From: SpearmntXP <spearmntxp@aol.com>
Date: 9 Sep 1998 23:41:18 GMT
Subject: Hide & Seek Part I (23/39)

TITLE: Hide and Seek (23/?)

DISCLAIMER: Characters from the television show The X-Files used herein are the
property of 1013 Productions and Fox Broadcasting Corp. 
CATEGORY: X, MSR
RATING: Segment, PG; Story, NC-17
ARCHIVE: OK for Gossamer
SPOILERS: Fifth season (up until Folie a Deux)
SUMMARY: Continuing what I hope will be an online novel.
PREVIOUS SEGMENTS: E-mail to spearmntXP@aol.com
FEEDBACK: Please, to spearmntXP@aol.com
NEXT POSTING: 11:59p EDT 26 August

<23>
En route to Blue Bluffs, Indiana
6:50 p.m.

Scully hefted her overnight bag and her briefcase from the trunk of the fleet
vehicle.
	*Traveling light this time,* she mused.
	*That is, if you don't count emotional baggage.*
	*Wonder how you check that,* she thought with a slight smile.
	Skinner, in full damage-control mode, had ordered her to change out of her
blood-soaked pantsuit and into one of Anne Doyle's before leaving. He was
right--she couldn't walk anywhere as she was dressed without raising someone's
attention--so she did so. But she felt like a grave-robber, her skin crawling
as she slid into an expensive, cream-colored Anne Klein outfit.
	The assistant director had wordlessly taken her bunched-up navy suit and
tossed it into a fire he'd started in the Doyles' fireplace.
	*This job makes me go through a whole wardrobe every year,* she'd thought
idly.
 	From the Doyle house, she'd walked four blocks to hail a cab to headquarters,
where she requisitioned a fleet vehicle, drove home and changed into her own
clothes. She'd then driven to ATF in Rockville. Marsden was out--an arson case
in Pennsylvania had erupted over the last hour, and he was on his way
there--but he'd left instructions that she had carte blanche access to the
labs, of which she took advantage.
	After that, the drive from Rockville to National Airport, in the city's
southwest environs, presented her with two new surprises.
	The first happened in the parking lot at ATF, where she dialed Mulder's cell
phone as she cranked the engine.
	"Mulder." From the background noise, she could tell he was also in a car.
	"It's me. I'm afraid I'm going to be late, if traffic's bad--"
	"You won't be late," he interrupted. "There's been a slight change of plans."
	"We're not going?" She gripped the phone tighter. *I'll go without you. I have
to know about Transgen.*
	"No, we're going. Just not on a commercial flight."
	"What are you talking about?" 
	"Just go to the charter-flight terminal. We're Hoosier Air 311. Or 312. It
doesn't matter; it'll be the only Hoosier Air flight."
	"All right, I'll be there shortly." She hung up, puzzled. *Charter* flight?
	The next surprise came when she turned on the radio, tuning in a Washington
all-news station, checking to see if the Doyle double-fatal had become the lead
story yet. She braced for an announcer's breathless voice, using a sinister
voice to report that mysterious "sources" had alleged that FBI agents conspired
to contaminate evidence at the crime scene.
	The announcer was breathless, but wasn't talking about Doyle or his son.
	"For those just tuning in, the Associated Press and Reuters are both reporting
that Israel has exploded three nuclear bombs in the Negev Desert."
	*New World Order my ass,* Scully thought. 
	"These detonations have been expected by intelligence officers for the past 24
hours, of course, following Saddam Hussein's nuclear test, conducted last night
in the western desert of Iraq."
	*Has it only been 24 hours?* she marveled. *It feels like it's been a month.*
	"Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, informed the United States and
the United Nations early this morning that his nation would not stand by idly
as surrounding Arab states built nuclear capabilities. The Jewish state's
believed to have possessed nuclear bombs for nearly three decades now."
	"From the White House, the President has issued a statement urging the Israeli
government to exercise restraint in order to prevent a nuclear war in the
Middle East. At the same time, the Pentagon, which has already placed U.S.
forces in the Mideast on high alert--"
	Scully withdrew her cell phone and began dialing.
	"--says it's contemplating a variety of action plans. Military sources have
told the AP that the Army and Air Force are laying contingency plans for a
massive deployment of U.S. troops and material to the region, if the Saudi
royal family agrees to cooperate."
	"Scully residence," Margaret Scully answered.
	"Mom."
	"Dana." Her mother's voice sagged with relief. "I called Admiral Hanson's
wife, but she doesn't know--"
	"The Pentagon might not know yet, Mom, this is moving too fast."
	"I know," she said, her voice distant, her thoughts with a son half a world
away.
	"Are you all right?"
	"Yes," she said, forcing a false note of brightness into her voice. "You know,
Charlie's probably safer than all of us. Surrounded by steel and jets and
Tomahawks."
	*Navy wife to the end,* Scully thought. "Yes," she said, feigning agreement.
"Is Lisa all right?" Lisa was Charlie's wife.
	"I think so. So far."
"Mom, I have to go to Indiana tonight, but if you need me, call on the cell
phone, OK?"
	"I'll be fine."
	Scully sighed. *You won't be* fine--
	*Is this how Mulder feels when I say it?*
	"Your father always told me this would happen," Margaret said. "It used to
infuriate Melissa, remember? All those talks about nuclear disarmament--"
	"I've thought a lot about Ahab today," Scully said suddenly.
	Her mom was quiet for a moment. "Anything in particular?"
	*How I've let him down.*
	"No," she lied. "Just how I miss him, that's all."

Hoosier Air 439--fortunately Mulder had correctly identified the carrier, and
it was the only flight they were running that evening--was actually a small
Gulfstream jet, painted a horrible melange of orange and brown that reminded
Scully of the tie she gave Mulder for his birthday three years ago.
	She boarded to find Mulder already strapped in, files strewn across one of two
small tables that interrupted the 20 or so seats that stretched the short
distance from nose to tail.
	He looked up and she bit back a gasp.
	*I haven't seen those in a while.*
	She suppressed a little shiver. She *liked* him in eyeglasses. 
	*Smart is sexy.*
	She took two fingers and pointed at her own eyes.
	"Traveling in disguise," he joked lamely. But as he took off the silver-rimmed
spectacles, he pinched and rubbed the bridge of her nose. 
	*Headache from eye strain.*
	Concern floated to the top of the maelstrom of feelings about Mulder twisting
inside her--anger, frustration, desire and confusion having been the four
front-runners so far this afternoon. "Tylenol?" she asked.
	He shook his head. 
	*He revels in pain sometimes,* Scully thought. *He lets it define him.*
	"Well, I wish you'd take something for it. Are there assigned seats?" she
asked.
	"Nope. Just you and me tonight," he said, jerking his chain forward. Scully
turned to see the pilot seal the aircraft door closed.
	"We'll be aloft in a few minutes, Agent Mulder. We're cleared to taxi," the
pilot said.
	"Thanks, Gary," Mulder replied.
	"What's going on?" Scully asked.
	"Skinner said hide, right? So that means commercial flights are out. And I
figured you might not want to spend eight hours alone in a car with me." He
said it matter-of-factly, without drenching the words in either pain or anger.
	She looked down at the table top in front of her. The aircraft began to roll.
	"So I called Senator Matheson," Mulder continued, in full-tilt storytelling
mode--only the monotone was missing. "Because I remember he knows this
congressman from Indiana very well. They serve together on one of the joint
committees, maybe Tax, I forget which one. The congressman's family is the
majority shareholder in Hoosier Air. He made a phone call, and we get
first-class seats."
	He was nearly rambling now, the words tumbling over each other pell-mell.
	*Why is he so nervous?*
	"Scully," he continued without a breath, "I'm so, so sorry about today." He
looked over at her, eyes light-tan with flecks of gold.
	*A new look for Mulder,* she thought. *Apology eyes.*
	"Two apologies from you in one day," she said. "That's almost an X-File."
	She meant it as a joke, but her voice seemed to freeze in the air. He winced.
	*I didn't mean for it to come out that way...*
	She felt the aircraft tear itself away from gravity and rise from the runway,
an ethereal, almost sexual, feeling that made her stomach flutter and her body
buzz.
	*Mulder makes me feel like this sometimes.*
	*Sometimes...*
	 She took a deep breath. She'd rehearsed this sentence in her mind during her
entire time at the lab in Rockville, but the words still felt foreign as they
crossed her lips.
	"I'm sorry, too," she said, barely audible over the jet engines. "But I think
we need some time away from one another."
	He turned away and looked out the window.
	"Mulder."
	He ignored her.
	"Mulder, look at me. *Please.*"
	"I understand," he mumbled.
	"I don't want you to understand *your* way. I want you to understand *my*
way." 
	Now he faced her. His eyes swam with clouds that eclipsed his traditional
piercing look. She reached across the aisle, grasping his hand, letting her
fingers trace the lifelines in his palm.
	"Do you remember..." She broke off, chuckling. "Our lives are full of
do-you-remembers. As if we forget. Do you remember Chattanooga?"
	He nodded. "The field where I died."
	"Allegedly."
	"Probably."
	"Anyway," she continued. "You asked me if I would change anything about the
four years we'd been together."
	"You said you wouldn't change a day." He smirked. "Except for the Flukeman."
	"I meant it," she said, looking at their clasped hands. "Not a minute, not a
second. If you believe anything, Mulder--in this world or any other--you must
believe that. And that's why today scared me."
	He squeezed her hand gently.
	"We've been through so much together that we know the location of every wound,
every scar on each other's bodies," Scully continued. "And today we struck at
them. With one sentence, you neatly sliced through all my emotional armor. And
I did the same to you. And we both spoke the truth, didn't we? I know Emily
clouds my objectivity every day, although I don't want to admit it. And you
know Sam does the same to you."
	He nodded.
	"And when we can't lash out at these... people..." she spat, "who have done
this to Emily and Sam, who are doing this to *us,* then we lash out at
whoever's available. Skinner most often. Sometimes each other."
	She felt his arm muscles grow rigid. She found his eyes.
	"We need some time to heal. To classify and categorize our feelings," she
said, trying to get a smile. It failed. "To protect ourselves against
ourselves."
	"What if we discover we're more intact apart rather than together?" he asked.
	The question felt like a medicine ball on Scully's soul.
	"I guess," she said, "that's a risk we'll have to take."
	He dropped her hand clumsily and sat back in his seat, closing his eyes.
	*He doesn't like this at all.*
	"Mulder..." she began.
	"What did Doyle's blood work reveal?" he asked quietly.
	Scully felt the door slam between them.
	*Don't, please, Mulder. Don't leave me on this roller coaster.*
	"Whatever," she mumbled. She bit her lip and opened her briefcase, withdrawing
a file. "Neither Roger Doyle's nor Jason Doyle's blood contained mutated red
blood cells or displayed oxygen deprivation symptoms."
	"So it was normal."
	"The *blood* was normal. Jason's *DNA* isn't." Scully handed Mulder two pieces
of film, both clear except for a number of lines across each, resembling bar
codes from grocery products.
	"What am I looking at?" he said.
	"The top film is a very quick-and-dirty PCR on a sample of Jason's blood that
I took before we left. ATF ran this double-time in the lab, so several mistakes
could've been made," she warned. "The second film is a PCR ran on Jason's blood
four years ago."
	Mulder looked over, confused. "Why would anyone need to run a DNA test on an
eight-year-old?"
	"To confirm paternity," she said.
	"Who ordered it?"
	"Roger Doyle."
	"Why a PCR?"
	"I agree, a little extreme for a paternity test. Unfortunately, the three
people in the best position to answer that question have died."
	"So Roger Doyle is or isn't Jason's father?"
	"He is," Scully said, feeling a headache begin to kick at the back of her
eyes. *Maybe I'll have that Tylenol I offered him.* "According to the *first*
PCR. The newest one, however, indicates significant changes in Jason's DNA."
	Mulder juxtaposed one film over another and held them both up to the aircraft
light. "They're different here... here... and here."
	"Again, it could be an error at ATF."
	"If it's not an error, can you explain it?"
	"No," Scully said flatly.
	"Maybe a mutation?"
	"Mutations occur generationally. You can't simply alter someone's existing DNA
codes."
	"Or at least we don't know how," Mulder persisted.
	"Mulder, nature has laws, and some of them are pretty stringent. This isn't
like running a red light. Breaking this one could turn genetics as we know it
upside down."
	"But one could argue that while Jason Doyle was missing, something happened to
him that caused a mutation in his DNA."
	"Or this boy isn't Jason Doyle," Scully countered.
	"Possible. And if this second DNA isn't in error--"
	"There's no way Roger Doyle could be Jason's father," she said with a nod.
	"Wow." Mulder shook his head in amazement. "How about the instant coffee?"
	"That's even stranger," Scully began. "Analysis of the coffee found
microscopic metal filings, approximately one part per ten million, throughout
the grounds."
	"What kind of metal?"
	Scully handed Mulder a sheet of paper littered with numbers.
	"I can't read this," he protested.
	"Neither could ATF," she said. "Apparently it's an unknown metal. And it has
some slight radioactive decay."
	"Higher than background?"
	"Higher than background."
	"And the weapon?" Mulder was apparently ticking items off a list in his mind.
	"The syringe was empty," Scully said. "But it did contain trace elements of
some acidic compound. And when I say trace, I mean very, very small amounts.
Total retained was about a microliter."
	"What kind of acidic compound?"
	"Nothing I or ATF could quickly identify. I'm hoping the Gunmen could take a
look at it."
	"You think it's a compound unfound on Earth?" Mulder said with a hopeful note.
	"I think it's a weapon," she said, "and the Lone Gunmen track arms trade. They
may be able to identify it. I've placed it in a sealed evidence locker at ATF."
She paused for breath. "Your turn."
	"Hmmm?"
	"Did you go through the information Frohike sent on this informant at Pinck?"
Frohike's E-mail had been waiting for her at work; before she left for home and
Rockville, she'd forwarded it to Mulder's queue.
	"Oh. Yeah. Here are the highlights." He rummaged through his papers and
presented her a laser-printed sheet.
	Her heart sank faster than her eyes could descend the page.
	"This guy now runs a carousel at the county fairgrounds?" she asked.
	"And the Ferris wheel. Don't forget the Ferris wheel," Mulder said.
	"For God's sake, Mulder, he was a *janitor.*"
	"Scully, executive vice presidents often don't leave to become paranoid
conspiracy theorists. That's not a good career move."
	She kept reading. "Fired for drinking on the job?"
	"If he offers you a free ride on the merry-go-round," Mulder said, "say no."
	She looked at the long list of crimes of which Frohike's so-called informant,
Miles Seligman, had accused Pinck: price-fixing, environmental-law violations,
illegal export of strategic materials and assets, income tax fraud.
	"This looks hopeless," she mumbled.
	"Do you want to go into Pinck and confront people there?"
	She thought he was being sarcastic, but when she looked up his face was
placid.
	"No," she said, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. "We don't have
enough for that yet. We'll have to start with Miles." She began packing her
briefcase back up. "Anything else?"
	Mulder thought for a moment. "Do you want to see the cartouche?"
	Scully was surprised to discover she did. "Yes."
	He dug into his pants pocket, retrieving it and handing it to her. It was a
two-and-a-half inch tall silver oval, with a slightly longer bar along the
bottom. Three hieroglyphs were suspended in the oval's center, attached to the
edge with exquisite metalworking--no sloppy soldering or melt marks.
	"If it's Sam's, who gave it to her?" Scully asked.
	"Don't know. I left a message for my mom. Maybe she can tell me."
	*Ask her no questions, she'll tell you no lies, Mulder.* But she kept silent.
	"It's pretty," Scully said. "It's not authentic, though?"
	Mulder shook his head, reaching over to point to the top two glyphs--a
hook-shaped curve and a bird that looked like a vulture. "These are the two
symbols for 's' and 'a'," he explained. "But DeForest says the Egyptians used a
duck to represent the combined sound. So this is likely a tourist knock-off.
Airport gift."
	"And the owl at the bottom is..."
	"M," Mulder said.
	"But the cartouche that Anne wore..."
	"That might be the real thing." Mulder withdrew a photograph of Anne's
cartouche, blown up by the FBI photo lab. 
	Scully closely examined the picture. This cartouche was a solid oval, with the
glyphs engraved into it. There were twelve rows of symbols, each holding eight
glyphs. The odd-numbered rows used varying combinations of only two symbols:
vultures and owls. The even-numbered rows restricted themselves to different
permutations of dogs and snakes.
	"DeForest isn't sure what this is, because it doesn't have syntax--or spelling
even. Just gibberish." Mulder said. "He's seen this type of cartouche before,
though, in temples to the Ogdoad."
	"The Ogdoad?" Scully tried to keep her eyebrow in check and failed.
	"Egyptians from the city of Hermopolis worshipped the Ogdoad, the 'Group of
Eight' gods, whom they believed created the world," Mulder said.
	"But there are only four symbols."
	"An irony that's perplexed Egyptologists for centuries, apparently."
	Scully felt a smile rise on her face, watching Mulder's eyes crackle with
energy as they scanned through his memory and imagination, trying to turn
evidence into argument into proof.
	*Alchemy.*
	*We dance well together. We're intact* together.
	*I don't want to be alone, Mulder.*
	She began to reach across to Mulder, but he was unbuckling his seat beat and
standing. He offered an embarrassed smile and jerked his head toward the
lavatory at the back. "Too much coffee," he muttered.
	She nodded.
	When he was halfway back, he called for her. "Scully?" She twisted around in
her seat. He was standing in the aisle, looking at the floor. "When we get
back, I'll put in for two weeks' vacation around the holidays. I have it
coming, and... maybe I'll go find myself."
	*No, don't,* her mind and body screamed.
	"OK," she heard herself whisper.
	He looked up for an instant, gave her a wry smile and continued toward the
bathroom.
	*The last time you went on vacation things ended badly,* she thought as she
turned back to her files.

<24>
FBI Headquarters
8:23 p.m.

Skinner smelled the smoke before he heard the knock. He hung up the phone.
	"You know," he said without looking up from his paperwork, "I *thought* it was
really cold outside. So can you tell me the exact temperature at which hell
freezes over?"
	The gray-haired man sauntered in and casually sat in the chair Mulder usually
occupied. "An ashtray?"
	"The rules haven't changed since you died," Skinner said.
	"Indeed." The man reached across to Skinner's desk and picked up his coffee
mug. He tapped a long ash into it. "You don't seem too surprised to see me,
Walter--may I call you Walter?"
	"No."
	"Anyway, *Walter,* it's not every day a dead man walks into your office."
	"You know what they say about bad pennies," Skinner said. "They just keep
turning up. Besides, after you've read enough of these--" he held up a
candy-striped X-file-- "there's really not too much that can surprise you."
	"Pulp fiction, those," said his guest, waving the cigarette toward them.
	"But you're the star of so many."
	"A reluctant one. Although I see you've become quite talented at fiction
yourself." The man reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a couple sheets of
paper at Skinner.
	They were laser-printed copies of *The Washington Post's* web site.
	*Suicide mom's husband, son found dead in G'town,* read the headline.
	"Oh, but this is your handiwork," said Skinner, tossing it back. "See?
'Suicide mom.' Your lie. The D.C. police may yet conclude she was murdered."
	"Walter, come on. Listen to this: 'Police sources say detectives have
assembled evidence that points toward Doyle and his son interrupting a
burglary.'"
	A broken window, some rifled desks, and a favor owed by a D.C. chief of
detectives. Skinner hoped that would add up.
	"So Doyle tries to stop the robbery by leaping out a second-story window onto
a picket fence? Please," said his guest. "It sounds like a bad television movie
you'd see on Fox."
	"Did you rise from the dead just to critique newspaper stories--true newspaper
stories, by the way?" Skinner asked.
	The man stubbed out his cigarette in Skinner's cold coffee and lit another.
"Where are Agents Mulder and Scully? I know they were in that house at some
point today."
	"No clue as to either point."
	"None?"
	"Whatsoever."
	"A shame," said the man, drawing deeply on his Morley.
	"Why are you looking for them?"
	"I wasn't, but I'm afraid they're looking for me. Rather indirectly. And I
can't have that, Walter, not right now."
	"Wish I could help."
	"You could," the man said, an edge emerging in his voice.
	"No, here you're on your own. Find a new errand boy," Skinner said tightly.
	"You don't understand. There's a power struggle going on, Walter."
	"Big surprise. Politics is universal, isn't it?"
	"Eventually, there may be new leadership among the people who employ me."
	"Yeah, in two years. We'll have an election."
	His guest snorted. "As if that man will control anything important. Look back
through history, Walter. You can argue for centuries over who was right and who
was wrong. But it only takes a few minutes to determine who *won* and who
*lost.*"
	"And you're going to let me join the World Series team?"
	"Let's put it this way," said the smoking man. "I won't let the losing team
pick you first on the playground."
	"I'm already on the winning team," Skinner said through gritted teeth.
	His guest chuckled. "How melodramatic. Go ahead and wrap yourself in the flag
as tight as you want, Walter. You were there at the beginning. Your hands are
just as dirty. You've got several codewords attached to your file. Tailwind?
Lucky Horse? Ring a bell?"
	Skinner smiled and shook his head. "Go ahead and destroy me. If you can."
	"Bravado. Good for a Marine. Bad for a survivor." The smoking man stood,
putting out his second cigarette and handing Skinner the butt-filled mug. "You
leave me no choice, Walter, but to take care of Mulder and Scully on my own."
	The assistant director replaced his smile with a sneer. "Touch either of them
and I'll hurt you," he hissed.
	The smoking man smiled, tapping out another cigarette and holding it up.
"These will kill me before you will," he said. He walked into Skinner's
pitch-black anteroom.
	"Agent Spender, by the way, is doing fine. He's shaping up to be a class-A
G-man," Skinner taunted.
	There wasn't a word from the darkness in the anteroom.
	"I have to say, it's hard to see the resemblance. He's youthful, vigorous,
somewhat optimistic and doesn't smoke. Let's hear it for recessive genes."
	The smoking man struck a match. Every wrinkle on his face caught the light.
	"Should I give him your regards?" Skinner asked.
	His guest lit his cigarette, and became just a pale orange dot in the
darkness.
	"I'll be in touch," said the smoking man, and he disappeared.

<25>

Happy Pines Motor Lodge
Decatur Falls, Indiana
12:55 a.m.
December 3

He figured it was a dream--the deja vu gave it away, the feeling that he'd seen
this feature presentation most nights over the past few weeks--but the oil
still trapped him. He couldn't wake up.
	"Take my hand."
	Scully stood on the ledge above him. Tonight she was dressed in his Knicks
jersey and Quantico-issue jogging shorts, for some reason.
	The slimy oil had begun to swallow him. He could feel it seeping into his
skin, lapping at his chin.
	"*Mulder,*" she said, louder this time. "Let me help. Take my hand."
	He reached out, took it, yanked and pulled her in.
	She began to drown. He watched her swallow some of the oil, trying to spit it
out. She began to cough as it trickled into her lungs. As usual, he could only
watch, using every muscle he could find to keep his mouth above the surface of
the deadly pool.
	"Mulder," she coughed.
	He began breathing faster. This was different.
	"Mulder," she sputtered, finding his eyes with her blue ones, glazed over with
tears. "Mulder, you've killed me."
	He felt his chest began to heave with hyperventilation. He tried to thrash
about in the oil, do something to help, but the slime remained heavy as molten
lead, inexorably pushing him down.
	"*No,*" he screamed. "*No, Scully, no--*"
	He sat bolt upright in a sweat-sopped bed, his lungs clawing for air.
	His throat felt raw, scratchy.
	The hiss and crackle of the television's white noise comforted him.
	*OK, Mulder, let's put that psychology doctorate of yours to work,* he
thought. *Where in the fucking hell do you want to start with this one?*
	He let himself fall back against the pillow. His pulse pounded in his ears,
deep as a bass drum but fast as a snare.
	*This is the old dream.*
	"Nothing's as bad as the old dream," he muttered to himself.
	But he realized how false his voice sounded saying that, and knew it was
worse.
	He remembered the blue boxes Laura used to bring home, right before the end.
	"Nytol?" he remembered reading, stunned that he'd done something to make her
want to drug him.
	"To help you sleep," she'd said, exasperated.
	"I don't need any help sleeping," he said, angrily tossing the box into their
kitchen waste can.
	She began to cry.
	"You always go on about wanting the truth," she said. She wasn't hysterical at
all; her voice was level. And ice cold. "So here it is, Fox. I can't take your
nightmares anymore. So maybe they're to help *me* sleep."
	And after that, he was alone with his demons in the dark room at night. He
punched the remote button, turning up the volume on the television. He bathed
in the white noise.
	*Maybe you're not alone anymore.*
	"No," he said out loud. "I won't. I can't."
	But the Oxford-educated psychologist inside him made a disapproving noise.
*You know why you're having this dream. Mulder the man can't deal with
something Mulder the student understands perfectly. So let logic prevail. Just
do it, Mulder.*
	He swung his feet out of bed. He thought about changing out of his black
sleeping-shorts and T-shirt into something more presentable.
	*Don't stop. If you do, you won't go.*
	He slammed his sockless feet into his jogging shoes, tying them up.
	He grabbed his overcoat.
	He walked out the door.
	Happy Pines sat on the edge of Decatur Falls, a middle-of-nowhere clump of
modular homes and disenfranchised farmhouses that hid from Blue Bluffs--the
state-of-the-art, sport-utility-vehicle-and-outdoor-Jacuzzi-laden planned
community that lay just over the hill. Ninety percent of Blue Bluffs residents
worked for Pinck. Not one Decatur Falls denizen did, which is why Mulder voted
to stay there: no water-cooler rumors could spring up.
	*But if hell has a motel, it looks like this,* he admitted to himself. Drafty
buildings, smelly beds, and every room had a beautiful view of the center-court
parking lot. *The works,* Scully had muttered before waving good-night to
Mulder. They couldn't even get adjoining rooms; they had to settle for opposite
sides.
	Mulder briskly strode across the parking lot.
	 He pounded on her door, surprising himself with his frantic
*rat-a-tat-a-tat*.
	"Mulder?" he heard her call. Her voice sounded alert, as if she'd been waiting
for him.
	"Yeah," he said, looking at his shoes, suddenly embarrassed.
	*If I hurry, I could be halfway back to my room before she...*
	She threw back the bolt and opened the door.
	Caught out, he looked up and began to speak.
	Halfway up his throat, his words stopped cold.
	Her hair was a tempest of silver and gold in his color-blind eyes, tousled and
rumpled, errant bangs spilling pell-mell in front of her eyes.
	Soft, rose-petal lips, punctuated by a beauty mark that she often tried to
hide with foundation.
	Navy-blue silk pajamas that appeared one size too big for her petite frame, as
the open men's-style collar lay bare a wide expanse of creamy skin stretching
from neck to right shoulder. 
	The gentle curve of her collarbone gleamed porcelain in the moonlight. He
resisted the deep-seated--the *primeval*--urge to lean over and trace the
flesh-covered ridge with the tip of his tongue.
	He carefully looked into her eyes, as if he were about to stare into the sun.
	Without flinching, she returned his gaze with sapphire eyes that sparkled.
	And, for a moment, Mulder saw a deeper fire ignite within them.
	Something feral that sent a fiery flash of arousal through his body.
	*An angel,* he thought idly. *And maybe that's exactly what I need.*

Scully had learned she didn't need to fall asleep anymore to have nightmares.
	The final weeks in the hospital--when the cancer fully occupied her body--she
fought sleep. When the shadows on the wall grew long, her stomach began to
tighten and burn.
	She believed God would send Ahab for her while she slept. He did once before,
when she was in coma.
	And, as much as she loved her father, she was not ready to see him.
	One night--following a bad bout of afternoon chemotherapy which had made her
dry-heave with nausea well into the evening--her mother had turned off the
overhead lights in her room.
	"Leave them on," she'd said.
	Margaret Scully had walked over to the bedside. "You should get some sleep,
Dana."
	Four notes of fury: "*I don't want to!*" she'd screamed.
	Then she'd began bawling, uncontrollable sobs. She remembered her mother's
face--panicked, grieved, trying to hug her daughter everywhere at once, trying
to *somehow* stop the hurt. 
	They'd sat up all night. She'd finally passed out, exhausted. When she awoke
four hours, her mother was still sitting next to her, still stroking her hair.
	Even now, victorious over the cancer, she looked toward bedtime with
trepidation.
	She'd begun sleeping on the couch, with the television on.
	Once or twice she'd begun to call Mulder in the middle of the night--seeking
comfort in the voice of another, more experienced, insomniac. But she'd always
hung up before he answered. 
	The knock surprised her less than she thought it would. And even though it
sounded like a Gatling gun, she knew who it was.
	*Who else could it be?*
	She bounced out of bed, almost jogging to the door. One hand flew to her hair,
attempting to arrange locks without aid of mirror or light.
	*Mulder's seen me covered in mud,* she chided herself. *Hell, Mulder's seen me
covered in* shit.
	But her hand kept working.
	She reached the door. "Mulder?" she asked.
	"Yeah." He sounded sad. And cold.
	She hurriedly undid the deadbolt, throwing open the door.
	Her breath froze in her lungs.
	He stood half-lit, half-silhouetted by the parking lot lamp, which gave him a
soft halo. Wandering snowflakes danced through his unruly hair.
	His five o'clock shadow had moved well past eight, becoming a rough dark cape
hiding his chin. It was magnetic. She felt herself begin to reach up to stroke
her fingers across it.
	He wore a V-neck T-shirt under his open coat that showed her his entire neck,
from the tiny hollow at its base all the way up to the tiny line in his chin.
	She wanted to slide her tongue into that cleft.
	*Would you gasp if I did that, Mulder?*
	*Would you moan--*
	She shuddered as something warm and moist deliciously cascaded through her
torso, pooling in her belly.
	And his eyes: deftly cut emeralds holding gold-tinged flames. 
	Looking at her. Looking *through* her.
	*Say something to stop me, Mulder,* she thought, feeling her leg tense, ready
to take a step toward him.
	And, as always, he obliged.
	"When you go to confessional, how does it feel?" he asked.
	Scully's entire body screeched to a halt.
	*I'm thinking carnal sin and he's thinking* church?
	"What? Mulder, it's a little late tonight for catechism," she said, sounding a
little more annoyed than she felt.
	He waggled his eyebrows once in agreement, looked at his shoes, began to turn.
	"Wait," she said, reaching out, touching him on the arm. "I didn't mean--"
	She felt his whole body quiver like a bow string, overwound and ready to
shoot.
	*Maybe he's cold.*
	Somehow she doubted it. "Come in," she said.
	He gave her a smile--thin but honest, and she'd take it--and entered. She
closed the door behind them. She stepped over to the front window, wrapping her
hands around the thick plastic-feeling hotel drapes--wincing as she wondered
why they felt vaguely slimy--and throwing them open.
	"No lights," she explained. "The overhead bulb was out when I arrived and the
desk lamp blew shortly after that. I can turn on the bathroom--"
	"S'OK," Mulder said. "Do you have hot water?"
	"You don't?"
	"That's *all* I have. Scalding," he said. "Sorry. Guess this goes beyond
budget."
	"Are you here to confess your sin of always picking the *worst* possible
hotel, wherever we go?" She smiled, hoping he could see in the poor light.
	He chuckled. "What's my penance?"
	"Ten *billion* Hail Marys."
	"Where's your chair?" he said, pirouetting in search of a seat.
	"You have a *chair?*"
	He sat on the foot of her bed, clasping his hands, looking at the floor.
	Scully folded her arms, examining the moment. Midnight visits, nervous banter,
painful half-smiles--these were all signs of MulderAngst, something she'd been
swimming through for six years now.
	But something felt different tonight.
	*Like he's taking me on a trip,* she thought. *Somewhere he doesn't go often.*
	"Confessional," she reminded him.
	"Right," he said too brightly. Clearly he hadn't forgotten where they had left
off. "What's it like? I mean, do you feel better? Cleansed?"
	"I haven't been in a while," she reminded him, walking over, propping up a
pillow against the headboard. She sat down on the bed Indian-style, leaning
back. "But cleansed is a good way to describe it. Sometimes. Sometimes I feel
lighter when I leave the booth. Some days I don't."
	"Do you think it still works if you don't believe in God? Or--more
accurately--you're not sure if you believe in God?"
	*In one sentence, the mystery of Mulder,* Scully thought with a slight smile.
*A man who believes in extreme possibilities--except the most extreme of them
all. And who's wearing the cross? His skeptic sidekick.*
	She tried in vain to analyze his face in the window's poor light.
	"It may, if God believes in you," she said. "Mulder, what is it? You didn't
come here at one in the morning to discuss comparative theology."
	"I need to tell you... some things."
	Her blood ran cold. Her nerves caught fire.
	He looked toward the ceiling--*toward God?* she wondered--and inhaled deeply,
raggedly. "And some of these things may make you angry," he said. "Angrier,
maybe. At me."
	The parking-lot light began to flicker, bathing the room in lightning flashes.
	Scully shivered, pulling her knees up to her chest.
	"And I'm worried about..." She saw him the pale illumination from outside
reflect for a moment off his gritted teeth, and then out went the parking-lot
light, this time apparently for good, and they were sitting alone in the
darkness.
"...losing you," he finally whispered. "And I might."
	"Do you want me to say I won't leave, after hearing this?" she asked through a
dry mouth.
	"I can't ask you that," he said.
	"And I can't promise that," she said. "I won't promise that."
	She listened to him breathe for a moment, scared to reach across and touch
him.
	"Tell me," she whispered.
<26>

The silence grew humid. Scully felt herself hold her breath.
	"Laura and I were neighbors," he began.
	She saw his silhouette writhe a little as he shrugged off his coat. He sat
back a little further on the bed.
	"She understood me. I mean, Dave and Pete--Pete was another friend of mine,
from the Vineyard--they *tolerated* me. When I wanted to map stars or spend all
afternoon examining a rock that looked like an Indian arrowhead, they'd sigh
and roll their eyes but they'd do it, bored the whole time."
	Scully imagined a Mulder-child, an ardent explorer at ten, overturning every
rock in his backyard, pushing hair out of his eyes to examine every mystery
nature could throw at him. *Even praying mantises in trees.* Her hand flew to
her mouth to cover her smile, even though she knew he couldn't see it.
	"But Laura... when I was ten, she gave me this seashell. Purple and blue, she
found it up by Vineyard Haven, I think. Beautiful seashell." He saw his hands
move in the barely lit room, turning an imaginary shell over and over in his
hands. "I had all these questions about it. Why was it purple? What kind of
animal lived in it? Where did it come from? What had it seen? Could it see?"
	His voice rose, gathering momentum and ardor. *He's still asking those
questions,* she realized.
	"Anyway," he said. "Then Sam disappeared. Shortly after that, we moved. Back
to Washington for three years. Dad had a final stint with the State Department,
they called him out of retirement."
	"For what?" Scully asked.
	Mulder shrugged. "Just another blank page in the Mulder family album. We
returned to the Vineyard three years later, but that lasted only a month before
my parents split. In 1981, Mom fled to Greenwich and I fled to Oxford, leaving
Dad alone with his pension in Vineyard Haven." 
	"When you returned to the Vineyard," Scully asked, "was she there?"
	In the dark, Mulder turned toward her. *I wish I could see his face.*
	"No," he said, sounding mildly surprised at her interest. "Her dad was a
Democratic consultant, and he moved the family to Washington before the 1976
elections. We probably lived in Washington at the same time, but didn't even
know it. Dad was swimming in Scotch by then, and he... well, by then we all had
problems."
	Scully thought of the way her parents held hands, even at the end, and wished
she could give that to Mulder.
	"When did you find her again?" she asked.
	"She found me," he replied. "Shortly before I graduated Oxford, I came back to
my flat--my *apartment*--to find a letter from her. She'd finished both her
bachelor's and master's in poli-sci at Georgetown and was working as a
legislative assistant in the House. For *Representative* Matheson. By the way,
Scully, you've been kind in pretending to believe my winning personality helped
me score the contacts I have on the Hill. They were all Laura's friends--all
her *bosses,* actually--whom I bumped into at one point or another."
	Scully gently placed another piece into the jigsaw puzzle that was Mulder. It
made her feel a little sad. *Mulder's mystery is as sexy as it is frustrating.*
	"She'd just gone to Hilton Head, and she said she'd found another shell and it
reminded her of me and she called Dave, who by now lived in Washington too, and
he gave her my address. And it felt like old times, Scully. No one really
understood me at Oxford--one professor told me he thought I'd make a poor
psychologist but a brilliant patient. I wore my neuroses on my sleeve on a good
day and like armor on a bad one. Phoebe had pretended to understand me, only to
dissect me like a lab frog."
	Scully felt her lip twitch upward in disgust.
	"The future after defending my thesis was this big white blank, and she began
to fill it for me with her letters. So when the FBI came calling, I didn't see
Quantico as much as I saw a ticket back to Virginia, close to her. She was
waiting for me at Dulles when I arrived in '86."
	"Were you happy to see her?" *You don't sound as if you were.*
	"Yes and no. It's a little complicated," he said with a sigh. "I was happy to
see *somebody.* By then, my parents and I... I blamed them and they blamed me.
So I was alone. And she was, too. Her parents and she'd never got along, and
she was an only child. Maybe in some weird way I was the only one who
understood her. By default."
	"Who proposed?" Scully asked. She rested her chin on her knees, hugged herself
tightly. She felt pins and needles all over.
	"Me."
	"Why'd you ask?"
	"I felt she wanted me to, and I loved her. I did, Scully. For all the wrong
reasons and some of the right ones."
	"What went wrong?" It was nearly a whisper.
	Mulder sighed deeply, bent over, put his face in his hands. Rubbed his cheeks.
	"I did," he finally resumed, "as usual. Do you remember me telling you about
the time I first met the Gunmen?"
	*One of the more bizarre stories from the Mulder Collection,* she thought,
biting her tongue.
	"I had this hallucination about aliens," he reminded her. "And even today, the
boys still think that spurred me to drive to Boston in June 1989 to have Werber
regress me."
	"It wasn't?"
	"I'd made the appointment a week before Baltimore, actually."
	Scully leaned forward, confused. "Why?"
	"I'd been having nightmares about Samantha."
	"About someone taking her away?"
	"About me killing her."
	Scully softly, involuntarily, gasped.
	"Yeah," Mulder said, turning toward her. "I kept dreaming I'd strangled her
with my belt, then tossed her body down a nearby well, over on the Galbrands'
property."
	"Why?" she asked.
	"In the dream, I lose the Stratego game," he said. "Of course, at the time, I
was knee-deep in psycho killers at ISU. And earlier that year, I had profiled a
New York schoolteacher who used a leather strap to strangle children and drop
them down wells."
	"So it was only--" Scully began.
	"No," he interrupted her. "Scully, you've seen me profile. Hell, they all
start the same. White male, aged 25 to 35... and they're never totally right.
They're close. But not exact. Except this one. I nailed Bernhardt Primakov's
balls to the wall. Facial tics, fears, sexual dysfunctions, every single thing
I got right. Patterson said it was like I was inside his mind, and that made me
scared that I was inside *mine.* And the suspicious looks I always seemed to
get from my father...."
	*Rot in hell, William Mulder,* Scully thought. "And you thought Werber..."
	"Could fix it once and for all," Mulder said with a slight nod. "I drove up to
Boston one afternoon. Packed my weapon. I'd planned... if I had..."
	"But you hadn't," Scully said, shuddering.
	"That's what I said during hypnosis," he said, running his hands through his
hair.
	"Mulder, you didn't kill your sister. How could you think that?"
	"How could I think she was abducted by aliens? Admit it, Scully, you've asked
that question."
	"You've *seen* her since. She's alive."
	"I know. And the psychologist in me knows the dream is a guilt manifestation.
It's just that when I remember the dream, it *feels* like something you can't
find in a textbook, something real, with vivid colors and odd smells and sharp
edges." He stood and walked over to the window.  "All I want to know," he said
angrily, "is what *really* happened."
	He touched his forehead, slightly above his temple.
	"We'll find out," she said.
	She watched Mulder's shadow for a moment, saw the shoulders shake a little,
his arm move to wipe his face. *Is he crying?*
	If he was, he hid it when he spoke. "You can probably figure out the rest of
the story from there. My dreams disturbed Laura; she begged me to quit ISU and
profiling, said it was ruining our lives. Which it kind of was. In a way, I
proposed to her to save us both. We got married in December 1989. Then, in
1990, I rediscovered the X-Files."
	"Arthur Dales." He'd told her the story.
	"It was more than trying to find out the answer to life on other planets or
explain the catalog of unexplained phenomena sitting in the basement." He
chuckled. "Actually, it was a lot less, Scully. All I wanted to know was why
this dead man croaked my father's name at the last minute. All I wanted--maybe
all I still *want*--is to know who corrupted my dad."
	"Laura didn't," she said.
	He leaned against the window sill for a long time, staring out at the snow.
The parking-lot light flickered on again.
	"In 1991, the day before Thanksgiving, I came home-- for some inexplicable
reason, she'd chosen to move in with me, instead of vice versa, so that
hellhole apartment was our home. She was packing. We were en route to spend the
long weekend with her parents, who now lived in South Carolina, on the coast.
That was the day I'd finally got every X-File 302 signed over to me. The day
I'd won. 
	"I bubbled about it," he continued. "I think I even tried to dance with her
around the apartment. It took a while to see that her face... it'd just become
this ugly scowl... and then I knew, she didn't understand me at all, not
anymore. She asked why. And I told her. Samantha. Dad. Me. She threw the ring
at me and told me to leave. I went to see the Gunmen. I was too embarrassed to
tell them what happened. In the morning, I went back and she was gone. We
divorced by mail."
	Scully watched him in the dark for a while, trying to read the body language
of his silhouette.
	*Why tell me now, in the middle of the night--*
	She got it, and the realization stung her heart.
	"How long have you been dreaming about me?" she asked.
	She could see his whole body stiffen, as if he'd been struck.
	"Do you kill me in the dream, Mulder?" she said, standing.
	His head hung. He wouldn't speak.
	She approached him, sliding her arms around his belly, reaching up, splaying
her fingers across his chest. She could feel the muscles hitch, holding back
something. *Tears?*
	She laid her cheek against his back, between his shoulder blades.
	"Dreams don't always come true, Mulder," she said. "And just because they're
the answers to questions we're afraid to ask doesn't make them the right ones."
	He rotated in her hands, turning around to face her.
	His face was a cypher in the dark room.
	He gently cupped a hand under her chin, tilting it slightly upward.
	She felt his breath, hot against her face.
	"I understand," she said through quivering lips.
	He nodded in the semidarkness. Sadly, she thought.
	"I know," he whispered. "But Scully, there's something else."

<27>

He felt himself falling into her azure eyes, gladly drowning in them.
	Her epidermis--he felt it only appropriate to use Scully words to describe
her--felt deliciously soft and smooth under his fingers as he gently lifted her
chin. Yet he could feel a high-voltage current of excitement running just
underneath, thrumming through her body, thrilling him to the core.
	He wanted to pull her tight, feel how her body fit against his, find the spots
that would make her squirm, make her scream, with pleasure.
	He stared at her lips, wondering what her kisses would taste like.
	*If you do one thing right in your life,* he chided himself, *make it this
one.*
	Mulder carefully moved his right hand, placing it on her shoulder. He very
gently pushed himself away. He felt her petite frame sag a little. Her eyes
flickered with confusion.
	"I did something wrong when you were gone, when you were... taken..." he said.
	He felt her shoulder muscles grow taut under his fingers.
	She folded her arms across her breasts, but held his gaze.
	*I will not look away.*
	"There was a woman," he began.
	For one second, he saw her bottom lip swell and tremble.
	Then she bit it, and stepped away from his hand. She looked down.
	"The Bureau put me back to work, they *ordered* me to quit looking for you,
they sent me to Los Angeles, she was a material witness to a murder, I was
protecting her... I was alone again, Scully, I thought this time forever,
and..."
	He trailed off. She looked up. Tears clung to her eyelashes. 
	He wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole.
	*Keep me from hurting her again.*
"Did she understand you?" she rasped.
	He looked at Scully's cross, twinkling in the parking-lot light.
	*That's from someone I lost,* he had told Kristen.
	*Well, I hope you find her,* he'd heard her reply.
	*I did. But maybe I've lost her again.*
"I think she understood... that she couldn't," he said. "She was rather lost
herself."
	"Did you... protect... her?" 
He winced as he listened to Scully try to keep a bitter edge from hardening her
voice.
	"No, I failed," he said. "She died."
	Her eyes widened. "Oh my God," she breathed, walking back, sitting on the edge
of the bed. "I'm sorry."
	Mulder stepped toward her, dropped down into a kneel, looked up into her face.
One errant tear plummeted from her eye, catching the light as it descended. It
detonated like a bomb in his heart.
	"I slept with Ed Jerse," she blurted.
	He rocked back on his heels. *I knew it,* he thought.
	He'd known it when he'd walked--well, run--into the hospital in Philadelphia.
He found her in a hospital bed, bruised like the last piece of fruit at the
produce store but otherwise intact, and he let his body shudder with relief.
	"We have to quit meeting in places like these," he'd said, trying to begin on
a light note.
	She had faced away from him, looking out the window. He watched a faint shade
of pink had crept underneath the mottled yellow-and-blue smear on her
cheekbone, and then all he'd seen was his fist smashing into Jerse's face.
	"He do that?" he'd shouted. *I'll fucking fix his other arm.*
	"I took care of it," she'd mumbled. "I don't need your help, Mulder."
	*I don't need you,* was what he'd heard, and he'd felt panic leap from his
belly toward his throat.
	He'd decided to drown that fear in anger. "Bullshit, Scully, then why the
*fuck* am I here?"
	"I don't know," she'd said in almost a bored voice. "D'you want to tell me?"
	 *Was he good, Scully?* he'd wanted to ask. *Worth a trip to the hospital?*
	He'd imagined what her face would look like in bed, the sounds she'd make as
she came. He'd kicked a metal hospital chair across her room--that, at least,
got him a look and a partly raised eyebrow--and stormed out of the ward.
	When she'd shown up in the office after recovering, he'd let her have it until
she finally stopped him with a soft sentence: *Not everything is about you,
Mulder. This is my life.*
	He'd found it difficult to argue with that.
	Days later, he'd been filing some case reports and seething about the entire
episode when he found Kristen Kilar's X-file. 
	*What a fucking hypocrite I am,* he'd thought, self-loathing seeping from his
pores like a bad odor.
	Then his cell phone had rung. She'd asked him to come to the hospital.
	He'd bought flowers along the way. Made up some dumb story as a way to segue
into an apology.
	Then she'd spoken, and his world had collapsed.
	*Like it is now,* he thought.
	"I wanted--I *needed*--to feel something. Because I knew I was dying," she
continued, watching herself wring her hands in her lap.
	Now he tipped backwards, right on his ass, as if she'd pushed him.
	"How..." he began.
	"Betts told me." She sniffled, making a small frown, apparently angry at
herself for crying. 
	"He *told* you?"
	She described the fight in the back of the ambulance, shivering as she
repeated Betts' words: "You have something I need."
	And now Mulder remembered with crystal clarity.
	She'd seemed so small that night, like she'd been trying to wrap the car seat
around herself. And when she spoke, it'd been with a hoarse whisper he'd never
heard her use before. A *terrified* whisper. *I want to go home*. 
	*She didn't trust me enough to tell me. Just like I didn't trust Dad enough to
find Samantha.*
	*Have I become Dad?*
	The parking-lot light outside buzzed, flickered, died.
	They sat in the darkness for a while. 
	"Where are we now?" she finally asked.
	"You know how I am with directions," he said.
	"Mulder."
	He thought for a moment. Then he clambered up onto the bed, sitting on its
edge, next to her.
	Through the dark, he reached for her hand, *knowing* where it was. 
	"I'd like to say I'm sorry about what I did, but I'm not," he said. "Because
it made me realize...what was important."
	She squeezed his hand, once, but that was enough.
	He lay back on the bed.
	"So how'd it feel?" she asked.
	For one panicked moment, he thought she was asking about Kristen.
"Confessing," she quickly added.
	The room seemed to grow even darker.
	"I feel a little lighter," he said. But actually, he felt heavier, as if he
were sinking into the bed. He felt his eyes flicker back open, surprised that
they'd closed to begin with.
	"Me too," Scully said, from somewhere far away.
	Mulder felt himself drown in something black.
	But it was warm and soft.
	"Mulder?" He could barely hear her now.
	He let sleep wash over him.

"Mulder?" she said, turning in the dark.
	A soft, raspy snore was her only reply.
	*He hasn't really slept for forty-eight hours,* she realized.
	With a tired grunt, she dropped to the floor and began to slide off his shoes.
	*We are such emotional cripples,* she thought. *What other couple would
mutually admit infidelity to bring themselves closer together?*
	*Couples who can't admit they're couples.*
	*Defining ourselves by guilt. How Mulderesque.*
	She moved her hands up his legs, preparing to lift them into the bed.
	*Tibialis anterior.*
	*Quadriceps.*
	*Gracilis.*
	They felt so hard, so tight.
	She gently raked her fingernails up Mulder's thighs, very slowly.
	He made a slight, contented moan, deep in his throat. She gulped.
	She felt the tips of her fingers brush the hems of his jogging shorts.
	*Go no further, Dana.*
	*But I* want *to,* whined a voice in her head.
	She felt her face contort into... a *pout?*... as she lifted her hands.
	He now lay in almost a fetal position, mostly on the far side of the bed.
	She grabbed hold of the covers she'd thrashed off earlier in the night, gently
trying to slide one corner of them from under his inert body.
	He sleep-kicked a little in protest.
	She retrieved the final corner and pulled the thick hotel-issue bedspread
across Mulder.
	He mumbled something incomprehensible.
	She crawled into bed herself, lying on her left side, facing him, pulling her
side of the covers across her body.
	He smelled wonderful: soap and showered skin wrapped around a muskier, more
animal scent.
	*I've never watched you sleep,* she thought idly. *At least somewhere other
than a hospital bed.*
	She softly brushed her fingers against his cheek. The stubble triggered an
exhilarating shock that spread through her body.
	"I lied, Mulder," she whispered. "About what I said about Ed, needing to feel
something?"
	Another little snore. She smiled.
	"I needed to feel you," she said.
	She brushed hair from his eyes, letting it slide through her fingers.
	"I called out your name," she said. "I thought that only happened in bad
movies. But I did."
	She listened to his breathing--steady, rhythmic, soothing. She felt her body
begin to gently float away, toward unconsciousness.
	"I only called out your *last* name, of course," she heard herself mumble.
	Then she tumbled headlong into the blackness.

He was making love to someone in a pitch-black room.
	Silently, they were coupling, moving gently, without hurry. Her body
surrounded his, warm and protective, soft and wet. Fingers soft as butterflies
fluttered against his back.
	He felt a thick, hot droplet trickle down his cheek.
	*I cried with Kristen,* he remembered. 
	Their sex had begun heatedly, after he'd let her shave him, but once he was
inside her, he'd felt empty. Useless. Alone. 
	*Without Scully.* And he'd started to weep.
	This felt different.
	He felt his partner use her hand to turn his head a little, bringing her lips
to his ear.
	"It's OK, Mulder," he heard Scully whisper. "It's me."
	Her voice bathed him in rapturous fire.
	Then he awoke with a myoclonic jerk, as if he'd been dropped from an airplane
into the bed.
	*What... who...*
	"Mulder?" Scully mumbled.
	*Just a dream. Nothing happened. Only a dream.*
	He looked over and saw her, eyes closed, hair rumpled, reaching out to him in
her sleep. "Z'OK. Juzz'a dream." She patted him on the ear.
	He stifled a laugh. *You'd shoot me if I told you how cute you are.* "Go back
to sleep, Doctor Scully," he whispered.
	"Mmm-hmm. OK." She was already there.
	The clouds from earlier that night--*morning,* Mulder corrected himself--had
disappeared, and moonlight streamed in through the open window, cascading
across Scully's body.
	He marveled at her long eyelashes.
	He listened to her breath skate across slightly parted lips.
	He felt his pulse quicken as he slid his eyes across her figure.
	He lost his breath when he saw a tiny nub pushing up from behind the blue silk
cradling her right breast.
	Now Mulder knew he'd shoot himself for using *cute* instead of *exquisite.*
	*If there is a God,* he thought, *forgive me.*
	He blew gently across her body, watching her nipple harden under the fabric.
	She made a soft, pleasantly surprised noise, and for a bone-chilling moment
Mulder thought he'd awakened her. But her sleep-slowed breathing continued
uninterrupted.
	Reluctantly, he turned away, shivering.
	*That was definitely a good dream. It's been too long since I've had one of
those,* he thought, feeling himself fade back into slumber.
	One of his last thoughts was *it wasn't too good, was it?*
	He felt his hand move toward his crotch with trepidation, to check, but he
fell asleep before it arrived.

<28>
Rondalay Fairgrounds
Outside Decatur Falls, Indiana
8:53 a.m.

"There it is," Mulder said, lifting one hand off the steering wheel to point
through the windshield.
	Scully let her eyes follow the line created by Mulder's index finger, finally
sighting the tall, spoke-filled circle that created a slight bump in the
otherwise level prairie horizon.
	"A Ferris wheel. In the middle of nowhere," she muttered. *Only we could find
that.*
	"Well, it didn't *use* to be the middle of nowhere," Mulder said in his
tour-guide voice, the one that hung just one note away from his lecturing
monotone. "This used to be one of the top corn-producing regions in the state.
Fully operational farms littered this county, producing bumper crops season
after season until 1930, when Elijah Cooper, a fourth-generation Hoosier
farmer, decided to level off a fifty-acre swath of his property that had lain
follow for decades. He ended up flattening a Kickapoo funeral mound. Like
several Native American nations in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio--"
	"The Kickapoo buried their dead in huge earthen mounds that were considered
sacred ground," Scully finished for him. "Are you implying that Cooper's
decision to rotate crops into his back forty--"
	"Fifty," Mulder corrected.
	"--triggered an ancient Indian curse that poisoned the fields and their new
landlords?"
	"I didn't say *that,*" Mulder said. "Although it's curious that ever since, no
farmer who's plowed seeds into a field within 10 miles of Elijah Cooper's old
homestead has managed to grow a profitable crop of any type. Curious that
Elijah Cooper managed to fall into the blades of his combine--somehow tipping
forward through the glass windshield *and* the metallic safety guard--in 1932.
Curious that frustrated farmers were willing to settle for any price, and
shortly after World War II a company called Pinck Drug swept in and bought up
most of their acreage. That land is now the Pinck Pharmaceutical compound, Blue
Bluffs and this--" Mulder twirled his hand around to indicate their
surroundings-- "which they keep as a corporate investment. In fact, the only
piece of land in the vicinity that Pinck *doesn't* own is the Rondalay
Fairgrounds." He pointed back at the Ferris wheel, now larger in the distance.
	"Mulder," she said, "have you been gone anywhere in the world where you didn't
try to find something weird or strange in the landscape?"
	"Just call me Fodor's Guide to the Fucked-Up," he said with a smile. "This is
an old X-file. Back in the 1950s, they tried to put an interstate through here,
but workers kept losing their limbs in accidents. Called in the Indianapolis
field office to see if there'd been foul play, they got wind of the local
curses, labeled it unexplained, gave it an X-number and dumped it in the
headquarters basement for me to discover forty years later."
	"But we're not solving that one today," Scully warned.
	Mulder's smile disappeared. "No. We have more important things to do."
	*Welcome to Rondalay Fairgrounds!* exclaimed a large billboard weathered
nearly illegible by age, wind and rain. The only thing new about the
decades-old sign was a recently added two-foot-high warning in blood-red spray
paint: *Private Property Keep Out. This Means You Pinck.* The billboard's faded
arrow marked a turn-off onto a dirt road that wound through a small
field--which must have served as a parking lot during the park's heyday.
	*If it ever had a heyday,* Scully thought.
	"Well, someone's been here recently. Looks like a plow's been through sometime
in the past week," Mulder said, pointing at the road, which was relatively
clear despite the three-inch thick snow blanket that covered the rest of the
land.
	"Mm-hmm," Scully agreed.
	"Something wrong?" Mulder asked as he began slowly driving the rental car up
the path toward the fairground's front gates. "You seem occupied."
	"Something's... different." Scully felt the words escape before she could halt
them.
	And it was true: she had awakened at around six-thirty that morning,
deliciously warm under the covers, as if she'd bundled herself up in a tight
flannel sleeping bag.
	She'd felt *safe* for the first time in a long time.
	And then she'd felt the breath, a gentle breeze against the back of her neck.
	She'd felt the soft, heavy weight of an unconscious arm draped around her
waist.
	And she'd realized that somehow, during the night, she'd slid closer to
Mulder, back against his body, as if they were spoons.
	*I could stay like this forever,* she'd thought with a lazy smile.
	But her next thought--*No you can't*--had smashed that grin into several
pieces: worry lines in her brow, crinkles around her eyes and a frown that felt
forlorn.
	*If I lose myself in Mulder--or let him lose himself in me--we'll never
finish,* she'd thought, as she'd gingerly and reluctantly slid out from beneath
his arm. *He has to keep me sharp, and I have to keep him honest, and if we're
not totally objective with one another, that will never happen...*
	Still, all morning, whenever she'd looked at him, she'd felt his hand against
her belly.
*Different already.*
He stepped on the brake and turned toward her. "What?" he asked.
	*Dammit, not now, Mulder. I'm not ready to talk about this yet.*
	"Something's different about this dossier on Seligman," she ad-libbed,
pointing to the open notebook computer she was cradling in her lap. 
	She watched Mulder relax, tension draining from his face. "What about it?" he
asked. He resumed driving.
	With calm-sounding keystrokes, Scully began frantically paging through
Frohike's electronic documents for something "different."
	"Well, OK. Take this, for example. I read through this one article the Fort
Wayne *Journal-Gazette* wrote about him three years ago. And it makes this guy
sound like a classic whistleblower, despite his problems with alcohol. He sees
something wrong, but he's afraid to talk about it because he might lose his
job. Then he finally sees something that makes him cross over that line, the
company tries to crucify him, and ever since he dedicates his life to finding
the truth..." She trailed off, as she realized how familiar *that* sounded.
	So did Mulder. "We all should be able to find something in common," he said.
	"But he didn't *need* this job. I took his name and ran it through various
search engines on the Internet. First of all, he owns these fairgrounds, free
and clear through inheritance. Why not just sell it? Or develop it? And he
graduated from the University of Indiana with a doctorate in computer science.
*Summa cum laude.* He could've got a job anywhere in the world. So why the hell
did he become a janitor for Pinck Pharmaceutical?"
	"Maybe Pinck offered free beer on Fridays," he said.
	"And not only that," she continued, "but why didn't he file formal complaints
about any of the things he saw? He's accused Pinck of price-fixing, yet he's
never contacted the Federal Trade Commission. He says Pinck's exported
strategic materials without license, yet he's never complained to the State
Department."
	"That could involve an expensive lawyer, which would put a dent in the hooch
budget," he added with a snarl, slamming the transmission into park.
	*This is going to be difficult,* Scully thought. *Drunks remind him of his
father.* 
	They both got out of the car and walked toward the park. Scully looked around
in vain for the vehicle that must have plowed the dirt road.
	Mulder walked up to the large gate that proved the only interruption in a
nine-foot-high chain-link fence. It was padlocked closed and bore a bumper
sticker as a warning: *Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.*
	"Charming," Scully said dryly, approaching him. "Now what?"
	Mulder gave her a confused look. "What do you think?"
	*Oh, no, we don't.* "We don't have a search warrant," she said carefully, as
if explaining to a six-year-old why he couldn't touch a hot stove.
	Mulder had already twisted his fingers into the chain links, wedging one of
his toes into a diamond-shaped hole about two feet from the ground. He began to
climb up the fence.
	"We don't have probable cause," she protested.
	Mulder paused, cocking his head as if he heard something in the wind. "Did you
hear that?"
	She cupped her forehead in her right hand. She knew this game. "Hear what?"
	"I heard someone shout for help." He had managed to swing one leg over the top
of the fence. He reached a hand down for her.
	"I didn't," she said, looking up.
	"Then you're hearing *me* call for help. Please, Scully. I need you to come
with me."
	Green wrestled with gold in his eyes, winning out, creating a pleading look.
	She was about to say *absolutely not* when she remembered how he'd felt
against her body this morning, lean and hard and so warm.
	*What if someone hurts him in there?*
	*Or, more likely, what if he hurts himself?*
	*Different already. Dammit, Mulder, how far will you make me go?*
	"Will you let me call the local law for backup? You know that's the procedure
in situations like this," she said.
	"Sure. But I doubt anyone's going to come running to save Miles Seligman."
With an exasperated sigh, Scully grabbed his hand and began to clamber up the
fence.

He pretended to case the carnival park as he trudged through the snow, but he
actually spent less time looking at the dilapidated Ferris wheel and carousel
than he did sneaking glances at Scully. She kept was time with his pace,
talking on her cell phone with the Decatur County sheriff's office as an Arctic
breeze from the north blew her hair back, creating a sparkling meteor shower of
silver and gold in his color-blind eyes. 
	*I woke up to that this morning,* he thought, his chest tightening at the
recollection.
	Somehow, during the night, they'd rolled over and together, and he had ended
up holding her. Her hair, fragrant with strawberry shampoo, had softly splayed
across his face, smelling better than the trace whiff of Chanel his nose could
still detect in the soft skin across the back of her neck.
	She'd felt smooth and lithe pressed against his body, as if they'd been
sculpted from the same stone. His fingers had burned against her abdomen.
	He'd felt her stir slightly, and then felt her body tighten from head to toe.
	*She thinks she's made a mistake,* he had thought. *About a lot of things. And
who could blame her? A man walks into her room last night, says he's had a
dream about killing her, and she ends up waking up next to him?*
	That's *an X-file in itself.*
	He'd feigned sleep as she wriggled out from under his arm.
	And while he'd walked back to his room to collect his belongings, he'd
promised himself to behave going forward. He needed Scully as his anchor, his
final tether to reality and logic, holding him within the bounds of proof. Of
*sanity.* Injecting sex into their already complicated bonds of friendship and
partnership would be like mixing nitroglycerin into a milkshake.
	*Possible, but not a good idea and definitely resulting in something
unstable.*
	Yet every time he'd looked over at her today, he'd had the same reaction.
	*She's beautiful.*
	But Mulder shook off his daydreams as he saw her eyes, still staring off into
the distance, widen with concern. Then they began to swivel around the carnival
park.
	Looking for something.
	"What?" he asked her.
	She slammed the cell phone closed and turned to him. "Mulder, the sheriff says
that we need to watch out for--"
	From the far corner of the compound, Mulder heard a strangled little yelp of
surprise. Then a bark that sounded something like a question. *Who goes there?*
	Then a deep-throated growl that turned Mulder's intestines to water.
	He whirled back toward the fence, gauging the distance. Maybe fifty yards.
	"--the dog," Scully finished in a despondent tone.
	Mulder's eyes scanned from right to left, looking for shelter.
	Maybe sixty to seventy yards to his left was the closest building, with a door
that looked as if he could slam it shut behind them.
	"Follow me," he said, breaking into a sprint. 
	*And don't argue,* he silently added.
	But she didn't, probably having reached the same conclusion he did: even if
they could reach the fence, they probably wouldn't be able to clear it before
Cujo clamped his jaws around one of their ankles.
	He ran faster, dragging air into his lungs with hard breaths.
	"Why... always... *dogs?*" he heard her ask from behind.
	An Alsatian-colored blur shot out from behind the carousel and began closing
in on them.
	Mulder now knew he was wrong about the distance to the door. It felt like *six
hundred* yards. His pulse throbbed in his throat.
	The dog's barks grew more high-pitched as he smelled fear rising off his
targets.
	The door finally seemed within reach. Mulder began taking Olympic-length
strides toward it.
	He glanced behind him. The Alsatian was *much* closer. He could see the dog's
dirty-white teeth snapping open and closed as the canine yapped.
	He reached forward, wrapping both his hands around the faded-brass doorknob
and yanking.
	The door didn't budge.
	He heard a sharp cry from behind him, and whirled.
	Scully had slipped on a patch of ice.
	"*Scully!*" he shouted, starting back.
	She looked up at him. "*Go!*" she yelled.
	The dog leapt into the air, jaws open, trails of saliva streaking backward
from its gray tongue. 
	It was clearly aiming for her throat.

<29>
Rondalay Fairgrounds
9:02 a.m.

Mulder watched Scully shrug out of her coat and whirl it around, letting it
catch the breeze like a matador's cape.
	She then released it.
	The coat snagged the Alsatian in mid-air, trapping it in a navy-blue woolen
net.
	Scully was already up and running.
	The dog fell to earth, baying in confusion.
	Scully barreled into Mulder like an offensive tackle, shoulder-blocking him
into the door.
	Which opened--inward.
	Both of them landed in a heap on the hard wooden floor, Scully sprawled across
him.
	He heard Cujo's yapping grow louder as the dog bounded toward the door, now
free of the coat.
	Mulder thrashed out with his feet, his heels finding the door and kicking it
shut.
	With a heavy *thud* and a yelp of pain, the Alsatian slammed against the
building.
	For half a moment he just lay on the ground, struck semi-speechless by the
sound of Scully panting for breath in his ear.
	He was disappointed when she quickly stood, straightening her suit jacket,
trying to reimpose order on hair that'd run riot.
	"Are you all right?" she said, reaching down toward him.
	*Take my hand.*
	*Don't, Scully. I might pull you back on top of me and that'll sink us both.*
	He shook his head, trying to dissolve the dream's image. 
	"You're not? What's wrong?" Her voice began to grow a little brittle.
	"Nothing. You should try out for the Redskins, Scully. They could use a good
linewoman." Mulder waved away Scully's hand, smiling to show he was fine and
could pull himself upright without assistance. One corner of her mouth sagged.
*In disappointment?* he wondered.
	Mulder stood and walked to the door, peering out through its window. He felt
Scully come up behind him, standing on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.
	The dog--only a bag of matted fur and undernourished bones when viewed up
close--squatted outside, barking furiously at its two former targets.
	*Looks like you missed breakfast, Cujo,* Mulder thought, extending his middle
finger and holding it up to the window.
	Scully snorted. "That's real mature. Like it knows what that means."
	But the dog seemed to bark even louder for a few more seconds before bounding
back to Scully's jacket, which it proceeded to try and tear apart with its
teeth. 
	He heard Scully sigh, felt her exhale against the side of his neck. "Dammit. I
just bought that," she said.
	"Did our sheriff friend indicate how long it'd take him to come find us?" he
asked, turning back toward her.
	"He said he'd just got a call regarding a traffic accident over on Route 13.
He'd come looking for us after that."
	"So we could be here a while." Mulder pulled a flashlight out of his coat
pocket and turned it on.
	Comets of light ricocheted around the room, and for one panicked moment Mulder
thought he faced an army of dark-coated men armed with flashlights.
	Until he saw that the soldiers returning his gaze looked just like him,
staring out of mirrors. Dozens of them, stretching from floor to ceiling,
tilted against each other at rakish angles.
	"A funhouse," he informed Scully.
	"How appropriate," she replied dryly.
	Mulder took a step forward, toward the foot-wide gap that split two of his
reflections.
	His toes and nose bumped hard against something that felt heavy, cold and
flat. *Plate glass.*
	With a shiver, the mirror fell backwards, out of its frame, shattering with an
earsplitting explosion as it struck the floor. 
	He felt Scully's hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him around. "Are you
cut?" she asked.
	Mulder wiped a hand across his face and examined it for blood. "I'm OK."
	"Let me see."
	"Scully--"
	The hand on his shoulder became a claw. He turned and shined the light in his
face, unable to see her reaction.
	"OK, then," she offered as an almost timid reply.
	Mulder played the light across the floor. Powdered glass shrapnel lay strewn
across it, like new-fallen snow glittering in the flashlight. 
	A duller gleam stopped Mulder's swinging beam. He stepped forward to identify
the different type of glass.
	A muddy brown color, with a red label. A forty-ounce Budweiser bottle. And it
clearly lay between two reflections, pointing the way ahead.
	"Looks like Miles has left us a trail of beer crumbs," he said, kicking aside
the bottle and cautiously stepping forward, without incident, into the maze.
	But Seligman's taste seemed to improve as Mulder followed the alcohol bottles
through the maze of mirrors. He soon came across some green-glass Heineken
containers, followed by a squarish, marbled-glass Rumpleminze bottle. Then a
Gallo wine carafe rolled against his feet. Finally, he found a Johnnie Walker
bottle--this one obviously special, as it remained standing up, carefully
placed in its disposal location.
	The whisky bottle seemed to sit dead in the center of a circle of Mulders and
Scullies, all of whom were looking around and looking confused.
	*I bet you that bottle's there for a reason,* he thought.
"Dead end," she said.
	"Maybe not," Mulder muttered. "I think we just don't know how to read the
trail signs."
	He used his index finger to point to the mirror at his left. His mirror image
returned the gesture. 
	Slowly, Mulder moved his finger toward the glass, watching his twin do the
same. But before they met, his finger bumped into the mirror--apparently just
millimeters away from his shadow's extended digit.
	"Mulder, phone home. I thought you hated that movie," Scully said.
	He shushed her, and tried the same approach with the mirror in front of him.
He got the same result; the fingers failed to kiss.
	"Maybe it's behind door number three," he muttered.
	"What are you doing?" Scully asked in her are-you-even-*listening*-to-me
voice.
	Mulder touched the third mirror, to his right, and smiled as his finger
touched his doppelganger's.
	"Two-way mirror," he muttered. "So someone can see out."
 	He began feeling around the mirror's seams, pressing gently as he went.
	"A door?" she asked.
	He nodded, feeling a slight give in the mirror's upper-right corner. He pushed
harder.
	"Learn this in Boy Scouts too?" she asked.
	"I got a merit badge for finding secret passageways," he said, smiling as he
felt the soft *click* of the push-catch releasing. The mirror swung open on
inset hinges. A flat, wet cold-cellar smell rose up to meet the agents. Mulder
shone his light downward, revealing a set of stone steps descending into inky
blackness.
	"No warrant," Scully reminded him.
	"Hey, when Cujo came around the corner, did you see tags on him?"
	"What?"
	"I didn't either," he continued, knowing Scully knew he had no clue about the
dog's neckwear. "I bet you he hasn't had any shots. Not to mention a
half-decent meal, poor guy."
	"That poor guy almost made a sandwich of my neck," she said.
	For a flash, Mulder had an image of her screaming in pain, and felt his whole
body seize. He squeezed his eyes closed, suppressing the thought. "We got him
on failing to license the dog and cruelty to animals," he said with less
enthusiasm. "That's enough for starters."
	Scully was silent.
	"Well?" he asked.
	"Lead on," she replied with a resigned voice.
	He let the darkness hide his smile. *You know I'm right about that.*
	The two carefully descended the staircase. 
	With the flashlight beam, Mulder began to cut away the darkness. The light
reflected off the far side of the cellar, a good thirty feet away. Wires and
fuse boxes populated the wall.
	He heard a click behind him, and fluorescent light poured from above. He
turned to find Scully's hand on a wall-mounted light switch.
	"Old Girl Scout trick," she said.
	He snapped off the flashlight and looked around.
	Everything--*everything*--smelled like piss.
	Two large minitower computers sat on rickety old card tables, in front of
which sat a rusted metal folding chair. One of the computers was slathered with
Greenpeace bumper stickers. A hodgepodge of peripherals--a printer, a scanner,
some modems and other odds and ends--took up most of the space on a third
table. A rat's nest of multicolored cables linked the computing devices, tying
them together and to a hole in the far wall.
	A mattress lay on the floor in one corner, covered with an old army blanket
and surrounded with cigarette butts and empty bottles. A magazine lay next to
it. Scully walked over and gingerly poked it with her toe, turning it to reveal
its cover: *Celebrity Skin.*
	She looked at Mulder, giving him a playful half-arch of her eyebrow.
	"March 1997," he read from the cover, digging into his coat pocket and
removing a couple pairs of latex gloves. "Can't remember who was in it."
	"Well, check if you want, but *I* wouldn't touch it," she replied, taking two
of the rubber gloves from Mulder.
	Given the rather crinkly state of its pages, Mulder decided that was wise
advice.
	The rest of the room, toward its rear, consisted of several large makeshift
tables, jury-rigged by placing old doors over sawhorses. They sagged with
papers and documents, books and shoeboxes, all jumbled in haphazard piles that
looked as if they'd all spilled over at least once each. Dozens of copier-paper
boxes, full of similar items, sat underneath the tables.
	Mulder's eyes rapidly skipped around the room, looking for someplace to start.
They finally settled on the sticker-wrapped computer.
*A PC PC,* he thought, pleased with his own pun.
	He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.
	"Lone Gunmen," Langly answered.
	"Turn the tape off," he replied.
	"It's off."
	"The other one too."
	"OK," Langly said after a second.
	"I'm looking at a pretty beat-up PC, looks like it runs on DOS, I guess. Seems
to have--" He looked at some of the devices jacked into the CPU's rear. "Seems
to have a live modem connection to something."
	"ATM or GSM?" Langly asked.
	"Yeah, right. You're lucky I've figured out it's on."
	"What do you want?"
	"If it's talking to someone, I want to eavesdrop," Mulder said.
	"No court order," Scully warned from the back of the room.
	"Can't you guys use that thing you used the last time we did something like
this?" Mulder asked.
	"Amazingly enough, I followed that," said Frohike, who'd apparently picked up
on an extension. "You mean the Timbuktu agent we used?"
	"Yeah, but we can't get in without breaking the connection," Langly said to
Frohike.
	"Maybe we can get into the other side of the transmission. That might have
multiple entry ports, like a PBX modem or something. Mulder, what's the number
there?"
	"Dunno," the agent replied.
	"Where are you?"
	"Rondalay Fairgrounds, off Route 171, in Decatur Falls, Indiana."
	"Great. Sounds like the capital of the Land Touch-Tone Forgot," Langly
quipped.
	"We'll hack Ameritech and see if we can figure it out," Frohike said. "That
should be pretty easy. Langly's mom could hack Ameritech with one arm tied
behind her back."
	"You know what your mom can do with one arm tied behind her back?" Langly
fired back.
	Mulder hung up and looked for Scully. She stood near the back of the room,
looking intently at the right-hand wall. For the first time, Mulder noticed
something was hanging on it.
	He walked over to discover a large *National Geographic* map of the world,
taped to the stone. Scrawled across it, in red grease pencil, was a string of
twelve numbers, finished with an exclamation point.
	"International telephone number?" he guessed.
	"Still too many digits," she replied in a distant tone, staring at the map.
Mulder drank in her face. She was wearing her doctor's eyes now, cobalt and
clear and calculating.
	He saw her jaw muscles quiver just once, and almost hit himself in the
forehead.
	*Her teeth are chattering.*
	He began to take off his coat.
	"What are you doing?" she said, still looking at the map.
	"Wear this."
	"I'm fine, Mulder."
	"I can see your teeth chattering."
	"They're not."
	"Whatever." He finished shaking off the coat and draped it across her
shoulders, letting his fingers trace their gentle slopes for just a second. He
resisted an urge to pull her backward against him, to feel her body meld closer
to his.
	"What if you catch cold?" she asked.
	"Then I hope your rates for house calls are reasonable."
	He had hoped for a witty retort, but she'd turned back to the map, taking a
notepad out of her suit jacket pocket, transcribing the long number.
	His cell phone chirped as he walked back to the computer.
	"Yeah?" he answered.
	"Whose computer?" Langly asked.
	"Miles Seligman's."
	"No shit." Langly said with a soft chuckle. "Looks like he's one class-A
hacker. He's built himself a sweet little pipeline right into Pinck's intranet
system. Cut through firewalls like they were so much tissue paper."
	"What?"
	"Yep," Frohike said from the extension. "We're taking notes here, Mulder,
that's how good your boy is."
	"What type of data?"
	"You can take a look for yourself, if you give us a minute or two," Frohike
said. Mulder listened to a downpour of keystrokes in stereo; both Gunmen were
apparently at work.  "We're going to take a gooey--"
	"A what?"
	"A G-U-I, a graphical user interface that Pinck uses inside, and splice it
across the Unix connection that Miles is using," Langly finished. "Then we'll
cycle it back to you. Give us a few minutes."
	"Mulder," Scully called, her voice excited. "You have to see this."
<30>

"Gotta go," Mulder told the Gunmen, hanging up and walking back toward Scully,
who was paging through a four-inch-thick notebook with wide eyes and trembling
hands.
	Mulder looked over her shoulder. The binder was full of black-and-white maps
splattered with dots, curved lines and concentric circles of all shapes and
sizes. Most of the dots were labeled in both English and Cyrillic.
	"The Russian Olympic hockey team playbook?" he asked.
	Scully flipped the binder closed to display its cover. U.S. SIOP '65, it
blared in the same red grease-pencil used to decorate the map.
	She looked up at him, biting her lower lip. "Do you know what this is?"
	He shook his head.
	"It is a playbook, but it's the one the president keeps with him. SIOP is the
Single Integrated Operating Plan. It's the rules of engagement for a nuclear
war." She began flipping back through it. "See? Moscow. Leningrad. Yakutsk.
Novosibirsk."
	"Are there codewords?"
	"No," Scully said. "Just targets."
	Mulder rubbed his chin, feeling his brain grow dizzy from spinning in
confusion.
	"Where did he get this?" Scully asked. "You can't just find them in flea
markets."
	"Well, now you have your probable cause," he said absently. He began pawing
through the other binders on the table. *SIOP 1968. SIOP 1972. SIOP 1978.*
"Looks like he's got the box set."
	Scully moved to the next table. Mulder began replacing several of the binders
where he'd found them, stopping when he saw an inch-thick, black leather-bound
book, one that stood up and shouted first edition, lying near the edge of the
table.
	He picked it up. Even through the latex, the leather felt supple and
well-used. He carefully opened it, feeling the front cover creak on the spine.
He turned a couple of the pages: whisper-thin, yellowing onion-skin, already
brittle with age and crinkling under his fingers.
	He then slowly drew in his breath.
	Bold, black hieroglyphs stared back at him.
	Gently, he flipped through the hundreds of pages. The book was full of the
symbols, accompanied with the occasional red grease-pencil annotation.
	"Mulder, these are *Russian* war plans," Scully said in amazement from the
next table. "What the hell is going on here?"
	"Maybe you better look for Egyptian war plans too," he said, handing her the
book. His cell phone rang again. He began walking back toward the computer.
"Yeah."
	"Check it out, dude. You're live," Frohike said.
	Mulder collapsed into the folding chair and examined the monitor screen.
	"What am I looking at?" he said.
	From the corner of his eye, he saw Scully lift her head in surprise. *I
thought that line was just for me,* her eyes quietly chided.
	He winked. She smiled, but just a little.
	"The business end of one of the biggest frickin' databases I've ever seen,"
says Langly. "We're talking terabyte central here, Mulder."
 	"Thing must take up a couple of Crays," Frohike added.
	"It's both in German and English, looks like," Mulder said.
	"They must've been working on the GSK merger for months," Langly agreed.
	*Name?* the pixels asked.
	*OK,* Mulder thought. He typed *Anne Doyle.*
	*Anne Frances Doyle,* the computer responded. *Epsilon subject. DOD 12-1-98.
You are not authorized to read this file.*
	"Authorize me," Mulder said into the phone.
	"Not sure if I can," Frohike said. "This lock's got all the signs of Seligman
trying to pop it too. He didn't get very far."
	"You're saying a drunk Ferris wheel operator's a better code cracker than the
Lone Gunmen?" Mulder taunted.
	"Apparently," Frohike said without irony.
	Mulder tapped the *escape* key, following the instructions to return to the
search screen. *Jason Doyle,* he typed.
	*Jason David Doyle (1), Jason David Doyle (2). Please select.*
	"Well, shit," Mulder breathed. He pressed *1.*
	*Jason David Doyle (1). Alpha subject. You are not authorized...*
	Mulder went back, tried door number two.
	*Jason David Doyle (2). Gemini subject. Surveillance records at Issac Server.
You are not authorized...*
	"Guys, help me out here," Mulder said sharply, cycling back to the search
screen.
	The only response was torrential keyboard pounding.
	*Roger Doyle,* Mulder typed.
	*Subject not found,* came the response.
	Mulder grunted. Then a thought came to him.
	*Well, why not?*
	*Samantha Ann Mulder,* he typed.
	The pixels danced. *Samantha Ann Mulder. Alpha subject. You are not
authorized...*
	*Fox William Mulder,* he typed.
	*Subject not found.*
	Disappointment pounded Mulder in the chest. *I'm not part of all this?* a
little-boy voice inside him asked.
	*William Harrison Mulder,* he typed.
	*William Harrison Mulder. Epsilon subject. DOD 4-13-95. You are not
authorized...*
	Mulder brought his first down on the card table hard enough to make the
keyboard jump an inch into the air.
	"Mulder?" he heard Scully ask from somewhere.
	He took a deep breath.
	*Dana Katherine Scully.*
	*Dana Katherine Scully,* the computer heartlessly replied. *Gemini mother.*
	The green pixels burnt into the back of Mulder's cornea.
	*Mother.*
	*Click here for detailed file,* the computer offered. Mulder obeyed.
	The two Gunmen's dueling keyboards had fallen silent. Mulder laid the
still-connected cell phone down on the table.
	*Loading...*
	A picture began to load.
	Numbers and letters spilled into the right hand side of the screen. Scully's
blood type and medical history. *No known allergies.*
	A trace of Chanel floated past his nose, and he knew she was now standing
behind him. 
	The bottom-right quadrant of the screen filled with a long string of letters:
A's, T's, C's and G's. 
	"DNA," he heard her whisper.
	The picture scrolled in, and began to swim into focus.
	It was an overhead shot of Scully, in a white hospital jersey, lying in an
autopsy bay. 
	Mulder felt his fingernails dig deeply into the flesh in his palms as he
looked closer.
	She had been strapped down with thick, black belts.
	Her eyes were closed; she was apparently unconscious.
	*Harvested, 94.1%,* read a small box at the bottom of the screen. *Viable,
30.9%. Successful to date: 0.0%.*
	*What in the* fuck *could be successful about* this? Mulder wanted to scream.
Her skin looked almost grey; her hair seemed slick with sweat, plastered to her
forehead. Mulder found himself reaching out and touching the screen.
	*My fault.*
	He looked back at Scully, who was staring at the screen, biting her lip. Only
her nostrils--flaring open and closed in a rapid rhythm--betrayed the fact she
was anything but calm.
	"How did you find this?" she asked flatly.
	Mulder responded by hitting the escape key twice, taking her back to the
search screen.
	She looked at it for only a minute before speaking. "Emily Sim," she croaked.
	*Oh, God, no.*
	"Scully--" he began.
	"Do it, Mulder," she said through gritted teeth.
	"I don't think--"
	"Or I will."
	Mulder looked up at her. Her blue eyes looked almost gray. But they were on
fire.
	*Emily Sim,* Mulder typed with loud, angry keystrokes.
	*Emily NMI Sim,* the computer spat back. *Gemini failure. Code 3TF. DOD
1-3-98. Click here for autopsy photos.*
	Mulder looked back. Scully's jaw looked solid as stone, yet it shivered just a
little.
	"Click," she whispered.
	He did.
	The picture loaded, a multicolored blur at first, but clearing as the pixels
fell into the proper ranks and files.
	Another overhead shot of an autopsy bay.
	But this was of Emily Sim.
	*Her hair looks like Scully's,* Mulder thought. *Silver and gold.*
	Emily's chest had been cracked open with a Y-incision.
	Some of her internal organs had been removed, leaving yawning, desolate
cavities.
	Long black fibers curled around her heart, her lungs. *So many of them,* he
thought. *Tentacles that choked the life out of her...* Mulder tasted acrid
bile at the back of his throat. He felt waves of acid break against the walls
of his stomach.
	He remembered the church, the gunmetal eyes Scully'd laid on him for only a
second before she'd turned back to the coffin.
	*There is evidence of what they did,* she had said.
	Of course, there hadn't been. They'd even stolen Emily's body, replacing it
with a coffin full of sand.
	But he couldn't watch then as she opened the coffin.
	He couldn't watch *now.*
	He turned back toward her. Her eyes glistened.
	"Scully," he breathed.
	"I'm f--" she began.
	He *felt* something snap inside him.
	"*Don't say it!*" he roared.
	Her eyes widened and her jaw went a little slack.
	"Can't you be honest in front of me?" he blurted.
	Now her eyes narrowed. "I'm nothing but honest in front of you."
	"You're nothing but *fine* in front of me." He let his tongue uncoil around
the fourth word, like a serpent striking.
	"If I hadn't walked over, would you have told me about any of this?" she
asked, leaning forward, burning Mulder with accusing eyes.
	"No, probably not."
	"To *protect* me," she said with a sneer. "I don't want to be protected. I
just want to know who did..." She gulped. "Who did that..." She pointed at the
screen. "To my daughter..."
	"And I don't?"
	"She's my daughter."
	"And you're--" Mulder began.
	He hung in mid-air, looking back at the cliff from which he'd leapt.
	Both Scully's eyebrows went airborne.
	"--her mother," he awkwardly finished, "but that doesn't mean you have to
suffer alone. Except you don't *trust* me enough to help."
	"I trust you with my life!" Scully shouted.
	"But you don't trust me with your heart," he shot back.
	She took a step backward. Her eyes fell with a crash to the floor.
	"Mulder," she said in a small voice, "that's undoubtedly the cruelest thing
you've ever said to me."
	*Whatever,* he thought. *I can't win.* He turned back to the computer,
pounding the *escape* key.
	"Mulder," she said quietly.
	"No," he rasped.
	*Walter Skinner,* he typed.
	*Walter Sergei Skinner,* replied the computer. *Epsilon subject. You are not
authorized...*
	 He could hear Langly and Frohike still chattering on the cell phone. He
picked it up.
	"*Fuck.* No, shut them *all* down," Langly yelled.
	"What?" Mulder said, rubbing his temples.
	"Mulder? *Mulder.* Where the *fuck* have you been?" Frohike asked. "Pinck's
shot a feedback-loop virus back through the connection, it's blowing out our
systems."
	"What?"
	"They're on to you. Get out of there," Frohike yelled before hanging up.
	Mulder closed the phone, head spinning.
	"Mulder," Scully insisted.
	He shook his head. *What was going on?*
	"Mulder," Scully said, more tightly this time. "We're not alone."
	His spine turned to ice.
	Slowly, he turned around in the chair.
	Scully looked back at him, head held high on a ramrod-straight neck.
	Her back was to the stairway.
	Her hands were in the air.
	At the foot of the steps stood a tall, black-beared man with thick glasses, a
deerstalker cap and a threadbare overcoat.
	He held an ancient shotgun in his hands. The tip of its long, heavy barrel
rested against the back of her skull.
	Mulder slowly raised his hands. "Mr. Seligman," he started.
	"You've ruined *everything,*" Seligman slurred loudly, with a sob in his
voice.
	Even from the distance, Mulder could smell cheap vodka's potato tones wafting
from every pore.
	"*Everything,*" Seligman repeated.
	He pumped the shotgun to load it. Scully closed her eyes.
	"*Everything!*" he shouted.

<31>

The gun barrel felt like a heavy and lethal circle drawn on the back of her
head.
	She tried to swallow but couldn't. Her throat was bone dry, painted with a
thick paste.
	The physicist inside her knew what would happen if Seligman pulled the
trigger. The force of the explosion itself, expelled through the barrel, would
be enough to shatter her skull as if it were a porcelain doll's head. The shot
from the shell would then shred her exposed brain, turning her thoughts and
ideas and dreams into lifeless gray liquid.
	She watched Mulder's Adam's apple dribble up and down like a basketball as he
swiveled in the chair, slowly raising his hands.
	"Don't hurt her," he said quietly.
	"Why'd you have to do this?" Seligman almost sobbed, his drink-addled vowels
tripping over one another. "Who are you?"
	"What did we do, Miles?" Mulder spoke calmly, distinctly, trying to knit his
words into some form of security blanket for the gunmen to grab.
	"You *blew* it," he said. "They check during the day. They don't check at
night. That's when I go in, around midnight. They'll find me. They'll *kill*
me."
	"Who's *they,* Miles?" Scully asked very softly. She struggled to keep her
voice level; part of her was still angry that she'd turned her back on the
stairway, letting Seligman sneak up on her, not realizing he was there until
she felt the cold steel rod prod her.
	"The Campfire Girls," he spat. "*Pinck.* Who do you think? They have a
corporate security force. They're better armed than the goddamn State Police.
They've left me alone 'cause they thought I was just a *drunk.* Now they know
what I've been doing. How *close* I've been getting."
	Mulder caught her gaze again. *Hold on,* his eyes said. "Close to what?" he
asked.
	Seligman began to snicker darkly. "Fat chance. Tell me who you are or I'll
make your friend here even *shorter.*"
	Scully ground her teeth together. *I'll have your testicles for that.*
	Then Mulder laughed, a caustic cackle that dragged her nerves across
sandpaper.
	"Close? You're not even within spitting distance, Miles."
	She found Mulder's eyes. Gold sparks flicked inside them. 
	*Trust me,* they said.
	She could feel the gun begin to shake in trembling hands, the heavy circle now
dancing in her hair. 
	Mulder slowly began to stand.
	"C'mon, Miles. Do you really want to kill a Gemini mother?"
	"Wh-wh-what?" Now the barrel lifted off her head, but Scully could still feel
it behind her, its weight hovering like some deadly bird-of-prey behind her
neck.
	"Dana Katherine Scully," Mulder said, taking a baby step forward. "Don't you
know all the names?"
	"The Gemini mothers are all dead," he said, his voice beginning to widen with
a trace of surprise. "All but one..."
	Scully watched Mulder's eyes flick across his shoulder, checking something,
and she knew.
	"Now," he said in a very soft voice.
	But she'd already begun unleashing the move for which she'd been coiling
herself. In one practiced twist, she ducked her head, bent her knees, pivoted
on the ball of her right foot and swiveled around, her hips swinging her left
leg backward like a cleanup hitter aiming for the fences.
	Her ankle smashed into Seligman's left knee. *Home run,* she thought.
	He stumbled backward. She now saw how he'd managed to sneak up behind her; his
feet were clad only in ratty, Swiss-cheese socks. 
The gun exploded, a thunderclap just a foot from her heard. White noise filled
her ears--a tinny ringing arguing with a static-charged hiss. Her aural canals
felt swollen and plugged, as if she had taken her fingers and folded over her
pinnae to block out the world.
	Otherwise the world was silent, except for her heartbeat, pounding behind her
eardrums.
	She cocked her leg back and kicked again, higher this time, toes flying toward
the sky, a deadly ballerina's move. Her foot neatly connected with Seligman's
jaw, tipping him backward.
	*That's for the height crack, asshole.*
	Hot buckshot rained down upon her, white-hot hail that burnt tiny holes in her
suit.
	Then she saw Mulder lunge past her, like a screaming eagle, hands clawed into
talons, diving onto Seligman.
	The hiss in her ears grew louder. The blocked feeling was beginning to
dissolve.
	Mulder had wrapped his hands around Seligman's lapels, pulling him up, closer
to his face. Her partner's mouth was open wide enough to see his incisors.
Without hearing a word, Scully knew Mulder was screaming.
	Baritone notes began to creep into her ears. *Mulder's voice.*
	He was shaking Seligman, whose eyes appeared to pop out of his skull with
fear.
	She began to realize Mulder was saying the same three words, over and over.
	Except they weren't words.
	"Three-T-F," he yelled, now grasping Seligman's shoulders and shaking him like
a newly opened ketchup bottle. "Three-T-F! What is it? Three-T-F!"
	Scully felt her hand fly up to her mouth.
	*Code 3TF.* The alphanumeric remained as indelible in Scully's mind as the
picture of her autopsied daughter.
*Of all the questions he could ask... his father, Samantha,* me...  *he wants
to know about Emily.*
	*This bungee cord you have my heart on, Mulder? I hope it's not fraying from
overuse.*
	"Stop," she said quietly, putting her hands on his shoulders.
	He ignored her. "Tell me," he roared.
	"I don't know!" Seligman screamed, his whole body shaking. "I don't know!"
	"*Stop it,*" she shouted.
	Mulder looked back over his shoulder at her, his face a portrait in pain.
Irises of nearly solid gold strangled his pupils.
	Tension crackled between them for a moment. Then he curtly nodded and let go
of Seligman.
	"Mr. Seligman," Scully said, squatting. "If you know who I am, then you
probably know who my employer is."
	"The government," he said, nodding. "You helped create them, you know."
	"Create who?" she asked.
	"Pinck. When Eisenhower spoke in 1960? 'Beware of the military-industrial
complex?' He was referring to Pinck. And the Pentagon. They work together.
Eisenhower was trying to warn the people without enraging the generals. He was
afraid they'd kill his family."
	"Did you find all these war plans at Pinck?" Mulder asked, jerking a thumb
back toward the table.
	Seligman nodded. "I rewired some of the security systems, so I could snoop
around while I cleaned. I had a janitor's ID card with an executive vice
president's code. Got me into the documents library. Full of SIOPs. Nuclear
warhead design specifics, U.S. and Russian. Plans for the Seawolf three years
before anyone had even *heard* of the Seawolf."
	"So these documents were all classified," said Scully.
	"Every one."
	"What is this database?" Mulder asked, pointing at the computer.
	"The list," Seligman replied.
	"What list?" Scully asked.
	"Those who will survive."
	"Survive *what?*" Mulder said. Scully resisted a flinch as she felt the razor
edge to his voice.
	"The end," Seligman said softly. 
	Scully watched a cloud quickly pass through Mulder's eyes, then it was gone.
	"A nuclear war?" Scully asked.
	Seligman nodded his head.
	*This is insane,* she thought. "You mean the U.S. government has determined
which Americans will live and which will die if--"
	"When," Seligman said.
	Scully wrapped Mulder's coat tighter around herself.
	"If," she repeated, "we have a nuclear war."	
	 "They know *every* person who will survive," Seligman said. "The Americans,
the Russians, the British, everyone. They held a secret meeting in Iceland in
1951, during the middle of the Korean War, to determine--"
	"This is bullshit," Scully said. "I wasn't born until 1964, and I'm in that
database."
	"--to determine the *criteria.*" Seligman continued in an
if-you'd-let-me-*finish* voice that, for a split second, sounded annoyingly
like Mulder's. "The criteria for who would survive and who didn't."
	"You in there?" Mulder asked.
	Seligman shook his head. "There's less than one hundred million people in that
database. And that's *worldwide.*"
	"When is this nuclear war going to take place? So I can mark my day-planner,
pack a bag," said Scully.
	Seligman drew a weary sigh. "I can show you something. May I?"
	Scully narrowed her eyes and looked at Mulder. *Don't indulge him, please.*
	He ignored her. "OK. No sudden moves." He reached for the shotgun on the
ground, moving it away from Miles.
	Seligman stood and slowly stumbled toward one of the tables.
	"I don't believe we're listening to this," Scully said.
	"Don't you want to know the truth?" he replied.
	"Whose truth?" she asked. "The truth of a drunk paranoiac?"
	"*In vino veritas.*"
	"Somehow I don't think *veritas* is on the list of ingredients for Four Roses
whisky."
	Both agents' heads snapped up as they heard a bottle smash against the
basement floor.
	"Oops. Where'd that come from?" said Seligman, holding a notebook in one hand,
scratching his head with the other, apparently genuinely confused.
	Scully began to walk over. "Mr. Seligman, can you touch your nose with your
right index finger?"
	He scowled. "I'm not drunk."
	"Of course not. Please?"
	He extended his arm, pointed his finger, and brought it toward his face. He
hit the top of his left cheekbone.
	She looked back at Mulder. His eyes were focused on Seligman, narrowing. Green
and gold wrestled in a confused clash. 
	"Lemme try again," Seligman said.
	"This is not the World Series, Mr. Seligman," she replied archly. "It's not
the best four out of seven." Scully took the notebook from his hands and began
paging through it. It was full of green-and-white-striped computer printout
paper laden with names.
	*Millions* of names. Of all nationalities.
	*Peter Thomas Barrows.*
	*Lin See Tok.*
	*Jean-Luc Claude Dupree.*
	She felt Mulder at her side, looking over her shoulder.
	"The list," Seligman repeated.
	"No. Just one in a world full of them," Scully muttered, remembering a deep
cave in the hills of West Virginia, long tunnels full of file cabinets,
stretching forever into the darkness.
	Mulder gently lifted the cover to see its label. "*Firelake,*" he read.
"Scully, do you think that means what I think it means?"
	"It's the codeword for the database," Seligman explained.
	*It's more than that,* Scully thought, looking into Mulder's eyes. Ironic that
an unbeliever--or an agnostic, depending on his mood--knew The Book of
Revelations better than she. But Mulder had studied Revelations at Oxford, in a
classroom. She'd studied it in catechism, under the watchful eye and quick
tongue of Sister Bernadette. And when the old nun had read this line out loud
in a voice that dripped with both fear and warning, a young Dana Scully had
smelled brimstone in the air, felt apocalypse in the sky.
	Consequently, she'd never forgotten it.
	"The sea gave up the dead which we in it," she recited, "and death and hell
delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every man
according to their works."
	"And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire," Mulder continued. "This
is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life--"
	"--was cast into the lake of fire," Scully whispered.
	*Dancing again, Mulder.*
	"Mama read the Bible," Seligman quietly said.
	He had standing by the next table over, holding a photograph frame. Scully
stepped over, looking at the picture. A young woman with windswept brunette
hair stared back, half-smile on her face, sitting comfortably on the rickety
steps of what appeared to be a farmhouse.
	"Cynthia Janet Seligman," Miles said. "Gemini mother. The first one, actually.
DOD twelve-twenty-sixty-nine. About a year after she was taken."
	Scully's blood ran cold.
	"Taken?" Mulder asked. "By whom? By... aliens?"
	Seligman's eyebrows lurched upward. "What the *fuck* are you talking about?
Are *you* drunk? By *Pinck,* asshole."
	"Pinck?" Scully asked.
	Seligman nodded. "May fifth, 1968. I was eight. Mama woke me up early in the
morning. Still dark out. Wrapped me in a blanket. Carried me up the pull-down
stairs into the attic. That was my fort." He smiled a little. "There was a
small hole in the floor. A knot had fallen out of the pine plank or something.
I could look down into my room. I used to set up toy soldiers and pretend to
spy on them."
	Scully glanced at Mulder. The corners of his lips were twitching upward. *Boys
and their toys,* she thought.
	"Mama told me to be quiet as a mouse," Seligman continued. "So quiet. I
crawled over to the hole and looked down into my room. It was *pouring*
outside. We had this metal roof, and rain was just *thundering* against it. It
was lulling me to sleep again... and then I heard her scream."
	He began to shake; he reached toward a corner of the table for support.
	"I heard noises downstairs. Thumps and bumps. Then I saw her run into my room.
She was crying... she was crying..." One tear began to trickle down his
grizzled cheek. "She was trying to open my window. She wanted to jump. She was
trying to kill herself."
	Scully gnawed on her lips, sympathy flooding her body.
	"Two men in black raincoats ran in." Seligman had closed his eyes to replay
the memory. "I knew one of them. He had been to the house before, one evening,
to talk to Mom and Dad. Came in a black truck with *Pinck Drug* lettered on the
side. I eavesdropped from the top of the stairs. They wanted to buy the farm.
Mama and Dad said no. They yelled a lot.
	"This... man... grabbed my mother's hair. He yanked backward. Hard. A tuft of
it came out..." Seligman choked back a sob. "It came out of her head. She
screamed. He grabbed her around the waist. He stuck a needle in her arm..."
	*Dear God,* Scully thought.
	"And the other man... he just watched... smoking..."
	Scully whirled toward Mulder. His eyes had narrowed to mere slits.
	"I hid forever," Seligman continued. "Until the rain stopped. Then I went back
downstairs and they were all gone." He sniffled. "Daddy never came back. They
found him drunk along one of the state roads. He drank a lot back then... the
farm was failing. All the farms had been failing for years... He'd hit Mama
once, she'd reported it. The sheriff figured Dad had killed her, hid the body
somewhere. They convicted him on it."
	Scully couldn't watch Seligman's face anymore.
	"He died in prison in 1980. After that, I decided to find out about Pinck. To
expose them. So I got the janitor job. And although I lost the farmhouse, I
inherited my uncle's fairgrounds. The last parcel of land around here those
bastards don't own. So I kept it." He sighed. "And being Feds, you probably
know the rest. But I finally found Mama. In the database, at least."
	"Miles," Scully said in a thick voice, "do you have the Gemini mother list?"
	He nodded, and turned toward the table.
	A loud, rusty creak came from upstairs.
	All three of their heads shot up.
	"Oh, Jesus, no," whimpered Seligman. "They're here."
	In four long strides, Mulder jumped toward the light switch and killed the
overhead lamps. The room went pitch black.
	Heavy footfalls pounded on the floorboards above them. *Boots,* Scully
thought. *Maybe two pair.*
	Some mumbles drifted down. A conversation was taking place.
	She jumped a little as she felt a hand on her arm. But then she felt a warm
breath on the back of her neck, a soap-and-aftershave smell she knew well.
*Mulder. He found me in the dark.*
	The clash-and-tinkle of a breaking bottle. Then another.
	And then two sounds that circled around Scully's chest and squeezed the air
out of her.
	*Whoompf. Whoompf.*
	"What was that?" came Seligman's panicked whisper.
	As if in response, violet flames began licking through the floorboards above
them, kissing the wood like a jealous lover.

To be continued...

--- Copyright 1998 SpearmntXP ---