Date: 26 Jan 1999 21:00:52 GMT
Subject: An Orwellian Death (7/12-end)


Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and Skinner don't belong to me.  They are
property of Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox.  I didn't make them up and I
don't own them.  

Archive: Not without my permission.  To gossamer: yes, but only if you
list it under the author name DS254.  

Category: Pure Case File

Rating: somewhere between a strong PG and a mild AA

Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate a plague that only seems to affect
those living in poverty or sorrow.  (It'll make sense when you read it.)

Warning: This is very depressing piece, having written it after watching
"The Killing Fields."  It also deals with some very contraversial issue,
one of them being poverty.  Very few people have actually been able to
discuss poverty without sounding self righteous and I'm not one of them. 
The way I handled that issue and a couple of others may be offensive to
some people.  

Author's Note: This version is revised but not by much.  If yo had read
the first few parts before, you don't have to read this again.  Just bear
in mind that I changed the native tongue of the girl in the beginning from
Choujong to Mandarin and the events of the first part of the story
happened three years *earlier* than the events in the second section.  I
should also add I don't know much  about bombs and medical procedures.  

Feedback: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!  I'll accept flames!!  (Of course, I'll
argue with you back but that could be fun too!)  

- - - - - - -

From dx515@FreeNet.Carleton.CA Sat Feb 27 14:32:14 1999
From: Houng Te <dx515@FreeNet.Carleton.CA>
New: An Orwellian Death (7/12)

Intro and Disclaimer in Part 1

 - - - - - - - 

An Orwellian Death (7/12)

The fingers of the approaching person were completely dark, like she had 
dipped them in Chinese ink.  She wore a torn rag over her small frame, 
ragged around her rounded belly.  The child wasn't pregnant or overfeed; 
on the contrary, she was malnourished, the bones above her abundant 
stomach protruding through the thin transparent skin.  She smelled of 
neglect and decay, like vomit and garbage.  Her hair was thin and 
tangled, crawling with lice and dirt.  She walked like an old woman, her 
feet slipping in the crevice of the muddied and polluted streets of her 
home.

If she had eyes, they would have been listless, dull, or empty.
 
But she didn't have eyes.  She didn't even have a face.  Like all those 
who visited Muchou's mind, she was faceless.  A rag doll no one wanted 
and threw away.
 
Muchou shook her head, trying to make her go away, but she stayed in her 
mind, the wind blowing her rags and hair around her.  She was so thin, 
emaciated, that one would think she would vanish in the breeze.
 
"Get away from me," Muchou pleaded with the silent figure.  "If you 
don't, you'll die."
 
But she stood there, her body emitting sorrow and poverty.  A victim of 
disease, violence, hunger.  She knew what pain was.  She had experienced 
it most of her life.  Perhaps all of it.
 
"Go away," Muchou begged, her voice rising.  "I don't want to kill you."

The girl took a step towards Muchou, but her knees were so weak, she 
fell onto the ground and laid there, struggling for air.  Breathing was
labourious for her.  
 
"No," Muchou cried, lifting her feet so she could run away from the 
girl, perhaps far enough that the girl disappeared from her peripheral 
view and was out of her mind.  But her legs wouldn't budge.  She 
couldn't move from her position.  She was trapped.  "Get up!" she 
yelled, panic rising in her chest.  "Get up and ran away from me!  Get 
out of my mind and save yourself!"
 
The girl attempted to stand up, one bony hand against the hard ground 
trying to push the weight of her wasted body up.  The bones of her arms 
shook as she raised her upper body off the ground.  She moved her knees 
underneath her chest for balance and slowly picked herself up.  
 
And she exploded.   
 
Muchou felt the force of the explosion against her body, causing her to 
stagger backwards and fall on her bottom.  Red, yellow, and orange 
filled her vision for a moment, and something sticky began to trickle 
down her hair and face.  She lifted a shaking a hand and touched her wet 
cheek.  When she brought her hand back, she saw it was covered with 
blood.  
 
Muchou woke up screaming.

- - - - - - - 

Scully felt slightly annoyed as she packed her clothes that afternoon. 
Her cynical, almost misanthropic (did she just call herself 
misanthropic?) attitude of the late surprised her a bit.  She wondered 
if she was tired of working with Mulder.  Maybe all those years of 
following his impossible quests and keeping him in line were finally 
catching up to her.  It would explain why she was so quick to refute 
everything he said now.
 
She snapped the suitcase closed and walked over to Mulder's hotel room.  
 
In the car, he had mentioned something about obtaining the girl's 
medical files.  Scully wondered what he meant by that.  She had managed 
to get his attention by touching his arm but when she asked why he 
wanted those files, he told her to forget about it.  But she knew he was 
thinking about the girl.  She couldn't tell why though.  
 
"Have you packed yet?" she asked when Mulder opened the door.
 
"I'm going to stay a few extra days, Scully.  Tell Kersh I'll pay for 
 the hotel bills."
 
Scully looked at him.  "What will you be doing to do here?"
 
"There's something I want to check out, that's all."
 
"Do you want to talk about it?"
 
"This is something I need to do on my own," Mulder told her.
 
Irritation was starting to show in Scully's expression.  "What do you 
want me to tell Kersh?  He wants us back in Washington tomorrow morning.  
Don't forget we have that Evion case in New York to work on."
 
Mulder sighed.  "The Evion Case can wait."  
 
Scully's irritation turned into exasperation.  "It's a kidnapping case, 
Mulder.  The first relevant case Kersh has given us since we started 
working with him.  He's finally giving us a chance to prove that we can 
work in cases more explicit than sifting through piles of manure and 
you're blowing it off so you can get the medical records of a girl who 
just suffered a common seizure in a parking lot.  What the hell is so 
important about her?"
 
"It's nothing," Mulder insisted, his tone of tone clearly aggravated.  
"Look, Scully, I just need you to stall Kersh on my behalf for a couple 
of days."
 
"A couple of days may be too late for the boy and his family," Scully 
pointed out, referring to the Evion kidnapping case.  

"Kersh already has two other agents working on it."

"They're not getting anywhere," Scully snapped.  "They need our help.  
If we're not in Washington by tomorrow morning, Kersh is going to assign 
someone else."  Mulder looked away as Scully continued to speak.  "And 
you know how hard I had to worked in order to convince Kersh to give us 
this case if this Orwellian Death scare turned out to be false.  I'm not 
willing to risk it."
 
Mulder turned to face her.  "I remember a time where you once said you 
were willing to put your job on the line for me."
 
/You bastard./
 
Scully's anger and shock was clear, as was Mulder's surprise and regret. 
 
Scully's voice shook when she spoke.  "I'm not willing to put my job on 
the line for some asinine quest that you won't tell me about."  
 
Perhaps it was the guilt he was feeling for turning an intimate moment 
they shared against her or the evident pain on Scully's face, maybe even 
a combination of the two, that made Mulder close his eyes and mutter, 
"you're right, Scully.  I'll start packing right now."
 
Scully nodded mutely, her face hard as stone, and turned to go to her 
own hotel room.  
 
Mulder shut the door softly after she left and started to pack.

 - - - - - -

Muchou Liang's scream startled everyone in the hospital room.  Her 
mother, sister, and the doctor dropped what they were doing and rushed 
over to her bedside.  The girl stopped screaming and opened her eyes 
when her mother reached down to hug her.  "Oh God," she whispered.
 
Her mother pulled away, her face drawn and frightened.  "Shemmasze?" she 
demanded, her hands gripping her daughter's shoulders.  
 
Muchou took a couple of deep breaths and said, in a shaky voice, "Mown."
 
Her sister translated the short dialogue to the doctor .
 
/What's the matter?/
 
/Dream./
 
Muchou looked at her sister.  "Ying-ying, what happened?" she said 
quietly in English, for they spoke English together.  She didn't ask her 
mother because that would only make the woman become more hysterical.
The death of seven children made the woman easily agitated when 
something  like this happened to her remaining children.  

"You had another seizure."
 
"Shit," Muchou whispered.  Her eyes widen.  "Christ, no."
 
"It must have been some nightmare," Ying-ying said.
 
"It was horrible," Muchou replied.  She was still breathing hard.  "Was 
I mumbling in my sleep?"
 
Ying-ying shook her head.  "You were sleeping like a log."
 
Muchou seemed to find peace in that.  She gave a faint smile.  "Good."  
Her eyes widened again.  "There was a man in the parking lot-"
 
"The one with the big nose?"
 
"Yes."  Muchou seemed anxious.  "Do you know who he was?"
 
"No, but his wife was a doctor and helped you while you were in the 
parking lot having your seizure."  
 
Muchou nodded, clearly disappointed that she couldn't get more 
information about the man.  She turned back to her confused mother and 
touched her hair.  "Meiyosze." 
 
/There is no problem now.  It's over./
 
Her mother relaxed and looked at Ying-ying.  Ying-ying shrugged.  The 
doctor spoke to them, asking them to leave the room because he wanted to 
check on Muchou.  
 
"Doctor?" Muchou asked.  
 
"Yes?"
 
Muchou looked so innocent.  Ying-ying was younger than she was, but she 
looked smaller.  Childish, even.  "Can I have a TV in my room?"

"Sure, but after I finish examining you."
 
"I would like to have it now."
 
The doctor was amused.  "Is there's something on you can't miss?"
 
Muchou shook her head lightly because her head throb with pain.  Her 
tongue and check hurt like hell so she suspected she had bitten them 
during the seizure.  "I would like to watch the news."
 
"The news?  That's unusual for a girl your age."
 
She smiled grimly.  "I just want to know if that was really a dream or 
not."
 
- - - - - - - 
 
Mulder didn't get to his apartment until it was past midnight.  He 
didn't bother turning on the lights as he made his way to the couch.  
The darkness was comforting.  He stretched himself on the couch and 
stared at the ceiling, thinking about what happened so far today.
 
He saw Samantha.   He was certain of that.  She was being experimented 
on.  The vision lasted for less than a second, but it was burned in his 
memory.  She looked like she was in a great deal lot of pain.
 

He wondered if that was a vision of the past or the present.  It had to 
be the past.  Samantha was dead.  She'd been dead for a long, long time.  
 
Then why the hell did that girl call up that image?  That puzzled Mulder 
the most.  The girl in the hospital was born after Samantha died.  Maybe 
she was born on the same day Samantha died.  He had investigated cases 
like that before, where that connection somehow opened a door to the 
dead person's past.  Who knows?  Mulder was horribly confused about the 
events of the day. 
   
The ring of the phone caused him to jump and he picked it after rolling 
his eyes at himself.    "Mulder."
 
"It's me.  I hope it isn't too late."
 
"Scully, I used to wake you up at three o'clock in the morning.  What is 
 it?"
 
"They found the Evion child."
 
"Was he alright?"
 
There was a pause.  "No."  

"I'm sorry to hear that."
 
"Kersh is letting us off the case."  Scully's disappointment was heavy.   
She was upset over the fact they missed out on a relevant project and 
that the child didn't make it out alright.  Scully was both a doctor and 
a FBI agent, two occupations that required the ability to detach oneself 
from those they were trying to save, but she had always been first and 
foremost a human being.  
 
Mentally, Mulder started to make plans for Oregon the next day but the 
pause on the other line told him Scully wasn't done yet.  He waited.  
 
"He also wants to see us tomorrow morning," his partner continued.  "To 
go over the Oregon case."
 
"Scully, we already know the man didn't die of Orwellian."
 
"I know, but with what happened in Haiti-"
 
Mulder sat up.  "What happened in Haiti"
 
"It's real this time, Mulder.  I saw the footage on the news.  The UN is
allowed to investigate the case this time."  Mulder knew the last sentence
was a reference to an mass explosion in Tunguska in mid 1997 that killed
about forty prisoner.  The UN had not been allowed access to the site.  "A
little girl exploded to pieces in Haiti," Scully continued.  "The
Orwellian Death is back."
 
"You can't be serious."  

"I know it's ironic, especially after after we just finished investigating
a false
claim..."  
 
"God."
 
She sighed.  "Anyways, Kersh wants us there to explain what we saw in 
Oregon.  He wants to be sure it wasn't the Orwellian."  
 
There was a moment of silence.   Mulder was trying to pocess everything 
that happened that day.  A mistaken cause of death, a vision of his 
sister, the girl's seizure in the hospital, and a bona fide Orwellian 
Death.  
 
The whole world was dancing mad.  
 
Mulder turned on the lamp light.  "Thanks for letting me know, Scully."
 
She sounded tired.  "Good night."  
 
"Scully."
 
"Yes?"
 
/About what I said in the hotel, I'm sorry./
 
"Nothing.  I'll see you in the morning."
 
She was silent for a moment and then hung up the phone.  
 
It took Mulder a while to put the phone down.  He still couldn't believe 
the Orwellian was back.  On the same day that he sees Samantha and some 
girl suffers a seizure in his presence as well.  
 
Remembering the girl, he made a phone call to the hospital Scully and 
himself had visited earlier that day.  After he gave the receptionist 
his name and badge number, he said, "there was a girl brought in today 
after she suffered a seizure in the parking lot.  It was in the 
afternoon."
 
"What's her name?"
 
Shit!  Mulder was not familiar with Chinese names and he forgot how to 
pronounce this one.  It started with an M and meant "Sorrow free" and 
that was all he could remember.  "I don't know, but she was admitted in 
today.  Her first name started with M, if that's any help."
 
He heard the flicking of papers and then the woman said, "Would it be 
Muchou Liang?"
 
Mulder was positive her name was Muchou.  "That would be her.  Would you 
be able to put me through to her or her doctor?"
 
"I'm afraid she was discharged an hour ago."

"Damn," Mulder said softly.  
 
"Please wait a minute," said the receptionist.  And Mulder heard 
someone, man's voice, talking to her in the background.  
 
Then the man picked up the phone.  "Is this Agent Mulder?"  
 
"Yes, it is," Mulder replied, a little taken back.

"This is Dr. Aimes.  I was treating Muchou.  She asked for you."

That really surprised Mulder.  "Really?"
 
"What a coincidence you were looking for her as well.  She didn't know 
your name, but she wanted to know who was the man she saw in the parking 
lot.  I got your names off Dr. Richter. I guess she wants to thank you 
and Agent Scully for helping out with her seizure."
 
Mulder had his doubts but he said, "Maybe she did."
 
"Mind you, she thinks Agent Scully is your wife."
 
"A lot of people do.  Listen, I was wondering if I could get Muchou's 
medical files.  Would that be possible?"
 
"I'm afraid not.  She doesn't live in the states.  Her grandmother's 
dying and she was visiting the old woman when she had the seizure.  
She's from Canada."
 
"Damn," Mulder said again. 
 
"But she did leave her aunt's address and told you to told me to give it 
you as soon as possible.  I don't know how long she's staying in 
Oregon."
 
Mulder wrote down the address and filed it in his wallet.  Then he 
thanked the doctor and hung up.  
 
He hoped like hell Scully forgave him for what he was about to do the 
next day.

- - - - - - 

End of Chapter Seven
Continued in Chapter Eight


An Orwellian Death (8/12)

Chapter Eight
 
- - - - - - -
 
Mulder phoned Scully while she was sitting on the couch outside of 
Kersh's office.  His secretary stopped what she was doing and looked at 
Scully.   Scully ignored her.
 
"Scully."
 
Mulder didn't even bother with the /it's me./  "Do you have the report 
we made yesterday about that man in Oregon with you?"
 
"Yes.  We're going to have to show it to Assistant Director Kersh.  
Mulder, where are you?"
 
"On a plane heading to Oregon."
 
For a moment, Scully was so shocked, she could not speak.  She stood up 
slowly, made a motion to Kersh's secretary with her hand to say she'd be 
a minute, and then left the room.  She fought to keep her voice even.  
"Mulder, you know Kersh is expecting both of us."
 
"It only takes one of us to explain the facts to him."  For a guy who 
carried his guilt like a cross, he sounded exceptionally unrepentant 
about what he was doing.  
 
"Goddamn you, Mulder," Scully hissed, "he's expecting both of us!  
You're already on thin ice with him.  Push him any further and you'll be 
out of the bureau."
 
"That's why I need you to cover for me," Mulder told her.

Scully couldn't believe what she was hearing.  "Exactly what do you want 
me to say to him?"
 
"Tell him I'm doing background checks."  
 
Scully felt the temperature rise between her temples.  "And who are you 
doing the background check on?"
 
"A girl named Muchou Liang."
 
"The one who had the seizure."  
 
Mulder sounded reluctant.  "Yes."  
 
Scully swallowed, the bones in the throat showing as she did.  "Can you 
tell me what's so important about her?"  
 
"I'll explain it the next time I see you.   I just need you to take the 
heat off me when you go in the see Kersh."  
 
"I don't see how I can, Mulder. He expects to see you in his office in a 
few minutes and he's not going to accept background check as an excuse, 
especially if it's unauthorized, which this is."  

Mulder must have missed the freedom and flexibility that came with 
working with the X Files.  Scully had to admit, she missed it too.  They 
had reported to Skinner in the past, but they were allowed to decide 
which cases had priority and how they were to go about those that did.  
It had been easier to take "unauthorized" trips to suspected alien 
beacon stations and hidden missiles silos then.  
 
"You've done this before with both Skinner and Kersh."
 
"And you think I like doing it?" Scully demanded.  "You're not there, 
Mulder.  Of course you're not there.  You're never there.  You have no 
idea how hard it is to have your superior tell you let them down.   Or 
how much it strains your self esteem to be told how irresponsible you're 
acting."  Scully didn't mean blurt out all this, but once she got 
started, she couldn't help herself.  After all, she prided herself on 
her precision and efficiency when it come to her work.  She worked hard 
to gain approval from her superior.   "I'm sick of covering up for you 
all the time.  I'm sick of being your glorified servant.  And it's 
harder to play the role when you won't tell me what the hell is going 
on."  
 
"Why do you really want to know what's the hell is going on?  So you can 
disprove everything I say and make me sound like a jackass?"
 
She couldn't believe him.  "Mulder, I never - "
 
"You do that all the time, Scully.  Do you have any idea how many times 
I put my faith in you to back me up when we approach Skinner or Kersh or 
someone on the sub committee?  And how many times I only had it thrown 
in face as a joke when you refute every goddamn thing I say?  Maybe I 
would stop treating you like the glorified servant as you so colourfully 
put it if you stop trying to make me look like a lunatic so you could 
look so fucking in control and sensible all the time!"
 
Scully stood perfectly still for a moment, waiting for the thunderclap 
of shock to pass her.  She was surprised at the tightness of her throat.   
She blinked.  "Do you really think that's what I'm trying to do?" she 
murmured.
 
Mulder must have heard the shock and disbelief in her voice.  The 
silence on his end of the phone was heavy. 
 
Scully was equally overwhelmed.  She jerked when she felt a tap on her 
shoulders.  
 
"Agent Scully."  It was Kersh's secretary.  "Assistant Director Kersh is 
ready to see you," she said.   Scully nodded mutely at the blond.  The 
secretary disappeared.  
 
Without a word, Scully reached up to the cell phone with her free hand 
and pressed the off button.   She held the phone in front of her for a 
moment, her expression completely blank, and then walked into Kersh's 
room.     
 
- -  - - - - -
 
The drive back to Ottawa was a long and cold one.  Muchou spent most of 
her time in the car looking mangas, anime magazines, and sharing her 
walkman with her sister.  They listened to Sarah MacLachlan, Hole, Our 
Lady Peace, and a variety of anime soundtrack and theme songs.
 
The indulgence in her anime obsession kept the leper from reappearing in 
Muchou's mind.  He had appeared shortly after her family had started 
their drive home that morning.  Her grandmother died a few hours before 
that and her parents felt it was time to head home.  
 
Muchou didn't know which country the leper came from.   His limbs looked 
like they were being eaten from inside out, his overall physique so 
repulsive she almost exploded him the moment he entered her mind.  
Instead, she opened a Tokyo Babylon manga and studied pictures in it.  
 
It would flabbergasted some people, as well outraged others, that 2D 
people maybe have been all Muchou needed to control the Orwellian 
plague.  
 
The leper appeared every time she put the manga down to look out the 
window, with less clarity and vividness.  By the time she exhausted all 
her mangas and magazines, the boy had disappeared.  
 
But he was still out there somewhere in the world.  She wondered if by 
pushing him out of her mind and ignoring him, she committed a crime that 
was equal to what the Orwellian would have done to him three years ago.  
The concept bothered her conscience, and she looked at her hands again.  
As usual, she saw the blood of the three hundred and eleven people she 
killed.  
 
Three hundred and eleven, not three hundred and twelve.  She had tried 
to save that girl in Haiti; she didn't kill her.   As much as her guilt 
ridden half wanted to, she couldn't blame herself for that particular 
death, even if it was her powers that made it possible.  But that wasn't 
going to stop her from drawing a picture for her.  Another hideous red, 
yellow, orange orgy of colours.  
 
It baffled her that the curse had returned.  She knew it had to do with 
that guy she saw at the hospital.  She got his name from the doctor: 
Agent Fox Mulder.  Beside wondering what kind of a name was Fox, she was 
curious about the girl she saw in her vision.  She knew he saw it too.  
The girl was probably related to him, a daughter, maybe.  She must have 
been dead, Muchou figured.  And he was feeling guilty for that.  She 
didn't know why.  She was hoping to talk to him.  
 
She suddenly had the urge to look through at the earlier artwork in her 
bag.  Count all the sheets.  She waited until they were safely in Ottawa 
to do so.  The pictures were spread out like a fan on her bedroom floor.  
Wearing an extra sweater because the Ottawa was currently ridiculously 
cold, she counted them in Chinese, and then counted them again.  And 
again.
 
She couldn't believe it.  One was missing.  
 
"Impossible," she whispered, and started to organize the pictures in 
piles of tens.  Although she carried the knapsack where ever she went, 
she never opened it up to remove anything.  But no matter how many 
times she counted them, she ended up with only three hundred and ten 
pictures.
 
After counting it about thirty times, she shoved all the pictures back 
in the bag, and then started on one for that girl in Haiti.  Her anger 
and frustration returned as she slashed the paper with her charcoals.  
She wrote "Sorry" with hard, desperate strokes, and then dated the 
picture on the back.  She put a hand to her eyes and silently told the 
girl she was sorry over and over again.  When she was finished, she 
looked at her hands again. They were stained with blood, and she 
wondered how she would atone for her sins.  Maybe she should join the 
Peace Corps or UNICEF or something with a dopey name after she finished 
university.  She hoped that would be enough to at least partially 
cleanse her hands.
 
For now, though, she was going to have to be satisfied with giving her 
lunch to that homeless man at the corner of her school.
 
- - - - - - - - -
 
It was funny how the phone conversation replayed itself over and over 
again in Mulder's head as he drove over to the Wong's residence.  The 
more he replayed it, the more pitiful it sounded and the worse he felt.  

He didn't know why he was torturing himself with it so much.  
 
/Do you really think that's what I'm trying to do?/
 
The disbelief in her voice was hard to take.  It wasn't that it sounded 
shocked as much as it sounded like she didn't want to believe it but 
had no choice.
 
The real sad thing was, Mulder really believed that at times it was
exactly what she was trying to do.  It stunned him that she didn't see it
herself.  Then again, he hadn't realized how hard it must have been for
her to cover up for him, to chase after him without knowing what she would
find 
when she caught up.  He had been treating her like his secretary.  
 
The thought made him want to kick himself.  
 
/Then why don't you fix it, you bastard?/
 
But all he could think about was his worthlessness and his selfishness.  
 
God.  
 
They really should have taken him instead.  

- - - - - - - - -
 
Muchou Liang's aunt, Li Wong was a hospitable lady, like all Chinese 
woman were.  She offered Mulder water and sweet and sour pork buns which 
he declined politely.  Her son Kelvin, Muchou's cousin, sat beside her, 
translating.  
 
"How well do you know Muchou?" Mulder asked.  
 
"Not too well," Kelvin told him.  "Yesterday was the first time we met 
her."
 
Mulder could already see he wasn't going to get very far.  "So you 
wouldn't know if she was epileptic?"
 
Kelvin asked his mother who said something in Chinese.  "We don't know."  
 
"She had a seizure once before.  You wouldn't know when, would you?"
 
Again, Kelvin turned to his mother.  Mrs. Wong shook her head.  "We 
don't communicate on a regular basis," he explained.
 
Mulder nodded.   "I understand."  When the was the last time he talked 
to his mother?  He had forgotten her birthday eight years in a row and 
she his in the last three.  "You wouldn't have her address would you?"
 
Mrs. Wong looked clearly agitated after Kelvin had asked her.  She 
looked at Mulder suspiciously and said something he couldn't understand.  
Kelvin translated: "She wants to see your badge again."
 
Mulder understood.  With all the reports about people pretending to be 
authorities and raping woman and breaking in houses, who would be?   And 
being an immigrant who found the country highly immoral and full of 
hidden dangers which a lenient justice system had no power over, Mulder 
knew taking out his badge and telling her that the information was 
needed would only scare her even more.  She was even sure why he wanted 
to find Muchou.  Child predator, she was probably thinking.  It wouldn't 
surprise Mulder if she wished she had never invited him in.  
 
"Tell her I don't mind," Mulder said to Kelvin, taking out his badge 
again, "and that it's better for her to remain cautious than 
trustworthy."   
 
One of these days, he was going to learn how to take his own advice.  
For a guy who's motto was "Trust No One", he spent an awful lot of time 
trusting the wrong people: Alex Krycek, John Roach, Diana Fowley.   No 
wonder the X Files were constantly being taken out of his hands.  
 
Mrs. Wong told her son to tell Mulder to wait a minute while she went up 
the stairs to get, what Mulder assumed, was Muchou's address.  
 
She returned with an envelope and bright sheet of red-orange paper.  She 
handed Mulder the envelope first.  His name was written in big block 
letters on the front.  There was a single sheet inside, and written on 
it, in a very neat, blockish, no nonsense handwriting, was the message:
 
"Mr. Mulder,
I'd knew you come because that girl means a lot to you.  I'm dying of 
curiosity here.  Who is she?
Muchou"
 
Beneath Muchou's name was  her Canadian address and phone number.  Mulder
folded the message and put it in his pocket.  
 
Mrs. Wong then presented the second sheet of paper to him, looking 
extremely embarrassed as she did.  

Kelvin explained, "she wants you to return something to Muchou.  She was 
curious about what was in Muchou's knapsack - we Chinese had absolutely 
no respect for other people's privacy so you'll have to excuse her - and 
she looked inside and took out a picture.  Muchou's suddenly entered the 
room so my mother had to zipper up the bag and stuff the picture out of 
sight.  She never got a chance to return it."
 
Mulder looked at the picture.  It was amazing.  It was of an explosion 
and staring at it, Mulder felt like he was at the epicentre.  He was 
surprised at the power the artist put in it.  "God," he said, marvelling 
at Muchou's talents.  He noticed the three characters at the top, 
written in black.  "Do you know what that means?"
 
"Doi bu chi," Kelvin read.  "Sorry."

Mulder nodded and turned it over.  It was dated on the back.  December 
2nd, 1996.  He wished he brought his briefcase.  He wasn't sure how he 
was going to take it back with him to his hotel room without wrinkling 
it.  
 
He didn't know why the date on the back was bothering him so much.  
 
"Were there any more of this pictures?" he asked.
 
Kelvin asked his mother and looked at her in disbelief when she gave a 
reply.  "Really?" he said in English.  He turned to Mulder.  "She said 
there was probably about six or seven hundred of them."  
 
"Thank you," Mulder said to Mrs. Wong.  "I'll be sure to return it to 
her."  
 
- -  - - - - - - 

End of Chapter Eight
Continued in Chapter Nine


Intro and Disclaimer in Part 1

- - - - - - -

Chapter Nine
 
Scully was sitting in on his couch in his apartment when Mulder arrived 
from Oregon.  She had her side to him, facing straight ahead, her 
hands resting loosely at her sides; she hadn't bothered to take off her 
trenchcoat.   There was a thin file lying on her lap which she seemed
oblivious to.

"What's that you got there?"  Mulder asked, closing the door behind him.  
He was surprised to see her, but doesn't show it.
 
Scully tilted her head down a little and played with the edge of the 
folder.  "It's Muchou Liang's medical files," she replied.  
 
He should have felt pleasantly surprised.   "Scully-"

She turned to look at him, her face completely impassive.
 
"I - " He stopped and looked at her.  Her expression was imperturbable, 
except the tight, rigid line of her mouth.   "I don't want to treat you 
like you like my glorified servant."
 
Her expression should have softened, the apathetic indifference in her 
eyes dissipitating into something warm and open.   But she remained 
aloof.   "Do you really think that was what I was trying to do?" she 
persisted.  
 
He could lie.  Tell her no, he didn't.   That she never did that and he 
couldn't see how he thought she did.  He could have lied, but he had a 
feeling that lying only encouraged history to repeat itself.   
"Sometimes," he admitted.  "Scully, if you're going to tell our 
superiors something different from what I'm going to say to them, can't 
you tell me that first so I don't look like an utter fool?"
 
His honesty surprised her.   She looked thoughtful.  

"I don't mean to treat you like a secretary," Mulder repeated.

"Will you tell me what's so important about the girl?" she queried.  

Mulder yielded, feeling foolish and exhausted for not doing it earlier.  
"I saw Samantha," he told her.  
 
Scully raised an eyebrow.  
 
"She was being experimented on.  There were tubes coming out of her 
chest and she was crying.  Muchou saw her at the exact time.  It was 
right before she had her seizure." 
 
"You don't know she saw Samantha," Scully told him.
 
"She did.  Her body flinched at the same time I saw Samantha, as if she 
was having a vision as well.  And there was something else.  I can't 
explain it, but I felt that we were connected somehow.  In our guilt.  I 
don't know who that girl was, but she feels the same guilt that I feel 
when I think about Samantha."
 
"Why would she feel the same guilt?" Scully asked.  
 
"I don't know."  
 
Scully didn't say anything.  Finally, she stood up and handed Mulder the 
folder.  
 
"How did you get it?" he asked.  
 
"I had a friend in medical school who moved to Canada after she got her 
degree.  We write to each other occasionally." Scully stood up as Mulder 
flipped through the records.  "Muchou was born in Ottawa, November 16th, 
1984.  She had never been checked into a hospital since her birth until 
November 3rd, 1996, when she had a seizure.  It was during her Sunday 
School class.  The CAT scan concluded that it wasn't epilepsy.  It was 
just a one time event."
 
"Until yesterday."  
 
Scully nodded.  
 
"Do they know what caused it?"
 
"I'm not sure, although she had a car accident before it.  She got hit 
by a car but was not badly injured.  She was well enough to refuse a 
medical check-up."
 
"Idiot," Mulder muttered.

Scully continued.  "I looked up her family medical files as well.  Her 
family were treated for trauma when they arrived to Canada in 1981."  
She took a small breath.  "They were refugees from the Cambodian Killing 
Fields."
 
Mulder was confused.  "I thought she was Chinese."
 
"She is," Scully told him.  "But there were apparently a lot of Chinese 
residing in Cambodia before the war.  That's where many of them ran for 
refuge during the Japanese Invasion."
 
Mulder nodded.  "So she was born after the war."
 
"She and her younger sister, Ying-Ying."
 
 "I remember her," Mulder said.   "Did she have other brothers and 
sisters?"  
 
"Do you want the names of the dead ones as well?"
 
He stared at her.  "What?"
 
Scully sighed.  "Seven of her older brothers and sisters died during the 
killing fields.  Only one sister survived."
 
"God," said Mulder softly.  Comprehension flickered in his hazel eyes.  
"Muchou's guilt," he muttered.
 
Scully looked at him.  
 
"She's suffering from survival guilt because she never went through the 
war."  He talked slowly, his voice uncertain.  "That's why she saw 
Samantha when we passed each other.  We share that link."
 
"Survivor's guilt?" She sounded skeptical.  
 
His shoulder's began to sag.  "Sounds a little far-fetched, doesn't it?" 
he asked.  Scully nodded her head.  Mulder thought about it.  "I 
wondered if her seizure had anyting to do with it?"
 
Scully at the medical files.  "According to this, her father had slapped 
her on the head before they left for Oregon.  Her mother said he smacked 
her pretty hard.  The doctors believe that that could have triggered the 
seizure."  She put the file down on the couch.  "You're really 
interested in her, aren't you?"
 
"She saw Samantha," Mulder told her.
 
"Mulder, Samantha's dead," Scully said pointedly, but her voice was 
lower than usual, her way of conveying compassion.  Mulder didn't flinch 
or show any emotions.  "Whatever this girl knows, it's not going to 
bring your sister back."
 
"Still, I can't help but think she's part of a bigger puzzle," Mulder 
mused.  "There's something uncanny and significant about her."  He 
thought about the picture he carried in his briefcase.  "Wait."
 
Scully watched him dig into his briefcase and pulled out the artwork.  
"Look at this, Scully."   
 
She did, and was immediately taken back by how much power the artist put 
in the picture.  "Oh my God," she said, gingerly resting a fingertip on 
the surface.  The chalk caught onto her fingernail.  "This is amazing.  
Did she draw this?"
 
Mulder nodded.  "Look at the date," he added, turning the picture.
 
"That's about month after she had her first seizure."

"Exactly."  

Scully shook her head.  "I don't understand what you're trying to say."  

"I can't put my finger on it either.  But there's something about that 
girl and this picture and the date on the back.   I can't explain it.  
It's like pieces of the past that I'm trying to piece together.  The 
picture reminds me of something but I don't know what."  
 
Scully's eyes were like blue glass as she scruntinized the explosion the 
artwork was protraying.  She spoke so softly that Mulder barely heard 
her.  "The Orwellian Death," she whispered.
 
As soon as she said it, Mulder knew it was true.  The picture had a 
distinct Orwellian feel to it.  It marked that plague that same way the 
swatiska marked the Nazis.  "Christ," he said.  
 
"The first reported Orwellian Death was in early December, 1996," Scully 
noted.  
 
"There were other pictures," Mulder said, and proceeded to tell Scully 
about his trip to Oregon.  "Maybe each picture symbolized the death of a 
 victim.  I talked to her aunt.  She said there were were six or seven 
hundred of them."
 
Scully shook her head.  "There were only three hundred and fifty cases 
reported."
 
"I don't think her aunt sat down and actually count them," Mulder 
protested.  "She probably just looked at the pile of the paper and 
thought there was this ridiculouly huge number.  It's a known fact that 
correctly estimating the number of objects in a container or just in 
pile becomes more difficult when the numbers of objects increase.  Three 
hundred and fifty paper can pretty much look like six or seven hundred 
to some people."
 
"Mulder-"
 
"Or maybe there were reported cases we didn't know about.  The Orwellian 
Death is a random death.  It could have happen to someone living alone
on a deserted island.  To some people, that's poverty.  We woudn't have
known if that 
person died or not."
 
Scully manage to cut in.  "You're saying that a fourteen-year-old - no, 
I'm sorry, she was twelve at the time, was responsible for one of the 
deadliest and most bizarre plague ever to grace the history of 
civilization."
 
"It's a theory," he admitted.
 
"How?" she demanded.  "Why?"
 
"The how I'm not sure of."  Mulder picked up the medical file.  "The why 
I may have an explanation.  If she is suffering from Survivor's Guilt 
about what happened to her family, wouldn't it make sense that she was 
trying to hit out at the ugly bits of her family's lifestory and the 
shame she feels by destroying what she sees as the cause of it all?"
 
"If that's true, then why not destoy war or starvation or the things 
that cause poverty?  I don't see what killing the people suffering from 
those afflictions will solve."
 
"But you can't destroy war," Mulder told her.  "It's human nature to 
hurt one another .  You can't destroy starvation.  We have enough food 
to feed everyone in the world but a lot of children still go to bed 
hungry.   The most logical method to get rid of poverty is to make 
enough resources to go around - which we have - and to share it with
everybody, which we can't.   She probably thinks the only way to get rid 
of poverty and war is to kill everyone who's suffering from it."
 
"That still isn't going to solve anything.  Even we if get rid of all 
the poor people in society, more will come eventually.  Like you said, 
it's human nature.  Unless we shift human nature so everyone lives in a 
society like "Brave New World", greed and bad luck will eventually rule 
everything and poverty will commence once again."  She paused to think, 
her eyebrows knitted in though.  "And who's even to say what is poverty?  
So someone is lacking a house and some nice clothes.  Does that mean 
they're living in destitude?  What if they don't need it?  What about 
those people who are beaten up and raped and tortured but  live in a 
mansion with servants and bulters and valors?  Are they considered part 
of the happy and rich?"
 
"Prisoners were killed in jailed," Mulder pointed out.  "They had food 
and water and clothes.  I think what she is trying to do is kill all 
those living in some state of sorrow."
 
/Her names means Free of Sorrow.  It's a cursed name./
 
"As if they'll be living in sorrow for the rest of their days.  As if 
they're incapable of being happy."  Scully thought about what she said.  
"Does she think these people are only capable of being poor?  That they 
can't help themselves?  Jesus, that's even more self righteous than you 
are."  
 
The last remark made Mulder smile.  "Happy to know you think so kindly 
of me, Scully."
 
Her own smile was grim and forced.  "Always, Mulder."  She stopped 
herself.  "But everyone I just said only applies to the situation if the 
girl really is responsible for the Orwellian Death."
 
There was that expression on Mulder's face that clearly said, "wait a 
minute."  Scully knew it well.  He turned back to the medical records.  
"The girl woke up at 4:56 PM after she had her seizure.  What time did 
that other girl in Haiti explode?"
 
Scully went to check her files while Mulder found an atlas in his 
bookshelf.  They compared the time Muchou woke up in Oregon from her 
seizure and the time the girl in Haiti exploded.  They were roughtly 
fifteen minutes within each other.   
 
"It's just a coincidence," Scully insisted.
 
Mulder shook his head.  "I think the seizure triggered her ability to 
kill those people."  He thought about Samantha.  "I think she has 
visions."
 
"Mulder-"

"Those pictures she drew.  Remember Gerald Shnauz?  The photograph he 
left behind showed a piece of his mind.  I think Muchou's pictures work 
the same way."
 
"Mulder, wait," Scully said, holding her hand up to slow him down.  "You 
have no hard evidence to prove your theory.  All you have are a series of
disconnection coincidence.  It's impossible for a human being to control 
a plague.  God, if that was possible..." She shuddered, thinking about 
how diastrous it would be if Mulder's theory prove to be correct and the 
girl fell into the wrong hands.  "Christ, she would be even more 
efficient than any biowarfare any government can come up with."  
 
Mulder was staring to feel sick.  
 
Scully stopped herself again.  "But like I said, that's only if she was 
the cause of the Orwellian and that's impossible.  It's pure science 
fiction."  Scully added carefully, "I'm not saying that to spite you or 
make you look like a fool."   
 
"I know that," Mulder said honestly, a little embarrassed.   "You don't 
have to tell me that again."  

There was a moment of silence where Scully played with the ends of her 
sleeves and Mulder tucked the picture into his drawers. 
 
The trill of the phone made them both start.  They smiled tightly at 
each and Mulder picked up his cell phone.   The phonecall was long 
distance, a call collect and Mulder accepted it.   "Mulder."  
 
"Uh, hi,"  The voice on the end was uncertain and unfamiliar.  It was a 
female voice, thick and accented, and very low and harsh.  It sounded 
like it belong to someone who was about thirty or so.  "This is Muchou."
 
Mulder nearly dropped the phone in his excitement.  He motioned for Scully 
to stand next to him as he held the phone between their ears.  "Really?  
We were just talking about you."  Scully gaped at him.  
 
"I guess the /we/ would be you and your partner," Muchou replied.  "I 
got your message on the answering machine.  Sorry for taking so long to 
get back.  The drive from Oregon to Ottawa was long."

"I understand," Mulder said.  
 
"Um," the girl sounded very comfortable from the other end.  "Sorry for 
inarticulation.  I'm starting to feel dizzy."
 
/The Survivor's Guilt./
 
Mulder made a face in his disappointment.  Scully took over the 
situation by taking the phone from him and indicating to him with her 
hands to sit on the couch while she moved to the other end of e room.  
"Are you feeling better?" Scully asked.
 
"Yes."  
 
Scully made arrangements with her over the phone to see her in person.  
The next day was a Sunday so Muchou agreed to seem them in the 
afternoon. Scully hung up the phone.  
 
"So we're going to Canada," Mulder said when Scully handed his cell 
phone to him.
 
"You can come along if you want," Scully told him, "but you're not 
coming with me to see Muchou."
 
"You're kidding."
 
Scully was serious.  "I'm not.  I can't risk her having another seizure 
if you're there."  
 
Mulder knew she was right.  
 
She touched his hair, feeling his disappointment.  "I'll tell you what 
she said about Samantha."
 
He looked at her and asked, "do you believe I saw Samantha?"
 
She nodded her head.  "I do."  
 
"I forgot to ask," Mulder went on.  "What happened with Kersh?"
 
Scully's expression harden a little.  She brought her hand back to her 
sides.  "He want to see you in his office first thing Monday morning.  I 
don't think it's going to be serious, but nevertheless, he wants to know 
what's going on."  She clenched one hand.  "I didn't even bother taking 
the heat off you."
 
He didn't blame her.  "I deserved it."  
 
Her next remark surprised him.   "I don't want your guilt, Mulder."  
 
He remained silent.  
 
Scully's eyes were sad.  "I wish you told me what happened."  
 
Next time, he promised to himself.  He watched Scully walk to the door 
and turn the door handle.  She stopped halfway and looked at him.   
"Despite everything that happened to her," she said, "Samantha was very 
lucky to have you as an older brother."
 
 - - - - - - - - - -

End of Chapter Nine
Continue in Chapter Ten


Intro and Disclaimer in Part 1

- - - - - -

Chapter Ten

"BABY!"  
 
Doris Li  ran up to the chubby two year boy and scooped him 
up, pulling into a tight embrace.  "Oh, he's so cute!" she gushed, 
hugging him harder.  "He's such a cute widdle baby and I just want to 
squeeze him until bones crack and his heads pops off and blood gushes 
everywhere and He's so  CUUUTE!!"
 
Muchou looked at Ida who looked at Ying-ying who was staring at Doris with 
wide eyed amazement.
 
"He's only pint size!" Doris gushed.  "How cute!  He's even shorter than 
I am!"
 
"And we don't see that everyday, now do we?" asked Muchou archly.
 
Ying-ying and Ida snickered.  Doris was the shortest of them all.  She 
made a face at them.  "Shut up!" she snapped.  "Hey, why isn't he 
talking?  He was babbling a lot before."
 
"He can't breathe," Ying-ying replied dryly.  
 
Doris let go of the toddler, who immediately started to gasp for air and 
scream.  He ran out of the room screaming "Mommy!"  
 
The girls cracked up.  "Jiejie is going to kill us!" Ying-ying laughed.  
Jiejie meant older sister.  The boy was their nephew.  
 
"Who cares?" Muchou asked.  She little affection for her older sister 
and her nephew.  
 
"You certainly like babies," Ying-ying said to Doris.  They were having 
a sleep over in Muchou's place, which was a rarity.  Her parents didn't 
allow their daughters many social activities.  
 
"They're so cute!" Doris gushed.  Cute was her favourite word.  
 
 "Planning on having any?" Ida asked.
 
"I want a dozen," Doris admitted.
 
"I thought you said sex was disgusting," Ida pointed out.
 
Doris cringed.  She cringed whenever anyone said "sex."   "It is."  

"How do you think how babies are made?" 

"Ever heard of adoption?" Doris countered.  "And I don't want to go near 
boys!  They're revolting.  Remember what happened in the boy's 
washroom?"
 
They girls looked at each and made a face.  They all went to the same 
high school, and in the past week, the boy's washroom had been seriously 
vandalized.

"How hard it is to shit in the toilet?" Ida demanded.  "I can't believe 
they got shit all over the place.  As if stuffing socks in the toilet 
wasn't bad enough."  

"I didn't think spraying a hose could be so difficult," Muchou remarked, 
which of course caused Doris to turn a bright shade of tomato red.  

"Does a guy have an erection when they're peeing?" Ying-ying suddenly 
asked.  She was always curious about that.
 
Muchou stared at her sister.  "Of course not!" she said.  "They have to 
hold it with their hands."
 
"Is that considered masturbation?"  
 
"Will you guys shut up!?" Doris snapped.  Her face was turning from 
green to red.  
 
Ida grinned.  "I'm going to make it the mission of my life," she 
announced, "to get Doris to say `sex' without blushing."  

Doris buried her face her in knee, pressing her hands closer to her 
ears.
 
"On the count of three everyone," Ying-ying sang.  "One two three-"

"SEX!"
 
Doris visibly tried to disappear through the floor beneath them.  
 
Ying-ying laughed rolled off the bed.  "Let's play with the Ouija 
board!" she suggested.
 
Ida and Doris were enthusiastic about the idea.  Muchou stopped laughing 
and stared at her sister.  Ying-ying didn't understand it.  There was a 
real fear in her sister's eyes.   "Let's not," Muchou said quietly.   
"It's not good to fool around with the spirits.  That's what the Bible 
said."  
 
"But you stopped being a Christian three years ago," Ying-ying 
protested.  "And it's not like we're going to call the devil or 
anything."  
 
Ida looked interested.  "Why don't we?" 

Muchou laughed nervously.  "That's not a good idea," she said, certain 
that her voice was an octave higher than it was a minute ago.  "Why 
don't we watch some anime?"
 
"Ida and Doris already saw all our anime tapes," Ying-ying replied.  
"Except for Escaflowne and that's hard for non otakus to watch.  It's 
too philosophical."
 
"It's my favourite," Muchou pointed out, swallowing thickly.  "And we 
threw our old Ouija board out."
 
"I can make a new one," Doris volunteered.  She walked over the table 
and pulled out a sheet of paper.  "Somebody make a pointer."
 
"I'll do it!" Ida offered.  The Cantonese girl went off to rip another 
scrap piece of paper.  
 
Muchou's chest felt like it full of water.  Heavy.  Her head felt heavy 
as well.  It also felt light, like it was going to float off her neck.  
She didn't want to do this.  She licked her lips.  "I - I don't think 
this is a good idea," she said quietly.
 
Ying-ying sensed her sister's uneasiness.  "You can leave if you want," 
she said, concerned.

Muchou was shaking.  Ying-ying could have sworn she was staring to 
perspire.  "Sure," Muchou said weakly.  "I'll leave."

"You really don't like the Ouija Board, do you?" Doris asked from the 
table.  She had finished the board, having written letters and numbers on 
a sheet of paper with "Yes" and "No" on the bottom.
 
"I heard a lot of horror stories about them," Muchou explained, forcing 
a high pitched giggle that made her nerves go on edge.  
 
"They're bullshit," Ida said boldly.  But she was the first to cry out 
when the planchette flew out of her hand and headed for the homemade 
board.  
 
Muchou felt the world collapse from under her, sending her flailing down 
a bottomless abyss.  She wanted to turn back and run out of the door, 
screaming.  But her feet move forward without her acquiescence and she 
found herself at the edge of the desk, watching in disbelief as the 
planchette moved along the paper by an invisible hand.  She could feel 
her friends' and sister's horror as the pointer spelled out its message.  

/M/    /U/    /C/
 
Muchou grabbed the makeshift Ouija board and turned it on its front.  
Her hands twitched when they come in contact with the paper.  She felt 
life force in paper; it was throbbing against her palms.  "Ying-ying," 
she ordered, her voice so flat it was almost toneless.  Mad.  It made 
her friends tremble and her sister shudder.  "I want you to take Doris 
and Ida downstairs to the living room.  Put on Escaflowne for them to 
watch.  Now."
 
Ying-ying nodded, and Doris and Ida followed her out of the room.  They 
were all clearly frightened.  

Muchou waited until she heard Ying-ying turn the TV on.  Then she turned 
the sheet over.  "Okay you bastard," she whispered.  "Tell me what is it 
that you want." 

She watched the planchette move, every letter causing her stomach to 
lurch and her mouth to go dry.  Muchou was never more afraid in her life 
than she was then.  She could feel Him next to her, asking to be invited 
into her body.  It made her flesh break out in goose bumps.  

She read his message.
 
/YOU ARE OF NO USE TO ME ANYMORE./
 
The pointer stopped moving and the life force left the room.  Muchou 
stood there for a moment, alone, scared, horribly frightened.  She was
afraid to move,
as if the slightest flinch might make the monster return  Finally, she
reached forward and grabbed the Ouija board, tore in half, and then half
again and again and again, until the floor was covered with tiny little
bits of paper.  
 
Tiny tiny bits, like the remains of the victims of the Orwellian Death.
 

Her hand were shaking when she was done.  Shaking so hard she had 
trouble turning the doorknob.  Her legs felt like they were locked in 
position.  Lifting them to walk was an ordeal and when she sat her foot 
back down on the floor, she was afraid that the thumping noise would 
bring Him back.
 
She wanted to run outside and scream out her frustrations and fear.  She 
wanted to run to her mother and sob in her arms.  But she took a deep 
breath and made her way downstairs to join her friends and sister. She 
thought she heard the devil laughing the entire way down.  
 
- - - - - - - - 

End of Chapter Ten
Continued in Chapter Eleven


Remember the warning about this story being offensive?  I'm not saying
this chapter is offensive, but it probably will make someone's blood boil.  

Intro and Disclaimer in Part 1

- - - - - - -

Chapter Eleven

 
"Where do you want me to start?"
 
The room they were sitting in was very cold.  The heat was turned up, the 
window securely closed.   The wan autumn sunlight infiltrated the windows 
in pale yellow rays but its presence only made the room colder, not 
warmer.  Scully kept her trenchcoat and gloves on.  Muchou wore a heavy 
cardigan sweater over her crisp white blouse.  They were sitting by 
Muchou's table, facing each other.  
 
Scully handed Muchou her picture back.  The girl looked at it with 
fascination, as if she wasn't the artist and had never saw it before.  
 
"Mulder thinks you're responsible for the Orwellian Death," Scully told 
her.  
 
Muchou put the picture down.   "Mulder," she repeated.  Her voice was 
too low and too old for someone who had a face of an eight years old.  
"Your partner."
 
"Yes."
 
"Why isn't he here?"
 
Scully explained the problem of bringing two guilt complexes together.  
Mulder was probably in the hotel room touching up on some background 
checks.  
 
"I understand," Muchou said.  "So you know about the girl we saw?"
 
Scully nodded.    "Yes."  

"Do you know who she is?"

One ice maiden to another: "It was his sister.  She was abducted when he 
was eleven.  We found her body a couple months ago."  
 
Muchou felt a weird sense of closure.  "That explains why I felt his 
survival guilt when I approached him in the parking lot.   Tell him I'm 
sorry."  
 
What she really wanted to say, though, was, I want you to thank that 
bozo partner of yours and his vexatious guilt complex for causing me to 
have a seizure and suffer through this Orwellian hell again.   
 
"Her death must have been hard on him," the girl added.  
 
Scully's expression softened.  "I'm sorry about your family," she said.
 
The response was purely a knee-jerk reflex.  "It happened a long time 
ago.  I wasn't born then."
 
"But you suffered the guilt."  
 
It was a subject that the girl didn't want to dwell on.  "Which lead to 
the Orwellian Death."
 
It was more horror than awe that showed in Scully's eyes.  "Did you 
really start it?"  
 
Muchou broke her glance off Scully's face and shifted it to her collar 
bone.  "That cross," she said.  "Are you Christian?"
 
The cross now had an added weight on Scully's skin.  She felt the 
coolness of the metal.  She touched it, feeling the sharp ninety degree 
angles piece her fingertips.  "It was a gift from my mother," Scully 
replied.  
 
"They usually are," the former killer stated.  "I guess that means you 
don't go to church."

Scully stared at her.  "Do you?"
 
Muchou nodded.  "Yeah, that's where it started."
 
"Your seizure."
 
"I saw the faceless people after that."

"Faceless people?"
 
Starving, being beaten, eating garbage, being raped, begging for food."  
The voice was oddly toneless.  She shrugged.  Paused for a bit.  "I 
thought God gave the images to me.  As a test.  It said in the Bible 
that God will test you.  I thought he was testing me.  But the Bible 
said he wouldn't give you more than you could handle.  I couldn't handle 
that."  
 
"The images?"  
 
The killer showed emotion.   "It drove me crazy.   Every day, I saw 
them.  Even when I was asleep, they were in my dreams.  Whenever I ate, 
I'd see children, thin as skeleton, eating dirt and grass because they 
were so hungry.  Whenever I watched TV, I'd see prisoners being tortured 
and beaten.  I'd be on the bus and I'll suddenly see people killing each 
other in wars and air raids."  Her voice dropped and trailed.  "I used 
to think of them as my brothers and sisters.  The ones who didn't 
survive the killing field."

Scully could barely hear the last two words.   

/Killing fields./
 
Scully was horrified by how deep the scars of that war penetrated 
through the family.  Muchou's parents and older sister would have 
obviously been traumatized since they lived through it, but Muchou had 
not even been born at the time.  Nevertheless, the war marked her so 
severely that anything she encounter in life she immediately associated 
with her dead siblings.  

"How-" Scully licked her lips, allowing her composure to slip a little.  
"How did you -"
 
"I made a deal with the devil," Muchou said calmly.  "After seeing those 
faceless people for a month, I started to go insane.  I kept praying to 
God to get rid of them, but He didn't.  So I had this thought about 
taking all those people in my mind, all the destitute and impoverished 
people in the world into one spot and bombing them with a nuclear weapon 
or something."  She gave a wan smile at the suggestion.   It vanished a 
second later.  "The devil heard me.  And we made this deal that he would 
kill all those people in my mind if I would give him my soul." 
 
Scully shook her head.  "That's not what I meant," she said.  She looked 
at the girl, surprised at how someone with the round, fresh face of an 
eight-year-old could have been responsible for such an atrocity.  "How 
could you do such a thing and not feel any guilt or compassion for these 
people?  For their families, the people around them..."
 
Muchou looked at Scully with new respect.  "You're a very moralistic 
person," she remarked.   "You don't care how I killed those people, do 
you?"
 
"It doesn't make much of a difference to me," Scully said.   
 
/I know the truth, Mulder.  Now what I want are the answers./

Muchou looked away.   "It's easier to kill them when they're faceless," 
she said.  
 
"But they had faces," Scully told her.  "They had personalities and 
habits and routines and families."
 
The young girl's voice was nonchalant.   "I only saw them as sufferers."
 
The urge to slap her was immense, but not as immense as the sadness 
Scully felt at how blind the girl was.  "They're more than just 
sufferers," Scully said, her tone of voice low and firm.  "They were 
human beings with their own opinions and their own thoughts and ideas.  
They may have been in desperate situation that we would call unbearable 
but you can't underestimate their ability to endure and live through it.
 
"A suffering person has at least the same chance to be happy, sad or 
suicidal on a given day as a rich person does.  They deserve a chance to 
have a turnover in their situation.   Maybe all those homeless people 
you killed would have found a job a later and be living fairly well off 
by now.  No one knows what the future holds and it's unfair to take that 
future away from those people."  
 
"Like my brothers and sisters," Mochou said softly.  
 
Scully waited her out.  
 
Muchou looked at Scully again and the agent suddenly felt a twinge of 
guilt for the harsh manner she had been speaking in.  The girl looked 
barely old enough to cross the street on her own.  Scully felt like she 
just committed verbal child abuse.  

"If only they hung on a little longer," Muchou added slowly, and Scully 
noticed for the first time, the white strands of hair in her braids, the 
lines around her mouth and the crowfeet beside her eyes.  
 
Scully looked at her, her expression hard and compassionate at the same 
time.  "You already knew that were you're wrong, didn't you?"

Muchou shrugged.   Today's way of saying yes among the teenagers.  "I 
guess I always knew."
 
"Then how could you-"
 
"I didn't kill them out of pity," Muchou told her, her voice, expression 
and eyes lacking of any emotions.  
 
Scully stared and then remembered.
 
/She is a killer./
 
She wore a prim pleaded skirt and pulled her hair back in two perfect 
tight braids.  She was small and modest, her hands clasped neatly in her 
lap.  A child with bright dark eyes and a wide mouth that often twisted 
into a rueful grin.  
 
She was a killer.  A monster in disguise.

"I convinced myself that I killed them out of pity, that I was sparing 
them from a life of pain and suffering and hunger."   She held Scully's 
eyes.  "But I really killing them to get them out of my head.  To stop 
them from visiting my mind all the time.  From reminding me of my dead 
brothers and sisters and making me guilty.  I killed them out of guilt, 
not pity.  I killed them so I wouldn't have to feel bad about living a 
life they were deprived off."
 
The guilt settled in them.  It was fascinating to watch it sink through 
her facial features in waves.  Scully marvelled at the transformation.   

Muchou looked away again, this time looking at her hands.  She saw a 
scab and started to pick at it.
 
"You shouldn't do that," Scully advised weakly.  
 
"I did it three hundred and eleven times three years ago," Muchou 
told her.
 
Scully felt sick.   That was what the victims of the Orwellian Death 
were to her three years ago.  "You killed three hundred and eleven 
people."  

"Three and twelve if you include that girl in Haiti," Muchou corrected.  
She succeeded in pulling the scab off   She was surprised when the blood 
from the wound spilled all over her hand, drenching it in the sticky red 
liquid.

She panicked, and held her up hand up for Scully to see.  "My hand," she 
said in amazement.  "It's bleeding."
 
Scully peered at it.   "It's nothing a band-aid can't handled," she
insisted, unnerved by the fear and astonishment in Muchou's eyes.   

Muchou looked at her hand.  The blood was running down the length of her 
arm, staining the sleeves of her blouse.  She smiled at the Scully, who 
handed her a Kleenex.  "I'm sure you're right," she said.  "Sorry for 
bothering you."  
 
Scully was unconvinced.  "Are you sure you're alright?"  
 
Muchou put her hands down, clasping them together.  They both felt dry 
and clean.  But when she looked down again, she saw blood.  It was 
leaking through the Kleenex she pressed to the back of her hands and was 
running off the tips of her fingertips and staining the  fabric of her 
blue-green skirt.  
 
"I'm fine," Muchou told her, and it her turn to be startled when she saw 
the agent react to the comment.  It was strange for Scully to have 
someone else say her keyline in the exact manner and tone she had said 
it so many times in the past.  
 
Scully picked up from where she left off.  "You killed three hundred and 
twelve people."  
 
Muchou nodded.  
 
Scully was confused.  "There were three hundred and fifty reported 
cases."

"The prisoners in Tunguska did not die by the Orwellian Death," Muchou 
explained.  "I don't know who killed them, maybe it was the warden or 
the government or somebody else, but the Death provided those people 
with the perfect scapegoat.  The last person died in December of 1996."
 
"Jesus," Scully whispered, realizing how evil the death was.  She 
 remembering Mulder saying that they were experimenting on people in 
Tunguska.  Did the Consortium use the Orwellian Death as a way to hide 
the experiments?  

These people didn't even need Muchou to carry out their plans for them.  
Scully thought about ethnic cleansing, peacekeeping scandals, apartheid; 
the possibilities to use the Orwellian Death as a scapegoat was endless.  
Those United Nations only had so much power.  They couldn't force a 
country to let them investigate the massacres.  The Orwellian Death 
could be an efficient tool for wiping out whole nations.  

"Oh my god."  Scully was mortified.  "What did you start?"

Muchou bowed her head and remained silent.   

"And you killed those people because they were inconvenient to you?"  

"Pretty much," Muchou answered.  "The world back then as I saw it was 
filled with pain and suffering or wealth and opportunities and the two 
never met.  I had some pretty demeaning ideals of the world back then.  
I used to get mad at the rich people for not helping out with the poor 
and I would get mad at the poor for reproducing because I never saw the 
point of having kids if they were going to die of starvation before they 
were five."  
 
/Who would have guess those hunger statistic could have backfired?/
 
Scully swallowed her disgust.   

"I was screwed up back then," Muchou admitted.  She paused to think 
about  it.  "I guess I haven't changed much.  I don't see why people who abuse
child would have children.  My aunt in Toronto keeps telling me I'll 
have a dozen kids when I'm older and I told her that if I have one, I 
would starve it and strangle it and crucify it to her kitchen door."
 
"Christ," Scully said, clearly repulsed.  
 
"Why does everyone think that the moment you have a child, you turn into 
this selfless, child centre, loving person?  Are they so blind that they 
can't see all those reports about abused children?  Anyway, I figured 
the best thing an abusive person could do their children is to not have 
them, which is what I'm doing."  
 
She tucked a loose moist strand of black hair behind one ear.  When she 
spoke, she sounded distant, like she was talking to herself.  

"There was this family who lived next to us when we lived in one of 
those government housing program.  They had a two year boy who they kept 
beating the shit out every night.  I would lie in bed and hear him 
scream.  It was awful.  He sounded like a pig going to the slaughter 
house.  I heard them hitting him with whatever they hit him with and 
every time I heard the whack, my heart would leap into my throat and 
would stay there until they stopped beating him and he stopped 
screaming.  And that would go on for hours.  As long as he kept 
screaming, they kept hitting him, so I figured they stopped hitting him 
when he black out because that's the only time he would be able to stop 
screaming."
 
She spoke faster with every word, the pitch varying in her voice as the 
memory became more vivid. 

"I used to listen to him scream and wished I could somehow go through 
the wall and kill him myself.  I guess my anger was misdirected and I 
should have wanted to kill the parents, but he was doing the screaming.  
I used to wish I could explode him.  Have him blow up into a million 
pieces when his parents were in the middle of beating him so he would 
stop screaming and give me some rest and his parents would have 
nightmares about beating him and him exploding.  After that, I start 
mentally exploding every abused and homeless and starving person I saw, 
especially those on those world vision commercials."  She shrugged.  "I 
was only six or seven years old.   I guess that's where my fantasy about 
exploding people came from."  
 
Scully could only listen mutely as the Oriental girl laid out a fraction 
of her autobiography.  There was something about the way she spoke that 
made Scully believe she had practised it in her mind a million times 
before.  It was almost as if she had dreamed of having this conversation 
with a psychiatrist or a news reporter after being forced to keep her 
awful secret locked inside for three years.  
 
"I can understand abusive parents though," Muchou continued.  She asked 
Scully, "have you ever held a child's throat in her your hands before?  
Or lock them in dark closet with your back to the door and you can feel 
them banging on the wood begging to be let out?  It gives you such a 
rush of power, it's amazing.  Especially when you got your hands on the 
child's neck.  You can feel his pulse under the skin of your hands and 
it's a strong pulse."  Her voice was low,  fascinated and almost 
aroused.  "And you know that by moving your fingers together a couple of 
inches, you can stop that pulse from running and just like that, the 
child is dead.  The first few times I killed people, when I saw the 
explosion, I felt that way.  I remembering marvelling at how fragile 
life was and how easy it was to wipe it off the planet."  Her voice 
trailed away and she stopped talking.  
 
There was a moment of silence at which Scully looked at her watch and 
Muchou looked at her hands.  The blood was gone, except for some red 
spots on the tissue surface.  
 
Scully spoke first.  "How did it stop?"
 
A grim smile appeared on Muchou's face.  Scully probably thought she was 
a nutcase, a killer, and a monster.  But the worst evil had yet to be 
unfolded.
 
"I got into Japanese animation," Muchou said, slightly embarrassed.

The shock was evident on the agent's face.  Scully couldn't have looked 
even more shock if her mother had offered her some potatoes to go with 
her meat and then slapped her.  She pulled her lips together for a 
moment before saying, "I don't see the connection."
 
Muchou laughed, and it sounded like someone had put dug their nails in a 
chalkboard and yank  them down.   "When I was small, I used to  
watch a lot of cartoons whenever I was scared or frightened or anger or 
hurt.  It was a way to tuning out the screams of the boy next door or 
hearing my parents fight or listening to my sister tell me that I should 
have suffered with the rest of the family in Cambodia.  Ironically, the 
morning cartoons would be on at the same time as those save the children 
world vision commercials showing scenes of poverty.  But if I ever 
crossed those channels, I'd just flip the remote control and watch 
cartoons.
 
"I guess that's how anime works.  Those images I used to see were like 
TV channels and by pressing the remote control and putting on some 
anime, I was able to change the channel and put them out of my mind."  
 
Scully had seen a lot of ridiculous things in her life, from a man being 
able to control weather with his thoughts to devils trying to spawn a 
normal child, but few had been as ludicrous and impossible as 2D people 
being the remedy for a international plague.  
 
But when she thought about it, it wasn't that unheard off.  She had read 
"Watchers" by Dean Koontz and remembered how the outsider cradled the 
Mickey Mouse video in his arms before asking Travis Cornell to kill him.  
His vicious, violent urge to kill Einstein, the genetically altered dog, 
waned after remembering the only happy times he spent at the laboratory: 
watching the Mickey Mouse movies.  
 
Why did it come back?" Scully asked.
 
"After the images of faceless people vanished, I started getting images 
of guilt, but obviously, that wasn't as bad as the faceless people. 
That's why 
I saw your partner's sister.  And when I feel people's guilt for some 
reason, it gives me a headache or makes me dizzy or, in the case of your 
partner, trigger a seizure."    She pulled her knees to her chest and 
rested her feet on the edge of the chair, wrapping her arms around her 
legs.  She looked harmless then, vulnerable.  "The seizure was what 
initiated the first batch of Orwellian deaths.  I guess the second 
seizure did the same thing."
 
There a moment of hesitation before Scully asked the more pressing 
question: "will it come back?"  
 
Muchou didn't even have to think about it.  "No," she said with 
resolution.  "It won't."
 
/You are of no use to me./
 
"Even if I wanted to destroy those people again, I wouldn't be able to."   
She took the Kleenex off her hand. The bleeding had stopped.   She 
tossed the soiled tissue into the garbage can and straightened her legs 
out, resting her feet on the floor.   "What's going to happen to me 
now?" she asked.
 
The question left Scully speechless.  She thought about all the possible 
scenarios.  Morally, Scully knew the answer.  No one with any sense of 
integrity would want to see the girl exonerated  for the mass murders 
she was responsible for.  It would have like allowing Hitler and Pol Pot 
to get away with the atrocities they committed all over again.  
 
Legally, however, that was going to be difficult.  The girl was twelve 
when she committed the crime.  She wasn't even old enough to be treated 
as an adult, at least  not under the Canadian Young Defender's Act.  
 
And then there was the issue of whether or she was even responsible for 
the Orwellian Death.  Mulder and Scully had been there in court when a 
"paranormal" culprit was being tried.  They never did get very far.  
Claiming that a twelve-year-old girl created a plague would only be 
laughed out of court before they even reached the preliminary hearing.  
Even if Muchou confessed she did it, people would only assume she was 
some nutcase trying to take immortalize herself as the one who started 
the Orwellian Death.
 
Scully suddenly realized, with a start, that she hadn't considered that 
idea.  Muchou could have been a severely deranged child who was only 
trying to make a name for herself.  It was more logical than the concept 
that she actually started the plague.  It was very Scully thing to think 
of.  
 
But as she stared at the girl, Scully came to revelation that she truly 
believed this girl was responsible for the deaths.  
 
"God," Scully said in amazement.  "You really did start the plague."  

"You believe me?"
 
Scully nodded her head, overwhelmed by the depth of her beliefs.  She 
felt light headed, a little dizzy.  "What do you think should happen to 
you?" she asked feebly.
 
Muchou looked outside into the backyard.  The sun was dying, the sky 
turning purple.  She lived in a beautiful neighbourhood.  The grass was 
green, the ground covered with dried up brown leaves that the wind 
tossed about carelessly.  The leaves on the trees that had survived the 
ice storm were orange and red and yellow.  They reminded her of the 
explosions she used to witness three years ago on a daily basis.  
 
"I don't want to think about it today," she said, placing a hand on the 
window.  She pulled it back, surprised at how cold the glass was.  It 
was beautiful outside, but deathly cold as well.   "Today's Hallowe'en," 
Muchou announced airily.  
 
Scully remembered that it was.  She could see her neighbour's backyard 
from the window as well.  Her neighbour was some decoration freak.  
There was skeletons and tombstones and pumpkins and scarecrows on every 
spare inch of the yard.  

"I'll think about what to do next tomorrow," Muchou continued.  "I just 
want to take my nephew out tonight for candies and enjoy it."  She 
turned to Scully and gave a soft smile.  "I'm going as Vampire Prinss 
Miyu.  My mother made the dress for me this sumer for Anime North."  

She stood up, walking over to her closet.  Scully was taken back by how 
light Muchou's mood suddenly was.  

Muchou pulled out the white satin dress and held it to her neck, 
allowing the skirt to fall to her knees.  "Isn't it pretty?" she asked.  
"I used to tell Ying-ying that I wanted to be buried in this dress."  
 
Her face suddenly changed.  Scully didn't understand it.  She looked sad 
and old.  Miserable wasn't the right word.  Sorrowful, however, might 
have been it.  She looked like she lost something of importance to her.  
 
/You are of no use to me anymore./
 
Muchou clutched the dress to her chest, her eyes blank and unseeing.  

Scully cleared her throat to break her trance.  "Isn't it a little cold 
to wear that tonight?" she asked, uneasy at the way that Muchou changed 
her temperaments.
 
Muchou blinked and shrugged.  "I'll wear a turtleneck underneath and 
three or four white stockings," Muchou said, her voice returning to 
normal.  "Although it's ridiculous to think of Vampire Princess Miyu 
wearing stockings.  We won't go out for long, only for maybe for fifteen 
minutes.  It's freezing out there.  Everyone says it's the coldest 
Hallowe'en Ottawa had in fifty years.  And people die in Ottawa every 
year from the cold."  She shuddered, holding the dress tighter to her.  
"It would be horrible to freeze to death," she said softly.
 
Scully watched as the girl put the dress back in the closet.  She 
walked up to Scully and shook her hand.  Scully could have sworn her 
hand was shaking itself.  "Thank you for coming," she said.  
 
Scully nodded.  "I best get going."  She was eager to leave, but at the 
same, she wanted to stay in the room with the killer and talk some more 
about her family past, her guilt, the Orwellian Death.

Muchou put her hand down.  "Your partner's sister," she said, "she must 
have meant a lot to him."

Scully nodded.  "He spent most of his life looking for her."  

Muchou was touched.  "You two must encounter a lot of kidnapping cases 
that remind him of his sister."

"We do."

"How does he go about them?"

"He tries to save the girls."  

"That's good.  His sister probably would have liked that."
 
"He loved his sister," Scully said.  
 
"I can tell."  Muchou picked up the picture on the table .  "Tell him 
not to let guilt run his life," she said.  "I let it run mine, and it 
destroyed the lives of so many perfectly innocent people.  It's only 
going to destroy him and those he loves."  
 
Scully told her she would.
 
"He was a good brother, wasn't he?"

"I believe he was," Scully said.  "He's a good partner, a very good 
friend."
 
"You care about him a lot don't you?"  
 
Scully nodded.  "He's my partner."  

Muchou smiled sadly.  She looked at her picture again.  "My first victim 
lived here in Ottawa.  He was a homeless who I used to pass on my way to 
school.  If I haven't kill him, do you suppose he would have been 
If I hadn't killed him, do you suppose he would have been sitting his
apartment today, watching the weather channel complaining  about how cold
it today sipping his coffee?"  She sounded distant, like she was talking
to herself.  "Or maybe he enjoyed being homeless.  Maybe he  choose to
live the life he did.  There are people who choose to live in  poverty
because they don't want to follow their rich parent's lifestyle.   I don't
think so, since my plague only killed those in sorrow, but I  guess I'll
never know."
 
"Your name means Free of Sorrow," Scully said.
 
Muchou nodded.  "My mother called me that because I was born after the 
killing fields.  She had suffered so much sorrow there.  I can't imagine 
the pain she went through watching seven children die of starvation.  
She buried each one of them herself.  She called me Free of Sorrow 
because she was sure she leaving all her sorrows behind in Cambodia.  
She wanted me to live a life of free of sorrow.  It's a cursed name."

Scully understood.   

The only way to be truly free of sorrow was to be dead.  

"Do you want me to show you out?" Muchou asked.

Scully shook her head.   "I can do it myself."

"Take care of yourself," Muchou said.

Scully made her way out of the house.  She gasped at how cold it was 
outside.  From Muchou's room, it didn't look that cold.  The wind didn't 
look so fierce.  She was surprised to see her breath in the air which 
the wind tore into pieces.  
 
She pulled her trenchcoat tighter around her and sucked in an breath of 
the cool autumn air and made her way to her car.
 

 - - - - - - - -

End of chapter eleven
Continued in Chapter Twelve


Intro and Disclaimer in first chapter

- - - - - -

Last chapter of this story!!!!
 
Mulder looked up from the table as Scully walked into the hotel room.  
Muchou's medical files were spread out in front of him, as well as some 
reports from their last case.  Mulder put his glasses down on the table 
and turned to look at her.    "How did he go?" he asked.  
 
Scully put her handbag on the bed and sat down beside it.  Her 
expression was unreadable.  "I looked into the face of evil, Mulder," she 
mumbled, "and I saw the face of a child."  
 
Mulder spoke carefully.  "So she did cause the Orwellian Death?"
 
Scully replayed her conversation with Muchou to Mulder, vertabam, 
clipped without emotion.  In this case, her phlegmatic expression and 
tone of voice conveyed her repulsion and horror at Muchou's action more 
loudly than if she went into a hysterical fit of rage and disbelief. 
 
Mulder didn't try to conceal his amazement or his disgust, particularly 
when Scully mentioned the deaths in Tunguska.   "Oh my God," Mulder 
said.  
 
"There never was an investigation in that case, now was there?" Scully 
asked.

Mulder had always suspected it wasn't the Orwellian simply because the 
UN was not allowed to photograph or investigate any of the deaths.   "An 
autopsy probably would have shown that it wasn't the Orwellian Death," 
Mulder said.  
 
"Which is why they didn't allow anyone near the bodies."

"Nevertheless," Mulder continued, "if someone were to come up with an 
explosion that couldn't be differentiated from the Orwellian..."
 
Scully shook her head.   "It doesn't matter," She said.  "Muchou knows 
whose deaths she's responsible for."

"No one is going to believe a death wasn't the Orwellian because a 
fifteen-year-old said it wasn't."

"But we'll know.  And somehow, we'll find a way to prove it."  
 
Mulder wasn't convinced.  "She could lie."
 
"She wouldn't," Scully replied.  "I've talked to her.  She may be a 
murderer, Mulder, but she's no liar.  As much as I don't want to say it, 
I can see there is something good about her.  She wouldn't lie to us."

Scully scarcely put faith in anything as strongly as she put her faith 
in Muchou, but when she did, she was seldomly wrong.
 
Mulder made a notion with his head that said, "if you said it to be 
true, than I'll believe it."
 
"What are we going to do about her?" Scully asked.  "She's just a 
child."  She didn't mean to say that.  She had said the same thing about 
her daughter, Emily.  Emily was just a child as well, but she was very 
well capable of killing people with the venom in her small body.  But 
Emily had no choice; she never had a say when they fused her body with 
that of something poisonous and extraterrestrial.  
 
Muchou did, however.   She choose to kill those people.  Whether or not 
she was a child when she unleashed the Orwellian Death did not matter; 
she was still responsible in every way for the death of three hundred 
and eleven people.  

But... she was still a child.  
 
"We can't punish her," Mulder admitted.  "We'll never convince anyone 
that she created the plague."
 
"But at the same time," Scully added, "it'll be like exonerating Hitler 
or Pol Pot."
 
"It doesn't matter," Mulder concluded.  "The four purposes of sentencing 
are deterrence, punishment, restitution, and rehabilitation.  There 
won't be a problem with deterrence because no one other than us will 
know she was one who murdered those people.  They'll simply pass it off 
as a very selective and bizarre plague so no one will get the impression 
in this case that they could get away with murder. 

"Rehabilitation is not an issue here because from what you say and
believe, she knows she 
wrong and even given the chance, she wouldn't choose to kill again.  

"Restitution if you look at it at in a direct manner is impossible because
these people are already dead and she can't bring them back.  However, she
can make amends by helping those in needs but that's up to  her.  As for
punishment, she's almost fifteen.  She has already spent three years
living in guilt and paranoia and I have a feeling that she'll be living
the rest of her life with that. I doubt she'll forget what she has done to
those people."

Scully wasn't convinced.  "What about segregation?" she asked softly. 
"Keeping her away from the public for their safety?"

"You told me she said that even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to
call the Orwellian Death up again."

"She did say that," Scully said.  "But what about that girl in Haiti?"

"I believe she didn't want to kill her," Mulder said.  "I think that it
was her seizure that triggered that death and she had no control over it."

Scully was both baffled and shaken by how neutral Mulder appeared at that
realization.  "That's even worst," she insisted.  "If she can't control
the Orwellian - "

"It doesn't matter," said Mulder.  

Scully stared at him, confused at the pensive lines on his face.  "Mulder..."

Mulder was confused as well.  "She is the plague and if she does, so does
the Orwellian Death.  She isn't going to live long," he said slowly.

"I don't understand," Scully said.

Mulder shook his head.  "I just got a weird feeling, Scully."  

He looked like just realized he lost something.  Scully was surprised to 
see that he looked exactly like Muchou did after she said she wanted to 
be buried in her Vampire Princess Miyu outfit.
 
"The connection?" she assumed, remembering that they felt each other's 
guilt.  Maybe they could feel each other sorrow's as well.  
 
Mulder shrugged.  "I don't know.  Maybe."  
 
Scully walked up to Mulder and put a hand on his shoulder.   "She said 
you were a good brother."

Mulder looked up at her.  "How would she know?"

"By the way you still remember Samantha."

Mulder's face aged considerably.  "I've only associated Samantha with 
guilt," he objected.  

Scully spoke gently.  "Why did you want to find Samantha for so long?"

"I wanted to know the truth," Mulder replied.  He thought about it.   
"And because it was lonely without her."
 
"You guys must had had a lot of fun together as kids."

"She used to annoy the hell out of me."  He smiled.  "We were crazy 
about each other.  I would push her on the swing in the yard when she 
was five or six.  Once I pushed her so hard she fell off the swing and 
broke her collar bone."  His smile became rueful.  "That idiot.  After 
her collar bone healed, she still made me push her on that blasted 
swing.  I have a feeling that I could have broken every bone in the body 
and she would be asking me to push her."
 
Scully played with his hair.  "I think it was her way of telling you she 
knew you would never do anything to hurt her."
 
"Maybe."  Mulder was having a hard time letting go of his guilt.  Scully 
didn't mind.  They had all the time in the world.   He regarded Scully 
with concern.  "It must have been hard on you, losing Melissa like 
that."

"I actually think it was easier for me," she said thoughtfully, taking 
her hand off his hair.  "Melissa and I had known each other long enough 
to know that no matter what happened, we were always be sisters.  I know 
that where ever she is, she doesn't hold any grudges against me."
 
Mulder nodded.  He turned around and stared at Muchou's medical files.  
"I've been letting my guilt run our relationship lately, haven't I?"

"Yes, but I'm not entirely blameless, either," said Scully.  "I wasn't 
there for you when we found Samantha."  She paused, remembering that she 
did try.  "Not as much as I could have been."

"I wouldn't let you in," Mulder pointed out.

"With the way I've been treating your ideas and quests lately, I don't 
blame you for not wanting to let me in."

Mulder's mouth stretched into an ironic grin.  "I merely thought you 
were reciprocating to my ditching you and withholding information from 
you."

Scully was serious.  "I don't need you to protect me, Mulder."   

"Good, because with the inefficient way I protected Samantha, I'm the 
last person you want protecting you."  
 
Scully sighed.  "Everything boils down to you and your sister, doesn't 
it?" she asked.

Shit, thought Mulder passively.  And they were finally getting 
communicating with each other like civil human beings again.  He tried 
to try make amends.   "Not everything is about me, Scully," he said.

She shook her head.  "You're wrong, Mulder.  Everything is about you."  
She didn't sound angry or tired.  She simply stated it like a fact that 
couldn't be disproved.  "So you better be worth my time."
 
Mulder let out a laugh, a low, yielding chuckle that melted the barriers
that had 
been between them for the last few months.  Scully smiled and held out 
her hand for him.  He took it and squeezed it lightly for a moment 
before letting go, their fingers slowly running along each other's 
palms.  Scully's smile faded and she turned around and left the room.  
 
- - - - - - - - - - - -
 
Muchou shivered in her Vampire Princess Miyu outfit.  The turtleneck and 
stockings beneath the silk provided little insulation.  She felt like 
heat was flowing out of her body in waves, leaving a cold, ice laden 
body behind.  No doubt the last time Ottawa was this cold was during the 
ice age.  She wondered how Agent Scully and her partner found Ottawa.
 
She had thought a lot about Scully since their affable little talk.  The 
agent fascinated her, and she wasn't sure why.  Serial killer, child 
abusers, and mass murderers were what teenagers were supposed to be
fascinated with, not good, 
selfless, hard working citizen.  Of course, with Muchou, it was the other
way around.  People capable of great evil bored her.  She never 
understood why all the kids in her school always wanted to play the 
villain in a school play or why they crowded around when two boys were 
kickng the shit out each other.   She wondered if maybe playing the role
of the villain for too long and finding it to be less glamourous than what
Hollywood made it out to be was what made her weary of evil.  Whatever the
reason was, she was more captivated by good than by malevolence

She wondered if Agent Mulder shared his partner's decency and integrity.  
He must have for Agent Scully to care so much about him.  
 
Muchou looked out of the window, watching the bitter wind claw at 
the trees.  Just looking at the cold made her fingers numb.  She 
wondered how her sister and nephew were surviving outside.  
 
"Can you go out and find them?" her mother asked.  "She could stay out 
longer, but Didi needs to be home now."
  
As much as Muchou resented her mother, she obeyed the woman, mainly 
because she was worried.  Ying-ying was the most important person in her 
life.  If anything were to happen to her, Muchou knew she wouldn't be able 
to survive it.  
 
Muchou went to the coat closest and pulled out her blue breaker.  She 
pulled it over her head and then glanced outside through the window of 
the door.  It looked very very cold.  Shuddering, she put her hand on 
the doorknob, turn it, and then stepped out of the front door.  
 
- - - - - 

End of Story


Author's Note: First of all, I want to apologize and thank all the people
who answered that inane question I posted on ATXCfor not flaming me,
especially to Maureen O'Brien whose reponse proved to be invaluable in
chapter eight, ten, and eleven. 

I would also like to express my gratitude to Drax for an incredibly
thoughtful and useful email sent to me regarding poverty.  The suggestions
and criticism also proved to be invaluable in the last few chapters.  The
story was a lot worst before I received the email and if you still found
it horrible, it's because I didn't take all the suggestions or/and I
applied the ones I took the wrong way.  

Last, I want to give a BIG cyber hug to Heather Stone, who was brave
enough to beta read for this thin skinned rabbit.  She was undaunted by my
long list of demands and requirements when she answered my plea for a beta
reader and never complained once when the story went from a seven parter
to a twelve parter.  Had it been me, I would have thrown the writer out of
a window.  Patience is a virtue this talented person isn't lacking.
Heather, I owe you one. :)