Date sent:        Sat, 31 Jan 1998 21:11:00 -0800 (PST)
From:             Fiona Bradley <fionabradley@rocketmail.com>
Subject:          Mercury Rising (1/1)


***************
Mercury Rising
***************
by Fiona Bradley

Author: Fiona Bradley <fionabradley@rocketmail.com>
Rating: PG (for Autopsy!Scully)
Category: X
Distribution Statement: Do not forward to ATXC, everywhere else OK
Summary: Mulder thinks there may be more to a teenager's drowning 
than first appears.  

Disclaimer: This production has not been approved, endorsed, or 
authorized by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Ten Thirteen 
Productions, or Twentieth Century Fox. No infringement intended. 

Any scientific inaccuracies are mine. You can read all my stories at 
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/3096/

***************
Mercury Rising
***************

Robert Myers clutched at his head and sighed. He'd been having these 
headaches a lot lately. He'd put it down to the vast amounts of 
alcohol he'd drunk recently, but that morning he had coughed up 
blood. Robert knew that you didn't usually get that when you were 
drunk. 

But right now he was too drunk to do anything much about it. He was 
having a good time despite the pain. The party was really jumping. 
He'd gathered with a few of his friends to celebrate the end of 
finals. Just another party.

A girl sat down beside him and laughed. "Geez, Robbie. Why are you 
such a downer? We're all going to the beach. Wanna come with?"

He glanced over at Mary Emver, who by the looks of it was just as 
tanked as he was. They were just a few minutes walk from the beach, 
and even though it was approaching midnight Robert's skin was sticky 
from the hot air. He stood slowly, swaying slightly as he fought to 
maintain his balance. 

Once they made it to the beach, Robert stood just beyond the reach 
of the waves, letting the sand slide through his toes. He mumbled 
something and Mary turned. 

"What?"

He mumbled again. 

"Look, Robbie, you're gonna have to speak up if you want anyone to 
understand-" Mary's sentence was interrupted by her own screams. 

The sound was muted to Robert's ears as he fell to the ground. To 
Robert it felt like everything was in slow-motion, his fall was 
peaceful, almost dream-like. He had already blacked out before he 
hit the ground. He didn't feel the seizure as it coursed through his 
body, making him shudder violently. 

He didn't know how long it was before he came to. A second? An hour? 
All he could see was faces, those of his friends as they hovered 
over him. Their minds were too clouded by alcohol to know what to 
do. 

"I'll be all right. Really." He sat up and stared into the water. 
"Maybe a swim would do me good. Who wants to come?"

Mary jumped up and pulled Robert to his feet. They walked unsteadily 
through the waves fully dressed, leaving their friends dazed on the 
shore. 

"Hey Mary, do you ever get bad headaches? I mean, when you don't 
have a hangover?" he laughed at himself. 

"Nope, never." she replied.

"Hmmm."  

He didn't have time to scream as he felt something pressing on his 
chest. A weight that pushed him under the water. he tried to kick 
his legs and move his arms, but they remained still. He was sinking 
still, further into the murky depths of the ocean. He didn't dare to 
take a breath, but he had to. He couldn't feel which way was up as 
he became blind to his surroundings. Finally, his mouth opened, 
praying to find life in the water, but finding only death instead. 

* * *

Agents Mulder and Scully arrived on the scene the next afternoon, 
finding a group of sobbing teenagers, and what appeared to be half 
the local Sheriff's department. 

"Special Agent Mulder, this is Special Agent Scully." Mulder 
introduced them to the Sheriff. 

"Damn tragedy. These kids throw their lives away on binge drinking, 
never realise that it's too late until they're already dead."

"Is that the cause of death? Robert Myers' inebriated state meant 
that he lost control in the water and drowned?"

"Looks to be. But I hear you'll be doing the autopsy so I guess we 
won't really know until then. One of those kids over there, the girl 
said she saw the whole thing. But she was just as drunk as the rest 
of them." the Sheriff said.

"Well, I'd like to talk with her anyway." Scully looked over to the 
girl, who was in hysterics. 

Mulder led Scully away from the Sheriff. "Well Scully, what do you 
think?"

"Just a simple drowning. He was drunk, couldn't keep his head above 
the water, drowned. Why were you so interested in this though? What 
could possibly make this an X-File?"

"I don't know. But she saw it. She must know."

"Mulder! You can't be serious! The Sheriff measured her blood 
alcohol reading last night before they took her statement. The 
reading was three times the legal limit. I'm not inclined to believe 
that a person that drunk could possibly remember the events 
accurately."

Mulder was unfazed by Scully's reaction. "Why don't we just talk to 
her and find out."

"So I was just hanging out with him on the beach when all of a 
sudden, Robbie fell and he totally blacked out. Like a seizure or 
something." Mary pushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes and 
propped her chin on her hand.

"A seizure? The Sheriff never mentioned that." Scully flicked 
through the reports.

"Because I didn't tell him."

"Why not? Why are you telling us and not him?" Mulder asked.

"Because I don't trust him. There's like a total cover-up or 
something going on here I reckon. Like, Johnny is the third person I 
know that has died lately. And they all had these weird headaches 
and seizures and stuff. And the Sheriff just said that they all had 
Epilepsy or something. But I know they didn't! He's a liar."

Scully thought for a moment. "Can you think of any reason why the 
Sheriff would want to cover up the truth?"

Mary nodded. "Because somebody is poisoning them. I don't know why, 
but they are. I think it's some kind of experiment or something. 
People are moving away, and it's hurting tourism to let this 
information get out. So he covers it all up with his government 
buddies and they're dying because of it." 

"Thank you, Mary. Here's my card, and if you think of anything, 
please call us right away." Mulder handed the girl a card, then 
walked with Scully to the car. "Well, what do you think?"

"I think she's making it up."

"Just like that? You're going to dismiss the whole thing?"

"I'll do the autopsy, then we're leaving. There's nothing for us to 
do here. We have no real jurisdiction -"

"It's an X-File, which means that we have every right to be here." 
Mulder interjected.

"A very shaky right to be here." 

"Fine." Mulder pulled on his seatbelt as Scully pulled out of the 
parking lot. She seemed tense, even more so than usual. Was it just 
this case that was bothering her? Mulder thought, or something else?

* * *

Scully sat silently in the car for a few moments before she had to 
go into the hospital to perform the autopsy. She couldn't be 
frustrated and try to work well. She couldn't take her anger out in 
that way, not only was it unprofessional, but it would ruin their 
investigation if she botched up the evidence. Mulder wanted to come 
down with her. She didn't know why, for years she'd wanted to show 
him various things only to have him turn away in disgust. Now all of 
a sudden he wanted to watch. Sometimes he would wander in the middle 
of her examinations, but for some reason it hadn't bothered her 
then. But now, inexplicably, she really didn't want him around. 
Another distraction, she mused as she got out of the car and slammed 
the door loudly. She could feel his eyes on her back, wanting to ask 
her what was wrong. Don't ask, she thought, you may not like the 
answer.

"Mulder, I can handle you in here, just stop doing that." She 
muttered as she set up her instruments.

"What?" he said innocently.

"Stop looking at me. I don't know why you're down here, but you're 
irritating me."

"Sorry."

"No you're not." She said under her breath.  

"Scully, whatever is wrong, just tell me."

"Why?"

"Because I can see that something is bothering you and if it's going 
to affect your work -"

"Dammit Mulder! I am not going to have an argument in a refrigerated 
autopsy bay! It's just stupid."

"Then why don't we go upstairs and talk?" Mulder tried to remain 
calm.

"Why don't you go upstairs and talk to yourself?" 

"Scully -"

"Don't you Scully me."

"Please?" Mulder pleaded.

Scully relented only because it would shut Mulder up. She threw her 
gloves down on the table and stormed out of the room.

Once she was outside, she turned to shout at her partner. "I am sick 
and tired of running across the country following paper-thin leads 
on cases that we have no jurisdiction to be following! Whatever 
happened to investigating fields of inquiry in Washington before we 
go someplace?"

"Because we both know that evidence can vanish in a second. Because 
we know that the longer we wait to get to the scene, the easier it 
is to cover-up everything." he explained.

"That's not always the case. There is no cover-up at work here. It's 
a simple drowning. Why couldn't we let the locals take care of it? 
Why does every unexplained death automatically equal 'X-File' 
material? Why can't you ever sit back and be objective, and realise 
that not every unsolved mystery means that there's aliens or an 
international governmental conspiracy at work?"

"Scully, if you don't want the work, walk away. It's that simple."

"I can't Mulder, and you know that. I love this job. It's become my 
life, I can't just leave. If I really wanted to leave the X-Files, 
don't you think I would have left years ago?" 

"Then why can't you accept that this is all part of a process?"

"Sometimes... I just don't feel like we're getting anywhere. For 
every rock we turn over there's another boulder blocking our path."

"I know." he pulled Scully into a hug. "But we can't give up. 
They've won if we do."

"Let's get back to work, shall we?" Scully disentangled herself from 
Mulder's arms and headed back into the hospital. 

* * *

Scully adjusted the clear plastic face shield and checked that all 
the equipment she needed was in order. Mulder stood in the far 
corner of the room, leaning against a counter. He was trying to be 
inconspicuous, but Scully couldn't ignore his presence anyway. 

She clicked on her tape recorder and began. "Subject is Robert 
Myers, age 19 and four months, body is 175 centimetres in length. 
White foam around the mouth is concurrent with suspected drowning." 
Scully turned his hands and examined them. "I don't see that the 
subject has grabbed at anything. Witness claimed that the subject 
did not move once he was underwater." She turned her attention to 
Mulder. "That's strange, Mulder."

"What?" 

"It's rare for a drowning victim to not have not grabbed at 
something, like sand or mud. They usually have objects in their 
hands as a result of Cadaveric Spasm. They try to put up a fight, 
moving their arms and legs in shock."

"But the girl said he didn't move at all, just kept sinking." Mulder 
mused.

"Hmmm. Well, I'm going to perform the internal examination now, so 
if you want to leave you'd better go now."

Mulder seemed to pale a shade or two in the bright fluorescent 
light. "Umm... I'll be okay. I'll turn away if it gets too gross."

"Okay." Scully turned back to the task at hand and picked up a 
scalpel. "Last chance, Mulder."

He made no move to leave, so Scully felt that it was safe to 
continue. She made the incisions, removed the rib cage, and opened 
the thoracic cavity. 

Scully spoke into her recorder again. "Lungs are pale in 
appearance." She performed some additional procedures before she 
removed the organs. Moving to another table, she began work on the 
lungs. "Mulder? See this foam in the trachea? All causes of
drowning."

He remained where he stood, far away from Scully. "Umm, do you mind 
if I just stay over here?"

"I thought you wanted to look." she smiled, despite her 
surroundings. She dissolved a section of tissue from a lung in acid, 
and placed a slide under a microscope. She turned on the monitor for 
Mulder to see. "These organisms here..." she pointed on the monitor 
for effect, "are called diatoms. They were inhaled prior to death, 
meaning that this subject definitely drowned."  

Scully took some more tissue samples and extracted blood for lab 
tests to be performed that afternoon. Mulder wandered outside 
sometime, Scully was too busy finishing the autopsy to notice. 

She walked out to the parking lot to try and find her partner. She 
found him sitting under a tree, holding his head. 

"God Scully, how do you do it?"

"The key is to be detached. You can't become emotional in a setting 
like that. The worst thing to do is to start thinking about how that 
person felt when they died. Once you're out of there, you can do 
what you like, but once you enter that room you have to be 
scientific. It's hard sometimes, but that's the only way to get the 
job done."

"I'd never be good at what you do. I think too much." He smiled, 
despite his obvious pain.

"Headache?" 

"Yeah. It started while I was down there. Maybe the smell just got 
to me. Don't you notice it?"

"Well... yes, but I try very hard not to think about it. Though 
something did smell a little different today. It will show up in the 
lab tests if there was something unusual."

* * *

Late that afternoon, Scully returned to the motel after picking up 
the lab reports. She flicked through them quickly. Mulder lay on the 
bed, headache cured but still trying to invoke sympathy from Scully.

"Yep, just as suspected. His blood alcohol reading was 0.15. That's 
three times the legal limit in this state. Wait a second..." she re-
read the page just to make sure that she was processing the 
information correctly. "That's strange. This kid had traces of 
mercury in his blood."

"Mercury? But how could that happen?"

"Well there was an instance recently where some kids in Arkansas got 
a hold of pure mercury and managed to make their whole town pretty 
sick. Maybe he's exposed to it in a science class, or it leaked out 
of somewhere..."

"Or someone wants to find out what effect high level short-term 
exposure has." Mulder reached out for the lab results. "Do you think 
that my headache earlier could be the result of mercury fumes?"

"Possibly, but why didn't I get a headache too? After all, I was 
working much closer to the body."

"The other three deaths that Mary mentioned, who were they?"

Scully grabbed a file from the table by the bed. "Ah... Gary 
Williams aged 32, Michael Bosco aged 25, and Thomas Billings aged 
49."

"All male. Do you think it's possible that maybe, somehow, whatever 
is going on here is targeting males and that's why you weren't 
affected?"

Scully stared at Mulder. "That's a hell of a leap. How do you know 
that these four men just weren't in a room together when they were 
exposed?"

Mulder leaned back on the bed and sighed. "It's just a thought. I'm 
getting another headache. Do you mind if-" Mulder's words were cut 
off as he suddenly had the sensation of something being caught in 
his throat. Scully grabbed a box of tissues and pressed one into his 
hand. He coughed, blood appearing on the tissue. 

"Oh God Mulder, we've got to get to the hospital right now."

He stumbled as he tried to stand, and grabbed onto Scully's shoulder 
for support. Once they arrived at the hospital, Scully explained the 
situation. "I performed the autopsy on Robert Myers this afternoon, 
and we found mercury in his blood. I think that perhaps the vapours 
have entered Agent Mulder's bloodstream."

"If that's so, then we've got to take a look at you, too." the 
doctor said.

Scully went to another room with a doctor, who took a blood sample. 
He returned two hours later, shaking his head as he looked over the 
results. "I don't understand it. You were right, your partner did 
have mercury in his blood. But we took another blood sample an hour 
ago and there was no trace. It was all gone. And you never had any 
in your blood to begin with, which I can't explain given that fact 
that you were in much closer proximity to the body than Agent 
Mulder."

"So Mulder's okay?"

"Yeah. He's fine. I don't understand it. But if he has another 
headache, or if he starts having seizures, bring him back right 
away."

Scully nodded as she walked off to find Mulder. She spotted him 
standing by a window. "Hey Scully. I'm feeling fine. Shall we go?"

She stared at him. "No wonder the doctor was so puzzled by your 
condition. Usually you'll play up the dramatic possibilities when 
you're sick, but you seem fine for once."

"Thanks Scully, so nice to have your vote of confidence."

"I want to get another blood sample from Robert Myers' body. I have 
a hunch that maybe there won't be any more mercury in his blood 
either."

"A hunch, Scully? You're abandoning your rational, scientific 
methods in favour of something as wild as a hunch?"  

Scully gave a sidelong glance at Mulder. He was definitely back to 
normal. She smiled. "Shut up Mulder."

* * *

"Oh my God. I was right. There is no trace of mercury in Robert 
Myers blood. None at all." Scully said once she received the latest 
lab reports. 

"Spooky." Mulder grinned. 

"All right. I'm sure you have a theory. What is it?"

"This is no ordinary mercury. It stays in the system for a while, 
then leaves. I think perhaps its been mixed with something else to 
give it this property."

"Mulder, that's impossible. You can't go around changing the 
elements. You don't see new things popping up on the periodic table 
of elements every week, do you? Besides, mercury in an altered state 
would cease to be mercury. It'd be... something else. I don't know 
what."

"Our biggest problem is trying to identify what that something is 
though. We have no samples of it. And I'm not about to drag out a 
kiddie chemistry set to find out, thank you very much."

"What, you blew up stuff when you were a kid?" Scully smiled.

"Oh, don't remind me." Mulder moaned.

"So what do we do now? We have no evidence, we've exhausted all 
avenues of investigation."

"I want to talk to Mary Emver again. Run a couple of things by her."

"Just so long as you don't put any ideas in her head."

"Me? Never!" he joked. 

* * *

"Agent Mulder... I've heard some pretty weird stuff but what you've 
just told me takes the cake." Mary laughed once Mulder explained his 
theory of altered, male-targeted mercury. 

Mulder wasn't offended, it wasn't the first time someone had thought 
him crazy. "But what about this government connection you were 
talking about?"

"Oh, that. Well, there's a federal research laboratory in town. 
They've been concocting some pretty heavy stuff up there for a while 
now. That may be your answer." 

* * *

Mulder and Scully headed to the research lab after they left Mary 
Emver. A lab technician was only too willing to show them around, 
unaware that the agents were there to potentially expose the 
laboratory's activities. 

They walked past a room with a sign reading, 'Restricted Access. 
Level 5 only. Hazardous materials.'

Mulder paused by the door. "What's in there?"

The technician was excited to be explaining the lab's latest 
project. He had been told not to tell anyone, but these were federal 
agents. Surely they were part of the plan, he thought. Wasn't 
everyone? "Oh, that's our pet project. We're experimenting with 
mercury. It's part of the government's biological weapon strategy. 
It targets males, leaving no trace once its done its work. The 
perfect weapon."

"Do you realise what you've just told us?" Mulder said.

The young technician's face fell when he realised his error in 
judgement. These agents weren't part of the plan after all. He 
backed up against the wall slowly, and pressed a button. A shrill 
alarm rang throughout the building, and Mulder grabbed the 
technician's arm. He drew his gun, pointing it at his head as five 
military men rounded the corner with their own weapons ready. 

Mulder realised that where biological weapons were concerned, the 
life of a lab technician was worthless. He edged up to the corner, 
and fired his weapon towards the ceiling. Mulder and Scully moved 
around the corner and ran down the hall as the soldiers followed. 
They ran through the halls as they twisted throughout the building. 
They were lost, but it seemed that they had finally eluded the 
soldiers. Either that, or they had just given up trying to find 
them, concluding that since they had no evidence no one would listen 
to their claims. 

And Mulder knew it too. Without concrete samples, they had no case. 

* * *

Back in Washington, Mulder and Scully were wrapping up what little 
evidence they had. 

"So what are we going to write in the report? We can't make 
unsubstantiated accusations." Scully said. 

"Do what you want. I'm writing down what I know happened in that 
town. They're getting away with murder, Scully."

Scully sighed and went back to typing her report. So close, and yet 
so far. They'd just climbed to the top of the hill, only to find 
that there was another mountain ahead.

Later, Mulder sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "I'm all 
done. I'm taking this up to Skinner." 

* * *

A man chuckled with satisfaction as he lit his cigarette, reading 
Mulder's report by the dull light of a lamp in Assistant Director 
Skinner's office that night. "Well done, Agent Mulder. You almost 
got there. But I'm afraid that almost isn't quite good enough."

--------
Well? Write me - <fionabradley@rocketmail.com>