From: mgreten <mgreten@xtalwind.net>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 11:28:33 -0700
Subject: NEW-Prison of Innocents 11 of 20
Source: xff


(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)

Chapter 11 of 20

Fox Mulder watched the videotape of the cafeteria fight and the
isolation cell in silence.  He knew Scully was segregated.  Skinner
had told him and he had secretly cheered her ingenuity.  He had no
idea how she'd accomplished it.  Skinner had not told him that.

After a time he no longer felt Clare Otis' eyes on him,
he only knew so much sorrow he couldn't move his arms or legs.
Scully's rage skewered him, pounded through him.  His impotence
mocked him.  Scully.  He turned away and stared at his "I Want to
Believe" poster.

"Can I keep this tape?"

"Sure.  I'm sorry, Agent Mulder.  You understand now what the problem
is." Dr. Otis said.  She'd been watching his jaw clench and relax,
clench and relax.

"I want-I need to see her."

"You can't.  She's in isolation, then on restriction."

"I'm a federal officer and she's material to an on-going investion-"

Clare frowned.  "Don't go there."

Mulder sprang up. "I don't think you understand.."

"I'm well aware of that. Agent Mulder. That's why I'm here. But I know
this much: you try to pretend you're investigating a case with her help
and her life will be a living hell when she gets out of isolation."

"That transparent?"

"It's a pretty good rule not to go to the well twice with the
same bucket," Clare said.

"Is she-?"

"She's better.  She'd recover faster if she'd eat something.  She has
another week to serve in isolation then her lawyer can see her.  Then
she'll go for arraignment at the federal building - assault charges."

"Someone's poisoning her.  Before her arrest, conviction, even now."

"Why-and who?"

"I don't know.  But it has to do with the prison.  Something going
on there."

"What?"

"Mind control, remote viewing -- a-a mind meld that enables women in
your
prison to become one with specific targets who work in art galleries,
banks and brokerage houses.  Once they enter the mind of their targets
they commit robberies and leave stolen goods for an accomplice to
retrieve," Mulder said in almost one breath.

Clare gaped.  "You're not serious?"

"That's what Scully would say."

Clare gave Mulder a tentative smile then chuckled as though she knew all
along he was teasing.

Mulder's answering smile was dazzling.  "How can you help me, Dr. Otis?"

"I've had other three cases with symptoms like Dr. Scully's." Clare
produced copies of the medical records.  She started with Ann Millard.
His reaction surprised her.  "Know her?"

"FBI.  She died in the line of duty.  A shooting.  Ambushed
while tracking down some drug dealers.  How do you know her?"

"She died in our prison.  Suicide.  I pronounced her myself," Clare
said.
"She was undercover?"

"It would seem."

"What was she investigating?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Somebody must know."

"Not necessarily."

Clare hummed.  "You mean an FBI agent could work undercover and nobody
in this building know anything about it?"

"Your tax dollars at work," he said.

Clare expelled her frustration in a loud huff.  "Dr. Scully too?"

"I suspect so. I wish I could prove it."

"Because if it is, it's a callous disregard for her personal safety -
and sanity."

Mulder couldn't look at her.  He only saw Scully's rage playing against
his
skull.

"This is way over my head."

"What else do you know?" Mulder said.

Now Clare grinned, "Your turn."

"I know you saved Scully's life by putting her in restraints and
locking her in isolation," Mulder said.  He touched Clare's hand.
"I know it was a hard thing for you to do."

"I'm told all Dr. Scully does now is sit on the floor and stare at
the wall.  What did I save?" Clare patted his hand. "Here are other
cases." She shoved copies of the files at Mulder.  "Keep them."

"What do all these women have in common?" Mulder asked. "Besides the
obvious - all Zelda Deschamps' cellmates."

"They were all extremely bright.  All loners.  No long term
relationship to speak of - no children, husband, long-term
lovers.  From what I could discover they were all adrift, all
passive aggressive.  Seemed full of doubt about everything but
their crimes.  They felt justified."  She paused and tried to think.
Mulder had spread the pages out on his desk and his head swiveled
from one to the other.

"In my opinion," Clare continued, "these women just didn't feel guilt
or remorse.  Not proud of what they did, exactly -- well," she pointed
to a photo, "all but her.  This woman was a con artist who bragged she
could get a mark to think anything she wanted.  Now she can't hold a
rational thought herself.  I haven't had a chance to work with Dr.
Scully much.  Any of this fit her too?"

"Some." Saying more would violate whatever privacy Scully
had left and Mulder wouldn't be the cause of that.  "I've read
Zelda's record - anything more you can tell me?"

"She's very quiet.  Never the slightest trouble.  Maintains
she did not kill her husband - but if you believed that you'd
have to believe we have an entire prison of innocents.  Very
self-contained.  At peace.  She does seem to like your former
partner." Clare paused.  "Off the record? I think she's the only
inmate who doesn't belong in prison."

Mulder smiled.  "That include Scully?"

"You saw the tape.  She's a danger to herself and others right now.
She won't talk to me."

Mulder thought about that for a moment.  "What about an
African-American inmate named Bernice?"

Clare rubbed her hands together.  "Ah! Dr. Scully bumped her off."

"Killed her!"

"No, no, no.  Took her place.  That's what the riot was
about.  Dr. Scully attacked her and dislocated her thumb,
effectively taking over the leadership role of her pod or family
group.  Bernice's an amazing story.  Bernice Johnson, now 34, is a
graduate of the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania.  Her
father was a full professor of physics at MIT and her mother
teaches romance languages there.  Bernice speaks three languages
fluently - or did.  One of the brightest, most articulate women
I've ever met.  She was in an extremely abusive domestic
situation at the time of her arrest.  She and her latest lover were
convicted of securities fraud three years ago.  Big case - even
attracted lawyers from the Attorney General's office."

Mulder sat up straight in his chair. "Go on," he said.

"Well, you talk to Bernice now and you would swear she was born and
raised on a Georgia plantation or-or someplace in the 'hood.  We
suspect she's running an illegal activity from the prison, but we
can't catch her.  She's vicious and violent -- completely different
from anything I read about her at intake or in her early days.  Prison
is great, isn't it?  Sure changed Bernice."

"She was Zelda's cell mate?"

"She was already an inmate when Zelda came," Clare said. "They were
together a long time-- about a year-- then Zelda applied for a new
cell mate.  Shortly after that Bernice became the mama-the pod leader."

"Scully's now the mother of a group of criminals?" The idea seemed to
amuse Mulder.

"If she can control whatever this is inside her -and if she wants it.
That's the way it works," Clare said.

Mulder leaned forward and clasped his hands together on his desk.  "Dr.
Otis, look in the encyclopedia under self-control and there's Scully."

"Then prison has already changed her, hasn't it? How nice. Our job is
done."

"I don't believe it was the prison - it was happening before she was
incarcerated."

"Which reminds me.  Dr. Scully had me do some tests. Blood, urine- I
even performed a spinal tap.  I checked the hormone levels of various
samples: one from the time of her initial injury in the shower and
another after the, huh, that tape.  And I gotta tell ya, Agent Mulder,
outside a male in his prime I've never seen testosterone levels
as high as Dr. Scully's.  The most recent results: testosterone
dropping, estrogen on the rise."

"Do another one."

"When?" she said.

"Give it a few more days," Mulder said.

"What am I looking for?"

"I don't know," Mulder said.  "But you'll see it."

"I like Dr. Scully.  I wish I knew how to reach her."

"I say the same thing all the time."

"Last time I spoke with her, she asked why I still trusted her.  I said
something like, 'woman's intuition.' A light bulb seemed to go on.  She
said,' You have power you never imagined.' She wasn't talking to me."

"Maybe she was." Something clicked in the back of Mulder's mind. "You
are right to trust her."

Clare looked at him in disbelief, then a slight, small smile pulled
at her lips.

"You think my judgment's clouded," he said.

"That would strike me as normal."

"I trust her because time after time she's proven herself - in the
field,
in the lab, in the office. I would be dead many times over without her"
Mulder said. He could not allow himself to be angry in this defense of
Scully.  "She's an exemplary agent - you should check out her record."

"Perhaps I shall."

"I'll make it happen for you," Mulder said.  He waved a hand around the
office. "This is the nut and kook department. Agent Scully is the voice
of sanity and reason."

Clare Otis hoisted herself from the chair. "I don't have
much control over what happens to her out of my clinic, Agent Mulder.
But I can require her to assist me during infirmary hours.  That will
offer her some protection - and perhaps give us time to find answers."

"I would appreciate it very much. I need to ask you one more favor.
Don't talk to Scully about this.  Don't tell her anymore about what
you know or discover or that we talked at all.  I have a feeling the
more she knows about this, the more danger she's in. Maybe you too."

"Based on?"

"Men's intuition."

Dr. Otis chuckled.  "What shall I tell her?"

"Say -- just tell her you saw me.  That's all," he said.

"That's all?"

Mulder leaned his cheek on his hand.  "Yeah."

Dumbfounded, she said, "May I be blunt?  You and Dr. Scully...involved?"

He shook his head.

"Why the hell not," Clare Otis said.
**********************************
Mulder carried the videotape up to Walter Skinner's office.  He had to
wait a few minutes for Skinner's last meeting to end.  And he waited a
few minutes in front of Skinner's desk while he signed some papers.
When Skinner looked up, Mulder was respectful, businesslike and calm.
It worried Skinner.

"Scully's in isolation.  No visitors, no calls.  I can't get to her.
You can't get to her.  Someone else can and did."  Skinner chewed on
his teeth for a moment and Mulder held the tape. "You should see this."

Skinner winced during the viewing of Dr. Otis' tape and
that was the only thing that stopped Mulder from pulling his
weapon and shooting Skinner right there in his own office.
When it ended Skinner ejected the tape, turned it over
in his hand several times then said, "Do you have any other
videotapes of Agent Scully in your possession?"

"Two, I think.  One is blank -- the one Scully sent to
mutual friends.  Another arrived in the mail with no return
address.  Both are safe.  Dr. Chuck Burks at the Advanced Digital
Imaging Lab at the University of Maryland is coaxing some
pictures and sound off those tapes.  He says maybe, but he can't
deliver yet.  What's on them?"

"I can't help you," Skinner said. "Agent Mulder, think of this as a bank
robbery case. Don't think of it as anything but ghosts in a bank or a-an
insurance company."

"Is this a game?"

Skinner pointed to the television.  "Does that look like
she's having fun!"

Mulder's jaw clenched.  "Why am I in the dark?"

Skinner considered his next words.  "I can only say that
anything I tell you could endanger her further.  And you are
still vulnerable, Agent Mulder."

"Vulnerable? Is this about protecting me?"

Skinner shifted his weight to another foot.  "You are a
direct link to Agent Scully.  You are her partner; you know her
better than anyone else.  People know who you are and can reach
out to you anytime of the day or night."

"What people? How?"

But Mulder knew how.

"The case is a certified X-File, for what that's worth," Skinner said.

"How do we get her out?" Mulder said.

"You already know.  Solve the bank robbery, solve the X-File."

"Will I find Donaldson at the end of it?" Mulder said.

"I hope so," Skinner said.  "I certainly hope so."

Mulder thought a minute.  "Chuck has the tape that was
erased and Scully's was blank.  So where is the original? If
someone were to conceal tapes where would he or she put them?"

"Are you suggesting Agent Scully-"

"I'm asking your opinion on a hypothetical situation, sir,
that's all."

Skinner's hands went to his hips.  "You don't think Agent
Scully or anyone else who might have done this would be foolish
enough to keep the original."

"Nixon kept the White House tapes," Mulder said.  He saw
Skinner remember something; it was clear as if he'd spoken the
words.  He rubbed his forehead, deep in thought, as he walked
behind his desk to sit.

"Agent Mulder." Skinner studied the papers on his desk for
a second.  "I can't tell you how sorry I am about this situation."

"I'll be sure to tell Agent Scully, sir.  If she can remember
who you are - or who I am."
*********************************
Intuition.  Imagination.  Power.

Scully spent the hours sitting in the floor of her cell
staring at light patterns on the opposite wall.  She still
couldn't read.  The quiet of the segregation area maddened her -
she wouldn't have believed such a thing possible a few days ago.

For the first day or two she had to be disciplined in her
thinking to avoid blinding headaches that could make her curl up
in a ball of pain or virulent nausea that kept her losing weight
at an alarming rate.

It seemed safe to think about the human body - her body - and all
the chemicals or hormones or electrical impulses that she knew
governed its functions.  She still couldn't recall all she once knew
about the way hormones acted in concert to make human beings aware of
their surroundings, able to deal with their environment, and bore on
intellectual pursuits and creativity.

She made it a mental exercise to try to trace the
science of thought in the human brain and to recall those
theories, studies and research reports that dealt with the role
of hormones in firing neurotransmitters in the human brain.

Gradually she was able to recall the role testosterone
played in aggression, and estrogen's recently discovered impact
on the ability of certain natural chemicals to bind on receptors
and thus control learning patterns.

As the days passed she began to catalogue what she could
remember on mind-reading - something she always regarded as a
fairy tale until she met Gibson Praise.

>From Gibson she knew certain genetic remnants, inactive
DNA in most humans, could be "turned on" in some people to read
minds.  She presumed Gibson was born with this active remnant
and that was how he won chess tournaments and his case
demonstrated how all humans could be "mind readers" if this
genetic remnant became active.

Was that part of what was happening to her?

It had to be another element in the instinct, intuition, and power
conundrum.  What she didn't know was how it all interacted.

"Look, Dr. Scully, you aren't eating and you aren't
drinking much.  I think the nausea has passed," Dr. Otis told
her.  "You can't be afraid to test the waters here.  If you don't
do better, you're going need intravenous fluids."

The worst of the sickness passed. It may have been gone for some
time, but she had been conditioned by experience to equate illness
with certain reflections, and thus avoided them.  Scully realized she
wasn't just afraid to test food on her stomach.  She also had been
loathed to let herself think about dangerous things and the
people who made them dangerous to her: Bernice, Zelda, and Mulder.

As one week became nearly two she began, reluctantly, to
ponder those things and entertain theories that normally fell
into Mulder's purview --- remote viewing where persons claimed
they were able to project themselves into another place and see
what was going on there, transcendental states that were semi-
conscious awakenings, altered consciousness that changed the way
the brain perceived reality.

She could no longer consider the possibility any of this
was drug-induced.  It was obviously a natural phenomenon, using
the body's own chemicals against the brain.  None of it made sense
to her.

Mulder, does it make sense to you, she asked the patches
of light as they grew, then shrank against the walls and
ceiling.  Intuition.  Imagination.  Power.
How do those three things fit together, she asked him.

Mulder, how can apparently normal women transcend their bodies,
fly around the world, and possess someone else's mind?  That
defies all the laws of nature, of science.  She couldn't grasp a
single piece of quantifiable evidence that would support the
authenticity of that.  Yet no one suggested these women were
anything but flesh and bone.  Laws of physics were like any other
kind -- they could not be broken without penalty.

"Haven't we seen a number of cases where electrical energy
or sudden chemical flashes caused ordinary people to do
extraordinary things," Mulder said.

"Lift cars off babies, run miles when they could barely
walk? Adrenalin surges, yes."

"Then, Scully, if human beings are capable of doing such
examples of super physical strength, how much of a leap is it to
believe humans can do the same type thing with their minds?"

"Apples and oranges, Mulder.  Projecting yourself into
someone's mind isn't the same as breaking the broad jump record
to avoid a car!"

"Both have to do with a chemical imbalance."

"I grant you that."

"Chemicals normal to all humans such as estrogen, testosterone,
adrenaline?"

"All right."

"We've also seen that certain cultures and religious
persons can attain higher mental states than most of us thorough
prayer and meditation," Mulder said.  "We accept remote viewing
as fact."

"In some circles it is accepted as fact.  I still don't see
your point in this broad leap."

"What if the heightened mental states and the chemical imbalances
aligned, interacted?"

"And carried through air to different parts of the world-how?"
"Electricity? The freed spirits carried to a destination
on currents of energy and directed or attracted to opposite
chemicals or hormones in the host."

"It's not possible, Mulder."

"I'll bet if we could test one of these women before she
possesses someone, the estrogen level would be astronomical.  And
somehow the electrical energy generated by that hormone would be
attracted to the testosterone in the victim."

"Certainly there are chemical changes during transcendental
states, but the type of hormonal imbalance you're suggesting is
too extreme.  An-and that's to say nothing of the electrical
energy that would have to be generated.  The person would
spontaneously combust! Nothing to suggest this possibility has
ever been seen or documented."

"It happened to you.  People walking around in your mind,
seeing what you think-"

"Wait-"

"--and who you think about, knowing what you feel and who you
feel it for, seeing what you see and-"

"Mulder, stop."

Bernice - and maybe Angela too - saw how you, a sworn
officer of the law, a professed Catholic, a moral person, a
woman of standards - murdered a man in cold blood."

"No!"

"No what, Scully! They didn't see or you didn't kill Donnie Pfaster."

"Look, I don't regret it - you yourself said that in the
final analysis I saved lives."

"Are we there yet - the final analysis? If you asked them, is that
what those criminals would say, the ones who snuck a
peek at your memories?  Did they see beyond that big black door -
- or did they open door number two and just think you were crazy?"
"Door number two?"

"Where all the abduction memories are stored.  The images
of what happened then, the tests.  You know, the aliens who
helped themselves to your body as these women availed themselves
of all your secrets."

"Mulder!"

"You wanted an open honest talk with me."

"About this case."

"An open and honest discussion about work, about anything
that isn't really vital to our lives."

"This is vital to our lives - to my life, at least."

"You are my life, Scully."

"This is serious."

"You think I'm not serious? What have I ever done to make
you believe I'm not serious about that?"

"We're partners."

"So that's it.  Well, I hadn't really thought about it that
way: Work as an agent of seduction."

"Seduction?"

"Courtship, then.  Scully, I bring you demons as bouquets,
ghosts as dreams to share. I introduce you to my alien relatives..."

She scoffed.

"I bring you all my monsters to slay."

Scully felt her heart quicken.  "I must not do a very good job.  I
hear them chasing you in your sleep."

"Hmm-m. Maybe you should be there with me then."

"Mulder, you don't sound like yourself."

"You never think I'm right, but you have to admit here
that I'm close.  Maybe it's seduction -- does that mean love in
the workplace is sexual harassment and in that context, am I the
harasser or the harassee?"

"What are you talking about?"  It came out as a moan that
Scully could hear in the cell.  "I need you to focus.  Help me
find a rational explanation."

"Not my job, Scully.  Let's see-we work together - hmm-m,
if work in this context can act as an agent of seduction that
means we have an X-File."

"Of course it's an X-File! These women, this prison is
unexplained paranormal phenomenon.  It's what we do."

"That's what I do.  Part of it anyway.  What do you do --
apart from observing?"

"I'm involved.  What do you think I'm doing here?"

"You are doing what you always do - evade.  You can't even
have an open honest discussion with me here."

"Mulder-"

"You're an observer in life.  You won't participate - no,
that's not the word.  What do you contribute beyond trying
desperately to avoid becoming engaged in anything you observe."

"I refuse to engage in personal attacks."

"See, I'm right.  You refuse to engage."

"Could we stay on point? What do you know that can explain
the present phenomenon? Any theories?"

"I think the work explains it, Scully.  In that sense that
brings us back to what we were discussing earlier.  I suppose the
work is the most important thing in our lives."

"Why are you talking like this, Mulder? I need you --"

"So maybe, in the final analysis, that's it.  While they
were poking around for your secrets, those women discovered how
you feel."

"Nothing.  They saw nothing of importance."

"Those women saw how you really feel.  Tsk, you must have
been mortified."

"Mortified?"

"Feeling, that most degrading fact of life.  The ultimate
X-File because feelings can't be touched, quantified, or
controlled.  Not really and not forever.  You're afraid they saw
how much you feel for me.  Afraid someone will know you love me.
That would make you a clichi, wouldn't it?  In love with your partner."

"I don't believe this."

"Come on, you're eatin' this up."

"You better eat this up," said the guard.  Her creased
pants bent a little to look into Scully's eyes.  "Come on.  Snap
outta this before the doctor hooks you up to a bag."

"I'll eat something later.  Thank you," Scully said.

The guard seemed reluctant to leave.  "Okay then."

The cell door shut with a hollow clang, the bolt slammed
into the lock, and she looked for Mulder against the wall.

"Okay, then. Think about it, Scully.  Another example of a
lifetime habit: taking older, more mature lovers whose body you
accept because you don't really trust yourself and you want to
follow someone else's lead.  You don't think you are fast enough,
smart enough, good enough!"

"You are out of line."

"Poor Tom, Jack, Daniel Waterson-"

"Mulder, I never said -"

"No, you never say anything, do you?"

"How do you know Daniel Waterson? I've never mentioned
him."

"I trust you to go it alone. I think you're fast enough, smart enough,
good enough.  I just don't think you should have to.  Why would you
want to, Scully?"

"Mulder," she whispered into the shadows.  "Are you here?  Now?"

The shadows turned black.  Her dinner sat untouched on a tray near the
door.  Shaking her head as if to clear it, Scully pulled herself onto
the bunk, exhausted.  "Mulder," she mumbled as she closed her eyes.

Prison of Innocents (12 of 20)

This isn't right, Scully.  Mulder's lips moved, but no sound
came out. He nodded out the front car windshield in the direction
of Henry Donaldson - at least it looked somewhat like Henry Donaldson
- in the street in front of him.  What's wrong with this picture,
Scully?

Mulder had been thinking about the various permutations of
mind-melding that he'd discovered and, like pieces of a round
puzzle, tried pounding them into the square peg of Scully's
situation.  He wondered exactly where Donaldson fit.  Mulder knew
he was a big fat piece. A piece Scully might see if she were here.

"My head is going to explode," Mulder said aloud, knowing
he would never talk this way if Scully were really with him.

What did power, instinct, intuition and Scully -
especially Scully - have to do with the ability to become
absorbed into another human's mind? He could sense her
next to him, hear her exasperated sigh at his flights into the
absurd.

He had been spending a lot of time reviewing his life with Scully-
particularly the time since he returned from survival training. He'd
begun to remember things she said -- at the time he thought her words
angry misjudgments brought on by the what they had thought were drugs.
Things like: "...surely this isn't some scheme concocted to prove a
point about ghosts or goblins" and "the end result might be positive
for the X-Files.." The words had seemed out of context and vastly
out of character then.  Mulder wondered if they were statements from
her subconscious and as such more true than either of them realized.

The coffee in his hand sloshed over and burned his fingers.  He
hated this; he depended on her.  Not just to figure out parts of
the equation he couldn't see, but to make sure he didn't kill
himself.  For example, Scully would never let him drink the muddy
brew in his hand.  "That's lethal," she would say.  He expected
her to reach for the cup, grimace, and say --

"So don't drink it.  I'll take it if you don't want it."

Frohike slid into the passenger seat beside Mulder.  Langly had
just relieved him.

The Gunmen were certainly right about Henry Donaldson's
sexual preference.  It was all over the planet.  What was he doing
with a dog!  Mulder watched Donaldson, now dressed as a
transvestite, prance out of a pet store like the poodle
on the end of the leash.  He had been following Donaldson for
about a week, spelled by the Gunmen.  No one had slept much and
Mulder had a cut over his eye from a pimp who took exception to
"his lady" being tailed.

"Who are these pet store owners?" said Mulder.

"I thought you knew," said Frohike, blowing across the coffee lid.

"I checked them out. Nothing to connect them to Donaldson. The man
is retired Army -- that's the only possible connection." Mulder said.
"They're nice next door neighbor types."

"Donaldson wasn't well liked in the Army first place," Frohike offered.
He'd just burnt his tongue. "Army people don't usually like queens in
drag in the second place."

"Whose next door neighbors are they,"  the Scully in his head asked. 
"They
act as though they're taking care of Donaldson in drag."

"Anybody owe you a favor," said Frohike.    "He's too cautious.  We need
reinforcements."

"Maybe we can cut back on surveillance," Mulder said.  His
eyes burned.  His musings about Scully had given him a headache.
And an itch he could not scratch with Frohike in the car.

"Hate to do that.  Got the makings of a best-seller here,"
Frohike muttered.

Mulder forced himself to study the picture of the
Assistant Attorney General Henry J. Donaldson strutting his
stuff on the street in a tight sheath dress and heels, dragging
a yipping white poodle.  Goes to show you never know about some
people, he thought.  Three hours ago this man was a dignified,
self-assured attorney presenting a complex case to an appellate
court.   Mulder shook his head.  This guy - madam, he/she - has
two or three sides to him.

And that was it.  Mulder sat straight up, spilling
coffee down his shirt.  "How many women does Donaldson
know? I mean, in his life.  How many in his life!"

"Including clerks - dozens," the Scully in his head said. "We
can't check them all.  Besides, even if we could how will we
decide which one knows his alter ego?"

"What about his past?"

"What about his wife?" Scully said. "At the risk of repeating myself,
who are these pet store owners?"

"We need reinforcements," Mulder said.

Frohike threw up one hand.  "Didn't I just say that?"
*************
The two weeks in isolation cleared Scully's head just as
Mulder suggested.  First she hadn't been able to remember much.
Then, the day before a guard came to escort her to the main cell
block she admitted to herself she remembered too much.

Her mind filled with images of Mulder in hot flashes of lust that
became nearly orgasmic at times.  She seemed to recall with vivid
clarity every time he touched her.  Recalling that kiss at the
airport roused such waves of heat in her that she could only breathe
in short, shallow pants.  Mulder was extremely fortunate she was
behind locked bars.  She took a deep breath and expelled it, then had
the decency to blush.  Zelda would probably be able to guess why
her cellmate's cheeks looked so rosy after two weeks confinement.

To Scully's dismay, Zelda greeted her return to the cell
with cool civility.  She rebuffed or deflected attempts at all
but superficial conversation and left for the recreation area at
the first opportunity.   Scully opened her locker and immediately
missed the picture of Zelda's son Scott that she had placed
there.  Zelda's message couldn't have been clearer. Scully pawed
through Zelda's belongings, causing her collection of special sale
postcards to scatter across the cell floor.  Scully picked them up
and studied them a moment.  What a strange thing for Zelda to collect.
Zelda never said anything about them when Scully read them aloud.

And Bernice!  With a pop Scully recalled hearing Bernice say she
received
one too.  Scully hurriedly put the cards in a neat stack on Zelda's
shelf.

Task complete, she continued searching for the photo and
found it in the first place she should have looked: Zelda's favorite
"National Geographic" magazine.  Her heart plummeted.  She pressed
the magazine against her chest and crawled into her bunk.  She
sat with her back against the wall, her legs drawn up.

What had changed, she wondered.  After two weeks in
isolation she was - as she had always been, really - still
isolated.   Even after mulling it over for 14 days Scully had not
a single explanation about why she was here or how to
escape.  She was no longer befuddled or confused.  Just scared and
painfully aware that she could not meet the most minimal expectations
of anyone.  She was tired of carrying it all herself. Who would she
allow to help: Mulder, Zelda, her mother?  God?

Memories kept popping back to Scully like the burst of firecrackers.
Like the lustful ones of Mulder she almost wished she couldn't remember.
She didn't want to recall the look of disappointment on Zelda's face
in the lunchroom.  The violence she'd committed that day - the level
of murderous rage she was able to sustain - overwhelmed her.  She
felt disgraced.  She wanted to tell herself that in her right
mind she could not, would never, do those things.  The ghost of
Donnie Pfaster mocked her denial.

Perhaps this prison was her penance for murder.

Perhaps this prison was her penance for allowing the viciousness of
the acts she witnessed to find a place within her.

Perhaps this prison was not acknowledging what was before her all along.

She should have known she could not deny impact of the
things she'd seen and heard merely by choosing to pretend they
didn't bother her.  She should have realized that keeping the
worst of it locked inside would eventually wear down her
humanity like droplets of water smoothed away mountains.  No
one notices and one day there is a valley instead of a hill.  She
had not noticed - or cared.  Perhaps Mulder saw but he shielded
her, keeping her from seeing the worst she had become.  He called
out the best in her and reflected it back to her because he
loved her.

"Ahh."  Shock made her suck in air.  She didn't question
it, nor for once, did she turn away from what she saw through
open eyes.  "Mulder, I'm sorry."  Her knees slid down and she
stared at the wall.

She saw the corners of his mouth pull back,the lines in his face
crinkle,
and his shrug.  "You don't owe me, Scully."

"Not owe," she said, stroking his face.  His cheek felt
warm and faintly moist as though he'd been crying.  "Not an
obligation."

"A pleasure?" Mulder suggested.

"Yes!" she said.  "A gift and a pleasure.  I'm not afraid of
you."

"Not even a little?" She felt his kiss in her palm, on the
throbbing vein under her wrist.

She grinned.  "Maybe a little."

"A little fear is a healthy thing," he said.

"Can you forgive me?"

"Not my forgiveness you need," Mulder said.

"Dana?"

"I'm not convinced there is a Higher Power, Scully, but if
there is, I'm fairly sure you're not it," Mulder chuckled.
"Shouldn't you leave the God thing to God?"

"Yeah," Scully said with a smile.  She tucked her hair
behind her ear.  "Perhaps I will give it up." She heaved a great
sigh of relief and released herself at last from the shackles of
guilt and fear.

Now she must find the courage to return to full  freedom,
to Zelda's I AM and accept the forgiveness offered there, the
final release she craved.

She was not -- had never been -- alone.

As Zelda had said.

"Dana!"

"My God!" she breathed, knowing it was true, all of it.
The imagination and intuition she owned was the source of power.
Zelda had told her that truth from the first.  How that power was
generated wasn't as important as how it was used.  Once she
accepted that the rest was all so simple.

Zelda's face swam into focus.

And regarded her with mild curiosity.  Scully couldn't seem
to catch a good breath.

"Dana," Zelda said, "uh, I was wondering -- can I have
that magazine, please?"

"Would you like me to read?"  Scully said at last.

"Thank you, no."

Scully scooted off the bunk, noting that Zelda backed away
from her a step or two as she did so.  "Let's see.  We haven't
been to Nepal."  Scully held up the magazine and Scott's picture
fluttered to the floor.  The two women stared at each other.
Scully dropped her eyes and after a second's hesitation picked
up the photo.

Zelda took the picture from her hand.  "I'm sorry," she
said.  "It-it isn't your fault.  You aren't who I thought, that's
all."

"I'm not who I thought either," Scully said.  "But I will be."

Zelda said nothing, but cocked her head and the hint of a
smile stole across her lips.

"Can you help?"

Zelda shook her head.

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Can't." Zelda put her hands on the magazine.  "You are not alone.
You have to believe that."

"I do, actually.  For the first time." Scully surrendered
the magazine.  She went to the sink and patted cold water on her hot
face.
When she finished, Zelda had disappeared.

Tears coursed down Scully's cheeks, unbidden and unnoticed
until they dropped onto her shirt along with the water she had
not bothered to dry from her face.  She wiped them away with the
heels of her hands and splashed more water on her face.
She suddenly needed people close.  And noise.

She couldn't recall ever feeling it so strongly.  Instead
of being content to listen from a distance, she wanted voices
nearby talking to each other, to her and laughter - lots of
laughter.  Content with solitary pursuits most of her life, she
became frantic to see people playing games, watching television,
dancing to music on the radio as some inmates did.  She longed to
have the pounding drums from the music in the rec room
reverberate in her chest instead of the solitary beating of her
heart.

She tucked a book under her arm as a prop and went into
the recreation room.  Still, when she walked through the open
door of the recreation area she almost lost her nerve.
*******************************
Conversation stopped.

The only sound came from the booming bass of a song four
or five of the inmates had on the radio.  Overhead the television
played a soap opera.  Scully searched for Zelda and found her
lounging in a chair watching "Days of Our Lives".

Silence became a violin string quivering for a bow to strike it.
Scully swept the room slowly and all the women became
engrossed in whatever they had been doing.  Gradually the noise
level picked up.  In one corner of the area an argument broke
out.  The dancers turned up the volume.  Scully's relief was
almost tangible.  She walked to a chair with a decent reading light.

As she made her way across the rec room it occurred to
her that she had inadvertently headed for Bernice's chair again,
for the green chair where Bernice sat every day to settle
disputes between inmates, dispense advice, box ears, and dole
out special privileges or cigarettes.

Now the empty chair drew her like a dangerous but forbidden treat.
Scully wondered if Bernice was in the recreation room yet.  She
didn't dare look around and it was too late to take another chair.
After a moment's hesitation Scully sat down, cleared her throat and
opened the book.  Her heart pounded.

She hoped this breech of protocol would not spark another incident.
She had seen that the woman could not only be verbally cruel, but
physically
abusive with her so-called family.  Whatever happened, Scully vowed
she would not permit herself to respond in kind.  She could not --or
the person she believed herself to be might disappear forever.

She discovered she could read a few more words.  Not that
it mattered.  She was only waiting, moving her finger under
sentences for effect, listening to the sounds around her, and
praying Bernice and her cell mate would let this go by.  Over the
top of her book she saw two pairs of feet, one planted firmly
and the other shifting.

"Mama, Laquintia stole my comb and brush right outta my
locker.  My aunt sent me that new comb and brush last week," said
one of the women.  Scully recognized the speaker, a convicted
forger who whined all the time.

"Nahuh, na.  That ain't so! I found it in the bathrooms,"
Laquintia said.

Scully glanced up to make certain they were talking to
her.  Then she held out her hand.

Reluctantly the aggrieved party delivered the brush and
comb.  Scully studied them a moment.  "Laquintia stole this.  Looks
like darker hair over lighter." She handed the set back to its
owner.  "Go wash both these things immediately.  Lock up your
locker from now on.  There are thieves about.   Laquintia.." she
nodded at the tall, frightened woman in front of her, "didn't we
go through this same thing a few weeks ago?"

Laquintia's eyes grew wide and she cringed, clearly
expecting to be struck.  "Na, please, I-I don't never get--"

"Sit here.  On the floor.  Beside me.  Every time you come in
here come right to this spot and sit.  That way I can keep an eye
on you," Scully said.  She didn't bother to see if Laquintia
obeyed.  It had suddenly dawned on her that no matter what else
the women in the room appeared to be doing, everyone's attention
focused on her.  She cleared her throat again, adjusted her book,
and bent her head into the pages.  A half second later Laquintia
sat down.

"Can you read," Scully said without looking up.

"Mostly."

Scully handed her the book.  "Good.  Read to me.  My eyes hurt."

Laquintia found the place Scully pointed to.  In a moment
she said, "This thing? I gotta read this - I don't know half
these words!"

"What you don't know, spell them to me," Scully said.  She
folded her arms across her chest, leaned back in the chair and
closed her eyes.  She could barely feel her toes -
the blood that had rushed to her head must have come from her
feet.

And maybe that's what she was sent here to do.

Redemption.  An ancient word for the timeless, elusive reality that
followed repentance.  Scully felt the waters of salvation rush in, tiny
rivulets of cold sweat down her neck and back, in her palms, on
her forehead.

Scully searched for Bernice and located her sulking with
Angela in the corner of the large room.  Her brown eyes filled
with resentment.  When she realized Scully sought her, she turned
away.  The hostility remained in the slant of her shoulders and
arch of her neck.

Laquintia stumbled over another word and tapped Scully's
arm.  "Spell it," she said, then repeated the word until Laquintia
pronounced it correctly.  Laquinta faltered again and this time
Scully not only pronounced it, but also explained what she could
remember about the hypothalamus.  Not much, actually.  The young
inmate tripped along and groped for words for an hour before
Scully, patience exhausted, called a halt for the day.

"I gotta do this tomorrow, Mama?" asked her sullen prisoner.

"Scully.  My name is Scully.  I'm the mediator - temporarily.
But yes.  You must do this tomorrow and the day after and the
day after that.  Perhaps you'll become proficient."

"You think that's right what it say in here about the
hyper-something making us mean or nice?"

"To a large extent the hypothalamus determines our moods.
We govern our own behaviors," Scully said.  "That's one of the
things that makes us different from animals.  We are supposed to
control our emotions."

Laquintia laid the book in Scully's lap.  "That don't sound
right to me.  Feelin's is feelin's.  You can't help that."

"You can govern what you do with them," Scully said.

"I don't think that's good.  You gotta let 'em out
sometimes," Laquintia mumbled.

"Some of them," Scully said.

"Yeah, uh-huh." There was doubt mixed with a little sarcasm. Scully knew
she was being challenged to account.

Scully tapped the spine of the book against her palm
thoughtfully, then rose and walked across the rec room.  A couple
of the dancers tried to coax her into joining them.  Two of the
women engrossed in cards invited her to play.  One made her
laugh.  A short skinny woman asked her advice about her husband.
A few women looking through some magazines glanced at her and
smiled.

When it became clear where she was headed, the room stilled.
Bernice started out of room.

"Wait."

Bernice stopped but Scully had to speak to her back.  "I
apologize for striking you.  That was unconscionable," Scully
said.  She watched the book tap against her hand for an instant
then looked up.  "I have no excuse for my behavior, but I want to
assure you it won't happen again."

The room became quiet as an empty church.  Below, the
noise of other recreation areas, shouts of other prisoners on
other floors, and the clanging of metal doors punctuated the
silence.

Bernice turned and studied Scully for a moment.  One side
of her mouth began to curl and her hands balled in fists.
Scully dropped her arms, but her shoulders and her gaze
remained steady.  Open.  Vulnerable.  Unafraid.

A cruel smile crawled over Bernice's face; her eyes hardened.
"I had me a fine lover - like yours.  Took me a while to
realize I had no friends, hardly anyone I spoke to at the office.
Who would understand?  He wuz my only friend.  He beat me 'til
I wuz too scared to do anything but what he wanted.  Made a big
impression." She stood back, glanced at the surveillance camera, then
focused on Scully. "Yur man don't beat you.   Not with his fist. So
how cum you mind him...be so scared you don't please him?"

Scully's lips parted -- but it was the only indication Bernice's
words meant anything to her.

"He don't think of you now," Bernice said flatly.

Deep in Scully, the barb hit.

"You know why men rule women in society?" Bernice's voice
carried this time.  "They are willing to be violent.  Women have never
been, yet we are capable of more violence than men.  We gotta
stop being afraid of our potential, and exercise it wisely."

Bernice leaned into Scully's face, her voice a husky, hollow noise that
hissed through the rec room like a poisonous spray.  "Don't tell me
you don't know power.  You've killed -- my sister."

"What kind of power is it that eats away at you piece by piece," Scully
said.

Bernice snorted in disbelief.

"Reducing human interaction to violence changes us into less than we
were meant to be -- changes anyone into the basest of creatures,"
said Scully.

"Look what it did to you." Zelda stood behind Scully's
left shoulder.

"You taught her?" Bernice said.

"No."

Bernice turned her widening grin on Scully.  It was black
and ugly and her chuckle sounded like a threat.  "This be a
damn fool standin' here."

Scully didn't move.

Over Scully's head Bernice glimpsed the women in the rec
room.  Several gathered behind Scully.  None of them turned away
from Bernice's glower.  More women moved up.

"It stops here," Scully said.

The two women stared at each other.  The brown eyes that
had taken by force what Scully would never have given finally
blinked.

"Fuck off," Bernice said and strode out of the area.

Scully let the air ease out of her mouth.  The tension in
the room deflated the same way.  Then she tucked the book under
her arm and started back to the green chair - only this time one
of the dancers insisted she get in their circle.  When she
demurred, another took her hand and they drew her in.  Within a
few minutes the dancers collected a crowd, persuaded others to
join and even coerced Scully into trying some of the steps.  The
drums and bass guitar beat into her back, against her chest.  The
laughter and joking of the women around her lifted her.  Like the
others, she soon lost herself in the celebration, in the
circle.

>From across the room Zelda watched Scully's awkward
participation - and ducked her head to hide a smile.  She put the
tips of her fingers against the top of her forehead, and bowing
slightly from the waist toward the East, she recited a prayer
from the book her mother sent her years ago: "And here meets the
first circle which, from the beginning of time, O Lord, you did
ordain to nourish and sustain Your handmaidens.  From the power
of the first circle ripples flow out and join others.  And so
is the Your universe kept in harmony."

Scully discovered Zelda still flipping through pages of
"National Geographic".  When she went to the sink to rinse out
her mouth, she found Scott's picture jammed into a corner of the
mirror.  It was a start.

Scully slid into her bed and sat against the wall, spent and shaky.
She continued to sit there even after lights out, eyes open and her
spirit reaching for the One she thought had abandoned her at the
the prison gate -- if not miles before.

The morning bell startled Scully awake.  She had no idea
she even fallen asleep.  The arms she thrust into sleeves felt
heavy and awkward.  Zelda said no more than "Excuse me," when she
wanted to use the sink. This morning the inmates lined up to march to
breakfast and took a circuitous route to the cafeteria.  Repairs
to lights in the usual corridors gave each inmate another chance
to cross the bridge-way in front of the huge window that allowed
them to gaze at what lay beyond them.

"Sun's comin' up! Lookit!" shouted one inmate and a logjam
developed on the bridge as prisoners pressed to see what they
seldom had an opportunity to glimpse.  From somewhere in the line
behind Scully two inmates began to push and shove, swear and she
heard a distinct slap as inmates jockeyed for a way to see.

Scully stepped out of line and glared at the women.  She didn't
know them, but she stared at them and soon the bumping
and shoving stopped all down the line.  A prison officer hurried
up from the rear to restore order but there was nothing to do
when she arrived.

"Get back," she barked to Scully.

Scully obeyed at once.  The female officer sized up the orderly
group of prisoners and heaved a sigh of relief.  She paced the
bridge, going up and down the line of prisoners as they waited
for the congestion ahead of them to ease.  Finally the officer
stopped beside Scully, inclined her head to catch Scully's eye
and nod ever so slightly.

The sun burst over the hillside outside; Scully felt warmed.

By noon she was hot.  Extremely.  Her hands and face had
turned red from the steam coming out of the machine used to
press the blue prison shirts.  Once Scully saw a shirt with her
own prison number on the pocket come onto the machine and was
tempted to leave the press down until the shirt ignited.  It
might have except for Laquintia's intervention.

"You needs a drink, Li' Mama," she said through a plume of
steam.  "Me too."  They stood at the water fountain drinking deeply
until one of the guards meandered over and motioned for them to return
to work.

After lunch and group therapy sessions, those in the
laundry exchanged work details with those who had been mopping
floors throughout the prison.  So far Scully avoided being drawn
into the therapy discussions; she thought it pointless.  The young
counselor was condescending and the inmates responded by being
ridiculous.  What Mulder could do here, Scully often imagined.

Her group spent the last session discussing community responsibility.
Scully had rolled her eyes.  What did that therapist know of
community?  The only thing Scully could say for group sessions
was that the meeting room was comfortable and the posters on the
wall interesting. The only time it was at all worthwhile were the
times the group met with Dr. Otis.

Once, after group, Clare had asked Scully to stay behind. "What would
it take to get you to open up?"

"It's not you."  Scully said. "What I've seen has made me less willing
to try again.  What you've seen has only made you more determined."

"George - the director - calls it naiveti," Dr. Otis had said. "When
does naiveti become dangerous, Dr. Scully?"

She didn't know. Scully hadn't been naive in a long time.

Scully thought about naivete now. She hadn't been this exhausted in a
long time.  Mopping, sweeping, scrubbing walls was cooler work than
operating the laundry press, but altogether more physical effort
than Scully had expended in two weeks.  Assigned to the
cafeteria after her morning in the laundry, Scully watched the wet
mop head spread across gray linoleum when she dropped it out of
the bucket then expand or contract as she pushed or pulled with the
handle.  Ahead of her and behind her inmates performed the same
monotonous ritual for most of the afternoon.

She didn't believe she had the energy to eat, to
shower, or even sit in the rec room.  The others sensed her mood
and only Laquintia, sitting beside her , spoke.  She read
a few pages in the book Scully gave her, then gave up.  Scully
didn't prompt her to go on. Laquintia seemed content to sit.

Seeing the book closed, one of the inmates walked over as
though to talk with Scully.  Laquintia frowned and shook her head
as if to say, "not now." Undaunted the inmate
handed Scully a drink in a plastic bottle.

"I tell you what, you don't fatten up this prison gonna
get a bad rep," said the woman.  "You look like this is Dachau."

She didn't look as though she'd missed many meals.

Scully tried to smile, but it was too much trouble.

"Yeah, well - could you do something about these walls? Is
it not depressing as hell?" the obese woman said.

"I couldn't agree more," Scully said.  That sentence might
be her last; she didn't think she could move her lips again.

"Why can't we paint a picture, a mural, or somethin' if we
can't hang nothing."

"You know anyone who can paint a mural?" Scully asked, her
interest piqued.

"Maybe," said the woman.

"A mural of what?" Scully said.  "For argument sake."

"Woods, a forest.  Doesn't matter," the woman said.  "They
won't let us.  I asked."

"They won't permit it?" Scully sat up.

The woman shrugged.  "I'm heading a detail to paint this
whole area, starting day after tomorrow.  I asked if I could put
a mural on that wall and the sergeant said it has against the
rules to deface property.  He didn't look at my sketches.  How
does he know that's defacing?"

Scully held out her hand and wiggled her fingers.  The
woman put several sheets of paper in them.

"They're very nice," she said.  A few women gathered around.

Laquintia held them at arm's length, then grinned.  "Yeah,
they very nice."

"So how do we get these drawings on that wall," Scully
said.  "Ideas?"

"We could use the paint we got," said one woman.

"I used me some blue in the hall last month.  And yeller
last week.  We gots mor' colors somewhere," said another.

"Yep, I could mix colors.  Won't be great but-" the artist
said after some consideration.

"What about labor," said Scully.

"I'll help," said a woman lounging near the pinball
machine.  "I can draw a little.  So can Mary over there."

"Say we even get it up," said the artist.  "What's to keep
them from painting over it?"

"What do they want that we could give them in exchange for
the mural," Scully said.

"Peace and quiet," said one inmate.

"Work faster," said the artist with a grunt.

"Make 'em money," said Laquintia.  "So what we gonna do?"

"First we get it up, then we bargain," said the forger,
who, Scully noted, had dropped the whine for this occasion.

"Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission?" said the artist.

"Something like that," Scully said and wondered if Mulder
would believe this if he heard it.

"What else," said Laquintia.  "Open up.  Let's hear what ya
thinkin'."

Half hour later Scully asked for a meeting with the
sergeant of the watch and requested several women from her pod
be transferred to the rec room paint detail.  To her dismay it
was Sgt. Anderson, one of the guards who had wrestled her from the
cafeteria.  He was hostile and reluctant to entertain any request
from her, pod leader or not.

Scully decided to take a different tact other than the
straight-forward appeal she'd planned.  Instead, she explained
that all the women on the list had experience painting and thus
could work faster.  And she told him the workers had run out of
paint, submitting a list of the paints required for trim, walls,
and ceiling.

The guard snatched the list from her hand and scrawled his
initials on it.  "Pod leader," he said with disdain.

Chapter 13 of 20

Scully lay atop her sheet and blanket that night too hot
and too tired to sleep.  An unexplained restlessness filled her.
She had sense of growing urgency about this prison, Mulder, her
real life.  If she could just talk with him, Scully felt sure she
would understand more.

Perhaps his pieces of this puzzle would fit hers.
There, as in everything else, they fit together.  The
hard experiences and their own abrasiveness had worn off their
points, rounded their edges until now they fit together.  Apart
from Mulder she felt adrift, imperfect, wounded - as though
large piece of flesh had been torn from her side.  Now she felt more
like herself.

A Dana Scully she recognized, but who had changed.

She didn't think all the change in her was healthy.  Worst of
all, she couldn't define for herself the nature of her
alternation.  Certainly she had never been one to use loopholes
to achieve her goals or test the patience of authority.  She
believed in rules, regulations, the letter of the law.

She would ask Mulder: How had she changed?  He would see, although it
would displease her to hear him tick it off for her.  Bereft
of the counsel she'd come to rely on, she opened herself to the
Infinite, praying as she had not been able to do since she was a
child.  Not even Mulder's grave illness, which altered her
perceptions of reality, or her own had pushed her into the lap
of God as this awareness of the changes in herself.  Her prayer
was simple, really: "Don't let me go."

When she blinked, she was still mortal.  Still human.  With
a human yearning so potent it surprised her.

She closed her eyes but they popped open.  Mulder's face
projected against the bedsprings above.  Compelling, bold images
of Mulder, of being with him, on him, next to him pounded into
her.  She grabbed the mattress with both hands, saliva pouring
into her mouth.

"Dana."

Scully stiffened.

Zelda slid off the top bunk and leaned on it to stare down
at Scully.  Finally she nodded to the opposite wall.  "Let's sit
over there," she said.  She pushed herself away from the bed,
stretched, yawned, then plopped a folded blanket against the
wall.

After a moment Scully followed.

"I didn't want to interrupt your prayers - I AM has missed
you." Zelda hugged her knees.  She waited until Scully took a
similar pose beside her.

"I owe you an apology, " she said.  "I said when you
were empty enough I would fill you.  That was arrogant and
foolish of me.  Only two of my many sins.  You must fill yourself
with -- but you know that.  I can give you a little relief from
what you're fighting now.  It's the least I can do.  Tomorrow, I
swear.  Tomorrow I will teach you what you need to know - to
defend yourself, to do what you must."

Zelda offered her hand. Scully grasped it and they linked fingers for
a moment.  "I'm sorry, Dana. I was so busy wrestling my own demons I
didn't take time to help you with yours.  You almost slipped away.
I made that mistake with Ann and lost her."

"Ann Millard." The name fell out of Scully's mouth.

"Your friend from the academy," Zelda said.  She gave
Scully a gentle poke in the ribs and a big grin.  "See, I've
known you from the first."

Scully licked her lips.  Ann had been undercover here.  With Zelda.

"Let's do this."

"Do?"

"Imagination - even a powerful one - can only take you so
far.  It is the spark.  Then you have to trust your own intuition.
But - that's for tomorrow.  Tonight let's go to Mulder before you burn
up," Zelda said and made her eyebrows go up and down in a suggestive
leer.

"No, I don't want to-to invade him."

"You'll know everything you want to know."

"I know everything I need to," she said.

Zelda slapped her knees.  "I was wondering when you'd get
around to that."

"He's too strong, anyway."

"You could do it.  Bernice did.  Did it to you too."

Scully rolled her head and fixed her eyes on a place where
the ceiling met the wall.  "She saw in him what was within her
experience to see.  In me she saw the fear and guilt that was
hers too."

"You could do it, Dana.  He would allow it.  Still, a man as
intuitive -- and needy -- as your partner, there could be
another problem."

Scully already suspected what it might be.  Panic
clawed at her.  For a moment they both listened to the noise of
the prison bedding down for the night.

"I killed Michael," Zelda said.  "My husband.  The crime for
which I was convicted."  Scully said nothing, so she went on: "I
loved him to distraction."  Her laugh held no mirth.  "That's a
real good way to put it.  Distraction.  He distracted me from what
I knew to be true.  He still comes to me sometimes.  Laughing,
calling to me, touching me in ways that make me soar.  Singing -
he has a terrific voice.  We go to Brazil, Arizona, India."

She paused, then licked her upper lip and said, "Strange
that I never feared I would disappear in him."

"Disappear?"

"Millions of women do. Subvert who they are and what they want for
the sake of a man who can't wait to take it." Zelda looked at Scully
and Scully squirmed. "To become nothing - to know, feel, and see
nothing in and of yourself."

"Yes!"

"You can look inside a man and become one in ways beyond the
physical.  But I always chose, as you do, not to violate
Michael's trust and test the patience of Allah.  Maybe if I had,
I would have recognized Michael's weakness."

"Or maybe you would have become lost in him forever."

"Or that.  A real possibility as things turned out, as
easily as he could manipulate me." Zelda took a long breath
before she began again.  "He wanted to fly, you know, as I do --
as you will.  This is not what I AM has given to men.  I knew
that!  God chose to bless men with other gifts." Zelda's head
dropped to her chest.

"What... other gift?"

Zelda popped up in surprise.  "Why - us.  The gift of women."

Scully laughed - it burst out of her in a gloriously clear
gush -- and Zelda punched her in the ribs playfully.  They
giggled together, before falling into comfortable silence.

"But, in the end, you taught him."

Zelda regarded her from beneath her eyelashes.  "I'm no
angel."

"I didn't mean -"

"Because I loved him.  I taught him.  He was slow at first.
Then, it was -- incredible.  Amazing.
Liberating.  Until the day he never came back.  I thought he was
right behind me.  I waited.  I went after him, back into the
mountains and the mountain guide shown in the "National
Geographic" picture.  I sat by his body for hours - days -- and
waited."

"The authorities thought you killed him."

"They were right," she said.  "I lost Michael, our son, my
freedom - for a time I even lost Abba.  Big thing to misplace,
huh?  Because I didn't love Michael enough.  When it mattered --
when I knew it mattered -- I didn't love him enough."

She leaned her head against the wall.  "Maybe I was meant to
serve only as a bad example." She grinned and tilted her head
towards Scully with a deep groan.  "I'm tired.  I'm ready for this
to end.  I want Scott to be safe and have someone to love him.
You're tired.  Your doubts press on you and your need is getting to be a
physical pain - for both of us.  Sleeping above you is like
bedding down on a stove."

"It's, ah, the estrogen rush that follows each episode.
This one is lasting, um, a long time." Smiling, Scully lowered
her head and studied her fingers.

"Yeah, well, I understand that.  Just follow my lead as
before -- and try, I mean try hard -- not to get carried away
this time."

Zelda scooted around on her bottom to get in front of Scully.

"Is it difficult to learn this - mind manipulation?"
Scully asked.  She tucked her hair behind her ears out of the
way.

"Oh, no," Zelda said cheerfully.  "Not difficult to learn.
But very easy to forget."

Scully continued to stare at her hands.

Zelda said, "You want to see him, don't you?"

Scully's eyes shone in the security lights from the
hallway.  "Yes.  But I want to talk with him more."
******************
Mulder swore he wouldn't do this again, but here he was
concentrating on the pencil stuck in the ceiling tile over his
head.  He knew it was going to fall.  He willed it to fall.  He
waited for it to fall.  He held out his hand in anticipation as
he stared.  It landed on his head the minute the janitor slammed
the office door.

"Mulder?"

His feet came off the desk and hit the floor.  He grabbed
the pencil and put it behind his ear with an air of nonchalance.
"Still working.  You can't clean in here yet, Amman."

The young janitor began dusting shelves in the office.

"I'm going soon." Mulder tried to find the pencil on his
desk.

Amman pointed behind his own ear.

"Yeah, uh, thanks." Mulder jerked the pencil down, started
to flip open his yellow legal pad of notes when it struck him
that Amman, the Lebanese janitor charged with cleaning the FBI
offices for the last year, had called him Mulder.  He gave Amman
closer scrutiny.  Amman looked as he always had.  Tall, muscular,
dark, clear-eyed and sober.  "Can you come back later?"

"Okey-dokey," Amman said.  He continued dusting and picked
up the trashcan on the opposite side of the room.

Mulder looked at the papers on his desk again.  Zelda
Deschamps, serving 25-to-life for the 1996 murder of her
husband, magna cum laude, scholarships, awards, master's degree
then doctoral, yes,yes, yes.  Mulder read on through her
psychological profile - which he noted could easily have been
his - the basic facts of her life: raised in a foster home after
her grandmother died; dad died young and military mom killed in
Vietnam; Worked with Greenpeace from 1985; jumped ship in Asia
when the Japanese threatened to board the Greenpeace boat; no
record until 1990.  Something in this file should speak to him.

Something about Zelda Deschamps was worth putting Scully into a
prison cell with her.  It was right there - Mulder just couldn't
see it.

He shoved that file aside and pulled down the pages with
Henry Donaldson's profile on it.  Something here might correlate.
Maybe he should go through it line by line.  Something metal
clanged.  His head jerked up and Amman, still holding the trash
can, smiled sheepishly.

Mulder stood up to gather the files together so he could
go home -- then stopped.  The last file Dr. Otis left him was
Scully's.  Her photograph was stapled to inside folder cover.  He
stared at it for a long time, rubbing his thumb over the bottom.

Without realizing what he did, Mulder sat down again, his eyes
blurry but focused on the grainy black and white image of his
partner.  The edges of the photo ran together.

He became aware that Amman stood right behind him.  The
young man moved his hands just above both Mulder's shoulders,
then down his arms.  Momentarily paralyzed by shock, Mulder
watched Amman put a hand on Mulder's chest.  He could smell
onions from janitor's dinner.  His breath tickled Mulder's ear.

Mulder sprang to his feet, flustered.  "Ah, look, Amman,
you have the wrong idea here."

Amman appeared eager, expectant.  He took the pencil from
Mulder's desk, underlined something and looked up to see if
Mulder understood.

He did not.

"I'm not-- you can't...I mean, I don't need your phone
number.  Look, ah, can-can you just go.  Go." To his horror it
appeared Amman might cry.  "No offense, I'm just not-interested.
Really.  Flattered though - " He pointed repeatedly to the photo
of Scully.  "Not interested, okay? Understand?"

"Okey-dokey," Amman muttered.  He picked up the waste can
by Mulder's desk and closed the door behind him.

Mulder collapsed into the chair, released the breath he'd
been holding into his cheeks and grinned.  Scully would laugh at
him - maybe he'd never tell her. "Mulder." He had never heard Amman
say anything but okey-dokey.

Mulder always presumed he couldn't speak English.  He looked
at the marks Amman made on the files, then leapt out of the chair,
flung open the door, and ran into the hall. Following a noise,
he found the young janitor retching in the restroom.

"Sculleee!" Mulder shouted to the ceiling, the walls, the
door.  "Scullee!"

Amman looked at Mulder as though he were insane.  Which, Mulder
thought later, he might be.

**************

The conspirators stood outside the freshly painted rec
room and nodded to each other like players in a World War II spy
movie.  Using requisitioned paint, colors had been mixed and
secreted around the rec room in small buckets collected from
various work sites.  The team of painters took positions along
the wall and the women who would run interference congregated at
the entrances of the rec room.  The surveillance camera made a
sweep and the preliminary work began on the wall.

The guard monitoring the surveillance cameras served by
the rec area cameras made a habit of concentrating on the women
and their movements, not the scene behind them.  So he noticed
nothing amiss for about half an hour.  Then he sat up.  The second
pass confirmed it.  He grabbed up the microphone and notified the
third tier guards that prisoners had painted flowers and trees
on the wall of the rec room.

So many prisoners clogged the entrances and were so slow
in moving out of the way, the sergeant and the duty officer had
to shout orders to clear a path.  The two guards searched the
women's expressions, demeanors and noted nothing but amusement.

One at a time they obeyed each order to back away.  They seemed
respectful - even happy.  Sgt. Anderson glanced back at the
officer with him in bewilderment.

When the last woman stepped aside the guards discovered a
half completed mural of a woodland scene on the wall.  Colorful.
Bright.  The artists, brushes dripping, continued their fevered
work until the sergeant yelled for them to stop and back off.

"Is there a problem?" said Scully.

"What the hell is this?" The sergeant's face colored red.

"This has to come down.  Get some paint over that."

"Actually, sergeant, the paints and colors are from the
approved list published by the prison," Scully said.  "The
requisition list, signed by you, and the work detail names, also
signed by you, are in order."

"It's against regulations," the sergeant said into Scully's face.

Scully folded her arms and shifted her weight to one foot.
The other foot rocked back and forth on her heel.  "Nothing in
the regulations or specifications prohibits this.  The
regulations only state the paint and colors must be come from
prison stock and approved by staff."

"It comes off."

"Are you saying you would rather cost the prison at least
$500 in paint and labor than permit this mural to remain? I
think these women have a great deal of talent, don't you,
sergeant?"

The sergeant gave it some thought.  He looked over the
mural, walked up to it, and stood for a moment, tension playing
up and down his neck.

"Let's go," he muttered to the duty officer and they began
to leave the rec area.  The women let them pass unimpeded and
began to cheer until the sergeant whirled around to Scully.  "Pod
leader," he spat out.  "What's needed here is some-some
discipline..and responsibility.  Not flowers and trees."

"It requires a great deal of discipline and creativity to
achieve objectives within the limits of rules and regulations,"
Scully said.  "As all civilized people will attest."

"And you would know all about that, wouldn't you Special
Agent Scully."

She said nothing and she didn't flinch.
***************
Scully stood outside the barred doors of the clinic
speaking through an intercom and camera to the guard sitting in
a master control room.  "I was told to report to the clinic for
work detail." She saw a mop and bucket just inside the infirmary
door and pretended not to care that it probably had her name or
rather, her number, on it.

"Turn.  Lemme see your number."

Scully shifted so the number on the top of her shirt
pocket became visible to the camera.  The man in the booth
checked it against the one he'd been given.  Seconds later he
buzzed Scully through the first door.  She waited until the door
closed and the second set of barred doors slid open.

A feeling of homecoming swept over her as she surveyed the
clinic: white sheets, charts, a computer, drug cabinets behind
unbreakable glass, trays of instruments locked in cases.  The smell of
antiseptic and alcohol.  Within her reach.

Dr. Otis beckoned to her.  "I'm glad to see you.  My feet
hurt and I want to visit my grandchildren." To Scully's surprise
Dr. Otis thrust a clipboard listing patients and their diagnosis
into Scully's face.  "Welcome to the clinic.  Don't disappoint me,
Dr. Scully."

"I'll do my best," she said, hardly daring to believe she
was free of the laundry, of the mop and pail.

Clare snorted.  "Don't thank me yet.  We get more patients
through here than the average emergency room - it's a mercy the
injuries and illnesses aren't usually as severe.  Five a.m.  sick
call through 8 p.m.  lights out.  An hour for lunch and another
for dinner in the mess - nothing if we're busy.  Two hours
afternoon break in the rec room when I can let you off.  I want
you up there too.  You'll be the physician on call, but a
guard will have to observe you anytime you're here without me.
Is that acceptable?"

"Yes."

Clare handed her a stethoscope and watched Scully finger
it affectionately.  Right then she decided it had been worth the
knock down, drag out battle with administration to allow Dana
Scully into the clinic.

The stethoscope triggered a memory for Scully.  Her mother.
The night she went to visit her mother.  It had seemed so real.
She could remember the feel of the metal and rubber of a
stethoscope.

She could remember her mother's heartbeat. Irregular compared to
the strong pounding of Mulder's heart under her hand, no, Amman's
hand.  Mulder had jumped away from her.  She shook her head.
When it happened she knew it was real. She and Zelda laughed about it.

Now? It had to be an illusion, a trick, a dream.

Except for a dig about not being about to control Scully
and teasing her about selecting a target that spoke little
English, Zelda had been ecstatic last night.  She had made a
discovery.  Scully had been only too glad to wait to hear it.  The
trip exhausted her.

But she did not feel sick, or angry.  And she woke up in her bunk
instead of curled up in the corner of the cell.

"Here's a lab coat - you'll have to roll the sleeves
until we can order a small.  These are all mine," said Dr. Otis.
Scully slipped her arm in the sleeve.  The starch and white
of it was like a caress.  She'd almost forgotten.

Her eyes flitted around the infirmary: the beds with pale
green blankets, the desk covered in medical magazines and charts,
the shiny rolling trays of cotton and bandages.  She noticed the little
things about each one.  Amazing how she missed the ordinary items
of life, the handy things most people take for granted: pencils
with sharp points, paper, paper clips, tape.

"Anything else you need?"

"Do you have anything to stick pictures on the wall?"

"Not tape." Clare thought a moment, wandered to the desk
and pulled out a sheet of gummy-stic.  It looked and felt like
thick yellow gum that had already been chewed.  The packet lay
next to Clare's set of keys to the drug and instrument cabinets.
"They won't let me use tape on the walls either.  I use this.
Take it."

Scully slipped it in the pocket of her jeans.  By tonight
inmates could put up their own pictures and posters in the rec
room.  After tonight the rec would belong to the women who used
it, not the institution that built it.

"Dr. Scully, you gotta put on some weight or you'll blow
away," Clare said.  "Are you ready? Your first patient is--"

"Ah -- Dr. Otis.  I was wondering if you... Have you had an
opportunity-"

"I saw him."

Scully's eyebrow arched and waited.

"I saw him, Dr. Scully."

Scully played with the stethoscope then looped it around
her neck.  Either Dr. Otis didn't see Mulder or he didn't trust
her enough to send word.  In either case she couldn't trust Clare
Otis.  That was the message Scully received.  "Where shall I
begin?"

Clare pointed to a curtain.  "There.  Stay away from the
instrument case, the drug cabinet and the computer.  If you need
something, I'll get it.  In the beginning you'll be supervised
closely, then -- we'll see."

Scully nodded and started off on her new duties.  At least,
she thought, she wasn't in the laundry anymore.

She was stronger, getting better every day.  She would find
a way to get to Mulder.  No matter what Zelda said, the very idea
of the mind meld did frighten her - the power of it was too
great for a human being to own.  She wasn't sure of the morality
of using someone else's body without permission and knew it was
ethically indefensible to leave them sick and defenseless.  She
wasn't sure she could or even wanted to fly.

Scully pulled back the first curtain and introduced herself to
the inmate there.  Judging from the apprehensive look, the woman
already knew her.
******************
Atty. Byron Waters couldn't remember feeling so nervous.
He'd received more complicated messages from more people than a
nuclear engineer working on a government rocket.  He'd adjusted
his glasses a dozen times since entering the conference room in
AtoZ prison.  What he'd been asked to do - what he was going to
do - would lead to his disbarment he felt certain.

While Byron Waters professed the radical faith, he rarely
practiced it. He rose from the table when the door opened and
his client stepped in.  Waters became livid; Dana Scully wore handcuffs.
Restraints to a meeting with her attorney while in a secured
facility.  He started to protest but she shook her head and he
contented himself for the moment with some loud huffing and puffing.

"I am an officer of the court. I understand you don't wish to make
an issue of the handcuffs, but I can't let that go by." Waters popped
open his briefcase.  "I feel more like a messenger than an attorney,"
he said.  "Before we say anything else, remember I have to
report anything illegal.  That's not privileged."

"I don't anticipate anything illegal emerging from our
conversations," she said.  "I don't suppose you have a cell phone?"

"Not permitted." Waters smiled his apology.  "Well, uh, I do have
some messages.  Byers and cohorts send their regards - Frohike said
something distinctly suggestive, which I will not repeat--"

Scully chuckled. "Nothing else? No letters?" She was disappointed and
somewhat alarmed.

"Agent Mulder asked me to show you this.  He said you'd understand."

She knew what it was even before he dangled her necklace
in front of her.  She held it across the ridge of her hand and
caressed the gold cross between two fingers.  "Thank you, Mr.
Waters," she said in a soft voice.  She couldn't take her eyes
away from it.

It glittered with so much promise.  She could tell
Mulder had been wearing it; heat - salty, sweaty Mulder heat -
warmed her fingers where she touched it.  Before she could stop
herself she pressed the cross against her cheek.  Chagrined now,
she licked her lips and handed it back.  Waters held it aloft for
a moment, then slipped the necklace back into a plain white
envelope.

She tried to fold her hands on top of the table, but it
was awkward in handcuffs.

"Why are they so afraid of you," Waters said.  "I've read
what they put in your record - they are all afraid."

"I think they were told to be," Scully said.  "I think
this-" She indicated the handcuffs.  "-is supposed to be more
than a security measure."

"What?"

Scully waved it off with a flick of one hand, a motion
that meant her other hand had to follow.  "Doesn't matter.  It
isn't effective anymore."

"Agent Mulder wanted me to ask if you remembered your
badge number?" She recited it.  "Your email access name and
code?" She nodded.  "He said to ask if you knew that your
cell mate's mother disappeared with a man named Donald-"

Scully stood up so fast her chair nearly fell backwards.
Startled, Waters jumped too.  "I'm going to take that as a
negative," he said.

"Did Mulder say anything else about Zelda?"

Waters shook his head and they slowly sat back down.
"Then tell him Zelda has a dark-haired son, a four-year-
old named Scott Deschamps.  He's living in Maryland with a foster
family named Turner. Tell him to tread lightly." She stopped.
"Tell him to tread very lightly.  Scott is extremely important to Zelda.
He is her life.  Make certain Mulder understands that."

"Zelda's son.  Tread lightly.  Very important.  Okay." Waters
thought about writing it down and actually took out his pen,
then thought better of it.

"Anything else?" She fingers massaged her forehead.  It was
aggravating not be able to speak to Mulder directly and openly.
She swore she would never take that privilege for granted again.
Her palms sweated and her heart raced.

"He has somehow persuaded FBI agents from Dallas, Denver,
Phoenix and Miami to join him working to clear you.  He said
their efforts have sparked a renewed conviction in him that ugly
men do not make pretty women no matter how hard they try."
Waters said.  "I have no idea what he's talking about."

"Nor do I."

"Oh, and he did say to expect some action soon," Waters
said.  "He seems very anxious to get you out of here.  He was most
emphatic that I tell you he is - and I hope this does not refer
to a weapon - he is gearing up the Midnight Special," Waters
said.

"It's a song, Mr.  Waters.  It refers to freedom from prison," she
said.

"Which may be difficult.  And that brings me to the assault
charges."

"When do I go to Washington?"

"Next Tuesday.  For arraignment.  Nobody's in a rush about
this but Agent Mulder.  So let's go over some things.  I need to
explain this to you, get your signature on some papers, and
prepare a defense.  I don't have much time," Waters said.  Anxiety
burned in his belly.

"Mr. Waters, will you tell Agent Mulder - please tell him
I'm fine," she said.

Waters saw her face turn blood red and he wondered about the
truth in the message she asked him to deliver.

Chapter 14 of 20

After two days in the infirmary Scully understood why Dr.
Otis said her feet were killing her.  Scully couldn't wait to
prop them up.

She returned to the cell, lay on the bunk and
elevated her feet.  In all the work of administering shots,
sutures, exams, weeding out malingers from those genuinely ill,
Scully hadn't the time to reflect on Water's visit or last
night's illusions.

Above her loud sigh of relief she heard snickering from
the door of the cell.  She raised her head to see Laquintia and a
friend standing outside.  Since inmates were not permitted to
visit in each other's cells, they only leaned against the bars
outside and peered in.

"Don't get up.  That such a nice picture," Laquintia said.

"You go to hell for lying," Scully said and swung her legs
off the bed.

"This fool can't read," Laquintia said.

The woman folded her arms in defiance.  "Can read a
little."

"Did you sign up for the adult literacy program here?"
Scully said.

"It full."

"It is full," Scully said.  "Well.  Have you always read 'a
little' or did you once know how to read a lot and have now
forgotten?"

"I ain't like you, Mama.  I never knowed."

Scully bit back a correction and instead said, "Laquintia,
if I can requisition books for you to use, you teach her.  You
read fairly well."

Laquintia grinned.  "If she ain't too dumb, Scully."

"Shut up!" the woman said.  She hung around a minute, then
wandered down the row to speak to another inmate.

"Bernice still ain't happy," said Laquintia.

"I'm sorry to hear it," Scully said.

"She say you won't give none of us our splits."

Scully leaned against the bars and arched her eyebrows.

"When Bernice and Zelda goes to do a job, we all gits a
cut.  We got families live off that.  Now you come and we wanna
know if we still gits to keep part of the money?"

"I don't know of any thing in the works," Scully said.

"Then how cum Bernice and Zelda got they cards already!"

"Nothing happens without me."

"Bernice say we got to all git ready to make sure you gets
yur beauty sleep."

"Bernice," said Scully with a touch of ice in her tone,
"controls nothing.  Not even herself."

Laquintia reiterated. "She ain't happy." Into Scully's disdain
she added, "Jest so's you know."

"Laquintia, how do you get your money?"

"I dunno. It come like magic in my mamma's bank."

"Electronic transfer?"

Laquintia shrugged.

"Would you please find Zelda for me?"  Scully's forehead crinkled in
concentration.  She walked slowly on aching feet to the sink, found a
washcloth and rinsed it out.

As soon as Laquintia disappeared Scully picked up Zelda's cards
on the shelf by the sink and rifled through them.  The cards that
purported to be advertisements dealt in everything from art to
antiques to department store sales.  Tuesday was the 12th.
The last card offered an odd 12 to 23 percent off.  Obviously, the
robbery must  occur between the 12th and the 23rd.  One card was
antiques and art.  The card before was a stock of white linen
sale.  Another told them to bank on bargains at Virgil's
Department store.  And before that a starving artist's getaway in
Florida.

The names on the cards were strange-yet oddly familiar.  It would
come to her in a minute.  She replaced the cards in order knowing
there was something in them she had missed.

When Zelda came in, Scully said, "Beauty sleep?"

"Oh, yeah.  I was going to explain tonight," Zelda said.  "I
alluded to it earlier.  Rather important for us not to be
disturbed when we leave our physical bodies.  Moving them,
disturbing them too much could result in-"

"Not coming back," Scully said.  "How did you know I
wouldn't try to wake you one night when you were off seeing the
Bahamas or-or attending the Metropolitan Opera?"

"You were too confused - and since you don't get enough
yourself, you value sleep too much to disturb someone else."

"When the authorities found Michael's body, they moved it,
didn't they? That's why he couldn't find his way back."

"I begged them to leave him alone.  Now he's buried,
decayed -- lost."

"Except when he comes to you," Scully said.

"Except then." She hopped up on her bunk in one jump and
let her legs dangle off the edge.  "As long as we're telling
secrets, tell me how you plan to stop this."

"Stop what?"

"Our robbery of Lipscomb's Auction House.  We have our
window of time.  We have the drop-off site.  We'll get pictures of
the men involved in a few days in department store sales
catalogues, and - woo-wooo -- the ghosts strike again," Zelda
said.

"When were you planning to tell me?"

"When you couldn't stop it."

Scully scoffed.  "Why should I even try?"

"Because that's what you will think you have to do."

"No, no," Scully shook her head fiercely.  "I don't believe
that.  I don't have any memory of-of an undercover operation.  I
have no memory of a deal, a plan - nothing."

"People have lots of things buried in their minds.  Things
they can't deal with.  Things they're afraid of."

"I don't believe my purpose is to stop a robbery," Scully
said.

"I didn't say that's what you were sent to do.  I said
that's what you think you have to do."

Scully leaned against Zelda's bunk and chewed on her
knuckle.  "Why would I put myself in such a position? For a
robbery conviction? I can't imagine."

"And you have a vivid imagination," said Zelda.  "What do
you value?"

Scully still fumed.

"I do this because Bernice will have Scott murdered if I
don't.  I value his life above everything else."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why? What can you do about it?" Zelda laughed.  "I only
meant for this to be a one-time deal." She ran her fingers
through her hair.  "I had what I wanted - Scott's college money.
The next time the card came... but Bernice didn't want to quit.
It was powerful for her.  She has friends, co-workers on the
outside-"

Scully sagged onto her bunk and Zelda said, "What do you value most?
Until you can answer that, you won't know why you're here."

"Is-is it Bernice?"

Zelda laughed.  "Oh no.  But she likes it.  It-it feeds her.
I took her with me that first time.  She'd been learning to fly.
She was quite capable.  It was a mistake.  A terrible, terrible
mistake.  She's very good and works at it all the time."

"But it changed her."

Zelda nodded.  "She's been trying to teach Angela and,
well, you saw for yourself how that's working out.  I think
Bernice's about to give up and--"

"Then who is it?"

"I don't know," Zelda's answer was tentative.

Scully looked askance.

"I don't.  Bernice and I get these postcards-"

"Even the first time with the-" Scully realized she had no
idea where it had all started.

"The insurance company in upstate New York.  It was so
simple, so easy.  I could even rationalize it.  Who likes the
blood-sucking insurance companies?" said Zelda.  "It hardly
bothered me at all.  The first sin led to all the others: the
theory of Original Sin demonstrated in modern, everyday life."

"A postcard?"

Zelda beamed.  "Right.  In code, of course." She leaned
over, took several off the shelf, and handed them to Scully.

This time Scully saw it immediately.  "Pig Latin!"

"The name of the target - and maybe some pertinent data
about the target -- is always in pig-Latin," Zelda said.  "Looks
like a misprint or, in some cases, just an odd name.  The ranges of
dates are the prices or sale discounts.  A child could see it - I
picked up on it the first time I saw one.  My mother and I used
to use pig-Latin at home when I was little when we didn't want
my grandmother to know something.  A game.  Something between us
two.  I thought we were so clever.  My mother's diary, her book,
the last thing she touched, inscribed to me, written in pig
Latin--our special language.  Her last present to me."

"You believe your mother is involved?"

"My mother is dead.  I just don't know how."

"Who would know about it, then?"

Zelda seemed to give the matter some thought.  "I don't
know.  And I have considered the question more than once.  I think
now it must be Henry Donaldson."

Scully took a few thoughtful steps then said, "You know
Henry Donaldson was with your mother when she died in Vietnam?"

"I discovered it last night.  With Mulder.  I might have
learned more from Donaldson's file if you hadn't had your mind -
and that boy's hands - on something else! Last night is a perfect
example of why mother said it was dangerous for two women to
occupy the mind of a one man."

Scully was no mood to be teased.  "You knew about Donaldson
and your mother before."

"I never knew his name.  The military never told me."

"Do you also know Henry Donaldson was instrumental in my
incarceration?"

Zelda shook her head. "But I knew he prosecuted Bernice. He
was on her case a long time."

"Donaldson," Scully said. "He must be
the accomplice who picks up the proceeds from the robberies."

"Not necessarily.  Once I was taking bonds to a drop-off
site outside a brokerage house and I saw someone in the shadows
there.  I didn't think it was a man.  Too small, short-"

"Another accomplice? A stranger? A homeless person?"

"Could have been anyone." Zelda shrugged.  "Just an
impression.  I was a little busy -and in some else's body.
Frankly, I was more concerned that the body I was visiting could
be in danger.  Can't stay outside a mortal body very long or -"

Scully knew or what.

"Turns out that person did me a favor - started screaming
and that warned me the police had arrived.  The police might have
shot me-the body, I mean.  Can't hover very long.  And you can't
at all, Dana.  Not for years."

"I just want to defend myself," Scully said.  "No more -- incidents."

"Well, you've got some exercises to toughen up.  In a pinch
you could fly - provided you could apply pressure points and he
was a, well, suitable host.  I wouldn't try anything - or anyone
- ambitious just yet," Zelda said.  "Practice, Dana, practice.  If
you want to come with us, practice."

Scully stopped pacing and closed her eyes.  "I-It's a terrible
responsibility."

"You're still afraid of it."

"A healthy fear," Scully said.  "Mingled with a degree of disbelief."

Finally Zelda said, "There's something I haven't told you.
Something I've known for a long time.  I should take a third on
this next trip."

Horrified Scully said, "Me?"

"Sure can't be Angela. We could do the job with two, but that would put
us -- and the men we've chosen to invade -- at risk. Bernice's solution
is to kill the third guard. I can't do that. Come with us, Dana."

"No." But she felt a tug, a pull on her to agree.
Intuition.  Aloud she said, "How is this going to help?"

Zelda shrugged.  Her legs swung back and forth on the bunk.

"About the split?"

"Oh yeah.  The families of the women in the pod - all 12 -
get some help from these robberies.  Besides the college fund,
Scott has a trust- so he won't be a financial burden to you."

Scully put her hands on Zelda's knees.  "I would never
consider your son a burden.  You have my promise.  I will keep him
safe until you come for him."

"You can't give your heart to him if you believe I'll come
and take him away," Zelda said.  "I won't come for him, Dana."

"Someday." Scully's hands gripped Zelda's knees.

"I said he was yours and that's what I meant.  You have
Yahweh's Hand on you.  I could see it when they brought you in.
On the day you know I've told you the truth, remember your
promise."

Scully began a thoughtful pacing of the cell.  Zelda
resumed swinging her legs back and forth and humming an absent-
minded tune.  Then she glanced at the clock in the corridor and
slipped off the bunk.  "Oops.  Time for my soap," she said.  "'Like
sands through an hourglass'.."

Scully bit her knuckle, lost in thought.  She was missing
something.  Something Mulder would see.  Something that Mulder
needed to know.

Gradually it dawned on Scully that what she wanted most, what
she valued most -- was the one thing she shouldn't have:
communication with Mulder.
***************
"I'm beat," Clare Otis said.  She dropped a pen on her desk
and rubbed her eyes.  "What did we see, half the population
today?"

Scully plopped down on a chair next to Dr. Otis.  "We've
got a possibly appendicitis -- and one tonsillitis I wouldn't
send back to the population just yet."

"Did you give the tonsillitis an antibiotic?"

"She needs one, but I have to have the key to the medicine cabinet,"
Scully said.  She watched carefully as Clare logged off her computer,
unplugged the mouse and put it in the desk drawer.  Scully had been
observing Clare Otis log on and off for several days and now she
thought she had the passwords and codes memorized.  "And you have to
leave word that I'll have to give her another injection during early
morning clinic."

"Okay.  Here." Clare tossed her the medicine cabinet keys.
She watched as Scully unlocked the door, selected the medicine
and stood back to allow Clare to see everything she was doing.
Clare seemed to appreciate that Scully honored the need for supervision
and didn't make the situation too awkward.

Scully disappeared behind a curtain and presently emerged
with a used syringe and empty vial in her hand.  She tossed them
away and peeled off her latex gloves to dispose in the biohazard
waste bin where Clare could observe.  Seeing everything was in
order, Clare picked up her things and started to leave.

Scully waited until Clare cleared the first door before she called,
"Dr. Otis.  Your keys."  She held them up.

Clare tossed her a key chain through the bars.  "Lock them
up in the desk drawer.  I'm running late."

Scully unlocked the drawer and hastily dropped the keys into the drawer.
Before she closed it she ran her hand over the drawer lock, stuffing it
with yellow gummy stic from her finger and preventing it from
catching when she closed it.  She walked the key chain to the doctor.

"Why aren't you tired?" Clare grunted as she accepted the
keys through the bars.  "Must be nice to be young."

"If it's alright, I'm going to check in on curtain four
once more.  I think she's more scared than sick, but--" Scully
said.

"I'll leave word.  Don't be too long," Dr. Otis said.  "Oh..
you won't be here tomorrow.  You have to go to Washington."  Clare
groaned.  "Amazing how quickly I got used to having you around.
See you in a few days.  Good luck."

"Thank you," Scully said.

It was a relatively simple matter to time the rotation of
the infirmary cameras, unlock the desk drawer and access the
computer.  When the camera swept the area the guard only observed
Scully next to the desk pouring over a chart.  He could not see
the mouse had been reattached and the monitor was on.

Scully logged on with Dr. Otis' passwords and numbers, then signed
Into her email account.  Hurriedly she wrote to Mulder: "12th to 23rd.
Lipscomb's Auction House.  Donaldson."

She had scarcely scrapped off the yellow gum from the lock
and secured the desk drawer when the night officer strolled
through the infirmary.

"Doc says you shouldn't stay late," he said.  His eyes
roved the office, clearly showing his distrust of Scully and his
belief that she shouldn't be here.  "What are you doing?"

"Charts," Scully said, swallowing hard.  Her heart raced.
"I had to finish them.  Who's checking on the patients tonight."

"I am.  There's a problem, you'll be the first to know.
Let's go," the officer said.

She hid the residue from the yellow gummy stic in her
palm.  Just before they left the infirmary the officer gave her a
perfunctory frisk and let her go.
***********************
A disinterested guard in a sweat-soaked blue uniform
helped Scully out of the prison van into the garage for the
Washington jail.  The stuffy burnt oil and trapped carbon
monoxide smell reminded her of the FBI parking garage the
morning Mulder left.

She'd been thinking about forests and wilderness training when she
walked in to work that day.  The day Skinner called her into his
office and suspended her.

Her feet were chained together; her sore wrists and
feet secured to her waist through a loop on her leather belt
restrain.  The belt around her waist was too tight and pressed
under her diaphragm, making it necessary for her to take small,
shallow breaths.  Scully mentioned it once to an apparently deaf
prison guard who was riding shotgun, then resigned herself to
suffer in silence.

She paused after getting down from the van to
straighten the ankle chain.  Even so she would be ridiculous
hobbling along.  She did not dismiss this as procedure, instead
understood it as part of the continuing attack on her spirit.
She recalled with dismay how well it had worked earlier.

Before taking that first awkward step she felt a wave of heat as
though she stepped under a heating duct.  Searching for the source
she saw Mulder gazing down from the second floor observation room.

He was clenching his jaw, she could tell even from that
distance.  She stared at him a moment letting his open affection
wash through her, wishing he wouldn't watch, then walked
straight through the garage into the intake area.  Before the
door to the garage closed, she glanced up again; Mulder had
vanished.  She wondered if she ever really saw him or if the damn
belt so constricted her oxygen she hallucinated.

Mulder, are you here? Now?

"This way," said the guard behind her and nudged her to
the left.

Scully's sudden look into the observation room sent Mulder
ducking behind a pillar.  He hadn't meant for her to see him, but
he wanted to catch a glimpse of her.  He wished he hadn't.  It
maddened him for her to be weighted down, chained like that.
Even worse, he felt tears of angry frustration rise in him that
he could not burden her with.  Her upturned face, searching the
garage, then the room for him, looked the same.  She seemed
better.  Mulder straightened his suit jacket and left for the second
floor men's room.

Scully sat in first floor receiving for almost an hour, presenting
the very picture of forbearance she did not feel.  She watched the
marshals, jailers, and sheriffs shuffle paper, process other
prisoners, and drink coffee.  She presumed she was waiting to be
called to reception, to the room where inmates could have visitors.
The summons never came.  She was almost relieved.  It would be very
difficult to speak to Mulder of mundane things right now.

She let her mind wander.  Hers would be the first hearing on the
docket the next morning.  She would wear her own clothes.  Silk
blouse, stockings, heels.  Amazing that such a thing could
lift her spirits.  Wearing the clothes of a free woman, the person she
was inside, in her head.  She decided to practice what Zelda had taught
her and discovered her cellmate was right: it was hard to learn but
easy to forget.
*********************
The conference room Scully had been led to by the court officer
seemed out of the way.  But it was large.  Huge, in fact, compared to
other lawyer/client cubbyholes she'd passed as a marshal led her down
the hall.

The federal marshal left her alone to wander around the room for a
moment, gaze out the large window cover with a heavy mesh screen,
touch the old wooden chairs.  The room had no pictures or posters;
the only thing worth looking at was the intricate design in the
oversized ornate heating vent in the wall overhead.

But, the room had been painted recently, Scully gave them points
for that.  Still, there was a musty odor that hung in the air.  She
walked around idly,listening to the rats scratching in the walls and
vents, appreciating the feel of hose, heels, a skirt and blouse.
Comfortable, businesslike clothes that hung loosely on her but suited
Scully, fit her mood.

Except for the handcuffs around her wrists she would almost imagine
herself waiting to interview a suspect herself.  She expected Byron
Waters any moment and began reviewing the list of things she wanted
him to relay to Mulder.

So it surprised her to find Henry J.Donaldson standing in the
doorway with the marshal.  His briefcase
dangled by one finger; he held nothing else in his hands.  He
regarded her as he would an old, trusted friend.

"There you are! What are you doing up here?" Donaldson
turned to the marshal.  "I have to speak with this prisoner
alone."

"Sorry, Mr.  Donaldson.." the marshal began.

"Don't worry, John.  I'll take full responsibility."

Scully stood motionless.

"Thank you, John."

The marshal sighed and left the room with a glance back at
Scully.

She waited until the door closed before she said, "You've
made them all think I'm an axe-murderer."

"How do you know you're not?" Donaldson said.

"Sir?"

He gave her a pleasant smile.  "Please.." He pulled out a
chair and motioned for her to sit down.

She approached warily, but took the seat he offered.  He
leaned against the arm to regard her.  "I understand you've
had a bad time of it.  I'm sorry.  However, your service is of
the highest caliber.  Rest assured you, Agent Mulder and the
X-Files will work unmolested, under the protection of the
Attorney General's office from now on."

"Yes sir," Scully said.

"So, I take it you've had some luck, then? What is the next target?"

Scully's face grew hard.  "I'd like to know something."

Irritation flitted across Donaldson's face.  "Certainly."

"What happened to Zelda Deschamp's mother?"

Donaldson grabbed her arm at the elbow and she felt his
thumb pressing in on her.  "Dana, that is not your errand," he
said.  She felt the tension go out of her limbs.  She relaxed,
then caught just the merest hint of something - cruelty, panic,
self-satisfaction, pity -- behind those green eyes.  "Dana
Scully, you have an errand to run."

She tried to push out of the chair.  Her arms and legs refused to
move.  She closed her eyes and began the defensive exercise Zelda
taught her, hoping she was not too late. The pull of his voice and
her conditioned response dragged on her ability to focus.

"Open your eyes, Dana."

They fluttered without her consent.  His voice came now
from far away, wreathed in a bright, greenish light.  He repeated
her name over and over and she fought to keep from succumbing.

"I'll take your oral report, Agent Scully."

"Yes sir."

"I congratulate you on your success.  The next target?"

She told him everything - time, date, place, people-- hearing the words
come from a place deep within her mind.  She concentrated on releasing
the fear, the hate, the dread.

"Agent Scully, your mission is almost complete.  Your service is
appreciated.  As before, you will not recall this conversation."

"Yes...sir." The words stumbled out of her mouth.

Scully fixed on Mulder.  She visualized his face, the touch
of his hand on her shoulder, the crinkles along his cheeks when
he grinned.  She remembered his habit of chewing sunflower seeds,
his boyish grin, his 2 a.m. telephone calls that woke her from a
sound sleep and propelled her out of her world and into his.

"Do you understand, Agent Scully?"

"Sir.."

"You will wipe this all from your memory.  Tell me you
understand your instructions."

"I understand..."

She focused on her mother: the texture of her hair against
Scully's face when they hugged; the laughter when wind whipped
it out of her mouth in winter; her quiet resolve that brooked no
disagreement; her sweeping devotion to her daughter.  Scully
would want to know what happened to her mother.  She had to ask
something.  For her mother, no, Zelda's mother.  For Zelda.

"Sgt. Amelia Peterson -- what happened to her?"  The droning
repetition of her name faltered.  "Zelda is still searching."
Donaldson gave a horrified, high-pitched squeal and backed
into the conference table.  He doubled up as though stricken with
severe abdominal pains and collapsed across the table, groaning.

He uttered a few moans of agony, fell into silence, then picked
up a stammering chant of Scully's name again.

"No-" Scully's eyes closed, gray clouds in pillowing puffs
closed again.  From somewhere door hinges screamed.

"Are you alright?" Donaldson said as the marshal swung the
door open.

Waters stormed in behind him, his face a bright red.
"What's going on here?" Waters said.  "Just what the hell is
going on?"  He stared at Donaldson, then Scully.  "You okay, Miss
Scully?"

"She looks sick," the marshal said.

Waters flung his arms out in exasperation.  "I repeat --
what the hell is going on here?  Why is this man even in the same
room with my client?"

Donaldson waved his hand as if it were of no importance.
"She said - she said she had information for me that could be
vital in stopping a planned robbery of a federal facility.  On
behalf of the prosecutor I came to offer a reduced sentence in
return for this information.  I-I realize I was out of line
speaking to her without her attorney, but as she used to be law
enforcement..."

"You bastard!" Scully breathed.  Her nausea and headache
nearly made it impossible to speak.  She opened her eyes, fixed
on a spot in the ceiling and began the mental gymnastics of
thought and form that Zelda explained.

"I don't believe the government should oppose an insanity
defense, Mr.  Waters.  I find your client seriously disturbed!"

"I think that's enough, Mr.  Donaldson," Waters said.  "Your
actions thus far are grounds for censure - or even disbarment."

"I'm not worried.  But if you want to talk deal, let's
talk."

"Let's," said Scully, head swimming.  "Vacate the plea.  I
want a trial on the original charges and an immediate bail
hearing."

Even Waters regarded her as insane.

"Ah, Dana," he began.

She stood, leaning on the table as close as she could get
to him.  She bore into his eyes with her own.  "Let me go, Mr.
Donaldson.  Now.  Tonight," she said.

A sheen of perspiration appeared on Donaldson's forehead
and upper lip.

He swung his attention to Waters with a see-what-I-mean
express on his face.  "Down the hall for a moment," Donaldson
said.  "I took a chance, a big chance that might cost me my job.
It-it, well, let me explain."

"Step outside, Mr.  Donaldson.  Let me make certain my
client is okay."

Donaldson nodded to the marshal and they left.

Waters threw his briefcase on the table, snapped it open
and pulled out a white handkerchief.  He handed it to Scully and
said, "In case you sneeze or need it for something else.  This
room is, well, it's drafty."

"Thank you," she said.

"Can you stand alone?"
She nodded, her breathing coming easier now and without
headache or nausea.  She felt better.

"You'll need it if you stand near drafty vents," Waters
said.  "I'll be right back - as soon as I deal with Mr. Donaldson
and I want a full report on what he said to you."

Scully nodded, following his eyes as he stared at the
heating vent in the far corner of the room.

"I think you'll want to read some of these motions before
I file them.  I'll be back in, oh, six minutes," he said and
swung his wrist up to check his watch.

She stared at the door after he closed it behind him.  What
had happened?  Donaldson could do what Zelda did.  That much was
clear to her now.  Her stomach rolled and her head rumbled.

Scully stumbled over to the heating vent and sat down
under it.  And Zelda or Zelda's mother's name caused a big
reaction in Donaldson - had it or was that a dream? The marshal
came back in to monitor her.

"You okay? You look real pale," the marshal said.  "You
want a drink?"

She nodded and put the handkerchief to her nose and mouth.
The marshal handed her some water and that's when she heard the
unmistakable thunk of the vent cover hitting the carpeted floor.
She poured water into the handkerchief, dropped the glass,
grabbed a breath and pressed the wet cloth to her face.

Mulder.

The marshal drew his weapon and looked up as a gas
canister and fell onto the carpet.  It was the last thing the
marshal saw before he collapsed.

Scully stood on a chair, dropped the handkerchief and made
a jump for the lip of the vent.  She caught the lower rim.  Her
hold slipped just as two familiar hands grabbed her. The cuffs pulled
and tore at her wrists. The residue of the gas and bungled mind-meld
left Scully disoriented; the world spun.

Lying on his belly, arms outstretched, Mulder hooked his
foot around the corner of the shaft for leverage and yanked her
into the vent.  Once she was inside he unhooked a mask off his
belt and shoved it toward her.  She slapped it over her mouth and
began to breathe sweet oxygen.  Mulder's eyes came into focus.
She wanted to smile. He banged an elbow getting the handcuff keys
out of his jumpsuit pocket.

Mulder inched backwards into the main line of the vent
shaft and she followed.  The strain of their locomotion against
the metal made the vents echo a plong, blonge noise.  After the
first short branch, they made better time - it was downhill.
Scully crawled after him on her stomach, propelled by
gravity and her elbows and knees.

Mulder turned another corner and she started after him, but he
stopped her and indicated another branch.  She nodded to show
she understood.  She could see wrinkles around the mouthpiece of
his mask and understood he was smiling.  She crawled away down
the opposite shaft, flushed and breathing heavily.  She didn't
have far to go.  The second vent cover she encountered had been
loosened.  She began to climb out.

"Agent Scully!"

Chapter 15 of 20

>From the top of the stairs Mulder could see AD Skinner
pacing outside the door of the courtroom where Scully's hearing
was to be held.

"This is running late.  Where have you been?" Skinner said.

"Bathroom," Mulder said straightening his tie and jacket.

"Upstairs?"

"It's cleaner."

Skinner detected an odor of dusty and mildew.  He opened
the courtroom door for Mulder and said, "You sure?"

The two men sat uncomfortably on the wooden benches for a
long time.  Skinner grew restless.  Mulder was miles away.  He
would see her again today, talk with her, hear her voice.  He
sighed impatiently and appeared to scan the room in boredom.  It
was jam-packed. He glanced around, nudged Skinner and they
scoped out the room together.

"What's this?" Skinner said.

"Obviously the news media believes she's going to be
executed today."

Skinner adjusted his glasses and turned in his seat.  "I
accept responsibility for this," he said to Mulder.  "I want you
to know that."

"If I know Scully she had something to say about it," Mulder said.

"You do know Agent Scully and that's exactly why you are
in the dark," Skinner said.

Mulder rubbed his mouth; it spoke his impatience with that more
clearly than words.

"It's a long story," Skinner said.

"I'd like to hear it sometime," Mulder said.  "Soon."

Skinner stared at him and, after a moment, nodded slightly.
Mulder crossed his legs and tried to think of seeing
Scully again.  Soon.

Skinner shifted in his seat.  "This is running late," he
said again.

Mulder studied the great seal over the bench with some
interest.

Skinner got up and walked out the door of the courtroom.
Mulder sat quietly, no expression on his face, his hands resting
in his lap.  His feet, however, moved up and down on the balls
and back on the heels.  After a few moments Skinner hurried in,
leaned down and whispered to Mulder, "She escaped.  They're
searching the building.  They've searched her lawyer's car.  The
building is sealed."

Adrenaline rushed to Mulder's arms and legs, but he forced
himself to be casual.  "No need to stick around here, then, is
there?"

Skinner grabbed Mulder's arm and fairly hissed, "They will
shoot her.  They are within their rights to shoot."

"I'm sure she thought of that," Mulder said.

It took four hours for Mulder and Skinner to clear the
building.  Everyone and everything was subject to search.  Mulder
counted two dozen uniforms and an unknown number of agents.  Both
he and Skinner were questioned, although there could be no doubt
they were both in the courtroom long before the escape.

Mulder drove home cautiously, very aware that he was being
followed.  A block from the court he pulled out his phone and
punched in her number, hoping - no, knowing - he would hear her
voice soon.  He heard only a dozen rings.

Mulder slammed the phone shut, tossed it on the empty seat
beside him and rubbed his mouth.  Good thing traffic was light.
He waited for his chance, made an illegal left turn and headed
for Scully's apartment.

No sign of her.  He drove home.  The Gunmen were waiting.
They looked like whipped dogs.

"She jumped out of the garbage truck somewhere along the way,"
Langly said.

"You didn't see her, didn't notice?" He yelled.  He didn't care that
the three men in front of him seemed miserable enough.  What if his
instincts about this escape were wrong-he couldn't bear to think about
it.

"She took the little duffel bag," Frohike volunteered.

"I feel much better knowing she has clean underwear," Mulder
said.

"Agent Mulder, did it occur to you that Agent Scully might
not be, exactly, prepared for this escape," said Byers.

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"That the same physical and mental stresses of the mind meld she's
been subjected to might have-" Byers didn't want to be the one to say
it "- might have had a permanent effect."

Byers may have said it, but Mulder had clearly thought of it already.
Mulder's phone buzzed and he fumbled in his haste to answer.  "Yes,
he's here." He thrust the phone at Byers and listened to him say
"yes, uh, huh, huh-huh, okay.  Thanks."

When he handed the phone back Byers said, "That was Bryon
Waters.  He said Agent Scully seemed very distracted, ill, and a
little hostile when he saw her last.  He also said Henry
Donaldson was alone with her when he came into the conference
room."

"That's a violation of her civil rights," said Frohike.

"He's the one who's been playing with Scully's head from
the beginning," Mulder said.  "He laid the foundation and now
he's building on it."

"Who knows what he's done to her.  That is one seriously
screwed up dude," Langly said.  "We may have put our foot in it
this time."

Mulder stayed home three days never leaving the phone.
Call, Scully, he pleaded to her.  Call, damnit!
Three long, endless days of worry.  Three days of telling
inquisitive policemen and agents that he didn't know where she
was.  Three days of lying to her mother, reassuring her that
Scully was safe.  Three days of berating himself for arranging
her escape.  Three days of racking his brain for places she might
go, then charging out to discover she hadn't shown.

Three longer nights.  He slept - when he dozed - with his
cell phone in his hand.

He was fixing coffee on the morning of the fourth day when
he suddenly knew where to find her.  He could have kicked himself
for being an idiot -- and her for scaring him to death.
************************
Scully unlocked the door, stepped into the apartment and knew
she wasn't alone.  She saw it at once - the overstuffed chair
angled slightly wrong, a table lamp that seemed just a fraction
of an inch too far to the right.

She began to back out of the door slowly, the grocery bag still in
her arms.

"Don't make me run you down."

She froze.

Mulder appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and
living room.  He leaned onto the door frame, the muscles in his
arms tensed from holding his weight and his jaw clenched tight.
The sun from the kitchen window shone at his back through his
white shirt and his tie hung loosely around his neck in a noose.
Scully couldn't recall seeing him so furious.

"Come on in."

She shut the door and set the groceries down on the hall
table along with the apartment key.  He didn't move, but his eyes
raking over her made her strangely self-conscious.  She touched a
stray end of her hair.  She never liked her own hair color much,
but now that it was covered with a black rinse she felt
unnatural.

Mulder snorted.  "This place stinks.  The bureau couldn't do
any better than hot and cold running rats?"

"Did you come to criticize the accommodations -- or take
me back?"

His mouth went slack, then closed in a determined line.
Panic fused his arms and legs with the strength he didn't think
he could have found otherwise.  Mulder covered the distance
between them in four or five quick strides.  She stiffened, but
refused to move.  He wore an impassive expression until he stood
within an inch of her.  He stopped and leaned down as if
confiding a secret.

"Scully, they've done something to you...and you-you aren't
seeing things as they are...mentally.." His face was that of a
tortured angel.

"I was," she said, nodding.  "You're right.  I was...and you
talked me through it."

Mulder knew they hadn't spoken in weeks. "This was a mistake.
You understand you could get killed.  I made a mistake."

"Actually, I thought it demonstrated good insight." She needed him to
see beyond his fears, beyond his wounded pride, and her
deception.  Of all the things she worried about, she most feared
his need to protect her.  She couldn't let him take her and she
didn't know how to stop him.

"Please understand," he said.  He put his hand on her the
way he would a suspect.

"Mulder, all those times you asked me to believe you, to
follow you on nothing more than faith... You have every reason to
doubt.  I'm asking that same blind faith of you now."

Mulder wavered.  He had come to take her, to hold her
against her will if necessary, to make certain she wouldn't be
hurt until he could straighten things out.  He hadn't considered
that she would be one step ahead of him.  Again.  Arrogance on his
part.

"I'm fine," she said evenly.  "For the first time in a long time..."

He took a moment to study her.  This Scully had a different
lilt to her chin, a customary glint in her eyes that marked her
as the hunter instead of the hunted.  Her carriage was familiar;
her hands steady again.  He felt ashamed; he'd almost put her in
restraints.

"I-it's the hair," he said and dropped his hands.  "Had me
fooled."

The breath whooshed out of her mouth.  "I think it's
Frohike's fantasy color of the month," she said.  She sat down on
the armchair, her knees suddenly weak.  "I thought for a minute
you weren't going to believe me."

He fought the urge to put his arms around her and draw her
next to him.  It made him appear fierce, almost angry.

"How did you find me?"

"It occurred to me to try the obvious.  Our FBI
undercover identities, safe house," Mulder said.

"I knew you'd come to that eventually," she said.

"You scared the hell out of me.  Mind telling me what
you're doing?"

"It was instinct.  I took the chance you offered.  I
followed Langly through the maintenance room and crawled behind
him down the garbage chute - and let me say that is an
experience I don't want to repeat.  I waited until the Gunmen
stopped at what seemed like a great distance from the
courthouse.  It was relatively simple to-"

"I figured the rest," Mulder said.

"I know it - all of it.  Some of it is still unclear, but I
thought talking with you might clear it up.  The problem is, I
can't prove any of it.  It's too improbable to believe.  The
prison, the women and how they are used- the power." Scully
said.  She knew she was talking too fast.  "You were right.  The
robberies and prison are all related."

"I know," he said.

"How?"

"That was the only possible explanation for what happened
to Andy Paige.  And there was a case in Los Angeles - you didn't
get to see that one.  I interviewed the men convicted in the
theft - two young night clerks who simply walked a $1.2 million
watercolor out of an art gallery and left it in the alley behind
a post office.  They told basically the same story you and Andy
do.  Sickness.  Violence.  Memory loss."

"Who's doing this?" she said.

"Don't you know?"

She appeared to concentrate.  "I know Zelda and Bernice
carry out the robberies.  They assume the identity -- the person
-- of guards, clerks or any man with easy access to the asset
they wish to steal.  They take what they want, then leave it
outside for an accomplice to pick up," Scully said.  "The police
don't search for other suspects since they have one or two right
in front of them who are clearly guilty."

"Women do this to men--only men?"

"Not exclusively, but it's easier for women to enter the mind of men. 
It
requires no physical contact, there is--"

Mulder couldn't resist.  "Not much fun."

"Apparently the key to the success of what you call mind
meld is interrupting brain patterns.  Since estrogen release is a
key factor in "fertilizing" the neutrons that fire-."

"So women get inside the head of men and take over.  This
is almost a clichi, Scully."

"Bernice bumped into you in the hallway outside the
conference room after our first visit."

"That's right.  I don't remember slipping-"

"And afterwards you were sick?"

He shrugged.  "Bad burrito."

"Sad? Poetic? Sentimental, even weepy?"

"Bad burrito."

"Mulder, not every unsettling experience in life can be
attributed to refried beans."

"Most things," he said.

"Bernice saw things in you-"

"Those weren't my thoughts, Scully.  I found just them
there," he said.

"You knew nothing to change their opinion of me as just
another felon.  Anyone who came to visit me was under suspicion.
Everyone at first."  She hesitated.  He could sense the pain she
would not show him.  "After.. afterwards --they weren't afraid
of me."

"How did they get to you?"  But he didn't really want to
know and she obviously didn't want to tell him.

But she said, "Not just me.  Several other women, including Ann Millard.
They must have trapped her and discovered she was there to
expose them.  They must have driven her to jump over the railing."

"Can they reach you now?"

"There are barriers, techniques to block intrusion.  Mental
self-defense if you will.  Zelda taught me a few.  Just in time,
as it turned out.  I've been trying to recall who..."

She'd lost him.  His eyes bore into hers in an uncomfortable,
penetrating
way. He was mad, yes, but she saw sorrow behind it all.  "Mulder?"

It was startling because he said it as though he could
barely stop himself from slamming his fist into a wall,  "Why didn't
you tell me where you were?" He threw up his hands and his voice became
even louder and angrier.  "No! Let me say it! You were protecting me."

His fury drew the heat from Scully. "I was protecting myself."

"From?"

She didn't say anything at first.  She spent a few moments
examining her fingers as they ducked in and out of each other.

Finally, she said, "I needed to feel.. like myself."

Mulder knitted his eyebrows and his hands flew to his hips in
impatience.  "Which is how?"

"Normal."

"Normal?"

"Mulder, this mind meld technique involves the stimulation
of estrogen as a enhancer.  Research in the late 1980s discovered
that estrogen affects mental capacity, intellectual skills - and
some researchers are following this path now in hopes of
treating Alzheimer's.."

"You're smarter than me because you're a girl? And...?"

"My hypothesis is that in this mind-meld, stimulation of
estrogen, ah, disrupts normal body processes and results in
firing neurons, specifically those in the hypothalamus, that are
not normally called upon.  In women this is expressed in the body
as testosterone.  This creates a chemical imbalance of estrogen-
producing neurons vis-`-vis the ones which produce or require
testosterone.  This imbalance is, thankfully, self-correcting
over time through a surge of, ah, estrogen as well as - well,
that explains why there is extreme violence or hostility in a
female victim immediately after an intrusion and it explains the
sickness, particularly in an unwilling host-"

"-or hostess-"

"-Or hostess.  Such imbalances escalate with each incident
and take longer to reverse.  There is a surge of estrogen, which
apparently activates..." She licked her upper lip and ventured a
glance.  "..certain other reactions as well."

Mulder's anger dribbled away.  He stared at her in bewilderment and
took a minute to process what she said.

He was being deliberately obtuse, Scully thought.
Gorgeous, sexy, and definitely, deliberately obtuse.  She shifted
her weight to her other foot and cleared her throat.

Finally he started a slow, sultry grin. "Are you trying to say this
thing leaves you horny and you were afraid you'd force yourself
on me?"

Her cheeks flamed and she made a visual circle of the
room.  "Something like that."

Mulder bit his lip to keep from laughing at her discomfort.  He
leaned down and whispered, "What makes you think you'd have to use
force, Agent Scully?"

Scully gave a feeble, embarrassed chuckle.

He took her right elbow, noting a wince, and guided her to
the couch.  He sought a comfortable place amid the worn out
cushions, finally gave up and just sat down.  She perched on the
edge beside him.

"It's all for a purpose, Mulder.  Revenge.  Greed, power,
these out of body experiences that.."

"You say that like you're surprised."

"I said I owed you an apology."

He shrugged.  "You were hardly in a position to make a
rational judgment.  Do you remember that Donaldson visited you a
few days ago?  What does he want from you?"

"I have a vague notion.  My memory comes back in fits and
starts."

"You know he is capable of mind-meld.  That's what he has
done to you."

"I can't recall hearing of a man who can do this.  The only
case I remember is Zelda's husband, who died as a result."

"Here's another interesting coincidence," Mulder said.

"Henry J.  Donaldson used to be head of the securities and fraud
task force -- the one that arrested Bernice."

"Donaldson has a lot of connections to the two women involved in
this," Scully folded her arms in front of her.  "I don't believe in
coincidence."

Mulder chuckled.  "You believe in Divine Intervention?"

A pop exploded in Scully's head.  She saw
Donaldson bent over the conference room table, heard him chanting
her name.

"He doesn't want me to remember! He doesn't want this
charade to end yet." She hesitated.  "I think I'm supposed to
stop the next robbery."

Mulder seemed disappointed.  "I wanted him to be the man
behind all this -- or at least the accomplice.  But he has no
discernible motive - he's independently wealthy, has a
prestigious job, nice family, good reputation -- somehow I don't
think he's a criminal."

"I don't either, although I would actually pay money to
make it true," Scully said.  "No, he wants the robberies to stop,
to expose Zelda and Bernice."

Mulder's lips pursed.  "Done.  I got your email.  I presume
you informed him of all the particulars too.  So why aren't we popping
beer and peanuts to celebrate your release?"

Now it was her turn to shrug.  "I don't know."

"So this is an undercover operation?"

"Essentially.  Yes -- I don't know."

"Don't know?"

Scully made a strangled sound in the back of her throat.
"I just feel this is my-my job.  To stop it all.  Whether
Donaldson began it and I allowed it -- this is why I went to
prison."

"A mission from God.  All you need are sunglasses and a
blue suit."

She glared at him.

"Say you're right.  That would explain why you were
convicted so fast and so easily.  It's an X-File, so that
explains why it came to you.  And the ability of these women
would even explain why your memory of any undercover operation
was wiped clean by drugs or some hypnosis," he said.  "It would
also tell us how that hypnosis worked --you cooperated.  At least
in the beginning."

"It's not hypnosis.  It's the same sort of mental trickery
Zelda uses," she said.

"Maybe it started as hypnosis... or something like it to weaken your
mental defenses.  Gradually -- and without Skinner's knowledge --
Donaldson introduced the mild meld to erase your memory and
impair your ability to defend yourself.  He wants to keep you in
that state."

"It makes a certain sense. With Skinner present, Donaldson is someone
I might have trusted enough to-to submit. Ann Millard's murder would
have
been a good motivation for that kind of action." She gasped.
"Mulder,this
next robbery needs three women. Three, although it could be done by
two.  How did he know the next target required three if he didn't pick
it himself?"  She thought about it. "Unless three was the number
Zelda picked -- to include me, to reduce the danger."

"The danger to whom?"

Scully shrugged. "To her, Bernice...the men whose bodies they will take
over." She pursed her lips. That sounded right. Zelda needed
a third woman to control the third subject and keep Bernice from killing
or maiming him to keep him quiet.

"There is another more serious problem," Mulder said.  And he looked
as though it frightened him.  "Think about this a minute, Scully.
It's such an elaborate ruse - falsified documents, signed reports,
judicial manipulation.  A tape of the arrangements, legal
documents to free you, the 302 assignment sheets gone.  Damaged
or missing.  It's too elaborate to justify as merely cementing
your cover."

"Why so much?"

"He doesn't want you to come out of that prison at all -
at least not as a whole, credible person.  And not for a long
time."

Her eyes widened," And maybe he doesn't want to merely
expose Zelda and Bernice, he wants to silence them forever."

"With you a non-factor and the two perpetrators dead or
gone, Donaldson has stopped the robberies, silenced the women,
and eliminated any credible witnesses to this bizarre crime."
Mulder said.

"Skinner--"

"He has an axe to grind.  Thanks to some faulty information
from Donaldson, Skinner's platoon was wiped out."

"My God."

"But this scenario doesn't give us the whole picture."

"It leaves open the question of who concocts the robberies, selects
targets, picks up the assets?" She shook her head.

"Maybe you know something he doesn't want exposed." Mulder leaned back
against the couch.  "It can't be something as simple as his aberrant
lifestyle."

"Aberrant lifestyle?"

"Mr. Donaldson likes to transform himself into a woman and walk with
a poodle up and down the street to attract men and whistles.  Then he
or she returns the poodle to a couple in a pet store and comes out as
the Donaldson we know and love," Mulder said.

"A poodle?" Scully laughed.  "You're not serious."

"Well, I don't know what other kind of dog it would be. Looks like one."

She couldn't stop laughing.  She sagged against the couch back next to
him and they lounged there shoulder to shoulder.  After a while he said, 
"Does that hair stuff wash out easily, because I'm in trouble here.  I
was 
expecting a redhead and I'm having a problem relating to someone
who-" he stumbled, "--isn't."

"I'm not really your partner," she said.  "I was.  But as you can see,
I've changed." She was uncomfortable with the game all of a sudden.

"I'm glad you're here," he said. "Whoever you are."

She pushed herself off the couch and picked up the groceries she'd
left by the door hours ago.  Scully spent some time putting groceries
away, examining the fruit and vegetables for bruises or signs the
stay outside refrigeration damaged them.

She felt him walk into the kitchen and come up behind her.  She
closed her eyes against the heat of him so close.  Her hand squeezed
the orange it held and studied its tough skin.

"I promised myself that when I had the chance to speak to
you openly and freely again without codes or disguises I would
never take the privilege for granted." She placed the produce in
the refrigerator and shut the door.

"What's stopping you?"

Scully glanced around the kitchen.  She'd cleaned it-cleaned the whole
apartment from top to bottom.  Washed the linens, scoured the tub,
burned the scented candle she purchased- all to avoid thinking of this
very question.  She couldn't say anything.  She looked at him, mouth
moving like a dying fish. Mulder, pull me out.

He opened his arms and she fell into them nearly groaning with relief.

"Why does this come so easily to you?" she said against his chest.

"Maybe it's too irrational for you to consider."

"No," she said, "for us, for as long as we've been good friends, it is
the most natural, logical thing in the world."

He pushed her off his chest gently so she couldn't hear his heart break.
"You are my partner, my friend," he said.  "Both of us with many roles
to play in each other's lives.  Maybe some we haven't explored. Can we
play cook now.  I'm starved."
********************
Mulder clearly had something in mind besides a vegetation dinner.  He
picked at his plate.  But it had been so long since Scully had eaten
fresh vegetables and fruits that weren't old or cooked to death she had
wanted nothing else for the last four days.  Mulder watched her eat.
She needed to.  He passed her the butter.  When she was almost finished
he put down his fork and played with a piece of French bread.

"What I want to know is, why did you agree to do this, Scully?"

"Something I wanted."

"What do you want badly enough to go through hell to get," Mulder said.

She put her fork down and swallowed hard.  She even took a drink of wine
before she said,  "Zelda keeps asking me that.  What is of value to me?"

"What do you tell her?"  Mulder thought for a moment she might say it.
He willed her to say it.  He wanted it so much his lips moved for her.

"The X-Files," she said finally.  "I think I value that most, what we
do - what we do together.  That we do it together."

A slice of bread, doubled over, paused half-way into Mulder's mouth and
fell back onto his plate.  She was getting there.  Almost there.  "I
value that too.  And I wouldn't want to miss anything."  He picked up
his plate and hers, then headed for the kitchen sink.  She couldn't
see, but he smiled.  "You want the shower first," he asked.

"Yes, thanks." She got up from the table slowly, thinking of what he'd
said.

She undressed in the bathroom and turned on the spray. Frohike - she
could see no one else behind this - had included some scented soap,
a lavender votive candle, and her perfume in the small duffle bag she'd
pulled out of the garbage with her. Only one change of clothes and
underwear. But perfume, candles and soap. She washed the skirt and
blouse and underwear she had just worn, draping them over a towel rack.
She sighed with fatigue then stepped into the shower.

"I wouldn't want to miss anything." Mulder's phrase resonated within
her. She soaped her body. Had she missed something?  She spit water
out of her mouth and allowed more from the spray to fill it. What was
she afraid she'd missed? Her hands, busy lathering shampoo in her
hair, stopped in mid-task.  The night he came back from training. She
missed that -- she missed him.