From: Kate Rickman <kate.rickman@mindspring.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 18:42:18 -0400
Subject: Nightmare, With Angels
Source: direct

Reply To: kate.rickman@mindspring.com

TITLE:  Nightmare, With Angels
AUTHOR:  Kate Rickman
E-MAIL;  kate.rickman@mindspring.com
ARCHIVE:  I've sent to Gossamer, anywhere else is OK by me.
CLASSIFICATION:  S, A, MSR, Scully/Frohike Friendship
RATING:  R, language and violence
SPOILERS:  FTF, One Son, Unnatural, Field Trip
SUMMARY:  In a world transformed by alien colonization, humans fight
to take back their planet.  Sequel to *A Terrible Beauty is Born.*
DISCLAIMER:  I've used what Chris Carter has given us and made up
the rest.  He owns his part and I own mine.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:  You really should read the first half of this saga to
get the second half (this story).  You can find *Terrible Beauty*
directly at http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com/beauty.html.

***

In his hand was a woven, wire basket, full of seeds, small
metallic and shining like the seeds of portulaca;

Where he sowed them, the green vine withered, and the smoke
and the armies sprang up.

--Stephen Vincent Benet
Nightmare, With Angels

***

May 21, 2000
Year 01 Day 01

The blue globe spun through the ether, sea replacing continent
replacing sea as it turned on its axis in the vast expanse of space.
A wave of solar radiation washed over one side, parted to flow around
its small mass, then flowed back together again, leaving a small dark
wedge in its wake.

A large object detached itself from the star-flecked blackness,
flashing once in the sun's glare before slipping behind the planet
and sliding into orbit.  It floated in the highest fringes of
atmosphere, unseen in the shadow, as the world turned thousands of
miles below.  After several revolutions the object settled lower,
dividing.  One object became ten.  They settled lower and divided
again, ten objects becoming one hundred and then hundreds of
triangular craft, spreading through the atmosphere, sinking lower
toward the planet.

Bright urban centers, connected by thin webs of light, spotted the
darkness.  Twinned lights raced up and down the highways, small
pulsating lights flashed rhythmically through the night sky. Above
them, the unseen armada hung motionless, never leaving the
shadow, floating lower as the world revolved beneath them.

One large ship remained among the many small craft.  It drifted
down through the armada, hovering a few thousand miles above the
planet's surface.  As if anchored to the large metropolitan area
below, it tracked counter-clockwise, never wavering from its position.

A small black dot appeared in the middle of the twinkling metropolis,
spreading outward. Layers of darkness rolled over the horizon leaving
the globe in shadow against the emptiness of space.

Where the sun lit the higher reaches of the atmosphere it glinted off
the floating armada.  Now, they drifted in groups.  Below each group
sifted a silvery haze, twinkling beads that glittered as they fell to
Earth.

***
Year 01 Day 182

"Home Base to all units:  We have begun."  Tinny from the small
speaker.

The pressure in the room seemed to drop several millibars from the
collective gasp.

"3,4,5 to action"  The words crackled with static.

Excited conversation rushed to fill the vacuum.

"OK, everyone has his or her assignment." Byers calmly announced,
taking the transmitter off line, pulling the plug, coiling the wire
neatly before setting it aside.

People lunged around the room, gathering things, preparing.  A chair
turned over, its back striking the stone floor with an echoing crack
that went unnoticed.

"Except me," Mulder complained to Scully, hoarsely.

"You won't be much good to me or anyone else if you die of pneumonia
in the process."  Scully reminded him before steering him to one side
of the room where he would be clear of the bustle.

Beneath the conversation and hurried footsteps, unnoticed in the
excitement, vibration rose through the floor.

"Wu, Hulspas, you're with me."  Staal called roll for her team.

The stone underfoot tapped, stopped, tapped against the objects
standing on its surface around the room.

"Where's Kittler?"

 Someone pointed to the group forming on the left.

A wave of vibration rolled up the walls, through tables and chairs.
Scully, her fingers resting lightly on a quivering table, looked
around, wondering....

"Every group leader gets a transmitter and every unit commander a
harmonic converter."  Frohike waved an electronic device in each hand,
standing on a chair above the fray.

A pencil quivered, rolling from the table onto the floor.

"And I get stuck with guard duty, "  Mulder groused, sitting down
suddenly.  Dizzy.

The shade of a table lamp fluttered, sending odd shafts of light and
shadow across the ceiling.

Scully stroked Mulder's long hair away from his face, noting the dark
circles under his tired eyes.  "Mulder," she began as a sharp jolt
toppled a stack of clipboards.  The boards clattered as they bounced
from the table to a chair to the stone floor.

The ground heaved suddenly, throwing everyone off balance.  Thompson
bounced off a console.  Langley fell between two tables.  Boza and
Davis steadied each other, swaying on their feet.   A crate of
transmitters tipped, spilled, sending the little plastic boxes
skittering around the stone.  Byers tripped on a transmitter, skidded,
fell across Cooper, who had conveniently slipped and fallen at his
feet.

The lights flared and went out, leaving the room in seamless darkness.

Silence.

Then a low growl built, reverberated from the ground, washed through
the room.  A computer danced across the table and fell, hitting the
floor with a shattering crash.

"Mulder!"  Scully shouted, feeling for him in the darkness,
disoriented by the shaking.  Flames sprouted and licked up the wall
on their right, casting yellow light around the room.  All the better
to see by, Scully thought as she tried to orient herself in the
chaos.  Clouds of smoke rolled across the ceiling as the flames grew,
feeding on piles of papers, maps, and logbooks.  The earth moved in
short, sharp jolts, sending burning debris bouncing everywhere,
seeding little fires that broke out around the room.  Cries of pain
or fear punctuated the rumbling and crashing and crackling.

Scully struggled across the shaking floor, crawling over piles of
debris, dodging falling objects, trying to stay out of the fires.
She felt Mulder at her right shoulder, crawling with her as she
approached the tunnel that led to the surface.  A horrendous groan
tore through the room as a large slab of rock fell from the tunnel
opening, smashing on the stone floor in front of them, fracturing
into shrapnel that flew around the room.  Sharp fragments tore into
Scully's face, the pain blinding her momentarily.

Scully wiped the blood from her eyes, blinking to focus. She
staggered to her feet and ran for the door, snagging Mulder on the
way. The stone floor rolled under them like a snapped rug, bits of
rock bouncing loose from the ceiling and falling over their heads.  A
rift formed in the near wall that turned into a fissure, snaking
across the floor, opening wider as it ran.

Scully jumped over it easily and dove into the tunnel, turning to
locate Mulder in the pandemonium.

Mulder--weakened by his recent bout with pneumonia--faltered,
tripped, and fell into the fissure, clawing at the floor on the far
side, desperately trying to pull himself out of the gap.  As the
earth convulsed around him, his fingers slipped and he dropped from
sight.

Scully coiled to spring back across the rift when the split wall
collapsed inward, tons of rock crashing into the command center,
instantly filling it with rubble.  Thick dust blew into her face,
blinding and choking her.  "Mulder," she screamed, hurling herself at
the cascading debris, clawing at the solid mound of rock that covered
him.  "Mulder."  She slumped against the rock pile, pulling at it
with hands scratched and bruised from the effort.  "Mulder."  She
whispered his name.  The mountain quaked around her, tearing itself
apart.  Squinting in the thick dust that choked the passage, she eyed
the stone roof, praying that it would rupture and bury her, too.  It
held, firm.

Scully lurched to her feet, swaying with the earth, moving slowly
down the dimly-lit tunnel.  A shadowy figure moved cautiously in
front of her.  In the gloom, she rushed toward it, bouncing from one
side of the tunnel to the other as the ground rolled beneath her
feet.  "Hey!"

The figure disappeared around a corner into darkness.

Scully found the corner and inched down the side tunnel, her fingers
leading the way.

Suddenly, an iron hand caught her arm and shoved her against the
stone wall.

"Who are you?"  She tried to peel its fingers from her arm where they
pinched her flesh painfully.  No luck.

"I am a messenger."  He spoke directly into her ear, the hood of his
cloak brushing her cheek and his rotten breath strong in her nostrils.

She struggled to free herself from the steel bands that restrained
both arms.

"Dana Katherine Scully..."

The shadowy figure knew her name.

"...you must wake up to the realization that you will not succeed."
He shook her sharply.

"No..."

"You must wake up to the understanding that no one can beat them."
Gusts of his sulfurous breath punctuated the warning, bringing fresh
tears to her eyes with each word.

Her head snapped back and forth as he shook her again.

"You must wake up and realize that you and the others around you will
be destroyed if you persist in your folly."

"No.  We.  Won't."  Her teeth rattled in her head as her assailant
bounced her against the wall.

"You must wake up, see the images I've shown you and understand the
warnings I have given you .  You must wake up, go among your kind,
set them straight, pull them off the path to total destruction."

Her eyes flew open.  Diffuse yellow light glowed in the tunnel,
outlining the dark figure that pinned her to the wall with his
inescapable grip.  Correct that:  the light glowed *from* the dark
figure in the tunnel, it radiated from him.  Golden fires burned
where eyes should be, fires flaring from sunken sockets.

"Noooo..."

"Wake up, Scully."  She felt someone shaking her.  "Wake up,"  said
Mulder's familiar voice.  But Mulder was dead, wasn't he?  Someone
shook her again.

Scully's eyes fluttered open, but she still couldn't focus.  "No..."

"Scully."  Softly, coaxing her back to this realm.  "It's me."

"Mulder?"  Confused.

"Yes, Mulder."  He stroked her cheeks gently with his fingertips.

So comforting.  She leaned into his touch.  "I thought you were
killed when the command center collapsed."

"The command center collapsed?"  He lay on the ground beside her,
pulled her against the warmth of his body, supported the weight of
her head on one arm.

She looked around, saw hills rolling to the horizon, looked back.
"Wyoming?"

"Wyoming."

Wyoming.  She closed her eyes, lay her head back on his arm, listened
to the steady pull of his breath.  Another bad dream.  Shivered.

Mulder chafed her arm with his hand to comfort her.  "What happened?"

Scully ran the dream images, already blurring and fading, back through
her waking mind.  She remembered an earthquake, chaos, fire,
cave-in, and...someone...threatening her.  "I don't remember.  Just
that Safe Haven seemed to be coming apart and someone threatened to
hurt me if I didn't do something."

"What didn't you do?"  Softly.

"I don't remember."  She needed to tell him something.  What?
Sighed.  "It was just a dream, Mulder."

He tightened his arms around her, to comfort her.

She shuddered and covered his hand with her own, taking comfort
from his warmth and his strength.  "The world has changed
irrevocably, Mulder.  We are not who we were."

"No, we're not."  He propped himself on one elbow, looking down at
her.  "In many ways, we are better."

"Better?  We've lost everything, our families, our careers, the means
to support and protect ourselves.  We're living in a world taken over
by an alien race or races that seem bent on destroying our kind.  So
exactly *how* is that better?"

Mulder reflected for a moment.  "The act of survival necessitates that
we focus on the essentials and let go of the superfluous baggage that
most people drag around with them."

"Strip down to our bare essentials?'"  She smiled.

Mulder smiled back, threading his fingers through the strands of long
red hair that had worked free of its customary ponytail.  "The bare
essentials of character:  need, trust, sharing, loyalty, compassion,
love."

The honesty of his statement warmed her heart while the look in his
eyes warmed her somewhere a bit lower than her heart.  --Ah Mulder,
you could conquer the world with those big hazel puppy dog eyes of
yours.--  She reached up and gently touched his still-thin cheek,
tracing the dark circle beneath one eye with a fingertip.

"Scarred by life," he pronounced, capturing her hand between his own,
nipping her finger provocatively.

While she had many occasions to doubt Pre-Apocalyptic Mulder's
ability to share and to love, Post-Apocalyptic Mulder was truly a new
and improved model.  He needed and trusted her, he shared his soul
with her, he was a loyal, compassionate, and loving partner in every
sense of the word.  What else could a woman want?

A satisfying career, children, a house with a white picket fence, she
added up her list.  The proverbial wrinkle.  Unemployed, barren, and
homeless, she rolled onto her stomach and lay shivering, chin to the
earth, eyes on the guarded camp that rolled across the snow-spotted
hills of Wyoming.  Post-Apocalyptic Mulder, bless him, breathed
audibly at her side.

--3,4,5 to action.--  The words rang in her memory.

As she lay on her belly three hundred forty-four hours later, she
thought of Byers and the rest of the crew from Safe Haven, knowing
they were spread out between the camp in Nevada and this one, waiting
like she waited, for hour 345 and a strike back against the invaders.

The early evening sky above the compound swarmed with alien craft
as it had for the past two days.  Pearly blue craft circled the camp
watchfully.  Bright green craft arrived from points unknown, joining
the crowded sky, landing somewhere inside the huge compound.  Dark
green craft climbed into the air and departed, disappearing over the
mountains.

Below the swarming craft, the humans lay unnoticed, assembled, in
place around the compound.  They had one hour to wait until the fight
to reclaim their planet would begin.

Scully rolled onto her back, considering the shapes of clouds.  "If
the ships are blue when they're in reconnaissance mode and red when
their weapons systems are powered, then what are they doing when
they are green?"

Mulder propped his chin in his hands and looked down at her.  "Well,
since we haven't seen green before and we haven't seen ships going in
and out of the compound before, what about *transport mode*?"

Scully nodded thoughtfully.

Mulder bounced his foot nervously next to her.

"Calm down, Mulder," she warned him, her stomach doing handsprings
she was glad he couldn't see.  "We have 55 minutes to go," she
announced, checking her wristwatch, holding it against her ear to
listen for the sound of the mechanism.  It ticked.  Good.

"I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready," he chanted at her, wheezing a little.

"How are you feeling?"  Scully remembered how they had tried to
leave Mulder behind at Safe Haven because of his recent pneumonia
and how Mulder had pedaled up to their camp at dawn the next day,
worn out but smug with his accomplishment.

"110%."  Mulder responded immediately.

"Bullshit."  Scully laughed at him.

Mulder smiled.  "No, really.  I feel 110% better than I did when we
arrived at Safe Haven."

Scully laughed, a witty retort on her tongue.  "I...."  Her voice
trailed off.  She stood slowly, as if she were raised to her feet by
an unseen force.  She looked into the sky, her face lit by a shaft of
light falling through a break in the clouds.

"Scully?"  She heard his voice faintly, but didn't respond, she
couldn't respond.  She felt Mulder's hand touch her arm, but she
couldn't move.  His hand passed in front of her eyes, but she
couldn't even blink.  She sensed him moving back, sitting down,
watching her.

An Angel floated in the air above her, his hands, palm up, extended.
In each palm a fire burned, golden flames flickering, climbing into
air on a column of smoke.

--I am Aermahhtli-- the Angel said without words.

--I don't know you.--  Scully heard his voice in her head and replied
in kind.

--I have not been this way before.--  The flames flashed and sparkled.

--What do you want?--  She squinted, blinded by the fires.  A golden
haze floated over his shoulders, a misty alb.

--I want to warn you.--

--Me?  Why me?--

--Because you can listen.  Because you will hear.--

--Hear what?--

--What you need to save humanity.--

--I'm no savior.--

--No, you're not.--

--Then what do you want to tell me?--  Confused.

--If your kind interferes with our work on this planet, fire will rain
down on the earth.--  He flicked his wrist groundward, a great bolt
of fire rolling from his left palm and striking the earth, sending
dirt and rocks and debris skyward in a great column.

Scully flinched at the impact.

--There will be much death and destruction.--  He tipped his other
hand and the fire poured from it in a golden stream, washing over the
ground at her feet, setting the ground ablaze.  Flames rolled over
the snow-covered hills in every direction, sending black smoke into
the sky.

Flames licked around her ankles, but she felt no heat, no pain.  She
shifted anxiously from foot to foot.

--You must warn them.  You must be the voice of reason.--  Aermahhtli
raised his hands to the sky, the fires once again contained in his
palms.  Misty smoke swirled down, floating over him.

--I can't.  You're killing us.--  She squinted against the acrid
fumes that burned her eyes.

--We are using you, yes.  But we are killing no one who does not
challenge us.--  Thick clots of white drifted around Aermahhtli.

--You are taking our people.  You are taking them to those...camps...
and doing...things...to them.--  Scully's anger transmitted clearly
in her thoughts.

--We will leave most of your people untouched...if you leave *us*
alone.--  Swirling mist swallowed the being named Aermahhtli.

--Who *are* you?--

--Aermahhtli.--  The mist boiled around him, thickening.

--Are you an Angel?--

--No.--  The mist cleared suddenly.  He was gone.

Scully stepped back and sat down hard.

"Scully?"  Mulder knelt at her side.

Scully's face was slack, blank.  Mulder's voice came from a distance.

Mulder grasped her by the shoulders and shook her a little.
"Scully!"

She blinked, gasped, stared at Mulder.

"What's going on?"  His voice low, tender.

"I...don't know."  Scully stammered as she gathered her scattered
wits together.

"What did you see," Mulder prompted her gently, looking into her
face, looking for a clue.

"I saw...I don't know."  Scully shook her head.  What was that thing,
anyway?

"What did it look like?"

"Uh...an Angel."  Well, it did.

Mulder sat back.  "And angel with wings and a halo?"

"Nothing like that.  He...it...something called my name.  I looked up
and there was this figure in the air above me."  She went on,
haltingly, to describe the encounter to Mulder.

He sat back, thinking.  "He said he wasn't an angel."

"Right."  Scully drew her knees up to her chest, embracing them with
both arms.

"Then he must have been an alien."

Scully considered all the alien forms she could imagine.  He matched
none of them.  "Maybe he appeared to me in the form of an angel
because..."

"...because he knew it was a form you would relate to, an image you'd
take seriously."

Scully nodded.  "But why not you, Mulder?  You're the one who
believes in almost anything."

"I'm so drugged up with antibiotics and cold remedies and Frohike's
homemade tonics that..."

"Ha!  I knew you weren't 110%."  Scully pounced on his admission.

He chose to ignore her jibe and continue.  "They obviously know we're
here and what we're planning to do."

"Do we take him seriously or is it be a bluff?"

"Have these guys ever bluffed us, Scully?"  Concern.

With the exception of the one encounter where the alien craft chased
them around the Wyoming night for sport, no.  Scully tightened her
grip on Mulder's arm.  "We've got to warn the others.  We need to
plan another approach."

Mulder unclipped a small box from his belt.

The transmitter in his hand crackled to life.  Two long bursts of
static and a short one.  Pause.  Three long bursts.

Scully looked at Mulder.  "Go," she mouthed.

The pattern repeated twice more.

"Go, Go."  Mulder translated the rest, eyes wide.  Hopefully the
aliens would not recognize the pulse of Morse Code against the
background electromagnetic radiation in the area.  Mulder looked
over at Hulspas who, with Wu, had just arrived at their location.
Hulspas carried a small device in his hand.

Hulspas hefted the small box, flipping a switch with his thumb,
bringing it to life.  A low hum filled the air as he crept forward.
"Let's see if this really works," he muttered to himself as he
pulled a pair of night vision goggles over his head and adjusted
them against his face.

Scully watched Hulspas wave the small box in the direction of the
force field, twisting the dial back and forth with his thumb.  His
arm moved in an arc, slowed, paused, then pulled slowly backward.
He moved carefully up the hillside, raising his arm as he moved.
"Got it."

"Wow."  Mulder pulled off his goggles and passed them to Scully.
"It really works.  Just match the frequency of the converter to the
frequency of the field and the field will flow right through it."

Scully pressed the goggles to her eyes, blinked.  Against the bright
background of evening light stretched a shimmering band, the force
field.  From horizon to horizon, it hugged the ground, rolling from
hill to valley to hill.  But on their hill, it looped up like a piece
of unfinished taffy, leaving a five foot gap between it and the
patchy snow.  She peeked over the top of the goggles then back again.
Sure enough, the top of the loop passed right through the harmonic
converter.

--Score one for the tech heads at Safe Haven.--

"Let's go, people!"  With his free hand, Hulspas waved them into the
compound.

Wu led the way, Scully followed close on her heels, and Mulder loped
to one side.  Hulspas pivoted, dropped his arm and slid down the
slope behind them, tucking the harmonic converter securely into his
pocket as he ran.

Between a tree and the first barrack, they stopped, caught their
breath and regrouped.  The mission:  search and destroy.  Each person
carried several explosive devices to plant around the compound.  They
would have one hour to do their work and an additional 30 minutes to
retreat to safety outside the compound.  After that, the signal for
detonation would be sent from a central transmitter.

They crept up to the door, hesitated.  Mulder cautiously looked
through the opening.  No movement.  He signaled the others with the
wave of one hand and then rushed inside.  Empty.

Diffuse light--originating from nowhere, coming from everywhere--lit
the vacant structure.  Native trees and scrub dotted the dirt floor
that stretched from one exterior wall to the other.  Smooth areas in
the dirt suggested a former organization of the space into smaller
units, but no walls or dividers of any kind remained standing.  The
humans moved around the perimeter of the structure, cautiously
hugging the wall, scanning the interior.  An open door split the
wall on the far side of the structure.

Wu placed a charge in the corner, then joined the group where they
huddled just inside the door.  "So?"

Mulder motioned with one finger against his lips, waited, peeked
through the door again.  He quickly jumped back around the corner.
"OK.  There are two more barracks, one of the left of this door and
one to the right.  Both are lighted, as this one is.  However, they
are both occupied."

A chill ran down and back up Scully's spine.  She edged closer to
the door.  "Occupied by whom?"

"Grays...humans."  Mulder hefted a plastic block of explosive from one
hand to the other.

"How are we going to separate the Grays from the humans?"  Scully
took the explosive from Mulder's hand and tucked it into her parka.

"What about a false alarm?"  Hulspas shifted from foot to foot,
anxious, ready.

Wu thought for a moment.  "We could set off *one* charge early, off
to one side, near the force field."

"If it's near the field, they might think we lobbed it over," Scully
added.

Mulder and Hulspas exchanged considering looks.

"It's not in the plan," Hulspas reminded them.

"It's an improvement of the plan," Wu insisted.

"I'm in,"  Scully decided quickly.

"OK,"  Mulder agreed.  "Do it."

Hulspas nodded.  He was the designated leader of this group but he
deferred to Mulder and his senior, almost mythical, position in the
resistance.

Wu scooped up the charge she'd set in the near corner, sprinting
across to the far side of the building to lay it there instead.

Mulder whipped another quick look outside, re-evaluating the
situation.  "There's less activity on the right."

"Sounds good for a start."  Hulspas edged closer to the door.

"On three," Mulder said, counting down with fingers behind his back
 as he cautiously watched the space between their building and the
next one.  As Mulder's last finger disappeared into his fist, the
small group bolted to the right, sliding through the door to the
relative safety of the darkened interior.

Hulspas dropped a charge behind the door, turned, breathed, "Shit."

Wu stared, wide-eyed.

Hundreds of transparent pods hung from a grid suspended in air.

Each pod contained a human.

Each human contained a dark mass writhing within it.

Mulder hurried along a row of pods, looking into each one for signs
of life...human life.  Half-way across the building, he came to an
abrupt halt.  Scully and others moved up to fill the space around him.

"Ohmygod."  Scully stared, transfixed, at the woman floating in a
green amniotic fluid, a lizard...THING...thrashing beneath the
translucent skin of her abdomen.  She'd seen this before.  The
surreal nightmare of her Antarctic experience washed over her.

Hulspas leaned in, running his fingertips gently across the pod,
watching the reptilian twist and snap at the passing shadow.
"Fascinating."

Wu shrank back, revolted.

Mulder shivered.  He grabbed Scully's arm, pulling at her.  "Let's
get out of here."

She tossed a charge behind the pod, then followed without resistance.

A sudden splintering sound filled the air.

Scully whirled, gasped.

Perhaps excited by the visual stimulus of the finger passing back and
forth before its unfocused eyes, the lizard alien had burst through
the thin skin of its human incubator with such force that it cracked
the outer shell of the pod.  Thin green fluid dribbled onto the floor.

A scaly arm clawed weakly through the rift.

Hulspas extended one finger, lifting the tiny reptile paw by its tip.
Little claws extended, curled around his finger like a human baby's
would.

"Hulspas...."  Scully warned, concerned.

He stroked the back of the lizard's paw with one finger, sliding it
up and down the slippery scales.

"I don't think..."  Mulder pulled at the back of Hulspas' jacket,
urging him away.

The little claws rhythmically clasped and unclasped the tip of
Hulspas' finger as a kitten's would.

He turned and smiled.  "Hey, look at this..."  he started to say.

The pod exploded.

Shards of transparent material knifed through the air, catching
Scully on the cheek, slicing a neat vee into Mulder's forehead.
Fragments tinkled to the ground all around them.  The tiny alien had
used its other set of cute little claws to split open the damaged
pod, then to tear at Hulspas' neck and face.  Blood splattered
everywhere.

Mulder, Scully and Wu fell back as Hulspas writhed on the ground,
his face unrecognizable from the gashing.  Waves of rage and fear
and hunger radiated from the creature as it tore at him repeatedly.

Mulder fumbled in a pocket and produced his weapon, raised it, and
fired three shots at the lizard as it tore at what used to be
Hulspas' throat with razor-sharp fangs.  The lizard's scaly body
shuddered with each hit, thick black fluid brimming from the entry
wounds, rolling down its body and onto the floor.  It decapitated
Hulspas neatly with a final swipe of one tiny paw and began gnawing
the stump of his neck.

Hunger.

Hunger.

Hunger.

The need, the feeling, rolled over them as they backed away from the
feasting creature.  Black fluid pooled on the floor around it,
coalesced, shimmered in the dim lightening.

Scully pulled at Mulder's arm.  "There's nothing we can do.  Let's
get the hell out of here"

Wu bent over and retched suddenly.

Mulder pulled Wu to her feet, sliding one arm around her waist,
supporting her.

The black fluid quivered and started to flow.

"I'm fine,"  Wu said, her voice tight.  She pulled away to stand on
her own trembling legs, wiping her mouth with the back of one hand.

Scully felt warmth on her foot and looked down to see the alien blood
rolling over her boot.  --Shit.--  She jumped back, pulled the scarf
from around her neck and blotted desperately at the black liquid.
Little droplets wiggled up her leg like dangerous worms.  "Get this
stuff off of me," she screamed to Mulder and the others as she hopped
backward, stomping her foot, trying to shake the little wormy things
from her leg.

Mulder tore off his own scarf and swabbed quickly at her pants leg,
brushing away the black droplets.

Scully, shaking, surveyed her legs carefully.  --Clean.--  She ran
her fingers behind her knee, down to the ankle.  --Nothing.--  She
edged away from the pool of black goo that quivered nearby, waiting.

"Let's get out of here!"  The humans in this building were all beyond
help.  Mulder led the way down the aisle toward the door.

Thawp!

A green bolt flashed in the dimness.  A pod exploded on their right,
showering them with green fluid.

Blinking to clear her eyes, Scully tripped over the human corpse
that slithered out of the mess and onto the floor at her feet.  She
steadied herself against an adjacent pod, wiping her face with the
other hand.  She found herself staring into a pair of blue eyes,
staring sightlessly back at her.  She froze.

Mulder dragged at her elbow, towing her down the aisle toward the
door.

Thawp!

Another bolt flew over their heads, the static electricity of its
passing
pricking across Scully's scalp.

Thawp!  Thawp!

The bolts struck just behind them, herding them forward, toward...

A Gray stepped between them and the door, a silver tube in his hand.
He raised the weapon, pointing directly at them.

A loud report and the scent of gunpowder washed over her.  From the
corner of her eye, she saw Mulder lower his gun.  The alien collapsed
on the ground, lifeless.  "I guess they know we're here now,"  Mulder
shouted over the ruckus.  He leapt over the dead Gray's corpse and
through the doorway into the night air, sprinting across a small open
space to the next building in line.  He edged along the near side
until he came to a corner.

Scully fell in beside him, ears still ringing from the gunshot, and
breathing heavily.  She glanced at her wristwatch then rechecked the
time.  Shit.  She tugged at Mulder's sleeve.  "Mulder!  We only have
10 minutes to lay our charges and get out of the compound."

Mulder nodded, poking his head cautiously around the building's
corner.  Two Grays with weapons, coming in their direction.  He
jumped back, threw himself hard against the shadowed wall of the
building...and passed through it.

Scully blinked as he vanished in front of her eyes, then dropped to
the ground, making herself as small as possible in the darkness as
the two Grays walked past her position.  She tried to block out the
images that flowed from their minds, focusing instead on the
odd-looking bits of wood lying in the dirt at her feet.

Then the wood moved.

Mulder's feet!  She waved one hand at the wall.  It passed through.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed her head through to where her
hand had been.  Gasped.

Dozens of lizard aliens raced in their direction.

Hunger.

Need.

Indistinct feelings rolled over her, projected from the throng that
surged in their direction.

Unaware of the immediate danger, Mulder lay, face-down, shaking his
head, struggling to find enough coordination to sit up.

"Mulder!"  Scully screamed to get his attention as an elf-sized
lizard burst through the hedge-like planting in front of him.  "I'm
behind you!"  She hoped the sound of her voice would carry through
the chorus of vocalizations and the flood of strange images that
surged around them.

"Sculleeee!"  Mulder heard her, turned, screamed her name as the
small alien bit into his arm, shaking him this way and that, rolling
him around in the dirt.  The act seemed unreal in the odd light that
glowed inside the warehouse.

"God, no!"  She grabbed at the back of his jeans, pulling him in the
direction of safety.  "Mulder!"

The tail of a large lizard alien swiped her across the jaw, sending
her tumbling backwards, out of the enclosure, onto the ground next
to Mulder's feet.

--Mulder's feet!--  She pulled hard at his ankles, but something
pulled harder in the other direction.

"No!"  Scully screamed, lunging for the silver barrier, her hands
passing through, scratching against something hard, slipping,
grasping nothing.

"NO!"  She screamed harder when she felt the hand at the back of her
parka, pulling her away.

"I've got to go after Mulder!"  She struggled against her captor.  Wu.

"Leave him," Wu said tightly, dragging Scully away from the building.

"No."  Scully fought against the smaller woman but couldn't match her
strength.

"He's gone."  Wu bit out the truth, unvarnished.

"No."  Scully whispered, remembering the lizard aliens snatching and
clawing at him as he desperately tried to repel their attack.  "No."

An explosion rocked the compound, throwing them to the ground.  A
fountain of fire rose on their right, a shower of rocks and dirt
pelted them as they fought to regain their footing.

Suddenly freed from Wu's iron grip, Scully let herself roll downhill
toward the buildings.  She struggled to her feet, fell, rolled,
struggled to her feet again, ran toward the building where Mulder
had disappeared.

In the distance, she heard Wu's voice calling her.  "Scully,
you're...."

A thunderous eruption knocked Scully flat on her face.  Dazed, she
lay there, feeling rocks and other debris thunder down on her back
--The wrath of the alien gods,-- Scully thought as she rolled to her
feet.

--Oh My God.--

A crater smoked where Wu had stood just a moment before.  She turned
back to the compound.

--Oh My God.--

As far as she could see, flames seethed across every hillside, sending
black columns of smoke into the night sky as they burned.  --Just
like that little alien shit promised.  All destroyed.  Nothing left.
Even Mulder gone-- and her beating heart torn from her chest and
lost with him.

"You bastards!"  She choked, tears streaming down her face.  "You
fucking bastards," she railed at the aliens, falling backward as the
flames advanced across the snowy ground in her direction.  She
scratched her way up a steep hillside, slipping a little with each
step, the fire only a few yards behind her.

Several alien craft, flickering bright red, shot over her position
with a loud whine, disappearing into the night.

Heat radiated against her back, the smoke choking and blinding her
as she grabbed an outcrop of rock and pulled herself onto the ridge.
She ran blindly forward, away from the wall of flames.  --Shit!--
Stars exploded in her eyes as she bounced off something unmovable.
Her head swam for a moment, images tumbling around her brain, as she
fought to regain her orientation.

The fire roared close behind her, consuming the hillside at an
alarming pace.  She crawled forward on her hands and knees, eyes
streaming, her vision badly distorted by her tears and the smoke, one
hand feeling the way.  Something burned her hand and she snatched
it back quickly, blinking into the darkness before her.  --Fire!--
Could she have gotten turned around?--  She wiped her eyes with dirty
hands and saw nothing.

She crawled forward again, the bright abstract flickering of the fire
threw odd shadows here and there, distorting the night and
disorienting her.  "Ow, shit!"  She sat back and rubbed her forehead.
A sickening feeling pooled in her stomach.  Cautiously, she reached
into the darkness.  A tingling sensation ran up her fingers, numbing
them.

--The fucking force field.--  In fifteen seconds, Scully used up
every salty word brought home from sea by her father and brothers
combined.

Her vocabulary exercise was cut short by searing pain in her shoulder.
Even with her bleary eyes, she had no trouble seeing that her parka
had caught fire.  She fumbled with the zipper.  Her fingers, numbed
by the force field, were thick and clumsy, The balky zipper snagged,
refusing to slide.  She swatted furiously at the burning nylon with
one hand.  No luck.  Desperate, she threw herself against the ground,
trying to smother the flames with her body.  As soon as she hit the
dirt, she started to roll out of control.  The orange glow of flames
and the blackness of night traded places over and over again as she
tumbled over rocks and through small bushes, down a steep slope.

Bouncing from rock to bush to dirt in the surreal orange-streaked
blackness, Scully fought to regain control of her body.  She hit a
large rock with her right shoulder, flipped over and kept rolling.
Her feet tangled in a scrubby bush, snagged, slowed her downhill.
No success.

With a final bump, she tumbled head-first into a large stream,
thrashing awkwardly until the sharp pain of a rock against her knee
oriented her to the bottom of the stream.  She quickly rolled to a
sitting position and assayed her injuries.  Everything still worked--
more or less-- a really good thing since flames leapt into the night
sky around her and dense clouds of smoke rolled toward her at an
alarming pace.

Stumbling to her feet, Scully waded away from the fire.  Intense heat
radiated in waves against her back.  Tripping over submerged rocks,
falling, getting up again, she forced her way through thigh-deep
water, fleeing the flames that threatened to consume her.

Then she landed on her ass in the stream, dazed, shaking her head
to clear it.

--The force field.--

--The goddamned force field.--

Fire roared up the hillside on either side, sucking oxygen from the
air, spewing thick smoke that settled against the ground in a lethal
blanket.  She gasped, choking, the heat burning her exposed skin.

--Wait.--

A dim memory flirted around the edges of her consciousness. -- What
was it that Kittler had said that first afternoon at Safe Haven?  Was
it something about how the field didn't always fill a depression in
the earth?--  Scully eyed the dark stream through the clouds of smoke
that billowed around her.

--Option One of One--.

She struggled to fill her lungs with something breathable, then tried
a cautious approach.  Stretching, twisting, she groped blindly
forward through the stream.  The force field bit at her fingertips.  She

groped lower and her hands passed freely beneath the it.  --Bingo!--
Coughing, her jaw clamped shut against the water, her chest burning
for oxygen, she forced her head down and inched forward.  The field
tore painfully at her back.  Strangling from lack of air, fighting
not to inhale, she flattened herself against the stream bottom and
kicked forward with her feet.

She slipped through to the other side.

Gasping, chest heaving, she sucked in great lungfuls of relatively
fresh air as she stumbled out of the stream.  The flames licked
skyward, restrained behind the force field.

Spiritually, mentally, and physically exhausted, Scully struggled her
way to the top of the ridge and fell to her knees, retching.  The
rolling hills smoldered, smoke drifting through the intermittent
moonlight.  A thin veil of snow sifted groundward, melting as it
fell, the fine mist turning into a whispy fog that clung to the
blackened hills as they rolled into the distance.  Devastation, as far
as her eyes could see.  --Did the aliens do this,-- she wondered,
--or was it a hideous misfire of human technology that led to the
destruction?--

Wiping her numb lips with a shaking hand, she awkwardly rose to her
feet, swaying with the effort.  From the corner of her eye, she saw
movement, whirled.  A pale horse disappeared into the shadows and
was gone.

--Strange.--

She cast around in near darkness, looking for landmarks she could use
to guide her way back to the rendezvous point, a small abandoned
farmhouse near the western border of the compound.  --There.--  A
thin road snaked into the distance.

Clouds gathered again, snow falling seriously now.  In total
darkness, Scully stumbled her way downhill and onto the hard surface
of the road.  Using the level hardness as a guide, she felt the way
with her feet.  Her spirit numb with grief and exhausted in body,
she staggered blindly down the road.

***

Some time later, the moon peeped from behind a cloud, its thin white
light washing over a paddock near the road.  Horses lay everywhere,
blackened, blown apart, the paddock pocked with small craters,
evidence of the destructive force that had been used here.  Smoke
rose from what must have been a barn and from something that could
have been a house.

Fire.

Death.

Destruction.

All around her, Scully saw evidence of Aermahhtli's prophecy.  Head
down, heart stricken, she labored numbly toward the rendezvous point,
wondering if anyone would be there or whether she was alone in this
decimated world.

A faint rumble filled the air.  She looked up at the sky.  Stars
twinkled back at her from the thinning darkness.  Movement caught
her eye.  There, on a bluff, paced the white horse.  On his back, a
rider.

"Hey!'  Scully called out, raising her arm, hope swelling in her breast.

The horse flipped his tail and disappeared over the hill.  --Was
there someone on his back?--  Scully couldn't remember.  She shook
her head and kept walking in that direction, more vigorously now.

In the light of the morning sun she came across another building.  It
had been blown apart, one wall left standing at an odd angle.
Unburned fragments of wood and stone lay scattered around the yard.

Her legs wobbled and gave out, dumping her on the ground.  She rested
her cheek against the cold snow that had drifted against the wall in
the night.  She listened to the thud of her heart and the pull of her
breath.  No morning birds.  No wind.  No animal sounds.  Nothing.
Just her.  Alone.

She pulled herself into a sitting position, leaning against the shaky
wall, listening to the sound of her own breath for company.  "Shit."
She continued to speak out loud, finding the sound of her voice--any
voice in this nightmare--comforting.  "This is worse than my worst
nightmare.  Hell...it was...is...worse than *Mulder's* worst
nightmare."

--Mulder.--  The image of his warm hazel eyes smiling down on her,
his gentle smile, the smooth tones of his voice, and the distinctive
smell of his skin, his soft touch, all flitted through her mind and
were gone, just like Mulder was gone.

"I was going to get through this OK with you, Mulder,"  she
whispered, her voice choked with tears.  "This really stinks, this
world we've been left with, but I could see a way to continue...to
build a life out of the remains...with you."

Bracing herself against the shaky wall, she pulled herself up,
speaking her heart to Mulder.  Wherever he might be.  "I've changed,
I've changed so much since this happened to us.  I've learned to be a
much stronger person, but more open, more flexible than I once
was."

She took a few tentative steps through the unmarked snow, watching
each foot sink through the fluff, leaving a boot-shaped hole behind
it.  "You've grown with me.  You are...were...more patient, more willing
to listen, to compromise."

She scuffed a pile of snow with one foot, bending to take some in
each hand, molding the two gobs into a respectable snow ball.  "We've
grown together in ways that would not have been possible...before."

Scully hefted the ball, eyed a forgotten scarecrow guarding a dead
garden, threw.  The snow splattered across the stuffed creature's
chest.  "Despite losing everything but you, Mulder, I felt optimistic
about life."

"Goddammit," she howled into the morning sky, "you've taken
everything I have.  Mulder, my family, my career, my life, Mulder...
everything.  How can I possibly survive with nothing to hold on to?"

She hadn't asked for this when they became partners, she hadn't
expected or wanted it.  But at some indefinable point during those
seven years she spent with Mulder, she had mated with him--completely
and irrevocably--without knowing it.  Now that part of her had been
savagely excised, leaving a gaping wound with bloody edges.

For the first time in seven years she was truly alone and it
frightened her more deeply than a horde of vengeful aliens could.
She shivered, then shuddered, then sank to her knees in the snow,
gripping her elbows tightly.  An enormous emptiness pressed down
around her, making her small against the devastated earth.  Rocking
back and forth, she willed her spirit to leak from her wound and leave
her empty.  Numb.  Dead.

She could survive the aliens but she would not survive this. "Damn it
to hell."  She whispered, slumping on the ground, finally too empty
to cry, her consciousness fading to black.

***

Some time later, a thundering sound woke her.  She raised her head
and saw that it was night.  A thin sliver moon hung among stars that
peppered the sky.

A pale horse pranced in the moonlight.  His rider, cloaked in black,
announced himself.  "Behold, I am Death."

"Fine.  Take me," she mumbled, sitting up.

This was clearly not what Death had expected of her.  He gave it
another try.  "I am the Angel of Death."  He produced a scythe,
waving it to make his point.

Scully struggled to her knees, swaying with fatigue.  She held her
arms out from her sides.  "Either take me or get out of my sight!"
she cursed at him, her temples throbbing so badly she could hear the
drumbeat in her ears.  "You're making my head hurt."

Death's horse shied at the loud noise.  "I am Death, and I am here to
warn you of the dangers of the sword and of the coming hunger and the
ravaging beasts..."

--I know all about the little gray ravaging beasts, you shit head.
Been there, been done by that.  Tell me something I don't know.--
She threw a rock.  It passed straight through Death's sunken face
and landed with a loud thunk on the ground behind him.

"...of the earth.  I am...."

"I don't give a good goddamn if you're the Publisher's Clearing House
guy.  Get the *fuck* out of my sight."  She threw another rock.

"Umph," Death grunted as the rock bounced off his plaid coat.

--Plaid coat?--  Scully staggered backward, hitting the wall with a
bone-jarring jolt.  She blinked, for the first time in years, it seemed.

"Scully!  You're as pale as a corpse."  Frohike touched her elbow,
concerned.

"I've just seen Death."  --I think.--  Her lips barely moved.

"Who?"

"Death."  She regained motor control and turned to look at him, eyes
wild, dilated.  He still didn't get it.  "You know, the guy with a
scythe and the hood?  Death?"

Frohike nodded, serious.  "I've seen him at the bottom of a bottle a
few times."

"I've seen him a lot lately,"  Scully admitted, leaning her head
against the wall at her back.

"We all have."  Terse.

"You wouldn't happen to have a bottle with you tonight, would you,
Frohike?"  Scully licked her lips.

"You wanna get shit-faced?"  Incredulous.

"A bottle of *water,* Frohike.," she enunciated clearly.

"Oh."  Disappointed.  Frohike dug through his many pockets and
produced a small bottle of Evian.

Scully smiled at the irony as she twisted the cap and drained the
bottle in one go.  "How did you find me?"

"We're fanning out, backtracking, gathering up as many survivors as
we can."  Frohike saw her question in the moonlight and shook his
head.  "Not many."

She hung her head between her knees, thinking of all the friends
she'd lost...and Mulder.  She choked on a sob.

"I take it Mulder's not with you?"  Gentle.

Scully shook her head no, raised her eyes to the crescent moon that
swam through her tears.  In the few words she could force past the
lump in her throat, she told Frohike what had happened.

"Shit."  He hung his head with her.

***
Year 01 Day 190

Shattered timbers stuck from a cellar hole, the remains of their
designated meeting place.  Few people gathered there, sheltered in
the wreckage of the basement.  Wan faces looked up as Scully followed
Frohike down the narrow stone steps.

Staal looked at Frohike, asking.

Frohike shook his head in the negative as he guided Scully to an
improvised bench near the cellar wall.

"Scully."  Byers sat next to her, touched her elbow, looked around.

Frohike, Staal, Kittler, Gonzales, Boza.  All scouts present and
accounted for.  Cooper with a broken ankle, Davis, Thompson,
Sisemore, Roman swathed in gauze with serious burns across the left
side of his body, and Helbling with a head injury that left her
semi-conscious on a thin pallet.  Mulder, Hulspas, Wu, and so many
others--missing, dead.

--Great freedom fighters we are,-- Scully thought to herself as she
surveyed the few survivors of the failed attack.  --It's a good thing
our ancestors were better at this rebellion thing or else we'd all be
speaking the Queen's English down here.  Not that it would matter
anymore.--

"We're heading south, to the Nevada site," Byers announced his
executive decision to the small crowd around him.  "When the craft
left the Wyoming camp, they seemed to be heading in that direction."

"Have you heard anything from our people there?"  Scully dared to ask.

Byers glanced down at his shoes.  "No."

Quiet hung in the air for a moment.

Scully sighed, moved on.  "What have we learned from this...fiasco...that
we can use to our advantage for the next attack?"

"The Grays can read our minds as well as we can hear their thoughts
in our heads," Boza offered.

Heads around the small group nodded in agreement.

"It's no use trying to hide from them because if you can read their
thoughts, they can read yours through a brick wall."  Kittler spoke
from experience:  she had narrowly escaped capture just before the
Wyoming compound exploded in flames.

"The only problem is that all the thoughts come at once, one mixed up
with the others.  To really *hear* what they're thinking, you have to
concentrate very hard on just one thread."  Thompson massaged her
temples in memory of the metal chaos.

"Sort of like watching several television programs at the same time,"
Gonzales grimaced.

Murmurs of understanding and agreement.

"They have to do the same," Cooper pointed out as she propped her
splinted ankle on the remains of a kitchen chair.  "A few times I
went completely unnoticed by two aliens conversing intensely."
She winced.

Scully marked that thought.  --One way to be safe.--

"I found that if I blanked my thoughts completely, focus on something
diffuse like clouds or fog, they could sense me but they couldn't
figure out what it is that they sensed," Roman slurred through the
painkillers that saturated his brain.

--Clouds.  Another way.--

"The lizards seem to communicate at a more instinctual level.
Images, emotions."  Boza shifted uneasily on the hard floor of the
cellar.

Scully remembered the wave of hunger and aggression that washed over
her when she lost Mulder and shuddered.

"So the lizards are a lesser form," Thompson concluded.

"A race subjugated to the Grays?"  Frohike suggested another
interpretation.

"Definitely inferior, dependent.  Grays not only pen the lizards,
they seem to tend them."  Scully added her impression.

"And what about their structures?" Davis rubbed her elbow, swollen,
mottled with purple.  "What are they made of?"

"Some walls have density and others don't."

"Holograms?"  Scully shuddered.

The discussion trailed off as the battered survivors descended into
their own dark memories.

After a few minutes of silence, the soft notes of a familiar tune
swelled on the night air.  Byers' credible tenor joined Thompson's
clear soprano as they sang.

"I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst through the sky"

Cooper added her smoky alto to the next stanza.

"There was a band playing in my head
and I felt like I could cry
I was thinking about what
a friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie...."

A loud clatter of rocks rained down from the edge of the crumbling
foundation.  A head popped over the edge, silhouetted in the
moonlight.

"Langley!"  A chorus of voices.

"Nevada is still there.  We couldn't get in."  Langley tumbled over
the edge, landing in an inelegant heap.  "But we have a plan."

***
The Former Nevada
Year 01 Day 198

"Where's Langley?"  Scully flashed her light around the narrow
tunnel, critically examining the old timbers for signs of imminent
collapse.

"Isn't he in front of you?"  Thompson gently kicked at a questionable
support with her foot.  Solid.

"I thought he was behind *you*."  Scully led the way back down the
tunnel, her light darting around, flashing across the back sides of
timbers, as she looked for the whittled blazes they were to follow.
She found nothing but some stress fractures in the wood that she
undoubtedly had mistaken for blazes in the dim light.  --Dammit.--
She mentally kicked herself for not being more careful.

Frohike eyed the fractured timbers.  "If it's any consolation, I
thought they were blazes, too."

Scully scrubbed her face with her hands.  "Sorry.  I've been a bit
distracted lately."

Mulder.  Frohike and Thompson exchanged a sympathetic look in the
dim light.

Scully retreated further, following the scuff patterns in the dirt,
looking for a more promising path they might take.  At each
intersection, scuff marks lead in every direction.  She turned to
Frohike and Thompson for a vote.  "Back or forward?"

Thompson flashed her light down the tunnel in front of them.  Open
and clear.  "I'm always in favor of going forward."

"Then forward it is,"  Scully decided.  She took out a knife and
whittled a chunk from a support timber, marking it clearly before
cautiously moving forward, stepping over debris, watching for low
beams in the tunnel ahead.  Frohike grumbled along in her wake.
Thompson tripped, recovered, and uttered a low curse.

When the stragglers from Wyoming finally trekked to the Nevada base,
they had met a jubilant assault team.   Newburger announced that a
way had been found to penetrate the otherwise impenetrable alien
compound.  One out of the many abandoned shafts in this old silver
mining region had led to a tunnel that had led to a tunnel that had
led to the surface just inside the triple force field.  The way had
been scrupulously marked with blazes whittled into old support
timbers and a date for attack had been set.

Penetration of the compound would be followed by liberation of as
many humans as they could gather, then leading them back to the shaft
that would eventually lead to the outside and freedom.  The group met
the plan with great optimism   They hadn't had much luck beating the
alien technology but this they could do, using good old-fashioned
human guile.

Scully worked her way around a pile of rubble that blocked the tunnel
partway, her temples throbbing in time with her footsteps.  --Did
poisonous gases accumulate in silver mines?--  She passed the light
over her wristwatch:  half past six...AM.  They'd been down in the
tunnels for six and a half hours.  So far.  An ugly feeling welled in
the pit of her stomach.  She pushed the feeling back down and slipped
under a dislodged ceiling support.  Stopped.  Cursed under her
breath.  Frohike and Thompson joined her.

Cul de sac.

Without warning, Scully lurched into an upright timber.  Frohike fell
into her back.  Thompson grabbed both of them as the earth trembled
around them, making a low grumbling sound that rose and fell in a
slow rhythm.  A deep rumble welled up from the ground, shaking the
walls of the tunnel.  Small rocks tore loose from the ceiling,
peppering painfully across their heads and shoulders.  Scully ducked,
throwing up a protective arm.  Frohike leaned over her, sheltering
her with his body.  Thompson shrank to one side of the tunnel,
pressing herself against the wall.

"Whoa."  Frohike held onto a support timber, listening carefully.

"What do you think that is?"  Scully braced herself, brushing her
hair with her fingers, combing out small clots of dirt that had
fallen from the ceiling above.

The rumbling swelled and ebbed.

"I have no idea."  Frohike looked at Thompson for help.

Thompson shrugged.  "An earthquake?"

Frohike tipped one ear toward the ceiling.  "It could be heavy
machinery."

--That would be *alien* machinery, since no terrestrial equipment of
that magnitude remained operational after Day 01.--  Hope surged
through Scully as she imagined them standing directly beneath the
compound at last.  --But how to get to the surface from here?--

The vibrations faded as they retreated to the last junction.  One
route remained to explore.  It looked unpromising.  The ceiling was
low with bowed timbers.  Piled rock lay spotted across the dirt.
Support timbers leaned precariously into the tunnel.  Scully looked
back at Thompson and Frohike.

Thompson sighed.  "It doesn't look good."

Frohike scratched his chin, thinking.  "We could go back.  We've
carefully marked our route since we ran out of original blazes."
He spoke frankly but without recrimination.

"Forward, Frohike."  The image of her and Frohike and Thompson
wandering endlessly through these tunnels until exhaustion and
dehydration overtook them flashed through her mind.  Scully ducked
under the low crossbeam.  "Forward."

In places the tunnel grew so narrow that they had to take off their
packs and slide sideways through the constriction.  In some areas so
much rubble littered the passage floor they had to slide over it on
their bellies.  Occasionally they had to stop and hurl armfuls of
stones to one side in order to make an opening big enough to pass
through.

The air grew dank and thick with dust.

Sweat tickled down the back of Scully's neck as she thought of the
few ounces of water sloshing around her in canteen.  She unzipped
her parka with one hand as she directed the light along beams and
supports, checking their integrity as she led the small group beneath
them.  Her heart thudded in her chest, beating rapidly to compensate
for the bad air.

Without warning, a timber tore loose from the ceiling, swinging down,
hammering into Scully's back.  She pitched forward, grasping
desperately for control, feeling the flashlight knocked from her
grasp instead.  A tinkle of breaking glass accented the deep rumble
of collapsing dirt and rock.  After a while, after the noise and the
shaking died down, she opened her eyes cautiously.

It was dark.

It was very dark.

It was dark filled with the sounds of shifting stones, dirt trickling
into new spaces, and her own breathing loud in her ears.  With a
groan, she levered herself to a sitting position and assessed her
condition, flexing first one wrist and then the other, trying her
ankles against the ground.  --Sore, but functional.--  A shower of
tiny rocks trickled over her head.  She choked a little on the
suspension of fine dust in the air.  Coughed.  Shouted.

"Frohike!"

Her voice was loud in the enclosed space.  She gagged on the fine
dust suspended in air, listening for something in return.

--Nothing.--

"Thompson!"

--Nothing.--

--Shit.--

--Were they buried under tons of rock?  Was she alone in this warren
of collapsing tunnels?  Would she die here, crazed by her search for
a way out?  Better to be quickly eaten by lizard aliens.--  Her worst
nightmare all over again.  She shivered, remembering.

"Mulder," she whispered, seeing his face, hearing his voice in the
silence, needing his touch and his strong shoulder.  --Mulder,-- her
lips moved around the word.  She reached into the darkness, her
fingers combing the emptiness.  Tears welled in her eyes.  Then she
heard it.

"Mulder?"  She rolled onto her knees, hopeful, listening.

It seemed to be coming from the rock pile near her head.

"Mulder!"  Scully pulled at the rocks from the top of the pile,
throwing them behind her in the tunnel, heart racing.

A piece of the ceiling collapsed, sending more dust into the stagnant
air.  Coughing, choking, she kept pulling rocks from the obstruction
and tossing them aside, digging her way to Mulder and safety.

The rock pile shifted, settling.

Sweat poured down her face and dampened her clothing as she tore her
nails scratching at the barrier.  "Mulderrrrr!"

Fresh air and a blaze of white light poured over her.

She blinked, blinded.  "Mulder?"

"Melvin, Mulder...two good-looking SOBs.  I can see how you might
get us confused."  Frohike helped her through the tiny opening,
hooking his hands beneath her arms and pulling as she pushed at the
rocks with her feet.

She came through with a rush, like a young calf meeting the world for
the first time.

"Oh...Frohike," she hiccuped, her face wet, caked with mud from the
dirt and her tears.

"Hey."  His voice was gentle.  He pulled a clean handkerchief from
one of his many pockets, wiping her face with it.

"I could have sworn that I heard Mulder in there, calling to me."
--From beyond the grave.--

"Did you see a white light?"

"Well...yes...but that was you."  She gasped for air, coughing to get the
dust out of her lungs.

"Shhhh.  Keep that under your hat. It could give a guy a reputation.
I'll never get anyone to come with me for cheese steaks again."

Scully laughed a little at his jest, letting him clean her face as
she lay on the ground next to him, taking greedy gulps of air,
feeling her racing pulse slow to something more normal.

"Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Just here."  She lay one hand over her heart.  "It's bad.  It may be
fatal."

Frohike took her hand with his own.   "We'll all miss him, Scully."

Scully's breath caught in her throat, an involuntary hiccup.

"Hey."  Frohike squeezed her hand.  "We'll name our first son after
him."

Scully sniffled then giggled then burst out laughing at Frohike's
joke.  "Mulder Frohike?"

"Fox Frohike" has a better ring to it."  He watched her mood
carefully.

"Thanks, I needed that."  She sat up and brushed debris from her
jacket, breathing the stale air deeply, trying to get enough oxygen
into her bloodstream.

Frohike stood and helped Scully to her feet.  "I was only half
joking," he added under his breath.

Scully's looked around the dimly-lit tunnel, partially filled with
debris from the cave-in.  "We may all be joining Mulder sooner than
we'd planned."

"We're not going to die down here, Scully."  Thompson touched her arm.

"How can you be so sure?"  Scully hyperventilated a little from tension
and the bad air.

"I know."  Confident.  Thompson took the one remaining strong light
from Frohike's hand and flashed it around the passage, finding
blackness where rock should have been.  The light faded into the
depths of a new tunnel that had been exposed when the ceiling
collapsed.  She slid through the opening and disappeared.

Scully and Frohike sat in silence, listening to Thompson's footsteps
recede.

In complete darkness, Scully could only hear the pounding of her
heart, the rapid shallow pull of her own breath, and an occasional
tick of a pebble falling in the darkness.  The ground remained
steady; the air, bad.

A slight flicker bobbed their way from the tunnel on the right.

Scully tensed, wondering.

The light grew stronger, illuminating the tunnel, showing Thompson's
outline.  "I think I found something."  Excited.  Very excited

Frohike trailed Scully and Thompson along the rubble-strewn passage
to yet another blank wall.  Thompson traced upward with her light.
The beam disappeared into blackness.  A slight scent of fresh air
wafted down at them.

"Yes!"  Scully's pulse leapt as she grasped a crossbeam in the shaft
and pulled herself up.  Again.  And again.  She clawed her way
through dense brush that filled the opening and crawled onto the
earth's surface for the first time in over twelve hours.  She rolled
onto her back, savoring the fresh air.

Thompson followed.

Frohike, tangled in branches, landed awkwardly at her side.

Scully scrambled onto her knees and quickly scanned the area for
aliens and other threats to their safety.  Nothing.  She glanced at
the sky--no stars.  She blinked and looked again--no sky.  They had
climbed from the earth directly into one of the alien structures.
--How very convenient.--  Native scrub and trees dotted the empty
hanger-like enclosure.  Walls behind them and to the left glowed,
translucent, lighting the hanger in their vicinity.

Frohike pulled a transmitter from his pocket and thumbed the switch,
bringing it to life.  Short, short, long, short.  Pause.  Short, short,
long, short.  *F*  He toggled the transmit switch to send his signal.

A swell of static filled the air as they waited breathlessly for a
reply.

"Come on, come on," Frohike begged the transmitter.

Unbroken static hissed from the speaker.

Scully shifted anxiously, looking around them, hoping they wouldn't
be discovered.

Thompson edged over to a low interior wall, working her way to a
deeply shadowed point where she could look over it without being
seen herself.  She pulled back rapidly, repeatedly pressing her palm
toward the ground.

Scully grabbed Frohike's arm and pulled him into a crouching position
behind a small bush.

More static, then...short, long, short, short-pause-short, long short,
short.  *L*  Langley.

"All right."  Frohike thumbed an acknowledgement then listened
carefully to a rapid series of static dots and dashes.  He nodded,
sent another acknowledgement, then pressed the power switch and
returned the transmitter to his pocket.  He pulled a hand-drawn map
from his vest and scrutinized it carefully.  He pointed at a series
of small boxes with one finger.  "Langley and the others are here.
We need to make our way in that direction, join up with them."

From the corner of her eye, Scully caught movement.  She turned,
looked.  Thompson waved her over, mouthing "humans."

Scully turned back to Frohike, resolve in her voice.  "You join
Langley.  I'm going to go with Thompson and see what we can do for
the humans here."

Frohike grabbed her arm as she moved away.  "Scully."

She turned, question on her face.

"It may not seem like it now, but there's plenty to live for.  Plenty
of people think the world's a better place because you're in it."

Scully smiled, touched.  "I'll be careful, Frohike."

"Yeah."  He hesitated, still concerned.

Scully placed a light kiss on Frohike's cheek.  "You be careful
yourself."

Frohike blushed.

Scully pushed him gently in the other direction.  "Go."  She watched
him scurry off to meet the others, then ran to join Thompson where
she crouched by the low wall.

"There's about 25 toddlers in there,"  Thompson hissed in her ear,
"but they are well-guarded by Grays, at least five of them."

Scully popped up quickly to take a look for herself, then huddled
next to Thompson.  "Maybe we can find something to draw the Grays
away, something to distract them."

"Like find the proverbial fire alarm and pull it?"  Thompson
suggested.

Scully nodded in agreement, trying the wall with one palm and
finding it to be reassuringly solid.  She pressed herself against the
barrier, slipping down its length to where it bent around a corner.
She stopped, took a deep breath, then peeked into the next hall.
"Let's go."

Thompson followed her around the corner, tiptoeing down a dimly-lit
passage.  Through the thick walls, they could see forms and movement,
but could not identify them clearly as alien or human.  Scully
listened hard with her mind but could not decipher the jumble of
feelings and images that swirled around her.

Around another corner, the passage glowed more brightly.  The light
came from a thin wall on the left.  Thompson and Scully inched up on
the lighted area and looked inside.  Gray forms huddled around
some kind of control center, excitedly discussing the images
displayed before them.  Their voices roared in Scully's head, one
overlapping another.

Scully filled her mind with a soft gray cloud, seamless gray,
formless gray, nothing but gray.  She dropped her to hands and
knees, crawling close against the opposite wall.  Thompson crept
quietly in her wake.  They moved on hands and knees until they
rounded the next corner.  In the gloomy quiet, they stood,
exchanging looks with wide eyes.

"Something's afoot."  Thompson put voice to the jumbled words and
images she got from the alien control room.

Scully nodded.  "Definitely.  Let's see what we can see, get who we
can get, then get the hell out of here."

They crept along the dimly-lit passageway, cautiously eyeing the
reptilian forms through the milky barrier of the electromagnetic
wall.  Sleepy, peaceful thoughts radiated from them.  On the other
side, two young human females huddled together in the corner of one
cell.  Scully pulled a harmonic converter from her pocket, pressed a
recessed button, then twisted the dial, neatly dropping the barrier
that separated her from them.

--New trick.--

She knelt by their side, feeling for a pulse in the wrist of each
child.  Dead.  She stroked their hair, said a quick prayer for their
immortal souls, stood, stepped back into the passage and continued
on her way.

A tiny lizard, agitated, paced the next enclosure.  It sensed their
movement and threw itself repeatedly at the barrier.  Anger.  Hunger.
A need to destroy.  The field bowed with each lunge.  Held.  Scully
and Thompson subconsciously hugged the opposite wall, so thick it
was nearly opaque.

Through the dense barrier, Scully saw a lanky human male sprawled
lifelessly across a platform. Naked.  Another dead one.  She moved on.
Stopped.  Went back and peered through the dense barrier. "Mulder."
She said the name aloud, expecting no answer.

"Hey, Scully."  The hallucination knew her name.

"Oh, God...Mulder."  --Could it be?--  Scully waved the harmonic
converter at the milky wall, twisting the dial.  The wall thinned but
did not clear.  --Damn.--  She adjusted the frequency manually and
she swept the little box back and forth against the barrier.  It
flickered then bounced back to the original density.  --Double
damn!--

"Scully?"  Mulder called to her.

"Mulder!"  She bit her lip, twisting the dial up to the highest
frequency, thrusting the little box directly into the wall.  With
an audible *pop* the barrier fell.  She waved a hand through.
--Safe.--  She stuffed the converter back into her parka and went to
him, kneeling, touching the multiple lacerations that marked his
upper body.  "Oh, Mulder."

His eyes fluttered open, focused on her face after some effort.
"I knew you'd come."

"You have way too much faith in me, Mulder.  I thought you were
lizard food."  Scully traced her hand across puncture wounds with
fierce red rims, raised buttons hot against her fingertips.  She saw
a set of parallel marks on one upper arm, tracks that spanned his
right shoulder, another set across his waist on the left.  All deep,
all infected, and all mere punctures.  No tearing.  No missing parts.

--Thank God.--

Mulder caught her puzzled look.  "I think Frohike's tonics and all
those antibiotics he stuffed down my throat ended up saving me."

"I don't understand."  Scully tested his temperature with one hand to
the forehead.  --Scorching.--  Fear pooled in her stomach.

"I think I tasted too bad to eat."  Mulder reached up, grabbed her
hand and held it against an uninjured part of his chest.  "Every alien
that bit me quickly let me go.  After three or four of them had a go
at me, they all just crowded around, looking, drooling, chattering,
but not biting."

"Thank God," Scully whispered, brushing the damp, matted hair
away from his forehead, tucking it behind his ears on both sides.
 --God bless Frohike.--

"I think they put me in here to dry me out."   Mulder brushed his
lips against her knuckles.

"Speaking of here, how did you get to this place?"  Scully squeezed
his hand, remembering the firestorm that engulfed the Wyoming
compound.

"I have no idea."  Mulder blinked heavy lids at her.   "I recall
looking up at all those lizard faces, then the next thing I knew I
was here, lying on this slab like a laboratory specimen."

Scully pushed the unpleasant image of Mulder as Lizard Chow
from her mind.  She pulled several vials from her bag and prepared
syringes for each of them.  "Show me your cheek, Mulder."

"Are you coming on to me, Scully?"  Weakly.

"In your dreams."  She expressed a small amount of air from the
needle into the vial before pulling back the plunger, collecting the
medicine in the syringe barrel.

"Better things happen to you in *my* dreams than in *your* dreams,"
Mulder leered at her verbally as he let her roll him to one side.

"Antibiotics," she explained as she neatly jabbed the needle into a
gluteal muscle.

"Who knows what kind of bugs are found in alien lizard spit?"  Mulder
mumbled, tensing his muscle, not helping at all.

Scully massaged the injection site with her fingers, before making
another puncture just a centimeter away.  "Anti-inflammatory."

"Ow!"  Mulder flinched at the sharp pain.

Scully kissed it better with a smile on her face that Mulder couldn't
see, then added a pharmacologic assist:  "Analgesic."

"Jeez, Scully," Mulder complained.  "Don't I have enough holes in me
already?"

She picked up the last needle.

"That'd better be good," Mulder mumbled.

"Amphetamines" was all she said before emptying the contents of the
last syringe into his behind.

Mulder groaned, rolled to his back and looked at Scully, his eyes
clouded with fever and pain.  "Thanks," he whispered, closing his
eyes.  His chest rose and fell gently.  Sleep.

Scully busied herself, taking care of each infected puncture.  She
cleaned them individually with a small amount of peroxide, then
smeared on a liberal dab of antibacterial ointment.  Finally, she sat
back and admired her handiwork.

Mulder groaned, stirred, his eyes flickering open.  Clear.  Scully
already could see a response to the drugs pumping through him.

Footsteps pounded down the passage in their direction.  Stopped.
"Scully..."  Thompson saw Mulder and stopped in mid-sentence.
Blinked.

"They spit me out."  Full explanation.

"Wow."  Nonplussed, Thompson thought about this turn of events for a
moment, then continued with her train of thought.  "It looks like the
Grays are on the move.  A bunch of ships have arrived...."

"What color are they?"  Scully interrupted with a question.

"Green."

Transport ships.

Scully remembered what happened to the last camp when the Grays
moved on.  Images of the fiery holocaust still came to her in her
nightmares.  "We've got to get out of here."  She turned to Mulder,
helping him to his feet.

Mulder stood, swayed.  Scully slipped beneath his arm and steadied
him.

"Uh, Mulder...."  Thompson nudged him.

"Wha...?"

Thompson raked his nude body with her gaze.  "It's December
out there."

"Scully, could you get me a tuxedo from the closet?"  Mulder gestured
widely with his free arm, a silly grin on his face.

--The drugs.--  Scully bent, fished around in her pack, and pulled
out a fistful of blue cotton.  Scrubs.  She handed them to Mulder.

The top dangled from one hand, the pants from his other as he looked
at Scully with wonder in his eye.  And a question.

"Well...they were in the Medi-kit."

"Just put 'em on, Mulder," Thompson warned him, glancing up and down
the hall, shifting from foot to foot.  Anxious.

Mulder dropped the top over his head then bent and pulled the bottoms
over his legs.  The cuffs hit him mid-shin, leaving his ankles and
feet bare.  He tied the pants at his waist, looked down at his feet,
then up at Scully.  Coughing, he wiped the sweat still beaded on his
face then danced a shaky jig for good measure.

"Mulder, I need to remind you that this vigor you're feeling is
strictly drug-induced.  When the drugs wear off, you're back on your
ass."  Scully cautioned him, stroking his arm gently with her hand.

"Yes ma'am."  We'll worry about that when I'm sitting on my ass, his
look seemed to say.

A low clangor swelled over them; the lights in their area pulsing in
sync
with the sound.  An alarm had been sounded.

"We can get out that way."  Thompson pointed to a narrow passage on
 their right.

"The children.  We can't leave them behind."  Scully looked down the
passage toward the enclosure where they'd seen the group of small
children.  The sound of thundering footsteps swelled beneath the
strange tones of the alarm bells, coming closer from that direction.

"Scully, we've got to leave," Thompson pulled at her arm.

Scully pulled her arm back, took at step in the other direction.
--The children.--

Mulder grabbed her with both hands and looked directly into her
eyes.  "We.  Must.  Go."  He enunciated very clearly.

--We can't leave the children.--

With his recovered strength, Mulder grabbed her arm and hauled her
down the passage.  "I've had enough of this cut-rate alien
hospitality.  Let's get the hell out and send a thank-you note later."

--We have failed at our every attempt to fight the aliens.  We can't
even save a few human children.  We are surely doomed as a race,--
 Scully despaired as she followed Mulder along the passage.

The passage was dark and very narrow, a strong wind blowing through
it.  --It was more a ventilation duct than a walkway,-- Scully thought
as she crouched along in Mulder's wake.  Before long, the
passage/duct bent sharply to the right and ended abruptly.  The three
humans pressed themselves against the wall and peered out carefully.

A storm of activity raged inside the hanger-like enclosure as dozens
of Grays herded lizard aliens and loaded human cargo onto waiting
craft that glowed green as they hovered just above the ground.
Evacuation seemed to be in progress.

Thompson pointed to the far side of the hanger.  "When I came down
here before--before all these craft had landed--I saw an open door
over there."

Scully followed the line started by Thompson's finger. -- Great.  The
door lay somewhere on the far side of at least a hundred Grays and
twice as many man-eating lizards.--  Scully weighed the possibility
of escape with the probability of being eaten or taken prisoner.

--Not good.--

Mulder tugged at her sleeve, pointed around the side of the hanger
where large crates and containers stood against the wall.  In single
file, they slipped behind the first box, pressing themselves low
against the wall, working their way around the hanger.

Scully lay on the ground to peer cautiously around the last box.  She
pulled back, crouching next to Mulder and Thompson.  "I hate to say
this, but there's no more cover."

"I say we take advantage of the aliens' preoccupation with evacuation
and bolt for it," Mulder suggested, shifting to the balls of his feet,
ready to run.

Scully preferred a more stealthy solution, but couldn't think of one.

"I say let's get the hell outta Dodge."  Thompson threw in with
Mulder.

Mulder grinned, coiled, and sprang through the opening, running flat
out in bare feet across the packed earth of the hanger.  Scully and
Thompson sprinted in his wake, trying to catch up with him.

Zzzap!

A green bolt lanced through the gloom, missing Scully by inches.
"Over here!"  Mulder ran back, grabbed Scully's hand, pulled her
along behind him.  Scully reached for Thompson, missed, then felt
Thompson grab the back of her parka and hold on.

Thawp!  Thawp!

Two sudden reports came in short order, one to the right and the
other to the left, pelting them from both sides with dirt and small
rocks.  This part of the hanger was so dimly lit that Scully could
barely see Mulder as he ran in front of her.  She stumbled as she
felt him suddenly change direction, moving toward a dark space on
the wall.  Head down, she followed him through the opening.  With
a quiet sigh, a door closed behind them.

The darkness was absolute.

Scully turned, felt around the door's surface for a release mechanism.
--Nothing.--  She shoved her shoulder against it. -- Nothing.--
We're locked in here, wherever here is, she panicked silently.

The room shuddered.

A low-pitched hum swelled, resonated through the darkness.  Scully
nearly fell on top of Mulder as the floor shifted, slanting steeply
to her left.  Thompson grabbed her arm and Scully grabbed Mulder,
stabilizing their skid across the tipped surface.  Together, they
slammed into a wall.  The floor rose up to meet them, then fell away
with a sickening lurch.  After a couple of bumps, Scully felt her
limbs grow so heavy she could hardly move.  With great effort, she
struggled to a sitting position and looked around with eyes adjusted
to the gloom.

Gasped.

Then she toppled backward, hitting the deck with a bone-jarring
whack, as the craft accelerated into the night sky.

First clouds, then stars, streaked by an oddly-shaped port as the
craft accelerated into the evening sky.

"Whoa."  Mulder pulled himself together, pulling himself upright
with a hand against the bulkhead.

At his feet, Scully lay on her side, a pained expression on her face.

"Scully."  Mulder staggered to her side, kneeling on the vibrating
deck.

Scully sat up, rubbed the back of her head, flinched as her fingers
hit the bruised spot.  Stars.  Lots and lots of them.  "Ow."

Mulder pulled her forward into his arms, examining the back of her
head carefully.  A respectable goose egg swelled beneath her hair.

"You OK?"  Thompson stood over them, swaying slightly with the
movement of the craft.

Scully looked up and smiled.  "Fine.  I'm fine."  She quickly glanced
at Mulder, reassuring him with her eyes.

"Well, this is an interesting development."  Thompson offered Scully
a hand up

Scully looked around the dimly-lit interior.  It appeared to be a
small cargo bay.

The craft swooped through the night sky, humming quietly.

"Hey, look at this."  Mulder opened a storage bin and pulled out a
familiar cylindrical object.

Scully and Thompson rushed to his side, each taking a weapon from the
safe.

Scully turned hers over and over, looking for controls, and found it
seamless.  She looked at Mulder and Thompson, who looked back at her
with the same puzzled expression on their faces.  "How does it work?"

Mulder probed at one end with his fingers.  Nothing.  He turned it
over.

Scully stayed his hand.  "Not in here, Mulder.  Let's wait until we
land and get outside."

Mulder nodded.  He patted down his pocketless scrubs, then divided the
contents of the locker between Scully and Thompson.  Each now carried
six weapons tucked into various pockets around her body.

The craft tipped suddenly and the floor dropped from beneath their
feet, sending them spinning through air, tumbling end over end.  They
rolled into a heap, then bounced off the deck and landed in different
heap, wedged between the empty weapons bin and the side wall.

The craft slowed, stopped.  The deck undulated beneath their twisted
bodies as the ship settled gently to the ground.  A soft thump.  The
hum faded.  Quiet.

Scully reached behind her back and retrieved the arm pinned under
Mulder's back.  Mulder twisted to the left, unsnarling his right leg
from Thompson's tangled ones.  Thompson pulled at her jacket where
the hem had caught between the weapons locker and the wall. Scully
froze.

Squicht.

An internal door eased open.  Several grays trooped through, their
animated communication washing over the dazed humans as a jumbled
rush of thoughts and images.

Squicht.

The external door opened, admitting a rush of mild air.  The grays
left the ship and moved away, their thoughts fading quickly with the
distance.

Scully watched the door, holding her breath.  --Stay open, stay open,
stay open,-- she chanted to herself, struggling awkwardly to her
knees.  Falling when she tried to stand on a numb foot, she felt
Mulder's arm around her waist, pulling her up, pulling her toward the
open door.  As they stumbled forward, Scully bent and gave Thompson
a hand up, bringing her to her feet.

Squicht.

The external door closed...on Thompson's foot.  "Aaarrrgh," she moaned
through gritted teeth, shoving her foot farther through the opening,
adding a shoulder.

Mulder leaned into the door, pushing against it.

Scully dropped to her knees, wedging her shoulder in the widening gap,
reaching outside, grasping for something to pull against.

With a sudden hiss, the door popped open.

Mulder, Scully, and Thompson landed in another heap, stolen weapons
scattered around them.  Stars glimmered above them in the dark sky.
The night air was warmer here than it had been in Nevada during the
day--they must have flown south.  Scully breathed deeply, looking for
a place to hide and regroup.

A curious gray face looked down at her.

"Shit!"  Scully rolled to her feet, fear pooling in her stomach,
anger rising in her.  She'd had enough of these little gray bastards.

The alien flinched at her outburst, both verbal and mental.

Scully grabbed desperately for one of the silver tubes, found it,
pointed an end at the alien standing above her.  She visualized
exploding gray flesh.  "Back," she said, waving the tube.

The alien didn't budge.

Mulder and Thompson fell in behind her.

The Gray moved forward slowly, sending a rush of painful thoughts.
Danger.  Fear.  Pain.

Scully shook her head, a bit disoriented from the onslaught.

The alien lunged at her, reaching for the tube in her hand.

Scully snatched it away, pulling at it, squeezing its length,
desperately searching for the trigger.  No luck.

The alien lunged at her again.

*Thud.*

The Gray staggered backward, grasping its head, falling on its back,
not moving.

Scully turned, looked at Mulder.  He slapped a silver tube against
the palm of his other hand.  "If nothing else, it makes a pretty good
club."

A wave of blurry images swamped her momentarily as the alien rolled
its head, eyes open, blinking.

Without hesitation, the three humans scrambled in the opposite
direction, running flat out across a large vacant space, heading for
a hill the rose darkly against the night sky.  Thompson zigged,
going to the right, disappearing into a low wooden structure that
lay, half-collapsed, against the hill.  Mulder and Scully zagged,
running around the hill, keeping a low profile, listening for signs
they'd been spotted.  Nothing.  They crawled over a pile of rocks,
dropping to the ground on the other side.  Scrubby trees ringed a
small open area.

"Sleep."  Mulder stumbled, the stimulant worked out of his system.
"I've got to sleep."

Scully yawned, exhausted herself.  Visions of a nice, clean bed and
down pillows filled her head.  She looked around and saw a nice, flat
patch of dirt instead.  That would have to do.  She removed her
parka, spread it on the ground, guided Mulder to lay on top of it.

He dropped awkwardly, reaching up for her.

She went into his arms, burrowing her face against his neck,
breathing deeply of his scent.  Remembering this.  Remembering how
much she needed him.

Mulder stroked her back, nuzzling the side of her face.   "You are
one helluva woman, Dana Scully," he whispered into her ear.

"I know, Mulder.  I love you, too."

"It's you and me against the world."

"Or what's left of it."

Mulder didn't speak for a moment.  "Well, there's you and me."

"And Thompson.  She's around here somewhere," Scully pointed out.
"We'll hook up with her tomorrow."

Mulder nodded, his breath tickling her scalp.  "From what you've told
me, the Gunmen could be OK, back at the Nevada site."

"And Staal.  And Cooper...she's back in Wyoming with a broken ankle."
Scully named some of their new friends, thinking of the others they'd
lost.

"Krychek?"

"I hope he got eaten by lizard aliens."  Scully spoke from the heart,
then said a little prayer for Krychek's immortal soul, black as it was.

"Or maybe turned into a lizard alien."  Mulder chuckled.  Winced.

Scully sensed his pain and sat up, digging in her medi-kit.  She
offered two tablets to Mulder with a little water.

He swallowed them and lay down again, pulling her down with him,
nestling her at his side, comfortably away from the throbbing
puncture wounds.

"Skinner's probably gone."  Scully lay her head on his good shoulder
and imagined him abducted from his condo in suburban Virginia.

"We don't know that, Scully.  On a Sunday night, he could have been
anywhere."

"He was either in his office at the Bureau or at home."  --Skinner
had less of a social life than they did.--  "Either place, he's
history."

"Yeah, but DC is probably there...just empty," Mulder mumbled into her
hair.

Scully thought for a moment.  "I wonder...if we could make it back,
would we be able to just walk back into our apartments?  Would we
find them..."

"...intact?"   Mulder yawned.  The pills had contained codeine, lots of
it.

"I guess anything of commercial value would be gone, but there's
stuff than no one would want.  Personal mementos.  Old photographs."
Her voice broke at the thought of her family.  --Did they survive?
How would she find out or find them in this technology-deficient,
alien-infested world?--

"Hey."  Mulder had sensed the sudden tension in her body.

"Hey," she whispered back, relaxing into the strength of his arms
around her.  --With Mulder, anything was possible.  If her family
were out there, they would find them.--

"We'll find them."   Mulder's pained voice cut into her painful
reverie.

"Oh, Mulder."  She smoothed his forehead gently, the stress lines
melting away beneath her fingertips.

Deep breath.  He smiled weakly, sleep quickly overtaking him, his
eyelids drifting shut then open again.  His breathing slowed and
deepened.  He slept.

"Oh, Mulder," she whispered again, slipping a protective arm across
his chest, resting her head on his uninjured shoulder.  Secure in his
arms, she snuggled down for the night.

***
Year 01 Day 199

Mulder's growling stomach woke her with loud rumbling beneath her
ear.  Scully's eyes fluttered open to bright sunshine and birdsong.

--Mulder.--  She felt his forehead.  --Cool.--  She lifted the front
of his scrubs and examined a few of the bite wounds.  They were less
red, less hot, less swollen.  --Hallelujah.--

The object of her inspection sighed, opened his eyes, looked straight
into her concerned ones.  He managed a small smile.  "Do I smell
bacon?"

"Cruel man."  Scully smiled back, sitting up, her mouth watering
helplessly now as her stomach rumbled in response.

Mulder moved to sit up with her but, weak, he collapsed onto the hard
ground with a groan.   "Just bury me here, Scully."

"Oh no, no, no."  Scully fished around her in medi-kit for the
necessary supplies.  "I need you around a little while longer."

"A little while?"

Scully smiled. --A *long* while.--  "I can still think of a few
things I need you for."

"A few things, hummm?"  Mulder rolled onto one hip at her touch.

Mulder only winced a little when the new battery of injection
penetrated his unpierced cheek.  "It wouldn't hurt so much if you
kissed it better," he leered.

"You just like the idea of me *finally* kissing your ass, Mulder."

Mulder chuckled, letting her pull him to a sitting position.  He
swayed but remained vertical. "Maybe I do."

Scully reassembled her medical bag.   "Do you want one or two
pieces of buttered toast with that bacon?"  She threw over her
shoulder.

"Cruel woman."  Mulder slipped his arms around her middle, pulling
her back against him, nestling his face in the side of her neck.

Scully lay her arms over his, leaning back against his shoulder,
feeling the warmth of his breath against her cheek.

They sat together for several minutes, each enjoying the closeness
of the other, listening to the birds carol in the trees that
surrounded their refuge.  Then Scully broke the quiet.  "Let's go
find Thompson."

Mulder nodded, releasing her with reluctance.

They slipped around the hillside under cover of trees.  The
ramshackle hut was empty.  Thompson had gone...or had been taken.
Scully shook her head and refused to consider that possibility.
--Thompson was too wily.  She undoubtedly had gone looking for
*them.*  But where?--

Scully noticed an open door into a nearby alien structure.  She led
Mulder inside and down a dimly-lit hallway.  Quiet.   She
carefully looked both ways at an intersecting hallway.  Empty.  She
tip-toed through it, Mulder a few feet behind her.

A tickle ran up her back.

She turned to see Mulder fading from sight.  "Mulder!"  She lunged
for him and bounced off the transparent wall that risen between them.
Mulder threw himself at the barrier, bounced back from his side.
Scully pulled the harmonic converter from her pocket and twisted the
dial--nothing.  She waved it at the barrier, high and low, to the
right and left, fiddling with the frequency--still nothing.
--Busted!--  The aliens had adapted the range of their force field
to be untouchable by their terrestrial technology.  At least by the
technology she had in her hand

Scully reached up to Mulder, placing her palm on the barrier.  Mulder
covered her palm with his own, his lips moving with she couldn't
hear.  The barrier clouded, then went dark.  Scully pushed at it,
heaved at it, threw her shoulder at it to no avail.  --Impermeable.--

--There is always another way, Dana,-- she reminded herself, looking
up and down the passageway.  She arbitrarily chose to go right and
moved in that direction.

--Dana?--

Scully stopped, turned.

A small Gray stood behind her, hands empty, palms held outward at its
side.  Non-threatening.

--Dana.--

Again Scully imagined her name, felt something warm roll over her.

The alien reached out, its long fingers combing the space between
them.

Strange images, unintelligible words flooded her head.  Here and
there in the flood was a recognizable word, a familiar image.  Scully
squinted, tried to force out the other sounds in her head, focusing
only on the familiar ones, trying to make sense of them.  They flew
by in a seamless stream.

A nursery with lizards instead of human babies.  Earth, floating in
the darkness of space.  Mulder's face, twisted in agony.  A surreal
landscape with twin moons floating on the horizon.  A Gray.  A
triangular ship, streaking across a ruddy sky.  Grays, talking among
themselves.  Her own face, at age six, when she'd lost her favorite
doll to the neighborhood dog.  A cockpit of some sort.  Her father,
smiling.  The kitchen of their house in San Diego.  A Christmas tree.
She and Mulder, standing in front of her mother's fireplace last
Christmas Day.  Her mother's face in a mirror.

Recognition washed over her.  No, it can't be.

--Yes, it can be.--

"Mom?"  Scully spoke the word involuntarily.

--Yes, I am.--

"How?"

The Gray that was also her mother flexed its long fingers in front of
her face.

--It's easier for me to show you.--

Scully closed her eyes, tears leaking from beneath the lids.  She saw
a shower of slivery particles rain over the desert, catching in
scrubby bushes, layering on the sandy soil.

--These are our mortal remains, what is left after we die, and our
souls.  Both encapsulated in a silver seed and stored until The Time.
The seeds are animated by the unique combination of solar and
terrestrial radiation in Earth's atmosphere, the only place in the
universe where suitable conditions can be found.--

Scully cried out as she saw pandemonium in her mind, bright lights,
the face of her brother as he scooped baby Matthew into his arms,
then darkness.

--The electricity failed and, before we could respond, the room
flooded with blinding light.  I felt disoriented, nauseous, then
numb.  Everything went black.--

Scully flinched at the image of a gestation pod from the inside.
She shivered at the painful memory of her own experience.

--It really wasn't bad, Dana.  When I regained some kind of conscious
perception after being taken, I felt a slight burning sensation in my
abdomen.  A single activated seed had been placed there while I
slept.  Slowly, it dissolved.  I felt only warmth and peace as its
contents melted and spread through me.  I had no sense of anxiety or
time.  But over time, my self-awareness slowly shifted from its
customary place in my body to the new life growing inside me.--

Suddenly, her mind's eye filled with tiny lizards.  Lizard aliens.

--We go through a larval stage.  Our larvae look like terrestrial
lizards, only bigger.  We play and eat...and grow.  It's fun!  During
this stage I first became aware of the other consciousness in my new
head.  The consciousness of my host.  I saw things from its memory
that you could hardly imagine, images of another place and another
way of life.  It was...is...intoxicating.--

Scully's stomach twisted as she saw tiny Grays emerge from molting
lizards, the scales peeling away from their shiny new bodies, large
eyes blinking in the light.  Her lips moved involuntarily, forming
the word Mom.

The Gray reached out with its long fingers and stroked Scully's hair.

--After a short time we molt and take on our adult form.  Our species,
The People, live very long lives compared to humans.  We live
centuries, instead of years.  When we finish this rebirthing process,
when all the seeds that can be reanimated have been reanimated, we
will leave.  Enough humans have been left behind to rebuild society
and repopulate the planet.--

"Until you return,"  Scully added.

The Gray nodded, a human gesture.  Her mother's act.

Scully dropped to her knees, shoulders rolled, head slack on her
neck.  The stream of images ran unfocused through her head again,
familiar things jumbled together with images and thoughts she
couldn't understand.

The Gray knelt in front of her, slid its fingers into the loose fist
of Scully's hand.

Scully felt the force of the Gray's mind inside her head.  She felt
the Gray--or her mother inside the Gray--order her thoughts, bring
them under control.  Once again, she saw herself through her mother's
eyes.  She held the Gray's hand, gratefully, with both of hers.
Images flashed back and forth between them.

Scully looked up.  The Gray followed her gaze.

"Mulder."  Scully whispered, smiling weakly, standing.  --Thank
God, Mulder had found her...them.--

The Gray followed Scully to her feet.

Mulder looked from Scully to the alien.  The Gray extended its palm,
fingers up, toward him.

Without hesitation, Mulder matched it with his own.  Scully sensed
the exchange of the last few minutes--words and images--flowing from
gray palm to pink one.  "Mrs. Scully," Mulder said finally.

--Yes.  We must hurry.  It's almost time.--

Mulder clearly heard the words in his head.  So did Scully.

The Gray beckoned with its long fingers.

--Come.  We are very sensitive now.  We will easily kill anyone who
stands in the way of migration.--

--We.--  A chill washed over Scully.  --Not her mother's words.--

"Where are you taking us?"  Mulder eyed the Gray cautiously.

--To safety.--

Scully wiped her eyes with one hand, extending the other to Mulder.
"She's telling the truth.  She would never hurt us."  She had to
believe in her mother's goodness inside that...thing.

Still Mulder hesitated.

--Fox, come.  Time is very short.--

The Gray moved impatiently down the hall, leaving the building
through a door in the side wall.

Scully tugged Mulder's hand.

He followed her down the hall and out the door.

Several craft hovered just above the ground, hatchways open, ramps
touching the earth.  In the thinning darkness, alien forms moved
toward each craft, filing up the ramps, disappearing inside.

The Gray paused, looking back at Scully.

Scully grabbed its hand, gripping it tightly.

-Let go, Dana.--

Tears rolled down her face.  "I can't."

--You must.--

Mulder peeled Scully's fingers away from the Gray's hand, replacing
it with his own.

"Mom, I don't want you to go."  Scully gripped Mulder's hand tightly.

--Our paths are set now.--

Mulder slipped his arm around Scully's trembling shoulder, drawing
her against his side.

--Go, Dana.  Go with Fox.  Take care of him.  I know he'll take care
of you.  It's your future.  This is mine.--

The Gray let its arms fall to its side, turning away.

"Mom," Scully whispered.

The Gray that contained the life force of Maggie Scully walked toward
the open door of the ship.  Without looking back, it stepped onto the
ramp, paused.

--I love you, Dana.--

The door closed behind it.  A beautiful silver haze washed over the
ship, which rose straight up, into the dawn sky.  The pink light of
day reflected from its shimmering form and the form of the ships that
rose around it.

One by one, the buildings of the compound flickered and were gone,
leaving only slight traces of their form on the desert sand.  Others
--resistance fighters, abducted humans left behind--looked around in
surprise as the walls dissolved around them.  Fingers pointed in air,
at the raft of shimmering craft that drifted eastward.  The humans
gravitated together.  For safety.  For comfort.

Thompson's clear soprano filled the air as more ships rose from the
earth to join the group flying  east in tight formation, all
swallowed in the red glow of sunrise.

Her words sent a chill down Scully's spine.

Mulder pulled Scully against him, cradling her head against his
chest, rubbing her back with his gentle palm as they listened to
Thompson finish the song she had started so many nights ago:

"All in a dream, all in a dream,
The loading had begun.
Flying Mother Nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun."

"So what now, Scully?"  Mulder looked down at her face, tired and
pale in the morning light.

"We go on."  Scully's eyes glittered as she slid both arms around his
waist and looked into his eyes.

"Where to?"  A very large question with many layers.

Scully left the question without answer.  --Where to, today?
Tomorrow?  For that matter:  where to, for the rest of their lives,
now and forever changed in unimaginable ways by what had happened
here.  For now, survival was enough.  And Mulder.  She'd work out the
rest as it came along.--

She lay her cheek against his chest, heard the steady rhythm of his
heart beneath her ear, felt the strength of his arms around her back.
--Yes.  Life was good.--  With a wry smile, she stepped from Mulder's
arms and offered her hand, walking beside him to join the other
survivors where they huddled, a small group in the cool light of the
morning sun.

***

December 5, 2000
Epilog

The hills near Sedona, Arizona:

A hawk soared in the sky overhead, dragging its shadow across a
rattlesnake basking in the early morning sun.  Sensing a change in
light, the snake raised its head, tasted the air with its tongue, and
coiled its length.  With a twist, it slipped sideways through the
soft dirt, dragging its warmed body toward the shelter of a low bush.
Once there, it curled around a cool metallic object and settled down
for the day.

Heian Shrine--Kyoto, Japan:

A crescent moon washed the immaculate grounds with icy white light,
catching the long curving slope of the shrine's roof in relief as it
arced across the night sky.  Stars glittered, their tiny points of
light reflected from small puddles of water collected between paving
stones.  Cool moonlight glinted off a small silver pellet, caught at
one upturned edge of the roof.

The island of Mykonos, Greece:

Brilliant blue waters lapped against the white sand beach stretching
from headland to headland.  Gentle waves sighed up and down the shore,
catching on stones, leaving tufts of foam in their wake.  Rounded
stones rolled with the water, rumbling as one stone tumbled over
another.  With a melodic tinkle, two small metallic objects dropped
from the surf.

Amazon Basin, Brazil:

The lush tropical growth seethed with life.  Large brilliant birds
fluttered through a rainforest canopy that sheltered innumerable
things that crawled, slithered and burrowed their way through the
jungle.  Droplets from a late afternoon thunderstorm beaded along
the underside of branches, dripping from branch to leaf to branch,
slowly dropping toward the forest floor.   Nestled against a tree, a
bromeliad brimmed with rainwater, a silvery object floating in its
heart.

Banks of the Potomac River, near Washington DC:

A fat Canada Goose waddled through the reeds on the banks of the
river.  Pecking here and there at objects in the mud, she grumbled
softly, making gentle goose talk as she nosed her way into a marshy
area.  Belly deep in water, she tipped her head, looking at something
that sparkled wetly.  Pecked.  Swallowed.

Shaking her tail feathers with pleasure, she relaxed into the arms of
the river and paddled away.

**

END




AUTHOR'S END NOTE:  I realize that many of you may be unhappy with
my interpretation of the XF mythology (or simply that I had the
temerity to interpret it), the transformation of Scully's mother, or
the way I left the story.  However, I have something special for you:
a reset button.

Simply press here -->  [RESET]  <--and it will all go away.

You see?  Mulder and Scully are back in their basement office at the
FBI, solving X-Files, Scully still doubts the existence of Grays and
Mulder still dreams of them.  The Gunmen lurk in their little den,
suspicious of everything, while CSM smokes in the shadows, scheming.
Skinner still has those nasty little nanites (what *are* those things,
anyway) floating around in him and Krychek is off screwing everybody.
Mrs. Scully is busy with her garden club today so she can't be here
to say goodbye, but she asked me to thank you all for reading the
story.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:  Thanks to Pam for her masterful
beta-reading AGAIN, thanks for Neil Young for not prosecuting me
for the unauthorized use of his lyrics.



--
kate.rickman@mindspring.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com