamed to. "You wouldn't happen to have a clinic in the DC area,
would you?"

"Yes, why?" 

"If I know my wife and mother-in-law half as well as I think I do,
they're going to lobby for Missy and Emily to move back east to be
closer to family."

"I see. Please tell Emily's mother that I'll make a visit to the
hospital tonight to administer treatment."

Mulder puts out his hand, which Calderon shakes. "I'll do that." 

 ~*~*~

Mulder's cell phone rings as he gets back into his car. "Mulder." 

"Hey Mulder, it's Frohike." 

"What's up?" 

"We did a little research about those kids you asked us to look
into...there were seven of them, but none of the others were a match."

Mulder wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. "You're
positive?"

"One hundred percent. This is a good thing, right? There being no
matches?"

"Yeah. Thanks for getting information for me." 

"No problem. Any idea why they'd of DNA tested a whole bunch of kids
like that, though?"

"I think they were looking for genetic markers." 

"Oh, that makes sense." 

"Frohike, you didn't congratulate me." 

"For what?" 

"I have a new niece. Thirty-six inches, thirty pounds." 

"Either this kid is going to be in the weekly world news for 'world's
heaviest newborn' or you're not talking about the kid Scully's
brother was expecting."

Mulder laughs. "Nope, Bill's kid is still overdue. Missy has a
three-year-old no one knew about, not even her."

"Wish her luck for me. Three-year-olds are rough. Say Mulder, she's
not married yet, is she? I've never wanted children of my own, but
being a step-parent isn't too bad a deal if you skip the diaper
stage."

"Good-bye Frohike." 

~*~*~

An Hour Later
 Emily's Room 

Doctor Calderon comes into the room while Missy is talking to the
police. Scully is about to say something to the man since he doesn't
have an ID tag on, but then she feels a hand on her shoulder. "I see
that doctor Calderon beat me here."

Scully relaxes a little. "You've agreed to treat Emily." 

"Yes." Calderon nods. "I interrupted your sister's conversation with
the officers and confirmed that your husband's assessment of her
willingness to treat Emily was as he stated."

Once he withdraws the needle from Emily's flesh, he pats her arm.
"You should begin to feel better soon, my dear."

 "Thank you," Emily whispers back. "I don't like bein' sick." 

"No one does," Mulder tells her, thinking for some reason of when
Scully had cancer during another life. "Your mom is going to make
sure you get to the doctor's when you need to so you don't get sick
like this again."

"Good." 

Missy returns with a wide smile. "They're going to get a judge to
issue the custody agreement tonight. They said the DNA evidence makes
it a slam dunk case."

"Oh, thank God," Scully breathes, pulling her sister into a hug. "I
know this is all a big shock to you, but you're going to be a great
Mom."

~*~*~

December 31st, 1997

"Oh! Isn't he a doll?" Maggie gushes as she holds April up to see her
new baby cousin. April is far more interested in playing with her
grandmother's necklace, but her eyes do wander across the blue
blanketed bundle that the nursery worker is holding up for them to
see. Although all that can really be seen is a tuff of dark hair
peaking out over the blanket.

Page and Sammy, who are being held up by their parents, seem slightly
more interested. "Our baby?" Sammy asks, giving them a puzzled look.

Mulder laughs and shakes his head. "Not this time. This is Uncle Bill
and Aunt Tara's baby. He's going to live with them."

"Okay," Sammy says, not looking at all disappointed. 

"Mommy, what's his name?" Page asks, leaning in closer, so her
forehead touches the glass.

"They named him Matthew." 

"Matt?" 

Scully's eyes widen in surprise. "Yup, they'll probably call him
Matt."

"Like Sammy's a trick name?" 

"Nickname, Page." 

"Who's Nick?" she asks, puzzled.

"I'm not sure who he was," Mulder admits.

"We have two new cousins, right?" Page asks.

"Yes you do." 

"When we see the uther one?" 

"Tomorrow," Scully tells her. "Daddy and I are going to bring Missy
to get her tomorrow, after we wake up."

"Good!" 

~*~*~

January 1st, 1998

Melissa picks up a plastic bag of Emily's belongings, and looks
around the room. She doesn't see anything else that needs to be
gathered up, so she walks through the door. A nurse is waiting for
her in the hallway, her hands on a wheelchair.

"Looks like Mom is all set, sweetie, so let's take a ride." 

Emily looks up at her with a curious look. "I can walk." 

"Nope, today you get to ride. It's hospital policy." 

Mulder has his arm around Scully's waist as they stand by their car.
They're both watching as the nurse and Melissa walk down the hallway.
"You know, Scully, we're witnessing a miracle." Mulder murmurs.

"I know," Scully tells him, leaning back into him. 

::Oh, you have no idea. And I'm so glad you never will:: he thinks. 

"Hey there, Emily!" Mulder calls as soon as the hospital doors slide
open. "Your chariot awaits."

"Like a princess?" she asks as she scrambles out of the chair with
Missy's help.

"You're definitely a princess," Mulder tells her with a nod. "Your
cousins Page and April are princesses, so you must be one too." He
takes a step back to allow her mother to put her in Page's car seat.

"Can I play wit my cousins?" Emily asks as soon as all the car doors
are shut.

"Sure." 

"Every day?" 

Scully looks back over the seat. "That's up to your mommy," she says
pointedly. As Mulder predicted, the two have spent hours debating the
pros and cons of Missy relocating.

Missy rolls her eyes. "Yes, every day," she says at length. "But your
auntie and grandmother have to help me find a house if I'm moving to
DC."

"Oh, we will!" 

~*~*~

January, 4th, 1998
8 p.m.

"Scully, door, please?" Mulder begs. April is sleeping on his right
shoulder, and Sammy on his left. She's only got one sleeping child to
deal with, so he thinks it's fair that she's the one dealing with the
keys.

"Hold your horses," she mutters then lets them in. They remove the
kids' coats and boots down stairs, then carry them up to their rooms
to dress them for bed. All told, it takes fifteen minutes before all
three little bodies are dressed in PJs and tucked into bed.

Then Mulder and Scully collapse onto their beds, still in their own
winter gear. Rolling over with a groan, Mulder can't resist the urge
to kiss her on the forehead. "We need to talk."

"About?" Scully asks, attempting to sit up until Mulder pins her to
the mattress, which makes her giggle.

He sits up, letting her go. "Your sister and Emily." 

"I'm listening." 

"What happens if Krycek comes looking for Emily?" The thought has
been on his mind ever since Scully told him who Emily's father was.

"He won't." 

"How do you know?" Mulder presses.

"Mulder, what would a man like that want with a little girl? He's too
self-centered to want to be a father." Her shoes fall to the floor
with a thump. "Don't borrow troubles."

::You're not thinking broadly enough, Scully. He doesn't want to be a
dad, I'm sure, but if that kid could ever be used as a bargaining
chip, he wouldn't hesitate for a second to use her.::

"Let's just hope he never finds out who she is." 

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty-Four

Washington, DC
Last week of January, 1998

As Mulder watches, Scully's hand closes on a glossy full-color
brochure. Although her fingers are half-covering the words, he knows
that it says "Westport Island, Maine" on the front of it.

"I can't believe we're finally going on a real vacation." Scully
sighs happily. "I mean, it was nice to see Bill over Christmas, but a
real vacation is different."

Mulder grins at her. "I think we deserve one after all the monster
slaying."

"We can visit Wildwood Art Gallery, spend time on the beach-" 

"Not have to change any diapers or look under rocks for mutants-" 

"There's a nature preserve close by, and we can go into Freeport to
go shopping-"

"We can see if there are any ghost ships passing Pemaquid Point
Lighthouse-"

Ignoring that, Scully concludes "And the Squire Tarbox Inn looks so
peaceful."

"More peaceful than DC," Mulder agrees. "We'll have to pack as soon
as we get home. I'm so glad that your mom has agreed to come spend
the week at our house."

"It should be okay, because Rachel will still be coming over every
day, so she can get out of the house and won't suffer from
'grandchildren overload'."

He shrugs. "She doesn't seem to be suffering from seeing Emily every
day."

"Missy is closing on that house this week, so she and Emily will be
moving out very soon," Scully tells him. Her mother convinced Missy
to move to DC as Mulder suspected, and she and Emily have been living
at Maggie's while Missy arranges for other housing.

"I don't Maggie think is too anxious to have her house to herself, is
all I'm saying. Otherwise, she'd of said no and sent them to stay
with us." It puzzles him that no one suggested that, given their
house has ten bedrooms. All he can figure is that Scully and Maggie
didn't want Missy and Emily alone all day at first.

"Come on, let's go give this report to Skinner and get out of here."
The eager look on her face makes Mulder smile.

~*~*~ 

A bucket of cold water is dumped on Mulder expectations when he sees
the grim look on the nanny's face. Before she even opens her mouth,
he feels his hopes for a vacation slipping away.

Rachel wrings her hands. "I'm afraid that the kids are sick." 

When he gets into the living room he sees what she means. All three
kids are sitting listlessly on the couch, leaning on each other. Each
one of them is covered in red spots.

"Itchy, Daddy," Sammy informs him.

Scully comes in right behind him, and is soon exclaiming over her
poka-dotted children. He leaves her to that and goes to hunt for
clues.

When he returns, he holds a piece of paper in his hand. "Hey, uh, I
just found something in Page's bag. A note dated yesterday that
explains that the kids have been exposed to chicken pox."

"Damn. By the time the kid became symptomatic, he'd already given it
to the entire class." Her face suddenly falls. "Oh no, Emily."

He shudders a little, thinking for the first time of his niece's
fragile health. Which isn't surprising since he's still having
trouble thinking of her as his niece. He knows that his wife worries
because Emily is in Page's preschool class now that Missy is serious
about permanently relocating in DC.

She's already on the phone, so he listens to the exchange.

"Hi Missy, it's Dana...Is Emily feeling okay? Yeah, the chicken pox
thing...She is, and she brought it home to her brother and
sister...well, keep an eye on her and let her doctor know if she runs
a fever or gets any spots...Okay, take care, love you both."

"She's not sick?" Mulder asks.

"So far, so good." Then she sighs. "But we still have to deal with
these three. Good-bye vacation."

"Go without me." 

"What? No, I can't leave you alone with you with three sick kids." 

"Yes you can. You've been looking forward to this for a long time,
and we'll be fine here."

"Mulder-" 

"We paid for the room already, and it's not refundable," Mulder
reasons. "I'd like at least one of us to enjoy the room we're
reserved."

"I don't know..."

"Rachel can still come every day and give me a break instead of your
mom." He hopes the nanny has already had the chicken pox. "This
doesn't seem like a good time for the kids to get sick, but hey, I
already took the week off, so it couldn't come at a better time as
far as work is concerned."

"Are you sure you'd want me to go alone?" she asks in a tone that
suggests that she's warming to the idea.

"Oh, sure. I'll need you to buy a few things for me before you go,
though..."

~*~*~

An Hour Later

After she reads his list, she shakes her head. Some of the items on
it make sense, like pedialyte, several canisters of oatmeal, boxes of
baking soda and diapers, but others...she's afraid to even guess what
he wants 18 pairs of stretchy mittens and three floor tarps for.
Still, she throws everything into the cart because she promised him
that she'd make sure he had everything needed before she leaves. And
now that Page speaks pretty well, she knows that she can get her
daughter to squeal later if Mulder himself doesn't confess as to what
he's done in her absence.

~*~*~

King's Crossing, Maine
Gas station
The Next Day

Scully is putting gas into her rented convertible when she feels her
phone vibrating in the right hip pocket of her jeans. She pulls it
out and takes a second to adjust her sunglasses before flipping the
phone open.

"Scully." 

"Hey, Scully, it's me." She hears the sound of a door shutting, and
from the second of squeaking she guesses that it's April's.

"How are the kids?" 

"Sleeping. All three of them. It's very quiet in Casa Mulder right
now."

"I'm glad they're sleeping instead of itching and crying." 

"Hey, me too. What's it like up there? And do you miss me?" 

"The weather is clear. I *do* miss you, but I'm looking forward to
hitting the road and breathing in some of this fine New England air."

"I don't know...the air is supposed to be pretty polluted up that way.
Not from factories in New Hampshire or Maine, mind you, but from
pollution being blown in from western states. Should be a colorful
sunset, though."

Scully gives the phone a dubious smile. "I'll be sure to keep an eye
out for the sunset, then."

"You didn't rent a convertible, did you?" 

"Why?" 

"Are you aware of the statistics of decapitation?" 

"Mulder, I'm hanging up. I need to get to the hotel before check-in
time ends. Love you."

"Love you too, but you shouldn't talk and drive at the same time,
either. Are you aware of the statistics-" Before he can finish his
sentence, she's hung up on him. She tells herself that if he
complains she'll claim it was accidental.

She drives the car into the grocery store lot, almost hitting a car
that is speeding away. After she catches sight of a small figure in
the cat she feels disgusted by the parent's recklessness. Then she
sees an old man staggering out of the store with bloody eyes. She
gets out of the car and runs towards him.

"Sir... Sir, what happened?" 

The old man seems disoriented. "I...I think we need a doctor." 

She becomes alarmed when she hears him say "we" and bursts into the
store. What she sees takes her breath away. People are moaning and
crying and have horribly scratched eyes.

Eventually she finds the store manager and startles him when she
bends to examine him. "Who are you?" He demands to know.

"My name is Dana Scully. I'm an FBI agent. What happened to you?" 

"I don't know. But Dave, the butcher...I think he's dead." 

When she goes around to the back she sees Dave lying on the floor
with a knife sticking out of one eye socket.

~*~*~

Washington, DC

"Daddy, whatcha doing?" The voice alerts him that naptime is over
sooner than he expected, for at least one of the kids.

Letting the tarp he's spreading out fall to the floor, Mulder turns
to address his oldest daughter. "I was thinking we could go
swimming."

The little blonde scowls at him. "Not funny. We're sick. It's
winter-"

He ruffles her hair. "Don't you dare say 'mommy wouldn't like it'." 

"Wouldn't," she insists, looking up when his hand grabs her wrist
right before she scratches at one of the blisters on her arm.

"Don't scratch, you'll scar. We're going to swim in the house." 

He almost laughs when he sees Scully's patented "you're nuts, Mulder"
look on his child's face. Before he can explain, they're interrupted
by the ringing of the phone. Page wanders off after giving the tarps
a distrustful look.

"Mulder, it's me." 

"I thought you said you were on your way to check in at the hotel." 

"I am. I'm already up in Maine." 

"So why are you on the phone with me, then? Not that I don't like to
hear from you, just surprised it was this soon. What's going on?"

"I, uh ... I'm at a market here. I'm just trying to give the local PD a
handle here."

"A handle on what?" 

"Well, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, Mulder. I didn't
witness it myself but there seems to be some kind of an outbreak of
people acting in a violent, involuntary way."

"Towards who?" 

"Toward themselves." 

"Themselves?" 

"Yeah. Beating at their faces, clawing at their eyes. One man is
dead."

"Dead? How?" 

"Self-inflicted, it appears." 

"Huh ... it sounds to me like that's witchcraft or maybe some sorcery
that you're looking for there."

"No, I don't think it's witchcraft, Mulder, or sorcery. I've had a
look around and I don't see any evidence that warrants that kind of
suspicion."

"Maybe you don't know what you're looking for." 

"Like evidence of conjury or the black arts or shamanism, divination,
Wicca or any kind of pagan or neo-Pagan practice. Charms, cards
...familiars, bloodstones, or hex signs or any of the ritual tableaux
associated with the occult, Santeria, Voudoun, Macumba, or any high
or low magic?"

"I always knew you were the right woman to marry." 

"I was hoping for something a little more helpful." 

"Well, you know, short of looking for a lady wearing a pointy hat
riding a broomstick, I think you pretty much got it covered there."

"Thanks anyway. Kiss my babies for me." 

"Uh uh. If you want to kiss the scabby little monkeys, that's your
business, but I ain't gonna." He teases. "But I'll tell them Mommy
says she loves them."

~*~*~

By the time Mulder comes back upstairs from the cellar, Sammy is out
of bed too. "What's that?" Sammy's wide blue eyes are on what's in
Mulder's hands.

"Like I told your sister, who doesn't believe me, we're going to have
swimming."

"In the house?!" 

Mulder drops the hard plastic wading pool with a thump. "Too cold
outside, isn't it?"

"Yes..." both children say, but they give the pool doubtful looks.

"This is going to be a special pool. It's going to do something
magical."

"What?" they demand to know.

"It's going to make three itchy little kids feel better," he tells
them.

"Us," Sammy says. "He means us!" 

"Do you mean us, Daddy?" Page wants to know.

"What other itchy kids do you know?" 

"None!" 

His son looks pleased, but Page gives him a suspicious look. "How can
a pool make us not itch?"

"A very good question. First I add water, then the magic
ingredients."

"Oh, magic," Page says as if that explains everything, for once
reminding him more of himself than Scully.

"You two sit on the couch until I say so." 

"TV?" Sammy asks with a hopeful look.

He considers it for a moment, then decides that what his wife doesn't
know won't hurt them. "Okay, sure."

"Yay!" 

After putting on nickelodeon, he brings two buckets into the bathroom
to fill with warm water. It'll take several trips, but he thought it
would be worth it to dunk all three kids at once, unlike in the
bathtub.

Once the wading pool is full, he wakes up April. He expects her to
cry, but she's cheerful enough. Back in the living room he pours four
canisters of oatmeal into the pool, while his older children watch
with interest.

"Okay, off with your clothes," Mulder tells them as he begins to
undress the baby.

"You too, Daddy?" Sammy asks.

"Nope, I'm not itchy." 

Page is able to get in herself, but he needs to lift the younger kids
in. April squeals with surprise, and breaks into a big smile. The
older kids begin to smile too when they realize that they do feel
better.

Crouching down next to April, Mulder tells the older ones, "You know,
your Nana might not seem like she likes kids, but when I was a little
boy and had chicken pox, she dunked me in an oatmeal bath too, and I
felt much better."

"Oatmeal!?" Page looks down at the uncooked oats floating in the
water. "But that's breakfast!"

"Only if you cook it," Mulder tells her. "And I don't have a fire
handy to cook you three."

"Good," Sammy mumbles around his thumb. "We yucky." 

~*~*~

Meanwhile...
King's Crossing

Officer Buddy Riggs comes over to watch the tape with Scully. She
points at the video screen. "Who's that woman right there?"

"Melissa Turner." 

"She's the only one I've seen who looks unaffected." 

"What's your point?" 

"You might want to talk to her." 

When Scully leaves the store office captain Jack Bonsaint follows
her.

The captain gives her a friendly smile. "Ms. Scully ... you staying in
town?"

She decides to overlook the incorrect form of address to see where
he's going with his question. "Yes. I'm on vacation. Why?"

"Well, what you said back there about Melissa Turner kind of put a
spin on this whole business here today."

"How's that?" 

"Well, Melissa's caused some stir. People here say she's a witch." 

"Well, that's not the first time for that accusation in these parts."


"Ayuh." 

"Look, to be honest with you, Captain Bonsaint, um, I'm not much of a
believer in witchcraft. My husband has me beat in spades in that
area."

As she suspects, his smile fades when she mentions her marital
status. He shrugs in off quickly. "Well, you know, I'm not either. I
used to just think it's 'cause Melissa was pretty and single.
Threatening, you know?"

"But now you're not convinced?" 

"Well, you know, I appreciate the trouble you went to, and I sure do
hope there's a reasonable explanation like you said - just this one
thing going to make it hard to persuade folks to your thinking."

"What one thing is that?" 

"Who she's been carrying on with." 

"Who she's been carrying on with?" 

"Ayuh. With Dave, the butcher." 

~*~*~

Melissa Turner Residence
2:08 p.m.

Bonsaint and Scully drive up in a patrol car and get out. Undeterred
by the sight of the empty driveway, Bonsaint knocks on front door.
There's no answer. Scully looks in through a side window.

"Back door's wide open," Scully tells him, then they walk around the
house.

"Melissa!" Bonsaint calls before turning to Scully. "The sheets are
still wet."

Scully enters house, and searches the first floor before going up to
Polly's room. She stops to look at the windows. Both are nailed shut.

"Chief? Take a look at this." 

"What the devil's this for?" 

"It looks like she was afraid of something." 

"Whatever it is, she's run off in a hurry. Laundry's out. Door's
unlocked. Beats me."

"You know her?" 

"Melissy Turner?" 

Scully turns her face so he can't see her reaction to the dumb
nickname. "Mm-hmm."

"About as local as you can get. Born and raised here. Married a
fisherman. Widowed last year after a boating accident. Don't know if
the little girl, Polly, ever really understood." He taps a temple
with one finger. "Toys in the attic."

"The daughter's autistic?" Scully guesses.

"That's what they say. There was the incident last year over at the
daycare center? Proprietor slapped Polly across the face."

"Slapped her? What for?" 

"Well, she said Polly threw a tantrum so fierce there was nothing
else she could do. Next thing she knew, she's on the ground. Little
girl knocked her silly."

"The little girl did?" 

"Well, that's her story. Polly never touched her, far as I could
figure. Oh, it was a real drama, though. The lady who ran the school
lost her license. People calling the kid all manner of names saying
Melissa's a witch. Polly never went back to school a day since".

"This ah, this affair that the mother was having with the butcher...?" 

"Dave. Oh, I might have given you the wrong impression. That wasn't
really an affair. Although Dave did make quite a fool of himself and
his wife."

Scully presses the issue. "So, it was unrequited." 

"You could say that." 

"To the extent that she'd have to nail her windows shut?" 

"Oh, he wasn't that big a fool. You know, maybe she wasn't afraid of
something getting in. Maybe she's afraid of something getting out."

"Like what?" 

He shrugs. "It was just a thought." 

~*~*~

Jane Froelich's House 

When Scully and Jack reach the steps, Jane looks through door window
suspiciously. Pulling back a couple inches of curtain, she puts her
face close to the window. "Is that you, Jack?"

"Uh, yeah, it's me, Jane. Can we come in?" 

"Who've you got with you?" Jane's voice drips hostility.

"Miss Froelich, my name's Dana Scully. I'm with the FBI. I just
happen to be here on vacation, and uh..."

"So?" 

"So, I just am helping out the chief here." 

"You talked to her?" 

"Who?" 

"Oh, please." Jane rolls her eyes. "Melissa Turner. That whore's a
witch sure as I'm standing here. She's descended from the Hawthornes
in Salem and the Englishes, too. She comes from a cursed lineage and
now she's passing it on to the whelp. God save that little girl if
somebody don't do something. Lord knows I tried."

"Jane, if we could just come in for a few minutes and talk." 

"I found out last year how much good talking to you does, Jack
Bonsaint. I explained everything and the city closed me down anyway.
Our great-great-grandfathers knew how to treat witches. They would
have driven the demon out of that little girl and given that slattern
of a mother just what she's got coming!" Jane slams the door in their
face.

"New England hospitality. Heard about it my whole life. Finally got a
chance to experience it for myself," Scully says calmly as they walk
away from the house. She glances back, noticing that Jane is watching
them.

"Well, you see what I'm up against here, public sentiment and all." 

"This family tree of Melissa Turner's..." 

"Ayuh..."

"It's all talk, isn't it?" 

"Oh, I never really asked. Why?" 

"Well, I think you need to bring her in to straighten this out." 

"Under what pretext?" 

"That she might know something." 

"About what?" 

Scully resists rolling her eyes, thinking that Jack is as dumb as a
box of hammers, or really good at playing like he is. "Well, about
what I'm sure is a perfectly reasonable
explanation for all of this." 

"Ayuh." 

"Well, I wish I could help you out. You know, I'm just...on vacation."
She smiles ruefully. "This was supposed to be a weekend away for my
husband and I, but all three kids got chicken pox, so I'm here
alone."

"I guess if he was here, you wouldn't be helping us." 

"Are you kidding? He'd love to work on this case." 

"Sounds like you're married to quite a character." 

"You don't know the half of it." 

~*~*~

Washington, DC
8 p.m.

"Hold out your hands, Sammy." Mulder waits for the toddler to comply,
then slips a pair of mittens over the child's hands when he does.
Sammy gives the mittens a dubious look, but doesn't say anything.

"You next, Page." 

"Uh uh." She pulls her hands behind her back. "How come we're puttin'
on mittens? We're not going out in the snow."

Mulder lifts the edge of his shirt and points at a scar on his side.
"See that?"

"Yup." 

"If you scratch at those itchy spots you can make a scar like that." 

"But we won't scratch!" Page quickly promises.

Mulder shakes his head. "I know that you've both been very good while
you're awake, but people scratch in their sleep too. The mittens will
keep you from doing that...I didn't scratch when I was awake, either."

"What about April?" Page asks.

"She already wears mits on her hands when she sleeps, remember?"
April developed a tendency to scratch her ears in her sleep, often
causing them to bleed, so they adopted this solution weeks ago while
they wait to see if she needs tubes in her ears since scratching is a
common symptom.

"Oh yeah." 

Giggling, Sammy opens and closes his mittened hands. "Funny." 

Reaching down to ruffle his son's hair, Mulder tells him, "It'll keep
you warm if you dream about snowmen."

~*~*~

King's Crossing, Maine
8 a.m.

Coroners are wheeling Jane's body out of her house when Bonsaint and
Scully drive up.

"Looks like she died by her own hand. A big slice under the chin
opened up the artery," Bonsaint tells Scully once they're inside.

"With what?" 

"Buddy, show her the thing." 

As officer Riggs shows her a plastic bag with a bloody piece of
record in it, a phone begins to ring.

"Jack Bonsaint.... Ayuh. ... Who? ... Oh, okay. Put him through." He looks
up at Scully, "It's for you."

She gives Jack a surprised look as she takes the phone. "Hello?" 

"Hey, morning, Sunshine," Mulder crones, making her smile.

"Morning, Mulder. I didn't expect to hear from you this early." 

"Yeah, everyone else is still sleeping, so it seemed like a good time
to call. And I was a little worried about you. I was wondering if you
needed my help up there."

"Needed your help on what?" 

"I left you a message at the motel. You didn't get it?" 

"I was up and out this morning. Mulder?" 

"Yeah?" 

"How are the kids?" 

"On the mend, I think. Less crabby, anyway. They miss you, but not to
the point of tears. Anyway, I was thinking about this case. You know,
maybe it's not witchcraft after all. Maybe there's a scientific
explanation."

"A scientific explanation?" 
 
"Yeah, a medical cause. Something called chorea." 

"Dancing sickness." 

"Yeah, St. Vitus's dance." 

"Yeah, and hasn't been diagnosed since the Middle Ages." 

"Oh. You're obviously not a fan of American Bandstand, Scully." 

"Mulder?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Thanks for the help. Talk to you later." 


"That your..." Bonsaint hesitates. "Husband?" 

"Yep." 

"I'm sorry for eavesdropping but has he maybe got some insight on
this?"

Her voice is firm. "No." 

"I see." 

Riggs briefly plays the record that's in the player - the Hokey
Pokey- but then turns it off without explaining why he'd played in
the first place.

"You know, Chief Bonsaint, I've been thinking that maybe ... maybe we
need to explore other possibilities."

"I'm not sure I understand." 

"Well, maybe we need to keep our minds open to ... extreme
possibilities."

"Okay, but aren't you on vacation?" 

She nods then looks away.

~*~*~ 

Not a fan of lobster, Scully is less than thrilled when Bonsaint
insists they have lunch at a seafood place. He's delighted with his
meal, but she finds herself wishing that she could order a Caesar
salad.

"You said you had some other directions you were looking at?"
Bonsaint asks between bites.

"I've been thinking about Melissa Turner. Now, you said that her
husband died in a boating accident?"

"Ayuh." 

"Well, was there anything strange about that? About the way that it
happened?"

"It was never quite explained to anyone's satisfaction, actually." 

"How's that?" 

Before answering Bonsaint rips another hunk off of the lobster,
reminding her of the cockroach case Mulder had. "How the man got a
grappling hook poked clean through his skull."

"Was Melissa ever questioned about that?" 

"Melissa? No. I don't see how she'd be involved. The boat he died on
is right over there if you're at all wondering."

They look out window and see the old man on a small fishing boat,
named "Working Girl."

"I saw that man at the market," Scully says in surprise. She watches
as he throws water overboard.

~*~*~

The old man allows them onto the boat that night, not unwilling to
tell him his version of events. The three of them sit together while
he spins his tale.

"What happened? You ask that question around here, you get as many
stories as ... as fishermen."

"You were on board the night that he died. What do you think?" Scully
asks.

"I told my story to the Chief." 

"People's stories change," Scully tells him.

"Folks blame the widow." 

"Who do you blame?" 

"He was wild for her. He worked very hard to build that little house
for her and when that daughter came, you'd need a mop to wipe that
smile off his face. We'd set out to sea on the girl's last birthday.
He was counting the hours before he'd be home again. Found a doll in
the ocean, said it was a gift for Polly from Davey Jones. Three days
later, he was dead."

"And you know what killed him," Scully suggests.

"The eyes play tricks at night, water up against the hull making
noises. He woke me up, all het up....it sounded like the doll was
talking to him right before he got speared in the head. Like I said,
the eyes play tricks."

"But you saw something in that grocery store. That little girl and
her dolly."

"Moment I saw them, I knew." 

~*~*~

Scully's cell phone rings as she and Bonsaint head for the car.

She flips it open, saying, "Scully." 

"Hey, I had a new thought about this case you're on. There's a viral
infection that's spread by simple touch ..."

"Mulder, are there any references in occult literature to objects
that have the power to direct human behavior?" She ignores the
strange look Bonsaint gives her.

"What types of objects?" 

"Um, like a doll, for instance." 

"You mean like Chuckie?" 

"Yeah, kind of like that," she agrees.

"Sure, the talking doll myth is well established in literature,
especially in New England. The-the fetish or Juju is believed to pass
on magical powers onto its possessor. Some of the early witches were
condemned for little more than proclaiming that these objects
existed. The supposed witch having premonitory visions and things...Why
do you ask?"

"I was just curious." 

"You didn't find a talking doll, did you, Scully?" 

"No, no. Of course not." 

"I would suggest that you check the back of the doll for a - a
plastic ring with a string on it. In any case, don't bring it home to
the kids-" Mulder's voice fades out when Scully closes her phone.

Turning back to Bonsaint, she says, "Let's go talk to Melissa
Turner."

~*~*~

Melissa Turner Residence
8 p.m.

Bonsaint pulls into the driveway, and they notice a car parked there
already.

"That's Buddy's car." Turning towards the house, he yells. "Melissa!"


Walking up to the house, looks in a window.

"You see anything?" 

"No." 

They hear noises coming from the inside, and redouble their efforts
to get into the house before it's too late. Scully pounds on the door
while Bonsaint looks for another way in. "Melissa? Melissa?
Bonsaint!" He runs back to her side of the house. "She's got the door
nailed shut. She's trying to kill herself."

Bonsaint begins breaking down the door, while Scully knocks at a
window. After Bonsaint kicks it, the door finally crashes open, and
they run into the kitchen. Melissa is holding the hammer in front of
her face.

"Get away from me!" Melissa demands.

"Put it down, Melissa," Scully tells her.

From Polly's arms comes the doll's eerie voice. "I don't like you
anymore."

Melissa hits herself on the forehead with the hammer. Bonsaint yelps
in surprise.

Scully, now sure of what's going on, kneels next to the little girl.
"Give me the doll, Polly." Polly shakes her head, and refuses to hand
over the doll.

"I want to play," The doll says right as Melissa hits herself with
the hammer again, bloodying her face.

"Polly, give me the doll," Scully demands as the doll speaks again.

Horrorstricken by her mother's appearance, Polly lets the doll go,
and Scully grabs it. It continues to say it wants to play right up
until Scully shoves it into the microwave. The voice is muffled by
the door, and Scully turns the appliance on. The doll catches on
fire.

All three adults watch as it incinerates. 

~*~*~

Four Days Later
Westport Island, Maine

The Tar Box Inn does turn out to be very nice, much nicer than the
Super 8 motel Scully spent the night in at King's Crossing. The thing
she immediately decided as she drove away from the microwaved doll is
that if she never spends another minute in King's Crossing, it'd
still be too much.

Finally in Westport, she's taken tons of pictures, spent time
shopping, visited the local attractions, and only called Mulder twice
a day. Each day she's relieved to hear that Emily is still showing no
signs of the illness her cousins have. It makes her wonder if perhaps
Emily's adopted parents had gotten her that new Chicken Pox
vaccination that the HMO she and Mulder have will not cover.

As she puts her suitcases in the trunk of the rental car, Scully
reflects on how well rested she feels, and it makes her feel a little
bit guilty, because she's sure that despite her husband's complete
lack of complaints on the phone, he's none so relaxed with three sick
children to look after.

This in mind, she stops off at a grocery store shortly before the end
of a very long drive. Unlike her shopping a week before, this visit
requires a shorter list. Sunflower seeds, steak, a chocolate cake,
some ice tea, diapers...

But as she is about to by-pass the feminine hygiene isle, something
occurs to her that makes her come to a dead stop. It's not until an
irritated old woman tries to get by that she starts moving again.

~*~*~

Washington, DC
9 p.m.

Scully enters the house quietly, fairly certain that the kids will be
sleeping. Mulder creeps up on her, with a finger raised to his lips,
confirming her suspicion. She nods and goes to put the food she
bought away in the kitchen, then follows him up to their room.

"The kids are better," Mulder tells her. "No more itchiness, very few
spots. I think they'll sleep through the night, though, so you'll
have to wait until morning to see for yourself."

"I'm glad they're feeling better." 

"Did you bring home any creepy dolls?" Mulder asks cheerfully as he
drops her luggage on their bed.

"No." She unzips the outer pouch of one bag and pulls out a small
rectangular box. "But I did bring home this."

He looks at it for a second, and it seems like he's trying to decide
whether or not to smile. "Did you use it yet?"

"I haven't. It didn't even occur to me until I was on the way home." 

"You have to wait until tomorrow then, huh? Because of the pee in the
morning thing."

 "That, and I think I'm about to fall asleep," Scully tells him with
a yawn as she lies on the bed. "I bought your dinner, it's down in
the kitchen, but I'm afraid you'll have to cook it yourself."

"No problem," he tells her. "I've been cooking a lot lately, and I'm
getting good at it."

Before he can go on to confess as to why they have a brand new frying
pan, and the fate of the last one, he notices that she's already
asleep. He shrugs, pulls of her shoes and covers her up, deciding
that she can undress if she wakes up later.

On the way out of the room he eyes the box on her nightstand, and
wonders what the results of the test will be.

~*~*~

Chapter Fifty-Five

The Next Morning

The sounds of small feet wake Mulder up. He yawns and rubs his eyes,
then notices that Scully is coming through the doorway. "What's going
on?"

"Missy dropped Emily off to play, and the kids need supervision if
I'm going to..." She trails off and nods in the direction of the box on
the nightstand.

"Okay, yeah. Let me get dressed and I'll get the kids out of your
hair. There are some things I need to pick up at the store so I'll
take them along."

"April's still asleep, so you've only got the three of them to cope
with."

"Cope? You make it sound it's hard to look after three little kids
while shopping. It's Saturday, how many shoppers could there be?"

"Good luck, Mulder." 

~*~*~

How many turns out to be lots and lots of shoppers. They're
everywhere, and he's tempted to put all three kids into his cart, but
wouldn't have room for what he wants, so he spends forty-five minutes
telling the kids to "put that down and come back here!" while he
gathers everything on his mental list.

Even so, things are going pretty well until... "Oh, they're so cute!" a
voice over his shoulder coos. "Are they twins?"

Mulder blinks a few times, then it dawns on him that the woman is
staring at Page and Emily. "No, they're cousins, actually. My
daughter is two months older than my niece."

The woman looks faintly disappointed, but says, "Their moms must look
a lot alike."

"They do. They're both redheads, like Sammy here-" He looks over to
where Sammy last was, and sees nothing. "Girls, where's Sammy?"

Both little girls shrug, and the woman offers an apologetic look.

"Oh crap," Mulder says, and sees Page's eyes widen. "If you tell Mom,
I'm eating your desert."

Unsurprisingly, his daughter says nothing.

~*~*~

When Sammy looks around, he's surprised to see no one he knows. All
he sees is a bunch of grown ups he doesn't know.

"Daddy?" He takes a few uncertain steps and looks around before
calling for his father in a slightly louder voice.

"Who are you looking for?" 

Sammy looks up at the woman and frowns a little. "My daddy." 

"My name is Carol and I work for this store. Why don't we go up front
and have someone call your dad to meet us?"

After a moment of serious contemplation Sammy takes her hand. "Okay."


~*~*~

Sammy thinks it's pretty cool that the man at the customer service
desk lets him sit on the counter, but he's still is anxious about not
knowing where Daddy is.

The man smiles at him. "What's your name?" 

"Sammy." 

"That's a nice name. What's your Daddy's name?" 

"Mulder." 

"Mulder what?" 

Sammy gives him a puzzled stare.

The man tries again. "What does Mommy call your Daddy?" 

"Mulder!" 

"Okay, what do Daddy's friends call him?" 

Sammy grins; this is a question he knows the answer to. "Spooky." 

The man turns to Carol. "That can't be his real name." 

Carol shrugs. "One of the kids in my grandson's kindergarten's class
is named Stormy and another is named Blaze. It could be his real
name."

~*~*~

Having spent the past ten minutes looking under clothing racks to see
if his son is hiding, Mulder is about to lose it when he suddenly
hears it.

"Would Spooky Mulder please come to the custom service desk. Spooky
Mulder please come to the custom service desk, your son is waiting."

He mutters to himself and grabs the girls by the hand, then almost
stumbles when Emily stops short and looks up at him. "What Emily?" he
asks.

"Uncle Fox, why is your face all red?" 

"Nevermind." He sighs and both girls giggle.

"There you are!" Mulder says sounding relieved as he claims his son
from the customer service people.

"Hi Daddy. I look at a toy, then you gone!" Sammy explains with wide
eyes.

"Well, I'm here now," he tells him as the little boy half-strangles
him in the attempt to get off the counter.

"Sir...is your name really Spooky?" Carol blurts out.

"Yeah," Mulder tells her, then steers the girls in the direction of
the checkout lanes.

~*~*~

As soon as they're through the door the kids run off in the direction
of the playroom, leaving Mulder behind as he hauls in all his bags.
Feeling unambitious, he drops them onto the floor and notices that
April is awake in the playpen. "Hey sweetie," he greets her, ruffling
her hair.

"Mulder?" Scully asks behind him. "How did shopping go?" 

Shaking his head slightly he puts an arm around her. "Do you know
what our son thinks my first name is?"

"No." 

"Spooky. I learned this when I was paged over the PA system-" 

"You lost him?" 

He gives her a guilty look. "Only for a few minutes." 

"I lost him in the grocery store last week. We should really consider
getting another of those leash things we had for Page."

"What, and let him cut this one to pieces too?" Mulder asks, faking
horror.

"I told you not to leave scissors around..."

"So, what's the verdict?" he asks, suddenly serious.

Her smile is bright. "Positive." 

"You know, they're going to out-number us two to one now." 

"That's okay, we're bigger and smarter than they are." She laughs.

"Bigger, yes, smarter, I'm not so sure," He admits wryly. "Anyway, I
guess this means that I shouldn't ask you to help load my trunk,
though."

"Load it with what?" 

"X-Files. You didn't notice that they're in the coat closet?" 

"Why are there X-Files in our coat closet?" 

"I was bored this week so while Rachel was here this week I went to
the office a couple of times and got them."

"How many? And why??" she asks with a puzzled look.

"All of them," he admits. "I wanted to scan them with my new scanner.
The kids slept a lot and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought
it would."

Scully stands on her tip toes to kiss his cheek. "I love you, Mulder.
But I hope none of our kids grow up to be as strange as you."

"Oh, thanks a lot," he complains, but he's whistling by the time he's
dragged the first box of files out to his car.

~*~*~ 

February 1998 
2:45 a.m.

As they trade barbs and information in the bullet-shattered diner,
Mulder wonders what the outcome of this case will be. Not that he
won't be busting his hump any less, but he wonders if that goth chick
would still try to join her dead lover in the digital beyond. Then he
wonders what sort of heaven that would be, and is on the verge of
trying to match other religions and philosophies to that sort of
afterlife when his lovely and startling awake wife asks, "What would
these lowlifes be doing here?" 

He blinks, then grins. "Maybe it was for the pie." 

She gives him a "fuck you" look, and not in a good way. 
"Mulder, not to sound like a broken record, but what the hell
are we doing here at this godforsaken hour?" 

He nods, then pulls back the white sheet like a magician. "Donald 
Gelman." 

Now it's her turn to blink. "Who?" 

"Donald Gelman - Silicon Valley software pioneer. He's been missing 
since 1979." 

She gives him that lovely eyebrow arch before pursing her lips briefly. "A
nd 
you recognize him?" she says, clearly in skeptic mode. 

As the words come out of his mouth by rote, he's reminded of Al Gore's 
similar claim years later and smothers a smirk, "He invented the internet.=
" 
Another skeptical look. Yep, this is gonna be fun. "Okay, well, he didn't
quite invent it, but he's a Silicon Valley folk hero. He was writing
internet software even before there was an internet." 

Now her arms are crossed. Better and better. "Why have I never heard 
of him?" 

He pulls the sheet back up to hide the dead man's face and swipes the
laptop as he does so. Yeah, having an amateur magician for an uncle
does have it's pluses. "On the eve of the deal that was going to set
him up as another Bill Gates, he went hiking in the Sierras and said
he'd think about it. Never came back." 

Scully frowns, looking at the cops and crime techs swarming the area. 
"I still don't see the connection." 

Mulder smiles briefly, readjusting the laptop under
his coat while no one's looking. "Maybe that's the point." 

She frowns, heading out the door. "Okay, Mr. Mysterious, why was Gelman
in there?" 

"You know you can call me Mulder," he flirts, grinning when that twitch in
 
her jaw reveals how much she wants to hit him, "I think it's obvious 
someone wanted him dead." 

"Why put a hit on him? It's just as obvious the man was dying, why go 
through the trouble of such an elaborate execution?" She gets in the 
driver's seat, since she drove the way over here. 

He shrugs before getting into the passenger's side and locks the door. 
"Guess the killer couldn't wait when it came to Gelman, since his mind 
was more likely the threat." He slips the laptop out from his coat and 
opens it, his face bathed in a mild electronic glow. 

Scully's eyes are the same size as her mouth. "Mulder, that's evidence."=
 

Okay, maybe she hasn't loosened up entirely, he grins. "Gee, I hope so,"=
 
he says, popping a CD out from the laptop and putting it into the car ster
eo. 
On cue, the car lights start blinking and the Platters' "Twilight Time" pl
ays. 
As he smiles at her, Scully reluctantly smiles back. They lean towards eac
h
other and kiss, as if in a mini-prom trapped in a car's body. 

Then Scully says in a low voice, her eyes still closed but her hands on
his tie, "Shouldn't we take the CD out before we attract attention?"

Mulder chuckles. "Too late for that." Before she can retort or pull
away, he draws her in for another kiss. 

~*~*~ 

A Few Hours Later

They're at the Lone Gunman's warehouse in Takoma Park, and as before,
the odd trio praise and salute their fallen hero. While the so-called
"Twilight Time" CD plays, Scully reads the latest issue of the Lone
Gunmen, the headline reading "Infrared Technology." Her eyes narrow
when it dissects the role of heat-sensing FLIR, or Forward-Looking
Infrared, in the Waco massacre. Originally designed to detect enemy
tanks in the Gulf War, it's now being used as a form of night vision
technology. According to the conspiracy theorists' paper, however,
FLIR cameras documented the FBI running towards the compound,
charging forward in front of tanks to shoot at civilians burning
inside. Her forehead wrinkles as she wonders at the ludicrous notion
of using what would be targets for Davidians as the frontline
shooters when they had tanks. She may not have a mind for military
strategy like her father, but even she can see the idiocy of that
kind of formation. 

Just as she's about to verbally drill several holes into the article, the
 
long-haired blond of the trio speaks up. "We're up against 64-bit encrypti
on 
- a password that's a random sequence of twelve symbols. Gelman's 
locked up this baby tight," he says, with as much admiration as frustratio
n. 

Scully walks over while Byers chimes in, "This CD has some kind of 
enhanced background data. Lots of code. Maybe a programming design." 

"Cool," Mulder says, half-wishing the old man was alive to break it down
 for 
the boys in person. "What for?" 

From behind the men, Scully asks,"Anyone think to check his mail?" 

They look at each other sheepishly before shaking their heads, and Langly
 
quickly taps on an icon and a couple of tabs. Byers reads aloud, "David 
missing, fear the worst, the hunted has become the hunter." 

"'Invisigoth'?" Scully raises both eyebrows. 

"Could be an address," the suit-and-tie man suggests. 

"Seven digits," Frohike puts his two cents in, "an alpha numeric string of
 
four." 

"Standard ID," Mulder corrects him, "shipping container." 

The short man makes a face when Scully looks at Mulder like she's 
impressed with his kung foo. Damn, Frohike thinks, she's hot. 

~*~*~ 

Once again, Esther Nairn zaps him with the mini-Taser. And once again, 
Scully saves his ass and takes the goth chick down. And once again, the 
damn AI locks on their location and blasts the ever-living heck out of Nai
rn's 
former steel-box residence. Although he has to admit, even the second time
around, watching it go "boom" just like in the movies was pretty damn
cool. The kids are gonna have a heckuva story when we get home, he
thinks, even though he knows the danger level is still high and
there's always a chance he could really screw up and die the second
time around. 

Don't get cocky, he tells himself as Scully tells the woman in the backsea
t, 
"No more screwing around. We need a name. Your real name." 

Mulder would tell her, but that would make both women
very suspicious in different ways. Besides, he likes seeing Scully in
her tough G-woman mode. 

"Invisigoth," the handcuffed woman in the back sneers, in spite of her bla
ck 
makeup smearing and fading. "My address? It's T-O-A-S-T." 

Mulder decides to add to the interrogation rather than the catfight he's
 
half-hoping for. "When you said 'it' was targeting us back there, you mean
t an 
artificial intelligence. Donald Gelman was trying to create a sentient AI.=
" He
twists around slightly to see her face. "He succeeded, didn't he?"

Nairn almost looks impressed, then looks out the window. "Donald
wrote an interlocked sequence of viruses 15 years ago. It got loose
on the net." 

"Whoa, what do you mean, 'got loose'?" Mulder says, already knowing 
the damn thing's out there, up there. Man, it's a good thing it's not on
 the 
aliens' side, he muses, things could get really bad in a James Cameron-kin
da 
way. 

"He let it loose," Nairn says in a tone of voice usually reserved for talk
ing down 
to small children, "so it could evolve in its natural environment. Urschle
im in 
silicon."

"Digital primordial ooze?" Scully asks. 

The goth nods, a little surprised that the woman managed to put two and tw
o 
together. "Except this time, Donald was the one pushing it to walk on land
, 
achieving the equivalent of Copernicus, Magellan and Darwin." 

Scully's stopped being surprised by the worship the dead man obviously
inspired. "And what was your role in this? Bass player?" 

Nairn gives her a look Mulder recognizes from encounters Scully's had with
others who doubted her credentials. "Automata theory, MIT '95. Post
doc the Santa Fe Institute. Headhunted to Kobayashi my junior year.
Then Donald showed up in Tokyo and made me a better offer." 

"A better offer to do what?" 

The woman with the pale blonde hair and kohl-outlined eyes sniffs. "You 
wouldn't understand." 

"Give me a small break," Scully mutters, veering off the road sharply befo
re
parking it and jumping out. 

~*~*~ 

Mulder runs out after her, knowing his fiery redheaded wife would dearly
 love 
to punch the blonde. Scully spins around, her stance defiant. "You believe
 this 
crap?" she asks fiercely. 

He puts his hands up, wondering again if a catfight wouldn't make everyone
, himself 
included, feel better. Hey, it works for guys, he reasons, but knows she
 wouldn't go 
for it. "You saw what happened back there, Scully. You saw that container
 blow." 

She gives him a pitying look. "She could have rigged an explosive charge.=
 There 
are no weapons platforms, there is no such Department of Defense satellite
." 

"What about Star Wars?" he argues. "Brilliant Pebbles?"


Her blue eyes flash. "They were never built, remember? Contrary to what 
sci-fi movies proclaim, we don't even have that kind of technology! I mean
, 
even if an AI was targeting us," and her eyes narrow, "and I'm saying 'if'=
, with 
an armed satellite, why isn't it frying us right now?" 

"Because it doesn't know where we are," the blonde prisoner says, her thin
 
wrists still in cuffs. "If I so much as made a phone call right now, it wo
uld nuke 
us right where we're standing." 

"How?" Scully is practically challenging her.

"Recognizes my voice, monitors all communication," Nairn says with
a grudging respect. "I haven't used a phone in over a month." 

"Then how did it know to target the container?" Mulder asks. 

She looks at the both of them. "All I can think of is that some idiot got
 on
Donald's computer and tried to contact me over the net. Only Donald
knew where I was. And David." 

"Who's David?" Mulder perks up.

"David Markham," the blonde says with a studied indifference
shading her now-standard cockiness. "He was hardware. Donald and I
were software. We'd been caring for the AI, weaning it. Then Donald
warned us that the system started to display more than consciousness.
It started to display intention. But before we could stop it, it was
gone." 

"Where?" Mulder asks the question Scully won't. 

Nairn shrugs. "I don't know. Once day David was on the system and it
wouldn't come, it wouldn't come when we called it. We knew it was out
there somewhere on the net, but it wouldn't answer, and Donald was
just getting sicker." 

You thought it was a simple puppy, but it turned into Cujo, Mulder thinks.=
 
"And you can't find it," he says.

She nods. "It's not just a program anymore," she says, "it's
wildlife loose on the net. And either we kill it..."and now she notices
there's a crucial person missing in this conversation, now that
either the adrenaline or massive suspicion has worn off slightly.
"Where's Donald?" 

"He's dead," Mulder says bluntly, "killed in a cafe in what looks like
 
a hit." 

Some of the spunk leaves the woman. "That's the Ai protecting itself," 
she finally says. "It'll find David and... me. It's only a matter of time.=
 Donald 
was writing a concatenation of viruses designed to find and immobilize the
 
rogue system. The file name was 'Kill Switch.' Without it, nobody can catc
h
it." 

"We have Donald's computer," he offers. 

"No," she shakes her head, "he'd never leave it on hard drive." 

"Well, we have this," Mulder holds up the CD. "'Twilight Time'." 

Nairn's eyes light up. "That's it. That's the Kill Switch." 

Scully looks at them both as if they've both left sanity and headed for a
 sci-fi 
version of Wonderland. 

~*~*~ 

Watching the Gunmen practically fall over themselves over Nairn was pricel
ess 
this time around, too, Mulder smothers the grin on his face. Watching Scul
ly 
look almost arch when she discovers Nairn's real name was just fun, too.=
 After 
he recuffs the blonde to the desk, however, his usually straight laced wif
e
surprises by murmuring in his ear, "I wouldn't mind if you'd lock me up so
metime, 
too." He almost falls over and she doesn't bother to hide her grin. 

Nairn looks at them suspiciously before snapping, "Gimme the Kill Switch."=
 

Scully loses her grin while her eyebrow shoots up. "Aren't you worried it'=
s going 
to track you, Esther?" she says, not bothering to hide her perverse pleasu
re at 
needling the girl with her real name. "Hunt you down with a particle beam?=
"

Mulder puts himself as a temporary barrier between the two, handing
the CD over to the hacker. "Not unless someone else makes another
boneheaded internet connection," the blonde shoots back, causing the
conspiracy trio to look guilty, even though it was Scully's idea in
the first place. 

"What's this?" Mulder asks, pointing to a diagram Nairn pulled up. 

"That's the sharp end of the stick," she answers, "Donald probably tried
 
to feed this sector over the net, but it took too long, so the system was
 
able to take countermeasures." 

"Why didn't it just zap him, too?" Scully frowns. 

"Its creator?" Nairn almost looks shocked. "No, it needed to impress Donal
d. 
Particle beam would've been overkill." 

"Unlike a dozen crack dealers." The redhead rolls her eyes. 

"No, that's its sense of humor." Nairn smiles thinly. 

"Yeah, right," Mulder says. "But if you load the Kill Switch, what's it to
 stop 
it from playing another funny joke on us?"

Now her collegiate background is showing. "Well, obviously we can't
inject Kill Switch over the net. We have to find its home nod and
physically feed it the poisoned apple." 

"Why?" 

Another patient look. "It knows it can't hide in the net forever, so it's
 gotta 
have a physical nexus of hardware, a safe house, if you will. David went
looking for it." 

"Did he find it?" This time Frohike's quicker than Mulder on the uptake.=
 

She shrugs. "There's no way to know."

Scully frowns. "Why don't you just call him?" Everyone looks at
her, and then she throws up her hands. "Oh, yeah, death from above."

Now the Gunmen jump in, eager to be part of the solution. "It would
need bandwidth," Langly says. 

Nairn agrees. "It's a pig for bandwidth." 

"It would need a T3, at least," Byers suggests. 

"T3?" Scully asks, wishing she didn't feel so out of her depth. Ordinarily
,
she wouldn't mind, but there's just something about that girl that's
just putting her back up and making her hate every time she doesn't
get something. 

"A hard line," Frohike is happy to explain, "45 megs a second." 

"Major research labs and internet service providers use them," Byers 
adds. 

Langly spins around in his seat. "But the government keeps those records
 
secret for fear of sabotage," he says in his nasal voice. 

Nairn looks at them as if, well, as if she's a blonde. "Gee, you guys know
 
anyone that works for the government?"

They all look at the FBI couple. 

~*~*~ 

This time around, Mulder would like to switch places with Scully, but does
n't 
dare place their unborn child in danger of those hallucinogenic drugs the
 AI's 
got, so he reluctantly climbs out of bed, hops in the car, and heads over
 to
Fairfax County in nearby Virginia, knowing Scully's safer with Nairn
than with the AI's needle-happy BattleBots. 

And hey, maybe this time he won't even get caught, he thinks as he talks
 to 
a for-now hostage Scully. When Nairn hangs up on him, he thinks, Well, 
here's to a more stealthier approach. This time, he's got some funky
poaching equipment from the Gunmen that should buy him a little time,
but there's no getting around the fact that sooner or later, he's
gonna have to go inside that trailer. With the handheld monitor, he
sees various sensors around the trailer, and finds with the overlap,
he'll end up tripping at least one of them anyways. Great. Well, if
two chicks could avoid getting punctured, so can he, Mulder thinks
grimly, and proceeds towards the trailer in almost military fashion.

He starts by moving swiftly from tree to tree until he reaches the
edge of the clearing, shoots a couple of the sensors as well as the
damn siren, then rolls towards the trailer, and finally breaks down
the door with a billy stick, not bothering to go in the stealthy way
like last time. His face is covered by a ski mask and his clothes
hide both kevlar and some tough leather long johns he stole from
Langly. Then he pulls down the night goggles onto his eyes so he can
see better, and finds the same mess of hardware inside. Try and get
me this time, you bastard, he thinks savagely, stomping and beating
on the wheeled drone until it falls to pieces. 

Then he sees the badly electrocuted body in the harness, its face covered
 
by VR goggles. He doesn't have to lift the visor to know it's David
Markham, and keeps his eyes open for any more surprises, like, say, a
floating harness of doom similar to the one holding the dead man.

~*~*~ 

Scully and Nairn come to what used to be David Markham's home,
which is now a charred mess. When the blonde woman steps out to
wander among the ruins, Scully unlocks the handcuffs, loosely putting
it back together when Nairn gets back in. Putting the gun on the
dashboard, the younger woman bursts into tears, and Scully sees her
chance. 

Then Nairn grabs the gun and points it at Scully. "Go ahead! Do it! I know
 
you've been wanting to, dammit!" Her black makeup is now running down 
her face, but she honestly doesn't give a damn at this point about 
appearances. 

Scully sighs, takes the gun,and finds herself patting the thin woman's sho
ulder. 

It isn't long before they're standing in the midst of the debris, and the
 blonde
woman inhales sharply against a chill that's not entirely due to the wintr
y 
breeze. "I lied to you," she says dully, her eyes on the remains of the ho
use. 
"I wasn't working with Donald. I mean, I was, and then he found out about
 us." 

"About you and who?" 

"David." She sniffles. "About our plans." 

Now Scully's curious. "What plans did he find out?" 

"Uploading." Now the blonde woman looks at the redhead. "Transfer of memor
y, 
of consciousness to the distributed system maintained by the AI. Imagine
 being 
mingled so completely with another, you no longer need your physical self
 - you're 
one." 

Oh my God, Scully thinks. "So you were going to -" 

Nairn nods. "Enter the AI. Give up our inefficient bodies so that our 
consciousness could live together forever." 

I remember being that desperately in love once, the agent thinks, but that
 was 
completely wrong. But with Mulder, I don't want to be of the same mind, or
 same 
body. I love the way he both challenges and respects me, the fact that we
 have 
the same job that tests us mentally and physically, the home and even
ghosts we share, and of course, our three, soon to be four, lovely childre
n. And 
I love having everything, a job, a man, a family, a home, a mind, and a he
art, 
all of which continue to surprise me with the fact that I have more to lea
rn, more 
to give, more to love. Love isn't selfish, she wants to tell Nairn, love
 would open 
itself to extreme possibilities in this present life rather than delusions
 similar to 
the Heaven's Gate cult, but I know she'd be as open to the advice as I was
 when 
I was with Daniel. "But Gelman forbade it," is what she says quietly. 

Nairn smiles bleakly. "He was afraid of his creation. He was afraid of wha
t would 
happen if other people followed us." She squats down and picks up a partly
-burned 
photo of herself and David. "I loved him so much." 

It's too early to tell, but from what the redhead can see, there's no sign
 of any 
human remains. Unless he was standing at ground zero, it doesn't seem to
 
appear that Markham was even home. She doesn't want to give false hope, 
but then, she's not entirely unsympathetic to Nairn's plight. "Maybe he wa
sn't
here when this happened," she says, her words bolstering her own belief.=
 If 
Nairn could survive an attack, it's possible Markham has, too. "Maybe he's
 
somewhere else." 

~*~*~ 

He's beating down a second BattleBot when a thought occurs to him. Why 
not take down the whole damn thing and save everyone the trouble? It's too
 
bad he didn't make a copy of the Kill Switch, as he was busy preparing to
 save 
his own hide. So he takes out his gun and starts shooting at the monitors,
and when his bullets run out, he gets a firm grip on the billy club and st
arts 
whacking away at various machines, tearing out wires and basically going
 
medieval in the cramped trailer. 

So busy is he wreaking havoc, however, that he doesn't notice the harness
 until
 the restraints bind him and a visor clamps down on his head. "NO!" he yel
ls, vaguely 
aware during his struggles that it's taking longer this time, probably bec
ause of the 
body armor. All that protection is just making him hotter, and electricity
 sparks off 
his sweat, making him scream. "Scul-laaaaaaaaaaay!!!" 

~*~*~ 

When he wakes up, his eyes fly open. If Nurse Nancy shows up, she's dead,=
 
Mulder thinks, and is pleasantly surprised to find Scully bending over him
. "Thank 
God," she says, holding his hand. She stops him when he tries to sit up,
her hand on his shoulder. "Don't. You just gave us a terrible scare."

He smiles weakly. "Sorry about that. I'm just glad you got to me before I
 
turned into a crispy critter." 

She nods. "I know. But not everyone was so lucky. Esther Nairn, for one."=
 

His mouth hangs open. "What?" 

Her eyes drop. "She tried using the Kill Switch, but they got her." 

His mind reels. "How?" he says in a dry voice. 

"I think it tracked us through my cell phone," she says. She holds his
hand up to her cheek. "Fortunately, you managed to damage most of the
equipment in the trailer, so by the time I got there, the AI wasn't
able to completely hurt you." 

"What do you mean, 'completely'," he asks, "what's wrong with me?" 

"Mulder, don't," Scully says, but it's too late. 

He sits up and finds second- and third-degree burns over a large part of
 
his body. As shock ripples through him, an orderly comes in and snaps, 
"I'm afraid you'll have to leave now, Ms. Scully. His pain medication's we
aring 
off." 

As Scully is hustled out the door, she shoots an agonized glance at him.=
 
"I'll be okay," he says weakly when the orderly returns to inject him with
 
something that's fast-acting. Damn, that's strong, he thinks, slipping int
o
unconsciousness. 

~*~*~ 

A shell-shocked Nairn and shaken Scully stand slowly from their crouched
 
positions on the bridge. "Okay, that was too damn close," Scully mutters,=
 
seeing the last of the computer fizzle into the river below. "I'm not abou
t to 
lose my unborn child over some ghost in the machine." Vaguely, she recalls
 
one of her early cases with Mulder involving a homicidal machine at the 
Eurisko building that killed off his glory-seeking ex-coworker. 

"You're pregnant?" Nairn asks, interrupting her thoughts. 

Scully smiles a little. "Our fourth," she says, then rotates her neck. It'=
s been a
long day, and it looks like it's going to get longer. "Thank goodness Muld
er's 
into large families." 

"He's your husband?" The techie is fairly goggling now. 

"Yeah," the redhead says, "partners in all the right ways." 

"Well, I guessed you were close, but," Nairn shrugs, "wow. Four kids. 
How do you manage that on top of this job?" 

"It helps to have a nanny," Scully says dryly, thankful she's still got
the keys. Walking on now-sturdy legs, she adds, "Coming?" 

The blonde woman nods as the gate hauls itself up, as if the AI's
satisfied the danger's over. "But you guys are always yelling at each
other." 

Scully smiles as they buckle up. "At the end of the day, the best part is
 
being able to kiss and make up. Or beat the crap out of some sewage-dwelli
ng 
mutant, but don't tell him that," she adds, and finds some small satisfact
ion in 
seeing the other woman smile.

"I don't know about the mutant part, but I think that's what I loved, *lov
e*, about 
David," Nairn says quietly as Scully drives over the bridge. "Just being
 with him 
at the end of the day. Especially when Donald was getting more and more 
spooked about the AI, it was just so good to come home to David and, I dun
no, 
talk. Sit. You know what I mean?" 

"You'll have more of those times, I'm sure," Scully says, her foot unconsc
iously 
pressing harder on the gas to reach Mulder. They spend a couple of miles
 in 
silence, until Scully grabs onto the train of thought that eluded her earl
ier. "Have 
you heard of Brad Wilczek? He used to work at Eurisko." 

Nairn nods. "I heard the CIA kidnapped him to rebuild a similar prototype.=
" Then 
her eyes narrow. "How do you know him?" 

"Mulder and I worked that case," the redhead says, her eyes on the road.=
 "I 
never was quite sure what happened to him, if he was kidnapped, as you say
, 
or incarcerated in some mental institution, or even killed. It seems stran
ge things
happen when the government takes an interest in AI, Esther," she finishes
 quietly. 

In a voice just as quiet, the blonde woman says, "Which was why Donald too
k 
the utmost precautions when he picked David and I. He didn't want to take
 the 
chance that what happened to Wilczek would happen to any of us." 

"And yet, it's the AI hunting you down, not the government," Scully says.=
 

Nairn smiles. "You and your husband work for the government, right?" Then
 
she looks out the window, her cynical face reasserting itself. "It's only
 a matter of
time before others add things up. By then, we should be long gone."

Scully's about to ask her what she means by that, but they've
reached the chicken farm and her heart's in her throat when she sees
Mulder's empty car. 

~*~*~ 

The next time Mulder wakes up, someone is massaging cool, soothing lotion
 
all over his body. "Don't stop," he says, smiling at his wife. 

Scully smiles back. "You're awake. Good." Her hands work slowly down his
 
torso until they rub small circles around his groin. She licks her lips wh
en he gets 
bigger. "Very awake." 

"You have no idea," he groans, thankful that's one of the few parts of his
 body that 
hasn't been charbroiled. "Oh, Scully, oh my go..." His eyes roll back, and
 for a while, 
he's incapable of speech, much less thought, as she gives him the best blo
wjob of his
life. It isn't long before he explodes in her mouth, and she licks him off
 like ice cream 
off a stick. When she licks her lips again, he moans, unable to stop blood
 rushing 
through his penis for the second time. 

"Mmm, Mulder," she groans, "I wish we could do more." 

"Me, too," he agrees, both heads in agreement. 

"I talked to the doctor, and he says he can speed the healing process alon
g with skin 
grafts," Scully says. "But he needs your help." 

"How?" he wonders. "I don't have much unburned skin to work with." 

She smiles. "It's not that. It's information you have on this case." 

"Like what?" 

"The Kill Switch," she says, idly playing with his penis. 

"I thought Nairn had it," he says in a hoarse voice, trying his damndest
 to think
straight. 

"We thought so, too, but she didn't," she says, and he's hypnotized by the
 way her 
thumb strokes him into the third stiffie of the day. 

"That's too bad," he moans, breathing shallowly when her other fingers joi
n in to 
bring him to fullness. 

"Do you have it?" she asks. 

He blinks at her dazedly. "Do I have what?" 

"The Kill Switch," she says insistently, stroking him harder. 

I can't believe I fell for it a second time! he thinks angrily. And I can'=
t believe I
came for an AI! How sick is that? "Duh," he says, twisting his hips and ki
cking 
her in the head. As she slams into the wall, everything starts to blur and
 pixellate. 

As he struggles into awareness, the machine plunges another needle into hi
s 
neck. "Scully," he whispers, his head slumping forward, even as the visor
 and 
clamps hold it hostage. 

~*~*~ 

As they emerge from the forest, they can see a trailer with its door missi
ng. "Scully," 
the women hear a groan coming from inside the trailer. Cautiously, they ma
ke their 
way towards the violated opening. 

"Dammit," the agent sighs, pulling out her gun and running in, her flashli
ght sweeping 
through the cramped space. "Mulder? Mulder, can you hear me?" she calls ou
t,
squinting her eyes for a sign of him, or maybe a light switch. It's obviou
s he did some 
damage before he went down, unless those monitors were supposed to be smas
hed 
in. 

"Brilliant," Nairn mutters, looking for a serviceable console and keyboard
 that hasn't 
been destroyed. As she spins her flashlight around, she sees two bodies ha
nging 
from harnesses. She flips up one visor and screams. "David! Oh, God!"

Scully joins the other woman and flips up the other visor. "Mulder! Mulder
, come on, 
talk to me," she says, trying in vain to free him. A whirring sound catche
s their attention, 
and Scully draws her gun at what turns out to be an opened CD-ROM drive.=
 

"It wants the Kill Switch," Nairn says woodenly. 

"Well, we don't have it. You threw it in the water," Scully sighs, half-wi
shing she had 
a Swiss Army knife to cut these damn restraints. Her eyes widen when Nairn
 pulls 
out a CD. "That's going to kill it, right?" she says hopefully. 

"Not if it can learn the program and vaccinate itself against it," the blo
nde
woman says grimly, staring at the disk in her hand. 

Suddenly, Mulder twitches, and Scully jumps back as electricity surges thr
ough
his body. "Just give it what it wants!" she shouts, not daring to touch th
e man she 
loves for fear she'll be knocked out, but hating that she can't even comfo
rt him in his 
pain. "Please, Esther!" she screams, pain tearing at her voice. 

The lone intact computer starts beeping, and its screen is filled with aer
ial maps 
that are quickly zooming in on their area. "It's targeting us," Nairn turn
s away 
from both the painful sight of a tortured couple and her own dead love. If
she can't be with David alive, she'd rather be dead. 

Scully, however, doesn't share the same sentiment, and, grabbing the CD,
shoves it into the drive. As the Platters sing a song Scully's really
starting to hate, the restraints break and Mulder slumps in the harness.=
 
Relieved more than words can say, she runs back to him and takes the visor
 off 
his head. "Stay with me," the redhead says, "you're going to be okay." 

Nairn watches them, then starts typing as Scully supports Mulder. Tears ro
ll 
down her face, and she sniffles just once as her fingers fly over the keyb
oard, 
inputting commands she never thought she'd use in real life until years la
ter. I 
was looking forward to sharing the rest of our lives together, she thinks,=
 guess 
this adventure's going to have to online, my love.

"What are you doing?" Scully asks, pausing in the escape. 

"Get out!" Nairn snarls. "I got it!" 

The agent, thinking it's some kind of payback, doesn't argue, but continue
s to 
half-carry her husband out the door as the music continues to insanely pla
y on. 
Once she's satisfied Mulder's out of harm's way, she goes back to get Nair
n, but
doesn't see the blonde woman at the console. "Esther?" 

"You don't listen, do you?" Nairn's voice may be muffled by the clutter an
d
electricity, but not her anger. 

Scully swings her flashlight around. "Where are you?" 

"I said, get out!" the other woman screams, and the computer beeps ominous
ly, 
as if to underscore the point. 

Dammit, Scully thinks, grabbing Mulder and hauling ass. And just in time,=
 because, 
for the third time during this crazy case, a targeting system from above
 strikes and 
blows the trailer to smithereens. 

~*~*~ 

The next night, having finished up and filed in their report, thanked and
 paid their 
nanny, and tucked their sweet babies in bed, Mulder and Scully plop exhaus
tedly 
on their bed. "I gotta say, virtual reality's got nothing on real life,"=
 Mulder says,
his eyes taking in the sight of his wife yawning and stretching next to hi
m in a faded 
Quantico shirt. 

"So what exactly did you see when you were drugged?" Scully asks, snugglin
g up 
to him. She's rather curious as to why his report is, for some reason, rat
her 
abbreviated during that part of his experience for once. 

He thinks of the cyber Scully and shudders. "It was a nightmare," he says
 
honestly. "I'm just glad it's over." 

She's about to press him further, but stops. "Me, too," she says, thankful
 that, 
according to the blood tests, the drugs would soon dissipate from his syst
em. "I 
wonder if she's happy now," she muses. 

"Who?" Mulder squints. 

She looks up at him. "Esther. In some ways, she reminded me of me. She was
 so 
young and talented, but so unlucky in love." 

"You regret marrying me?" He pouts, and she swats him playfully. 

"No, silly. I mean, the project brought them together, but at the end, bec
ause of 
Donald's paranoia and the AI's psychosis, they were forced to be apart. I
 wonder 
why sentient AI's end up like Hal in that '2001' movie," she muses. 

I won't let anything tear us apart, a Neanderthal part of him mentally pou
nds his 
chest, not our jobs, not the conspiracy, and not us. "Ah, so you *do* beli
eve there 
are such things as sentient AI's," he teases her. 

She makes a face. "After three near-misses on this case and numerous attac
ks 
by that Eurisko thing, I'd have to say, yeah, I do. But that doesn't mean
 I'll believe 
any cockamamie theory coming out of your mouth." 

"I thought you loved my cockamamie theories." Mulder pouts. 

Scully laughs, closing her eyes as she leans on him again. "Esther wondere
d how on 
earth we stayed together when we fight so much. I told her at the end of
 the day, it 
was nice to kiss and make up." 

"Or make out," he leers. 

"Shut up, Mulder," she nudges him. "I'm making a point." 

"Sorry," he murmurs. 

"You're forgiven," she says lightly, hugging him. "I'm just saying, whethe
r it's in a 
spiritual or digital afterlife, I hope Esther's happy. And that David's wi
th her." 

Before the shock of agreeing with her wears off, he nods. "Me, too," he 
says, enjoying the feel of his wife in his arms. After a moment, he says,=
 
"Hey, can we get to the 'kiss and make out' part?" 

She swats him again, but giggles and kisses him. "No making out, you've st
ill got 
drugs in your system," she says, but her voice is regretful. "Good night."=
 

He sighs. "Yeah," he mutters, more regretful than she is, "good night." St
upid AI, 
he thinks, not for the first time. 

~*~*~