From: mgreten <mgreten@xtalwind.net>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2001 12:00:57 -0700
Subject: NEW-Prison of Innocents 6 of 20
Source: xff


(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)
Chapter 6 of 20

No one but prisoners brought in with Scully on the van tried
to comfort the weepers, encourage the stragglers.  None of the
men or women in uniform spoke unless it was to deliver an order.
And there were many orders issued by men and women who
might have been robots.  They spoke in sentences that all began
with "You will not..." and "If you..then you.." Rules and
consequences.

Had she sounded like this, Scully wondered.  Had
she been this removed from the human side of law enforcement?
Did she distance herself from everyone as these guards and
prison officials did? Was her outrage at the crime so potent it
obliterated the human element in the criminal and thus
compromised her own humanity?

Perhaps these prison officials thought, as she had, that
criminals deserved no better.  She was, after all, an admitted
thief to them.  A guard nudged her back to reality with his
nightstick and pointed to a hallway where the new arrivals lined
up.

In a hallway was a window where she was photographed again
and given a number.  At the next window she got two pairs of
jeans, three long sleeved work shirts, two white short sleeved
tee-shirts, one pair of white tennis shoes, four pairs of
white socks, and assortment of white cotton underwear and a cell
assignment.

Another door slid back.  The newcomers moved into the
main cell block.  The noise of 434 women in a space built for half
that number whacked the newcomers in the face like an invisible
hand.  Scully's seatmate stumbled into her.  While the newcomers
had no chains, their arms carried stacks of towels and blankets.

Scully shifted her load and turned to help the woman behind her.
The illness and fright made her face a splotchy red.  Scully
suddenly feared the woman had developed scarlet fever.

"Face front," a guard said to Scully.

She started to speak.

"Face front." He drew out the words.

Scully reluctantly released the sick woman and smiled some
encouragement, but her seatmate hardly noticed.

"Fresh meat!" screamed a woman in the cell block.  She was
in the first tier, first cell.  She had a missing front tooth and
a shrill voice.  "Fresh meat coming in!"

"Chrissake," said a tall guard.  His dark blue shirt and
pants contrasted against the gray wall.  He adjusted his collar
and stood in front of the cell as the newcomers walked passed.
"Where you learn this stuff? Don't you remember your first day?"

"Been so long I forgit, boss."

"Don't hand me that boss shit," the guard muttered and moved on.

The cell block had few bars.  The cells themselves resembled
cement boxes with reinforced plastic fronts -- frosted on the
bottom half and clear on the top -- that housed two women
apiece.  Only the doors retained the traditional bars.  Women
inside leaned on them.  A guard who lead the line of new
prisoners cleared the way of the hands, arms and feet protruding
out of the cell doors.

Inside, the cells had a toilet with no seat, bunk beds, a
dresser, a sink and a bookshelf.  All the furniture was bolted to
the floor.  Like gerbil cages, Scully thought as she gripped the
bedding she'd been given.  She noted the cameras mounted on poles
at regular intervals in the hallways and common areas that kept
an invisible eye on every inmate.

As the line moved up and through the rows of cells, the women paused in
front of a cell until a guard waved his arm in a circle, alerting
someone at the end of the row to open a door.  A prisoner stepped inside
and was ordered to shout, "Clear" to signal the guard to close the door.
The bolt in the cell would slam home, locking the prisoner inside.  Then
the line of new inmates, all looking neither right nor left, moved on,
up
the stairs to the second floor, down the row of cells and finally up
to the third tier.  The last cell in the last tier was Scully's.

"The penthouse," said one of the guards.  "For FBI agents who screw up."

Scully looked at him and said evenly, "If that woman in section two,
cell six has an infectious disease it could spread through this prison
in a matter of days and overload your medical facilities."

Another guard waved his hand in the air, the bolt slid out, and the cell
door rolled back.  There was a pause.  Scully looked at her new slip-on
tennis shoes.  Manufactured in Taiwan no  doubt.  She didn't think she
could do it, could take those thin-soled shoes inside the small box.
Then, amazingly, it was done.

"You must indicate that you are clear of the cell door," said a guard.

Her back to the door, Scully pressed her lips together and stared at the
blank wall.  Token resistance, it meant nothing, but she felt better.

It startled her to realize resistance made her feel better.

"You are required to indicate that you are clear of the door," repeated
the guard.

"Sonvabitch.  I'm writing her up," said the first guard.

"Clear!" yelled a voice from the top bunk.

When the door bolt slammed in with the heavy thud of metal
on plastic, Scully started.  She could have sworn the bolt
pierced her heart.  She focused on a calendar taped to the back
wall.  Nine days since Mulder came home, since she woke in his
bed.  Six days since she last felt sick.  Three days since she
last saw her mother.  Two days since she was free.  A day since
Mulder saw her led from the courtroom.

Quiet fell over the cell block.  The retreating steps of the
guards clicked and clopped on the concrete hallway and metal
steps, growing fainter and fainter.  Scully looked on the top
bunk and saw a thin knee and two small hands holding a magazine.
She moved closer.

"Can you read?" said a voice from the top bed.

"Yes." Scully said it with more confidence than she felt.

A tiny woman with cropped blond hair, narrow face, and
dancing blue eyes popped up and grinned down at her.  The woman -
she looked more like a girl of 16 -- studied Scully for several,
silent moments before thrusting the magazine in Scully's face.
"What is this?"

Scully shifted the bundle in her arms and leaned over to
read the print.  To her relief most of it made sense.  "It's, ah,
the Grand Canyon.  A new nature trail opened and this picture
shows the view from the top of the trail."

The elfin creature bounded down from the top bunk.  "I knew
it! I knew it was the Grand Canyon.  It just looked so much like
the African..I've never been to the Grand Canyon.  Have you?"

"When I was little.  My family took a vacation out West.  We
drove to the Grand Canyon." Scully threw her bundle on the lower
bunk and pointed to a spot in the picture.  "I stood right about
there." She looked into the double truck, full-color picture.
The reds, oranges and greens in the photograph seemed to bleed
into her and she felt a measure of calm.

"Is this someone who works there? A guide?"

"Ah, yes.  Park Ranger Tom Mathews."

"He looks very kind, don't you think?"

Scully pursed her lips.

"Did you go in the summer? Fall?"

"Summer," Scully said.  "Right about this time, actually."

"What was it like? Can you see it in your head now?" the
woman asked.  Her tiny nose wiggled.  Her rosy cheeks made her
blue eyes seem even bigger than they were.

Scully shook her head.  "No, sorry."

"Try."

It was like facing down a child.  Scully sighed in
exasperation, closed her eyes, and tried to remember.  "The
brightest color that day was red.  The canyon was full of reds,
from the earth and--"

"No," said the woman.  "Open your eyes. I want to see too."

"What?"

"Just open your eyes and remember what you saw that day
when you were a little girl.  You said reds.."

Scully retreated a step in the face of her cell mate's eagerness.  "Oh,
geez, I'm scaring you.  I'm sorry.  I got so excited about the Grand
Canyon I forgot.  But you're not too scared, that's good."

"Zelda!" The harsh whisper from the cell next door sounded
distorted from its trip through the walls.  "You watch yourself,
girl.  I can hear you planning a trip!"

"Am not!"

"You mind!" said the voice next door.

"I'm just talking.  I can talk to her if I want."

"Zelda ---"

The childlike expression on Zelda's face vanished.  She put her hands
in her hip pockets and stared at Scully.  "Who are you," she said.

"I-I'm not sure anymore," said Scully, shocked by the words that came
tumbling out of her mouth.

"Well, who do you think you are," Zelda said as though Scully had
made a perfectly appropriate answer.  "Because, the others want to
know. They're afraid of you."

"You're not?"

The elf shrugged.  "I have to be careful too."

"Why?"

"Everybody has something to lose," she said.  "Even in here, you still
have more to lose.  They say you're an FBI agent?"

Inexplicably Scully's eyes smarted.  "I used to be."

Zelda studied her new cell mate.  Scully couldn't remember a
more penetrating gaze, a more thoughtful probing stare.  She felt
strangely exposed, compelled to tell Zelda something, anything.

"I'm afraid of what this is doing to my mother," Scully
said.  Her own honesty took her breath away.

"Not your partner? You're not afraid of his pain?"

Scully's eyes flashed with more surprise. She tried to step back.
Her breath came in quick pants that she first attempted to disguise,
then
control.

"Zelda!" The neighboring voice called.

"Everybody knows everything in here. It's like one giant beauty parlor
without the resulting beauty." Zelda walked to the front of the cell
and said to the woman next door: "I'm just talking, that's all,
Bernice.  What's wrong with that?"

"Talk where I can hear!"

"Get bent!"

Next door Bernice let fly a stream of creative oaths.

Scully sat stiffly on the edge of her bunk.  Zelda flipped her hands
back and forth.  "Don't pay any attention to Bernice.  She's the mother
of this pod.  It's her job to protect us, make decisions." She grinned.
Scully looked blank so Zelda continued, "Pod.  Six cells to a pod.  Four 
pods to a rec room.  Keep your same pod for your whole tour but rotate
rec 
pods every year...Rec room's in the center of the pods and they open it 
three hours a day -- you get used to it."

"And Bernice is the mother," Scully finished.

"Ah-h.." Zelda said, "Surely you're familiar with studies on the
dynamics
of
women in prison.  Where men use sex, and violence to mark territory or
control their circle of influence, such incidents are rare in a women's
prison.  Women typically develop family units.  Within the unit the
strongest personality becomes the mother figure and regards the women
around as her children to protect, comfort, reward, punish --"

"Recent studies detect an increase in violent incidents among female
prisoners." Scully sounded weary to her own ears.

"In the context of the family unit.  Domestic violence, if you will,"
Zelda said.

"Still violence," Scully said.

"Agreed. I didn't meet to imply it wasn't, I only meant
to say Bernice isn't bad.  I've seen worse.  She's inclined to
punish rather than protect, but ---"  Zelda looked uneasy.

Since it was obvious Zelda had said all she intended to on
the subject of Bernice's leadership qualities, Scully unrolled
her mattress and bedroll.  She realized she was tired - and
dirty.  After all the poking, prodding, examinations and
inspections, Scully wanted to shower.

But she wasn't free to choose.  Until she came up with answers she would
have to bath on command, eat on command, go to bed when the lights went
out.  She had to tramp down her blooming resentment.

"Look, it isn't as bad as you think."

It was already worse than Scully envisioned.  She searched
her bedroll for a towel and something to wash with.

"The others -- they think you're a spy, you know.  A-a-a-,"
said Zelda.  She leaned against the top bunk.

"A plant," Scully said.

"Are you?"

"You'd hardly expect me to say so if I were."

Zelda's face was pure innocence.  It shone like the light of glory from
her.  She lifted one eyebrow in expectation, shifted her weight to one
foot and, it seemed to Scully, waited for her new cellmate to say
something else.

Without thinking Scully said, "I trusted a man I shouldn't have.
And I didn't trust a man I could have."  She blinked in surprise;
she couldn't imagine why she said that.  It made no sense to her.

"Well, ain't that always the way." Zelda appeared relieved.  She leaned
against the bars and spoke in the direction of the cell next door.
"She's no spy, Bernice.  Just trusted the wrong man."

Somewhere down the cell row a woman laughed.  "That so? Hey, the FB and
I trusted a man." A series of hoots, catcalls, and raucous laughs
bounced
up and down the cell row.  Scully watched her hands lace together.

"Zelda's the damn fool!" Bernice's voice next door was a threat.  "Shut
the hell up.  All of you." The cell row fell silent.  "Zelda, you know
nothing about nothing! You mind what I say!"

Crestfallen, Zelda scuffed her feet, shoved her right hand
in her jeans, and studied the floor for a moment.  Finally, she
pouted and drew a deep breath.  "I'll help you make your bunk,
Dana.  Then will you tell what it says under all these pictures?"

"You can't read?" Scully said.

"I used to.  My brain won't hold everything it learns.  I lost the
knack."

Scully gave her a small smile.  "The human brain contains
billions and billions of cells - most of them unused.  You can
learn to read."

"Even the cells in your brain are finite.  When they fill
up, you have to abandon something to learn more," Zelda said.

"You'd have to learn quite a bit for that to happen,"
Scully said.  It was like arguing with a child.

"Yes, you would have to know a great deal," Zelda said.
She looked wistful for a moment.  "No two objects can occupy the
same space unless they are on different levels of existence and
then, technically, they aren't occupying the same space.  You
have to give something up to get something.  Perhaps something
you prize - to obtain something you prize more.  It's true in
physics, philosophy, religion, human relationships.. I didn't
mind not being able to read when Ann was my cellmate.  I won't
mind now that you've come - if you'll read to me."

"Ann?"

"Gone."

Scully saw there was more Zelda didn't relish telling.

Zelda tugged on the sheet at a corner of Scully's bunk.
"She jumped off the railing out there.  They enclosed it after
she took off.  It was my fault."

"Why do you say that?"

"I knew she was in trouble and I did nothing.  Doesn't that make it
my fault?"

Scully busied herself with the other corner of the bed.
"Not directly."

To her surprise that pleased Zelda.  "You're honest," she said.

"You still don't trust me."

Zelda's laugh came out like a high-pitched chortle.  "You
can't ask something of me you're not willing to give yourself."

She looked as though she pitied Scully.

Perhaps her cellmate wasn't such a child after all, Scully thought.

They finished Scully's bed in silence.  Then Zelda folded a wool blanket
from her bunk and dropped it against one of the cement walls.

"We can't sit on the bunks together," she said.  "Rules. You need to
requisition another blanket so we'll have somewhere comfortable to
sit when we read." She fetched her magazines and settled down.  Scully
sat beside her, leaned back against the wall, and opened the pages of
'National Geographic' for the previous October.  The magazine for the
previous January lay in Zelda's lap.

"Shall I start at the beginning," Scully said.

"Please."

"Do you want to hear the articles too?"

"Just the captions." Zelda said.

In their travels through the magazines Scully learned
Zelda had visited many of the places in the pictures.  Exotic
places like Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Uganda.  Ordinary places
such as Houston, Texas, San Diego, California and Phoenix,
Arizona.  She knew Buddhism and quoted Tao.

"How do you know these places," she asked Scully.

"I love to read.  My father was in the Navy.  We moved a
lot.  I traveled after college for a few weeks, and I saw a great
deal --." She started to say she saw quite a few places in her
job.  A pang of regret lanced through her.

"I was a military brat too," Zelda said.  "My father was killed right
after I was born and my mother was in the Army. We traveled all over the
place."

"Where is she now?"

Zelda's face fell.  "I don't know.  MIA.  She served in Vietnam and..."

"I'm sorry."

"You would have liked her.  I was old enough to remember -I remember her
eyes," Zelda sighed.  "She taught me so much.  I don't regret that.  No,
not that."

"My father is dead too," Scully said.  "I only regret I didn't have
more time with him."

Zelda regarded her with a renewed interest.  Scully felt as
though she had passed another test.  "You can travel with me,"
she said.  "I think you can do it--over time."

"Over time."

"Well, we got plenty."

Scully sat back and regarded her cellmate for a long moment.  "What are
you doing here?"

Zelda got up and stretched.  "That's a breach of etiquette.  Don't ask
why 
someone's here.  She wants you to know, she'll tell you." Zelda moved
back 
into a corner of the cell between the back wall and the beds to change 
shirts.  "You're innocent, aren't you?"

Scully studied the sink across the cell for a moment.  "Yes."

"So am I." Zelda grinned.  "This is a whole prison of innocents."
She pulled a tee shirt off and chose another "You can hang your robe
at the head of the bed or on the end.  Gives you some privacy on your
bunk 
at the end, but less air circulation.  Your choice."

Scully hung her robe on the end of the top bunk and it
hung over the edge.  Zelda approved.

Every night the line to use the one telephone on the row
wound down the corridor.  It was almost lights out by the time
Scully's turn came.

"Mulder."

For a moment she didn't know what to say.  She kept the
telephone pressed tight against her ear and opened her mouth,
but nothing came out.  With a hundred women breathing down her
neck and serious questions about the security of his end of the
line, Scully found she couldn't say anything.

"So, Scully, what are you wearing?"

She chuckled.  "Basic blue."

"Yeah," he said softly.  "Yeah, me too.  I'm trapped in a Salvador Dali
painting."

"The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 23?"

"How'd you know?" he said.

"I'm surprised we haven't run into each other.  It's a fairly barren
landscape with nothing but a skull to block the view," she said.

"Hey! You got people waitin'!" shouted one of the women too far down the
telephone line to make it before lights out. The line jostled, women
cursed.

"Gotta go," Scully said.

"Scully!"

"Mulder?"

"I-I'm glad it's not a Fellini movie?"

"'night, Mulder."

"Shit! You gotta tuck him in every friggin' night?" said
the next woman in line.  She began punching in her prison number
to clear the system operator the instant Scully hung up.  She
never got connected.

>From somewhere in the back of the line Bernice
materialized and took the receiver from her hand.  "Thank you, my
sister."

The two women stared at each other for a moment, then
the other woman dropped her eyes and walked away.  "Sure," she
said and walked away with only a sullen backwards glance.

"Doggie boy!" Bernice said into the receiver.  "You ready
to play fetch?" She laughed.  "I know that's right." Bernice's
eyes swept across the line, lingered on Scully, and turned to speak
with hushed tones into the receiver.  Everyone in line made an
effort to appear preoccupied.

Prison life surprised Scully.  She had set up expectations
and tested reality against them in a time-honored way to prove
or disprove theorems.  She discovered that thus far she hadn't
really known much about the realities of corrections.  That
realization frightened her.

She knew within a few days she couldn't use much of her
past experiences to predict the future.

One of the first expectations to fall was the notion that
a person raised in a military household who prized routine and
order would not find the rigid life of prison too difficult to
bear.

She despised it.

After that, her expectations fell like dominoes.  Although
she enjoyed quiet places, soft music, Scully possessed the
ability to tune out extraneous noises when she had to.  She had
no clue how the unrelenting noises of prison would wear on her.
And in such a short time.

She thought of herself as someone who could endure the
fallibilities of most people.  One afternoon with her pod and she
discovered she was actually very intolerant - but until now
she'd had a place to run.

She knew she was disciplined.  Stripped of her defenses,
her distractions, her support, Scully became seized by an
inertia born of having no purpose or direction.  Floundering, as
her mother would call it.  She didn't know what to call it.

Scully realized she was learning things about herself she
didn't care to know.

The routine wasn't hard to decipher.  The bell right
outside her cell sounded for meals, for the endless head counts,
for work, for outdoor exercise, for time in the recreation area.

Just when Scully thought the overcrowded cafeteria with the
sickening smells and uncomfortable stools that swung in and out
from the table represented the worst part of prison, she
received her work assignment to the laundry.  She had almost
decided meals were pleasant compared to enduring the heat and
steam of the laundry when she was braced for the first time.

Periodically guards would select inmates at random to face
the wall, arms high and feet spread, to search.  Often the
searches turned out contraband cigarettes, drugs, items pilfered
from work assignments.  The braces happened in hallways, cells,
conference rooms, and workstations - anywhere and everywhere
guards elected to frisk an inmate.

The first time a prison guard dropped a hand on her shoulder and
spun her around to face the wall she suffered in silence as a
female guard ran her hands over her body.  She understood the
reasons and the right of a guard to search a prisoner.  She got
through it by reciting any chemical formulas she could remember
and replaying medical procedures she recalled as being interesting.
It heartened her to know she could now remember many things she
thought she'd forgotten.

During her second week of prison she was braced twice: once by a
guard outside the laundry and the second in the library by an
officer whose hands lingered around her breasts until she allowed
a warning hiss through her lips. She filed an oral complaint with the
disinterested sergeant at the duty station.

The next time it happened -- on the Monday of the third week - she
was more prepared.  The officer slammed her against the cement wall of
the hallway so hard her cheek scrapped.  After he completed
the search, she said evenly, "Sgt. Anderson. Explain to the
staff that policy prohibits excessive searches and that in the
future I will file a written complaint with the director following each
incident. Every complaint, as you may know, requires a written response
from guards. I have nothing but time; you will be buried in paper."   He
laughed in her face.

She wanted to bathe.  Right then.  While the feel of the guard's large,
beefy hands still kneaded her soul as they had her body.  He escorted
her back to her cell at a respectable distance.

Once inside she turned to him, stared for a moment and said distinctly,
"You have my permission to close the door now, Sgt. Anderson."

The guard scowled, the bolt shot home and he walked away with a
heel-toe, heel-toe clip in his step.  Over it all Angela and Bernice
guffawed.  Only the sound of his steps and the laughter of inmates
died down did Scully allow herself to lean against the top bunk, arms
folded across her chest.  She hoped her face had not betrayed her
outrage, but only reflected a self-contained, cold, determination.

Zelda giggled.  "Well done.  It'll stop for a time."

Scully looked up sharply.  "How do you know?"

"I know all kinds of things," Zelda said.

"But you can't read..."

Zelda spit mouthwash into the sink, then held up a finger.  "What
would you give up, if you could fly? Would you surrender your
ability to add and subtract?"

"To fly?" Scully shook her head.  "Not much of a incentive."

"Hmm-m, a concrete thinker."

Scully didn't bother to answer.  Zelda made room for her at the sink
and Scully wetted a washcloth.  She held it against her cheek.

"What do you want?" Zelda began to laugh.  It sounded pure
and open.  "Maybe you need to discover what's valuable to you
before we talk about what it costs to get it."

Scully scoffed.

"Something to think about," Zelda said.  She hopped up on her bunk.
"What else you got to do?  Nobody but me will talk to you."

"You, ah, want to read," said Scully.  Her hands fluttered
to the magazines on the bed, then watched as one or two fell off
at her feet.  She had no energy to pick them up.  She felt
desperately lonely, and, something else.  Something she feared to
say, even to herself.

"You're not alone," Zelda said.  "You've got to accept that,
enjoy it."

"You always seem to know what I'm thinking," Scully said aloud.

Assuming the attitude of a storyteller Zelda began: "The
grandsons of Noah and their sons built a great tower to reach
up into heaven, to the very throne of I AM.
As they built this monument to their ego, I AM grew
more and more displeased.  While they raised their tower, schools
weren't build, the poor went unattended, the sick died.
Determined to punish them, I AM made the language of men
unintelligible, so they could not communicate with each other."

Zelda crossed her legs. "Then I AM saw that no women worked on
the tower.  No women made bricks or carried things up the ramp
or even offer water to men working on the tower.  The women
stayed in the villages, caring for children, teaching, healing.
So I AM gave women the power to communicate without speaking,
to know without asking."

Scully sank onto the bunk and proceeded to count her fingers.
Zelda leaned upside down to look at Scully.  "You have
power you never imagined."

She swiped her mouth with her sleeve, and sat back up.  After
a moment Zelda said softly into the air, "You are the one.  I've
been waiting three awful years."

She glanced around furtively, took a magazine from the stack on the
shelf and grabbed a photograph out of the pages.  She leaned
upside down again and thrust it in Scully's face.  It showed a
grinning pixie with blue eyes, her arms draped around the
neck of a dark-haired little boy.  On the back it said "Scott
Deschamps, age 4."

Chapter 7 of 20

"Your son?" Scully's finger wiped a trace of lint off the photograph.

"Taken last month.  His, ah, his foster mother brings him
once in a while." Zelda grinned.  "My smile, don't you think?
Smart too.  Intuitive beyond his years."

Scully handed the photo to Zelda, but she pushed it back. "Take him.
Make him yours.  That's all I ask.  You're honorable - I'm counting on
that.  Take him - it's all I want in exchange."

"Exchange?  For what?" Scully hurled herself off the bunk, a flying
bundle of raw energy, and placed the photo on Zelda's bed.

"Two things I'd give anything for: a safe home for my son
and-and to talk to my mother again."

"I don't understand, Zelda.  Is your son--?"

"You'll know everything when you need to know it." Zelda's face glowed
with happiness from something Scully could not see.  "When you are ready
I will be your teacher - and you will be free."

"Ready?"

"When your spirit is empty enough to fill." Zelda settled
into her bed.

Scully looked at the photo of the little boy on Zelda's
bed and reached to take it.  Scully held the photo lightly
between two fingers, but all her other fingers curled into  fists.

Zelda covered the fists with her hand. "Surely you know this isn't
the work of I AM," said Zelda.  "A more profitable avenue of thought
might be why you have to isolate yourself.  What it is inside you
that you feel you must protect at all costs.  You have to answer that or
you'll miss what's right in front of you - yours for the asking.  And
you won't be able to do what you came to do."

Zelda pulled a black sleeping mask into place, and settled between
her sheets.  "I'm bushed. Let's go to bed." Zelda liked the mask
because, as she had explained to Scully, she slept with her eyes open.

Scully eased back onto her bunk.  "What am I supposed to
do?" She realized no one but I AM listened.  "Zelda?"
Her cell mate slept.  Scully envied her the ability to fall
asleep so quickly and deeply.  Sometimes Scully could scarcely
detect her breathing.
**************************
The papers on Henry Donaldson's desk blurred.   He couldn't
stop thinking about Dana Scully and Zelda Deschamps, wondering
how they got along, how close they had become.  Perhaps Scully
would be able to read to Zelda by now.  When she sat at the
defense table in court Agent Scully had seemed uncertain when
she looked at the papers her lawyer handed her.

Donaldson had worked very hard on his plan to stop the
ghost bandits.  He alone of all those in Justice could deal with
this phenomenon because he alone knew how they could work it --
how it was possible.  He meant for no one else in the world to learn
about it.

Thus he'd considered every detail, countered every avenue of
escape, and tried to imagine every possible scenario, everything
that could go wrong.  It was what he did best.

He would use Agent Scully to uncover their next robbery target and
meet them at the scene. He would learn who was behind it all and deal
with them appropriately.  It would be done quickly.  And quietly.  The
FBI agent would never be a threat.  The web he and Skinner had woven
for Agent Scully was airtight. Who would believe an admitted felon's
ghost story?  There was no proof -- none -- that Agent Scully was
anything more than a dishonest agent.  Donaldson had seen to that
personally.

His one miscalculation was not seeing that Dana Scully could be so
strong and holding on until Fox Mulder returned.  Then she was
even stronger.  Not good for Donaldson's plan, but not fatal.  After
all,
he chuckled to himself, she had to bend, but not break.  Not yet,
anyway.

She and her partner were separated now.  She would weaken, shrivel,
and eventually he could discard her.  Donaldson felt much better.
Nothing was really wrong; everything was merely behind schedule.

It was amazing good luck to discover Dana Scully amid the
unimaginative idiots at the FBI in the first place.  He had
almost despaired.

He thought it essential that the next woman he sent to
flush out the robbers should be open to the paranormal;
that's where he thought he failed earlier.  Her association
with the X-Files was such a plus that he'd been willing to deal
with Walter Skinner again.

Now he wondered if it was a mistake.  His feminine side had liked
Miss Scully - that should have been a point against her.  But her
attitude and bearing at their first meeting goaded Donaldson into
acting irrationally.  She was so smug, self-contained, and superior
he wanted to beat it out of her.  He enjoyed watching women like
her fall.

Now he frowned and worried his pen.  Perhaps he should have chosen
someone not as open to the paranormal.  Yet when he asked outright about
her beliefs she gave him some equivocal speech about proof and "seeing 
things
I can't explain".  All in all she'd seemed perfect for his purposes.

Donaldson thought she might be easily manipulated too. That was
a plus.  Hadn't she transformed from pure scientist to space cadet.
The rumor mill called her "Mrs.  Spooky".  The implications were
clear: she only tagged along to be with Mulder.  And who could
blame her?

Donaldson shoved the papers away.  His face colored just
recalling the way Mulder's suit jacket fell over his ass.
Donaldson had to control these breakthroughs better.  The young
man on the third floor was bad enough, but an FBI agent?  Dana
Scully's partner?  Women had no shame.  He began to feel the
cramps in his abdomen again.

Christ, either he doubled his mental exercises or he might
as well go to Sweden for a sex change operation.  His heart leapt.

"Sir? Mr.  Britton from Senate Appropriations is on his way
over."

"Thank you, Mary." Donaldson said.  He could feel moisture
on his forehead.

And he wondered again how Dana Scully was faring in
prison.
***********************
Mulder knew Scully wouldn't do well in prison.  He'd
gotten permission to visit her a week earlier than most new
prisoners were allowed to have visitors.  Moreover, he received
special treatment the first time he came.  The prison guards,
privately contracted, seemed impressed with him.  He was law
enforcement, the FBI, one of them in spades.  They must not know
he and Scully were - are - partners.  They all acted as if he
were there to interrogate her.

He waited outside a door with metal bars to be admitted to
a hallway inside the prison.  At the direction of a guard at the
door, he walked down a wide corridor.  He passed a dozen people -
guards, trustee inmates, office staff - before he found a room
marked "Conference Rooms." He pushed the button next to the
door, smiled into the camera, and pushed open the door when it
buzzed.  A guard met him, frisked him, and directed him to a
door.  He used a key to open it.

Mulder stepped inside, feeling
the walls dangerously close for the first time in his life.
Hardly larger than a study cubicle at the Quantico library, the
room was split in half by a plexiglass wall.  His and hers side
of life connected by an intercom.  Mulder dropped into an
uncomfortable molded plastic chair and waited again.

After a few minutes a noisy clang announced Scully's
arrival.  The door opened and she stepped into the prisoner's
side of the cubicle wearing blue jeans that were too big for her
and a work shirt with the collar flipped up in the back.  The
shirt had a black set of numbers on the pocket.

Mulder rose and squashed down the panic he felt as she stood
in the doorway.  Washed out, small and uncertain at first, her eyes
swept 
the
area before fixing on him - habit, an alert agent's way of
feeling out a room.  He hoped for a smile, a wink - something to
show him it was still Scully inside.  As she walked toward the
chair he continued to hope it was only the harsh white light
necessitated by the video cameras that made her skin appear
translucent.

She sat down, punched the intercom and inclined her ear.
"I don't see you waving a piece of paper in your hand or humming
excerpts from 'Midnight Special'.  Am I to infer from this that
you have not come to affect my release?"

Mulder clucked and patted his pockets.  "Must have left
those papers in my other suit."

"So this would be a fashion consultation," she said,
staring at his tie.

"It was on the rack all alone-it called to me." He
stroked the fabric of the riotous red and blue tie as gently as
a woman's skin.  Not any woman's skin, hers.

She caught him.  "Hm-hm-m."

Mulder dropped the tie self-consciously and cleared his throat.

"My mother says you've been very kind, Mulder."

"I'm taking her to the cardiologist myself tomorrow." He
noticed the mark on her cheek.

She put her hand over it.

"Industrial accident?" he said.  His voice sounded
perfectly calm, but she heard the rumble underneath.

"Cut myself shaving." She rolled her eyes to the cameras
in warning.  Her eyebrow lifted in a question.

"Ah, Skinner's pushing the bank thing," Mulder said,
glancing up at the cameras.  "I see a connection, but I ran a
check of similar crimes and guess what-."

"I can imagine."

"Scattered around the country over the last two years.   A
couple of convictions.  Same MO, same everything --.  I'm taking a
field trip tomorrow, but it all comes back to you."

"Not necessarily.  I continue to maintain you are trying
for connections where there aren't any.  What about the attorney
in the Jackson case who swore I demanded $5,000 to--"

Mulder shook his head.  "That's not the way."

"You can't ignore the obvious facts given you."

"I'm following the facts given me.  Just not all of them
given about you-directly."

Scully took a deep breath and exhaled.  When she raised her
eyes again she seemed calm.  An artificial calm.  Not the kind
that promised whirlwinds and thunder just over the horizon as
was so often the case with Scully, Mulder decided.  Instead it
was a calm like the quiet acceptance of the natural order of
things, the way winter follows spring and death follows life.  He
had seen flashes of this Scully during her cancer.  His spirits
plummeted.

Scully regarded Mulder with a sense of melancholy.  He was
tired.  Perhaps a little scared at being alone.  She understood
that.  He brushed a hand through his hair and it alarmed her to
see it shook.

"Back on the couch?"

"Hey, I like my couch."

"Mulder..."

He floundered.  "You?"

She gave him a quick smile and looked away.  "At least my
cell mate sleeps like the dead."

"Snores, huh?"

"You've dropped some weight," she said.  "Working out?"
"The beer and pizza diet."   At her scowl he added, "Veggie
pizza." He didn't add that she had also lost weight.

She folded her arms in front of her.  "The best of the major food
groups.  Personally, I miss my evening champagne and caviar."

"Who's your cell mate?"

It was a rhetorical question. Scully knew Mulder would already have
chapter and verse on everyone in her pod from the FBI database.

Scully's arms loosened.  "Zelda Deschamps."

"What a coincidence," Mulder said.  "I remember that name
from interviewing a former security guard.  How many Zeldas can
there be outside a Scott Fitzgerald novel?"

She scoffed.  "The Zelda I live with can't read.  She said
she used to, but can't anymore.  She likes pictures in National
Geographic.  She's into spiritualism --thinks she can teach me to
fly.  She looks and acts 16."

"A 43-year-old woman who looks 16 - maybe she's found the
fountain of youth.  She know you're a white-knuckle flyer?"
Mulder suddenly shifted on his chair.  "Can't read? Are there no
literacy programs in this prison?"

Scully remembered that was one of the apparent side effects of
the drugs, but she didn't see how it connected to Zelda.

Mulder took a handkerchief out of his pocket and, in the
guise of blowing his nose, covered his mouth and muffled his
words.  "Graduated magna cum laude from Virginia.  Doctorate in
religious studies from Yale."

Scully moved up to the edge of her chair, her lips parted
slightly.

Mulder rubbed his chin.  He seemed excited.  "This all fits
into something I read a long time ago on - " He appeared taken
by another sneezing fit.  "-Mind Meld."

"A comic book?" Scully turned sideways in her chair and
her fingertips rubbed her forehead.

"Have you read it?"

"I'm sure I can requisition it.  Should receive it in three
or four weeks," she said.

"I don't recall that it had pictures, but if I can find a
copy, can you think of anyone else who might be interested in
it?"

Charlie Duncan had talked about a black woman taking over
Andy Paige's body.  Scully's eyes widened and she placed her
hands flat on the ledge in front of her.  "This place has a very
eclectic clientele.  My neighbor, Bernice Johnson, for example."

"Ah, but can she read?"

Scully thought a minute.  "Couldn't say."

"Maybe she would like my comic book."

"Perhaps."

"I know you must be more excited than that," he said.  "Got
a theory?"

"I'm developing one."

"Feel like sharing?"

"Be careful who you trust."

"Always," he said slowly.

"I mean, I don't think you should talk to anyone, ah,
important," she said.  "I don't think he - anyone, that is --
should know what's-" She glanced at the spot where the cameras
whirred.  " -what you're doing."

"Have to say something," Mulder said.  "Something so
I'll have leeway to pursue this."

This.  Her freedom.

"He'd like to help, but can't.  I think the war isn't over
for him," Scully said, just as amazed at her words as Mulder
seemed.  She attempted to backtrack.  "You can't stay on one case
exclusively," she said.  "Let me work it."

"Not alone." Mulder knew immediately where she was going.

"This is a long term commitment.  You have to- to do other
things.  Skinner expects it."

"I told him to back off."

"You can't do that for much longer."

"I've got enough vacation time to..."

She licked her lips and Mulder knew he wasn't going to
like what she said next.  The lip thing -
that was a guarantee.  "You can't make this your whole life."

He tossed it off as unimportant.

"This can't be your whole life or it's your sister all over
again," she said.  "Pursuing shadows just out of reach, ignoring
everything around you." Scully's eyes softened.  "Don't do that.
Don't disappear again.  I need you.  Here.  Now.  Where you are."

He could feel her caress as surely as if she'd reached out and
touched his face.  Her lower lip quivered; she caught it in her
teeth.

He swallowed his outrage and willed her not to say
anything else, not to tell him what she thought she had to.  "I
have to go."

He pressed his palm against the plastic wall
between them. "Scully."

"Let me go." Her gaze remained soft but firm.  She
hesitated, and then touched his palm through the glass with one
fingertip.  He finally dropped his hand off the wall.  Her slight
smile showed her approval.

Scully walked toward the door as though she were going
into the hallway to find a report -- too preoccupied to talk to him
right then.  Except she had to have permission to leave, someone
had to open the door and allow her to go.  She pushed the button
next to the door once, then, with a touch of impatience, twice.

She looked straight at the door until a clanging at the metal
lock signaled that the guard disengaged the lock.  She waited to
hear a loud clack at the door before she reached for the handle.
Her square shoulders, her apparent indifference brought the
opposite reaction from him.

"I've never known you to quit," he shouted loud enough to
be heard through concrete, plexiglass and stubbornness.  Her
hesitation was almost imperceptible; the break in her posture
nearly invisible.  She didn't look back.

Suddenly Mulder wanted to kick somebody.  He sat still a
moment staring at the empty seat gathering his fury around him
like a tornado.  Angry with Skinner, with himself, and mostly
with Scully, he thought he'd damn sure start with Skinner.

He stalked out of the room and into the corridor so fast
he ran into a prison trustee busily sweeping the hallway.  She
was a tall black woman with arresting brown eyes.  He felt
himself drawn into them.  And suddenly she was holding him up by
the elbow and around the waist.

"Whoa," said the woman.  "You okay? You nearly went down."
Mulder didn't remember slipping, but he could have.  He
checked the floor for banana peels.  "Yeah, fine.  Thanks."
"No problem.  Have a nice day."

Mulder strode out of the prison hallway full of purpose -
he just couldn't exactly remember what that purpose was.  And his
car keys?  He patted his pockets before recalling he had to leave
them at the guard station.  The visit had addled him - and upset
his stomach.
*************************
The recreation area for Scully's pod - or the rec as the inmates
called it - covered an area roughly four times that of her
mother's living room with none of the comforts or style.  As with
the cells, the rec was plain cinder block on three sides and a
steel-reinforced plexiglass front so guards in the corridors and
the floor below could easily see what happened inside.

The inmates had no hammer or nails and they were forbidden to use
tape to hold posters or photos on the walls since it might mar
the paint job.  Consequently the rec lacked color or warmth or a
hint of personality.

Four security cameras swept the area.  A large television hung from
the left center column in the room and a radio/CD player sat on a
shelf on the far right column.  Both had been screwed to boards and
covered with wire so only the controls and screen could be touched
or seen.

A series of pinging, panging pinball machines and video games sat
bolted to the sidewalls.  Books, magazines, and a stack of board and
card games lay scattered on tables screwed to the floor.  More than
two dozen chairs, settees and couches completed the room's furnishings.
It was all new, already fading.

Here women from two pods could watch television, play games, talk, or
read.  Cell doors were left open.  For three glorious hours a day and
five on Sunday, the nearly 50 women enjoyed unstructured time to wander
in and out of their cells and the recreation room.  No one called it
free time.  Nothing was free.

Scully found it bland, institutionally depressing and, if she'd been
honest, a little intimidating.  The fact that she had once been law
enforcement also caused her no small concern in the rec room.  While it
was under constant surveillance no guards roamed inside.  Still, she
couldn't put off going in forever.  It turned out to be a non-event.

She was invisible.  She walked along the edges of the room, sat on the
fringes of conversations and worked puzzles - most of them missing
pieces just like her life.  The first week she got some curious looks
and hostile gestures, which she ignored.  The second week one or two
women nodded to her.  Then women began speaking.

Wary at first, Scully found she was relieved, even pleased.  Zelda
reported that she made her bones with the guard incident.  That guard's
hands were always too quick and Scully had slammed him.  The others
were impressed; Bernice herself had grunted a half-hearted approval.
Still, no one made an effort to approach her and most turned away when
she walked close.

She remained invisible and told herself she was content that way.
It was safer.  It was easier.  It was familiar.

Mulder's visit somehow changed things.  Zelda was right: in prison
everybody knew everybody else's business.  Most conversation died away
when Scully walked into the rec.  Bureau coffee rooms, offices and rest
rooms often fell silent when she came in.  It never bothered her.

For some reason it irritated her that these women gossiped about her.
She felt a dozen pair of eyes follow her as she crossed to a chair, a
green armchair with holes in the vinyl that offered little comfort but
a good reading light.

"Mail!" Bernice came in waving letters in her hand.  The women gathered
around and she handed them to an inmate who offered her a big toothy
grin. "Read 'em out, Mary," Bernice said.  She dropped an
official-looking envelope from the FBI in Scully's lap. "Somebody tell
me this special delivery for you."

Prison officials had already opened it for inspection.  Scully pulled
out the letter, but she already knew what it contained: her dismissal.
Termination for cause, cessation of benefits, loss of pension.  Formal
black and white proof that the FBI was through with her.  Scully licked
her lips and carefully folded the paper back into the envelope.  Only
procedure, she told herself, a form letter.

"Zelda! Trot your buns over here," Bernice shouted.  "Mary say you got
a postcard." She waved it in the air.  Zelda, who had been watching a
soap opera, turned in her chair and stared.  "Come on, girl.  Come get
it. I got one too.  Mary say we on a list of pr-eeeferred customers."

Zelda shook her head.  Without waiting anymore Bernice dropped it in
Zelda's lap.

"I can't read it.  You know that," Zelda said.

"Then have the new girl to read it for ya.  She reads all the time."
Bernice and her cell mate Angela wandered over to take up positions
on either side of Scully's chair.

"And look here where she be readin' today," Bernice said.

"This is Bernice's place," Angela said.

Scully checked something on a previous page and returned to the place
she was reading.

"I said-"

"Leave off," Bernice said.  "This child still new.  She ain't really
family.  Still things she don't know.  Now she knows this."

Scully merely cocked an eyebrow.

"Girl," Bernice said in a loud, but confidential tone.  "You did not
need to tell that stud-ly piece of ass he had your approval to do what
he been doing since you got here! But you did the right cuttin' him out.
Time is hard enough without him weighin' on your mind."

Scully continued to read.

"Hey! I'm trying to be nice, here."

"As you see I'm trying to read."

Someone in the rec room snickered; another woman chucked.
Bernice's head jerked up.  All the women appeared occupied in
playing games, watching television, dealing cards.  Someone
cranked up the music and the drums beat behind Scully's eyes.

Bernice leaned down close to Scully.  "I'm talking to you!"
One or two of the women in the rec room edged closer,
anxious to see what would happen.  Someone made a nervous giggle.

Scully took the marker out of her book and laid it in her lap.
She moved her fingertip under sentences to give the appearance of
reading.

Bernice pushed off the chair, shaking it slightly, and
said to two women lounging nearby.  "So I'm standin' near the
door and she come from this big talk with her man-and she the
whitest white girl I ever seen.  Come out and she got such big,
bad crocodile tears in her eyes she can't even see where she's
goin'.  Pitiful." Some more women snickered and giggled.

"You're in my light," Scully said.

"On the other side, he's shouting," Bernice said to her
growing audience, "then he sat there looking hang dog, like he
was so tore up.  I ran into him in the hall - oh-h, it so-o nice
to be a trustee.  I thank you.  He got such big muscles in his
thigh.  And he was pacccking!"

She laughed and the women in earshot did too.  When several more w
omen joined the semi-circle around the chair, Bernice grinned.
cully gave her tormenter a blank look, then adjusted the book.

"Don't you want to know what he was thinking, girlfriend?" Bernice
put her hand across the pages.  "He was thinking how he gonna track
down his boss, and beat him into the ground for what he done to you.
What did he do to you? Anything you wanna share with the class?"

Scully enunciated every word, "Please move your hand."

The two women stared at each other.  Bernice's eyes, large
and brown, pulled at her.  Scully felt dizzy.  Slightly daunted,
she turned in the chair and put the book between them.

"You a fool.  If I had a man like that I'd still be under
him." Bernice tapped the book gently.  "I hope you got laid good
before you came in, 'cause you ain't gonna find nothing as
pretty as that around here."

Scully's eyes kept on moving across the page.

"And when you come out, he ain't gonna be there," Bernice continued.
"He forgot you before he got in front of the wall.  When I
looked into those eyes I saw me lots of store-bought women, naked
women doing things their mamas wouldn't like, doing 'em over and
over." A couple of women high five-d and laughed.

When she got no reaction from Scully, Bernice swore and walked away
before firing her last shot.  "Know what else? I saw you in his bed
wearing nothing but his shirt.  He had his hands all over you - helping
himself while you wuz dog sick."  She shook her head in mock disgust.

The sound of the women's laughter echoed in Scully's mind
along a hot wavy line from her head to her heart.  It rippled
over Scully in increasingly powerful surges.  Her mouth dried up.

She couldn't imagine how Bernice knew about Mulder's tapes, or about
Skinner or what Mulder wanted to do to him.  His hands on her while she
slept? She was vulnerable in his bed.  She had come to him for help and
safety.  If she allowed it, Bernice's scenario would explain a lot
about the way she felt when she awoke and the strange tension between
them the next day.  She gripped her book so tightly her fingers became
sweaty; she wiped her palm across her jeans.

Scully turned the page.  She couldn't remember what she'd just read. 
From
over the top of the book she could see Bernice's
feet moving away.  She released a long ragged breath and tried to
think.  It was easy to determine who Mulder's supervisor was.  As
trustee and pod leader perhaps Bernice had access to certain
prison records about Scully.  She appeared to be intelligent as
well as street smart -- so she made a lucky guess, a couple of
lucky guesses.

Scully wondered if Zelda said something.  Had she
mentioned the night she was so sick to Zelda? Of course not,
she'd told no one; she tried not to think of it herself.  And
when she did, she never thought Mulder broke faith.  She never
thought that was the source of the strange undercurrent between
them.  Whatever happened - Mulder said nothing happened.  What had
she missed? What was true, what was just in her head?

Scully felt guilt about her doubts.  Yet she couldn't seem
to banish them completely.  It flashed through her that as the
current dragged her further from shore the rock she needed to
stand on might be only sand.  Her face still buried in the book,
she unconsciously rubbed her forehead and chewed on her lower
lip.

"I can't let you do that, Bernice," Zelda said over the hubbub.
Scully's head snapped up.  The entire room fell into an eerie buzz
broken only by dialogue from the television and the music from the
corner of the room.  The black woman stopped abruptly.   "You can't
take him from her or she'll freak like the others."

Bernice wagged a finger and grinned, but there was no
mirth in it.  "Have you been peeking inside this girl's head?"

"Don't be insulting.  That isn't polite," Zelda said.  "You
have to be a fool not to see how they are bound together." She
looked at Scully, who was staring in wide-eyed astonishment, and
shrugged.  "Then again, she hardly sees it herself."

Bernice's mouth set in a cruel smile.  "I ain't happy.  No-
ooo." Someone in the back of the rec room said, "oooo-o" and
followed it with a nervous laugh.

"And when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," Angela said.

Zelda's shoulders sagged and she flicked her tongue over
her lips. The tension became a sweaty smell over the rec room.
Scully's gaze followed Zelda and Bernice into a corner of the
pod rec room. For a few minutes Bernice and Angela spoke angrily
to Zelda then Angela turned her back and while she was shielded
from the view of the surveillance camera Bernice acted.

To Scully's horror Bernice slapped Zelda's face and delivered
one blow to the stomach. Zelda turned sideways into the wall
while Angela and Bernice obstructed her from the camera.
Scully jumped out of the chair and found her way blocked by
an obese woman from the pod.

"Just a little family business.  Finished here? 'Cause if you are,
Bernice would 'preciate her seat back," said Mary, the inmate Bernice
used as a reader.

Scully clutched the book under her arm but by the time she got to Zelda
her cellmate had regained her breath.  Zelda stood as straight as she
could against the wall.  Scully dropped the book on the floor and would
have followed Bernice, but Zelda grabbed her elbow.

"She wasn't always like this," Zelda managed to gasp." Please.  This is
on 
me.  All of it."

"I'm going to report it," Scully said.

Zelda merely shook her head and gripped Scully's arm even tighter.

Chapter 8 of 20

Margaret Scully knew Fox Mulder would be picking her up soon, but she
never expected him to be early.  She opened the front door with an
apology for not being ready on her lips and found AD Skinner outside.

"Mrs.  Scully.  May I come in?"

"Dana!"

Skinner's head moved side to side in a barely discernable
motion.  "She's fine as far as I know." He seemed ill at ease.

"Come in then, Mr. Skinner." But her voice and demeanor
held no welcome.

Skinner walked inside and waited until Mrs. Scully closed
the door.  Margaret and her daughter were alike in many respects,
he noted.  Both unyielding, uncompromising.  He
didn't know how to begin because he didn't know what title to put
with Dana Scully's name.  Finally he said, "Your daughter doesn't know
I'm
here, Mrs.  Scully.  I came to ask you something." She waited and
he continued, "I came to ask: if you could know that Dana is
innocent or be able to visit her -- which would you choose?"

Skinner studied her face for a moment and felt foolish.
Stupid, really, for coming.  He should have known what her answer
would be.

"I already know my daughter is innocent, Mr.  Skinner."

He nodded, more to himself than to her.  "So do I," he
whispered, ducked his head and left quickly.

When she closed the door Margaret Scully began to weep silent
tears of frustration.  The anger she harbored for Skinner, the
FBI, and those who pushed Dana into prison disappeared.  Margaret
recognized the nagging fear she had from the beginning of this
nightmare was the reality.  She knew now that her baby had
somehow chosen the path she was on - and that it had taken an
unexpected and deadly serious turn.

She wanted to tell someone and realized the only one who would
understand was Fox Mulder.  Margaret had some inkling of why
Dana was so attached to the man.  He was the only person who
understood so many things.

Margaret Scully's backache returned.
*****************************
"Scully.  Wake up."  Someone poked at her feet with a stick.  A stick
through the bars.  "Scully.  You got a visitor."

Two guards stood outside her cell.  Scully sat, immediately alert.
Realizing it was still dark made the alarm sound in her head.  The
cell door opened.  The alarm progressed from her head throughout her
body when Scully realized the guards led her to a conference room.
They handcuffed her before she could go inside.  It must be an
unsecured area.

It had to be Mulder.  This late it was either very good news or very
bad.
It was bad.  She knew the minute she saw him.  He didn't look at her
until
the guards left.

"It's your mother." Scully's stomach leaped into her throat.  "She
had a heart attack.  It's serious.  I-I just came from Georgetown
Memorial.  I called your brother.  He's coming and-"

Scully's knees wouldn't support her anymore.  She sat down heavily in
the nearest chair.  "I thought.."

"I thought she was better too.  I took her to the cardiologist you
recommended --."

"Fred Morton."

"She had an episode in his office," Mulder said.

"God!"

"It saved her life," Mulder said.  "I had no idea a backache in women.."

"I must talk to him," Scully said.

"It can be arranged," Mulder said.

"I should be there."

"She's in and out of consciousness," Mulder said.  "She's not in pain
now.  I-I'll stay...until Bill arrives.  Dr. Morton is with her.
He's been great."

Scully's hands slid from her mouth to her lap.

"Her prognosis is guarded, but there are encouraging signs." Mulder
came around the conference table.

"The stress.."

"Hmm, Scully, guilt is my thing, not yours." He touched her shoulder
and she threw up her arms, jumped away.

"Prisoners aren't allowed physical contact with visitors.."

He pulled her stiff body up out of the chair into his embrace.

For one delicious moment Scully allowed herself to rest there. His hand
brushed her hair from her face.  She closed her eyes to imprint the feel
of his hands on her memory, the sound of his heartbeat.

Then she pushed away, afraid he would see how much she wanted to cling
to
him, afraid of how quickly she could come to want what she couldn't
have.
She knocked for an escape, then muttered, "Thank you, Mulder.  Thank you
for coming."
**********
For a moment she stood in the semi-darkness of her prison cell,
tracing the black outlines of the objects in the room.  A horrible
helplessness pushed against her insides, making it painful to
breath, difficult to stand.  The ache from the void where her heart
used to be hurt all the way down her arms and legs.  She must have
swayed.

She became conscious of her hand against the rough cell wall, then
the chill of it against her back as she slid down to the floor.
Cotton threads in her clothes catching in the rough cement made a
torturous pulling sound in her ears until she hit the floor.  For
some time she sat on the floor staring vacantly, knees drawn to her
chest, hands on her knees.  After a few moments Zelda took a similar
pose next to her. They sat that way for what seemed a long
time.

Presently Zelda said, "I understand about your mother.  I've spent
most of my life missing mine, trying to find out what happened to
her."  She sighed.  "I was 12 when we got a package with her personal
effects in it.  I sat for hours on my bed with the just fingering
things she had once held, reading her diary, all the papers she kept,
her pictures-"

Somewhere in the prison a woman began coughing and coughing.  When
she stopped Scully said, "My mother played a song at my father's
funeral.  It was special to them.  It was a-a connection for me.  I
couldn't get it out of my mind for a long time."

There was more silence.  Someone below them laughed, then the prison
quieted down to the normal clack, cling, clung of night.  A guard
made her rounds, paused when she saw them sitting there, then moved
on.

Zelda said, "I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon first, but I understand
You need to see your mother.  I'll take you to her."

Scully grimaced at the callousness of the words.  She bit her bottom
lip and her head went side to side as though to dislodge the cruelty
from her mind.  The air, the ground, the wall, the thoughts in her
head seemed so heavy she didn't think, she could bear the weight.

"We can, Dana.  I can take you.  Now.  If you will let me."

"How?" It was a desperate whisper.

"You are willing.  I can carry you."

"How?" Scully's lips quiver.  She rubbed them together.  "Tell me."

"Do you really you need to know all that? You demand so much proof,
but all the important things in life you know without it.  I can
teach you.  Later.  First, you have to let me have you," Zelda said.
"You will have to trust me to take you where you want to go."

Scully bit her lower lip to stop its trembling, but a tear escaped
down one cheek.

"Who's with her now?"

"I-I don't know.  Soon Mulder - my partner - will be.  Maybe her
doctor."

"Hmmm-m," she studied Scully's open expression of wariness, doubt.
"Let's try the doctor.  You know him?"

"Fred Morton.  Cardiologist.  She had a heart attack."

"I will need to put my hands on you, to look into you and see what
you don't want anyone to know," Zelda said.  "Is it worth it to you?"
Scully gave it a moment's thought, then nodded.

Without waiting for more Zelda scooted in front of Scully.  She put
her hands on Scully's arm, on the tender skin under the elbow, and
began a gentle massaging motion with her thumb.  Scully closed her
eyes and willed her muscles to let go.  They were happy to cooperate.
It felt good. She sighed in comfort.

Zelda smiled to see her relax.  One of Zelda's hands slid down to her
abdomen and Scully tensed.  Zelda found and began a gentle pressure
over her left ovary.  Presently the discomfort eased.  Scully's
toes began to tingle, her leg muscles quivered.  Her senses went on
high alert.

"Don't fight me.  When you fight something it is out of fear.  You
cannot be afraid of this.  You have to be open to it.  Open to
things you never thought possible.  Open your eyes, Dana.  If you
want to see-know anything-- you must first open your eyes.  Think of
that doctor's face.  Think of being with him.  See him." Scully
obeyed.  "Unlock your hands, your arms, your legs.  Open to the
infinity possibilities of human minds.  Make yourself available to
the spirit that lives in each of us.  Dana.."

Scully tried to visualize Fred Morton's face.  Chubby cheeks, a
Hitler mustache, dark, sad eyes.  Then he flitted away from her.  She
tried again, catching the memory of a joke he told her, his off-key
laugh.  She didn't feel anything, sense anything different.  She
didn't think she could surrender.  She listened to Zelda chant her
name over and over and tried not to think at all.  Then she couldn't
think.  Nor did she want to.  She felt better, lighter.

"Don't be afraid.  Slowly give yourself to the light-" Zelda's voice
came from somewhere very far away.  Colors within the cell became
brilliant, the room brighter and the room began to merge into one
flash of light.  A roar of a thousand voices, a burst of yellow, then
a picture of her mother in her head grew larger, more defined, the
outline of her face and the features in it grew sharper, clearer.

She could see her mother lying in a hospital bed, could feel the
soft skin of her mother's arms under her hand, hear the raspy in-
take of breath as oxygen poured into her mother's lungs from the
tubes in her nose.  Scully realized she was cold, that it was cold in
the room and the light above her mother's bed was nearly blinding.
The sheets and blanket radiated white and blue.

"Mom," Scully called softly.  "Mom."

Margaret Scully stirred.  Her eyes fluttered open.  Her voice
croaked.

"Is it--?"

"Hi," she said.  "How are you feeling?" She realized she had a
stereoscope around her neck and took it off.  The familiar act of
putting it in her ears and listening to her patient's struggling
heartbeat provided her with a measure of comfort and control.

Her mother blinked her eyes.  Once, twice, several times as though to
clear them.  "Fox?"

"Hmm, no.  He's gone."

"He was here --." She must have remembered something.  "Dana? Are you
free?"

Scully smiled.

"Fox..be so pleased," she said.  She reached for Scully's face and
Dana shut her eyes to receive her mother's touch.

Instead, she found herself thrown against the cell wall, gasping, a
searing pain in her abdomen, her hands flaying in air for purchase.
They fell on Zelda's shoulders and she instinctively grabbed them as
though her cell mate could save her from tumbling into an abyss.

"Couldn't hold ..both..long," Zelda panted as though she'd run a long
distance.

She peeled Scully's hands away and laid back on the floor to rest.
"Great Jehovah! That man-.  And you --" she pointed at Scully and
snickered, "Going into your doctor mode.  What a tussle!" She
laughed at the ceiling.  "Can't put two doctors in the same head."

Scully sprang away, scrambling to the other side of the cell like a
bug.  "What was that? What just happened?"

Zelda sat up and arched her back to relieve an ache.  "You have a
real talent."

Scully made a sound of alarm, a gasp of fear.  She felt a bitter
aftertaste in her mouth, her stomach rolled; sweat popped out all
over her.

Zelda didn't move, but held out her hand.  "In a few
minutes you won't remember.  You'll feel peaceful.  Just breathe in
and out.  Breathe with me.  The sickness will go away.  The fear will
go.  Focus on your own breath.  In and out."

And they breathed together until Scully couldn't hold her eyes open
any longer.  She slept curled up in the corner of the cell.

Zelda watched Scully succumb.  There remained a faint glow around her
even after her consciousness dimmed.  Zelda hugged herself with joy.
She rocked back on her heels, then put her forehead on the cell floor
and her lips moved in prayer.  She blessed I AM, Allah, Vishnu,
Jehovah, Abba - for sending someone who bore such favor to her aid
at last.
**************
Margaret Scully had something important to tell Fox Mulder, but she
couldn't remember what it was.  She opened her eyes and saw him
sitting in a chair not three feet away.  She watched him staring out
the window for some time.  Presently he seemed to shake himself awake
and frown as though his stomach hurt or he felt dizzy.  Margaret
frowned.  Fox looked as bad as she felt.

"Hi." He got up and bent over her the way - now she knew what she had
to tell Fox.

"Dana was here," she whispered.  "She was here last night."

"I-I must have missed her," Mulder said.  His throat hurt terribly
just forcing the words out.  His eyes burned from the stuffiness in
the room.  And he wanted to believe Scully was free just as her
mother said.  But he had seen otherwise last night while Margaret
slept.  He patted the woman's arm.

Now Margaret remembered the rest.  "She wanted this, Fox.  She is in
this trouble because she chose this."

"Mom!"

Mulder backed away as Bill Scully came into the room and kissed his
mother.  He didn't want to watch this reunion.  He and his mother
never shared the affection Margaret had with her children.  Idly
Mulder wondered what Margaret gave or possessed that kept them bound
together as a family.

"Agent Mulder-" Bill Scully held out his hand.  "I want to
..thank you.  I appreciate what you've done."

"Fox?"

"Mrs.  Scully."
"You believe me, don't you?  She was here.  Where Bill is now.  Do you
think it matters that she chose this?" Margaret's question was
breathy, barely audible.  She had used most of her strength calling
his name.

Mulder smiled.  "I believe you.  And I think it does matter."

"Could I speak to you, Agent Mulder, ah-h-" Bill Scully jerked
his head toward the door.  In the hallway he seemed uncertain what to
say next.  Finally he said, "You seem to have a way with the women in
my family.  First Dana believing in everything from
aliens to Santa Claus and now, mom..."

Mulder shifted his feet.  "So you know.  The only people in her room
last night were Dr.  Fred Morton and a nurse - a male nurse."

"Delusion."

"That would be Scull-Dana's -- word for it," Mulder said, wondering
what his word for it was.

******

Scully went through an impressive list before concluding "vacuum" was
the word.  And evenings are the worst for that panicky sensation of
weightless emptiness that stretched out to eternity like the River
Styx.  Even on the outside trouble seemed to magnify
at night, but in prison evenings were god-awful.  The paint detail
had been at work today and the cell block corridors smelled of paint,
disinfectant and despair.

The despair and disinfectant always hung in the air.  The paint
underlined everything.  She couldn't do this for five years, Scully
thought.  And she damn sure wouldn't.  She couldn't direct her
thoughts to ridiculous nursery rhymes in hopes she wouldn't vomit, or
count the number of tiles in the walk from the cell to the bathroom
then multiply them by the number of tiles on the ceiling
of the rec room in hopes she wouldn't go insane.

Over three weeks of her life had disappeared, vanished in a routine
not of her making.  Her mother lay in a hospital room and she
couldn't go to her except in dreams.  She was so restless.  She must
have paced the floor all night after Mulder's visit  -- she fell
asleep in the corner of her cell.  She understood why Zelda's former
cell mate had leapt from the top floor of the cell block railing, but
Scully felt homicidal, not suicidal.

The women prepared for their showers.  They stripped, put on
bathrobes, draped a towel over their arm or shoulder and lined up
outside their cells on command.  Scully clutched her thin cotton robe
with its huge plastic buttons in one hand, fingered the rough towel,
and followed Bernice's broad back down the halls.
Doors clacked and clanged.  Metal on metal changed to metal in plastic.

Scully knew where she was by the sounds around her.  If she looked to
her right Scully could have seen the sunset through the only panoramic
view of the outside world the women had.  Most of them took the
opportunity to gaze over the balcony and beyond the prison.  It was
a silent solemn passage.

Never one to long for what she couldn't have, Scully rarely glanced
outside.  The women waited in a narrow corridor for their turn to
enter the shower area.  A guard handed each woman a plastic tray with
her washcloth, toothbrush and toothpastes as she filed into the
shower room.

They moved in groups of six and eight into the room of sinks and
shower stalls to wash up in privacy - one of the few times the women
gained any time with minimal supervision or observation.  Only a lone
camera in the shower room monitored the women in the large shower room.
At the end of 45 minutes to an hour, a guard knocked, the women lined
up,
walked out the opposite door, handed their trays to the guards there
and marched back to their cells.  The clean up crew hosed down the room
with disinfectant and next group then entered the shower.

Scully left off counting hallway tiles.  Instead she listed the
things she hated: silence from the guards, silence from her fellow
inmates, constant talking, continual noise, hot water steaming up
from the sheets and towels in the laundry to burn her face and hands,
reading about diseases and treatments she'd never have reason to see
then forgetting what she read, lining up for showers, lining up for
meals at 5 a.m., noon and 5 p.m.  exactly. Lights out at 9 p.m.
Having someone dole out the elementary essentials of life like
soap.  Getting permission to leave a room, come in a room, buy a
candy bar, watch television, sit down on someone's bunk.  God, she
hated it all.

She put her plastic tray on one of the sinks and started to unbutton
her robe to get into the shower.  Ahead of her, water splashed as a
dozen shower nozzles opened up.  Steam rose and billowed throughout
the room. She had to change something or she'd
certainly lose her mind or kill someone.  She looked up and noticed
shower water was running, but no one stood under the sprays.

They had her before Scully could react.  They grabbed her arms,
stuffed a wet washcloth in her mouth and slammed her down on the
long wooden bench bolted to the shower room floor before she even
realized the women in her pod surrounded her.  The back of her head
cracked on the wood and a flash of light streaked across her eyes.
She grunted in shock more than pain and began to struggle.

Plastic trays balanced on the bench scattered across the tile floor.
Someone twirled a towel around her face and tied it behind her head to
keep the washcloth secure in her mouth.  Scully thrashed and kicked
until Bernice grabbed her chin.

"Stop fighting, girlfriend.  You're caught.  Things go easier if you
don't fight."  Scully fell still, her nostrils flaring with the
effort of getting enough air and her eyes narrowed in fury.  "That's
good." She patted Scully's cheek.  "Let's check her out first.  Get
that robe off."

The women pulled the robe away while Scully kicked,
elbowed and tried to gain some purchase with her feet.  She landed a
glancing blow off Angela's cheek.  Angela would have struck her but
Bernice grabbed her arm. "No marks," she said.

The women forced Scully back onto the bench.  Bernice looked over
her naked body carefully.  "Looks clean." She poked some bumps on
Scully's shoulders, punched a finger in her ears, nose, between her
toes, knees and under her breasts.  She ran her hands through
Scully's hair.  "Feels clean. No devices I can see or feel here."

"We gonna-." Angela grimaced and pumped her finger through her fist.
Scully's eyes widened, then narrowed in fury.

Bernice gaped at Angela.  "You think the feds would put a bug---?
You're crazy."  She grinned down at Scully, then at Angela.  "But
you can have a go at her first, if you want."

Excited, Angela moved forward and Scully began fighting again.

"I'll do it."

Everything stopped.  The women holding Scully seemed surprised to see
Zelda shoulder her way closer- they relaxed their grips slightly.
Seizing the momentary advantage, Scully used her legs to jackknife
up and throw one of the women against a shower stall.  It took
several minutes to force her back on the bench.

Bernice adjusted the gag, pushing the washcloth so far back in her
mouth Scully thought she'd have to swallow it.  "You pack wallop for
a little thing."

"Bernice-let me," Zelda said.

Bernice shook her head.  "Na, Zelda.  We definitely saving you
for an emergency.  I want to see what kindda reading we
get here first."

"You don't trust me." Zelda pouted.

"Angela needs the practice."

"Angela can't do it.  She will never--" Zelda picked Scully's robe
off the tiles.  She squeezed the water out.  "Dana's too strong for
Angela.  Even with Angela's hands on her, Dana won't --you're
just gonna wear her out."

"Weell, she got five years to rest up," Bernice said.  Furiously
Scully struggled against the women who held her pinioned.  "I went
visiting last night, to see what that handsome FBI partner of yours
was thinking.  Whiskey and naked women.  He ain't giving you a
thought.  All night he sucked on a bottle and the face of the woman
on the bar stool next to 'em.  A blonde, I think she was."

Mulder doesn't drink. Scully's words garbled in the washcloth,
but there was no mistaking her tenor or the growl in her throat.

"You're making this hard," Zelda said.  She squatted beside Scully's
head and folded her hands together on her knees.  "Look, they're not
going to hurt you.  They can't hurt you unless they shake you and
you fight.  Understand." Scully stopped moving and lay back on the
bench.

"Good.  Try to relax, to open yourself.  I know you can do that.
It'll be over soon."  She stood calmly, fighting to manage her own
fears.  She had no idea Bernice planned to test Dana tonight.  Zelda
had inadvertently weakened her cell mate by taking her out last
night.

Angela settled over Scully and took her face in her rough ones,
forcing her to look at her.  Her dark brown eyes glinted; the
overhead shower room lights wreathed her head.

"Dana Scully," she said and began repeating the name over and over
in a monotone as if it were a magic charm.  Scully felt a pressure
on her arm and a hand moved over her stomach to press into her
abdomen.  There was already a bruise and Angela's thumb felt as
though she were boring through skin and tissue into Scully's uterus.
The pain gradually receded, taken over by the sound of her name and
her reflection in Angela's eyes.

Scully grew less frightened, less angry, and more embarrassed by her
willingness to surrender to the hypnotic chants and pressures.  She
felt herself pulled into Angela's eyes, into Angela against her will.

It felt like her dream, her dream with her mother, but this was
terrible.  Hurtful.  Terrifying.  Scully struggled.  She wasn't sure,
but she thought the last sound she heard was her own grunts of
fury.

And then she could resist no longer.  There was no point.  No
reason.  She became warm, comfortable, and even content.  She
sighed, her eyes closed, the strength went out of her muscles.  She
drifted in a gentle breeze watching the world beneath her rotate
slowly in pale colors of rose, green, yellow...

How beautiful, she thought.  How wonderful.  Her essence, her inner
eyes, her soul floated effortlessly above the world -- so light,
open, airy, free.  She was home, secure, relaxed.  She stretched
herself in contentment.  Safe at last in her own mind.  Scully
wandered aimlessly down bright corridors of mirrored doors, each
beckoning her to open it first.  Mulder, she laughed, where are you?

"What's so funny?" Scully turned, surprised to see Angela soaring
beside her.  The older woman's darkness pierced Scully's light.
In that horrible instant Scully knew Angela was in her head, a living
presence in her mind.

On the bench Scully began screaming through the gag and thrashing
against the women who held her.  Angela fell back.  She lay on the
tiles stunned and panting.

"See," said Zelda to Bernice as she watched Scully bucking and writhing
on the bench.

Bernice looked at the puzzled faces of the women around her. "What the
hell?"

"She threw me out," Angela said.  She rubbed her eyes and slumped on
one elbow.

"Damn!" In spite of herself, Bernice smiled at Scully with
admiration.  "See anything while you were there?"

"Buncha doors.  A big black door." Angela said between pants.  "Some
man all over the place.  Boyfriend, maybe."

Scully blinked rapidly against the light, sucking in air as hard as
she could, frantic eyes searching for escape or help.  She found
Zelda and her eyes narrowed in reproach.

"I didn't lie to you.  Don't fight!" Zelda said to Scully.  She
turned to Bernice.  "Don't do this, Please.  Not now.  You know she
needs a rest between--"

"Shut up," Bernice said.

"You can not risk it.  You could lose her!"

"Shut the hell up." Bernice shoved Zelda away.  She approached Scully
with caution, settling beside the prisoner before taking Scully's
face in her hands.  She twisted Scully's head around painfully.  The
cloth in her mouth muffled Scully's indignation.  "Come to Mama.
Let's see what you really got."

Where were the guards? Why didn't they hear? Why didn't they check?
Scully felt sick, weak.  She shut her eyes.  The episode with Angela
taught her that much.  Her head throbbed, eyes burned, and she could
feel nausea pushing up in her throat.  Someone in her mind, someone
else in her thoughts.

To Scully it was more invasive and damaging
than anything she'd ever experienced.  She shook her head ferociously
against Bernice's hands.   No, never again.  She heard doors
slamming.

"Hurry up! This ain't the longest shower on record, but it's getting
close," one of the women said.

"Pinch her nose," Bernice said.

Someone put her hands across Scully's face and cut off her air.
Scully opened her eyes and as she did she felt Bernice grab
them as if they were prizes.  The chanting began.  Something punched
into her arm, her abdomen.  She grunted against the painful touches
but could not resist.  Scully felt herself disappearing.  She
screamed one last time into the gag.

The room grew deathly quiet.  The sound of water spraying and the
pipes hissing bounced around the room like echoes.  Angela moved
into the water and began to lather up.  Finally the women released
Scully and dashed into the showers.  Zelda untied the gag and pulled
the washcloth out of Scully's mouth.  It had drops of blood on it.
Zelda frowned and threw it into a corner of the shower room.

Scully heard laughter, singing, water splashing, the slap of bare
feet on wet tiles.  She tried to moisten her lips and turn her head
slightly.  A headache threatened to split her in pieces.  She
started to move, but found her limps so heavy and sore she could
barely lift them.  When she tried to pull up, one arm fell onto
Bernice's back.

Bernice struggled to sit up.  "Lord have mercy.  You are strong.  Get
cleaned up.  Can you make it?"  Scully didn't move.
"Here." She leaned down and drew Scully to an upright position.

"Sick," Scully managed to say.

"Yeah, baby, I know.  We had to be sure.  Had to be sure.  Things
gonna be different now.  You sit this one out." Bernice rubbed
Scully's shoulders gently.  Then she laughed and tossed her robe off
on her way to the showers.

"Zelda, get Dana somethin' cold for her head." Bernice stepped into
the nearest stall: "Now that's cold!"

"Get your own shower!" Someone said in a good-natured challenge.  Two
women laughed, a bar of soap flew up in the air, and someone else
squealed as water play erupted in the shower room in earnest.

Zelda continued to bite her fingernails.  Then she reached out to
Scully: "Let's get your robe on.  Lean on me, let me help you stand."
It was a mistake to get up.  Immediately a wave of nausea sent her to
her knees and she began to vomit.

"Concussion," she gasped to Zelda as a black curtain blew across her
eyes.  "Call the guard!" Zelda said to a woman who stood gaping from
the first shower stall.

"Hold it!" said Bernice.  "Drag her into this stall."

"Why?" said Angela.

"How can she fall and hit her head in the shower if she ain't wet?"
******************************

Prison of Innocents 8b of 20

The Lone Gunmen had broken the code that had stymied them and
obtained Donaldson's sealed personnel files from the Pentagon.  Next
they pursued the records of his mission into Cambodia.

They called Mulder at once and he could picture them frothing at the
mouths.
Frohike especially couldn't bear the
thought of Scully in prison.  He'd seen too many movies.

"Donaldson was a spook," said Langly.

"A very spooky spook," Frohike said.

"He disappeared with his driver and his aide in Cambodian.  They were
missing for two years, assumed to be MIA.  Then Donaldson comes back
with the story of how they had been captured.  According to
Donaldson's report - verified in part by indigenous personnel -- he
and his aide Lt. Anthony Barker of Pittsburgh, and the driver Sgt.
Amelia Peterson of Baltimore, escaped the Viet Cong and eventually
made their way to Quinghai Providence in China -- the headwaters of
the Mekong," said Byers.

"They couldn't perform their original recon mission for some reason,
so Donaldson pushed them further and further into the Mekong on
another.  Something he felt explained why the North Vietnamese were
so fierce."

"He was looking for patriotism?" said Mulder.

"They were looking for a native tribe that produced superior
warriors.  It was a legend, a myth," said Byers.  "Warriors of such
prowess they killed with their minds."

Mulder became extremely interested.

"Donaldson had a rep for the weird.  For believing anything his
sources told him.  He was real -- goober," said Langly.  "But he
must have hit the jackpot.  What they discovered in the Mekong got
classified top, top secret."

"What were they originally supposed to do," Mulder said.

Langly shrugged.  "Ordinary recon.  Nothing to worry about or they
wouldn't have assigned a female driver.  Donaldson claimed he had a
source, a sure thing."

"Probably more to it, but that's all we could find," said Frohike.
"War's over, Frohike," Mulder said.

"For most people," he said.

"Anyway, Donaldson comes back skin and bones, clutching a torn knap-
sack and a his hat for some odd reason.  He was half-crazy.  Told
fantastic stories of  temples, rituals, monks that helped him
survive, native servant girls, and a kind of love that 'possesses a
man completely to the detriment of his mission'."

"Think he was braggin' about his sex life," said Mulder.

"How do I get there?" said Frohike.

"His initial report was pretty much dismissed as ravings.  His aide
was killed and his driver died of fever.  He escaped.  The Army put
him to work, but in short order they gave him a commendation and trip
home," Byers said.

"There is nothing in the record again about monks or temples."

"Monks held him prisoner?"

"Well, you know what they say about what goes on behind closed
cloisters."  Frohike's eyebrows went up and down.

Mulder scoffed.  "What kind of monks holds prisoners?  They have a
quiet, meditative life.  An-and they don't force people to join them.
Just the opposite, in fact."

"Whatever happened, it changed him.  Until his disappearance he was
an average officer - ambitious, but just average.  Actually he was a
little stupid.  After his disappearance he became a superman - an
erratic genius who could be gentle and reasonable one minute,
homicidal and uncontrollable the next.  They figured it was post-
traumatic stress.  His sources became golden.  He became known as
practically infallible kid."  His work done, Byers turned to Langly.

"He went into law school, graduated top drawer.  Nice trick for a guy
that just barely squeaked out of a second rate college," Langly said.

"Too many fraternity parties?" Mulder said.

"He made up for lost time.  He married rather well .. a West
Virginia coal heiress ...and begins a series of insightful
investments.  His portfolio's shrunk lately for some reason, but he
still has money running out of all orifices," Langly said.  "No
political aspirations, keeps in the shadows.  He's a mover and shaker
at Justice."

"And his sex life-" Frohike whistled.  "All over the map."

"Here's the other side of him.  He's generous - Planned Parenthood,
NOW, League of Women Voters.  Rather unusual pattern of giving,"
Byers said.

"We also went back to see who owned AtoZ like you asked," Langly
said.  "The employees.  And some big holding company that we are
still tryin' to peel the layers off."

"But, get this, most of the corporations owned by the holding company
are hospitals, schools in low income neighborhoods, hospice, day
cares, nursing homes.  All top of the line, good reps," Langly said.
"This company ain't makin' money, but they're makin' a lot of people
happy."

"Except the prison," said Frohike. "It's understaffed. Lots of
accidents.
A 
real hellhole."

There was an awkward silence.

"What does all this have to do with Scully?" Mulder said.

The three men looked at each other.  Finally Byers said, "We don't
think it has to do with Agent Scully in particular.  We believe it
has to do with someone at the prison."

"I know that.  Who?"

"It will take some time to run down the histories of staff and
prisoners there," Byers said.  "See what connection - if any - they
have to Donaldson."

"Right now the only connection is the Big Guy," Langly said.

"I can't talk to Skinner," Mulder said.  Three pairs of eyes stared
at him.

"Maybe he's a victim too," Byers said finally.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Mulder said.


-- 

Chapter 9 of 20

An annoying light burned and circled Scully's eyes.  She blinked and
gave it a half-hearted and ineffectual swat.

"Good! You're awake."

Scully tried to swallow, but her throat was so dry it hurt to try.
"Have an ice chip," said the voice beyond the tiny light.

Scully opened her mouth and fingers wrapped in plastic
gloves appeared from the darkness to place a chip of ice between her
lips.

"Light.." she said at last.

"Yeah, sorry." The small light snapped off and was replaced by a
larger, softer glow further off in the dark.  Now Scully could see
an older woman with her dark hair up in a bun.  She wore a lab coat
and a stereoscope around her neck.

"I'm Dr.  Otis.  Clare Otis.  I was hoping to meet you soon under
different circumstances."

Scully's eyes closed.

"Nope.  Awake up.  I, uh, retired from practice two years ago, but
they couldn't find anyone crazy enough to treat convicts, so here I
am."

"My head.."

"Hurts like a big dog, I'll bet.  You correctly diagnosed a
concussion, Dr.  Scully.  Can't give you anything yet for that
mother of all headaches you've got, ya know."

"Hmm."

"Any allergies?"

"No."

"Any recent surgeries?"

"No."

"Anything you want to tell me?"

Scully hesitated.  "No."

"You got bruises on both your arms.  Do that in the shower too?"
Scully grabbed her right arm and saw a bruise near the vein.  She
groaned; nausea nearly took her under.

Well, we'll see," said Dr. Otis.  "I double as the prison
psychiatrist too, so you have to talk to me sooner or later.  That's
how these private penal companies make money, you know, the staff
pulls double duty. I don't mind really.  I'm a stockholder so when
AtoZ Penal makes money, so do I.  "

Scully's head hurt so dreadfully she feared the pounding would move
to the rest of her body if she moved or spoke anymore.  She started
to drift off again.  Dr. Otis shook her patient's shoulder.  Scully
trembled and made an effort to listen.  She failed.  "Don't doze off
in the middle of a conversation."

"Hmm-m."

"Not much of a conversation, though.  I'm doing all the talking.
You're not saying anything.  Why is that?"

"My life story for two aspirin and a piece of ice," Scully said.  She
wondered if that came out right; her mouth felt like it was full of
-wash cloth.

She jerked, flayed by a fleeting memory of an assault on everything
most precious to her, most jealously guarded, most holy. She
closed her eyes then opened them to see if Dr. Otis noticed anything
unusual.

"What was that," Clare Otis said, writing in Scully's chart.
"That shudder? And don't say 'muscle spasm.' You don't strike me as
someone
who scares easily."

"Headache," Scully said.

"Mm-m," Dr. Otis said in a tone meant to convey she would let the 
misdirection
go for once. "Now, Dr. Scully, would you give one of your concussion 
patients
two aspirin?"

"My patients are already dead," Scully said.

"Hum--Not a good cure rate, then." Dr.  Otis took a cup and rattled
the ice in it.  She dipped her fingers inside, took out a chip and
slipped it into Scully's open mouth.  "Won't want that to get around
- nobody will want to come to the clinic."

Scully's eyes widened in hope and judging from the cringe around her
mouth
Dr. Otis obviously saw something in Scully's response that she liked.

"I can work here?" Scully whispered.

"Yep, if I say so.  That woman had scarlet fever - the one you fussed
about on your first day.  Another good catch.  She could have died."
Dr.  Otis put the ice cup down and rolled back the sheets.  "Let's
see your arms."  She held Scully's right arm up, noted the bruises
again, and dropped it. Satisfied, she did the same with her other arm
and both legs.  "Good muscle tone.  What do you think?"

"Slight to moderate concussion."  She shivered beneath the sheet and
light blanket.

Dr. Otis pursed her lips.  "Slight to moderate? With unconsciousness?"

"How long?" Scully asked.

"Three hours."

"Three hours!"

"I did a CT scan at the local hospital... negative -- and brought you
back.  You don't remember?  Still say slight?"

"With the scan and in the absence of continued high blood pressure or
low body temperature, yes," Scully said.

"The headache behind the eyes?"

"It'll go," Scully said turning her face away.

Dr. Otis nodded.  She reached for a blood pressure cuff over
Scully's head.  "What do you remember last?"  Her patient stiffened.
"From a medical standpoint."

"Water running.  A crack on the back of my head.  Visual pain --
streaks of bright lights that blinded me, actually."

"You don't remember people crawling in your head?"  She tightened the
cuff around Scully's arm.  Scully whipped around so fast the nausea
threatened again.  The last vestige of color drained from her face.
"Why do you say that?"

But Clare was preoccupied with taking Scully's blood pressure.
"Almost normal.  Little high.  You forgot to mention vertigo," said
Dr. Otis.  She bent over and cranked the head of Scully's bed up
slightly.  "It'll pass. I think you are right.  I think the
concussion is slight.  I think the nausea, tremors, visual pain comes
from something else."

"What else." Scully could barely breathe.

"You tell me."

Scully closed her eyes and willed the throbbing, pounding to stop.
Blessed sleep took her almost at once and she let go of the pain.

Dr. Otis allowed her to sleep.  She tucked the sheets around her
patient.  The woman on the bed would have blended into the white
sheets without that red hair.

She picked up Scully's chart and wondered what to write in it.
Concussion, certainly.  What else.

What else could she write: that Scully was the fourth case like this
that she'd seen?  That one died later as apparent suicide and two
were transferred to a psych hospital?  Should she set Dr. Scully on
suicide watch?  She didn't seem suicidal, but neither had the other
inmate.  The other inmate had been crazy.  Sane one minute, crazy the
next, and off the railing the minute after that.

Dr. Otis' pen tapped on the paper.  Dr. Otis didn't understand what
was going on in her prison.  She thought this patient might.  Clare
Otis had no plans to lose her.  She wrote: "Confined to clinic, 24
hours".  She was uncomfortable with sending Scully back to the
general population so soon, but there was no way to keep her in the
infirmary longer.

Nevertheless, Clare Otis was going to stay on top of this one.  She
went to get some coffee.  While she was up, she searched for Scully's
records on her computer, printed them out, and brought them back to
the bedside to read.

"Dr.  Scully?" A finger poked her away from a deep, safe place into
the cool, dim light.  She could smell stale coffee.  "This is your 3
a.m.  wake-up call."

It was medical school all over again.  "I'm up.  I'm up."

Then she remembered.  Dr.  Otis smiled down at her.  Every hour on
the hour during the night she had awakened Scully to make certain the
concussion hadn't become coma.  "You look tired," Scully said.

"Night's still young - unfortunately, I'm not anymore." Dr. Otis shook
out a thermometer and Scully opened her mouth.  "You seem more alert.
Headache better?" Scully closed her eyes and opened them quickly.  "I
take that as a yes.  Things are looking up.  I'll give you more ice as
soon as I get this reading-" She looked at the thermometer.  "Normal."
She offered Scully some ice.  "Anything else I can get you?"

"Agent Mulder." Her eyes widened as if she'd surprised herself by the
request.  Dr. Otis thought about it.  She recognized the name
immediately
from Scully's folder - her former FBI partner, and her most recent
visitor.
Maybe Dr. Scully would tell him what she wouldn't tell her doctor.

"Okay," Dr. Otis said.  She knew she'd made the right decision when
Scully
relaxed into the pillow with undisguised relief.

Dr. Otis took Scully's file back to her desk, punched in her code for an
outside line and ran her finger down a form for emergency numbers.  She
found Fox Mulder listed with two numbers.  Glancing at Scully she noted
some color returning to her patient's cheeks.  Now we're getting
somewhere, Dr.  Otis thought.  Knowing the hours law enforcement
officers
kept, she tried the cell phone number first.
*****
Mulder came immediately as she knew he would.  Scully could sense him
near long before she could see him or feel his hand on her arm. When
he called to her, she swam through an ocean of warm water to reach the
surface and answer him.

"That's not the sexiest hospital gown I've ever seen you in," he said.
"Puke green with a peek-a-boo neckline."

She pawed at the opening on the gown.  "Morning?"

"I haven't had breakfast yet." He hadn't shaved either.

She glanced around to find Clare Otis reading in a chair across the
room.  Clare threw them furtive glances but kept a discreet distance.

"Dr. Otis says you don't play well with others," Mulder said.

"I know.. I told you... I didn't want you on this..."

"I didn't hear that.  You said not to focus entirely on this case."

"You never listen."

"Aren't you glad?"

"Maybe.  Sometimes.  All right, this once."

He studied her, brushed the hair off her face.  It looked as though
his touch on her forehead hurt so he took his hand away.

She closed her eyes, "What is this, Mulder?"

"Can we talk about mind control?"

"Yes." Her exhale of capitulation seemed noisy in the quiet clinic.
And scared him.

"Lots of experiments by the military," he said.  "Some of them fairly
successful.  Lots of talk about classified experiments -- especially
during the Korean War and Vietnam Wars.  Sense a pattern here? It's
killer stuff."

"Is it?"

"Sure-even in the movies: "The Manchurian Candidate", for instance."

"X-Files?"

"You know them, Scully.  Pusher..."

"The result of a physical anomaly," she said.

There was only a hitch in his recitation.  "Rev. Orison put an
entire prison to sleep.." Mulder let the rest of it go.  He knew she
would automatically see herself shooting an unarmed Donnie Pfaster in
an act of revenge or self-preservation.

"Mass hypnotism," she said.

"What are you looking for?"

"Something more than illusion, parlor tricks, gimmick mind reading
games," she said.  Every word seemed an effort.

Mulder's head screamed yes, yes, thousands of cases, dozens of proven
incidents.  This time what she needed from him was some rational
explanation, something she could to hold onto.

"Outside the cases we've seen, what people normally call mind
control is the power of suggestion blown larger by stress, bad
food, sleep deprivation.  Any of that in your life lately?"

"Do you think it's possible for someone to enter your mind and know
what you know, see what you see, think your thoughts with you? As
the bank guard said?"

"That what happened last night?"

She grimaced.  She appeared to have trouble thinking and when he could
see muscles ripple, her body rebel.  "Yes -- don't know."

Mulder thought he would be as sick as she looked.  "That sure, huh?"

She almost laughed, then closed her eyes against the effort.  "Not
sure of anything."

His hand clutched hers tightly and he pressed their linked hands to
his cheek.  Her eyes fluttered open then seemed to reach for him.
"Okay, one thing."

It was almost a tangible thing: Mulder sensed waves bringing her back
to shore, the sand between her toes again, and the sand turned to rock
under her feet. He felt relieved.

"There's also the mind meld I mentioned before," Mulder said, stirring
himself from the comfortable place they were together.  "I've read more
about it.  Talked to a few spiritualists.  People enter your mind,
learn what you know and use it to control you, even transport your
spirit.  It exists in legends primarily, although I have heard of it in
some Far Eastern cultures.  Tibetan monks, for instance, claim they
achieve perfect peace only when they are one with the mind of the Dalai
Lama.  You think this is related somehow to last night?"

Before she could answer, an image of Henry Donaldson leapt into
Mulder's head.  Donaldson, his monks, and his companions on the mission.

"I don't know what happened last night.  I can't explain it," Scully
said.  In her report Mulder saw she was trying to concentrate on giving
an accurate, impersonal account of what she could recall, but the horror
obviously became too great, the sickness too virile. "The worst kind of
intrusion-things I would never share-things I hardly dare to think
myself.
It was intellectual rape!"

"Scully, let go of this for a minute," Mulder's voice was firm. "Think
about
a-a baseball game. Your favorite, uh -- baseball game."

She regarded him blankly, then they both grinned.

"Okay, your favorite symphony," he said.

"It's okay. The worst of it's gone now."

"Happened before?" Mulder's thumb tenderly stroked her cheek, her jaw.

"Never like this.  Never." She stared at him, then dropped her eyes.
"You know what happens."

"I saw you sick, fighting delusion, angry.  You never recall the
attack that brought it on."

"Yeah."

"Is that what you mean? The sickness, delusions, rage?"

"I haven't been sick in a long time.  Things were clearer.  I could
read.."

"You couldn't read?"

"I've been-using your trick - like now." She paused and he heard
something that sounded like "six times six equals 36" stumble out of her
mouth. He was quiet for a while to let her finish the multiplication
tables.

Mulder thought she'd fallen asleep until she mumbled," I saw my mother."

"Did you?"

"That night-you came.  Zelda took me-" Scully closed her eyes.  It
seemed nice to remember it. He could see the corners of her mouth
turned.
"In my dream, she took me to the hospital
to see her.  It was so real."

"For your mother too."  He dropped that into the air.  He thought he
saw that ghost of a smile flicker on her lips.

"Mmmm.  Fred's more interested in the night nurse than my mother."

"The guy?"

"The blonde at the desk - one with the chest."

"Good taste." Mulder made a mental note to talk to Fred Morton.

"He thinks mom is going to be fine," Scully said.

"So he tells me."

Scully nodded, eyes still closed.  Mulder started to touch her shoulder
then it struck him that Morton had cancelled his visit with Mrs. Scully
the previous afternoon.  His partner came instead, explaining Fred woke
up with a stomach virus.  Mulder wondered.

"Scully-"

She didn't open her eyes.  "Yeah."

"Before last night -how did you feel?  You said you could read
more. What else?  Any more vivid dreams?"

She opened her eyes.  "No dreams." She looked distressed.  "I can't
trust if what I do recall is accurate memory or-or a dream."

"Let me sort it out."

"Flashbacks of men in suits that I don't recognize."  Scully began to
fade again.  "- a woman I knew at the academy - Ann Millard -
newspaper pictures, guns, women-"

"That could be your life passing before you," he said.  "Ann Millard?"

"Hmmm.  Not seen her since the academy.  Killed in the line."  The
pounding in Scully's head suddenly became unbearable.  She touched her
head as though to keep it from spinning off her head.  Mulder looked
to Dr.  Otis.

"What does Ann Millard have to do with what's going on?" he said.

"Don't know.  Way I feel now -- connected somehow." She didn't open
her eyes, but she griped his arm.

"So we use your sickness as a barometer of how hot or cold we are on
this case," Mulder said, grabbing a nearby basin.

Scully heaved.  Dr. Otis moved toward them.

"Not much more, Agent Mulder.  In fact..."

Scully's eyes flashed blue and dangerous.  "No!"

"Five minutes," said Clare.

Mulder waited until the doctor turned her back to whisper to Scully,
"I'm going to submit this to Law Enforcement Journal - when the
investigator becomes vilely ill, the case is nearly solved."

"Breaking new ground," Scully said.

Mulder's tiny smile faded.  "It's worse right after whatever mind
games they play.  You know that.  You're very vulnerable now.  You
need some time where no one can get to you until your head clears."

"How?" She flung her arm over her eyes.

"I'll speak to Dr.  Otis..."

"No!" She said it too loudly, then dropped her voice.  "What if-she's
...involved.." Sleep.  Scully looked as though she wanted so badly to
sleep.

"What's going on?" Dr. Otis returned at double time.  She felt
Scully's racing pulse.

"Vertigo," Scully said.

"Time to leave, Agent Mulder.  Let her sleep."

Scully sighed.  She couldn't fight anymore.

"A minute," Mulder said.  He dropped his voice and put his mouth next
to Scully's ear.  In the dark behind her eyes she heard the desperation
over his words: "Tell me you're undercover.  I'd probably kiss you."

"I wish," she mumbled.

"Later," he said, gently brushing the hair off her clammy forehead.

"I'm not kissing someone who might throw up on me."

"Ha..." She dropped into sleep and Mulder let her go.

Clare watched Mulder pull the covers over his partner's shoulders and
tuck them around her.  "A word, Agent Mulder?"
****************
Dr.  Clare Otis married the man she loved when she was in her late
20s.  He was a fellow medical student, brilliant, gentle,
understanding.  He was the only thing she loved more than medicine,
than the healing of the human body.  They lived together 40 years,
raised two sons, and helped deliver one of their five grandchildren - a
granddaughter with wisps of red hair -- before a heart attack
killed him two years ago.   She turned to her other love, to medicine,
to heal her wound.

Clare Otis knew what it was to love and live with a man.  And even if
she had no psychology training, the woman she was could have
recognized another woman who truly loved a man.  These days she
didn't see many men and women outside her own family who had a sense
of self and gave themselves freely to each other.

Instead she saw a lot of co-dependent personalities, enablers
married to drug or alcohol dependent mates, or emotionally immature
men drawn to emotionally crippled women.  She saw so little healthy
give and take between a man and woman committed to each other that she'd
didn't recognize it at first.

But, lord, it was a pretty thing to see.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dr. Otis watched the FBI agent and his
convict ex-partner act out their love story in the early morning
light.  Their tenderness with each other made Dr.  Otis glow just to
remember her own love. She missed her husband.  She was glad of this
job to dull the pain of losing him.

She had anticipated some problems with the work, but not others.
She was too soft for a prison job, Dr.  Otis realized.  She should
be in private practice.  The inmates took advantage of her.  She
expected them to get over on her often and they did.  She had to
toughen up, she knew.

She had not counted on this mystery in her clinic: the death that was
ruled suicide nor the two inmates who were rational one day and
psychotic the next.  Dr. Otis did not think herself a fool, but the
illnesses made her feel like one.  Now she felt the answer lay within
her grasp.  Until Mulder arrived she saw Dana Scully as just part of
the problem.  Now she realized her prisoner might be the solution.

Mulder and Scully's relationship raised questions in Dr.  Otis' mind
- questions she didn't normally ask.  She never concerned herself
with a prisoner's guilt or innocence since a court had determined
that already.  They all claimed to be innocent; Clare never allowed
her patients to evade or excuse culpability for their crimes, since
that was part of why they were in prison to start with.

Dr. Scully was different.  Her case file raised questions of guilt
or innocence for Dr. Otis that could be dismissed separately but not
cumulatively.  Dr.  Otis rubbed the bridge of her nose and her tired
eyes.  Out of habit and experience she had slipped Scully into the
role of manipulative woman with Mulder the besot lover.  In the
morning light she could see that clearly wasn't the case.  If he was
in love, it was no more than she was.

Dr. Otis began to rethink the matter.  Even given their mutual
attraction, why would a trained investigator continue to believe his
partner innocent in the face of overwhelming evidence and her plea
bargain?

Scully's actions raised another question.  While she robbed the FBI
blind and held defense lawyers up for thousands of dollars in
bribes, she apparently kept Mulder clear of her felonies -- an
unselfish act that didn't happen often among female criminals.  Later
she didn't blame him or involve him at all.  In fact, she tried to
keep him at arm's length.  He would have none of it.  A strong woman
and a strong man, Dr.  Otis thought.  That didn't jive with women who
wound up in prison.

And what did she plan to do with the money, Dr. Otis wondered.
Scully didn't seem vain or in need of funds.  She seemed self-
contained and disciplined.  In fact, the one security tape Dr. Otis
had seen of her new patient and the FBI agent was enough to show her
Scully played by the rules, Mulder pushed them.

Dr. Dana Scully did not fit any known profile of a female criminal.

Dr. Otis gave some thought to an undercover operation.  If so, it
was real good, she thought.  No hints in the official record, plenty of
official transcripts, newspaper clippings and all the trappings of
a genuine crime-and-punishment scenario.

The tape Dr. Otis pulled of Scully and Mulder's visit was nothing more
than she expected from of a prisoner and her ex-partner.  No, it was
more.  They talked about cases, the weather, family, his tie, and the
prison food-ordinary conversations made so intimate by the participants
that Dr. Otis felt like a dirty voyeur.

Their partnership was beyond professional and probably stronger than
either of them admitted.  Dana Scully held another fascination for
Clare Otis: medicine.  Clare had a feeling Dr. Scully didn't crave
the personal, human side of the profession as much as the scientific
puzzle presented by a body that didn't function according to the
blueprints.  Still, she loved the art - they had that in common.

After talking with Mulder about his partner, Dr. Otis requested a
prison shakedown in hopes of turning up a pressure syringe that
might have injected Scully with a new drug she wouldn't be able to
identify from blood samples.  She wanted to eliminate the possibility
of drugs first. Then, Dr. Otis would use the prisoner's love of
medicine and Fox Mulder to get what she wanted from Dr. Scully.
********************
When Scully woke again the light was so bright and irritating she
shielded her eyes before opening them very far.  Mulder had gone.
She knew that from the emptiness all around her.

Stirring a little she heard with irritation glasses rattling, metal
clanging, a harsh laugh down the hall, a broom or mop slamming
against the baseboards.  The prison was awake.

She wanted to scream for everyone to shut the hell up.  The moment
passed, but she became aware of a bitter aftertaste in her mouth
that was somehow familiar.  Scully pulled the blanket around her chin
with a huff.  Every voice, every noise seemed amplified.

"No way, Bert."

"Doc, it's not my call."

"I won't let you do it.  She's sick.  What could she possibly do in
here anyway?"

Scully heard the unmistakable leather squeak of a policeman's holster
harness.  The curtain opened and the sergeant of the guard walked
in.  Without a word to Scully he pulled the sheet and blanket out
from the foot of the bed.

"What-what are you doing!" Scully sat up too quickly and her head
spun.

The guard grabbed her ankle, enclosed it in a manacle and secured
the chain to the footboard. Scully kicked.

"This is contrary to established policy. This is a secure area and no
restraints are required.  Come back!"

As an apparent after thought the guard covered her exposed foot up
before he left.

He never spoke or looked directly at her.  Shocked, then enraged,
Scully kicked at the manacle, the footboard.  A clanging noise that
reverberated through her head was her only reward.  She didn't feel
better at all.  She heard someone applauding outside.

"Way to go, Bert.  I, for one, feel much safer knowing that a
very sick, 105 pound woman can't wander around the clinic," said Dr.
Otis from  somewhere beyond the curtain.

"You don't like it, talk to the director."

"I will, don't worry."

"Ah, Doc.  Really.  It's not hurting her and she is a special case-"

"She's especially sick, you mean.  I didn't object to the manacles
outside the prison, even though I thought it was overkill for an
unconscious prisoner.  But this, this is barbaric."

"She's been trained-"

"Are all you people buffaloed by the fact that she was FBI?"

"Orders, doc." The leather squeak faded away.

Anger and bitter frustration burned Scully.  She lay very still,
willing herself not to feel the shackle.  Willing herself not to
feel like an animal.
Scully closed her eyes.

The curtain parted.  "Hi.  Feeling better?" In the daylight Clare Otis
appeared heavier, her hair grayer.  She plodded ahead as though too
weary to do any better.

"This is outrageous," Scully said to the ceiling.  She laid stiff and
straight, pressing into the mattress.

"I couldn't agree more," Clare said.  Taking a thermometer she stuck
it in Scully's mouth and took her pulse.  "Better." After a minute
she read the thermometer with approval and wrapped Scully's arm in a
blood pressure cuff.

"I think we can graduate you from ice to chicken soup.  Wanna try?"
Clare paused to read Scully's blood pressure, grunted approval and
reached over on a nearby rolling tray for a steaming mug.  Scully had
no appetite, but she accepted soup from Dr. Otis anyway.

"You know, your lethargy, nausea, memory loss, and tremors aren't
necessarily symptomatic of concussion," Dr. Otis said in a
conversational tone.  "Ever had this before - ever seen it before?"

"No."

"Never?" When she got no answer Dr. Otis said: "I have." Scully
stopped sipping soup and glanced up.  "Three times, in fact.  You're
the fourth, Dr. Scully.  One of them died - apparent suicide.  The
other two became psychotic.  What do you know about that?"

"Nothing," Scully said, taking a tentative sip.  The broth was hot
and too salty.

Dr. Otis took Scully's right arm and turned it over.  She gently
probed the bruised area but found no needle mark.  She frowned.  She
tapped Scully's arm several times and raised her eyebrows; it was a
question Scully chose to ignore.

Clare Otis turned down the sheet and examined Scully's stomach and
abdomen.  As expected there was tenderness and she drew a wince from
her patient when she examined the area.  Clare pulled the sheet back
up, noting Scully's hands curled into fists.

"Never saw this before, huh?" Frowning Dr.  Otis tucked Scully's arm
under the sheet and made some notes on her chart.   "I forget you're
all liars, thieves, murderers and con artists.  I keep asking a
question and expecting a straight answer.  I keep giving respect and
expecting it back."

She started to leave, then thought better of it.  "You know, I'm
tired down to my socks and I've got something here that I don't
like.  Now here's the deal, Dr. Scully.  I've got an hour's worth of
patients waiting for me.  When I come back you have answers or you
won't see Agent Mulder for a long while."

"You can't suspend my visitor's privileges." Scully sat up sharply.
"I haven't done anything."

"I can not only suspend them, I can put Agent Mulder on the list of
unacceptable visitors so you don't see him for five years.  You
think I can't figure out you were fighting last night? I can send
you to isolation too." Dr. Otis said.

"Do it."

Clare looked askance.  "Really? You wouldn't mind?"

Scully drew her lips together and refused to look at Dr.  Otis.
Clare  could almost feel the heat rising off her patient.
Scully's fists slammed them to the mattress when Dr.  Otis closed the
privacy screen around the bed and left.

Damn, Scully thought jerking the covers up.  She couldn't be cut
off from Mulder, not now.  She couldn't risk connecting the dots
for Dr. Otis until she had a full picture of what was going
on and who was involved.  She wanted to take Dr. Otis by the throat.
The urge was so strong it shocked Scully, made her arms tremble.
Her hands opened to grip the sheets and she kicked at the shackle a
gain with an angry grunt.

Scully suddenly realized she could think without debilitating
headache or nausea as long as she kept a cold, penetrating fury
aimed at some point in the future.  And that anger was a fertile
incubator to birth plans for a safe haven.  It pleased her because she
saw it as a way to return a portion of what she had received.

-- 

Chapter 10 of 20

The cafeteria was the noisiest place in the prison --high
ceilings, plastic and concrete, stainless steel and too many
people in too little space.

The prisoners ate in two sittings, perched on swinging stools that
fastened to the tables.  The inmates packed into the cafeteria
quickly since good seating was at a premium.  Dr. Otis released
Scully at just as lunchtime started.  The guard escorted her to the
cafeteria and watched until she took her place in the lunch line.
She waited, coiled and ready, her fists clenching and unclenching,
her muscles tensing and relaxing.

Scully accepted anything the workers wanted to put on her
plate and picked her seat carefully.  She walked to grab a seat
in the cafeteria that put her back against the rear wall.  She
sat there only a few minutes when she saw several of her pod
mates point at her and wave.  She ignored them.  As soon as they
got through the line, Bernice plopped down next to her, while
Angela claimed the seat across.  Zelda tried to sit in Scully's
line of vision, but Bernice shoved her aside.

"Girl, you sure look better," said Bernice.  "We were
startin' to figure you were gonna serve the rest of your time in
the infirmary."

Scully poked her Jello.  It wiggled obscenely on the plate.

"You gonna eat your cake?" said the woman next to Angela.

"Yeah, she gonna eat it," said Angela.  "Get your fat hands
off.  And she gonna eat your roll too." Angela reached over, took
the woman's roll and tossed it on Scully's plate.  It landed in
the gravy covering the mashed potatoes and splashed onto
Scully's shirt.  Everyone at the table broke into snickers and
giggles.  Scully's remained a blank as she cleaned the potatoes
and gravy off with a napkin.

"Look here, no hard feelings," Bernice said with a
chuckle.  "We'll have peace in the family.  You have any more
troubles, you come to me."

Scully stood up suddenly, knocking over her plastic water
glass.  She slammed her shoulder against Bernice's body, twirling
the woman's stool into the table and pinning one of her arms
between the table and wall.  Scully could scarcely see, scarcely
feel.  Her vision clouded around the edges, her skin flamed and
she felt as strong as a dozen men.

Grabbing Bernice's free hand Scully wrenched Bernice's thumb and
bent it back.  As the woman yelped in pain Scully said, "I handle
my own trouble." She took Bernice chin in hand.  Scully's teeth
clenched.

She put a point on her words by speaking directly to the black woman's
ear and twisting her thumb until it dislocated: "Don't do that to me
again.  Never! If there is a next time, you'd better kill me
because I will surely come after you." There was no mistaking
the venom in her voice.  Bernice continued to scream, but Scully
was too consumed by the power in her violence to hear her
victim, the whistles blowing, or the guard's orders to step
back.  "You aren't my girlfriend or my mother!" Scully said.

In a corner of her darkness she heard Mulder call out: "Scully!" She
whirled in the direction of the voice but
couldn't find him.  She popped Bernice's thumb back into its
socket just as the two blue uniforms slammed into her.  Bernice
screamed once and fell to the floor crying and holding onto her
hand in pain.

Two lunchroom guards pulled Scully away - fists flying,
elbows slashing, and feet kicking -- while a third tended to
Bernice.  The women in the lunchroom erupted into whistles,
catcalls, screams, shouts, thrown food, milk, and tea.  Scully
caught a fleeting glimpse of her pod mates as the guards dragged
her away.  Two of the women looked at Scully with a new respect
but it was Zelda's expression of dismay that registered.  The
guards flipped her against the wall and wrenched her arms back
to cuff her.  She hardly felt it.
******************************
On her way into the director's office Dr. Otis passed
between Scully, sitting shackled on one bench between two
guards, and Bernice, shackled on the opposite bench next to
another guard.  She scowled at both prisoners, noting no physical
damage beyond cuts and bruises.  Bernice seemed subdued; Scully
appeared ready to go another round.  She tapped her fingers up
and down, her legs jiggled and she looked as though she might
jump out of her skin.

Clare nodded toward Bernice, "Anything broken, Dr. Scully?"
Scully shook her head.  She glared past Dr. Otis to Bernice.
"Nothing broken -- this time.  Dislocated thumb.  Severe
sprain.  Ice, aspirin, rest should do it."

"What about you?" she asked, noting Scully's dilated pupils.  But it
was the malice and aggression in the prisoner that struck her.  This
was not the woman she had seen in the surveillance videos, the woman
she heard about from the in-take personnel, the woman brought into
her clinic, or the one described in such poignant detail by Agent
Mulder.

"I'm fine."

"I think you should pee in a cup for me," said Clare.

Scully shrugged as though it were of no importance.  "Why not do a
blood test while you're at it?" "Good idea." Clare said.  "Maybe a
spinal tap?" She knocked once on the director's door.  The prison was
in lock-down.

After several moments the door opened and Bernice went into the
director's office.   Scully sighed and leaned back in her seat.  The
guards beside her shifted warily.  Scully's heart rate slowed
somewhat; but she kept feeling strong, invincible, justified.  And
she was going to get at least two weeks in solitary confinement.
Maybe when she came out she would be herself, or close to it.

For now she allowed herself to enjoy this rush, the joy of savagely
attacking and hurting someone who had wronged her.  She felt none of
the remorse or self-incrimination that marked her murder of Donnie
Pfaster.  He deserved it too - why had she berated herself up all
this time?  She now had an inkling of why serial killers couldn't
resist another murder, why soldiers loved war, why boxers fought past
their prime.  Scully felt like beating her chest and hollering in
triumph.

In the back of her mind it all terrified her in some vague fashion.
When the prison director called Scully into his office, the guards
took hold of her upper arms and the restraint chains made a clanging
noise when she tried to throw off their hands.  The two men pulled
her into the office, nostrils flaring and her eyes drawn to menacing
slits.
***************

Dr. Otis leaned against the edge of the director's desk.
"You still seem a tad upset, Dr. Scully.  What if we just forgot the
whole thing? You go on back to your cell."  Clare got a flash of
panic from Scully that she'd thought she'd see.

"I think we'll give her two weeks minimum isolation until
we can get her arraigned for assault.  After the arraignment,
we'll see," said the director.  His mouth barely moved when he
spoke.  He leaned in to Scully's face.  "More time.  You're gonna
die in here, Scully, you don't watch out." He told Clare, "You
got to get a tougher hide, Clare.  You've got to learn to deal
decisively with violence.  We have to teach them that this kind
of behavior won't be tolerated.  You have to treat them like
children until they learn to behave."

Clare didn't pay attention to the director.  She was far too interested
in Dr. Scully.  The prisoner reacted to the director's remarks with an
involuntary shudder, a twinge of outrage, an undercurrent - a growl -
of anger.  Where had all this come from in Dana Scully?

"I'm going to make certain you get what you need, Dr.
Scully," she said.  "However, it's not going to be a vacation."

"Don't be ridiculous," said the director.

"Unless we find out what caused this, all we've done is throw her in
the briar patch," Dr. Otis said.  "And the resultant expense of
hospitalization will not, down the road, improve our profit margin."

The director tossed the pen on his desk away from him.

"Dr. Scully, tell me what you would do for a patient who
behaved in a psychotic fashion - in a situation where a previous
patient had turn psychosis into suicide."

"I am not suicidal!"

"That doesn't answer the question," Dr. Otis said.

"I was defending myself!"

"You would order a suicide watch.  A jacket restraint-"

"No!"

"A sedative-"

"I'm not psychotic!"

"Then what the hell is going on with you?"

Scully blinked as though her vision had blurred, a red lapped up from
her
neck to her face.  Clare heard a growl, then a scream, a primal yelp of
rage 
and
frustration.  Clare Otis jumped out of Scully's reach.

"Get this piece of trash out of here," the director to the guards.

"No!" Scully said, fighting against her captors.  "I'm not
suicidal! No!"

"Infirmary first."

"Ah hell, Clare," the director said.  "She'll just tear it
apart.  You want to treat her in isolation, knock yourself out.
But I'm not risking her anywhere else."

Clare Otis watched sadly as the guards dragged a screaming, struggling
Scully down the hall.

"Where are you going now? We have to fill out paperwork-"

"Getta a kit.  I have a couple of tests to perform on those prisoners
and I want to do it immediately," Dr. Otis said.

The director glared.  "It's a waste of time and money."

"I don't think so, George.  I'm convinced there is -
wrong here."

"You think that red-head is a psycho?"

"She is now  I want to know why."

George smiled patiently and scratched his head. "Lookee, Clare, not
everyone who becomes violent is suffering from a mental disorder."

"This prisoner has no history of violence.."

"Chrissake, she shot people!"

"And got a commendation for it!  She was an FBI agent!"

"All I'm saying is that she has a history of violence, even if she
was on our side at the time," the director said.

"I have to run some tests," Clare said in a firm voice.

The director waved her away with a sigh.  "Do it then.  Just
take somebody with you.  Remember she's a special case.  She's
been trained to do some damage with her hands."

"Oh, George, you believe everything the FBI puts out?"

"I was warned about her.  I was warned to take extra security
precautions," said the director.

"Who? For heaven's sake-"

"Someone who is familiar with her FBI record.  Someone at
Justice.  A fellow stockholder who doesn't want his kid's
university to wind up being the local community college."  George
said with a touch of pride in his authority.  "Go look what she
did to the guards.  Then tell me I'm overreacting."

"She'll be in a jacket," Clare said.

"All the same..." The director stopped and rubbed his jaw.
"I don't want any more people hurt today.  I don't want you
hurt." His eyes softened. "You're too willing to believe, Clare. You're
too willing to think even these women are valuable."

She shrank back. "Don't you?"

George rubbed his forehead. "I've been in corrections 27 years.  My
illusions are long gone."

"You don't believe someone can change her life around?" Clare knew she
sounded like a college freshman.

"Well, maybe some of them. But that one -" George jerked his thumb in
the direction the guards took Scully. "That one's not gonna make it."

Something flared in Clare; she recognized a gauntlet when one was
thrown in her face. It stiffened her resolve not to let Scully go down.
"You could be right, George. All right.  I'll take someone with me.
But I want those tests done ASAP."

"There's something else to consider here," George said.  "You're a
stockholder just like I am.  We're under scrutiny here by the
government and our fellow stockholders.  After that suicide and other
unfortunate incidents - well, we can't afford any more trouble.  And
we can't afford to let our head count go down.  Not if we want to
remain profitable."

It should have made her angry.  Instead Clare nodded.  "I've got
to do this, George."


The work on Bernice was easy for Clare to do.  Bernice sat on her bunk
in
isolation quiet, compliant, defeated, almost dazed.  She provided a
urine
sample, which Dr. Otis labeled carefully, and submitted to a blood test
with
only a grunt when the needle slid in her vein.

Down the hall they could all hear Scully banging against
the cell walls and door.  She screamed and swore at the guards,
the restraints they were putting in place, God, Bernice, Clare,
and the uncomfortable bed - not necessary in that order.  Dr.
Otis put a band-aid on Bernice's arm and watched the prisoner
out of the corner of her eye.

"She still sounds a little unhappy," Clare said in a conversational
tone.

"Yeah," said Bernice, wetting her lips.  "She's freaked."

"Whatever you did to her- - I wouldn't do it again," Dr. Otis said.

Bernice shook her head.  "I didn't do nuthin'."

"Well, you're not the mama anymore." Bernice's look that told her she
guessed correctly.  Pod 34 had a new leader.

"We're ready for you, Dr. Otis," said a guard.  She had a cut over one
eye.  Clare frowned. As soon as the doctor and guard left, the cell
plunged into darkness.

"I'll be happy to look at that for you," Dr. Otis said to the guard.

The woman dabbed at the cut.  "It's nothing.  A scratch.
Damn that Scully-she's little but she fights like a full grown
man-like somebody on PCP."

"Maybe she is," Dr. Otis said.  "That's what I'm hoping to
find out.  I need two, three guards.  Female only." The guard
opened Scully's cell and the light came on.

The woman in the cell made Dr. Otis gasp.  She didn't look
human; the eyes blinking against the light were those of a caged
beast.  The heaving and panting of her chest made Dr. Otis
fearful Scully might have a seizure.  With the jacket on and
her hair tangled and tossed, Scully seemed feral.

"Get out," she panted.  "Haven't you done enough?"

"I've got to have blood and urine samples.  I'd like to do
a spinal tap, just to check on--"

A smile curled around Scully's teeth.  "Try it."

"Is that what you want? Take a few deep breaths, Dr.
Scully, and listen to me.  Can you? Can you understand me?"

"Take this off," Scully growled.

Clare shook her head.  "I've seen this.  Before you do
yourself or anyone else any more damage, I'm going to stop it."
Scully appeared interested, but not mollified.  "Can you complain
about that?"

"Remove the restraints," Scully said between clenched
teeth.  The jacket had her arms laced in front of her.  She looked
small wrapped in the dirty white canvas.

"I can't.  As you know I can take the blood from a vein in
your leg or your scalp.  And I can catheterize you if necessary
to get the urine sample.  I'd rather not.  I want you to
cooperate.  But I have to have them now, Dr. Scully, before your
body processes whatever is causing this."

"Do it -- if you can," Scully said.  She used her bare feet
and her back against the wall to push herself into a defensive,
sitting position.

"I'm sorry.  I know you don't want this but I don't think
you can control it.  When we're done I'll give you a sedative,"

Dr. Otis said and motioned to the guards.  Three of them moved into the
cell and held Scully in position on the mattress.  Dr. Otis cut away
Scully's jeans and secured her samples.  It took all four women.  It
took close to an hour.  As promised, Clare administered a sedative when
she finished and after a few moments the guards released their hold.
Scully turned on her side away from them and her body shook.  Clare
pulled a blanket up to cover her prisoner.

"I'm sorry." Clare Otis touched Scully's shoulder, knowing how much she
would have hated what had been done to Scully.

"I'll get you for this," Scully said, choking on her rage and
humiliation.

"I'll come back to check on you."

"I will fucking get you!"

So what kind of results was she looking for? Clare Otis asked herself as
she walked back down the isolation hallway.  She had no real expectation
that drugs caused all this, yet it seemed chemical in nature, something
that preyed on a human's more violent natural instincts.  She asked the
lab for a full screen for drugs and alcohol and, as an afterthought,
reserved some of the samples in hopes a night or two's reflection might
be inspirational.  George was going to kick at the cost of these tests.
**************
Henry Donaldson tried to stop, but the gravel under his feet gave him
little traction.  He nearly fell on his ass.  While he was flaying his
arms around trying to keep his footing it was easy for the man standing
in the path to grab him by the tee-shirt and sling him into the bushes
by the park trail.  His captor had shadowed Donaldson until he left the 
regular
jogging path.  Branches from the bush he'd been tossed in now poked the 
thinner
man and his bare legs had cuts and scratches on them.

"What the hell!"

Skinner twisted the front of his tee shirt and hauled Donaldson
to his feet.  "Call it off."

"Turn loose of me," Donaldson said.  "You friggin' ape!
Jesus Christ, Walter, have you lost your mind?"

"Word is Agent Scully's teetering on the brink of that
right now," Skinner said.  He had tried to warn Scully.  And it
hadn't taken long for him to discover he'd been right.  He
thought he had taken precautions to protect her, but he knew he
hadn't weeks ago when he discovered only blank videotape where
he expected eight hours of color picture and sound, and blank paper
where he expected signed documents from Justice.  When Donaldson
came to him with this idea, he should have refused to entertain
it, much less allow Scully to agree to it.  He'd been negligent.
He couldn't let her die for Donaldson's ambition as the men in
his platoon had.

Donaldson straightened his clothes.  "I don't know what you mean."

"I'm talking about one of my agents in trouble."

"Walter, I can't imagine what you're talking about." Donaldson took two
or three steps back into the path.  Walkers came by this way. People
would see them.

"There was a riot at the prison.  Scully's in isolation and she's
nearly-" Skinner stumbled over his words."-she's nearly insane."

Donaldson looked horrified.  "Are you sure?" Skinner thought the man
might cry.   "Are you sure?"

"Not for a few more days.  But I'm not waiting to find out."

"I suggest you step back and take a deep breath."

"Get her out."

"Do you have any idea how much time, money and effort -
not to mention favors - went into this operation?" Donaldson
said.  "This is the best --I mean the best -- shot we have at
stopping these women and perhaps preventing a murder."

"Not at the cost of Scully's life," Skinner said.

Agent Scully was aware of the dangers," Donaldson said.
"FBI agents have always been prepared to make the ultimate sacrif-"

"Don't wave the flag in my face."

"She knew the risks."

"Not all of them."

"But you did, right? You knew I was a-a double-headed snake."

Skinner said nothing.  Donaldson forced a laugh. "Vietnam.  Christ, you
never get over it.  I made a mistake.  You think I wouldn't change it if
I could, if I could bring those men back? I didn't know my source was
VC.
How could I?"

"This is not about Vietnam," Skinner said.  "It's about Agent Scully."

"Walter, I'm surprised at you.  Truly.  You are showing a
great deal of concern for someone who is merely a subordinate."

Skinner decided to let Donaldson think what he wanted.

"I've asked you before, now I'm telling you: call it off." He
pointed to his chest and leaned in close to Donaldson.  "You
forget.  I know the truth."

"Of what? You may think you know something, but you have
no proof.  I always knew you hated me, blamed me for that
massacre, but this -- accusing me of- of what?  No, wait.  Revenge
can't be the sole reason.  No -- you were very close to this
woman, weren't you? You and Agent Scully.  I'm shocked, Walter.
Yes, shocked that you would lie for Miss Scully.  Your career is
in jeopardy- you could go to prison too."

"This isn't about jeopardizing the operation, is it? You
have something else out there.  Not that I wouldn't put it past
you to sacrifice her life for your career.  But it's something
else too."

"I'm a man of facts.  Here are two big ones: First, there is more than
sufficient documented evidence to convict your Agent Scully of the
crimes with which she was charged.  Second, I did you a personal favor
in engineering that plea bargain and sentence.  Saved the bureau some
face.  I have a letter to you to that effect.  My secretary typed it,
my aide delivered it personally."

"You get her out or I will." Skinner said.  His eyes shone dark and
deep.

"Get her out? How?" Donaldson scoffed.  "She's a convicted felo--"

Skinner took him by the throat and choked off the last part of the
word.  His expression didn't change the entire time he watched
Donaldson turning red.  For a moment, a split second, Skinner thought
about what it would be like to keep on squeezing until Donaldson choked
to death.  In his mind that he saw himself in fatigues and Donaldson in
an officer's uniform.  This is how he had pictured it would be when he
learned of Donaldson's role in the Vietnam ambush.

None of that would help Scully.

Donaldson fell on the path gasping for air.  Skinner didn't
move for a long time.  He knew Donaldson was right.  His word
against his superior's - and all that evidence they had both
manufactured against Scully.  He still needed Henry Donaldson.  He
nudged Donaldson with his toe.

"You stupid sonovabitch," Donaldson gasped out.  He rubbed his throat.
"When this is over, she'll be out! With honors! With everything she
wants! I knew, I knew you..didn't have the guts-to tough it out."

Walter Skinner turned and walked back down the path.  He'd
listened to all the lies he intended to from Henry Donaldson.
He couldn't talk to Mulder.  Scully still needed a contact,
a support system.  He racked his brain for ways to open doors
that Mulder could walk through on his own.  He had one idea.

Scully's tape of the nightly meetings with Donaldson was blank.
His had been carefully erased and damaged, so much so that the
FBI lab had no luck pulling anything off it.  Maybe Mulder knew
of someone with greater skill.  He would make sure Mulder got the
tape.

Donaldson wanted to yell "asshole" after Skinner, but
couldn't find the breath or the nerve.  He sat on the gravel
pulling air in as fast as he could.  Finally he threw a fistful
of rocks in Skinner's direction.

He got to his feet and brushed away the pebbles embedded
in his skin.  Bad luck about Scully's mental state.  However, if
she didn't go crazy this operation was back on track.  Obviously
she'd been tested.  If she survived they would accept her.

When this was all over Donaldson would have to do something about
Skinner.  That afternoon he told his secretary the marks on his neck
came from a disagreement with AD Walter Skinner of the FBI and sloughed
it off as a quick loss of temper soon forgotten.  On his way home
Donaldson dropped an anonymous note in the mail threatening his life if
he didn't arrange to release Dana Scully.  His secretary opened it the
next morning, and he feigned shock before dismissing it.
*****************************
Scully slept.  Wrapped in her own arms she drifted in deep,
dreamless, bottomless sleep.  She would have gladly remained in
this warm darkness forever - in a peaceful sea of blue, a navy
black ocean broken only by people urging her to drink and
shining lights in her eyes.  At last she recognized one of the
faces beyond the lights.

"Hmmmm." Her mouth felt like cotton.  She lay flat on a
rough mattress that smelled of mildew - or maybe something
worse.  Her eyes, soft and bewildered, fell on Dr. Otis in a
question mark.

Clare slipped her hand under Scully's neck and helped
raise her up to drink.  The water ran cool on Scully's sore
throat - it felt as though she'd been screaming for hours.

"Still feel like killing me?" Clare said.

Scully's eyebrows knitted together.  She drank
again, recognizing two of the guards who stood poised behind the
doctor on the balls of their feet.

"Look into the light." Clare examined Scully's pupils, noting they
were now normal.  She listened to her chest, checked her reflexes, took
her blood pressure, and looked into her ears and throat.  Nothing out of
the ordinary.

"Welcome back." Clare nodded to the two men behind her. "Yeah, it's
okay." 
Clare began unbuckling the straps.

"Okay from what?" Scully asked, afraid of the answer, but more afraid
Clare
would change her mind about the restraining jacket. She was weak,
a dull headache pounding like a drummer just behind her eyes.  She
had a stale taste in her mouth.  Her muscles felt sore and crammed.
And she was filthy.

"You went crazy, Dr. Scully.  No nice way to put it.  You popped your
cork.  I kept you sedated and monitored you for the last 48 hours.
That took the edge off.  Even so--" She whistled appreciatively.

The jacket slid off Scully's arms and shoulders to her relief.  She
jerked it off the rest of the way, putting the guards on alert, then
rolled her shoulders and stretched her arms.

"Pretty safe to say you've got a nasty temper." Clare
nodded to the guards to leave them alone.  They seemed reluctant
until Clare motioned them out again.

"I recall food all over the place and people screaming and -"

"Yeah, well, don't remember too much out loud until you talk to your
lawyer.  You're going to be formally charged with several counts of
assault."

"Blood test?"

Dr. Otis frowned  "I am sorry about that."

Scully rubbed her scalp.  "No, I don't believe -- I didn't
give you much choice.  Did you find any... ah,mm-m, any results back?"

"What do you think I'll find?"

"White blood cells..I-" Scully paused only a beat.  She remembered one
extraordinary thing about her last round of tests.  "Increased hormone
level.  My testosterone should be off the chart."

Dr. Otis looked shocked.  "And Bernice's?"

"I'm guessing.  Slightly elevated.  Test her today or tomorrow and
it's back to normal."

Clare made a note.  "I'd better ask the lab for some hormone levels,
then."

Scully leaned back against the wall and sighed.

"I've been trying to get you to help me with some mysterious cases I've
had in the infirmary.  You didn't seem interested.  Are you now?"

Scully said nothing. She almost didn't care.

"This happen to you before?"

Scully looked away. She wanted Dr. Otis to leave her alone.

"What the hell is it?"

"I don't know," Scully said.  It came out a bit testier than she
intended, 
though
not by much.

Clare thrust an official looking piece of paper into her hand.  When
Scully opened it, all she could comprehend was the seal of the Justice
Department.  She gave up trying to read and shoved the letter away in
frustration.  She looked at Clare Otis, moistened her lips and said,
"Are the letters on this paper..are there typos in this?"

Clare glanced at the letter.  "No more than usual.  Why?"

"I can't read it." Scully rubbed her eyes.  She drew her
knees up, clashed her hands together and chewed on her knuckles.

"Is there something wrong with your eyes?"

Scully forced herself to leave her eyes alone.  She blinked several
times.  "No.  Just a - it's nothing."

"You're not a very good liar. You don't sound like you've had a lot
of practice at it," Dr. Otis said with a sigh. "You'll be out of
here soon, Dr. Scully.  Back to the pod." Nothing registered so
Clare went on.  "You'll be in charge there."

Scully blew out her disbelief.

"You have a real chance to do some good," Dr. Otis said.

"Why would you say that?" Scully said. "O-or even think it in the face
of clear evidence to the contrary!"

"Oh, call it intuition," Dr. Otis said.

Scully studied Dr. Otis.  She looked embarrassed, as though she
realized what a naove thing she had said. In her place Scully knew she
would be thinking that no matter what her gut said, her intellect told
her that she wasn't dealing with an FBI agent but a convicted thief
and shakedown artist - a violent one.

"Or faith, Dr. Scully, call it the power of things unseen."

"You have power you never imagined.." Scully's knees dropped and she sat
up, her mouth a small O of understanding.

"Power?"

"I-I don't believe violence is power," Scully said.  She heard the
words fall into the air. She was remembering - something. "Violence
changes nothing fundamental - I can't believe that's it."

"I couldn't agree more," said Dr. Otis. But she was clearly puzzled.

"I want -- I need to speak with Agent Mulder."

"I'll bet you do." Clare shook her head.  "You don't seem to grasp the
significance of all this.  That letter explains it.  You're in
isolation for two weeks.  After that your privileges are restricted.
You can call your attorney once a week - that's it.  No other visitors.
Sometime within the next few weeks you'll be taken back to federal court
for arraignment on assault.  We used to have arraignments here but so
many lawyers objected we don't bother anymore.  There'll be a trial
and you'll have additional time to serve."

Scully absorbed the information without comment.

"Your mother's doing better.  Much better, I'm told."  Dr. Otis stood.
"I'll bet you'd like a shower. I'll okay it." Scully rose with her,
slowly 
and painfully. Scully tried once, then twice to say something, but she
couldn't seem to force the words out.  "You have to trust somebody,"
Clare said, trying to be encouraging.

"Agent Mulder," Scully said.

Clare shook her head sadly.  "There has to be someone else."

"Not for me.  Not now.  Maybe never."

The doctor's jaw dropped in surprise. Clare seemed to think about it. 
Then
she
nodded.  "I could call him.  Talk to me."

Instinct.  Intuition.  Scully plunged ahead using the measured tones
of one accustomed to ticking off such items.  "I've experienced this
two-three times.  Escalating symptoms with each incident. Strong
physical reaction followed by mild psychotic episodes.  No drugs I
could detect."

"Stimuli?"

"Unknown."

"Nothing?"

"That's often the case with an X - with the work I do-did."
Scully closed her eyes and swallowed against the headache and nausea
she felt pushing against the blurriness of her mind.

Clare shook her head.  "I find that hard to believe."

"A perfectly logical reaction." Scully couldn't look at Clare, and her
disappointment sounded more like impatience. "Beyond that I can't -
won't - speculate."

Clare's shoulders fell.  She had already planned to contact
Agent Mulder before Dr. Scully went back to the pod.  She just
thought she might be able to have a better idea of the problem
before she saw him.  Without such information she could have to resort
to what she considered a rather cruel method of insuring Agent
Mulder's cooperation.