From: "=?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCJF8kPyRLGyhC?=" <mitani3@beige.ocn.ne.jp>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 20:12:59 +0900
Subject: Guardians Chapter 1 Disclaimers
Source: direct

Part 3

*Disclaimers - Please read it from part one. Thank you.


Jake's House
30 minutes later

"How much have you told him?" Mulder asked after a brief, though very
tight, embrace at the door. Scully took his arm, and made him sit down
on the kitchen stool.
	"Not much. About the test results and the personnel records missing. I
also told him about someone cleaning the mess around here. Jake was
shocked, of course. But then, he's got a right to know this. To know
what's happening, so that he'll know what we are dealing with here. We
still don't know exactly what's wrong with the girl.
"I know it was hard for you to listen to him speak like that, Mulder.
But he's been through so much today. His partner's wife died. The
man'22s children are still barely alive, but the man sure won't be the
same. Jake's been pushing himself over the limit trying to cover for the
man's workload at the office. He needs someone to trust. But he also
needs to vent out his steam. We're easy targets." 
She tilted her head a little so she could look into his eyes, which he
had slightly out of focus from hers. She reached over to touch his cheek
with her hand, stroking his tightened jaw muscles while forcing him to
really look at her. His swollen eyes blinked a few times, and he
released a deep breath. His hand came to cover hers that was still
resting on his cheek. She felt his fingers slip down the length of her
forearm, then come back up to entwine his fingers with hers, taking her
hand off his face. 
	"I need to explain what I've seen in the VR images, Scully. Come take a
look." He said as he jumped off the stool, her hand still in his, and
pulled her toward the computer desk. She swallowed hard, but followed
him anyway. She reported everything she could remember about Jake's
witness accounts, about what he told her that he had seen. Mulder nodded
to all of them, and gave her the headpiece to have her view them all for
herself. She gasped, and her fingers moved fast under the hand pieces.
Mulder watched her reaction with understanding. She snapped the
head-piece down to let it dangle from her neck. Their eyes met.
	"Are you sure about this? I mean, that she's a witness to a murder?"
	"Murders. There are at least three. One body had been intact. About the
other two, maybe more... They're in pieces, Scully. Although I don't
believe they're all humans."
	"Don't." Her eyes shot him a warning look he'd grown so familiar with.
	"Be with me for a second, Scully. I need you to go with me on this. The
red is obviously blood. Human blood. The others, I think, are the
alien-human hybrid blood - like the samples we found from the clones."
	"And this is believable, because...?" Scully threw a hand in the air.
	"Because of what we've experienced before. Those human bodies could be
our girl's family. The green goo could be from any clone. The girl saw
something that triggered her repressed memories to come back, and it
scared her so damn much, she's lying in a hospital bed in restraints. As
soon as Hall gets here, we need to figure out how to recreate the exact
crime scenes hiding inside these colors, symbols, and other bits of
images we haven't figured out yet. Then we can ask the girl if any of
them are right, but not before we check the reports on homicides
matching the description of the recreated images. 
"We have the vial to get the girl's DNA map. If any of the homicide file
has the girl's family, their DNA testing included in the file should
match up. We're one step ahead of them, Scully. They may have the copies
of the drawings. But they haven't figured out just what were in them. I
ought to be fuming at Kathler for concealing evidences, but on this one,
we ought to present him with an award." His words grew stronger with
excitement, as did the intensity in his eyes.
	Scully just let him flow, knowing some of his wild ideas turned out to
be very right in the past. When she was sure he was finished, she told
him to call her for any emergency because she might just end up staying
with the girl at the hospital especially now that the girl was found to
be their key witness to a possible multiple homicides. 
Mulder told Scully not to bother, because he'd call her as soon as Hall
got to the door and let her talk to him about whatever they want. When
she asked him what he exactly meant, he only shrugged and told her the
kid wanted to get acquainted with her. He didn't tell her it was a part
of the deal. Already sensing what her partner really meant, she promised
to get the scores even once the case settled. She hastily left the house
with two over-night bags, one for Jake and the other for herself. Mulder
saw that she'd also taken Stella and her laptop. This will be a long
day. 
	It didn't take more than twenty minutes before Agent Hall arrived, very
much disappointed to have missed Scully by bit. To keep Hall's mood up,
Mulder refrained from telling the poor man about her not returning for
the night. Mulder gave Hall the Reader's Digest version of what had
happened so far, and the young man widened his eyes at first - then
quickly furrowed his eyebrows.
	"Agent Mulder, that doesn't make sense. If she's the one who created
the artwork... why would she get so scared of them, she needs to be
hospitalized?" This was a good question. Mulder sipped his coffee and
rubbed his chin with his free hand.
	"It could be a form of defense mechanism. Traumatized victims sooner or
later will need to let their demons out; to understand exactly what had
happened to them, and to look for best solutions possible for every one
of the cases. 
"The drawings were our girl's mind crying for help. She's been doing the
drawings ever since she was first rescued. She flat-out refuses to speak
and doesn't read well, although she has the mind of a genius. I don't
know if that was due to the shock from whatever happened to her, or if
she got hurt and had brain injury. Or, maybe she had not been exposed to
a reading form of language due to such a long-time isolation from the
real world. Or, maybe she just found language too  ...primitive as a
method of communication. Either way, we still don't know enough."
	"I heard in my psychology classes that Language Acquisition Devise
works only till puberty or age 12, right? That's what happens to wild
children who were raised by animals or raised in complete isolation and
captivity by their own family members as a form of child abuse?"
Pleasantly surprised, Mulder raised his eyebrows.
	"Good call. Yes, that's true. If a human being isn't exposed to an
adequate amount and form of language by that time, the child can't learn
language higher than that of a toddler no matter what or how hard the
child tries. In our girl's case, I think it was her defense mechanism
that made her draw those images deliberately obscure; intentionally
unclear."
	"That's when we came and poked around with them..."
	"Yeah. I feel like shit for that, but I wasn't allowed much of
one-to-one talk with the girl. Jake was overprotective, and she was
practically following Jake everywhere. She was just beginning to open up
to me and Scully. Now I may well have killed her, maybe worse. I know
I'd rather die than spend the rest of my life locked up in a hospital;
especially in restraints."
	"So, basically you want me to isolate every image and gather them up
according to types, so you can recreate them to reveal the crime
scenes?" Hall saw Mulder nod. "Well, it looks like this guy Jake's done
most of the work for us. I'll print them up and you can start putting
the pieces together. I've called some people before I left. They said
the symbols look like an ancient Mayan or Native African language in
origin, but..."
	"It's okay, Hall. Take one step at a time, and we really appreciate
you're here. I was surprised that you didn't pull any of the 'Spooky
Mulder at work' crap. Do you believe in paranormal phenomena?" Mulder
threw one of his favorite cherry bombs to the young man.
	"Well... I guess you could say that I have an open mind, but I tend to
rely on logic when looking at individual cases. I need to keep my
skepticism, or else I'll jump into every hoax thinking it's the real
thing." By this time, Mulder was mentally doing conga.
	"Gee, why don't you submit your transfer request through Skinner and
work with us?" Mulder was only half joking. It was very rare to find an
ally with an open mind. Then, a bitter memory of Alex Krychek came to
his mind and he shook them away quickly. 'No', he told himself. 'I
checked this guy out.'
	"Thank you for the offer, Agent Mulder. But I'm not even a field agent
yet, and... I don't think they'll accept my application there. But,
please don't hesitate to ask me when there's anything I can do, at any
time. I seriously need some excitement in my life to survive other than
computer crimes and my office desk." Mulder laughed soundly at this
comment, but he was cut short when his cellular phone summoned his
attention. He grabbed it off the computer desk.
	"Mulder? It's me." 
	"Hey, Scully. Where are you?" Mulder could swear he saw Hall's ears
grow larger upon catching his partner's name, and smirked. The kid was
too damn honest for his own good.
"I'm at the hospital, and I was just thinking. Can we call up someone to
check the entire list of children recently gone missing? Find any
possible matches, but try the official channels first."
	"I had the same thoughts, Scully. I also want to run a check on police
reports of homicide involving family and / or kids that took place
recently."
	"Why don't I send myself to D.C., or have AD Skinner personally do it
for us, so there's less risk of tampering?"
	"No. I need you right here, Scully. I think it's just about time to
call in our cavalry."
	"Cava...? Mulder, you're not thinking about...?"
	"Why not? They're safe. I can trust them with the extra vial, and once
the girl confirms the recreated versions of the drawings as her actual
witness statement, then we can have them cross check with the recent
murder case reports. They tracked down the answers for the branched DNA
in the past. We'll have a helluva lot shorter list to check."
	"Someone still has to go to D.C., and deliver the vial to them in
person."
	"I will if I have to. Just stay close to the girl and Jake. They need
you there. I'm useless if I stayed in the hospital. Neither of them
probably want me there, anyway."
	"Oh, all right. Go ahead, call them." Scully didn't sound excited, but
he knew she trusted them. The bottom line was, both Mulder and Scully
were getting desperate. "We've got Agent Hall. Send him down here. He is
armed." Mulder grinned at her comment, and looked toward the young agent
whose fingers flew on the keyboard like he was playing a piano. "Oh, and
I'll need to bring Stella back to the house in the morning. They let her
in any time during the day, but she can't spend the night in here." 
	"Fine. Everything's on hold until things clear up. I'll send myself
down there and will be back with their version of the answers. Want
anything from your apartment? This is definitely gonna be one of the
largest out-of-state cases we've ever got."
	"No, I'm fine. Thank... Wait. Maybe a couple of CDs out of my
collection would be good. Please pick something soothing that'll help me
sleep." Mulder fell silent. Scully needing music to sleep? 'Nightmares',
he thought bitterly. He concentrated on her voice at the end of the
line.
	"All right. Want me to stop by at your Mom's? Tell her you're okay and
to check things over?" He carefully avoided the part about her
'appointment'. 
	"No, but thanks for the offer. Go get the answers, but be sure to come
right back, Mulder."
	"Agreed." Mulder answered and waited for the dial tone. When he looked
up, he finally noticed Hall staring at him expectantly. Mulder nearly
laughed. "Be glad, Hall. She's coming."
	"Agent Scully?" His eyes grew brighter. 'God,' Mulder thought. He will
be one sorry man if she found out just what kind of 'Scully Tales' he
had been throwing on the kid. The kid's gonna have a broken heart so
deep the sound can be heard. Mulder nodded and patted Hall's shoulder. 
	"Keep up your good work, Hall. She'll be impressed." Mulder said,
knowing full well that the poor young man would now drive himself up the
walls to get the work done. Mulder knew he was guilty as charged, but
right now he needed the young agent's support, and he needed it badly. 
Scully arrived shortly with Stella who was looking very tired but
intact. Scully let the dog in ahead of her, exchanged a few pleasantries
with the anxious young agent, and listened intently at Hall's detailed
explanations on what he was doing. Scully gave Mulder a few scolding
looks, asking him why Hall proceeded to treat and speak to her like she
was the Empress of the Bureau. Mulder shrugged with a grin, but walked
off to call their secret ally, and to get ready for his trip back to
D.C. 
	Hall printed up the copies of the drawings for Mulder to mull over
during the flight, and Mulder tucked them neatly into his briefcase
along with a pair of travel-sized stainless steel scissors and a tiny
tube of rubber cement. Then he placed the vial carefully into the metal
freezer container that Scully got from the hospital. Once he booked his
flight departing in just three hours, he left the house in a cab.


Lone Gunmen's Office
Washington, D.C.
5 AM Next Day

The familiar metal click of the door answered by Frohike was strangely
comforting, as it always made him feel. Byers and Langly were at the
desk, mulling over the articles for the next month's issue of their
newsletter.
	"So, no Scully, huh?" Langly asked, noting Mulder's rather spent
expression. Mulder shook his head no.
	"Not this time, boys. Sorry about that, Frohike. But believe me, I
would be the last person Jake Kathler want sticking around for
protection. Scully's got his trust." Mulder carefully controlled his
voice as he snapped open his briefcase and produced the small metal
casing.
	"So, this is it." Byers said, carefully opening the box with gloved
hands.
	"Yeah, that's the only one I've got. If we need more, I'm sure we can
get it from the girl. But right now, she's got enough needles sticking
into her. I don't want her to get stuck with another one."
	"You've seen her?" Frohike asked with concern. Mulder shook his head.
Byers lifted up the small, thin glass tube under a light for a closer
examination.
	"Scully and I both would like you to bring up records of any recent
murders occurred that involve entire families or children. Say ...a
couple of years or so. Screen them all against the description of our
mystery girl. We're not asking you to give us 'the one', guys. Just a
relatively short list of names is fine. I need them both in a floppy
disk and hard copy, so I can look them over on the way back. Keep the
vial for safekeeping." Mulder instructed them as he took his seat in an
offered chair, and carefully placed his load on the floor beside one of
the crowded desks.
	"The screening takes time, Mulder. Why don't you go if there's any
other errand pending." Byers tipped in, nodding to the door with the
male version of Mona Lisa smile. Mulder nodded appreciatively, but when
he returned four hours later with Scully's CDs and a dark summer
business suit that he took out of her closet along with several blouses
in a plastic bag, none of the three stooges were smiling.
	"Come on, guys. I'm waiting here." Unable to quench his growing fears,
Mulder ushered them and they gave him the screened test results. It
really wasn't a surprise for him to see the same symptoms of
weightlessness and the unusually high white count. Next, he was
presented with a fairly thick binder and a computer disk containing the
possible candidates of the girl's parents. Mulder flipped through them
but decided to let the more urgent matters to rest.
	"Mulder, you said she doesn't have any implants?" Byers asked, and
Mulder nodded. 
	"I'm wondering why that is myself. Why would they let her go without
tagging her?"
	"Maybe, just as an assumption, she was spared from them, so they can
use her after she grows up." Langly said as he munched on a candy bar.
Mulder quickly closed their distance to mere inches.
	"What are you saying, exactly?" The instant Mulder's insistent gaze
locked with his, Langly realized he should have Byers do the talking in
this one. Mulder practically radiated tension from every pore.
	"She may have been trained as a conduit. All reported abductees who
came back with horrifying experiences had unexplainable scars or
implants. They were used as guinea pigs, and they usually fall among
below average, to normal, to slightly-above average intelligence. But
this girl's a genius. Maybe they wanted to use her as a sort of
communication devise."
	"You mean, because they knew what their experiments were doing to the
other abductees?" Mulder felt a new wave of anger rising in his psyche.
	"If they knew what this girl is capable of, or will be capable of,
there's no chance they'd waste her. They might be even trying to teach
her their language. That could be where the still-unidentified symbols
and letters came from. I mean, you had that as a theory yourself."
Langly indicated the enraged Mulder hovering over him, wanting to divert
his gaze. True to his guess, Mulder stood up and rubbed his chin, deep
in thought.
	"It makes sense. We didn't detect any signs of tampering with the
girl's reproductive organs. No implant behind her ears, nothing in the
sinus cavity, nothing in the abdomen, and no scars on the back of her
legs. No holes in her teeth, either. Nothing like Duane Barry or
Scully." At the mention of his partner's name, Mulder felt his blood run
cold. 'Why didn't they spare Scully? She sure is intelligent. How dare
they classify her as dispensable?'
	"The only thing being tampered with is her memory and communication
skills. Maybe she was brainwashed to keep silent. Maybe it wasn't the
trauma that made her mute." Frohike took the turn.
	"To keep the uniform code of silence about the existence of
extraterrestrial life on Earth?" Mulder growled each word deliberately
slowly, so that sarcasm dripped from them. The paranoid trio shrugged.
	"So, you don't think there's any way for her to regain her speech
abilities?" Mulder hated the idea of the girl and consequently Jake,
forced to learn to sign.
	"With these lines of assumptions, that's a no. They can regress
memories, they can literally make people return with cancers, they can
harvest babies, and they can even produce alien-human hybrids. They even
taught people how to do selective memory drain surgery which you
yourself have undergone." Byers added when he felt it right to remind
the man of their knowledge that Mulder had seen  very important things
that had been taken away from him, and thus from all of them.
	"So they can easily figure out how to suppress parts of normal human
function like speech, mobility, hearing, language composition,
vision..." Mulder's words were mere mumbles.
	"The list goes on and on." Langly finished for him.
	"What if I ordered the girl to undergo regression hypnosis?" Mulder
couldn't think of any other way.
	"That might make her talk, but I don't know if she should remember
them. You said yourself that she already had a panic attack episode."
Langly said as he finished his candy bar, crumpling the wrapper.
	"Yeah, but all that still provides no explanations to who she belonged
to."
	"Mulder, you must consider the possibility that her parents are already
dead." Byers said as he turned back to Mulder from the computer screen.
His eyes showed only his honest concern and sympathy for the girl. "She
used lots of red, and what looked like severed body pieces, didn't she?
Could very well have been blood. Could have been that her entire family
was abducted, and ...her parents didn't get so lucky and they were
butchered for experiments later. Assuming that the oddly shaped figures
were the little gray men, then all the gray she used could double with
the aliens. You said each two-dimensional version may add up to big
cubicles, right?"
	"That seems to be the direction we're headed, including Kathler."
	"So, in that case..."
	"Kathler would probably be the social services' first choice for an
adopting father." Frohike added, his gaze facing the surveillance
equipment towered in front of him, deep in thought.
	"He would be delighted, believe me." Mulder shook his head as to say it
was no problem.
	"Not with the consequences. He'll never know when or what their next
attempt on her is going to do to the girl. He'll wrack his brains
worrying about the next time. They may have avoided implants on the
girl, because they didn't need any." Langly added bluntly, but Mulder
knew there was only sincere concern behind the man's thick glasses.
	"Just what does that mean?" Mulder already had a guess.
	"She may have just lucked out. Maybe she was an ordinary girl with an
ordinary level of intelligence, but the abductors performed little
experiments on her and activated parts of her brain such as language and
art, to an abnormally high level to monitor how human brains can be
improved. The girl may have had contacts with other abductees and that's
how she came to witness those tables and desks that she draws." Byers
held up his index finger just as Mulder made a move to respond.
	"We just don't know, Mulder. We all have our own ides, and which ones
you consider credible is your choice."
	"Yeah, sure. It looks like I need to take chances putting her through
hypnosis just to determine if she still possesses speech ability. I know
that normally, about up to 1/3 of our brains get used in a lifetime and
the rest of them might have extrasensory abilities and other really neat
stuff that the evolution process left unused. They may have tried to see
what kind of things they could discover and then observe." Mulder hated
the idea even more, but he couldn't think of anything better. 
	"We'll try to form some kind of patterns with the letters, but all we
can do is just wait for more drawings." Langly mumbled as he leaned back
in his chair and reached for the remains of his soda in the bottle.
Byers nodded his agreement.
"She's the mysterious one with the puzzles and most decidedly, the
answers."
	"Shit. I hate to explain all this to Scully, let alone Kathler." Mulder
grumbled, but none of the gunmen volunteered to be the sacrificial lamb
for Scully in his place. 
	"Just do what you always do. Present them as ideas. Just watch your
back for the armed cleaning service crew, and prevent our girl's next
abduction."
	"They've gone through this much trouble with her. They'll definitely
want her back." Mulder said, feeling his stomach flip again. He glanced
at his wrist watch and grumbled again at the time. Hastily gathering his
things, he headed for the door. "Look. Be as busy as you want, guys, but
promise me to spare time for us later. I think we have to rely on you a
lot in this case." 
	"Any time, Mulder." Byers promised, and watched as Frohike shut the
door just as Mulder slipped out of it. 


Prescott Hospital
Oakland, CA
Noon

Scully expected Mulder to return at any moment, but without a call of
reassurance, nothing was certain. She knew he wanted to go down to New
York to chew the Barrington staffs' asses out, but she doubted he'd
waste such time. She kept calling Hall every hour for update, but so far
they proved unproductive. 
About half an hour ago, Hall called her and told her he'd try a
different approach. Instead of trying to dissect the images piece by
piece, he'll try to 'peel off' the drawings by layers. Hall told Scully
the drawings might have been done as those of Estcher. Each drawing had
layers, and by separating them one by one, it might lead to answers. 
When asked just how that was possible, Hall told her he'd analyze just
what images lay on the same depth, insert a block in between each layer
according to the order they had been drawn, then lift them off
individually. Scully made an 'oh' sound for a reply.
	Scully had been so wrapped up in the matters at hand, she'd forgotten
to check with the personnel office for the patient records they'd
promised to get for her earlier. She requested a security guard to be
posted for watch during her absence as a precaution. Just as she was off
the elevator, Mulder called on her cellular and told her he was already
in a car - a red Ford Taurus, and he would be at the hospital within
fifteen minutes.
	"I have a lot to tell, Scully. I'm not excited about it, but the guys
found a fairly manageable number of candidates in a pile of murder
cases. I flipped through them during the flight, but I fell a sleep in
the middle of it." Scully detected his frustration, but she was actually
relieved that he'd slept.
	"Don't worry about that, Mulder. Just get here soon as possible without
killing yourself or someone else. I'm on my way to the Personnel office
to get those Jane Does' records to look for a match with the ones we
have. I've posted a guard at the door for the time being. Jake's firm
partners have been raising hell at Jake's absence, and he's still shaken
up. The girl isn't out of La-La Land, yet. The doctors have no clue for
how long. She's not in a coma, though, which is a good news."
	"It all sound to me like she's in a catatonic state." Scully pursed her
lips as Mulder's tortured voice came through the line. She reached for
the door knob, talking as she walked inside.
	"Well, they said it's not so serious. Her vitals are so far stable, and
other organs are also functioning normally." She said as she saw a young
man in a business suit leave the room. 
	"Maybe she's too far gone, Scully. ...I just made the last turn, so
I'll be there in no time." Scully let out a breath of relief.
	"Look, Mulder, I'm already inside the office. Don't wait for me. You
should go directly up there, because very few people know who's really
at the girl's bedside. Even some hospital staff think it's you up there.
It might be better." 
	"Okay, see you in a few." Mulder said before hanging up. Scully smiled
briefly before facing the office receptionist waiting for her at the
desk. 

The girl's room
Same Time

Jake kept staring at the girl's sleeping body as if willing her to open
her eyes. Nothing had changed so far, and the only notable event had
been a change of her IV bag that fed her some nutritious fluid. Jake was
fiddling with the girl's fingers, studying them in detail as he had done
so for hours, when he heard a slight 'thud' noise in the hallway,
followed by a swift opening of the door.
	"Dana? That was fast..." Jake's words stopped dead at the sight of two
men in non-descriptive black uniform enter the room, followed by two
more men who were dragging the unconscious security guard after them
before shutting the door. Jake jumped out of his seat, but he didn't
have a chance to even let out a cry for help. Before he knew it, his
vision was lost; his mouth was gagged; and his body was thrown hard onto
the cold tiled floor. All air escaped from him as someone roughly sat on
his back, while another bound his wrists and legs with duct tape. He
struggled, but the only thing the effort got him was a series of blows
to his sides and head. Beside him, he heard another man ripping the
covers off of the girl's bed, setting monitors and machines into a
rampage in the process. 
	"NOOOO!!" Jake screamed, but words didn't reach past the gag in his
mouth. He gasped when he felt himself lifted off the floor in a
fireman's carry. He heard foot steps all around him, and eventually he
heard the door close. He was barely conscious. He had no clue where he
was being taken, but he knew that the girl was close by. 
'If only I could make sure she's all right'. He thought for the
thousandth time in the past two minutes. 'Please, no matter what you do,
don't hurt her anymore'. Jake hoped Stella had been there to guard the
girl at her beside, where she belonged.
	 Jake eventually heard a creaking noise of metal move against metal,
and immediately caught a whiff of the foul odor wafting off of chemicals
and some raw materials. His body began breaking into cold sweat even
faster when, true to his sick guess, he felt his feet dangle in the air.
He tried desperately to struggle against the hands that kept trying to
push him through the narrow opening. 
Jake lost the fight when he received another blow on the base of his
neck, eliciting a choked gasp through the gag. He could swear he heard
the men laughing as the inevitable happened,then felt his battered body
connect with some smooth and slick surface of thin plastic. He welcomed
the unconsciousness.


Prescott Hospital
The girl's room
Same Time

Mulder exited the elevator and nearly mawed down a nurse who came
running through the door. He steadied his balance and was immediately
greeted by an army of hospital staff in panic. When he saw Scully
frantically trying to push the stretcher with an unconscious security
guard lying on top he dashed toward her. Scully spotted him immediately,
and motioned for him to get to the girl's room. He ran to the door
without a comment, his weapon out and ready to fire. 
Scully soon followed Mulder, finding him standing in the middle of the
room. His arms dangled at his sides, his frozen gaze locked on the empty
bed, now ransacked and left with the monitors still beeping. Scully
stopped dead at the sight, but soon walked over to the bed, past the
still form of her partner, and began turning off the machines one by
one. When she was done, she turned back to face the snow-white
complexion of the terrified man in front of her. 
	"Mulder, I'm so sorry. I don't know how long they've been watching us.
I should never have left here. It's very likely that Jake was mistaken
for you, considering they know your history with cases involving
children, let alone abductees." Scully took his hands in hers, and took
his gun out of his grasp. She lifted the hem of his unbuttoned jacket
and placed the gun back into his hip holster.
Even after she pulled him to the chair to let him sit down, she saw no
response from him. The sight was almost too painful for her to watch.
His gaze never left the empty bed. She took his face in her hands,
forcing him to face her. He didn't even blink as his glassy eyes met
with hers, and she silently gasped at the absence of life in those hazel
eyes. 
	"We'll find her, Mulder. And we'll find Jake. The entire hospital
security staff's looking for him now, and I really doubt they were able
to carry Jake out of the hospital. It's likely they've left him
somewhere within the building to buy themselves some time." When he
showed no sign to respond, she finally snapped and lightly slapped his
face. "Damnit, Mulder! Don't you fade out on me now, you just can't!
Focus!!" 
	"... Scu...lly?" Mulder's voice sounded as if it had been choked out of
him. 
	"Mulder! What happened in here would have happened sooner or later. I
should have been more careful. Come on, Mulder. You have to tell me what
you found! You said something about the list of the possible candidate
for the girl's family. Where is it?" She desperately wanted to keep him
talking before she lost him, too.
	"In ...briefcase. ...Car." Nothing but his mouth moved. It was like
watching a robot talk.
	"Okay, give me the keys." She saw his right hand achingly slowly reach
the pocket of his trench coat, and she grabbed them the moment they
appeared in his hand. Seeing no further response, she slapped him once
again, but this time she did so soundly. Mulder blinked once slowly,
then again, and his shoulders hitched slightly. If she could elicit a
complaint of pain, he was back.
	"Agent Scully!" A security guard burst in the door, facing Mulder's
back, therefore not seeing his rapidly-swelling face. Scully turned to
face the very excited guard, who motioned urgently for her to follow
him. 
	"What happened?" She asked, springing into a dash.
	"We found him." The man said as he began running with Scully following
closely, trusting that Mulder heard the man.
	"Where?" Scully asked as the guard held the elevator door open for her
to slip in.
	"In the bio-hazardous waste chute. He's a bloody mess, what with cuts
and bruises all over his body. No one knows what he cut himself with."
	"Call up the infectious disease specialists down here and run every
test imaginable." She sure hoped no lethal virus entered his system. It
was just too unfair. 
	"We're already paging them." The guard said as they heard the elevator
reach the basement.
	"Good work. What about the girl?" Scully already knew their answers,
but she couldn't help asking.
	"No, Agent Scully. I'm sorry, we haven't found anything yet." Scully
released a deep sigh at the confirmation of her fears. The guard looked
at her sympathetically.
	"It's not your fault. Just keep searching for her." She said as she
hurried down the corridor toward the gathering of a few security guards
at one of the double metal doors. The moment she walked in, she saw the
nearly unrecognizable form of Jake Kathler, now untied and sprawled on
his stomach, lying still on the floor. Scully gave him a cursory exam
and tried to stop the bleeding, though none was major. 
Soon a stretcher was brought down to take him down to the ER. Scully
followed, not trusting Jake's safety even within the confinement of the
ER. Any one of "them" could disguise themselves and slip some poison
into Jake's IV or slip a scalpel between his libs to pierce his heart.
Scully used her medical degree and her FBI clearance to plant herself
next to the busy physicians and nurses to watch over the procedures. 
When she saw that all emergency first-aid was done for the moment and
they were moved to an observation room, she saw Mulder enter. He was
recovered,though he was still deathly pale. Scully discarded the latex
gloves, masks and cap she wore into the nearby yellow hazardous waste
basket, and walked over to him. She was a bit surprised when he drew her
into his arms, then tightened his hold on her. 
	"Scully, I'm sorry I lost it." He began before she could say anything,
then he released his hold on her to lock his gaze with hers. She shook
her head no. 
	"It's all right now that you're back. Sorry I slapped you. I was
just..." 
	"Scully, I ought to be thanking you for snapping me out of the dark.
Besides, I don't think anyone else's voice would have worked." He
admitted sheepishly, sweeping the room with a quick look and relieved
when he saw no one staring at them. But the survey cost him the chance
of seeing Scully blush before she put her professional mask back on.
"Keep an eye on Jake while I go get your briefcase out of the car."
Scully said as she moved for the door, but she stopped at the touch of
his hand on her upper arm.
	"No, I'll go. You stay here and keep an eye on Jake. I don't know
anything about medicine, and if someone tried to do something funny, I
wouldn't be able to stop it, let alone save him. Besides, having us both
side by side is too much trouble. I'll go talk to Hall and see just what
he dug up. Keep me posted on Kathler's conditions. I will probably be
back soon, but..." Fully alert on the matter at hand, he faced her
intense gaze with one of his own. The fire was back in his green eyes.
She nodded her approval.
	"Okay, Mulder." She said as she returned Mulder his keys. 


Jake's House
25 minutes later

Mulder nearly crashed into a stop sign that was standing just a few feet
away from Jake's loft while trying to park the car. He cursed and jumped
out of the car, but it didn't slow him down one bit. Mulder spotted the
unmarked van when he approached within twenty feet. He had his weapon
ready to fire as he ran up the stairs. 
Just when he tried to listen in to see if he could go in without back
up, the familiar barking of Stella came through the marble door. When he
tried to pull the handle, he heard Elly scream, followed by a series of
loud noises and shuffling of feet. Mulder opened the door just a crack
when it slammed into his face. He nearly fell off the stairs with the
impact, but the man who burst out of it didn't seem to notice as he ran
down the stairs with Jake's computer. Mulder was dizzy, but he recovered
fast enough to jump inside and lay flat on the floor to buy some time. 
He saw four men, two holding Elly down to the floor and the other two
who were working to remove his VR machine and scanner from Jake's
computer desk.
	"Freeze! FBI!" Mulder shouted, now in crouching position. They hardly
looked at Mulder before firing on him. He fired back immediately as he
rolled toward the back of the large wooden bench, then toward the
miniature city for cover. His head and body were quickly peppered with
flying fragments of the walls being torn by the raining machinegun
bullets. Mulder emptied the whole clip just going in for cover, but when
he took a quick look, now standing up against one of the tallest model
buildings, he only saw one of them holding his leg and screaming on the
floor. The other three quickly closed in on him while he changed the
clip and shrugged off his jacket. He threw the jacket in the air, and
immediately heard them fire. He stepped out just long enough to fire
about another six bullets, three in the general direction of the other
man with Elly, and other three toward the man behind the computer desk.
He heard another scream, but he couldn't see where the fallen man was. 
	"Freeze!" The man's voice came to call for him. Mulder stayed behind
the cover. "Surrender your weapon, and come out with your hands behind
your head." Mulder nearly laughed.
	"That's my line, you fucking son of a bitch!" Mulder said, checking now
for his back-up piece strapped to his ankle. 
	"I still have the poor housekeeper with me, Agent Mulder. I'm behind
the kitchen counter, so you can't shoot at me again." Mulder cursed
himself for not getting that guy first. Elly's life meant a spec of dust
to them.
	"Didn't think it was me, did you?" Mulder began talking instead,
carefully placing his backup piece into the waistband of his trousers at
his back, and sliding his Sig Sauer on the floor toward the door. He
loosened his tie and unbuttoned the shirt to the second button. The
collar was choking his movements, and to execute his plan, he needed to
move real fast. He came out, his hands behind his head as instructed. He
saw for the first time that the man at the computer desk had been shot
in his shoulder, and was trying to stand up. The first man he shot was
still bleeding and moaning at the spot he was shot. The voice was coming
from behind the kitchen counter. 
	"My, my. What a party it turned out to be." The speaker said as he
pulled Elly to her feet, his gun planted at the terrified woman's neck.
Mulder tried not to gasp at the sight. Her face had been badly bruised,
her mouth gagged and her wrists bound with a rope. 
	"Yeah, now that you had your fun, let Elly go. You wanted me. You have
me." Mulder said as he closed distance. He knew it was a really dumb
idea, but he couldn't let Elly be in the hands of these men any longer.
Elly's eyes spoke of fear that had very little to do with her own
safety, but more for never seeing her family or her boss again. However,
what caught him by surprise was her fear for Mulder's safety. Mulder
decided to keep talking. 
"It's bad enough that you've mistaken Kathler for me. I know you have
the girl. Kathler ended up in the emergency room. You've got Kathler's
computer, I've seen one of your men ran out of the door. You have all
that you came for. Now you can let Elly go, leave Kathler alone, and
take me." Mulder was practically begging. But in his mind's eye, he kept
his attention on the door, expecting the first man to come through the
door at any second. He knew he was practically offering his life away,
and he knew that the man would probably shoot him or take him hostage.
	Mulder needed a diversion to get to the next step. The man in front of
him said nothing, but he kept motioning for Mulder to come closer.
Mulder nodded and  approached slowly. 
"I'll do whatever you tell me to, but not before you let Elly go. She's
an innocent bystander in this. She knows nothing about you, your group,
or the girl. She means no consequence to you. Now let her go, and take
me." He was automatically reciting the speech he'd given to Duane Barry
when he traded himself with the hostages.
He saw the shooter exhale a quick breath, and heard Elly moan as she was
hoisted off by her shirt collar and then kicked away on the floor.
Mulder quickly ran to her, but not forgetting to do so with his front
facing the man, and untied her wrists. But before he could relieve her
of her gag, he was grabbed by his tie and was pulled up to his feet. It
was now or never. 
Mulder quickly planted a punch to the man's jaw, pulled Elly to her feet
and back behind the kitchen counter. He pushed her back down, plopping
her up against the refrigerator door. Then Mulder quickly planted a
bullet to the intruder's knee and another in the man's right shoulder.
The man screamed, but he instantly fired back. Mulder felt a shooting
pain on his upper left arm, but realized instantly that it was only a
scratch. Then he heard another gunfire behind him, followed by a thud.
He quickly duck behind the kitchen counter, checking to see where he was
hit.
	When he felt nothing, he took the fallen shooter's machine gun and
fired rapidly for cover as he darted out into the open long enough to
see where the shooter had gone to. He didn't spot the men in black
uniform, but instead his eyes caught Stella's white-and-black spotted
coat lying on the hard wood floor. Outside, he heard the van pull out
into the street, and for the first time noticed the fallen shooter at
the computer desk had also vanished. Mulder's panic for losing his
potential witnesses were lost in his grief for Stella. But before he
could run to her and fall to his knees, he had things to do.
Mulder emerged slowly and carefully from behind the counter again, the
machine gun now pointed directly at the man in front of the counter,
where he had taken Mulder's bullet in his thigh. When he found the man
also gone, he quickly surveyed the entire loft, moving toward the
bathroom door, then to the beds. When he was sure all was quiet again,
he returned to Elly's side where she was desperately trying to pull out
the lag stuffed in her mouth. She tried repeatedly to cough the rag out,
nearly passing out in the process due to reduced oxygen supply. Seeing
the situation as hopeless, he got her consent to carefully dislocate her
jaw to pull the awfully large wad of cloth out of her mouth. Holding her
jaw securely with one hand, he folded the rag into a narrow band to hold
her jaw securely at the top of her head. He apologized for her pain and
inconvenience, to which she answered with a dismissive wave of a hand.
	Finally, Mulder ran to examine Stella, whose shiny coat now turned
crimson for the most part. He soon discovered her blood woozing out onto
the floor from her exit wound. He instructed Elly to bring a few clean
towels. He took over the care for Stella, applying as much pressure as
he could to the wounds. While Elly ran to the bathroom to grab clean
towels, he retrieved his ruined suit jacket and covered the dog with it
to minimize the loss of her body heat. 
When Elly hurried over to them with the towels, Mulder first removed the
jacket and wrapped the dry towels around Stella's body, which Mulder
used to make a tourniquet using a pen he found laying on the kitchen
counter. Stella whimpered, but Mulder could do nothing but to keep
applying the pressure. His voice shook as he tried to keep her alert and
'informed', as stupid as that might have seemed.
"I'm so sorry, Stella. I know it hurts like shit, because I had it done
on me before. But it's necessary to stop your bleeding." When Stella
didn't respond, Mulder assumed she fell unconscious. However, as he
covered the rest of her as best he could with the ruined jacket and
secured it with his tie, she gave a choked whimper and her body jerked
with shock. Mulder closed his eyes momentarily in response. 
Mulder saw Elly standing up and walking toward the cordless phone.
'Phone!' He instantly damned himself for not getting to it first. He
must have really lost it to not realize his mistake sooner. She handed
it to him before he asked for it; her whole body still shaking. He
thanked her sincerely, then asked her to hold the pen still to prevent
the turniquet from loosening while he spoke to the 911 operator. 
	"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI, requesting emergency
medical assistance at..." His voice echoed throughout the loft as he
gave out the loft's location in Canoga Park followed by his budge
number, and walked back toward the kitchen counter. 
He was about to assess the condition of the fallen shooter for the 911
operator when the man pulled his backup piece toward him and fired at
his head. Mulder felt another burning pain, but it also was a scratch.
He dropped to his knees on impact, but he used it to his advantage as he
sprang himself over the fallen shooter before the man could fire another
shot. Mulder's knee embedded the man's injured leg, eliciting a scream.
Mulder quickly held the man's uninjured left arm down and planted a firm
blow to the head with the phone. Next, he seized the small gun out of
the shooter's hand and threw it toward Elly. She gasped in fear at the
sight of the weapon, but she immediately saw that nobody was attached to
it. 
Mulder quickly apologized to the poor woman, and wasted no time as he
flipped the shooter on the stomach and cuffed his wrists at the back.
The 911 operator apparently heard the shot and franticly demanded to
know if Mulder was safe.
	"Yes. I'm hurt, but I'm still here." Mulder reported as he picked up
the phone again and began making reports. He told the operator that
Stella is a trained police canine who took a bullet for him, and
demanded that she was to be treated at the Prescott hospital, at the
same level of care required for humans. Mulder even went as far as
telling the poor operator that she'd be very sorry if the hospital staff
failed to meet his demands. He was still panting, and his voice shook
slightly as he gave out descriptions of the unmarked van and the other
shooters. He knew these men were trained to disappear into thin air, but
couldn't help trying.
	Stella's body shook again, and this time she kept trembling. She was
slipping into shock, and with no painkillers to give her, Mulder was
lost. 
"Stella, I've told the medics to take you in, so we'll all go there
together. You can see Jake, and you can see Scully. We can all come out
of there, fine and happy. Hold on, girl. Please." He spoke rapidly into
Stella's ear, almost burying his face in her coat to monitor her shallow
breathing. "Come on, keep breathing. That little girl will be real sad
when she comes back and find you're not here any more. Jake loves you,
too much to let you go like this. Please, girl. Stick around." 
Mulder was concentrating on getting the words out so much, that he had
no clue how badly his own body was shaking. But the moment he felt
Elly's hand gently massaging his back, the tremor in his body ceased
almost completely. She then took Mulder's injured arm and applied
pressure on the wound with a smaller towel. Mulder gasped as the pain
hit, but his attention remained on Stella. They soon heard the familiar
siren of an ambulance fast approaching.
	His head movement caused the blood from his scalp to drip onto the
floor, and Elly quickly applied another towel onto it. Mulder only
turned slightly toward her, his face still kept next to Stella's head.
"It's okay, Elly. Head wounds usually look worse than they really are."
Mulder said, trying to calm her down. "They're both just scratches.
Nothing to be alarmed about. Just a few stitches and I'll be fine. I
promise." He said just as the paramedics rushed into the house. Since
Elly was unable to speak, Mulder gave them a quick update after
identifying himself.
	"This woman has a dislocated jaw, perhaps several cuts in her mouth,
and a mild concussion. This police canine has an entry wound and an exit
wound from a single gunshot fired point-blank with an automatic weapon.
Entry wound at the upper right shoulder, exit wound on the upper left
hind leg. 
"I have two bullet wounds, but they're both minor. The man handcuffed
behind the counter is only one of the four shooters who attacked us."
Mulder kept talking as they hauled immobilized Stella, followed by Elly
on another stretcher. Mulder stood up, his hand still holding the towel
against the gash on his head. 
Mulder presented the medics with his badge, and instructed them to be
brought to Prescott Hospital. By now the paramedics knew the scandal at
Henry Barrington's, and they had no objections with the idea. Mulder
grabbed his cellular phone out of the bullet-holed jacket handed back to
him by one of the paramedics, and found it miraculously intact. He
speed-dialed Scully, who had just been informed of the shooting.
	"Scully, I'm alive." Mulder said just as she answered.
	"Mul...?! Are you all right?"
	"Yeah, I have two bad gash, and Elly's bungled up pretty bad. But
Stella ... She took a bullet for me, Scully. She's bleeding real bad. I
told the dispatcher that she's a police canine, so you have to cover for
me." Mulder said as he heard the vehicle pull out of the driveway. He
talked while the paramedics worked on Stella. Elly was in another
ambulance that was just about to pull out.
	"Where are you hit?" Mulder could feel her mind spinning into action,
but he still hadn't her answer to his question.
	"Please, Scully. She's not going to make it anywhere else." This time,
he heard her sigh.
	"Mulder, covering for you is a part of my job. Lying for you,
however... oh, what the hell. I'll do this, but don't make it a habit.
Now, where are you hit?" 
	"My upper left arm, and my head. Thanks about Stella, Scully. I owe you
big." He took a good look at the gash on his arm, which was now attended
to by one of the paramedics. He saw the unmistakable bottle of iodine
make its appearance in the paramedic's hand and instinctively pulled
away at the sight. Seeing his reaction, the young paramedic gave him a
sympathetic look. 
"Sir, you know I have to do this, and that it's gonna hurt like a son of
a bitch."  Mulder already knew that the gash was pretty bad, if the
sight of exposed red flesh pumping his blood out was any indication.
Mulder returned the woman an annoyed 'Who the hell do you think I am?'
look, and gestured the woman to get it over with. He bit his lower lip
hard enough to draw blood at the pain of disinfectant being poured onto
it. He hoped Scully didn't hear the slight yelp that escaped through his
lips.
	"Your head!?" Her voice rose a notch. Mulder released his bleeding lip
and tried to talk.
	"Told you, Scully. It's a scratch." He just managed to say it before
distancing the phone again for the EMT to now clean out his head wound.
He bit the already bleeding lower lip once again, this time a little
harder, before pressing the phone back to his face.
	"Fine. Oh, Agent Hall called." At the mention of the agent's name,
Mulder felt a surge of relief. He thought Hall was already a goner
somewhere. 
	"I thought they took him." 
	"No. He claims that someone called at the house asking for him to come
over to the local police station, because someone was demanding to see
him immediately regarding this case."
	"But no one knows he's in it..."
	"Maybe except the shooters. They may have been keeping watch on us from
the start."
	"So, they made him get out of the house?"
	"Apparently." Mulder breathed a sigh of relief at her words.
	"Scully, I need you to get on the phone, and have Hall dispatch a team
of agents from the Los Angels field office to get here and collect any
necessary evidence." 
	"I'll get on it right away, Mulder. But right now, you need to take
care of yourself." He could almost hear her thinking through the line.
"There are lots of blood stains from the shooters here, because three
out of the four that attacked us are injured, and from the guy I managed
to apprehend. The guy's with Elly in the other ambulance." He knew he
should calm down, or Scully would worry about him even more than she
already did, but he just couldn't stop talking until everything was out.
"He's got a bullet in his leg, and another in his arm. He's got a
concussion, because I hit the guy in the head with a cordless phone
while I called the EMTs. The guy shot at me, and that's how I got the
gash on my head." 
	"...All right, Mulder." It was obvious that she realized what he was
doing.
	"Scully, stay with Jake. I know you want to come down to the ER, but
you can't leave Jake alone again. They know now that it wasn't me they
dumped through the trash. I hope you're still in Jake's room?"
	"Yes, I am. He's not conscious yet. So far, he's got a nasty doze of
flu, bronchitis, and hepatitis B viruses into his system. The doctors
put a grand total of forty stitches in his body. He's in the clean room,
recovering."
	"No HIV?"
	"It's too early to know, Mulder. They found several hospital gowns with
HIV positive blood smeared on them, but they were at far bottom of the
chute. Jake's HIV negative to begin with, and the doctors think it's
highly unlikely that he'll ever get infected with it from this incident.
Hepatitis B is what the doctors are keeping the closest attention on,
and they've taken every precaution." Despite her words, it was painfully
clear to Mulder that she was worried sick about Jake. He lowered his
head in resignation. Life was just meant to be unfair.
	"Okay, Scully. I'm coming up as soon as I get done in the ER. Is Hall
still in town?"
	"Yeah, he's headed down here." Her reply contained a silent question.
	"Good, because I need him staying with Elly and Stella. They are the
only ones who can identify the shooters in court when we get there."
	"A dog? Witness?" He could almost hear her chuckle, finally breaking
the ice and the tension that settle in between them. He was also sure
she was picturing his goofy grin.
	"Dogs have strong sense of smell, and she's seen them all. Couldn't
hurt, could it?" 
	"Not as long as we won't be laughed out of the court."
	"They are the only witnesses, besides myself, who can identify them.
Tell Hall to guard them with his life."
	"I'm sure he'll be up to the challenge." Mulder could almost imagine
the kid's excitement. "But once you get here to watch Jake, I'll go
interrogate the shooter before something else happens. Agent Hall
doesn't know much about this case, and I don't think you two should be
in the same room much less carry on a productive conversation." Mulder
grinned at her words.
	"All right, it's a deal." Just then the ambulance took a sharp turn,
and Mulder had to hold onto his seat in order to keep his position. 
	"Don't tell Skinner just yet. He'll know sooner or later, anyway. As
soon as Hall's team gets there, send someone to the building
construction site. They may try to ransack Kathler's office, especially
now that everybody's out." Mulder said as he readied himself for the
next turn. 
	"Sure, Mulder. I'll see you soon." Scully said before hanging up. He
slightly grinned at the phone before stashing it back into his trousers
pocket, and concentrated on observing Stella's progress. 

Prescott Hospital
Oakland, CA
10 minutes later

The moment the double doors opened, a team of doctors and nurses greeted
them. Mulder saw from the corner of his eyes that Stella had been rushed
into surgery, no doubt Scully's words taking effect. Mulder was soon led
into an examination room. Once he was positioned on the examination
table, he surrendered himself to their care. 
Mulder's heart was still beating fast, and he realized this the moment
they attached him to a cardiogram. He felt really lucky to get away with
such little consequences. He'd expected a bullet in his head, shoulder,
leg, or the gut. He knew that if it weren't for Stella, they'd be
pronouncing him dead by now. 
After assuring the ER team that he had no injury on his lower
extremities, they let him keep his trousers on. Once they stopped the
bleeding and thoroughly cleaned out the cuts on him, the nurses quickly
shaved the area of his head wound and brought in a surgical intern to
suture both cuts on him. In the mean time, Mulder lay on the table and
tried to calm down while thinking through their next move.
	"So, they said you're an FBI agent?" The young female intern asked as
she busied herself. Mulder pulled himself out of his reverie, and
nodded. "Must be a tough job. I've met your partner. She's really
through. She told me you were with a police canine." Mulder again
nodded. "Look, I know what you're trying to do, Agent Mulder. But all
registered police canines have a special tag on their collars." Mulder
turned his gaze to the brunette, and pursed his lips as to say,
'Busted.' The woman gave him a little smile. 
"Don't worry, I won't get her kicked out of here. The people upstairs
know the dog's with your people, and they know that she's a hero. They
even got a veterenarian up there just now. They just prepped the dog
while they waited for the guy. He's supposed to be one of the best in
town, and the guy just happened to be free because of a cancelled
appointment at his own office. They'll take good care of her." Mulder
breathed easier, and closed his eyes. Soon he lost the track of time.
	"I'm done with your arm, sir. Now I'll need you to sit up on the bed."
The intern's voice brought him out of his relaxation stage. He took a
quick look at the stitched arm, and raised his eyebrows at the
impressive handy work. The woman noticed and chuckled. "Yeah, I'm pretty
good at it. You won't have too big a scar when it heals. It was a really
nasty gash, though. You might experience pain lifting heavy stuff for a
while. The bullet cut through some of your muscle tissue." Mulder winced
but nodded again. She brought another needle with a longer thread up to
his head, and told him to hold his head still. Once again, Mulder closed
his eyes and was back to the image of the drawings he'd been analyzing
in his mind. With Jake's computer gone, all he had left was the copy the
Gunmen had in their safe. 
	"Excuse me, sir. You can't be in here." The intern's warning brought
Mulder out of his reverie again, only to be met with the sight of Agent
Hall trying to get inside. Mulder took the woman's hand in his good
right hand, stopping her.
	"It's all right, doctor. He's a federal agent, Thomas Hall." Mulder
said as he motioned for Hall to come inside. 
	"Oh. Finally, you spoke." The woman said with a relief, and returned to
her task at hand. Mulder grinned and thanked her. He detected Hall's
nervousness and made the younger man take a seat on the edge of the
examination table.
	"Agent Mulder, we've got another problem." Hall kept his tone rather
low and conspicuous.
	"What is it?" Already narrowing his eyes, Mulder's voice also dropped a
few notches down.
	"The ambulance that carried the shooter and Elly was attacked by a
bunch of guys matching the descriptions you gave to us."
	"What?" His head moved with his tense whisper, threatening the doctor's
hands to go off mark. She warned the agents to keep it cool.
	"Yeah, the word came through just now. Elly's fine. They're driving her
down here right now. They tried to snatch Elly, too, but the passing
police cruiser spotted the scene and the thugs barely had enough time to
haul their asses with the shooter in the back."
	"Oh, fuck." Mulder closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands.
Hall looked at Mulder sympathetically.
	"I'll stay with Elly as you requested. Stella's in surgery, but I'll
keep an eye on her outside the recovery room. Elly has a room already
assigned to her, so I'll be there until Stella gets out of the OR. I
told them to bring Stella into Elly's room once she's out."
	"Thanks, Hall. Good job." 
	"Oh, I'm enjoying it. Anyway, I meant to ask you. Did they get the
computer?" 
	"Yeah. They tried to hassle out with the VR and the scanner, but they
so far managed only the main computer and Kathler's laptop."
	"Oh, no, not the laptop. I have it. It was pretty dusty when I opened
the top, so I ordered a cleaning job at a shop. I thought I might need
to borrow it later, so..."
	"Hall, I don't care why. Good job." Mulder said as he gave the kid
another seal of approval. At least Jake won't lose all his hard work
down the drain. 
	"Can I get you anything?" Hall asked, genuine concern adding years to
his young face. Mulder chuckled. 'My, my,' he thought, 'a complete room
service.'
	"Just water, thanks." Mulder replied, then winced sightly as the needle
hit a particularly tender spot.
	"Can I get anything for you, doctor?" Hall asked the petite brunette,
who shook her head no, but with a seductive smile dancing at the corners
of her mouth. Mulder was thoroughly impressed with Hall's smoothness
with women. He saw from the corner of his eye that Elly's stretcher had
arrived, and he felt his heart sink. Soon his cellular rang, and he
answered it on the second ring. It was Scully.
	"Mulder? I'm heading down to the local newspaper office, instead. I
know the shooter is gone, and I know Elly's fine. I'm also guessing that
you're pretty much through with the ER."
	"Yeah, I'll be up to Jake's room shortly. Why the newspaper?"
	"They said they had a reporter come in to talk to Jake and the girl
when the police recommended them of placing an article in the paper
about her. I've talked to several hospital personnel, and the
description of the reporter matches one of the shooters that you gave
out. That's probably how they knew where to find us and what's around
where in Jake's house."
	"Oh, Scully. Don't tell me he bugged the house."
	"That's my suspicion, yes. But if so, it'll turn up soon with our local
agents' search. They're combing through the area as we speak."
	"But how is that possible? There was virtually no chance of anyone..."
	"I'm checking out the cable guy who came to install the blocking tip on
his satellite system, and all the furniture delivery guys who installed
our beds and the screens."
	"Okay, I'll be at Kathler's ASAP." Mulder said as he hang up and
reported the situation to Hall, who dropped his gaze to the floor.
Mulder accepted the offered water and finished it in seconds. The
surgical intern was soon done with the job, and sent him out with a good
luck handshake. Mulder thanked her before apologizing  for the
catastrophe. Hall and Mulder split in the lobby, Hall to head out to
Elly's bedside, and Mulder to go meet with Scully. 
Mulder showed up without his blood-soaked tie, his blood-stained shirt
half buttoned and untucked to cover his gun strapped to his hip. With
his head wrapped neatly in gauze, he looked fit to be roaming in a medic
camp in a battle field. 'Which I practically am', Mulder thought.
Scully's eyebrows shot up at the sight of her battered partner, but she
accepted his offered embrace. 
	"Hi, Scully. Good to see you again." Mulder whispered in honest before
pulling away. Scully breathed with relief and looked up into his eyes.
	"Mulder, I'm sorry I wasn't there. But you should admit, you were nuts
to not call for a back-up." Her scolding look spoke of her earlier
frustrations at his ruthless actions. Mulder smiled apologetically. "You
should change your shirt. Borrow a scrub, maybe. I'll see if I can fetch
you one. Stay here." She said as she stepped out, so that Mulder was
left alone in the room with the patient. 
Mulder took a moment to himself before he faced the sleeping form of
Jake Kathler. The man's face, so like Mulder's own, was now bruised and
bore several small cuts. His upper body was bare except for the gauze
that covered nearly his entire torso and head. Mulder wondered how the
nurses would tell them apart with the both of them wearing nearly
identical gauze on their heads. 
Mulder saw the IV bags delivering whatever needed to fight the
infections in Jake's body, and he silently wished Kathler would stay
asleep for awhile, before Mulder would have to deliver him the
devastating news regarding the events of the day. He knew that at any
moment, the sketch artist would come through the door to take the
composite sketches of the shooters. 
When Scully returned with a blue scrub shirt, Mulder was facing the
window, watching the city move as if nothing was out of ordinary. He
quickly got changed with Scully's assistance. He was a bit surprised
when she handed him her extra clip for him to keep, but he accepted it
without a comment. He told her he would contact Elly's family while
Scully checked out the reporter. He wondered if he was asking too much
to have a change of clothes brought down for both Jake and himself, but
she told him she would try. She left with a promise of calling him soon
as she knew anything. Mulder thanked her again and watched her go.   
	It didn't take long for Scully to inform Mulder that the reporter had
indeed been a fake, that no one by the name of Richard Melbrick existed.
She went on to tell him she needed to locate the hospital personnel she
had spoken to before, and have them give out their man's descriptions to
the sketch artist Mulder was currently with as soon as she gets done.
Mulder told the artist the news. She eagerly agreed to do the other one.


Prescott Hospital
An hour later

When Scully finally located the nurse who'd given her the information on
the fake reporter, she asked if Scully wanted her to ask around to see
if anyone else had seen the man. Scully, readily surprised at the
comment, told her they'd appreciate her help.   
	She returned to Jake's house where the combing search was still under
way, and grabbed their over-night bags to stuff them with their clothes.
Scully had been wearing the dark suit Mulder fetched for her out of her
apartment. It took her no more than ten minutes to find and stuff Jake's
Boston bag with his change of clothes, but she stayed there to watch the
experts work. 
Scully hadn't seen the house since it had become a crime scene, and
wanted to capture as many details as possible. There were three large
assemblies of blood stains. One was beside the computer desk, another
particularly large group was located behind the kitchen counter where
Mulder and the shooter struggled. 
Another large puddle was located just a few feet away from the kitchen
counter which undoubtedly belonging to Stella, according to the process
of elimination and the white fur that scattered around in the area.
Scully recalled seeing how the towels used as the tourniquet that Mulder
had applied on Stella had soaked up the dog's blood, and figured this
was the right spot. Scully saw another blood-soaked towel on the floor
nearby, and figured it was Mulder's blood that stained it. 
There was a relatively smaller puddle of blood streaked by a boot-print
lay about five feet away from Stella's blood, and Scully figured this
one came from the shooter who got shot in the leg. She could picture the
incident as if it happened right in front of her. Words, gunfire,
screams... She shut her eyes against the disturbing images.
	The sight of devastation that was sustained by the house could have
made the most heartless architect weep. There were two walls that faced
the kitchen, one of which housed the front door. They used to be
spotless white walls, which now looked like a pair of beehives. Half the
miniature city was now knocked down to the floor, leaving the polished
wood surface badly scuffed. Several slugs were still left embedded in
their spots, waiting for the ballistics to pull them out. 
At the computer desk, she saw that the intruders hadn't had enough time
to take the VR machine away. She wanted to look closer, but the
fingerprint technician asked her to move over. She complied and moved
back to the wall behind the red wooden bench, where she found several
shuttered windows, and half a dozen bullet holes that had permanently
ruined the bench. Scully sighed, but her eyes rested on the stack of
drawings - the originals - that had been left underneath some of the
pillows resting on it. She hastily gathered them up and stashed them all
into her over-night bag before being caught in the act by any one of the
technicians. 
Next, Scully needed to contact the Gunmen now that they were the only
ones who had anything useful to get them a lead on this case. She knew
Mulder wanted to visit them himself, but she wasn't about to let Mulder
go anywhere alone. Also, since Gunmen only trusted him or her, she knew
the trip had to wait and thus needed to let them know of their delay. 
	She was about to leave the house when an idea popped in her head. As
almost an after-thought, she walked to the refrigerator and true to her
guess, found a freshly baked sweet potato pie that Elly cooked earlier
in the day. She carefully packed the whole pie into a take-out dish, and
rested it on top of Mulder's clothes in his bag. She then packed a can
of dog food and a small bag of kibbles for Stella in Jake's bag. Just
when she closed the trunk of the car, her cellular summoned her
attention.
	"Agent Scully?" Scully immediately recognized the nurse's voice, and
her instincts told her to brace herself.
	"Yes, Mary. I'm heading back to the hospital right now. What's up?"
	"I've spoken to several girls here and some guys working in the ER, but
they aren't talking to me. One of the guys, his name's Craig, told me
secretly that they've been ordered not to talk."
	"Okay, Mary. We'll keep it confidential if you are still willing to
help us do the guy's sketch. I believe they didn't get to you, yet?"
There was no need to explain who the 'they' Scully was referring to.
	"No. I will help you with the description, Agent Scully. I'll go up to
Mr. Kathler's room and have it done there."
	"Thanks a lot, Mary. Agent Mulder's with the artist. He's my partner,
and you can trust him." Scully hang up, quickly pressing the first
speed-dial button for Mulder's cellular. He answered on the first ring.
	"It's me, Mulder. There'll be a nurse named Mary coming into your room
to talk to the sketch artist do one on the fake reporter. ...There's
something else."
	"Yeah?"
	"She asked around the hospital for me. They weren't talking, because
apparently they've been threatened."
	"Oh, this just doesn't get any better." Mulder's exasperated sigh
didn't help cheering her up. 
	"Mulder, they hadn't gotten to her yet, but be alert while she's
there." 
	"I sure will." Mulder hanged up without another word. Scully frowned at
the phone, but figured Mary probably had arrived there. She decided to
check with Agent Hall before making him deliver the bags for Mulder and
Jake. She told Hall she would stand watch; that she wanted him to go
back to Jake's house to oversee the progress of the technicians. Hall
promised to keep up hourly updates. 
Scully finally settled down in the chair positioned next to Elly's bed,
waiting for Stella's arrival. She then called the Gunmen for their
update, and to give them a friendly warning from her to be extra
careful. 


Jake's Room
Prescott Hospital
Oakland, CA
6 PM

Mulder noticed the briefcase that Scully managed to salvage out of
Jake's house, and opened up to fetch the Gunmen's list of the girl's
possible families. He had forgotten to give it to her, but moving to go
anywhere now was out of the question. Mary had gone long ago, but he
sensed from the way Mary stared at him that she was either very
embarrassed or very scared of him.
Mulder laughed aloud when he discovered Elly's homemade sweet potato pie
on the very top of everything inside the overnight bag. 'Scully, you
never cease to amaze me.' He thought as he took the pre-sliced pie and
shamelessly devoured the first piece. He could almost picture her
radiant smile.
	He reviewed each list again, making notes on the margins. Without being
able to conduct any questioning in person, the only option left to him
was guess-work. He pulled out the salvaged portion of the girl's
drawings packed inside his briefcase and studied them. His memory
replayed the images he'd navigated with the VR machine, trying somehow
to figure them out. Then, there were the Lone Gunmen's wild theories
that their mystery girl was a conduit; that she was a communication
devise; a guinea pig to experimental brain surgeries... and now the girl
was taken again. Mulder massaged his temples with his fingers,
frustrated that the gauze on his head was not quite allowing him do it
the way he wanted.
	Mulder sighed and reached over the remote to switch on the TV. The
incident at Jake's house was now a public matter. Although Mulder didn't
believe it would be kept quiet, he fumed at the mention of a possible
'kidnapping', and the involvement of the FBI agents who had been staying
at Jake's house. 
Mulder knew about Linda persistently calling them nearly every half an
hour ever since yesterday, but they hadn't had the chance to meet with
her in person. Now that the girl was gone, the security cut Linda off at
the hospital entrance and didn't even try to patch her calls through.
Mulder felt guilty about that, but there was really nothing he could say
to the social worker except that he was sorry, and that they were doing
everything they can. 
It was just the same with Jake's fuming business partners. Mulder had
them stopped at the entrance of the hospital and had Jake's room listed
under 'location confidential'. Mulder called the Lone Gunmen for their
update, but he was surprised to hear that Scully had already been in
touch. He immediately called Scully, not wanting to interrupt her, but
knowing deep down that she wouldn't mind the company.
	"Hey, Scully. Thanks for the pie." Mulder said the moment she answered.

	"Mulder, I know you too well not to trust you with your health. Elly's
pretty shaken up, and I had her husband visit her for comfort. He left
not long ago, and now it's the kids' turn. The children love Stella, but
she's still unconscious and unfortunately unable to return their love. 
"I've got Stella's charts here, and she may have some difficulty doing
running and jumping in the future. She caught the bullet in the air, so
it got twisted inside her body. It entered her body from the left, then
it nicked the spine which bounced the bullet a bit downward before
exiting from the right. The trick here is that since Stella was airborne
at the time, the speed of her body falling to the floor helped the
bullet to stay above any vital organ. This is why the exit wound is
located about half an inch below the entry wound. 
"With the latest technology in animal physical therapies, Stella might
just make a full recovery. But considering her age, it might take much
longer." 
	"Oh, God. Jake's going to kill me." Mulder's voice was a tortured
mumble. A slight pause interrupted their conversation.
	"Mulder, this is the first time you called him by his first name." 
	"Oh. Well, I... I don't know. It just feels weird, you know. The guy's
like my mirror image and I hate my first name, so I guess I feel awkward
calling him by his first name. I..." He knew he was rumbling, but
stopped at the sound of her soft laughter. He shrugged, knowing she
could picture him doing it even if she wasn't here.
	"It's okay, Mulder. That's how he wanted to be addressed in the
beginning."
	"I didn't even think about it. ...Scully, is there anyone listed as
'next of kin' to Jake?"
	"Nope. No one." This sounded strange.
	"Are you sure? I mean, the guy looks like he's got lots of
connections." 
	"Mulder, think about it. We have so many connections all over the
world, and we're listed as each other's 'nest to kin'. What does that
tell you?" 
	"It tells me that we only trust each other." The words escaped his lips
before he could stop them. When no reply came, he dropped the subject
and went straight for the list in his hand. "I'm sorry, Scully. Forget I
said that. I called you originally to tell you that the Gunmen gave me a
list of recent murder victims involving families, and out of those, they
singled out cases involving a child matching the description of our Jane
Doe. This still left ten names, and I wanted to ask you for your
opinion." 
Mulder spoke rapidly, a habit he had whenever he wanted to get out of a
hole he dug for himself. Scully remained silent for a few more seconds,
but then told him to table everything at least until Hall gets done
sweeping Jake's house for evidences and bugs. Mulder agreed, then
hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "Scully, I didn't mean...
I mean, you are the only one I trust, but you have your mother, your
brothers, and I..." He never got to finish it.
	"Mulder. quit it. You are the only one I trust when it comes to the
X-Files."
	"...Thanks, Scully. You ought to know that you are the only one I
trust. No matter what." Mulder said as he stared out of the window.
Another pause slipped in between them before Scully spoke.
	"I'll call on favors and try to get the DNA and fingerprint tests
express-delivered to us, but I doubt it would do us any good. The girl's
got no criminal record, and no testing results would be on file unless
she had some kind of genetic abnormality and was in studies or in
hospitals for gene therapy. I don't know, but I'll do this anyway, just
for our peace of mind."
	"You're the expert, Scully. I've been thinking about having the Gunmen
make a house-call, to have them come down here to work with us."
	"Are you sure? Would they do that?"
	"I haven't asked, yet. I was hoping you could ask them for me. Get
Frokihe on the phone and talk him into it."
	"Mulder! You can't do this to me every damn time." She didn't bother
hiding her annoyance.
	"It's not my fault that the guy's got it bad for you, Scully." He loved
teasing her. 
	"But it's not ...ethical." She knew her argument was weak. Mulder
smelled victory.
	"What can I say, Scully? It's not my fault that Frohike thinks you're
hot, and it's not my fault that you were born beautiful." 
	"Mulderrrr...." Her tone was a last-ditch effort. 
	"Please?" Mulder deliberately kept his tone innocent. 'As a sweet
child', he thought as he smiled.
	"Be thankful that I can't come up to your room at this very second and
shoot you in your ass." Mulder chuckled soundly and thanked her. He then
told her that as soon as Hall arrives at the hospital, he would have a
hard copy of the names delivered to her personally. He got another sigh
of resignation from her. 
	"What? Aren't you glad that everybody has a crash on you? You don't
have to do much to pull off strings. Everybody loves you, Scully. That's
much better than being 'the FBI's most unwanted'."
	"The same could be said for you, partner. Detective White; Dr. Bambi;
Phoebe Greene; Miss Kilar; Miss Covarrubias; and finally there's
Sarah/Melissa, whom you believe was your wife in the past life." Mulder
winced at the painful memories of what that particular case brought into
his life, although he wasn't sure how much the case really hurt him
emotionally.
	"Okay, I'll..." Again, Mulder never got the chance to finish it.
"That's not mentioning my list of at least a dozen female bureau agents
and half the bureau secretarial pool who have 'the hots' for you. I just
wish you'd stop using me as a bait to pull off your strings. I'm usually
the one to get stuck with the mess afterwards, and it gets tiring." 
	"Okay, I'll back off. I really am sorry." Mulder honestly apologized,
and told her he'd get in touch later. Mulder knew that Scully rattled
off the last half as sort of a cover, because she knew it was a
sensitive subject for him. The mention of Christen Kilar was still a
sore spot for him, and so was Phoebe, though he knew Phoebe wasn't worth
his heartache. Christen was different. She was another name on the list
of 'the people I've failed to protect', listed along with Scully's name.
Even after three years, Mulder still wondered if Christen had gotten her
wish of finally becoming a vampire. Only by taking her own life to
destroy the other three vampires who had gone on rampage through the
city of L.A, did she become what she wanted to be. Mulder could never
ignore, much less forget, that she'd probably have done so in order to
protect his life. Why? Probably to allow him to find the 'someone I
lost', and because she had already lost so much, she wanted desperately
to join the world of the immortal. Now that he got his wish, what about
Christen's?
	Mulder was deep in thought when the familiar tall frame of Hall
appeared at the door. He thanked the younger man for his hard work, and
handed him the list to be delivered to Scully. Hall told him they'd done
all they could for now, and found only one bug that had been placed at
the base of a plant that had been set between the first and the second
beds to the right. 'Jake's and the girl's beds', Mulder remembered. 
All evidences that could have been collected were now in their hands,
Hall said. The crime scene had been taped on videotapes as evidence,
including the outside views and the tire tracks of the intruders' van.
Only cleaning up and putting in an offical request for the repair
services were left to do. Mulder thanked him again.
	"No problem, Agent Mulder. I'm enjoying this." Hall replied before
closing the door. Mulder nodded to himself, and sure hoped Hall would
keep 'enjoying' this case.


Prescott Hospital
Elly and Stella's room
11PM

Scully studied the list again, taking in each and every detail the pages
could provide for her. So far, they all looked plausible. She called the
Gunmen after Elly's visitors left and asked them to give her a complete
police report on each of the family listed, because she had no way of
getting to them for as long as she was stuck at the hospital.
Frohike, as much a sweetheart as he was, volunteered for the job. He
faxed the data to a nearby 24-hour print service shop's rental fax
machine where Hall received the pages and paid the bill. Hall had gladly
played another delivery boy for Scully, getting a hug of thanks from
her. Scully sent the agent back to his hotel room for a well-deserved
rest, and told him to come back at nine the next morning.
Now Elly was in another chemically induced sleep alongside Stella,
though she checked periodically for any changes. She missed her
Queequeg, the little pomelanian that Mr. Bruckman had left for her only
to be devoured by an alligator at a lake on one of the X-Files
investigations. Stella wasn't Qeequeg. Scully grimly admitted to herself
that Stella was better-trained, warmer-hearted, and certainly braver
than her beloved Queequeg.
Scully didn't have a clue why the canine chose to take a bullet for
Mulder. Stella hardly knew him. But then, animals had a strange way of
seeing right through people, and Scully could swear on stacks of bible
that Fox William Mulder was very much worth fighting for. A long time
ago, beneath the man's reserved, carefully-controlled features, Scully
found a soul burning so bright, not even Hell could smother its light.
Watching Stella's wounded sleeping form, she couldn't thank her enough
for covering Mulder's back in her place.
	Scully noticed immediately that the family in Sacramento, CA, seemed a
dead-on match to the Jane Doe's case profile they had. This whole family
had been claimed victims by a serial killer. The killer had literally
butchered the entire family and all his other victims, thus leaving a
trail of bodies behind his killing spree across the country. In the case
file of this Sacramento family in question, the couple's only eight-year
old daughter had fallen prey for the inhumane act. But Scully could
never believe that their Jane Doe is presently ten years old. The girl
was way too small in size and looks to be anywhere close to the age of
ten years. 
A family in Houston, Texas also looked to be a close match. In this
case, the entire family had been left tied up on a train track and let
the running train had severed them all in pieces, including their
seven-year old daughter. The killer delivered the butchered body parts
at the family's house, opened the door, and literally left the bodies
scattered on the living room floor. Later, the killer wrote a note using
the victims' blood to confess exactly what he'd done, and left the
letter at a poor neighbor's doorstep.  
	Both cases had outright butchery and the use of metal surface for the
cutting job. The girl's drawings had that much in common. 'But what
about yellow, green and gray?' She asked herself, searching for answers.
Yellow could have been the headlight of the approaching train, or the
lightening the girl experienced before being rescued by Jake. It could
even be the fluorescent light on the living room ceiling of the house.
Green could have been trees, traffic light, or maybe the color of
wallpapers in the house; could even be the color of clothing or the
carpets. 
'So what are those symbols?' They were probably some images that their
girl watched on a sci-fi television program. The girl loved television,
and she loved watching videos. Scully knew that Jake let the girl watch
the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and the Sci-Fi Channel. The
programs shown in these three channels often had 'the little green
(though they're gray) men' running around. Besides, the gray could have
been something incredibly simple - like the color of asphalt or the
gravel used for train tracks; could be even more simple things like
furniture, for instance. 'Anything could be gray.' Carpets, curtains,
blinds, and couches. Hell, even her own bedspread had a fair share of
gray in it. 
	'Yes', she thought, 'that must be'. Yellow wasn't the light from the
U.F.Os, the green wasn't from the alien blood combined with human DNA,
and gray certainly wasn't from the E.B.Es' skin tone. Red, she agreed
without protest, was from human blood. 'Mulder's getting so desperate,
his mind's going haywire again.' She thought as she let herself zone
out. 
'The truth is,' she said to herself, 'we still have a lot to look for.'
What is brown indicating? All the other colors? She had no idea. There
was a case in Alaska, which was also on the list of their candidates.
This family had been camping in a forest when the attack came. They had
all been dragged through the dark forest and into the cramped little
cabin where they'd been tortured, starved, raped, then killed, and
finally butchered. Their bodies were left for a park ranger to find a
week later.
The brown in their girl's drawings could have been the color of the
soil, or the log house the girl's been held in. If the girl had somehow
escaped the cabin and ended up with a Post Trauma Stress Syndrome
accompanied by amnesia, that could explain some things. Use of a
stone-made, very possibly gray table for the butchering job, yellow for
moonlight that lit up the forest enough for the girl to crawl out of the
darkness of the cabin. Lots of green trees. Red blood splashed all over
her clothes and probably on her arms and legs. 
	Scully was just about to call it a night when a very nervous Frohike
called back on her cellular. "Agent Scully? This is Frohike, and I have
some information for you that couldn't wait."
	"What is it, Frohike?" Sensing his tone, Scully lowered her voice.
	"The case in Sacramento. We were digging in a little deeper into the
dossier, and Byers came across the employment record for the couples. He
found that they had been long-time members of a cancer research team
called Bionix, founded by a pharmaceutical called Genesis International.
I don't know if you've heard of any of these organizations, but Genesis
International is almost entirely owned by the United States' federal
government."
	"Oh my God. That's just it!" Scully couldn't have been more certain.
	"I'll check all the other cases, but I..."
	"No. I had a feeling about this one, too. I'll check with Mulder right
now, and have Agent Hall watch over the witnesses. One of us has to go
there, no matter what. ...Oh, and Frohike?" Scully knew the time
couldn't be more right.
	"Yes, Agent Scully?"
	"Mulder and I were talking about this for a while now, but... Is there
any way you can make a house-call? We really, really need you guys down
here. You know that they're cleaning house, and we've lost Pendrell
after losing Mr. X. I doubt Mulder had contacted Marita Covarrubias
regarding this case, and not even AD Skinner has all details. We never
made updates with him, because this case stinks of Morley's."
	"Agent Scully?" Byers interrupted from the other phone. "I'm not sure
if it's safe enough."
	"I know, I know. Really, I do. But I'm racing against time. Just today,
Jake's house was attacked and Mulder happened to be there alone. The
girl was taken again, and they critically injured the security guard at
the door. They dumped Jake through a bio-hazardous waste chute,
mistaking him for Mulder. I couldn't cover his back, because I had to
stay here watching over Jake. I can't have that happen again."
	"I know, we watched the news." Now Langly was jumping in, and Scully
figured they'd now put her on the speaker-phone. "Things are growing
chaotic down there." 
	"We'll see what we can do, Agent Scully. Get some rest. You've been
working non-stop." Frohike's voice made Scully feel strangely
comfortable.
	"Thanks a million, guys. Frohike, you're great." Scully said smiling,
and she knew Frohike probably looked about to melt on their dusty floor.
She heard the other two Gunmen giggling in the background just before
hanging up.


Prescott Hospital
Jake's Room
Oakland, CA
Same Time

When Scully called Mulder with the information, he insisted her to let
him go. She immediately struck the idea on the ground that he wasn't
fully capable of defending himself, and who knows what would be waiting
there?
	"Mulder, you should know that if this one is our lucky winner, then the
girl's name is no longer Jane Doe, but Vera Maxine Jarvis. She is a
ten-year old, supposedly-deceased, orphan. She has no family, no
appointed legal guardian, and not even distant relatives are mentioned
anywhere in the file. Now, if that's true, then Linda could proceed with
the adoption paperwork. But after all this chaos, I'm not sure if
they'll grant Jake that girl's custody. We'll have to fight for them,
but all this is just way too early to even think about, so keep it
quiet."
	"Sure, Scully." Mulder could hardly swallow the words. 'Vera Maxine
Jarvis, is the girl's real name?' Any name was more welcoming than Jane
Doe, but if/when the girl is actually found, can she handle the
consequences and the history attached to that name? 
	"The Lone Gunmen agreed to do whatever they could about making
house-calls, so once again, you owe me big time. They saw the news and I
think they're scared of showing up in town. I don't know about you, but
I can feel the wheels speeding up."
	"Oh, I'm feeling my seat heating up here, telling me to stand up and
get moving." Finding the real scent of his prey, Mulder was ready to
roll.
	"Let me go, Mulder. I'm a medical doctor, and I'm quite up-to-date on
cancer research."
	"I know that, Scully. I do." Mulder tried not to choke on his words. He
knew Scully's nasal tumor was still growing. "But, if the facility's
owned by our federal government and is indeed a state-of-art cancer
research center, wouldn't they have you on their file? It's too risky,
Scully. Once you knock on their door, they'll know exactly what you're
doing in there." He hated reminding her of her illness. The line was
silent, and he could feel her frustration and pain from deep in his
bones. 
"Sc... Dana, listen to me. You know that I'll keep you updated on
everything I'll find in there. All I'm going to do is to sneak in there
with a fake pass and get into their main computer system, just like I've
done in the Kurt Crawford case. I promise I'll notify the Lone Gunmen
and take them with me. They said they'd do what they can, right? That
means they know where they can go, but they're not sure if it's safe
enough." 
	"Mulder..." Her tone was wrapped in rage. Mulder closed his eyes.
	"I know you're fully capable of doing this job, and I would've chosen
you without a question if only our government didn't own the facility.
Those MUFON women could've gone there for all I know. Please, Dana. Let
me do this." He hoped she didn't take his motives the wrong way. The
line remained silent for several more seconds before her tired and
resigned voice replied.
	"Mulder, you're such a pain in the ass." Mulder couldn't help a
chuckle.
	"Yeah, I know. But your ass is the better ass. Take care of it." His
grin grew wider when he heard her chuckle. "Seriously, Dana. Will you
let me do this? I swear I'll return with what we need, and I'll even
return in one piece." He lowered his voice further. He soon heard her
long heavy sigh, acknowledging her defeat. 
	"On one condition." She spoke in the firm, 'Agent Scully at her best'
tone. Mulder blinked slowly as the familiar warmth filled his chilling,
aching heart.
	"What is it?" Growing a bit weary, he looked around the darkened
hospital room.
	"You must be accompanied by all the three Lone Gunmen. Otherwise, I
don't give a shit about any objections you might have. I'll get there
myself, by myself, and nothing you can say or do will stop me from
going. Got that?" 
	"Okay. Let me call them, and I'll have them call you with answers. That
way, you'll know that I'm not lying to you if I tell you I've got a
green light. Deal?" 
	"It's a deal, partner." Scully's reply was forgiving, allowing Mulder
to breathe easier. After ten minutes of fencing around, the Lone Gunmen
agreed to assist him but not before Mulder gave them a three-day
preparation period. The three-day time window was way too long for
Mulder's taste, but it sure was better than throwing Scully alone into
the mouth of death. 
The Lone Gunmen were nothing if they weren't thorough. Byers made Mulder
agree to let them take a peek at some of the latest X-Files, and to let
them take his photographs for the Gunmen's annual file updates. Langly
made Mulder promise to write an article, under an alias in their next
newsletter. Frohike made him promise to get Scully's recent,
professionally-done photograph for his 'personal' collection. Mulder
promised to ask Mrs. Scully for one, making Frohike swear a complete
secrecy of it or suffer a horrible death. Frohike swore on the honors of
all his predecessors that not a word of this will leave the room.


Prescott Hospital
Elly and Stella's Room
Next Day 9 AM

Agent Hall appeared promptly at nine, carrying a sack of breakfast
consisted of both of their coffee and some pastries for Scully. She had
been sleeping for the last seven hours and had nearly shot the poor
young man before recognizing who it was at the door. Startled, Hall
nearly dropped their breakfast to the floor.
	"Oh! I'm so sorry. Are you all right? Oh, God. I was sleeping." She
rattled apologies as she holstered her weapon back, and offered the
young man a seat right next to her own. Seeing the opportunity, Hall
dropped into the seat and handed her a steaming cup.
	"Freshly brewed. Cream, no sugar." 
	"How did you know?" She was thoroughly amazed that Hall would know
this, but then she figured that by this time, the man probably knew
about her cigarette incident happened back when she was fourteen.
	"Well, you know. Agent Mulder..." True to her guess, the familiar name
came up. She chuckled.
	"And people wonder why I'm still sticking around his office."
	"Well, he's a very bright agent. I could tell ever since I first met
him. He's incredibly polite, too. That's very rare these days. I envy
you, Agent Scully, that you can work beside a man as decent as he is."
Scully only smiled and took another sip of the hot coffee. "And I am
incredibly jealous of Agent Mulder, because he gets to work with such a
brilliant, beautiful woman for a partner." Hall laughed nervously, being
nervous that Scully might take his words negatively. She didn't.
	"Well, we keep each other on our toes, and we trust each other with our
lives."
	"I've always wanted to be a Special Agent, too. Investigate cases,
travel to places, meet people, and solve problems one by one. I still
feel the same way, but I don't know. I guess I finally realized how
naive I'd been. I never expected surprises like this in my wildest
imaginations."
	"What do you mean, 'this'?" Scully asked, now looking directly at the
young agent. Hall took his time searching for the right words.
	"People who destroy evidences. People who threat and even murder
innocents; especially the people who do so without giving their victims
a second thought. Burning houses. So much tax payers' money and hard
work going down the drains, just so that our government could keep its
unwritten Code of Silence." Hall's expression darkened. Scully dropped
her gaze, not wanting to see the depth of the young agent's
disappointment in his trusted government and in the world as a whole.
	"Yes, it is very hard to accept the reality, isn't it? But the truth,
although it's very costly to our personal lives to pursue, is still
worth fighting for." 
	"I don't know if I can do what you do." Hall shook his head and stared
across the room. Scully nodded, as only the people who'd walked through
the same path as which this young man began to walk, could.
	"Only you can know the answer to that. But you'll be constantly amazed
to learn just how strong, and how vulnerable, you really are." 
	"I knew how a majority of the bureau saw you and your department. I've
heard of many stories, both good ones and bad ones. I don't know if I
can ever live, much less work, in an environment where everybody who
passes me by thinks of me the way they think of you. I don't know how
you put up with all this crap and pressure." 
	"Because we have to, and because we can. I know that I have people I
can depend on if I fall. I'm not alone." Scully raised her head and
faced Hall again, smiling. She saw him return it and nodded a
reassurance.
	"I can see very clearly that you are not." He said, standing up from
his seat. "I'm checking to see if Agent Mulder has something for me to
do. Anything I can do for you?" Hall was clearly embarrassed that he
showed her his weakness. She knew, because she had acted the same way
before toward Mulder. 
	"I'm sure there is a lot that you can do for us, but not right now.
Thank you for the breakfast." Scully answered and saw him off. That was
how she realized Mulder had been right about Thomas Hall. He was a good
agent. 
	Within an hour, the local sheriff came into the room to tell her the
shooter matching the description of the sketch artist hasn't been found.
She thanked him, but she had no high hope set for anyone to ever find
the guy. Elly woke up just as Scully was making her field journal entry
in her laptop which she salvaged out of Jake's BMW. 
	"Good morning, Elly. I'll call the nurse for you." Scully spoke as she
reached for the call button.
	"Oh, no, no. That's quite all right, Miss Scully." The older woman's
cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Scully replied with a smile and
pressed the call button anyway.
	"I still need to call them, Elly. Call me Dana, though. I get enough of
the formality around here." Scully chuckled, trying to lighten Elly's
mood.
	"Good morning, Dana, and thank you very much for watching over me."
	"It's really my pleasure. Besides, unlike my partner, you've been a
model patient." Scully's face naturally broke into a smile as she
offered Elly a glass of water.
	"How is Mr. Kathler, by the way?" Scully knew that Jake was more than
just an employer to Elly. Scully always detected the same kind of
affection her own mother showed towards Mulder in the way Elly cared for
Jake.
	"He suffered a few viral infections, accompanied by lots of cuts and
bruises. But the doctors are taking good care of him, and I believe
he'll be fine in time."
	"Oh, no. What happened?" Elly's creased forehead supported Scully's
earlier assumptions about Elly's mothering over Jake.
	"Well, he was... thrown in." That was all she could say. Sensing
Scully's reluctance, Elly didn't pursue the matter. 
	"Have you been up late again, Dana?" The woman had practically been
living half her life with Jake, thus she was an expert on the subject.
Scully returned the woman a melancholy smile, suddenly missing her
mother. That was one of the reasons why she stayed with Elly instead of
going back and forth in between this room and Jake's. 
	"I confess that I haven't really had the chance. Yesterday was a big
day for all of us, and I really hope you didn't hear any of our heated
arguments over the phone last night." Scully made a sour face,
remembering the catastrophe of the previous day. She was more than
relieved when Elly shook her head 'no'.
	"No. Actually, I can't remember the last time I was awake." Elly
laughed, and her warm soft laughter was something Scully needed to hear.
"What day is it, Dana?"
	"Today's Friday. Your family was here yesterday."
	"Oh, right." Elly rolled her eyes and shook her head with disgust.
Scully knew from the way Elly hid her wince quickly, that it hurt for
her to talk even with the painkillers still in effect. The woman's
dislocated jaw had been repaired and most of her bruises had turned into
greenish-yellow as results of ice packs used for first aid, and the
anti-inflammatory medicine the doctors gave her. But she still suffered
a lot of pain in her back from the kick she received from the shooters,
which knocked her to the floor. Elly's limbs had been bound with the
duct tape at the time, and that just made everything worse.  
	"Elly, you don't have to talk. I know it hurts. They will release you
from the hospital in a couple of days, and you may have to go back and
forth between home and a Chailo practor, but everything else is fine.
I'm sorry about your jaw. Mulder told me he had to do it." Elly took
Scully's advise and silently nodded a 'yes'. She then tilted her head
towards Stella's bed, quietly observing the mound of white/ black
spotted fur. Scully noticed and walked over to Stella's bed.
	"I haven't checked on her since last night, but she's doing well so
far. The lab technician was confused a little at first to have a dog go
through a complete check-up. No serious infection was detected from the
initial tests, and they're taking every precaution against any
opportunistic infections. The blood work came out clean, but the vet
suggested us to try lowering her cholestrol level. 
Stella also needs to move a little more. I know that since the girl came
into your lives, Jake hadn't had much chance to take Stella out. I
actually do own a pomelanian myself, and I offered Jake my service for
Stella. But I hadn't had a chance to act on it; what with all this
madness crushing down on us lately. Stella needs to go through physical
therapy and she's not a young dog any more, so all her progress depends
on her strength. I'm sorry I don't have a better news." Scully saw
Elly's eyes close, and her hands reached up to cover them for a few
seconds. 'Yes,' she thought. 'Dogs are indeed the best friend the
mankind's ever had.'
	Her cellular rang, and Scully hastily fished it out of her jacket
pocket. It was Mulder.
	"You're never gonna believe this." Scully furrowed her eyebrows at his
bluntness.
	"Do tell." She didn't waste time with niceties in these situations.
	"Agent Scully, how are you?" Her breath refused to work for that
moment.
	"Uh... Sir?" Her eyes widened, and she caught Elly looking at her with
concern. She turned to face the windows. 
	"Agent Scully, I'm sorry to have come unannounced, but the enormity of
this case summoned my personal attention." 'Oh, God.' Scully thought as
she ran her hand through her hair.
	"Sir, you're not saying..."
	"Yes, I am, Agent Scully. My name is in the investigation team as of
this morning." The first time Skinner had involved in a case being
investigated by Mulder and herself, all three of them had ended up in a
three-way stand-off in Mulder's apartment. The last time, Skinner was
caught covering up evidences while posing as Mulder. She was at the
hospital for her cancer treatment, and hadn't been there to cover
Mulder's back. 'No,' she thought, 'this is a really bad idea.'
	"Sir, have you been updated on our findings?" Her doubts were proved
right.
	"No. Agent Scully, I'll come down right now and you can give me your
on-going case report. I will also use my own team of evidence collection
experts to uncover any trace of evidences that may have been missed. A
SWAT team's on full alert, and is available at any time." Scully froze
at the nature of the A.D.'s involvement in the case. Skinner wouldn't do
all this unless he was planning on taking over the case. But as if he
read her mind, his tone remained calm. "Agent Scully, you and Agent
Mulder are still the primary agents in the case. My involvement is
strictly as a consultant." 
	"Thank you, Sir. Truth be said, Mulder was thinking about contacting
you." 
	"I've met Agent Hall, and he's with us. I've just arrived here and
we're in the lobby. I have one of my men posted there as a guard. We'll
come up." 
	"Sir..." Scully's word hung in the air as the line went dead. Resting
her hands on her hips, she turned around and met Elly's gaze. "Elly,
Assistant Director Skinner will be here shortly with Agents Mulder and
Hall." Elly knew Skinner was their boss. Her eyes widened, but before
Scully could utter a word of assurance their door was knocked. Scully
immediately noticed the absence of Mulder's gauze from his head. But as
Skinner shook hand with Elly, Mulder whispered her his assurance that he
was taking every precaution against an infection. Mulder was dressed in
the charcoal-gray suit which Scully had brought for him, and somehow
managed to look sharper than she'd seen him in the last five days.
Skinner's presence always made difference in Mulder, as if he was
wearing a full-armor before plunging into a war. Ever since he caught
Skinner red-handed, Mulder became even more guarded and careful around
the man. 
	Mulder suggested they leave Agent Hall to guard the room while they
stepped out to the hallway. Hall agreed and took his seat in the chair
Scully just vacated. Scully thanked the younger man and shut the door.
	"All right, Agent Scully. Let's hear it." Skinner ordered, crossing his
arms in front of his chest. Scully sucked in a quick breath and braced
herself.
	"As you may already know, the Violent Crimes Unit received the case
from the Los Angels regional office. The VCU in turn contacted Agent
Mulder after investigating this case for a week, asking him for his
expertise in psychology, criminal profiling, and experiences he had in
our cases with similar nature. We've flown in just two days after the
call, and we've been staying at Mr. Kathler's residence upon arrival at
his personal request. Linda Lowry, a state social worker, was allowed
free access to the house at Mr. Kathler's request, and she'd been
checking on the girl daily until her recent hospitalization. 
"Mr. Kathler had a job-related trouble, and we were trying to set things
straight with the two hospitals that treated the girl, that none of us
could provide an adequate supervision on her. Agent Mulder has gone to
San Francisco for two days to investigate the psychological testing
center to which she had been taken into. This went on from an early hour
in the morning, lasting until late hours of the night for a period of
five days. All this happened prior to our involvement in the case.
By the time Agent Mulder arrived at the testing, evidences were
destroyed, files were misplaced, tapes were disposed, and all the
hospital staff were suddenly gone on vacations or nowhere to be found.
This was why Agent Mulder could leave the facility with only a few tapes
and files for evidence to use in further investigation.
	"When I investigated the Henry Barrington Hospital, I've encountered at
least one count of evidence tampering done in almost exactly the same
manner as what Agent Mulder has witnessed in San Francisco. When I
attempted to contact physicians who had involvement in the girl's
treatment, I found the personnel office and the records office to be
extremely uncooperative. They closed the office during the night and hid
the keys to the employee personnel records. All of the girl's medical
records including X-rays, MRI, PET, CAT scan, and genetic testing data
had either disappeared without a trace, been destroyed, or somehow
misplaced with some files kept at another Henry Barrington's in New York
City. Only when Agent Mulder returned from San Francisco and threatened
them with a court order, did they ever let him in. 
Agent Mulder found the files for the girl's attending physicians to be
mysteriously missing from their file cabinets, and he could only take
out an old patient record file for each physician just to have their
full names and signatures copied." Scully paused for Skinner to digest
the information. Mulder stayed silent, his gaze fixed on his partner.
	"Have you had any luck finding them?" Skinner asked, shifting
uncomfortably. She nodded.
	"At this time the girl's name was still listed as Jane Doe, and we've
checked about five Jane Does who had gone through either the same or
similar testing procedures during the days in which the girl in question
had been tested. Agent Hall tracked down the original files and gave us
a computer disk containing the material. I reviewed the files at the
Kathler residence, and found the girl to be extremely intelligent,
especially in the field of art and language. That's when Agent Mulder
learned that the psychological evaluation results were either falsified
or switched with those of another subject."
	"So, you have the file. ...Why did she end up in this hospital?" Scully
saw Mulder clench his jaw. She let out a small sigh before going on. 
	"Mr. Kathler has a Virtual Reality machine that he uses for his work as
an architect, and as an attempt to analyze the girl' drawings, he has
been scanning in the drawings with his computer scanner. We had a look
at them, and realized Jake had been trying to do what Agent Mulder had
been doing ever since his arrival. We were about to start watching the
girl's taped therapy sessions at the psychological testing center when
she got access to the computer. She knew how to operate the VR machine
and the scanner. She eventually got into the file containing the
analysis of her drawings, and immediately fell into a seizure. We
brought her to this hospital instead of the Henry Barrington's, and so
far there's no indication of a record tampering or anyone gone missing
in this hospital."
	"Wait a minute. Kathler's been letting her play with...?"
	"No, sir. He didn't want her to use it, much less view her own artwork.
It's easy for her to just watch someone do something and copy it. She
seems to be having trouble reading and writing, which I believe were the
result of her long-term isolation from the real world; preventing her
from getting an adequate exposure to written English language. She does
extremely well on visual and conversational communications, although she
seems to be unable to speak. Mr. Kathler often commented on the lack of
its necessity to establish a good enough communication in between them."
Scully paused again, seeing that Mulder was staring at his feet and
leaning heavily on the wall. She also saw that his eyebrows furrowed and
his forehead creased as he often did while brainstorming.
	"Agent Hall tracked down the doctors who treated the girl, but their
homes were set on fire and the doctors have disappeared. It was only
yesterday that, as you know, Mr. Kathler was attacked while keeping
watch on the girl. He was most likely have been mistaken for Agent
Mulder. Mr. Kathler indicated there were about four men, all wearing an
identical, black non-descriptive uniform. They'd beaten and tied him up,
then threw him into a bio-hazardous waste chute. 
"Mr. Kathler is currently suffering from influenza, bronchitis, and
Hepatitis B viruses. These infections occurred due to the contaminated
air Mr. Kathler inhaled while he was in the waste chute, and due to
direct contacts with contaminated fluids found on discarded medical
tools and gowns his body made through the various cuts on his body."
	"Nothing else?" Skinner asked, his frustration and exhaustion clear in
his tone. 
	"No, but they'll keep screening him for any other infections. There was
an HIV positive glass vial and blood soaked hospital gown, but it was
too far down the pile that I doubt he was infected with it."
	"What's the news on the shootings?" Skinner pinched the bridge of his
nose, pushing up his glasses.
	"They also kidnapped the girl out of her bed, and we are still in
search of her whereabouts. Agent Mulder returned to Mr. Kathler's
residence for the fear of any further attempt to intervene our
investigations. He found four men, possibly the same men who'd been at
the hospital to kidnap the girl, trashing the house. Agent Hall had been
out of the house because of a fake phone call requesting his assistance,
leaving Mulder to arrive at the scene without a back-up. They'd taken
Mr. Kathler's computer, severely injured his dog Stella, his housekeeper
Elly, and Agent Mulder before taking off. 
"Agent Mulder successfully apprehended one of the shooters and injured
two others before they drove away. It is our belief that these men were
responsible for the attempt made on the ambulance in which the shooter
and Elly had been taken in on their way to this hospital. However, as
soon as they retrieved their injured accomplice out of the backdoor,
they fled without any further harm done."
	"Why is the dog here?" It was a logical question on Skinner's part.
	"She was injured taking the bullet meant for Agent Mulder." Scully
answered calmly, but she saw Mulder flinch behind Skinner. "She's also a
valuable federal witness. She knows the faces and scents of these men
from their blood. We also believe Stella is entitled to this level of
medical treatment for her action." Scully ignored Skinner's frown.
"She's recovering nicely, but her treatment will probably require an
extensive physical therapy, and even then, a full recovery will be
difficult. Until then, she will have to live with greatly reduced
mobility due to the spinal cord damage." 
	"All right, Agent Scully." Turning to look at Mulder, Skinner saw the
younger man straightening up in an instant. "Do you have anything to add
to this?" Knowing there must be a lot, Skinner gave him the 'keep it
short' warning stare. Mulder got the AD's message with a nod.
	"As Agent Scully has just mentioned, I've been analyzing the girl's
drawings from the day one. Mr. Kathler kept all of her drawings
carefully in plastic binders, inside plastic cover sheets. He informed
us that he had them all saved in his computer, so the originals were
free for me to 'dissect' and analyze. There were over seventy-five
pages, and by the time she was hospitalized, there were about a hundred.
I've looked at each of them, and noticed that her drawings shared many
identical or extremely similar images. 
"The figures, symbols, and letters used in these drawings were all
obscured by her use of vivid colors. They mostly consisted of yellow,
green, gray, brown, and red. It took me a while to notice that some of
the drawings had been done in three-dimensional style. At this point,
Mr. Kathler hadn't trusted us enough to inform us about his own pet
project with the drawings. Cryptology report stated that the symbols and
signs used in the drawings were never in use by any known human culture
in history."
	"What are you saying, Agent Mulder?" Sensing the direction of this
report, Skinner sighed. Mulder only looked deeper into Skinner's eyes.
	"I'm simply saying that whatever these images stand for, they never
existed in human civilization."
	"Mulder..." Scully began to interrupt, but Mulder silenced her with a
raised hand.
	"Sir, please just let me finish. There's a lot more." Even though
Mulder's voice was carefully controlled, the tension he radiated was
almost stifling.
	"Fine. Go on." Skinner surrendered, allowing Mulder to let the man lead
him.
	"When we had the girl tested at the hospital, we found the symptoms of
prolonged weightlessness in the girl's blood work. We had the test
results double-checked, so that they weren't falsified. Agent Scully
also detected an abnormal flow of fluid around the girl's cerebrum and
nasal cavity. Although it's not proven, it could be the very beginning
of a tumor. We didn't find any trace of any implant ever been placed in
the girl's body, very unlike typical alien abductees.
"It's my theory that whoever had her in captivity long enough for her to
develop the condition of prolonged weightlessness, the suspected tumor
growth, interfere her reading and writing skills, knew very well how
valuable this girl was to them, or to us. They knew exactly what she was
capable of. They never harmed her physically, while almost every
reported alien abductee had suffered from severe physical and emotional
abuse. 
"When this girl was returned, she was almost completely normal. She
tolerated Kathler and accepted him as her protector. A guardian, almost.
She seems to understand everything that everyone says to her, and she
knows exactly what to do to show us what she wanted or how felt without
using words. Alien abductees commonly report that spoken language was
never in use for communication in their world. They use mind-scan.
It..."
	"Mulder, stop it!! That's enough!" Scully's yelling was loud enough to
make Skinner jump. 
	"You had your turn, now it's mine. Stay quiet, Scully!" Mulder's voice
rose in response. 
	"Enough! I don't like this as much as you, Agent Scully. But for the
sake of fairness, let him finish." Skinner cut in, his words surprising
Mulder. Normally, the AD would have dismissed them outright with a wave
of his hand.
	"Thank you, sir." Mulder nodded, then nodded to Scully. She looked away
and stared at her feet. "As I was saying, sir, I believe that the girl
has been a subject of their experiments, but not for any physical
experiments. Her mind is young, healthy, and she's a genius. It comes as
no surprise to me if they used her unique abilities to their advantage.
Normally, it wouldn't make sense that the girl cannot communicate with
any written or spoken language considering her level of intelligence.
But then, I believe she's also suffering from a rare form of Post
Traumatic Stress Syndrome that triggered her seizure while she was
viewing her own drawings with the Virtual Reality Machine. 
"I stayed behind while they took her to the hospital, and I got a look
at the computer images myself. What I saw was an isolated group of
severed human body parts, another group of what could be said as
extra-terrestrials, then the isolated signs and symbols which I've
mentioned earlier. All the colors used were gathered over at another
wall. There were shapes of what looked to be tables and desks. Some of
them drawn with images of what I believed were machines surrounding
those tables.  
	"Now, there's no way of knowing just how much access to their labs that
the girl was allowed. But assuming she was being held long enough to
witness nearly everything, it's reasonable to assume that the girl
witnessed the cloning of human-alien hybrids similar to those we've
encountered during our past investigations. Use of green here was most
frequently associated with images of the alien body, and some were
overshadowing the severed human body parts. However, since the hybrids
usually evaporate once their bodies die, I'm left with some questions
and doubts.
	"There's another explanation for these severed body parts. I contacted
my outside sources who had provided me with a list of recent murders
involving a girl matching the descriptions of our Jane Doe. My sources
isolated about ten case profiles and I had Agent Scully take a look over
them. Among these cases, we found one that led us to a multiple serial
murder case involving a family in Sacramento where a seven-year old girl
and her parents were claimed as the perp's victims. 
"My outside source further confirmed that the murdered couple had been
long-time members of a cancer research team called Bionix, which was
founded by a pharmaceutical called Genesis International, owned almost
entirely by our own federal government. I was about to go over there
myself, when ...well, when you arrived here this morning. Sir, if I may,
I'd like to leave here immediately to pursue the lead before something
else goes missing." Mulder relaxed his shoulders, indicating the end of
his report.
	"Am I to assume that your 'outside sources' won't be available to go on
record?" Skinner aimed his iron gaze directly at Mulder. Mulder shook
his head only once. It was Skinner's turn to clench his jaw and release
a sigh of frustration. 
	"For security reasons, they can't. But they are reliable, and they have
proven their loyalty to us and to the X-Files many times in the past." 
	"Agent Scully? What are your plans?" Skinner turned back to Scully,
their eyes meeting with silence.
	"I was planning on keeping things under control here in Los Angels. It
never occurred to me that you'd personally get involved in any of our
cases again." A very stale silence settled over the three of them like
fog, and Scully ran for cover. "Since you brought your men with you, I
suppose there will be no further need for me to stand guard here. I have
some of the girl's original drawings that weren't taken, and I have the
computer disks containing the medical files in question. I can get
started on straightening the facts and evidences to write up a
preliminary report for submission. Mulder's outside sources have all the
computer files Henry Barrington hospitals have attempted to fabricate.
I'll finish up the reports on the malpractice suit filed against the
hospital by listing out the names of both their medical and general
supporting staff. I will provide the summary of what happened in there
and submit them to you. I will also be sure to make a copy for the
District Attorney's office." 
	"Very well, Agent Scully. Agent Mulder, keep me posted on your
progress." With that, Skinner walked away. The moment the AD was out of
their sight, Mulder and Scully both took a deep breath of relief. Then,
Scully glared at Mulder and he felt her eyes impale him like a pair of
rusted daggers.
	"I can't believe you could possibly think that the girl was trained by
aliens to be a mind-reader!" Scully fumed at being forced to endure her
partner's full report.
	"It's a theory, and I am entitled to subscribe myself to it." Mulder
never lost his composure, and he stashed his hands in his trousers
pockets to keep himself from pounding on the nearest wall. "You didn't
have to raise hell and bark at me." 
	"I will, if your crazy theories directly chews out my rational ones. I
have opinions, too, Mulder. I'm entitled to defend them." Scully covered
her chest with her hand for added effect. Mulder leaned closer, their
faces now only inches apart.
	"We both know that, Scully." Mulder lowered his voice to a mere mumble.
She dropped her head and closed her eyes. The familiar touch of his hand
on her jaw compelled her to face him again. 
"I wasn't trying to discredit you by arguing against your theories. I
hope you know that I'm not trying to ditch you, either. They have you on
their files, Scully. I'm sure of it. If you find the girl while I'm
gone, then she's going to need someone she can trust to be with her.
Jake and Stella may still be asleep, and even if they woke up in time,
Jake doesn't know what the hell's going on and no one's going to talk to
him. The same goes for Elly and Linda. 
"I need you to stay here in case something happens to me. Only you can
keep everything together here. Not Skinner. Not Hall. There's nobody but
you to hold the tether." To Scully's surprise, Mulder reached over to
her and drew her into an embrace. His next words were a bit muffled
because he buried his face in her hair. "I know how my theories make you
run up the walls, but that's always going to be there. At least this
time, you know exactly where I will be, and I'm not going there alone." 
	"You will be alone for three days. I know you're going there right
now." Mulder broke their embrace to face her gaze, then responded with a
slow blink and lowered his voice further. 
	"I have to go, Scully. We're losing time, and I think we both know that
there's a whole lot more than just meets the eye. Contact the Lone
Gunmen and tell them I'm heading out, and that I'd appreciate it if they
could catch up with me as soon as they can. I promise I'll go home
before dark, and play nice with other kids." Mulder grinned, and saw her
lips slightly and briefly curl up on ends.
	"Mulder, you're such a pain in the ass." Patting his good arm, she
claimed finality to this conversation before turning to go in the room.
Mulder left the hallway smiling and shaking his head. 



Keneally Psychological Research Lab
Genesis International Laboratory building
Sacramento, California
11AM  

The friendly receptionist at the first floor lobby gave Mulder a map and
told him that the entire third floor and the basement of the modern
five-story building was occupied by Bionix. Mulder thanked her and got
into an elevator. The fake security pass and ID had been faxed to the
receptionist's computer before he left Castro Valley Airport, and his
temporal name David Aaron Joyce was on the list of staff as a Keneally
psychological research project's team member. He also had another set of
passes indicating his name was William P. Forrest, and that he was a
night security guard working on the third floor of the same building. 
Right now, he was playing the doctor. He had Forrest the security
guard's uniform inside his hotel room, and he was yearning for the
chance to rid himself of the lab coat and the stethoscope he currently
wore. He had no idea where everything was, and he planned to play the
doctor long enough to memorize the structure of this building and wait
for the Lone Gunmen to arrive. Then, they could go hack into the
Bionix's computer system in order to pull up the research data for the
Jarvis' projects.  
	"Dr. Joyce? Pleasure meeting you." The middle-aged man greeted Mulder
and introduced himself as Kenearlly, the head of the research lab and
Dr. David Aaron Joyce's new boss. "It is fairly common for us to recruit
new members into our studies half-way, so you should find yourself
comfortable working with us here." The man was all smiles and was
excited to show Mulder his work area. Mulder returned every smile the
older man sent his way, feeling his Quantico 'role-play' training
kicking in. 
	"This is Dr. Dutton." Keneally indicated an African-American woman in
her late twenties, and they shook hands. "Dr. Dutton, this here is the
new guy I was talking about." Surprised to sense the obvious pride
Keneally had for him behind the words 'new guy', Mulder honestly felt
guilty for lying about himself to the older man.
	"Oh. Dr. Joyce." The woman gave him a dazzling smile, a real one that
reached her eyes and straight into the heart of anyone on the receiving
end of it. 
	"I guess this is my assigned area?" Mulder asked Keneally and got a nod
for an answer.
	"This is your table, and we all have a shared office down at the end of
the hall. Your desk has your name on it, so I guess Dr. Dutton can show
you the rest of the way." Keneally handed Mulder a thick file folder he
had been carrying under his arm. Mulder's questioning gaze was enough
for the man. "It's the document files for our past experiments. You'll
also be observing therapy sessions at some point. Just monitor them
today, and we'll test how good you'll be tomorrow. In this lab,
sometimes we have animals or human volunteer subjects to come in and
participate in our studies. But right now, things are slow. I've heard
of your excellence in therapies, so I'll be sure to enjoy having you
here with us." Another pung of guilt hit Mulder's gut at these words.
	"Thank you, sir. I appreciate the offer." Mulder replied, successfully
hiding his frown. What the hell did the Lone Gunmen put in the computer
to get him to be 'so highly regarded'? He was going to kill them for
this. He wasn't really qualified to perform professional therapy. If he
only had to analyze patient files, his job was a piece of cake. But this
was no cake. This was a tiramisu.
	"You should be able to start right away. Case analysis is a very easy
stuff. At some point, we'll submit our final report stating our
findings. What you'll be analyzing is the results of tests we've done on
our ongoing projects. They're just the wrap-up processes, tying the
loose ends. The therapy sessions are the ones we just opened, and you'll
be one of the primaries in the study. Now, get yourself oriented, and
enjoy the day." Keneally concluded, and all Mulder could do in return
was smile, but 'Enjoy the day? You ought to be shitting me!' was what he
was thinking. 
	"Don't worry, you'll be fine." Dr. Dutton smiled against his
discomfort. Mulder grinned nervously and faced the case files piled on
the lab table in front of him next to his computer. 
	"Where should I start?" Mulder asked, pointing at the blank computer
screen. Dr. Dutton hit a couple of keys and the main screen came up. 
	"Just compare each case file with the ones in the computer. If you spot
any technical error, or if you happened to disagree with any prognosis
made in here, you need to report it. Sort of a whistle-blower." Dr.
Dutton explained as she pointed to a file marked 'D-5'. Mulder nodded
her a thanks. "Please call me Amanda, and you are...?" She tilted her
head a bit in question.
	"David." 'David Aaron Joyce', he mumbled to himself. 'What an ordinary
name'.
	"How lovely." Amanda said, staring him up and down. Mulder was in no
mood to play mind games. He shrugged.
	"Well, it's a common name..." He muttered as he began typing in the
first case file number into the demanded space. 
	"Actually, David means 'Beloved'. It's also the name of the
Michelangelo statue. Lucky you. My baby brother didn't get off that
easily." Mulder had no idea what his fake name meant, although he was
familiar with the famous statue. 'Oh, yeah? Try Fox', he thought.
	"What's your brother's name?" Mulder asked, just to keep the air from
getting stale. 
	"Promise you won't laugh." A corner of her mouth turned slightly
upward, obviously daring him to do otherwise. Mulder nodded a
reassurance.
	"I promise." 'What could be worse than Fox?' Mulder thought.
	"Star." Mulder's mind suddenly turned blank.
	"What?" He tried to keep his calm. 
	"That's his name. Star Clarence Dutton." 
	"That's ... unique." Mulder gave her an honest, sympathetic smile. The
kid's childhood must've been hell. "Well, I know a man named Fox."
	"Really?! And I thought Star was pretty bad." She didn't bother hiding
her pity, and Mulder grimaced.
	"You have no idea." Mulder replied and returned to his 'job'. He still
had to figure out how to balance his triple duty. With the way things
are going, he could be stuck in Sacramento for weeks, and he didn't have
weeks. 


Schuster Hotel Room #640
Sacramento, CA
10PM

Mulder took out his security guard uniform. He at least needed to see
the third floor before doing anything. He was going to go on duty as
scheduled and play the innocent guard for the next three days. The Lone
Gunmen was scheduled to arrive in time to bypass every security system
in the third floor before he could gain access to the computer files.
His shift was scheduled to start at midnight, and he needed to get
cleaned up. But first, he would have to call the Lone Gunmen and Scully
for update. Mulder had been on pins and needles all day long just
thinking of a few nifty interrogation technique to use on the three
stooges.
	"Lone Gunmen." The instant he heard Byers's voice, Mulder managed not
to scream.
	"We have some communication problems here, guys!"
	"What's the problem?" Frohike's voice indicated a tone of alert.
	"Oh, nothing too major. Like, what the hell did you write in my
personal file?! They think I'm a fucking God's Gift, and they're putting
me into therapy sessions, because some crack genius out in the no-man's
land thought I was the second Sigmund Fleud! I'm not even a practicing
therapist!! How the hell am I supposed to treat real patients?! Are you
nuts?!" The air ran out in Mulder's lungs, and he was finally forced to
stop for a breath.
	"It's just for a week, Mulder. No problemo. I hate to tell you this,
but you're the one who pushed it. We barely had enough time to get you
accessed, so don't complain." Frohike snapped back, and Mulder realized
his own selfishness.
	"Okay, I'm sorry. But this was something I wasn't ready for." 
	"You'll be fine. Just don't get caught."
	"Sure. Can you still come down here within two, three days?" He was
practically begging.
	"We'll try, Mulder. Just hang on." Langly added with finality. Mulder
gave up the fight and promised to be in touch. Next, he pressed the
first speed-dial and was answered on the first ring. Scully was on the
Lone Gunmen's side, and told him he would be fine as a doctor. 
	"Just do the job, Mulder. But don't get side-tracked or excited and go
venture out until they catch up with you." 
	"I told you, Scully. I'll play nice with the other kids."
	"You did take your back-up piece with you, right?"
	"Yes. It's right next to my bus pass. I'll even be back before the
street lights come on." 
	"Mul... Uhhh, whatever." Mulder smiled to hear her surrender, but he
also sensed her exhaustion.
	"Seriously, Scully. I'm as safe as I can be."
	"Your shift starts from midnight?"
	"Yeah. Any changes at home?" 
	"Nope. Jake's taking a slight downturn because of the HBIG. It stands
for hepatitis B immune globulin. Side effects are usually severe
allergic reaction, plus pain and swelling at the site of the injection.
Jake's suffering from the latter two. I can see the swelling. He's still
asleep, so I doubt if there's any pain detected by his system. But he's
fighting flu as well, so he's got a minor fever. Pretty soon, he'll
start coughing from the bronchitis."
	"Jesus, I feel bad for the guy."
	"How's your arm and head?"
	"I cleaned them twice today just as you suggested. I have everything I
need as medical supply in my suitcase." Dana Scully was practically his
personal physician.
	"Good. Skinner only knows that you'll be working undercover, which
means if anything happens to you out there, I'm the one who's
responsible."
	"I'll be careful, Scully. I'll call you when I can. Get some sleep."
Mulder said before hanging up.


Keneally Psychological Research Lab
Genesis International Laboratory Building
Sacramento, CA
9 AM

Although Mulder was used to staying up late, reviewing the briefing
materials took until the hour before his arrival at the center. His
security guard duty couldn't have been more boring, and it lasted until
five hours ago. Having to face a computer screen for the first four
hours of every day, only five hours after facing the monitors at his
security desk all night, was a little too much even for Mulder. 'At
least I got to view the entire third floor', he thought. He needed to
determine just how many people worked at night and when they got busy.
But most importantly, he needed to figure out what the safest route
would be for his army's invasion.
	Mulder, as expected, was called off his desk duty to go into the
therapy session he monitored the day before. He was led into a small
room filled with toys and dolls, but he knew his subject wasn't a child.
Sometimes, having play-room helped calming down adult subjects. It
helped them relax, and sometimes made them happier because they could
return to their childhood innocence. It also helped therapists to make a
better observation. 
Mulder tried to relax when Sarah Martin, his first patient and a
twenty-six years old woman of average height, walked awkwardly inside
and sat down on the carpet in front of him. There was no desk or chair
anywhere in the room in order to avoid developing physical barriers in
between the occupants. Mulder smiled and introduced himself to the
woman. He knew there was somebody was monitoring them in that little
cramped room behind the large mirror. He tried to ignore that piece of
information.
	The subject had phobias of machines and people in uniforms. This
condition was developed throughout her childhood, when she went through
cancer treatment. All she knew was the hospital staff demanded her to be
silent, rigid, and confined inside the enormous machines during each
session. At the mention of cancer, Mulder realized everything this
entire building housed was somehow related to cancer research. Suddenly,
Mulder felt incredibly guilty yelling at the Lone Gunmen. They must've
known, and decided not to spoil the fun for him.  
 	Knowing all their conversations are on tape, Mulder never made a move
to take a note for official submission. Mulder never needed notes for
himself, because he was an eidetic. He didn't even carry a pen. Upon
reading the case file, he also shunned his lab coat, suit jacket, and
his tie. He even unbuttoned the top two shirt buttons, so he wouldn't
look like a doctor. These patients needed to let their feelings out in
the open, and out of their system. The problem was how to reach them. 
Sarah began first to chew her nails, then she played with her long,
braided hair. She fidgeted and shifted constantly while she talked, and
sometimes she played with her shoelaces during conversations. She never
reached out for toys or dolls to distract herself, or to simply play.
Her expression mostly indicated insecurity, suspicion, fear, pain,
agony, and, a little curiosity aimed directed at Mulder. 
	Mulder asked Sarah to describe her feelings according to a variety of
situations. What does she feel when she's driving? Riding on a train?
Flying in airplane? Staying in hospital rooms? The examination rooms?
These sounded like a series of lame questions, but they were good to
test the waters. Sarah replies she never flew on planes, nor rode on a
train or a bus. She drove a convertible, and she took the top down even
in the middle of a winter if the weather's all right. 
	Sarah Martin had a father who worked at a timber mill operating the
saw-mill until he moved on to a job of monitoring and operating a meat
processing plant which allowed the family to move closer to the
civilization. After getting laid off, Mr. Martin got a job at a shopping
mall construction site as a crane and gondola operator, but he was
always requested to operate carnival ride machines whenever he and Sarah
were in town. When the job was done, he finally got a permanent job
operating the city's water processing plant, monitoring the system for
any emergency. 
The father thought it was intentional that his daughter never
participated in any of the 'take your daughter to work' day events
despite his repeated requests. Mr. Martin was convinced that Sarah
flat-out hated his work, and what he did to earn a living. Their
relationship never saw its light since Mr. Martin died five years ago
from an accident on the job. Mrs. Martin was a kindergarten teacher and
stuck with the job ever since the day she started it. Mrs. Martin
remains alive and now happily re-married to a wealthy banker who
financed all of Sarah Martin's medical expenses. 
	Sarah Martin had a tough time adjusting as an adolescent since she
hated rules, security guards and police officers. She tried to keep a
job as a waitress at a diner with the few friends that she had. But
Sarah felt she was never accepted, and she hated the uniform she had to
wear, because it made her 'look dumb'. 
Next, she tried to become a professional chef, since she was good at
cooking. But she couldn't get her license, much less finish the required
courses, because she couldn't operate the electric industrial-sized food
processor and the meat cutter. She also hated the huts and white aprons
they had to wear as rules. Then, she tried to hold a job delivering
pizzas. However, this didn't last a week since she had to keep the car
top down while driving around, wearing a uniform. 
She was regarded as a delinquent student at school for her maladoptive
behavior, and for refusing to follow the school rules, which didn't help
her in any way. When describing circumstances that usually trigger her
claustrophobia, she was never too accurate nor too vague. Floors began
to swirl upon entering; walls began to close in; the air became
non-breathable; sweat drenched the clothes; bones and joints became
sponge. These were all typical claustrophobic reactions. 
When Mulder probed her on the somewhat sensitive cancer treatment
issues, she immediately stated the fears and pains caused by the
treatment she has undergone. When she was asked to concentrate on her
fear of machines, she described the larger machines such as the CAT
scans, MRIs, and the radiation therapy equipment. She claimed that they
intimidated her; as if they were staring right down at her and saying,
"You're mine now. You're under my control. I'm going to hurt you, crush
you, and make you scream. I'm going to eat you up and you won't live to
see another day." She also went as far as listing the hypodermic needles
that were delivering drugs that made her sick. 
Mulder kept his reaction to a minimum, acting as if everything was under
control to prevent Sarah Martin from thinking she wass any less a
valuable person than others because of her conditions. But in truth, he
had enough first-hand experiences with hypodermic needles, cancers,
large machines, painful tests and prison cells to drive him up the
walls. As a consequence, his reports of the day's session included many
of his personal recollections and feelings in relation to the patient's
statements.
	"The patient's phobic responses are completely natural, considering
Miss Martin's age at the time she has undergone cancer treatments. She
experiences fear of confined spaces from having been moved around from
room to room; from one testing to another; from one treatment to the
next. All she remembers as a young girl is her sufferings. Her physical
pain, nausea, as well as her emotional burden of being left alone in
small rooms. She had no one around to seek peace from, and to ease her
overwhelming burden of helplessness. 
"The medical equipment identified by Miss Martin are designed and
constructed to have the patient lying down, and require them not to move
a muscle. It is just as bad as being in restraints, maybe worse." Mulder
wrote on his report after the session, still wondering if he misled the
patient in any way. But then, this was only their initial session. He
couldn't expect any solution or a breaking point out of it. 
	"As for her fear of people in uniforms, it could be explained by the
fact that the hospital staff in various uniforms operated the machines
that Miss Martin described as threatening. To explain further, the
numerous sessions of radiation therapy as well as the chemotherapy did
in fact threaten her health in order to reach through to the cancer
cells themselves. 
"It is completely natural that her mind generalizes her acquired fear
for machines and uniformed hospital staff to apply to the outside world.
Industrial machines, especially the ones requiring human assistance as
the center of their operational system that are commonly used in such
places as lumber mills, meat processing plants, construction sites, and
carnivals easily apply to the extended category. Then, gradually over
time, her phobias could extend their hands into smaller objects such as
cement mixers, fire engines, cranes, and jet coasters. 
"People in uniforms tend to be in control of the objects or assignments
they were given to manipulate or execute them. The doctors, technicians,
and nurses at the hospital where Miss Martin was treated go through the
same routine everyday while treating their patients. These routines
followed by the hospital staff can extend Miss Martin's psychological
generalization process to finally include police officers, post office
workers, chefs, waitresses, pilots, train conductors, bus drivers, and
even pizza delivery people.
	"As stated previously, her conditioned emotional responses are induced
by her anticipation of pain and anxiety leading back to her childhood
memories centering around the cancer treatments she received as a child.

"As for solution, when it eventually comes, a series of training
sessions focusing mainly on gradual de-conditioning of the subjected
CERs, targeting closely on her social phobia - fear of being evaluated
by others negatively, as well as claustrophobia, are the most
recommended course of treatment." 
	Mulder concluded the report and printed it up, almost signing his real
name at the bottom of the page before actually smacking himself in his
face. When he was finally done, he headed straight to his hotel room and
went to bed immediately after stripping down to his boxers. He had five
hours to sleep before preparing for his night job.