Out of Reach (10/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


Barrister's Bar and Billiards
8:45 PM

The nightmare had an opposite pole, a dry hiss of static and interference 
that ran just underneath and obscured the frequency. 

Scully came through, devastatingly clear from the blue of her eyes to the 
hiss of the snake that sought her, but Samantha -

Or Madeline. 

Or whatever her damned name was. Samantha didn't exist without Madeline. Not 
anymore. No sooner did I envision her disappearing into a haze that could be 
light or lies, I saw her turning. Firing. McGrath dropped from the frame, so 
scared and unbelieving. 

We'd stayed at the hospital until the dark had shown through the windows. 
Lori's husband demanded to know what was happening. I was the FBI, so of 
course, I would know. We waited for her to suddenly drop into the world as we 
knew it, coherent and possessing of the answers. To think there was a chance 
she'd been close enough to Scully to touch her, to see her alive... I felt 
like I should be able to lift Scully's prints from her skin. 

Was it possible that innocence could be processed, numbed away and 
obliterated from the memory so easily? 

I heard Scully's argument in my head. The memory wasn't someone's badly 
secured computer hard drive. Files could not be deleted at will. "Mulder, the 
only way to destroy memory is to mount a full-scale assault against the brain 
itself. After that, you're not going to be left with a person capable of much 
more than urinating on themselves." What about brainwashing? That was only 
suggestion and conditioning. What about post-traumatic stress situations? 
Disassociation and selective recall. 

I held my drink at half-mast. The world was preserved in amber for seconds at 
a time by the bourbon. I think it was bourbon. Scotch? The world swung into 
color as I drained half of it. Scotch. It was a recreational drink, diluted 
with cubes of ice. I didn't drink recreationally. Probably not the best 
follow-up to nerve gas damage, but screw it. Drake stared at me through the 
glass, destroying the image of a world that was malleable and still by 
speaking. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I drained the remainder of the liquid as if considering my answer carefully. 
"No."

(You're wrong, Scully. The memory is negotiable and indecisive. It sees what 
it wants to see until what it wants changes. I saw my sister rising out of a 
bed and disappearing until it became more tolerable, more *plausible*, to use 
a word you love so much, to envision myself diving for a gun, throwing myself 
in front of her like a fort. In the first image, I am paralyzed. In the 
second, not quick enough. Never mind the possibility that neither is the 
truth.) 

Raising his arm, Drake summoned another round. The empty glass in my hand was 
weighted once more. The alcohol was kicking in, dulling the pain. Creedence 
Clearwater Revival buzzed and howled over the bar's sound system, loud enough 
to vibrate the table under my palm. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no 
fortunate son. I sung it under my breath, trying to imagine the details of 
each life as just an elemental breakdown of chemical composition, branches of 
the composition pulled away. Mothers, fathers, brothers - gone. The 
initiative to find them - gone. 

Lori Maciver could've shot someone in the back, had she been armed and the 
situation presented itself. But to admit that, I also had to admit, for all 
intents and purposes, that my sister had fallen hard off this mortal coil.  
Who she had been, what she was now... the two couldn't be confused. 

I'd found what shone at the end of the tunnel vision like a searchlight. Six 
years of being blinded and lead by that one light, never even suspecting that 
it came from a fire.

"Agent Mulder," Drake said, as if it were maybe the fourth or fifth time he'd 
said it. "That kind of look on your face... doesn't make me comfortable about 
you having a weapon to go home with."

I didn't ask why. Didn't have to. "You wanna try to take it?"

He sighed. "This was a bad idea."

I couldn't even remember whose idea it was. No matter. Nor did I remember 
saying goodbye to him as I found my way outside. The rain pooled at the edge 
of the awning, falling in a sheet. I walked through it. Drake stood several 
feet away, glint of metal in his hand remind me that my coat pocket felt 
lighter. "Hope your gun isn't as easy to steal as your keys."

Bastard, I though undiplomatically, resenting being lead, resenting even 
momentary uselessness. I followed him to his car. 

x

Georgetown, W.V.
9:47 PM

It wasn't until Drake's tires had spun through the slush left by the rain 
that it registered with me that I was standing in front of Scully's (ours, I 
kept having to remind myself) apartment, key in the lock, knob turning. As if 
I'd drunkenly requested he take me to the last place I wanted to go and he'd 
promptly delivered me here. 

(Serves you right for drinking.)

I nodded at no one in particular, and braced myself for the onslaught - the 
questions, the accusations, the demand for some kind of progress. Like a room 
full of angry Assistant Directors. I deserved this much, but having my little 
finger snapped back again would've been more tantalizing.

And that would have been a hell of a lot better. 

My inebriated mind first assumed that Charlie's kids had gone off their 
Ritalin and destroyed the place. Until I opened the door a little more, that 
seemed vaguely rational. 

A wastebasket was upended across the doorway, its contents stretched out in a 
line as if to bar the way. I absently kicked the can upright, toed at the 
trash. My eyes followed the end of it to the empty bookshelf, and the 
hundreds of books that had been disgorged from it. They were piled in stacks, 
or had been. Most of the stacks had toppled over like a child's blocks. I 
bent at the knees and retrieved the leather-bound book, gilt-edged. It was 
one of Scully's medical encyclopedias, and part of her favorite set. In my 
hands, I tried to right the snapped spine, tried to smooth the now-dogeared 
corners and flatten the back cover. It had been cut with a knife, the leather 
ripped away from the thick cardboard, cardboard harshly yanked back. It 
wouldn't close in my hands unless I held it tight.

Little shards of glass crunched under my shoes. All her glass things, all her 
ceramic things... I'd never paid any attention to them. I couldn't 
reconstruct them from memory, or think of their proper place on her shelves 
and tables. They were all beyond repair -- red pieces, blue pieces, clear 
bits and white bits all swam in front of my eyes. Book still in my hands, I 
sat on a couch that didn't have any cushions, feeling the springs dig in. 
Drawers protruded from cabinets and tables, papers stuck out of files, 
photographs spilled from scrapbooks like something obscene, something that 
needed to be covered up. 

I got up, tried to find a pattern in those papers that had yielded enough 
worth to be among those spread out on her small dinette. No, too random to 
have a motif, too vague to be a signaling threat. I turned to the kitchen.

The cabinets all stood open. Pots and pans and utensils gleamed dully among 
the shattered plates and saucers. Unknown hands had reached in, simply 
sweeping the closed spaces clean. In my memory, Mrs. Scully's coffee cup hit 
the floor, shattering again, and all the other cups followed it. And then the 
plates and the dishes made of some dark blue and iridescent etched glass, 
left to Scully by a grandmother whose name I couldn't recall, only brought 
out for special occasions. 

Her garbage compactor had been gutted, turned wrong side out. Coffee grounds 
and empty yogurt containers stained a saturated copy of The Post. I turned to 
the broken teapot in the sink. Teapot? Who hid anything in a fucking teapot? 

The mail was on the opposite counter, or what had been delivered in my 
absence. It was where I always left it for Scully to inspect and file away. 
It wasn't strange that it would be there, but that it was all opened. The 
books, the mail, the folders and files, and anything else that might hold 
something like a piece of folded paper.

I closed my eyes hard. No, this wasn't happening. 

There were footfalls at the door, the rattle of keys. Whoever had them didn't 
know which one to use. I drew my gun, and waited. No use in meeting them at 
the door. No use in moving from behind the open counter.

The third key Bill Scully used was the charm. When he spoke, it was just my 
name, voice deadened with ice for effect. "Mulder." 

I was all too slow with returning my gun to the holster. He had his effects, 
I had mine. 

I watched his face carefully among the destruction. "You don't look 
surprised."

He laughed, and the sound echoed in my head like sacrilege. "They evacuated 
us when they showed up this afternoon to search it. Besides, I can't really 
be surprised at the sheer volume of shit you cause."

Hadn't even seen the bedroom, I thought, imagining the books spilled across 
the stripped mattress, their hands touching, imprinting and engraving what 
had been our one shell, our one neutral space. From the pages flipping 
through their fingers, bindings snapping in their hands, plunging into 
drawers of our clothes. 

"What were they looking for?"

I tuned him back in for half a moment. "What?"

He flung his hand in exasperation at the empty shelves, the cleared surfaces. 
If I didn't look at the floor, it looked okay -- it looked like a person who 
had no books, but lots of shelves, with a messy dinette. But my eyes rolled 
down again. I thought of Scully bristling at her brother's command. Maggie 
and Charlie had a certain complacency to their faces, a calm. Melissa had it 
once, too. But Scully was her father's daughter. Thanksgiving. Bill Junior 
had sat at the end of the table, had knighted who would say the prayer, who 
would dispense with the drinks. I just remembered her creaking like barbed 
wire at this acquired leadership. My own signals were probably as amiable. 

Whatever he had asked me, I'd forgotten it now. But he was still staring at 
me, as if he'd found what was wrong with the cryptic picture. "Did you find 
her?" 

(Sure, she's out in the car. She'll be right in. Stupid bastard.)

I wasn't sure I told him no or if I even had to say it. He took a step 
closer. "So why are you here?"

"Because I'm still looking." I opened the book now, as if I would read to him 
about... about Harvey William Cushing and his breakthroughs with... 
intercranial tumors. It was as good a story as any, more useful than my sad 
trudge through Sheehan, through Minot, then back again with Jonson. A box 
with a bit of skin in it up in the Nebraska hills, a letter that bled more 
extravagantly than the wounds apparent on her clothes.

He nodded almost imperceptibly. "In other words, you don't have a goddamned 
clue what to do next." 

Clearing a place for the book, I curled my fingers under the counter's edge, 
my knuckles white. Here we go. When my words finally strung themselves 
together, I spoke them like I was negotiating for hostages. Whether I was the 
hostage or on the cusp of taking one was another matter. "If you think you 
have to convince me to feel more like hell, you're wrong. If you want to hit 
me, take a shot: no one'll be able to tell. You want to let it off your 
chest, do it. I - don't - care."

It neutralized him somehow, as if by wanting me to give him a reason to hit 
me, I'd taken away the urgency in him doing so. He stepped back, out of fist 
range. "She trusts you with her life. That's what she keeps saying." 

The modulation of his voice was like a fair warning alarm. I didn't respond.

"I'm starting to question her judgement on that one," he continued. "I'm sure 
you'd understand why."

Yes, but damned if I'd give him the satisfaction.

"You see, you don't know Dana as well as you might think. You didn't see her 
ten years ago in med school. It almost confuses me to hear from her now, 
because she never, *never* would've put up with your sorry ass back then. She 
was top of her class, and the other students tried to use her, tried to milk 
her success and take a little of it. She was pretty, and those professors and 
doctors tried to use her too. She knew users. She could spot them from a mile 
away from the first words out of their mouths."

I shook my head at the medical encyclopedia, still holding it together. How 
many of those Scotches had I had, anyway? "Nice act. Nice act you got going."

He stopped, froze dead. "What act is that?"

"Just wondering how many dates Dana's brought home for the holidays, for the 
weekend, only to have you screen them like a father would, like they'd 
brought her home past curfew with her shirt on backwards."

"No, oh no - " He stepped closer to the other side of the counter. "I'm going 
to treat you like the bad date who didn't bring her home at all."

I moved out from behind the protection of the counter, stepping with purposed 
through the broken pieces and the trash. (I'm going to hit him, Scully. I'm 
going to pound his ass into the next - )

"Bill?"

I raised my head at Maggie Scully's voice as she stood at the door of the 
office, pulling at the sash of her robe. The expression of chagrin that he 
wore told me that he hadn't known she was there. It was the face of the 
caught. 

"I thought you got a hotel room," she said accusingly, not looking at me as 
she stood her ground between us. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Mom, I - " His glare over her shoulder told me to leave the room. I answered 
silently that it was my damn apartment. "I just wanted to - "

"Leave, Bill. Nothing good can come from this."

"Why aren't *you* getting a hotel room?" He asked angrily. 

"Because I need to be here." Her concerned glance in my direction was a 
magnetic push away, a negative repelling a negative. "Because I'm not trying 
to pick a fight with anyone. Leave." 

He gave me one last look before he turned to go, a shot of pure hate. He'd 
always practiced stealth with the few conversations we shared, out of his 
mother's earshot and sight. Now she had seen him being something besides 
cordial, something besides the dutiful son. 

The minute the door slammed behind him, I realized what this meant for me, 
how badly she wanted to talk. She replaced the couch cushions, stopping 
mid-way on the third one. "Wait. Do I need to leave this the way it is right 
now?"

In better times, I would've laughed. Yes, leave the scene intact so the 
police can investigate the FBI. I just shook my head, and she dropped it into 
place. The scrapbooks came next. She scooped up photographs and newspaper 
clippings without looking at them. "I thought they trained you how to search 
so things like this wouldn't happen." 

"They do." I put books haphazardly on the shelf, just to return the room to 
some normalcy. "I don't think this was a search as much as it was a sign."

She wedged the scrapbook onto the end of the shelf, in lieu of the lost 
bookends. "A sign? You mean a threat?"

I took more books from the floor, keeping my back to her. My voice was raw 
and unguarded to my own ears. "Something like that." 

"I remember when this happened five years ago. Melissa said she had to 
practically drag you out of your apartment to get you to even sit with Dana, 
to talk to her." Books were shelved absently in her hands, two by two. 
"Sometimes I feel like I have to do the same to get you to sit down and talk 
to me."

The books in my hands hit the rest of the pile with a hollow thump, a little 
louder than I'd intended. "What am I supposed to talk about?"

She hugged a book to her stomach. "I know that the person you're use to... 
listening to is not here right now, but what do you think she'd want you to 
do?"

"Scully would - " Whatever harsh words I had planned were lost in the 
immediate blinding rush to my head.

(what would she say what would she say what would she - ) Like a heated point 
spearing through layers, the white light bleached all vision, disabled all 
senses. Pulling away her voice, until playful became edgy became angry became 
scared. Screaming scared. The scream was so scattered and frantic that I 
almost didn't pull all the sounds together into a word. Just the one word. 
Help, over and over -

"Fox?"

I snapped out. Falling out of the vision was more painful than beginning it. 
I stood there, waiting to fall, hands out to catch myself. 

But I was just standing there. I wasn't falling, wasn't crashing. Like the 
dream on the plane, it had simply shot its way into the foreground. The pain 
came with it, but stayed behind long after the image was gone, just like 
before.

"Fox?"

Maggie Scully again. That worried look... could a look of concern be 
hereditary? I squinted my eyes at her, blurring the room around the edges. "I 
think she would tell me to go lie down, get some rest."

Those words sounded like her. I couldn't put them in her voice right now 
though, not without seeing her face. And that wasn't a clear picture to me 
anymore. The dreams had deadened her eyes. 

Maggie Scully nodded. I forgot what she was approving, or answering. "You 
should."

Right. Laying down. I felt like I no longer had a choice in the matter. Some 
poorly transmitted version of my voice said goodnight. 

"Fox?"

(I'm changing my name.) 

My vision cleared. She looked stricken, premeditatively sorry for what she 
was about to say. "I haven't had a dream in three days." 

I couldn't move. I wanted to run. 

"I was having them before then," she said. The tears were thick in her voice. 
"That's when you said to worry, right?"

Words that had been said to calm her five years before came back to bite me 
in the ass, like I should've known. I opened my mouth, willing the 
consolation to come out. 

"Don't apologize," she told me. I didn't find the insincerity or anger in the 
words, but I was looking for it. She pulled her robe tight, pulled the sash 
like a rip chord. "Try to get some sleep." 

The bedroom was in ruins. I turned off the light before I walked in, trying 
to ignore it. All effects of alcohol were obsolete. I wasn't assured of that 
being a good thing. Even in the darkness, the streetlights spilled through 
the slats in the blinds. I swept the slats away with my hands, but not before 
I saw the destruction here. My nightmares were tied here, even if they had 
spread beyond. Walking back in, I realized the nightmare was always in 
progress. Everywhere. 

(Profile the search. Like a murder.)

It *was* a murder. The murder of a sense of stability, of having an axis to 
blame for the spinning. Like any other murder, I grouped it under 
disorganized. Like any murderer, the Bureau had gone into overkill when they 
hadn't found what they were looking for. The chronology was as apparent as 
sifting through the layers of broken pieces in the kitchen. The mail had come 
first. It was the most obvious place. Then came the books, the files. The 
books had been shaken out, twisted, and cast to the floor to be stepped on 
and crushed as the hunt escalated into nothing more than a beatdown. 

I picked up the phone next to the bed and dialed Skinner's number. 

"Hello?" 

It wasn't Skinner's voice. My mind fought to place it. "Who is this?"

The breath on the other end of the line bristled at the question. "You called 
here. Who are you?" 

A. D. Kersh. Had I gotten the numbers mixed up? No, of course not. I'd never 
had Kersh's phone number on any kind of mental Rolodex. "What are you doing 
there?"

"Why are *you* calling Assistant Director Skinner?" He paused, as if he 
expecting me to answer. "You're right, you don't have to answer that right 
now. You do have to answer it tomorrow however, at an OPR meeting set for ten 
a.m. Can I expect you there?" 

I said nothing. 

"Because if transportation is a problem, Agent Mulder, I'm sure I could 
arrange something." 

"Where is Skinner?" 

"He'll be there, too, Agent. I am looking forward to hearing about your 
supposed investigation. Ten a.m. Fifth floor, east conference room C. I dare 
say you remember where it is."

Sleep didn't come. 

xxxxxxxxxx
End 10 of 16.



Out of Reach (11/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 

FBI Headquarters
9:40 AM

Since last night, the rain hadn't stopped. For a fortress comprised of mostly 
glass and stone, the Federal Complex looked wet, burdened down with 
saturation. The rain stained the beige of the fountains and stairwells, 
glancing off the slick umbrellas of the crowd surging through the courtyard. 

It never failed to amuse me that the same agents grimacing at the rain and 
cinching their trenchcoats tighter were the same who had climbed rope 
lattices at Quantico, glowering at the signs planted in the dirt alongside 
the track that told them to keep running. Were they to find themselves 
fighting for their lives in the woods, they could probably dimly recall the 
various berries, leaves and bugs given Federal approval for survival 
sustenance. 

Yet those same agents now groused about having to take the stairs when 
elevators were shut down, and getting them to have their morning bagel in the 
woods would probably be a stretch. Quantico could've saved the effort by just 
putting them in some kind of simulator that aptly mimicked the sensation of a 
three year desk gig, replete with the appropriate ass-numbness.

A man angrily pushed past me. How dare I stand still while the world kept 
moving? I held my hand out tentatively from under my umbrella. They were 
upset at this - at a little rain.

I suddenly didn't care if I lost my job today or not. 

I'd said it before, but always with the uncertainty afforded by a hope that 
life could get better. It was a miracle my FBI career had lasted this long, 
as I had heard it said often enough. No doubt the cost of maintaining this 
career had been a lease extension wrought by the very men I'd once hoped to 
bring to justice. 

Well, they could have it now if they wanted it. Hostage negotiators, SWAT 
teams, bomb diffusers, criminal psychologists - these required training, 
skills, maybe even prowess. But unknowing tools were easy to come by. Working 
in a less-sabotaged capacity with the same government that had made me one of 
those tools was unthinkable. 

Regardless, I still bothered with a suit, and having misplaced about twenty 
pounds, an ill-fitting one. I likened it to how the dead were dressed to the 
nines for burial. Of course, death probably wasn't as boring as an OPR 
meeting. 

Once the crowd had thinned out, I walked towards the elevators, moving in the 
general direction of the one that chimed as I approached. The doors opened, 
and I stood aside, waiting for the usual load to be disgorged into the 
hallway. No one came out. The button for the fifth floor was already lit when 
I started to push it, and Skinner stood in the corner behind me, watching the 
strip of numbers above the doors slowly progress upwards. 

He cleared his throat. "Agent Mulder - "

I watched the elevator chime for the third floor as I activated the stop key. 
The humming of movement ceased. Skinner waited for the next chime, watching 
the three blink on the strip as the elevator shifted underfoot. I turned to 
stare at him now, smiling as he hooked his finger under the band of his watch 
and pretended he wasn't looking at the digital face. Uncomfortable? I 
thought. The elevator, nothing more than a box suspended by a cable in 
mid-air, inescapable save for a blowtorch or death, was looking more and more 
like a bad idea. 

I checked my own watch. "Security is notified by a maintenance alarm after 
seven minutes if the floor sequence on the elevators doesn't shift." I turned 
my head now as he watched the number. I could almost *hear* him try to 
tabulate just how much of that time had passed. "I figure seven minutes - 
that's enough time to run a very tight, very discreet consultation with you."

His smirk seemed a little forced. "You think you can kick my ass in seven 
minutes?" 

"Who said anything about kicking your ass?" I stepped closer anyway. "I just 
want you to take a few moments to ponder your complicity in Agent Scully's 
disappearance."

"Complicity?" He snapped. "I'm not complying with anyone! Kersh searched my 
apartment, the same way he told me he searched yours."

"What did you tell him? What was his provocation for searching *anything*?"

"I don't know," he answered coldly. "Asking Agents Essary and Griffin how 
they got their jobs and good reputations reinstated might be a good place to 
start." 

"They didn't know about the letter."

"They knew about the box," he argued. "The box is what they were looking for 
when they came to my apartment. What they found was the receipt for the work 
order I put through to Forensics on the letter. They left from there. A.D. 
Kersh stayed behind." Checking the time again, he added, "It's three minutes 
till ten and your seven are almost up. If you're done - "

"Not even close," I muttered casually, flipping the key. The elevator hummed 
to quiet life. I didn't say another word to him as it climbed the remaining 
two floors. 

Her disappearance - or this investigation, as Skinner would have me call it - 
kept bringing me back to old haunts. First, the very hospital that marked 
Scully's first return. And now, the same room where I'd put a bullet in the 
Smoking Man's head. For weeks, I had regarded that incident as anecdotal 
only, as if it had happened to someone else. Maybe Scully had, too. Maybe 
that's why she hadn't brought it up, not once. Maybe it simply made it easier 
to wake up next to me every morning, not having to decide between the 
Hippocratic oath and the hypocrite beside her. A murderer. Was I? My finger 
automatically tensed into trigger position. I only regretted the act after I 
saw its consequences, just like any killer. 

I walked in behind Skinner. Kersh made a mental note of this as we sat down. 
If he waited for me to take the hot seat at the opposite end of the 
conference table, he was going to wait for a long time. I was planning to 
stay close, where I could make them all the most uncomfortable. Skinner had 
the opposite seat, next to Jonson, who simply nodded his greeting while Kersh 
shuffled papers. Beside Jonson, Griffin studiously ignored my stare, feigning 
unwavering fascination with his fingernails. The agents in the next two 
chairs were half of the four that had approached us at Dulles. To Kersh's 
left sat Essary, obsequious in his attention to Kersh. As I stared past him, 
I was startled that the person beside me was April McGrath, the chair to her 
right conspicuously empty of, I was guessing, her father-in-law. Of the seven 
others present, she alone met my eyes without so much as a flinch. She leaned 
to me, as if to say something, but Kersh began. 

He turned to me now. "Are there any statements you'd like to make before we 
begin, Agent Mulder?"

I didn't think the man could open his mouth without making me angry. 
"Protocol would require that you ask me that question *after* the meeting 
since I haven't been briefed on what we'll be discussing." 

Putting his papers down, he checked to see if anyone else got the joke before 
he turned back to me. "I find it hard to believe that you're trying to roll 
out protocol." 

I met his stare head-on. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"He's right," Skinner agreed, eyes narrowed. 

"You're both here to face the same charge. It's fitting you should pick your 
side now and stay on it," Kersh said dismissively. "The charge is the 
withholding of evidence in a federal inquiry. The suggested administrative 
response is a psychological dismissal, the reasons for which are to be 
outlined in prepared statements by Agents Essary, Griffin - "

Griffin was the one unfortunate enough to be in my direct line of sight, and 
couldn't have behaved in a more guilty fashion if he ran screaming for the 
door. (It's going to be easy to sit at that wiretapping assignment now, you 
fucking coward.) He was doing a miserable job of avoiding my stare. (Because 
I'm going to break your legs you stupid - )

Kersh's voice interrupted my thoughts. "To get to what Agent Mulder wants to 
know, we located both a letter and a box." 

It was Griffin. Griffin had broke first. He wasn't going to stand up to this 
much longer, and if Kersh got said prepared statements out of the kid without 
killing him, I'd be surprised. If a casual observer had to come in and guess 
which person at the table was up for a psych dismissal, Griffin would've been 
their boy. 

"After I found the work order in A.D. Skinner's residence," he continued. "I 
let the forensics test continue alongside a sample of Agent Scully's 
handwriting. The composite analysis for a match was inconclusive."

I smiled. "I'm supposed to believe that you would tell us if it wasn't? If 
there was a match?" 

He glared. "Believe what you want to believe. You always do." 

Skinner silently implored me to can it until Kersh was done. I sat back, for 
now.

Kersh changed pages. "You'll also be interested in knowing that I had the 
letter tested for any traits it might share with your handwriting as well. 
Again, the results were inconclusive, but the percentage of likelihood was 
higher. That's all I'm going to say."

Of all the stupid - "What real use would I have in forging a letter from 
Scully and *withholding* it from you?"

"Just to lend credibility to your claim that it was from Agent Scully," he 
answered calmly. "You've accused the government of similar methods, if I'm 
not mistaken." 

So, whether I had immediately turned it over to him or not, I was somehow 
working in violation of the inquiry. A lovely Catch-22. "I suppose you found 
some way to make the contents of the box below your investigative scrutiny as 
well." 

I caught a slight lift to the corner of April McGrath's mouth, hidden from 
Kersh's eyes by the quick raise of her hand. 

"There's nothing at fault with our investigative scrutiny, Agent Mulder." The 
papers in his hands changed again, and I suspected for a moment that there 
wasn't actually anything on them that pertained to why we were here. "Besides 
the confirmation that the biological substance contained within the box does 
indeed belong to Agent Scully, all we've been able to discern is that the 
blood on the clothes doesn't belong to her."

As if he'd shouted, heads up, he had my undivided attention. "Doesn't belong 
to her."

"Do I need to repeat it?"

"I wasn't asking," I replied flatly. "If it didn't belong to her, then what 
was the obvious placement of the source?" 

"The placement of the source," he mimicked drily, as if this were amusing. 
"Maybe they were sitting down or standing up." 

I looked down. "Someone want to let me in on the joke?" 

April tilted her head so that her words were directed to me, but still spoke 
loudly enough for the room to hear. "The tests showed that the blood was 
probably poured and rubbed onto the clothes. There's no splatter pattern to 
the stains themselves, and no obvious wound from another person it could've 
originated from. Not in any likely scenario, anyway."

Poured on? I felt my own blood drain. I could've asked for what purpose he 
thought this was done, but I already knew. The letter, addressed to me, sent 
early in Scully's missing time so that, deliberately, it would be waiting for 
me upon my return home. The box, purposely misrouted by the doctor himself, 
so that I might find it before the NSA intercepted it the woods. It was just 
more of the game. 

But if Scully didn't write the letter, who did? 

My hope for Scully dimmed. Even as I fought it down, it darkened. To imagine 
that she hadn't poured out an urgent cry for help on the page only implied 
that she *couldn't*.

And this hearing - more of the game, whether it was planned or not. The 
results were in, and I had no leads. The remainder of the meeting droned 
about the room, more an annoying, unidentifiable sound than actual words. I 
held my teeth tight, hearing them grind in my head with the sound of my own 
breathing. Scully - 

Scully no longer existed to anyone in this room but me. To Skinner, just 
another liability that he was now being charged for. To Griffin, the gist of 
what had almost unraveled his career until he started talking his way out of 
it, started talking about formaldehyde and bloody clothes. To the two agents 
from the airport, nothing but a nice commendation on their record. To Essary, 
she was a problem that, for him at least, had passed. To April, she was at 
least indirectly responsible and interconnecting with a murdered husband. But 
to Kersh, she was nothing more than the poor reflection in the forged words 
of a letter, the now-deceased recipient of some fraudulent blood. She was a 
piece of paper. She was a box. And how stupid, how ignorant of me to be 
searching for a woman who was nothing more than a piece of paper and a box. I 
didn't have to hear his words to hear this lurking behind them. It was loud 
to me. It was the drone in my ears, louder than the one that had occupied my 
head since I regained consciousness in Nebraska. 

"Agent Mulder." Kersh's voice summoned, loud and clear. "I just asked you a 
question."

"I surrender."

The drone stopped. The room collectively held a breath. Kersh peered up from 
the pages, caught off guard. "What?" 

"I said I surrender." My voice sounded pleasantly steady to me, bound 
together with the flow of it to my ears. "I'm sure the room is under some 
sort of surveillance. Aren't they all? Well, I surrender. I'll let them all 
hear that. I give up. You can have your fucking truth." I raised my face and 
addressed the corners of the room near the ceiling, the light fixtures. "Are 
you listening? Is anyone listening? I give up! That's what this has been 
about all along, right? Show me that I can't win. Take the wind out of my 
sails, thwart me at every turn, sabotage the crusade and make me think that 
it's yet another reason to continue. Then, hit me where it hurts, take what 
matters most, show me just how hopeless, pointless and stupid the whole thing 
is so I'll give up. Well you know what, you've won!"

Their discomfort was palpable. April's hand was extended, slightly, as if she 
anticipated my rising up and beating the table. No histrionics, I reassured 
her with a look. She didn't look reassured. Even Kersh - he looked afraid. My 
heart beat against the bandages, my breathing was too quick. Kersh fumbled 
under the table with one hand. Suddenly, I imagined it was his head with the 
bullet. 

"The button you're looking for is closer to your left. Actually, Griffin 
could find it more easily." I looked at him, my eyes so wide they hurt. "Go 
ahead, Griffin. Push the button. Push the fucking button! Are you panicking 
now? That's what it's there for! Go ahead. I came here today prepared to lose 
my job. I came here today prepared to be lied to. I walked into this building 
everyday, for about eight years, prepared to be lied to. But whether you send 
me on my way, transfer me to yet another useless waste of taxpayers' money, 
nail me with a sniper shot through my apartment window - none of that matters 
now. I'm not looking for the truth anymore. Just her. Maybe that's why they 
still have her, you think?"

April's hand snagged my sleeve now, pulled. "Mulder - "

"Am I finished?" I practically screamed it. Her fingers opened and jerked 
back in shock. 

"Yes," Kersh answered, tapping the papers into one stack resolutely. "I'd say 
you are, Agent Mulder." He turned to the two agents from the airport. "I'm 
filing for your immediate psychological dismissal - "

The loud thud of my gun, holster and all, hitting the top of the table, cut 
off his words. Half of them jumped back as if I'd just fired a bullet. My 
badge hit the table next. I slid them both across the table, hard, in 
Griffin's direction. He bolted up, his chair overturning behind him as they 
went past the edge of the table to the floor. "You can't dismiss me. I just 
quit."

"Sit down, Agent Mulder!" Skinner surged forward, shifting his attention to 
Kersh. "Protocol states that Agent Mulder gets a psychological screening 
before you can call for his dismissal - " 

"Ten years ago," I told Skinner, "I substantially helped write the 
psychological screening exam for the FBI. Irony, huh? I already know I failed 
it." I leaned down, yanking my at the holster around my ankle. Griffin caught 
my back-up gun, barely. "Besides... I just resigned. Unless you really just 
want to debate my sanity, I see no reason to continue."

Kersh stood, still wary. "All OPR meetings should be so brief. Assistant 
Director Skinner, keep your itinerary clear for the next two weeks. Your 
charge still stands." 

Skinner stood. "The last time I checked, you have no rank to pull on me, 
Kersh." 

"You're correct," Kersh noted tonelessly. "For now. Agent Mulder, I'd say 
it's been nice working with you, but it hasn't." 

He left the room. The arresting agents at Dulles followed behind him. 

April stood in the way of my leaving. "Agent Mulder - "

I moved past. Griffin retrieved my badge and gun from under the table like he 
intended to stay down there with them. 

I walked out. I hadn't expected it to feel like a release. 

xxxxxxxxxx
End 11 of 16.



Out of Reach (12/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


April McGrath fell into step beside me, her pace tentative. "Agent Mulder - "

"Not Agent anymore," I said succinctly, quickening my step. 

"Oh, come on..." She snorted a nervous laugh and caught up. "Even if you 
couldn't have the meeting overridden for unprofessionalism, you could change 
your mind."

"They've been praying for this day to come for years now."

She didn't try to conceal her disgust. "And you're just giving it to them."

"I thought I could accomplish things here. I thought I could uncover things, 
make them right, and from the very beginning, they've tried to assure me 
otherwise." I hit the down button on the elevator like my hand might go 
through the wall. "And when I wouldn't listen, they took my partner. And I 
still didn't listen. Well, I'm listening now. I'm all out of noble causes and 
smug righteousness, so why don't you spare me the fucking lecture about 
personal integrity?"

The end of the sentence was caught full-force by an elevator packed with 
teenagers bearing tour tags around their necks, who quickly moved past us 
with their guide. 

"I'm not lecturing you," she replied softly, holding the doors open. I got in 
and they closed behind me. 

As if this might camouflage me, I closed my eyes. 

"I thought you were scary enough at the church." I could feel her stare. "But 
now you're legitimately frightening me. Is any of this because of what I said 
at the funeral?" 

So *that's* why she had been at the meeting: to discuss my unsound mind. The 
pause for a reply lingered until the silence grew awkward and cold.

"Fine. If you aren't going to talk to me, I won't apologize for it." 

My eyes opened, seemingly of their own volition. "Apologize for what?" 

"Not for my words." She raised her dark stare implacably. "Just the way I 
said them."

I shrugged, looking away. "I held myself responsible for what happened to Ray 
the second I found him there. What you said didn't change that."

"You probably don't trust me any more than you did anyone else in that room." 
Quietly, she waited for me to refute it. I didn't. "I'm not an outsider here, 
Mulder. If there's something you need, I have connections, access... I could 
help."

And watch 'em line up to die, I thought, scowling. What was taking the 
elevator so damn long?

The strip hit the light for the first floor at the very moment she released 
her temper. "If you keep pushing me away, I'm going to run my own 
investigation. What do you think is more efficient? Two investigations being 
run simultaneously at odds with each other? Or just one?"

"Alright, detective," I replied snidely. "Why do you think Section Chi - 
excuse me, Senator McGrath wasn't at the meeting today?" 

It was her turn to be silent now. 

"He's withholding the most evidence of all. Has he let you see the security 
footage?" 

She frowned. "I wouldn't watch it if he did have it -"

"Oh, no need to question it. He told me he saw the footage. You and I both 
know that Ray didn't kill Pam Wyeth, and that Jonson didn't kill Ray... but 
for the sake of a pleasant public relations facade for the new Senator, he's 
letting those suspicions flourish. You and I both know that there's nothing 
more damning than time in matters like this."

She tried to walk away. I held firmly to her arm, walking alongside her. 

"Listen, April. Listen. You wouldn't know by their sycophantic little dance 
back there, but Essary and Griffin - they were sent to Nebraska by Ray's 
father under the guise of investigating a case that he already knew wasn't 
under Bureau jurisdiction. He sent them there, and he promised to cover this 
up in exchange for a few reels of security footage." The front glass doors 
opened again onto the federal courtyard. "Once they got that footage for him 
- he wiped them from the database and stranded them there to die. This way, 
he doesn't have to speak to the issue of his son being a killer, not being a 
killer... Their hassle-free highly-classified investigation with an easy, 
dead suspect in exchange for his hassle-free political career."

The umbrella in her other hand swung uselessly as the rain fell into her dark 
hair. "Then why were Griffin and Essary sitting there this morning?" 

"I haven't figured that out yet." 

"Well, tell you what..." She yanked her arm away. "Give me a call when you 
do." 

I smiled in feigned surprise. "Amazing... like your father-in-law, you can 
overlook the death of your husband in exchange for blissful ignorance. I'm 
*impressed*. You should run for Senator, too." 

I caught her wrist a moment before she would've punched me in the face. Not 
the slap I was expecting, but an actual, formidable right to the jaw. It was 
impossible to tell whether she was still or just spring loading. The tension 
went out of her wrist, and I released it on a probationary note only, arm 
still raised to defend myself. Her arm went slack at her side. "It's like 
getting that call again."

"I know that," I murmured. "But until you can wrap your mind around the fact 
that the people you've trusted to do what's right are the ones in control of 
this bullshit, then you're no help to me."

"Is that your way of saying 'go outside and play, April'?" She asked irately, 
pulling me out of the rain by the sleeve of my jacket. "Can't you see that 
I've lost as much as you have, if not more? I want to help, Mulder! I'm not 
trying to subvert this for you!"

"I didn't say you were," I argued listlessly. "But if Ray were here -"

Her eyes stopped me, wide and dry. I finally saw the woman standing there - 
the woman who had suddenly found herself alone after ten years of marriage, 
who had to explain death to two children who weren't even old enough to know 
what *life* was. I bet she reached across in her sleep, too - casually, at 
first. Then came the panic as she found no one there. I wanted to ask her 
what she thought was more hopeless: awaiting the return of another who had 
unquestionably died...

Or awaiting the return of one whose moments slid through my fingers with each 
obstruction, with each dead end? My phone rang. I ignored it, just watching 
her. 

"If Ray were here," she said spitefully, eyes flashing. "I guess that's your 
answer then, and that's fine. Maybe I'll call you if I find something. Maybe 
I won't." 

Her umbrella opened with a sharp snap. Without looking back, she walked out 
into the endless beige, out into the wet world. She instantly blended in. The 
pealing of the phone continued from inside my jacket. I dug it out of my 
inside pocket. 

(Don't be the bad news.) 

(It's always bad news.) 

I answered it. "What?" 

Drake was breathlessly up and running almost before I got the word out, 
giving me the impression that he'd been talking well before I picked up. 
"I've got good news and bad news." 

"I seriously doubt you could tell me anything good right now."

"I got a chip for your friends to analyze. You said you needed one."

"Then what's the bad news?"

"I got it from another returned abductee."

I felt my pulse kickstart, blood rushing between my ears. "Where?" 

"You're not going to believe this - I'll give you a hint. I've been at 
Northeast Georgetown since last night. I haven't left." 

"The *same* hospital?"

"And like before, this woman's a hell of a long way from home." Drake sighed 
wearily. "Vancouver, Mulder. This woman's from Vancouver."

"Does her condition match Lori Maciver's?"

"No. *Hell* no. You have to see this."

x

Northeast Georgetown Medical Center
11:23 AM

Three weeks ago, slightly intoxicated, Cindi Baron, 32, had left a Canucks 
versus Coyotes hockey game after the second period was called. She'd gone to 
the game with casual acquaintances who, while slightly miffed that she'd left 
without saying goodbye, weren't concerned as to her safety. Currently 
estranged from a family in Maine and living on her own, precious days had 
been lost before someone, her employer, called the police. Cindi was what 
Drake referred to as a 'MUFON tag': a woman who had been abducted at least 
five times or more. Like Scully and Lori before her, she had survived the 
cancer, going into remission two years ago.

All of which *somehow, some way* lead to the discovery of her unconscious 
body just on the outskirts of the Potomac's recreation areas in D.C. But if 
there was an opposite pole from Lori Maciver's calm and cold disposition, 
Cindi Baron was it. 

From the moment she'd regained consciousness in the ambulance, she hadn't 
stopped screaming. The raw, frayed cacophony of it filled the entire ward. 
Strong sedatives, administered in ever-arching dosages, should've been more 
than sufficient in quieting the incessant scream. Nothing worked. Doctors and 
nurses dashed about in a maddening frenzy, children cried and Lori Maciver, 
in the room beside her, vociferously complained of the noise. 

Drake had found Lori Maciver's husband unwilling to have the chip removed 
from his wife's neck, especially to turn over to a stranger who wouldn't or 
couldn't answer all of his questions. He filched Cindi Baron's chip, corked 
inside a little glass vial, from the pocket of her jeans after the nurses 
removed her clothes. I would bet good money that she'd had another one 
implanted where the previous chip had been. But for analysis purposes, I had 
what I needed. 

I paced the hallway in front of her room, pausing sometimes to look through 
the one-way glass of the inset window, letting the assault of her terrified 
howl wash over me. Then, I'd peer in to see Lori Maciver, regarding her 
husband with amused contempt. Drake came down the hall, towards me. I shook 
my head. "What's the difference here? There's got to be some connection." 

"A pattern is really the last thing I'd be looking for," he argued in a low 
whisper. "Each abductee has a different reaction to the experience. I've seen 
them with my own eyes." He paled. "My mother came back in increasingly worse 
states of... different each time." 

"Was she more like Lori Maciver?" I asked. "Or Cindi Baron?" 

"To be honest with you, I've seen neither of these reactions before. Never. 
And I've watched this kind of scenario play out since I was a kid." Shrugging 
helplessly, he crossed over to Cindi's door. "What happens if she *can't* 
stop screaming?" 

I opened my mouth to answer when the poorly transmitted voice on the hospital 
intercom suddenly spewed forth my name in a flurry of static. "Fox Mulder, 
telephone at the front desk... Fox Mulder, telephone at the front desk..." 

Drake looked up at the speaker over our heads inquisitively. "Expecting a 
call?" 

"No," I answered, confused. "Not from anyone who doesn't know my cell phone 
number." I pulled it out of my trenchcoat. No, it was on-line, the battery 
was all charged up. It was in rare, working order. Mark down the day. 

"Fox Mulder... telephone at the front desk..." 

Drake walked with me to the phone. "Seriously, if she can't stop screaming, 
what?" 

"At some point she's going to run out of lung power." I paused to listen for 
a moment. "Seems it would've happened by now, though." I pressed the line 
that was flashing. "If this is someone trying to get me to change 
long-distance services, I'm going to be - " 

(God! Oh... shit!)

Like a long, seamless screech of feedback, spiraling through one ear like a 
heated point. I fought to pull the phone away, but the sound - immobilizing. 
Couldn't...move. My vision sharpened into blurry angles, and plunged into 
blinding white. I raised my hand to my face, feeling a scream building from 
the pain, a scream trapped inside. The mechanical voice drilled through. I 
felt it searing across the back of my neck, felt it pushing from under my 
face, rattling through my teeth. 

(Make it stop.. make it... ) 
 Over and over again, it said the words... in a cadence like metal scraping 
metal, like a car wreck, multiplied upon millions...

"One can't remember - " 

My knees buckled. I couldn't see, just scrambled for the edge of the nurse's 
desk. Far away, voices raised in pitch - concerned... calling out... so far 
away...

"One can't remember. 
One can't forget - " 

I couldn't pry my teeth apart to cry for help. I couldn't tell if I was 
falling, rising, curling up... I opened my eyes to the blindness again, and 
an explosion of noise seemed to seize control of my neck now, firing up into 
the back of my head. The path of a bullet... I felt something warm fall onto 
my clenched fingers. Blood.. from my ear, onto the phone receiver. 

(Oh god, help me - ) 

"One can't remember. 
One can't forget. 
The third is at peace." 

xxxxxxxxxx
End 12 of 16. 


Out of Reach (13/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


I dropped into consciousness the same way I'd dropped out of it: kicking and 
fighting. 

My first breath felt like it was flooding my lungs with scalding water. I 
tried to thrash my way out, but my arms and shoulders were pinned. 

(Not demons. *Not* demons. Doctors. It's just doctors.)

(There are those kinds of doctors...) 

I pushed at all points of resistance as the room fell into place. The 
brown-haired nurse with her knee unpleasantly dug into my thigh, the doctor's 
thumbnail yanking my eyelid up, the other doctor a few feet behind him, 
priming the hypodermic needle...

"No! I'm fine! No!" I knocked the doctor's hand away from my face, attempted 
to pull my leg free. The nurse wouldn't move. "Get *off* me. I'm okay!" 

The room stilled its spinning, a little. The nurse arose. The doctor held the 
needle, unconvinced. The whole ward was gun-shy now, afraid that yet another 
person was going to start that infernal screaming that blanketed the ward 
like an unnamed disease. 

"I'm okay," I repeated angrily. "Move." 

The hand that pulled me up by my arm and to my feet belonged to Drake. I 
shrugged away from his help anyway. The brown-haired nurse touched the side 
of my neck, and I shrank back as if fearing deactivation. There was blood on 
the tips of her gloved fingers. It hadn't been an hallucination: my ear *had* 
bled, and continued to bleed. I pulled the receiver up by its tangled chord, 
peering at the drops of blood trapped in the hard, perforated plastic of the 
earpiece. Thinking better of hanging it up, I left it on the front desk, 
afraid to raise it to my head. I had the sneaking suspicion that the staccato 
bleating of the disconnected line would've closely approximated the droning 
pain trapped in my skull. I didn't want to find out. 

"What's his name?" 

"Mulder."

"Mr. Mulder - " 

I was headed for the exit doors at the end of the hall, freezing there when I 
couldn't think of a reason why.

"Mr. Mulder, your ear - " 

Drake had seized the floor in front of me, as if blocking my path. "You 
could've ruptured an eardrum. Or worse. C'mon, let them shine a light and 
take a look." Desperation now. "Come on, it won't take them but a minute." 

"The third is at peace." My voice was raw, unfiltered. 

"What? The third *what*?" 

Another hand on my arm now. A doctor. I shook loose again, going into the 
designated room. From the beginning, my body had declared war against all 
initiative to act. Now it had obviously moved on to the mortar fire.

I sunk into a chair. The doctor stood in the doorway, gauged the distance 
from the chair to the exit at the end of the hallway, and looking back, 
suggested hopefully, "Stay." 

Shrugging with one shoulder, I held my hand to my ear. 

"Alright," Drake replied, once the door had clicked closed behind him. "What 
in *the hell* was that all about?" 

"The voice, on the phone." I squinted, hand raised involuntarily to my 
forehead. "The first is... no, no... 'One can't forget, one can't - '" I 
shook my head dismissive. "That's not right either. One can't remember, one 
can't forget and the third is at peace." 

"The voice said that? There was a voice?"

"Loosely speaking - a computer manufactured voice..." The blood pulsing 
loudly between my ears reminded me of a bomb clock, ticking away the seconds. 
"But it was... like feedback. Input colliding with input." 

"You're telling me a *noise* just punctured your eardrum?" 

I glared at him, as coldly as I knew how. 

He backed away. "Shit. Sorry - "

"No, you have a point. Someone should be here to make that argument." Just 
not you, I added silently. 

"Well... okay, but what does that mean? One can't remember - ?"

"Lori Maciver." 

He resented his own confusion. "What?"

"Lori Maciver can't remember. Cindi Baron can't forget. The third, whoever 
she is, is at peace." I raised my eyes now. "At peace. Dead, right?" 

Paling now, he conceded with a nod. "Usually."

If only Lori Maciver's memory loss didn't seem to have been replaced by 
something more ominous. Cindi Baron's brand of remembering was true and 
harshly lit, absent of reprieve. I imagined her bent forward, unanesthetized. 
Before, I'd always thought that having them returned, wiped of these 
memories, was dishonest. And it was, but there was something to be said for 
mercy, even the unintentional kind.

I hadn't received any calls prior to *their* returns, so why now?

If only the answer wasn't so apparent. 

Drake protested as I walked out, the doctors even more so. I ignored them 
all, moving for the sake of moving, trying to quiet this new reminder in my 
brain that the mechanical voice hadn't said the third *would be* at peace - 

But that it was already done. 

x

Office of "The Lone Gunmen"
1:39 PM

Frohike twirled the glass vial between his thumb and index finger, sending 
the black speck inside sliding soundlessly from one end to the other. 
Suspicious eyes locked with Drake's, he suddenly stopped the motion. "You say 
you found this in the pocket of her blue jeans?" 

It was hard to tell, under the circumstances, but I was pretty sure Frohike 
had asked this question twice before now... or I was caught in a nightmare 
loop. The first time, it was just interest. The second time, annoying. Now, 
Frohike had apparently made his choice. Drake looked to me, for some 
brilliant legal defense. I couldn't keep my eyes dry, and their voices 
sounded scratchy and distant, like interference dulling a clear radio signal. 
He was going to have to handle this one on his own. 

"Drake's not in this. I am." Was that me? I suddenly couldn't remember if I'd 
just spoken or not, and the uncertainty floored me until I caught the 
collective stare, caught myself on the edge of a wheeled projector table. 

(Chrissakes, hold yourself together, dammit.) 

"You are?" Byers asked carefully, as if coddling a child. 

Infuriated, I forced my head to at least keen into one train of thought and 
stay there. Lucidity resisted. I felt like I was doing a systems check for a 
rocket launch, not just attempting to explain myself. "I don't think this is 
a global conspiracy anymore." They waited. "This is a personal vendetta."  

I willed them all to be quiet for a moment. "I'm not saying the global 
conspiracy doesn't exist anymore. I'm saying - the letter, the box, and now, 
that telephone call. Someone in this is out for *me*. The focus has shifted. 
I'm being followed, I know that much. At first I suspected Griffin or Essary, 
Jonson especially. But they spent at least enough time in holding for Skinner 
to have talked to Jonson at length. If that's what they were doing, they 
would've never let the three be apprehended. Right?"

(Do you even hear the damn words I'm saying?) 

Frohike jiggled the vial again at Drake. "In her jeans pocket, huh?" 

"Shut *up*, Frohike," I ordered angrily, before Drake could open his mouth in 
edgewise. "Look, what's more obvious than the fact that I don't have a clue 
what's going on here? I haven't had a whole lead since the beginning. As far 
as I know, Scully's airplane taxied down the runway into fucking oblivion, so 
why the crackdown on *me*? I knew something was wrong when neither the FBI or 
the NSA had the first clue about that box. There's a third party, working 
independently."

"What kind of vendetta?" Langly asked. "Someone you put in jail? I could call 
up your files -"

"Have you found the tracking database for these implants yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then keep all your operations online until you do." I absently turned my 
hands out and cracked my knuckles. "It's not a lead, but it's still the best 
chance. And I can just go through some of my files at work and - "

Drake cleared his throat. "Mulder - " 

I stopped, laughing uneasily, remembering. "Oh. Right. I'm afraid you lost 
your federal insider. I resigned today." 

The glass vial fell out of Frohike's hands, and he caught it right before it 
would've hit the floor. "You mean you quit?" 

"Well, yeah." I shrugged guardedly. "It was that or get a psychiatric 
dismissal. That's really not the kind of thing I want on my career record, 
such as it is. Couldn't get some place to stay the hell away from here, 
couldn't buy a gun. So I quit."

 "What are you wanting with a gun?" Frohike's question was too loud, too 
sharp, taking on the cadences of outrage. 

I kept my mouth steady, but my hands still shook. "I guess April *could* 
help, if it was only to go through my files and see if anyone I may have 
helped incarcerate just got paroled." I put my hands into the sleeves of my 
trenchcoat just as the phone rang and I jumped in spite of myself, sending it 
skidding across the floor to where Byers stood. I made no move to take it 
from him. 

Byers knelt to retrieve it. 

"Don't answer it," I warned. "Anyone I need to talk to, I can call them 
myself." 

"I won't put it to my ear." He pushed the answer key. When no voice came, he 
placed it to his ear. "It sounds like..." Langly leaned in. "Television 
static. Could just be your service going off-line." 

I wasn't about to play the game of trial and error required to prove this 
theory. One ear buzzing like a pinned wasp was enough. Standing up, 
discarding my jacket on the chair, I approached the phone, trying to figure 
out which sensations were my own and which were being cued by the noise. 

First, the slow chill, sweeping my neck horizontally.

(That was it! That was one of them!)

(Don't go closer!) 

Next, what felt like... a thickening. Only, I could *hear* it, happening. 

The ear that had stopped bleeding rang like glass shattering against glass. I 
backed away a full six feet. "That's... that's the sound." 

"You're sure?" 

I nodded. 

"I want to try something," Byers mused, still holding the receiver up. He 
turned to Frohike. "Trap that phone line on a short frequency. I'm going to 
patch it in to the amplifier."

Langly snorted, commandeering the amplifier in question. "You couldn't even 
patch your socks. Hold." 

"Got it," Frohike responded.  

Byers held the phone almost fearfully in his fingers. He winced, moving the 
amp towards him. "This is gonna smart for a second, but I need you to tell me 
if - " 

I hit the floor on my knees before he'd even finished talking, as the 
discordant howl flooded the room. "Turn it off! Turn it off!" I repeated the 
words over and over, unable to hear myself say them, but feeling my mouth 
strain. 

Yanking the cell phone away, Byers stood staring at it in horrified 
fascination. 

"Jesus!" Frohike shook the ringing out of his ears. "That came out of a 
*phone*?"

"It was unpleasant for us, but it almost knocked Mulder out," Byers thought 
out loud, looking up. "How did you describe it again?" 

"Input..." I couldn't get my teeth to stop rattling as I picked myself up. 
"Input, colliding with input. Out- Output. Whatever. Feedback." 

The three of them exchanged glances, slowing sharing a nod of agreement. 
Langly reached over, lifting the glass vial from Frohike's work area, holding 
it up to the light. "Shit." 

"You *are* being spied on," Byers announced. 

Drake stood up, indignant, ready to defend himself. 

"No," said Byers, reassuringly. "Mulder's being trailed by his own *neck.*" 

(Oh god - ) I rubbed my hand against it, thinking of that slow blaze of cold 
that ripped its way across the skin. Of course. For someone, I'd been moving 
around the same radar screen as Scully. 

"So when could someone have just ganged up on him and put this thing in his 
neck?" Drake asked, relieved that the harsh spotlight of paranoia had been 
removed from him, at least temporarily. 

"I was in a decontamination chamber for four days. They had ample 
opportunity." 

Drake sank down into the other chair. "This is insane." 

Byers still couldn't quite believe it. "And the frequency was fashioned just 
to clash with the implant. That's the only way there would be feedback. Even 
what occurs with some older models of hearing aids is a mild version of 
that." 

"Maybe have someone screen your calls," Langly suggested. "Until this all 
blows over." 

 The bitter, hostile sound of my own laughter startled me. "Blows over? You 
think it will?" I took my cell phone back from Byers, abruptly. "I guess I'll 
be calling *you* then."

When Drake and I walked out, the rain had stopped. The sun caught its own 
reflection in the pothole pools of the rundown parking lot, throwing back 
crinkled waves of bright heat that drew the eye like flashing sirens. I told 
Drake, without any room for negotiation, to drive me back to the hospital and 
let me get in my own car again. 

"Mulder," he began in exasperation. "You're in no condition to drive. You 
could get yourself killed -"

He said more. I tuned it out. Was "killed" really an effective threat 
anymore? 

They had my sister. And they could keep her. 

They had the truth, assuming it had ever existed in the first place. 

They had my job. 

As close as I held a hope that Scully was still alive, as fervently as I 
wanted to believe it...

The light that had gone off inside me, days ago, said otherwise.  

But they needed her, didn't they? And that meant alive.

(They need her the way they *don't* need you.) 

I held the passenger door open, glancing around at the windows. There were a 
million chance places for a man to be standing with a gun, waiting. Like 
McGrath had once waited for Spender. Like I had once waited for Spender's 
father. That's what the doctor had said to me in Pam Wyeth's house: Now it 
was I, not Scully, who was considered dispensable. Like the Smoking Man, and 
the dozens of nondescript players and button-pushers who stood behind, I was 
a dead man courting a bullet.

I wished they'd hurry up. 

xxxxxxxxxx
End 13 of 16. 


Out of Reach (14/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


Georgetown, W.V.
3:53 PM

I had no idea until I began to speak that she knew so little. She survived on 
sparse information, vague ideas. Did this make it worse, or better? I didn't 
ask. Bill sat next to her, but I didn't address him. 

I told her about the case handed to us at the Lincoln Memorial. I told her 
how I found a sister who didn't want to be rescued, and about how the person 
we'd gone in search of in the first place had found me first. Then there was 
the woman, only incidental to the case, that he'd killed just moments after I 
guaranteed her safety. Because he wanted to. Because it had seemed like a 
cool idea to have me distracted by her lying there, dead on the carpet. 

Monsters. Couldn't she see? I used my stare like a prod. 

The last I'd seen of Scully was in my sister's house, right before we'd split 
up to head to the airport. I could remember her wanting us to go in the same 
car. 

Oh, god, if only I had done at least that much. 

She interrupted me by touching my hand. What had Dana said? When I last saw 
her? 

I couldn't remember. 

How could I *forget* something like that? 

Then there was the decontamination chamber. The thought that their gas had 
also bought them a four-day head start still kindled a pain in my side that 
made it impossible to sit down. Soon, I was pacing there and the story lapsed 
into that of a fraudulent letter, of a box in Nebraska. 

I didn't mention the tattoo. The fact of its removal was as gratuitous as the 
act itself. No use in re-breaking a broken heart with a senseless image like 
that one. 

Lori Maciver and her acquired cruelty were next, then Cindi Baron and her 
screaming. I told her about the call, and the words that were said. 

The third is at peace. I delivered those words the way anyone would tell 
another that the person they'd mutually loved with such intensity was gone: I 
sobbed them out and stopped breathing. 

Maggie Scully shed no tears. I'd braced myself in vain. Instead, she started 
at the beginning of the cycle that I was ending, with rage and fury. 

But I was tired now. My anger had flattened into a single, unrelenting hum 
that my body could no longer withstand. Maybe it would become the same for 
her.

There were those things now that needed to be said. 

For the first time since I walked into the dim apartment, I looked Bill in 
the eye. The words weren't going to be said before him. It wasn't because of 
any personal shame on my part, just the knowledge that, tired or not, the 
first smug words to come out of his mouth were going to be directly 
proportionate to the number of teeth I knocked out of it. 

"About Lori Maciver," he said. 

Maggie widened her dark eyes towards him. She'd forgotten he was there. 

"What about her?" I asked softly. 

"She's the one who can't remember. Right?" We answered him by not debating 
the point. "Couldn't even remember her kids. Isn't that what you said?" 

I raised my chin. 

"So there's a chance," he continued, "that Dana might not remember you." 

"Bill," threatened his mother, her voice a preemptive strike. 

I lifted my hand in her direction. Cease-fire. "The chance is that she 
wouldn't remember *anybody.* Not just me." 

"I'm not really concerned with her remembering anyone else." He smiled, teeth 
bared just behind his lips. "Mostly just with her forgetting you." 

Maggie's jaw dropped, in shock. I closed my eyes, hinged my jaw and forced 
down the overwhelming bleakness of it. My fist closed on my fingers. I felt 
them cutting into my palm. "I'm concerned with finding out if she's still 
alive. I would think, as her brother, that this would be your concern as 
well." 

His mother stared at him pointedly. "So would I." 

"He just sat there and talked about her like she was already dead!" He stood 
up now, even with me, but still facing Maggie. "He's given up on her!" 

I stepped between them, pushing him back, but not forcibly. "I have *not* 
given up on her! Until I find out what happened to her, one way or the other, 
I can't stop looking." 

He drew up now, stiffening his spine. "So what's with the sob story, huh? You 
*look* like you've given up. You look like I could knock the shit out of you 
right now, and you'd stay on the ground where you fell. That's what I see." 

"Bill!" Maggie yelled. 

I held her back, keeping my expression neutral. "I have given up. But not on 
her."

"What in the fuck is that supposed to mean?" 

Maggie moved me aside and I let her. "Bill, you're going to San Diego - "

"Mom, we've been *through* this! And it keeps happening! How many more times?"

" - and you're not going to - "

He took a fevered step towards me. "People keep dying! As long as you keep - "

"GO!" His mother screamed, and all of his words froze somewhere in his throat 
as she stabbed her finger at the front door. "You're going back to San Diego, 
and you're not going to stop until you get there. If you're needed out here, 
I will be the first to call you. Until then, get out."

"I can't believe you're taking his side," he muttered sharply. 

"This isn't about sides," she contended, piqued to her last nerve. "This 
isn't about you, Bill." 

"She's *my* sister," he argued hollowly.

No one spoke, and the moment stretched on so interminably that I thought 
maybe time itself had chosen to pause here. But when Maggie Scully spoke 
again, her words were weighted with the menace of a grudge that could be 
carried through to the next twelve holiday get-togethers. Hell, to her next 
lifetime. "Since I called you, you've done *nothing* but complain about how 
this is being handled. You haven't stepped in once to offer your assistance 
in finding her, and every time someone tries to get through to you, you 
antagonize them like you're antagonizing me right now. Before I say something 
I'm going to have to confess, I want you to get your things, and go home." 

He stood there for a moment, unmoving, a weak attempt at a dare. With the 
anger of the whipped-down, he got his coat and slammed the door behind him. 
The sound made me hinge my jaw again. 

She touched my shoulder. "Fox?"

I didn't jerk away this time. 

"Don't say you've given up." 

I still wouldn't look at her. "I'm going to find her." 

"That's not what I meant. You *know* what I meant." 

Closing my eyes, I sank down into the chair across from the sofa, across from 
her. "There's going to be a call. Maybe in a few hours, maybe in a day 
about... the third one. Drake will call me, and I will go - wherever. I 
seriously doubt that I'll be coming back." Before she could interrupt, I 
added, "There's no negotiations here that you can make. I'm going, and I know 
what they have planned for me. They told me. I think they need her, and that 
there's a chance that if the tests didn't kill her, the men won't either. A 
shift in power has occurred. I'm no longer useful. If it means I might have a 
chance of saving her... or at least, talking to her before..." I couldn't 
make myself finish the sentence. "Then I'll go."

"But if she may still be alive, then you can stay here," she protested. "And 
she'll find you and - "

"It won't happen that way," I said wearily. 

"Why not?" 

"Because it never does!" 

She sat there quietly, and I began a slow pacing walk through the living 
room. She'd cleaned up. I hadn't even noticed. The books were back on the 
shelves, the broken dishes all swept away. 

I tried to imagine this apartment as a home that she and I shared. But that 
was too implausible. Even if we both called off the hunt - and the days when 
we had now seemed painfully far away - they would never leave us alone. But 
maybe, if I took myself out of the equation...

She'd be better off. Wouldn't she? 

I turned to Maggie and asked the question silently. 

The conversation was over.                                                    
                                          

Pulling the door closed behind me, I walked into the bedroom. I crawled 
across the bed, numb with fatigue as I spread myself out and closed my eyes 
so tightly it hurt. What had been held in refused to be suppressed a moment 
longer. The blankets under my face were soon soaked through. Nothing here 
smelled like her anymore. It'd been too long. 

For the second time today, I surrendered. 

x   

10:38 PM

The call came even sooner than I expected, in the form of a constant knocking 
on my door. Half-awake, I imagined it was the end, that the end always 
knocked before it came and swept the slate clean. 

Maggie Scully stood behind the door like a sentinel. She hadn't been asleep. 
Her eyes didn't look as heavy as mine felt. 

"Didn't you hear the phone?" She asked. "I answered it. He said it was 
urgent." 

"Who?"

"Someone named Drake." 

"I'll take it in here." 

She closed the door softly behind her. I raised the receiver to my ear 
cautiously. If it had been the sabotaging call, it would've already sent me 
sprawling. Waiting for the click of the phone in the living room, I stayed on 
the line. "Yeah?" 

"I tried calling you on your cell phone, but no one picked up." 

Well, no wonder. I didn't even know where the damn thing was. "This is fine." 

"Who answered?" 

"Scully's mother." Swallowing a yawn, I tried to stretch. Too painful. "Why 
did you call?" 

"The woman who runs the Baltimore MUFON chapter just called me about fifteen 
minutes ago."  His voice begged me to guess the rest. "An unidentified 
woman's description was just released over a police scanner in Salisbury. 
They can't get down there to confirm this, but... we think it's Scully. Down 
to the height, weight, blood type, hair and eye color and..." 

I wanted to scream at the pause. "Don't spare me, Drake. Spit it out." 

"The, uh... the patch of skin missing... on the lower back." He seemed to 
bite the words back, in dread. 

I couldn't breathe. 

"Mulder?" 

What came out was too close to a wheeze. I reined it all in, talking through 
my teeth. "I'm here."

"They didn't go apeshit over it until they found out the EMT who escorted her 
into the hospital wasn't legit." 

"How'd they know?" 

"Because he signed into the lobby ledger at the ER as Fox Mulder. Needless to 
say..." Drake cleared his throat. "Her condition was reported as comatose. I 
couldn't find out much more." 

I was standing up now. "Which hospital?" 

"Methodist West. It's in - " Realizing the question, he drew in the rest of 
his words. "No, Mulder. Let us go first and make sure." 

"This is where they want me to be. That's why she's there. That's where I'm 
going." I pulled my shirt over my head and around the receiver. "It's the 
only way I can follow them around." 

"You're not following them. They're *leading* you." 

"I know that. I'm counting on it," I said shortly. "Now - " Grunting, I 
pulled on a clean shirt. "Methodist West. Is there only one?" 

"Mulder! They could be waiting to kill you!" 

This tack stirred nothing in me whatsoever. For a moment, that scared me more 
than the possible impending doom itself. I'd had death wishes before, of the 
bile-black and self-destructive variety. I couldn't remember them feeling 
like this. "I'm heading up there. At this time of night, it's only a couple 
of hours by car. It would take me that long to try to book a flight out." 

"I can't believe you," Drake vented incredulously. "You *know* it's a trap." 

"If you didn't want me to go," I told him, in lieu of goodbye before I nudged 
the phone back into its cradle, "then you shouldn't have called."

I opened the closet, trying to think of what I would need. A change of 
clothes for Scully?

(That goes beyond wishful thinking.) 

(That's just damned stupid.) 

I grabbed a pair of her jeans and a sweater anyway. They hung next to a bulky 
garment bag that made the closet rod bow in the middle. Kevlar. I put my hand 
pensively against the bandages on my chest. A precaution couldn't hurt. I 
yanked the shirt back off, actively ignoring my shoulder, unzipping the 
garment bag and untangling the huge panels of snaps on the vest. 

(What are you going to say? What are you going to do?)

One thing at a time. I stuck the cup in the bathroom under the tap and held 
the four No-Doz in my cheek until it sloshed over the top. Choking them down, 
I splashed water on my face. Time to wake up. Time to make the plays that 
mattered. I watched as my own hand shook, as casual as if I was waving. I 
checked my waist for the gun that was no longer clipped against it, swearing 
to myself. Scully had never invested in a second weapon, and her only piece 
had disappeared with her in Minot. Given the questionable steadiness of my 
hands, I probably would've just popped a cap in my own knee anyway. 

I left the bedroom like I was making a tactical escape. Part of me thought 
that I should take a look back, snapping a mental picture of a place that I 
might never see again. But this wasn't the way I wanted to remember 
*anything.* If the past month could be neatly excised from my brain and 
destroyed... 

Nothing there was worth the total recall. That was why it persevered. 

My trenchcoat was on the sofa. No wonder I hadn't heard the cell phone. I 
slid my arms into it, half expecting Maggie Scully to come out and see me on 
my way. 

Her door didn't open. I guess I wasn't the only one who chose to remember 
things the way I wanted. 

It was raining again outside. The few hours of sleep I'd gotten hadn't helped 
my senses, but only reminded my body that there was much more sleep owed 
where that came from. I visually located my car outside, and noticed the one 
parked next to it under the yellow streetlight. 

Jonson's car. 

Warily, I walked up to it. He was head down on the steering wheel, arms in 
his lap. 

(What *now*?) 

I stumbled backwards about a foot when my tentative knock on his window 
yielded him snapping awake. I thought for sure he was dead. He hurriedly 
rolled his window down. "Damn. I fell asleep."

"No shit. What are you doing here?" 

"April and Skinner sent me."

I rolled my eyes. "So you could get some rest?" 

"No," he replied groggily. "April got pissed off when you wouldn't help her, 
so she called me. All I really gave her was the name. That Maynard guy." His 
face was steeled against the memory the moment he mentioned him. "She got a 
pass into the Pentagon, to get some stuff Ray had there. Waylaid a computer 
on her way out. She put the guy's name in." 

He handed me a poor facsimile of what looked like a photo of enlarged 
microfiche. This was practically antique. "Why does she want me to have it?" 

"Because nothing on it meant anything to her. She thought you might be 
looking for something else." He shrugged. "She really wants to help, you 
know. So do I. Seriously."

I scoffed at him over the top of the page. (You've got to be kidding.) I 
folded the paper double, pretending I wasn't interested in it, not giving 
April even the second-hand satisfaction of a job well done. "Who told Kersh 
about that box?" 

"I never talked to that motherfucker."

"But you told Skinner." 

"Look." He dug around inside his jacket, fidgeting for a nicotine fix. 
"Skinner didn't have word one with Kersh until that meeting. I got it on good 
faith."

My teeth seemed to bare themselves in disgust. "That must be a nice feeling. 
A nice warm glow."

He cupped his hand around his lighter and snuffed in the fire at the 
cigarette's tip, half-exhaling, half-coughing his next breath. "I think it's 
a no-brainer, man. Griffin about damn soiled himself every time you looked at 
him. That *look* on his face when you told him to push the button." Jonson 
shook his head, chuckling, and I could hear echoes of this story having 
already been relayed to someone at the next stool in one of the cop bars 
downtown. "I'm on your side. April's on your side. Skinner's on your side." 

"One out of three isn't bad," I mumbled. 

"You're still mad at me," he said lackadaisically, without surprise or 
argument. "I know that. But Skinner..." He rummaged around in the passenger 
seat. "Skinner said to give you this." 

It was a lumpy manila package. I pressed into it with my thumbs. It was 
cushioned on the inside, probably with bubble wrap. "I never *did* get my 
complimentary clock for ten years of service." 

"It's his service weapon," Jonson noted blithely. "He staged a break-in at 
his apartment, reported it stolen this morning. Filed the serial number off 
really nice. In'trim S.C. came down on him like a sack of shit, too." He 
indicated the empty holster clipped to my pocket. "Were you just going to 
keep your cell phone in there from now on?" 

"Shove it," I murmured, working on the brown strapping tape that had been 
overzealously wound around the end of it before giving up and prying through 
the bubble wrap with my pocket knife. I let it slide out into my fingers. 
Damn. I flexed my fingers around it. The Bureau went through weapons 
contracts like it did those for in-service vehicles, and Skinner's weapon was 
in good shape, but probably issued about seven years ago before the FBI got 
the service agreement for Sig Sauers. It was a Smith & Wesson .44, packed 
with a full magazine. He never bothered to have it replaced, though he'd had 
the option. Of course, once the Bureau handed down the promotion of Assistant 
Director, they were more likely to experience stigmata than to actually fire 
the damn thing. I holstered it and poked around inside the envelope. "Is 
there a list in here of people he wants me to kill?" 

Jonson stubbed out his cigarette. "He just wanted you to have it." 

I shook my head. "I'll send him a thank-you note."

"I'll tell him you said so." He glanced to his side, taking stock of the 
kevlar under my t-shirt. "Where you going with the flak jacket?" 

I feigned preoccupation with the empty package in my hands. "I'm not going to 
say." 

"You should take me with you."

"You should go home." 

His head came halfway out the window. "I'm your sniper, Mulder." 

"My sniper's dead." I spotted a metal waste container to my right, 
free-throwing the unmarked package and barely making it in. "Go home, Jonson."

He contested the order with a derisive glare. I glared right back. Wheels 
spinning, he left, no doubt calling me a "dope on a rope" all over again. 

I walked to my car. The drive up to Salisbury was going to infuriate me to no 
end, but I wasn't going to be trapped at an airport. Not on a rainy night 
like this one. I settled in, dug the maps out of the glove box and plotted an 
expressway route. 

Now that I was sure Jonson had truly left and not just circled around the 
parking lot and back to follow me, I took the sheet of paper April had sent 
with him out of my trenchcoat pocket, flipping on the interior lights. 

It was a copy of an application for employment that the Pentagon had, like 
every *other* piece of paper it touched, kept filed away until space demanded 
that the information, like this one, be poorly photographed or scanned and 
put on film. Anyone with the ability to write could fill out a damn 
application. No wonder April hadn't thought it was remarkable. 

John Maynard had graduated from NYU with a degree in political science. On 
paper, he looked like an ideal candidate for government work. The date field 
said 4/12/61. Maynard had two kids - Jacob and Kelly - and a wife, all of 
which made it impossible that he was the man Jonson and I had met. 

His most recent job listing at the time of the application was with the CIA. 

And he was applying for a position with the State Department. 

xxxxxxxxxx
End 14 of 16. 



Out of Reach (15/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


12:34 AM

Common sense and instinct. For me, no two catalysts had ever been more 
disparate, especially where driving was concerned. At one point on the 
expressway, I pushed the gas to the floor and realized that I'd buried the 
needle at least ten miles and three possible speed traps before. I let the 
common sense win out, for now, thinking of the unofficial obituary. (Could've 
saved his partner; wrapped his damn car around an exit ramp sign instead.) My 
foot felt heavy on the pedal though, and the stress lied in not hurtling 
forward. 

(Breathe.) 

I ignored my own advice. 

(It's as good a time as any.)

Yeah, what was good about it? For days and days, Scully and I had 
choreographed our lives to only exist in clips and phrases. Yet, here I was 
berating myself about the unposed questions, about all the words I tried to 
say to her that were choked out by either pride or doubt. 

I deserved to have my psychology credentials revoked. 

(Scully - ) 

I took a deep breath, wondering by what sick twist of coincidence it was that 
these utterances had become so private. They bobbed to the surface when they 
were the least damaging: when she was gone, when she was dying. But if she 
came back, if life started creeping back... there they went, submerged. This 
could *not* keep happening. Even as I thought this with such conviction, I 
wasn't sure I would drop the show of strength if I saw her again. 

*When* I saw her again, as Maggie Scully would insist.

Oh, yes. Because optimism had served me *so* well thus far. 

Did she resent me for this life? For the turns it had taken? I'd steered 
towards them without telling her (yet *another* set of lapsed promises). I 
put a bullet in a man's head, and after that night - 

She never mentioned it again. 

Not typical after-dinner repartee, but the opportunities had been there, 
noted, and passed up. God forbid I should kill the mood that was flatlining 
anyway, even when the hunt for Krycek in Sheehan somehow alleviated the 
tension. Don't ask me how. 

I glanced across the car. It didn't matter if she was angry, if she hated me, 
if she never wanted to see me again. A gun to Krycek's head would be nice, of 
course, but just finding her, salvaging *something* from this botched year.

(I love her.) 

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. Such things failed to be considered 
as candor in my mind. If my mother said "I love you," it always meant she was 
going to leave for weeks at a time to stay with her sister. If my father said 
it - 

Well, he never had. Maybe that was the point. 

(If you're done making excuses - )

I put myself in check. The exit for Salisbury was seven more miles. 

Common sense lost the battle.

x

Methodist West
1:28 AM

The hospital was a sprawling mess. The different wings and specialized 
centers of it covered several cross streets, as if it had developed slowly 
and overtaken the buildings around it as progress was made. A five-story 
complex of research labs here, the same-day surgery building there. 

She was here, somewhere. I parked in front of the building with the most 
floodlights and the vaguest sign. 

There was something spectacularly depressing about hospitals at night. 
Granted, they didn't purport to be cheerful. A skeleton of a night crew had 
learned how to walk and talk softly among the sleeping. My footfalls sounded 
inconsiderately loud in the foyer. I didn't slow down. If they pulled the 
nonchalantly unhelpful bullshit that seemed to befall most night crews I'd 
encountered, they were going to find that established tranquility largely 
jeopardized. 

Maybe it showed. The man in his white coat and scrubs, too young to be more 
than a resident, glanced up from the chart in his hands. The tag around his 
neck said he was R. Matthews. And he closed the file, instantly at attention. 

Looking like shit had definite advantages. 

"Sir?" 

I focused my eyes ahead of me, frozen with my hand fumbling inside my jacket. 
So much for the added influence of the badge. I dropped my arm to my side. "I 
received a call a few hours ago about a Jane Doe brought here yesterday."

"A Jane Doe?" He furrowed his brow, absently striking keys on the computer 
terminal in front of him. "Two John Does, but - "

"This is a woman. Caucasian, red hair, blue eyes, five-feet-two. Brought in 
unconscious." I realized that the snapping I heard was my own fist, rudely 
rapid-fire against the front of the desk. Balling my fingers into a tighter 
knot, I fought the still-puzzled expression on his face. "There was a problem 
with the paramedic who signed off on her - "

His face cleared suddenly. "Who called you?" 

"Someone who thought I might be able to identify her." 

"When?"

I searched his face for suspicion, but found none. "A few hours ago, like I 
said."

"Oh. Oh hell." Backing away a little, he teetered on his heels. His eyes 
swept the expanse of hallways behind me. "She - Sir, she went into 
respiratory shock about half an hour ago - "

"Where?" I spun madly, waiting for a direction. 

" - couldn't revive her." 

(No No No NO! NO!) 

My fist came down hard, pushing folders down into the chair, onto the floor. 
Papers spilled out. "No! I asked you where she was!"

"She's - " I followed his finger over my shoulder, staring back, panicked. 
His face matched the pulse rapping against my ribcage, his shock blandly 
trained. I knew the pose. The gun was bared at my side, and he took another 
step back. "The morgue... two floors down on this hall." 

Morgue. I was waiting for myself to run. 

Incognizant, I raised my hand to my mouth, as if stopping the sound that 
would come out. But I didn't make a sound, didn't move a muscle. My eyes 
wouldn't close, but I wanted them to, just for a temporary reprieve from the 
sterile walls and poached air. 

From the beginning, I'd only remembered her the way I wanted. Even when I 
closed my eyes and imagined her hurting, she still contained the vigor of 
life. But in the nightmares - 

In those, she was as dead as these hallways. 

I couldn't see her that way. My brain was always too reliant on cause and 
effect. I would never remember her alive without following the memory to its 
final conclusion each and every time.  

In each memory, she would die. Over and over again. 

Dr. Matthews spoke. The audio had gone out. His face was uneasy through the 
trained calm. I knew the tone from similar FBI training, but had never 
*really* known just how desperate the bland, soothing voice could sound. Like 
negotiating someone off a ledge, like knowing which wire to sever.

I thought back to December, of sitting outside that emergency room. Each time 
that long, high-pitched whir had reached inside, found no heartbeat, and 
screamed for everyone to stand and deliver, I sat there and absorbed that 
terror. I'd heard it then, three times. Only once had it alarmed for her, but 
it happened all three times for me. 

(And you kept her beside you, even though you *knew*... you motherfucker. YOU 
KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.)

The flatline might as well have gone on forever. I took her out of that 
hospital, to get her well, to get her standing. 

So she could die. 

My throat constricted around what threatened to be a penetrating howl in my 
chest. All I heard was my own heart, convulsing as every nerve siphoned its 
efforts.

(I don't *deserve* to remember her alive.) 

I hung my head. I told him I wanted to see. Every step intimated the 
opposite. 

(You keep your eyes fucking peeled.)

(You remember *everything* about this day. Every minute detail, sound, 
sensation. Breathe deep, remember this smell. Get your hands out of your 
pockets and touch her hand and KNOW)

I felt the first sob build in the center of my chest. No.

(and KNOW that you will never again engage joy. Not in this lifetime. Not in 
the next. You profile yourself like her killer and you die crying - ) 

The elevator doors whined open, and the long harshly-lit hallway waited.

( - because today is the day.) 

Matthews turned in the hall. I was still standing in the elevator. "Sir?" 

I simply stood there. 

"Sir?" He had me by the arm. "Isn't it possible that the woman you came here 
to identify isn't the one in the drawer?" 

How could I explain to him that the moment that when the call came, I'd felt 
something like *certainty*? Even before that, I'd lost the connection. The 
day felt inevitable, and what had happened to her was inevitable.

(Walk.) 

Whatever line I had on sanity, frayed and worn since days before, I let snap 
in two as I walked in. 

The fluorescent lights came on, section by section, gleaming dully on the 
bays and drawers. At once, the thickly cold air had worked its way through my 
clothes, seeping into my skin. 

He found the drawer, and hesitated. "Are you ready?" 

"No," I said coldly. "But you'd better open it." 

I forced my eyes to stay open. That small figure under the cloth, with the 
red hair brushed back from the blue-white forehead - 

(Oh god god god god god I can't do this I can't do it I can't - )

He pulled the sheet away from her face and - 

I half-stumbled backwards.

It wasn't her.

The doctor stared hard at my face, trying to get some kind of reading on what 
in the hell had just happened, when the fax machine in the corner sprang to 
life, ringing in an incoming message. 

"It's not her," I said angrily. For all the trouble that had been taken, the 
proportions were right. A red, scabbed corner of the missing skin was exposed 
from the side of the thigh. The eyes were frozen open, blue and glassy as 
they could be. The kind of things that set her apart from Scully - the wide 
mouth, the close-set eyes - wouldn't have made it onto an official police 
description. But I knew what I was looking at, after years of finding bodies 
dumped at the side of the highway, left for dead in basements, buried in 
shallow graves on the outskirts of picturesque towns. Fetish killers, when 
they couldn't find their ideal victim, *made* their ideal victim. They dyed 
the hair, they painted the nails, they put the girl in their mother's dress...

Or they cut hair that had probably been thick, long and blonde into a short 
bob, dying it a harsh red. 

"You're going to want to call the police back here," I said shakily. "The 
description they released isn't accurate - " 

Preoccupied, he pulled the papers off the fax machine, nervously shuffling 
through them. I knew this feeling, too: the dread and the anxious energy that 
one built up to cushion themselves when the bad news hit. 

But it wasn't Scully, just the love of someone else's life laying there. I 
pulled the sheet back over, wincing at her sudden indecency. 

Indecency that was nothing but a mock-up for a hoax designed to get me here, 
to get *me* at attention. Repulsed, empty now, I shook my head, glancing at 
Dr. Matthews as he stood there. He'd shuffled that fax too many times now. 

Something was wrong. 

"What in the *fuck* is going on here?" His voice quavered in time with his 
hands, and he censored the action quickly. "This is some sick joke, isn't it? 
This is the same name that the bogus paramedic put on the books when he 
brought her in." Flipping them over and back, he gave a sharp, unsettled 
laugh. "I can't even tell where they came from!" 

I took the papers from his hands. There were five, all addressed to me along 
the top edge of the page. Each one only contained a single word, set in the 
center of the white page, all capital letters...

THIS 

IS

JUST

A 

REHEARSAL.

xxxxxxxxxx
End 15 of 16. 


Out of Reach (16/16) Amanda Finch. Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part. 


I was afraid to be relieved. 

Since I'd awakened in the decon chamber, I'd been mainlining their force-fed 
adrenaline and acceptance like China White. From that moment, I was a blip on 
someone's radar screen, a puppet on invisible wires. I held my hand to the 
back of my neck, imagining them there, anticipating the opening of the 
drawer. The Doctor found the moment very important. All of his moments had 
been exact, precise. So far. 

Under the pad of my thumb, I traced the vertical scar at the base of my neck. 
I wanted it out, gone, but I had so few connections. I couldn't afford to 
sever even one of them. 

(If this is the rehearsal, motherfuckers, then when do we start the show?) 

His personal vendetta was nothing compared to the one he'd just crystallized 
in me. Whether Scully was alive or dead, whether I lived or died... I was 
going to kill tonight. 

I remembered his face, his feigned superiority there in Pam Wyeth's bedroom. 
Then, I hadn't been able to fight, hadn't even been able to stand. 

I wondered just how brave the man was when the hit squad wasn't flanking him 
on both sides. I recalled his seeming disdain for the guns they carried. Oh, 
he wasn't a fighter. He wasn't a simple machine. He was the ingenuity. 

(So you take out the hit squad as fast as you can.)

Right. 

(Just like removing the pawns around a king.)

Swallowing back the fatigue that wracked my body, I stood straight. 

Skinner's contribution was still loaded and holstered to my hip. 

I'd pawn myself, just to see. 

The bogus paramedic report had an address where "Dana Doe" had supposedly 
been found. It was probably more bogus than the EMT who rolled her through 
the doors, but something told me it was my next bread crumb. The mindgame had 
one more act.

x

2:15 AM

Outside conference room doors, I'd stood. A man behind them had died. It was 
still my home turf, still not as foreign to me, even in retrospect. By 
completing the act, I had  misplaced some of the bravado that hastened my 
finger around the trigger. 

Besides, if I hadn't fired that bullet, I wouldn't be sitting in this car on 
the crumbled pavement of a driveway outside of a house on 98 Dovecrest Cove. 
A house that was, for all intents and purposes, just an anomaly among the 
trees. The neighbors, if they could be called that, were more than three 
miles away in either direction. I'd checked. This wasn't suburbia. 

It had, at one time, been someone's expensive home, but the paint was flaking 
away in long spirals. The grass covered and poked through the sidewalk, as 
high as the handle of the wrought iron door. No lights were showing from 
either of the two floors. 

I dug my flashlight out of the trunk, firing the beam along the edge of the 
overgrown lawn to the mailbox.

Against the black aluminum, ornate white letters had faded over time. I 
dropped the flag on the side, and it gave way with a fine spray of rust. The 
letters spelled Maynard. 

Swivelling the light back around to the house itself, I thought about what it 
was going to be like to die here. This was no longer a red herring thrown 
into my path. I had my gun - Skinner's service weapon - tightly clutched in 
my hand, ready. There could be no dropped guns now. 

It felt like the end. 

(And it *will* be if I keep thinking like that.) 

I kept the flashlight high above the grass itself, hating the obscurity of 
each motion. The dead were everywhere, just like the men with guns. I walked 
carefully through the grass, keeping a constant trajectory with the 
flashlight until I made my way to the door. 

It opened at the slightest pressure from my hand. I rewrote the unofficial 
obituary in my mind: "Could've saved his partner, but got taken in by what 
anyone else would've recognized as a trap." 

(Of course it's a trap.) 

Traps could be sabotaged. 

The house was completely black inside except for errant curtains that let a 
suspicious light faintly peer in through the dirty windows. It wasn't the 
moon. There were too many trees for that. And no streetlights. I pointed the 
flashlight beam to the floor so I could find the source.

Instead, I found the blood trail. 

Every few inches, a dark blot of red had fallen onto the uncarpeted floor. It 
was mussed by a misstep and a smear, but was intact. I thought of fingers 
tangled in the back of her head, holding her face at the right angle. He'd 
hit her. He'd told her that the scene had to be just right. The blood had 
fallen then, either at his order or because she bled and he liked the effect. 
Nothing was random with him. Blood fell where he wanted, decoy women died at 
his whim. 

That's right, I thought to myself grimly. He's just a profile, just like any 
other killer. I maintained the dialogue with myself to keep my mind focused 
as I walked through the house. Was the doctor a bedwetter? No, he was too 
strident. A fire-starter? No, fire was boring, too out of his control. Animal 
mutilations? No. Those had been interesting for awhile, but like the fires, 
they got boring.

So he'd moved on, to women. What more was he, anyway, than Ted Bundy with 
medical training? He raped with incisions and technology. He raped, and the 
government looked away until the reports were released. They'd read the 
findings all day, but don't make them look at the blood. 

I looked up now. I had followed the trail to the back door. I turned off the 
flashlight.

So this was it. 

Like the front door, the back door was pushed open easily. A light bulb 
glowed too brightly beside the door, obviously new. The glass fixture that 
had once gone over it was shattered on the concrete below. My eyes adjusted, 
marred by the glare. 

Scully stood in the grass, too still. Apprehension hung on to her, from the 
tautness of her arms behind her (were they tied?) to the emotion that was 
somehow purely hers and somehow - 

(Something's wrong - ) 

My face was rushed into the door, catching me in a vertical line from my 
browbone to my chin. I tried to count the hands, and came up with six. Just 
when my mind cleared to think, a sharp corner caught me in the side of the 
neck. I threw my head back, randomly, catching someone's face. They grunted, 
then wheezed in pain. It hurt. Good. The flashlight hit the concrete below, 
just rolling off into the grass instead of breaking. They had the gun. Well, 
somebody did. I flexed my empty fingers to check, and the wheezing stopped 
just in time to knock me flat across the concrete. 

I don't think I even had the chance to call her name. 

Trying to get a fix on my position, I raised my head. The answering kick 
didn't come. All I could see was a blur, and after a moment it solidified 
into the doctor himself, casually holding a gun above the grass. Scully stood 
there, only two or three feet to his left. 

"Raise him up," he ordered. I was dragged to my feet, and stood on my own. 

I stared into Scully's face. It felt like years had passed, and the longest 
of them had passed between us. Her eyes moved sideways, gaze colliding with 
mine. If the past weeks had been a strange place, then she was the only 
familiar thing now or ever that had moved in it. I felt a childishly stupid 
twinge of triumph in all this, a feeling now so alien to me that I didn't 
censor it, didn't choke it down. 

But she killed it with a baleful glare, only broken by the doctor's voice. I 
shook my head, trying to shake it away. 

"It's the guest of honor, Red." He pointed at me with the gun. "Say hi." 

The glare from me to him only gained intensity. 

His arm came up in a sudden, jerking arc, face suddenly red. "I told you to 
say hi, bitch!" 

I closed my eyes and bit down. I could've shot the bastard through the back 
door. I had ten free seconds. If I'd only been looking for him and not her...

She looked at me now. I implored her for a sign, for anything, but the blue 
of her eyes unhinged me. When she moved back on her heels even slightly, I 
could see how the past days had treated her, even through the clothes that 
were too big for her. Her arm poked through the sleeve now, not tethered to 
the other. From her wrist to her elbow, she'd wasted away. Her voice echoed 
none of this in the forced greeting. That bolstered me, more than a little. 

I thought of how my face must look. How reassuring. How heroic. I struggled 
against the both of them. They just closed their fingers tighter around my 
arms. 

"There," he said with finality, and the gun dropped out of sight with his 
hand. "Now of course, this scene isn't exactly as I imagined. Some poignancy 
has been lost in the translation. But I've got what I need." He clicked the 
safety on and off in his hands. "I get to see your face when she goes down. 
And that's the important part." The hyper motion of his hands stopped. "Have 
you ever watched someone you love die like this, Fox? It's an experience, one 
that has to be survived to be appreciated. Do you see what I'm getting at?" 

Only a vague memory of the man in Pam Wyeth's bedroom remained now, and I 
couldn't place it. This was not the man who'd sidestepped into my blindspot. 
Vengeance had taken over.

And he was allowing it. He trembled with every ounce of it. Some bent, 
skewered happiness wrung it out of him. His dark eyes were gleaming and alive 
with it. "What's better than making the man who caused you pain face the 
justice of his actions?" 

I wanted Scully to look at me. She wouldn't. The doctor waited for my answer. 
"What have I done to you that you wouldn't have brought on yourself?" 

Wrong answer. He shot at the ground in front of him, enraged. Scully almost 
stumbled back, catching herself. I tried to plot out in my mind some way that 
she could run while I absorbed the consequences. How far was it around the 
house? 

"It's not what you've done!" It was as if the very nature of my question 
disgusted him. "It's what you *would* do. It's what you've inherited." 

I sighed sharply, as if my entire body demanded it. "Inherited?"

"Don't play stupid!" He roared as if he'd completely forgotten about her. 

The gun raised to the height of her head. No such luck. 

(Talk! Make him talk!) 

"I think I understand some of it," I replied quickly, watching the gun the 
whole time. "Is it Jacob? Or Jake? Jacob Maynard. It was your father's name 
you gave to Jonson. John Maynard, of the State Department. Is that it? Is 
that where this started?" 

"What's better than justice?" He didn't wait for my answer now. "Making them 
*feel* what it is that was done. The government has no concept of 'eye for an 
eye.' They have no concept of having the pain *shared* - " 

"And what you're doing? For the government?" I sought his face now. "How many 
eyes for an eye does that make so far?" 

"None, if you want to survive colonization. And I do." Recognizing the 
conversation for what it was, he raised the Glock now, twisting his wrist so 
that the gun would fire on its side. "We're all destined to finish our 
fathers' work. Tonight, I tie up the loose ends." 

I looked away helplessly. Scully stared straight ahead, at some point over my 
shoulder out into the dim haze of grass and trees. She gave a decisive nod. 

Confused, I stared back. 

Jacob Maynard unhinged the safety with his thumb. His knuckle went white 
around the trigger, then slack again as he turned to me. "The stomach, or the 
head? There *are* certain aesthetic conce - " 

When the gunfire erupted behind me, I was sure I'd been taken out, shot at 
least three times. The man on my right went down hard, sprawled across the 
concrete with four indistinct apertures in his shirt. I couldn't see the red, 
and it didn't seem real. There was some blood on my side. I was hard-pressed 
to identify it as his or mine. The vibrations of the bullet hits alone had 
brainwashed my physiology. The man on my left dropped down to his knees, 
checking for a pulse. 

In my peripheral vision, Scully lunged towards Maynard. The last thing I saw 
was his defensive charge forward. One of them hit the ground, and the grass 
concealed everything but the frenzy of the attack. 

I looked down at the dead man. And he was dead or getting there soon. His 
friend crouched there, prepared to take off into the grass, but still trying 
to conjure up his partner. "Hey... C'mon Brad. C'mon..." 

I took his gun at the same moment that a bullet was fired from the grass. I 
waited. Maynard's hitman waited, each of us rooting for a different person to 
rise up from the still ground. 

Holding the gun on him, I made my affiliations clear. He stood, eyes down, 
and waited for the killshot. 

The sudden blinding streak of pain in my side was corroborated by the hitman 
grabbing his chest and falling forward. I spun around, almost knocking Scully 
over with the heft of the rifle. 

"What were you waiting for?" She asked angrily, expelling the spent casing to 
the concrete. "A sign from God?" 

I was too busy trying to reconcile that thought with her voice when she threw 
Maynard's pistol into the grass and seized the sniper rifle. The ribs that 
had been taped and mending were re-broken by the muzzle of the gun as she 
speared me in the chest. "Scully!" 

She whipped her sweat-soaked hair out of her face. "You're coming with me. 
Move!"

Logic had never been my strong point, and the little I possessed was crushed 
under the weight of her words as she marched me through the thick, gnarled 
growth of grass and dense trees. Every paranoid delusion, every darkest 
hour... they all came rushing back. This wasn't Scully. It couldn't be. This 
was the woman I'd first met, the one I didn't know. The one who would let me 
die out there, who would make her little notes and betray me the moment I 
turned my back.

But she was bleeding red. I turned slightly, wincing. Wasn't she? 

(This isn't happening - )

There was a van parked in the woods, and the hand that held a sniper with a 
scope out the rolled down window hastily drew the weapon back in. If I was 
willing to trust my memories at that moment, the voice from inside the car 
would've sounded familiar. "Did you kill him?" 

She threw the rifle in with one hand. "The motherfucker got away."

(What in the HELL is the matter with you?) 

 I shrugged out of her hold, making it clear that I would go with her. 

 Isn't that what it boiled down to? To the ends of the earth, I thought 
angrily. Too bad we couldn't pick which ends those were. I tried to clear my 
head, tried to break this down into its simplest components. 

(This doesn't look right because it *isn't*.) 

She opened the side door, and pushed me in. 

The man in the car turned around, face only a vague shape in the darkness, 
voice hoarse as he lapsed into coughing, trying to talk around the harsh, 
ripping sound of it. "We are you - ? We can't take *him*!" 

Blood sprayed against my hand as he spoke. 

(Coughing up... blood...)

I raised my head from the floor of the van. 

"Put him back out and shoot him! He's still being monitored!" 

I matched the voice now. 

Krycek. 

Before I could even plan weeks-old retribution, Scully loomed above me,  
squeezing through the space in the bucket seats. "I can take care of that. 
Are you going to drive or just sit there and cough yourself to death?" The 
roar of ignition was lit under me as she dropped to one knee, turning her 
face so that her eyes were even with mine. "Come here." 

Krycek stomped the gas, breathing in sharply from the coughing. "He's the 
worst possible hostage." 

I waited for her reassuring smile out of Krycek's range. 

Maybe for her to just mouth the words, "It's okay." 

Anything. 

She put her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck, jerking my head 
to one side. I couldn't tell if the subsequent pain was an electrical shock 
or a needle prick, and when I tried to see what had caused the sensation, my 
mind simply zipped beyond my reach like a a television set being turned off. 

"He's know who I am," she murmured as the colors faded. "He's the *perfect* 
hostage." 

 The droning pain in my head -

Stopped. 

(Oh god god god god - )

Is that what silence was like? I'd forgotten.

The van hurtled forward, knocking me into the side. She braced herself around 
me. I felt myself being gathered up and collected. Arms closed around me. 

(Hey - ) 

The world dropped from under me, and I let myself fade out.

(Found her.)

xxxxxxxxxx
END.

Profuse thanks go to Becky "Do you need a butt-kicking?" DaSilva for Beta and 
archiving; to Rachel, Lori, Viridian, Anna and Ashlea for pre-reading, 
typo-hunting, Emergency Ego Resuscitation and the more-than-occasional 
face-thwap (face is *still* sore)  in response to my frequently whiny and 
self-deprecatory e-mails and IMs. I would've scrapped it without the six of 
you.

Thanks also to all of you who have kept tabs on the Cycle and offered your 
feedback. It always provided the necessary boost to progress with a story 
that was, at times, painful to write. 

Feedback read, blathered over and hauled out in times of crisis at: 
chaelysq@aol.com

Next 2 stories in the Cycle:
The Third Collective (Oooh! A spin-off! Somebody, please, shoot me!)
Out of Proportion

Amanda Finch
June 1999