From:             OpheliaMac <OpheliaMac@aol.com>
Date sent:        Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:37:31 EST

Title:  Revenants
Author: Ophelia
E-mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com
Rating: PG
Categories: X, A
Keywords: Mulder/Scully friendship
Spoilers: N/A
Summary:  A series of resurrections and the appearance 
of a mysterious woman over Usenet teach Mulder that 
reunions can sometimes be more painful than 
separations.

******************************************************
Disclaimer:  Copyright infringement is the most 
sincere form of flattery.  All X-Filey stuff belongs 
to Chris Carter and 1013.
Dedication:  I dedicate this story to the memory of 
Lotte Geller, my high school biology teacher.  I 
always feel her spirit looking over my shoulder as I 
write things like this.  She's usually demanding to 
know just who do I think I am to be warping the tenets 
of science.
******************************************************

"Let her speak . . . and make it manifest where she 
has liv'd, or how stol'n from the dead."
                --Shakespeare, "The Winter's Tale"

Covenant Baptist Church
Cumberland Falls, TN

     It was a beautiful day for a funeral.  Late 
summer sunshine turned the stained-glass windows into 
panes of multicolored fire, suitable to the brilliant 
form Reverend Simms was in.  He stood in a white choir 
robe, his hands planted on either side of the pulpit.  
"Brothers and sisters," he began, in his deep, 
resonant voice.  "We are here to celebrate the life of 
Sherilynn Jones, who after thirty-five years in this 
vale of sorrow, went home to Jesus."  
     There were cries of "Halleluja," and "Praise His 
name," from various corners of the church.  
     "But do not be sad," Simms continued, pacing away 
from the microphone.  His voice echoed in the church's 
rafters even without it.  "Because it is written that 
those who come out of great tribulation shall neither 
hunger nor thirst any more, for the Lamb in the midst 
of the throne shall feed them, and God shall wipe away 
all tears from their eyes."  
     "Amen, brother," called out an old woman.
     "When Mary Magdalene sought the Lord in His 
sepulcher," Simms continued, "two men in shining 
garments appeared and spoke to her, and asked, 'Why do 
you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, 
for he is risen.'  Likewise, do not seek Sherilynn 
among the dead!  For that is part of the covenant the 
Lord makes with us -- that we too shall rise, and 
dwell together in the house of our Father, and while 
`now, we see through a glass, darkly, then we shall 
see face to face.'  I have faith that Sherilynn is 
looking down on us now, and that we shall see her face 
to face again."  He permitted a suitable dramatic 
pause, pacing up and down in front of the first row of 
pews and making eye contact with as many parishioners 
as possible.  
     "Those of us who knew Sherilynn know how much she 
loved to sing.  Her oldest daughter, a member of our 
youth choir, has asked that we sing one of her 
mother's favorite spirituals, 'Go Tell It On the 
Mountain' in her memory."  Simms stepped back to join 
the singers.  Their choir director, little, 
bespectacled Miss Morris, came forward and blew her 
pitch pipe for them.  At her signal, they started in 
on the triumphant strains:
     "Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and 
everywhere,
     Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is 
Lord." 
     Then it became evident that one of the mourners 
was overly distraught.  Someone was shrieking and 
pounding on the back of a pew.  Simms ignored it at 
first.  The parishioners of Covenant Baptist were 
passionate in both their religion and their grief, and 
in his experience, it was better to let them alone in 
such moments.  He assumed the shrieking woman would 
soon get ahold of herself.  The noise got worse 
however, and the banging continued, as if someone were 
desperate to get in.  Or out.  
     It was Sherilynn's second daughter, Shalawn, who 
ran to the casket.  She shoved off the heaps of yellow 
and white lilies and started prying at the brass 
latches.  The choir's close harmony fell apart and 
died.  "Shalawn," cried Simms, "Shalawn!  What are you 
doing?"
     That was when he heard it himself.  The banging 
was coming from inside the casket.  He ran to 
Shalawn's side and helped her pry open the top.  
Sherilynn Jones sat up, gasping for breath and 
clutching at her chest.  Her husband and her three 
girls ran and clung to her, amid general chaos in the 
church.
     In utter shock, Simms stepped back and cried out, 
"It's a miracle!"  The cry was quickly taken up and 
repeated.

A week later
F.B.I. Headquarters
Washington, D.C.

     Scully leaned against a filing cabinet, her 
reading glasses perched on her nose, as she read from 
the papers she was holding.  "'The decedent's name is 
Randolph James Jones, 37, an African-American male, 
from Cumberland Falls, Tennessee.  The suspect is his 
wife, Sherilynn, who was recently pronounced dead of 
viral encephalitis, but then suddenly regained 
consciousness at her own funeral.  The suspect's head 
was found' . . . Mulder, are you listening?" she 
asked.
     "Huh?" he asked, looking up sharply from his 
desk.
"What did I just say?" Scully asked.
     "Uh, someone's head was found somewhere?" he 
asked.
"Sherilynn Jones' head was found plunged into the 
cavity of her husband's abdomen," Scully said.  "She 
literally chewed his belly out.  You'd think that 
would get your attention."
     Mulder looked quite horrified.  "That's really 
disgusting," he said.
     "Are you ok?" Scully asked.  "You've seemed out 
of it all morning."
     "I'm sorry, I just didn't sleep much last night," 
he said.  "Want a sugar-coated coffee bean?  They're 
the breakfast of champions," he said, holding out a 
small paper package.  
     "Champion what?" Scully asked him.
     "Cardiac patients, I suspect.  The place where I 
buy 'em calls 'em Columbian Jumping Beans.  Pretty 
much says it all, really," he said.
     "Just how much sleep did you get?" she asked.  
Her tone was stern, but it came from concern rather 
than disapproval.  There were dark smudges beneath his 
eyes, and she couldn't help wondering what could 
distract him from a story as bizarre as this.  Scully 
would have expected him to be as happy as a pig in mud 
with the Jones case.
     "I dunno . . . from eleven to two and then from 
five to six.  Four hours, I guess," he said.
     "What was the matter?" she asked.  She set the 
new X-File down on top of the filing cabinet and 
walked over to his desk.  
     He sighed and fiddled with a paper clip chain 
he'd been making while she spoke to him.  "I had a 
lousy night," he said.  "It happens, sometimes."
     "Did you fall asleep in front of 'The Fly' 
again?" she asked.
     "'Lawnmower Man,'" he corrected, "but I doubt 
that was the problem."  He was quiet for a few 
moments, and she didn't push him to explain.  
Eventually she just set the case file on his desk, 
figuring he'd look at it when he was ready.  
     When she moved to go he continued, "You know, 
Scully, sometimes even I start to wonder if I'm a 
nut."  She stopped and looked at him.  Then she looked 
at the flying saucer poster behind his desk, the 
plaster cast of a "Yeti footprint" that he used as a 
paperweight, and the heaps of carefully-torn-out 
tabloid articles with headlines like: "Giant Sloth 
Corpse Backs Up Dallas Sewer" and "Discovered: Secret 
Island Facility That Tattoos Prisoners to Death!"  At 
another time she might have laughed out loud.  The 
haunted, reddened look to his eyes stopped her, 
though, and she suddenly found his obviousness to any 
irony rather touching.
     She sat down on the edge of his desk and said, 
"You're not a nut, Mulder."  Actually, he possessed 
most of the qualities necessary to categorize a man as 
a nut, but he had others as well, which prevented any 
diagnosis so dismissive.  Scully considered him to be 
one of the bravest, most selfless people she had ever 
met, and even Bureau higher-ups had to admit he'd 
solved many cases that no one else would touch.  
Because of her affection and respect for him, Scully 
was willing to overlook the Yeti footprint.
     He smiled slightly, seeming to appreciate the 
reassurance.  Of course, she thought, he would never 
have had serious doubts as to his sanity.  In addition 
to courage and selflessness, he possessed a large 
amount of pure cocksure arrogance.  "It just wears me 
down, you know?" he said.  "The ridicule--meeting with 
denial after denial.  When it gets really bad, I 
sometimes read online postings from alien abductees."
     "Because you know they'll believe you, or because 
reading their posts makes you feel sane by 
comparison?" she asked.
     "Both," he said.  "Anyway, last night I logged on 
and found this."  He held some papers out to her and 
she took them.  According to the header, they'd been 
downloaded at 2:32 that morning from a news group 
called alt.recovery.trauma.unexplained.  Although less 
than seven hours old, the printout sheets were bent 
and torn at the edges, as if he'd shuffled and re-read 
them dozens of times.  The posting on top was from a 
person calling herself "Perdita."  
     "She named herself after the dog from '101 
Dalmatians?'" Scully couldn't help asking, amused.
     "The name 'Perdita' is from a Latin word meaning 
'the lost one.'  Shakespeare invented it for a 
character in 'The Winter's Tale,'" Mulder told her.  
He looked less than pleased at her bringing up the 
Disney cartoon.  "Perdita was a little girl who was 
abandoned in the woods on the orders of her father.  
For years everyone assumed she was dead, until one day 
she returned as a young woman.'"
     Scully could already see where he was going with 
this, and she felt torn between compassion and dismay.  
"You want to believe this is your sister," she said.
     "Read it before you tell me what you think," he 
said.  "Here," he tugged out a different sheet and 
laid it on top.
     This was a post dated a few days earlier, from 
someone with the screen name, "The Only Living Boy in 
DC."  Scully recognized it as a variation on a song 
title from "Bridge Over Troubled Water."  "You?" she 
asked.  He nodded.  "That's how you feel?"  She 
suddenly felt very sorry for him.  She hadn't realized 
the extent of the loneliness he must suffer from.
     "Sometimes I'm not sure it isn't literally true," 
he said.  "Everybody around here could be an alien 
clone.  I think Alan Greenspan is."
     "Boy, you're right.  You're not doing well," 
Scully said.  The subject field on the posting read, 
"Re: Is there hope?" presumably after the title of an 
original post that had started a discussion.  
Mulder had written: "Whenever I ask myself that 
question I come up with the answer 'probably not.'  
I've been fighting the official denial for so long and 
come up with so little, that every logical instinct I 
have tells me the whole effort is pointless.  
Sometimes I want to pitch all the work I've done into 
the Potomac, move to a buried bomb shelter in rural 
North Dakota, and become the next Unabomber.
     "Why North Dakota?" Scully asked.
     "Why not?" Mulder answered. 
     She kept reading: "Unfortunately, I'm still a 
relatively young man, and spending the next forty 
years in a bomb shelter sounds like a pretty big 
waste.  Even if what I'm doing now has only a one-
millionth of a percent chance of success, it still 
beats the zero percent chance I'd have if I just sat 
on my hands for the rest of my life.  
     "For those of you who don't know--my younger 
sister was abducted by unexplained means in November 
of 1973, and I've been searching for her ever since.  
I've turned up precisely nothing, but there were times 
when I felt close, and those times have given my life 
a certain meaning.  I guess my answer to the question, 
'Is there hope?' would be, no, not really, but at 
least the illusion of hope helps you keep going."  His 
.sig quote read, "Veritas odiam parit."  
     "My Classical Latin is pretty bad," Scully said, 
"but my guess is that this last sentence means, 'The 
truth buys hatred.'"
     "Well, it has been translated as 'Verjuice and 
oatmeal are good for a parrot,' but your version is 
closer to what I had in mind," Mulder said.
     "This sounds so bitter," she said.  "Have you 
ever considered getting into therapy?" 
     "You can't have therapy for paranoid people, 
Scully, they'd all be too scared to show up.  Usenet's 
the next best thing," Mulder said.  "Besides, I was 
about the sanest person in any psyche program I was 
ever in, if that tells you anything."
     "I'm sorry," was all she could think to say.
     He shrugged.  "It's not your fault," he said.  
"Anyway, read Perdita's response."
     The subject of Perdita's post was, "Re: Only 
Living Boy in DC's 'Is there hope?'"  She had written:  
"You say you've been searching for your sister since 
1973, and I just wanted to ask, how?  I remember 
almost nothing from before I was eight, but I know 
that I had a mother and father once, and an older 
brother.  For all my life that I can recall, I was 
told they died, and that was why I was put in the 
orphanage.  But when my daughter turned eight two 
months ago, I started having dreams about a bright 
light and being somehow taken away.  The people who 
raised me say there was an auto accident, and that I 
must be remembering the lights of the police cars and 
the ambulance.  But in the past, I was told there was 
a fire, or a plane crash, and none of these feels 
right to me.  
     "When I started to read this news group, I 
discovered that I could relate to everything the 
abductees wrote.  I, too, have a need to glance in 
windows and mirrors to see if I'm being followed.  I 
can't say by who.  I have a terror of doctors' offices 
and medical tests.  For twenty-five years I've felt 
like a fraud, as if I were living an elaborate lie.
     "What I want to know is, how can I find out if my 
family is still alive?  I'm afraid to ask the 
authorities.  Can you tell me what I should do?"  Her 
.sig quote was: "'He alone knows love who loves 
without hope.'"
     When Scully was finished reading she set the 
papers back on Mulder's desk.  He was apparently 
engrossed in making a pentacle out of his paper clips.  
"I didn't write her back," he said.  "I didn't know 
what to say to her.  I can't trust myself about this, 
Scully.  I want to believe so much."  Although his 
expression remained neutral, she heard the faintest of 
flaws in his voice.
     "How can I help?" she asked.  She knew that there 
was something he hoped she could do for him, or he 
wouldn't have shown her the printout.  She hoped that 
he wasn't going to demand that she positively ID this 
person as his missing sister.  
     "What would you do, if you were me?" he asked.
     She tried to put herself in his position, 
wondering what she would do if her own sister, 
Melissa, dead since 1995, suddenly seemed to appear 
over Usenet.  She shook her head.  "I don't think I 
could accept it," she said.  "I would want to, more 
than anything, but that very desire would make me 
double, or triple, the amount of proof I would 
require.  I'm sorry, Mulder," she said, "I honestly 
wish I could tell you what you want to hear." 
     "Unless you can tell me honestly, I don't want to 
hear it," he said.  After a few moments, he added, "So 
are we flying to Tennessee, or is this a road trip?"

     As it turned out, they flew.  St. Andrew's Mercy 
Hospital was just south of Cumberland Falls, about 
twenty miles from the Concord Airport.  Mulder had to 
loop their rental car around the local freeways 
several times before he found the place.  "Damn it, 
this is a hospital.  You'd think they'd at least post 
signs," he grumbled.  "Remind me never to get 
critically injured in northeast Tennessee."
     "Does that include critiquing your driving?" 
Scully asked.  He was clearly frustrated, making 
illegal U-turns and squealing across crowded lanes of 
traffic.  Someone behind them honked furiously as he 
changed lanes yet again without warning.  Scully found 
herself clinging to the handle in the ceiling, which 
Mulder referred to as the "'Oh, shit' bar."
     "It's not my fault," he protested.  "All these 
people keep getting in my way."
     "Mulder, I think you should pull over and let me 
drive," Scully said.  He responded by accelerating.  
Much to her relief, she spotted a sign for the 
hospital at the next overpass.  "There," she said.  He 
pulled off onto the exit ramp with a squealing of 
tires.  
After entering the hospital building, they 
identified themselves at the front desk and then 
parted company.  He went upstairs to the psyche ward 
to have a look at Sherilynn Jones, and she went 
downstairs to the morgue, to examine Jones' husband.
     Perhaps a half-hour later, Scully had the remains 
of Randolph Jones splayed out on the autopsy table.  
The county medical examiner had told her that he 
didn't mind her re-checking his work.  "To be honest," 
he'd said, "I'd like to get a second opinion.  This is 
like nothing I've seen before--well, outside of 
leftovers from a barbecue."  Scully found that she 
agreed with his findings: Jones had died due to 
massive blood loss caused by having his belly gnawed 
away nearly to the spine.  
     "There are what appear to be teeth marks on the 
ribcage," she said, speaking to her voice-activated 
Dictaphone.  "I tend to agree with the Bergen County 
ME that the bite marks are those of an adult human.  
The cartilage of the thoracic arch has been gnawed 
away bilaterally below the eighth rib, and on the 
right ribs eight and nine there are characteristic, 
flat incisor marks and groove-shaped canine marks.  
Massive damage has been inflicted to the liver and the 
kidneys--"
     "Oh, man, that is really gross," Scully heard 
Mulder say.  She startled, than stripped off a soiled 
glove and reached over to snap off her recorder.  She 
hadn't heard him come in, but he stood at the foot of 
the autopsy table, looking down at the victim.  
     "Mulder, I'm recording.  You know better than to 
come in and interrupt," she scolded.  "I'm going to 
have to record that last part over, unless the state 
prosecutor wants to stand in front of a jury, trying 
to explain the legal meaning of 'really gross.'" 
     "Sorry," he said.  "But it really is.  Besides, I 
doubt you'll have to worry about any of this becoming 
court evidence.  Sherilynn Jones is not exactly able 
to understand the charges against her or to assist in 
her own defense." 
     "What did you find out upstairs?" she asked.
     "Actually, I was hoping that you'd come up to the 
psyche ward after you were done here.  I think 
Sherilynn's situation falls more into your specialty 
than mine," he said.
     "What do you mean?" she asked.
     "I think she's crossed the line between 
psychological and medical pathology.  In fact, I'm 
sure she has.  My amateur diagnosis would be massive 
damage to the limbic system," he said.
     "As in rabies?" she asked.  
     "As in whatever will cause huge changes in affect 
and behavior," he answered.  "Before she got sick, 
Sherilynn Jones was a PTA member, a soloist with her 
church choir, by all accounts a happy and dedicated 
homemaker and mother of three.  She is currently in 
five-point restraints with a mouthguard shoved in her 
face, to keep her from attacking the nursing staff.  
That, and she was recently found up to her ears in her 
husband's guts.  That's a bit more than a neurotic 
reaction to a near-death experience, wouldn't you 
say?" 
     "Well, encephalitis often does cause brain 
damage," Scully conceded.  
     "How long does someone have to be down for, 
before brain damage starts?" Mulder asked.
     "It depends," Scully said, "usually between three 
and six minutes."
     "Do you know how long Mrs. Jones was down for?  
Nearly seventy-two *hours*.  I mean, sure Jesus did 
it, but then he didn't eat somebody's liver when he 
woke up," Mulder said.
     "Ok, I'll come up and take a look at her," Scully 
said.  "It'll only take a few more minutes for me to 
finish up here.  From a physical standpoint, at least, 
it seems pretty clear what happened."

     About twenty minutes later, they were getting off 
the elevator onto the third floor.  Mulder tried to 
lead the way past the nurses' station, but was 
prevented by a plump, white-haired nurse whose nametag 
read "Mary."  She planted her little self right in his 
path and folded her arms, as if daring him to run her 
over.  "No one goes back there without signing in," 
she said.
     "I'm sorry, we're Special Agents Mulder and 
Scully," he said.  "We're investigating what happened 
to Sherilynn Jones.  Sandy showed me back about half 
an hour ago."
     "Sandy's on her lunch break," Mary said.  "She 
didn't say anything about you."
     "We're not trying to cause trouble," Scully said.  
"I'm a doctor as well as a Federal Agent, and Agent 
Mulder was hoping I could take a look at Mrs. Jones."
     "Not now," Mary said, "the family's visiting."
     "It's all right," came a woman's voice.  Both 
agents looked over at the doors to the ward.  A young 
African-American woman stood in front of them.  She 
was slender, soft-featured, and wearing a somber navy 
dress.  "I'm Gizelle Lewis, Sherilynn's sister.  Her 
girls and I just stopped in for a moment."  One of the 
doors opened and three young girls slipped out.  
Scully guessed that their ages ranged from about ten 
to sixteen.  All three wore the dark-colored dresses 
of mourning; the older girls' skirts were ankle length 
while the little one's stopped at her knees.  
Something about the old-fashioned style of the 
clothes, plus the far-away look of deep grief in their 
eyes, made them seem almost nun-like, ageless and 
otherworldly.  It occurred to Scully that they'd 
effectively lost both their parents in less than two 
weeks.  
     "I'm very sorry about your mother and father," 
Mulder said gently.  Scully noted, not for the first 
time, that for a guy who claimed to be an embittered 
paranoid, Mulder was extremely good with children.  
She felt very fond of him as she saw the girls' sorrow 
reflected in the compassion on his face.  She knew the 
kids would open right up to him.
     "Thank you," the oldest girl said, with quiet 
dignity.
     Then the little one piped up and said, "I prayed 
to God to bring my mama back.  Reverend Simms, he said 
not to be sad, because we'd be reunited in heaven, but 
I prayed for her to come back anyways.  Then God 
brought Mama back and took Daddy instead."  Her dark 
eyes were flooded with tears.
     "Hush, Cherice," whispered the oldest girl.
     "It's all right," Mulder said, lifting a few 
fingers of his hand to stop her from chiding her 
little sister.  "Cherice, you didn't do this," he 
said.  "This isn't a punishment for wanting your mom 
back.  It doesn't matter what Reverend Simms said, 
everybody's sad when someone they love dies.  
Everybody.  God knows that, and he even knows that 
people might get mad at him for taking their mom or 
dad away."  Cherice's gaze dropped to the tips of her 
shoes, as if she were shocked and ashamed that he'd 
read her thoughts.  "You know what?" Mulder continued, 
"God gets over it.  He's gotten used to these things 
over the past few thousand years."
     Cherice glanced up and flashed him a little 
smile.
     "Thank you," said Gizelle.  Her expression showed 
a sorrowful gratitude.  "We were just going.  If you 
find out what's happened to Sherilynn, will you let us 
know?"
     "Of course," Mulder said.
     Gizelle nodded and smiled at him, then said 
softly, "Come on, girls."  The four of them walked 
away toward the elevators as Mulder looked on sadly.
     While the two agents wound their way back through 
the ward's corridors, Scully looked up at her partner 
and asked, "Why did you go into law enforcement, 
anyway?  You'd have been a wonderful child 
psychologist."
     "No, I wouldn't," he said.  "The first time an 
abused kid walked into my office I'd have to kill his 
parents.  I have zero ability to stay objective; you 
and I both know that.  At least if I get freaked out 
and obsessed while working in law enforcement, I'm 
only going to mess up myself and a bunch of 
criminals."
     "Or else maybe your partner," she said, giving 
him a mischievous smile.
     "Ah, if I was going to make you lose it I'd have 
done that way before now," he said.
     Minutes later Scully stood at Sherilynn Jones' 
bedside, shining a pen-sized flashlight into her eyes.  
Although the woman had been described as violent and 
was bundled up so as to be immobile, to Scully she 
seemed nearly catatonic.  "Both her pupils are fixed 
and dilated," Scully said to Mulder and Dr. Gousha, 
Sherilynn's attending physician.  "Has she been given 
anything narcotic, as a sedative?" 
     Gousha shook his head.  "She's been like this 
ever since she was admitted.  She never speaks, she 
refuses to eat or drink, she seems to have no 
awareness of what's going on around her at all.  But 
if I took those restraints off her, she'd be on you, 
trying to chew your skin off," he said.  Gousha was a 
tall man, balding and with wire-rimmed glasses, so 
that he reminded Scully a bit of Assistant Director 
Skinner.  Gousha's hair was grayer than Skinner's, 
though, and he spoke with a slight Indian accent.
     Scully snapped off the light and pressed her 
fingers to the side of Jones' throat, counting her 
pulse against the second hand of her watch.  "Pulse is 
fifty-eight.  You sure she's been given no sedatives?" 
Scully said.
     "Agent Scully, I do pay attention to the 
medications given to my patients," Gousha said, rather 
tartly.
     "Of course you do, I'm sorry," Scully said, 
trying to smooth the doctor's ruffled feathers.  She 
knew that the sheer pressure of a hospital caseload 
was often enough to make physicians edgy and short-
tempered, even when they weren't dealing with violent, 
resurrected encephalitis patients.  "What about an EEG 
or a CT scan?  Has either of those been run?" she 
asked.
     "Both," Gousha said.  "You can see the results if 
you want.  Maybe they'll make more sense to you than 
they do to me."
     A few minutes later, Scully stood by the nurses' 
station, holding up the results of Jones' CT scan.  
She had her reading glasses on, but she squinted at it 
anyway.  Mulder stood behind her, peering over her 
shoulder.  The man was incurably nosy, Scully thought, 
but then, that was probably why he'd joined the F.B.I. 
in the first place.     
"What am I looking at?" he asked.
     "The inside of Sherilynn Jones' head," she said.  
     "Well, yes, I figured that.  I was talking about 
that there," he said, reaching over her shoulder to 
tap a dark spot in the center of the image.  "Forgive 
my ignorance, but to me that looks like what we laymen 
call 'a great big hole.'"
     "It is.  It's a great big, fluid-filled hole.  
I've heard of people surviving with enlarged cerebral 
ventricles before, but I've never seen anything like 
this," Scully said.  "The damage is so generalized.  
If I didn't know that Sherilynn Jones was apparently 
healthy a month ago, I'd diagnose a congenital 
condition or a late-stage, chronic degenerative 
disorder."
      "I had an MRI done, too, mostly out of my own 
curiosity.  The damned insurance company will never 
pay for it," Gousha said.  "We found very low contrast 
between the gray and white matter, suggesting 
demyelinization, but she seems not to have lost 
corresponding levels of muscle control.  The EEG shows 
only a narrow band of brain wave patterns." 
     "She's got symptoms of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, 
and stroke damage, all at once," Scully said.  "I 
don't understand how this could happen in such a short 
time, much less how she lived through it."     
     Gousha was silent a moment, as if debating the 
wisdom of what he wanted to say next.  Then he asked, 
"Would you mind stepping into the conference room with 
me a moment?"
     "Not at all," said Mulder, although Gousha had 
not seemed to be speaking to him.  As they followed 
the doctor, Mulder shot Scully a pleased look.  She 
knew he was thinking, "Here's where things get good."
     Good, however, like beauty, was in the eye of the 
beholder.  Gousha led them into an empty conference 
room and shut the door.  He did not sit at the table; 
instead he just leaned on it with both hands, looking 
at the agents intently.  Mulder and Scully remained 
standing as well.
     "Don't take this the wrong way," Gousha said.  
"But I've heard about you people.  I understand that 
you get called in when there's a situation that's . . 
. strange." 
     "Our specialty is investigating cases that 
conventional methods have failed to solve," Mulder 
said.  
     Gousha nodded in apparent approval.  "Well, then 
you'll appreciate this," he said.  "On an impulse I 
showed Sherilynn Jones' test results to one of our 
interns and asked what he thought.  When he saw the CT 
and MRI images, he asked why I was doing scans on 
fetal brains."
     "He obviously didn't look closely at the 
structure of the skull," Scully said.
     "No, but that's not the point," Gousha said.  
"The point is that the incomplete myelinization and 
the lack of differentiated structures does make Jones' 
brain resemble that of a fetus, somewhere in the 
second-trimester. 
"What's more suggestive is that they ran a 
pregnancy test on her before they exposed her to the 
radiation of the CT scan.  When the results came back, 
they showed an HGC level five times the norm for a 
woman of childbearing age."
     "I'm sorry, you're losing me," Mulder said.
     "HGC stands for Human Growth Hormone," Scully 
explained.  "It's present in low levels in all people, 
but you only find it in large amounts in pregnant 
women and newborns."
     "Of course, we checked for an extra heartbeat and 
then did an ultrasound," Gousha said.  "But we found 
no sign of pregnancy."
     "It could be a molar pregnancy," Scully 
suggested.  Then, realizing that was likely to lose 
Mulder, too, she added, "That's when placental cells 
turn cancerous and burrow into the tissue of the 
uterus.  They produce high levels of HGC and mimic 
pregnancy."
     "But not at 50 nanograms per milliliter in the 
plasma," Gousha said.
     "No," Scully agreed.  "You don't even find that 
level in a newborn."
     "So you think Sherilynn Jones has been aging 
backward?" Mulder asked.
     Scully and Gousha exchanged uneasy looks.  "I 
don't think I'd put it quite like that," Gousha said.  
     "How would you put it?" Mulder asked.  
     "I'd say that somehow the encephalitis may have 
triggered the activation of a gene that normally 
functions only in fetal life.  To be honest, there are 
a lot of people looking for that gene, since if we 
could isolate and control it, we could cause the 
nervous system to repair itself.  No more irreversible 
paralysis or brain damage," Gousha said.
     "There's more going on here than just the 
activation of a gene," Mulder said.  "Last I heard, 
fetuses didn't attack people and chew out their 
livers."
     Gousha did not seem to appreciate Mulder's 
sarcastic tone.  The doctor's face turned a color 
Scully thought of as "aneurysm red" and he looked 
ready to pitch Mulder out of the room.  Scully spoke 
before either man could say anything, using her most 
reasonable voice.  "Dr. Gousha, were you able to 
isolate the type of encephalitis that Mrs. Jones had?" 
she asked.  "I'm sure we could understand it better if 
we knew where it came from."  
     "Well, I can tell you that the infection was 
probably viral, but not what specific virus caused 
it," Gousha said, still glaring at Scully's partner. 
"Ms. Jones' blood has tested negative for antibodies 
to all the disease strains we've tried.  However, due 
to the time of year in which she contracted the 
illness, and the fact that she seems not to have 
passed it on to anyone, I would guess that she was 
infected by an arbovirus."
     "Meaning what?" Mulder asked.  
     "Meaning that the disease vector was likely a 
mosquito or a tick," Scully said.
     "A tick?  As in the things that bury their heads 
under people's skin and drink their blood?" Mulder 
asked.  "By the way, Scully, just how much spilled 
blood was found around Mr. Jones' body?" 
     "I don't think we need to--" Gousha began, but 
Scully smoothly cut him off.
     "Agent Mulder often looks for explanations in the 
realm of extreme possibility," she said.  "At times 
that makes people uncomfortable, but he does have an 
exceptional success rate with unusual cases."  Scully 
caught Mulder's look of appreciation, but did not 
acknowledge it in front of Gousha.
     "Well, it's one thing to say that Jones has had a 
fetal gene activated, it's another to say she's 
turning into a giant tick," grumbled Gousha.
     "Is there any way to figure out where this 
unknown virus could have developed?" Mulder asked.
     "Indirectly, there might be," Scully said.  "Most 
arboviruses cycle between arthropods and non-human 
vertebrates before they infect the human population.  
I could call the local Animal Control Office and ask 
whether a larger-than-usual number of dead birds or 
horses have turned up lately."
     He wordlessly held out his cell phone.

Cumberland Falls Hampton Inn,
10:55 p.m., Central Time

     Mulder sat looking at his laptop computer, which 
he'd set up on the hotel room's little table.  He 
hadn't mentioned to Scully that he'd asked Perdita to 
log onto an abductee chat room at midnight, Eastern 
Standard Time.  He could practically hear what Scully 
would say to him: "Don't do this to yourself.  You're 
picking open an old wound and making yourself 
miserable for no reason."  He also knew that he 
wouldn't listen to her.  It was just as well that he 
hadn't brought it up, he thought.  Scully wasn't all 
that pleased with him right now, anyway.  She'd chewed 
him out on the ride back from the hospital for being 
"surly and unprofessional," with Gousha, and when he'd 
argued with her she'd accused him of acting like and 
out-and-out jerk.  However, at the moment he was too 
preoccupied to care much about what she thought of 
him, which was probably one definition of `jerk,' he 
thought.  
     He glanced over at the bedside clock and watched 
it change to 10:56.  He briefly toyed with the idea of 
just going to bed, which was doubtless what Scully 
would consider the mature and reasonable thing to do.  
Then he muttered to himself, "As if," and turned the 
computer on.  He'd already plugged in the phone line, 
and it took less than a minute for him to get set up 
on the chat room called "The Haven."  
     He recognized several of the participants' screen 
names.  A person calling him/her/itself "The Stolen 
Child" was lamenting yet again about being forced to 
participate in a test where something uncannily like a 
TV antenna was shoved up people's noses.  The Stolen 
Child was being comforted by "Darla," moderator of 
alt.recovery.trauma.unexplained as well as the 
maintainer of an FTP site where material relating to 
"Healing from Unexplained Trauma" could be downloaded.  
Mulder typed in his own two-cents worth of advice, 
allowing his screen name to be posted along with the 
others, then he waited. 
     The bedside clock flicked to 10:58, :59, 11:00.  
He waited a good ten minutes more before deciding to 
give up.  After all, he almost hadn't logged onto the 
chat room himself, so he could hardly blame Perdita 
for standing him up.  Just as he was about to hit the 
"Close/Exit" button, however, text scrolled up from 
the bottom of the screen reading: "Perdita: OLBiDC?"
     That was the acronym some abductee newsgroup 
subscribers attached to him.  Mulder felt his pulse 
rate pick up.  For some reason, this reminded him of 
the first time he'd gotten up the nerve to call a girl 
on the phone, and she'd actually answered.
     "Hi, I'm glad you showed up," he typed in.
     There was a brief pause, and then she wrote back, 
"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
     "I know we're not supposed to exchange any 
identifying information in this chat room," he wrote,  
"But there are a few things I'd like to tell you about 
myself.  No, actually, I was hoping I might be able to 
tell you some things about yourself."  
     "What do you mean?" she wrote back.
     "My sister's name was Samantha Ann and she was 
abducted from Chilmark, Massachusetts, on November 27, 
1973," Mulder wrote.  "She'd turned eight just the 
week before.  I'm four years older, the son of a State 
Department employee and his wife.  My parents divorced 
shortly after my sister disappeared, and I have reason 
to believe that my mother blames my father for her 
disappearance.  Perdita, does any of this sound at all 
familiar to you?"  
     "No," Perdita wrote.  Mulder released the breath 
he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and shut his 
eyes.  He could feel tears of either disappointment or 
relief prickling behind the closed lids.  When he 
opened them again he saw that Perdita had written, 
"Well, my birthday is in November, and I believe my 
brother was twelve when I was taken.  But other than 
that, nothing.  Just the bright lights, and the sense 
of something terrible happening."
     "Can you try to remember?" he urged.  
     "I've been trying all my life," she wrote back.
     Mulder ran through his own memories, trying to 
come up with something that might jar a person's 
recollection after twenty-five years of repression.  
"The last Mothers' Day before my sister disappeared, 
we set the kitchen on fire trying to make our mom 
breakfast," he wrote.  "Actually, I was the one who 
set it on fire.  The teapot was this ceramic thing 
that had a cork bottom on it, and you were only 
supposed to pour tea into it once it was already 
brewed, but I didn't know that.  I put it on the stove 
to boil and within a couple minutes it turned into 
this ball of flame, which I had to beat out with oven 
mitts.  
     "Samantha had some problems with the orange 
juice, too, because we had only one orange.  She 
squeezed out all the juice she could, which amounted 
to about three fingersfull in an eight-ounce glass.  
She raised the level by scooping out the pulp and some 
of the peel, too, and dumping that on top.  Our mom 
took one sip of it and spat it out.  She said, `It's 
lumpy.'  I'll never forget the look on her face.  I 
probably shouldn't think of it as being funny, but I 
do.  I guess the whole thing must have been pretty 
bad, because Mom has never, ever, let me cook for her 
again, and I am now thirty-six years old.  Every time 
I offer she says, `Oh, no, let's go out.'"
     "My kids can't cook, either," Perdita wrote back.  
"Every Mother's Day I wake up listening to them 
fighting in the kitchen.  So far I've been lucky; the 
worst I've gotten is burned toast and runny eggs."
     "You don't remember setting the kitchen on fire, 
huh?" Mulder wrote.
     "I'm sorry, I don't remember anything," Perdita 
wrote back.
     "What about this?" he wrote.  "I once taped my 
sister to a swingset pole.  She wouldn't stop 
following me around, so I had a friend of mine hold 
her against the pole while I wrapped packing tape 
around her whole body, cocoon-style.  She stayed stuck 
there a good, long while."
     "That's awful," Perdita wrote back.
     "I wasn't a very nice kid," he wrote.  "I guess I 
can see why someone might want to repress memories of 
me."
     "I'm sure your sister knew you loved her," 
Perdita wrote.
     "I doubt it.  I never told her.  I spent most of 
the eight years I had with her trying to get rid of 
her.  My mom used to tell me, `Be careful what you 
wish for,' but that went in one ear and out the other.  
I bet there are a lot of people who'd say I got 
exactly what I deserved," he wrote back.
     "They didn't do this to punish you," Perdita 
wrote.  "It had nothing to do with you at all.  The 
ones who do this--who take kids away in the night--
they say it's for a higher purpose.  They say we'll 
all be taken home, someday, once the tests and the 
trial runs are through.  They say it'll be soon, now, 
they've set a date."
     "Perdita, who says that?  Who gave you that 
information?" Mulder wrote.
     "If I gave you names, they wouldn't mean anything 
to you, and it would only put you in danger," she 
wrote back.  "Besides, they're not all bad people.  
Some of them only use the lies to fight bigger lies."
     "If that's true, then why don't they stop the 
tests?" Mulder wrote back.  "Why do they keep lying at 
all, if they mean well?  Perdita, they're not good 
people.  They're only telling you what you want to 
believe."
     "That's not true," she wrote back.  "You don't 
know anything about me or my life."
     "*You* don't know anything about your life," he 
pointed out.  "Don't let them make you do their lying 
for them.  I want to ask you something, and if you 
don't know the answer or if you're too scared to tell 
me, then that's all right, I'll understand.  Please 
just don't lie to me, ok?"
     There was a brief pause, and he wondered if she'd 
hung up.  "Ok," she wrote at last.
     "There's a man dead in Tennessee.  It seems as if 
his wife killed him, but I doubt that she knew what 
she was doing.  There's something very abnormal about 
her brain.  Her doctor told me that it looked like a 
gene had been turned on inside her, one that's usually 
only active before a person is born.  He said that a 
lot of people would like to identify that gene, 
because it could make nerve cells divide and repair 
themselves.  Normally, in adults, that can't happen," 
he wrote.
     "You mean like how Christopher Reeve broke his 
neck and ended up in a wheelchair?" she wrote back.
     "Exactly like that," he wrote.  "This woman--the 
one who killed her husband--nearly died of a disease 
that causes brain swelling.  My partner tells me that 
this kind of disease is spread by mosquitoes or ticks.  
I have known people, who may or may not be part of our 
government, to use insects as a natural dispensing 
device for everything from molecular tagging to 
artificially recombinant DNA.  Perdita, to the best of 
your knowledge, are these people who have `set the 
date' responsible for this?  Are they using blood-
sucking bugs to inject unsuspecting people with 
manufactured hormones or genetic material?"
     There was no response for some time.  "Darla" 
broke into their conversation, then, and wrote: "The 
point behind `The Haven' is that people can speak 
openly without fear of identification or retribution.  
OLBiDC, you're pushing Perdita too hard.  Whatever she 
does or doesn't know is her own business."
     "It's all right," Perdita wrote back.  "I'm not 
sure about the answer to your question, but there is 
somebody I can ask."
     "Is it safe?" Mulder wrote.  "I don't want you to 
get into a position where you're in danger."
     "He would never hurt me," she wrote.  "He's 
protected me before."
     Mulder couldn't help thinking about Deep Throat.  
"I had a friend like that, once.  What's left of him 
is buried in Arlington National Cemetery," he wrote.
     "This is more than a friend.  It'll be ok," 
Perdita wrote.
     "Make your safety and that of your children your 
first priority," he wrote back.
     "Of course I will," she wrote.
     The screen was inactive for a moment, and Mulder 
began to think that the conversation was over.  He was 
about to write "Good night," to her, when a new line 
scrolled up.
     "OLBiDC?" she wrote.  "There's only one clear 
memory I have of my brother.  It was Halloween, maybe 
in `71 or `72.  I was dressed up as a ballerina, not 
that anybody could tell, since my mom made me wear my 
coat over my costume.  For some reason, my brother was 
wearing our dad's V-necked black sweater, which went 
practically to his knees.  He was carrying around a 
toy ray gun that made these awful noises when you 
pulled the trigger, too.  We were way down the road 
away from our house when some bigger kids jumped out 
from behind a bunch of trees and chased me.  I think 
one of them had on a gorilla mask or something, and 
for some reason, that really scared me.  I tripped and 
fell over a low wall and lost most of my candy in the 
grass.  
     "I remember my brother shouting at the kids, 
saying all these words that my mom would have killed 
him for if she heard.  He fired the ray gun at them, 
too.  Now that I think about it, I bet he did that 
because of the flashing lights, so he could see who 
they were.  They got away, though, and all he could do 
was help me pick some of my candy out of the grass.  
We went back the next day to try and find the rest, 
but it was gone.  Other kids must have gotten it.  
     "I'm sure my brother was no angel--my son is 
often really horrible to his sister--but at least 
sometimes, he was very nice to me."
     Mulder looked at the screen through tear-filled 
eyes.  He found that he had his arms wrapped tight 
around his ribcage, as if he'd taken a vicious belly 
wound.  One handed, he typed, "I was supposed to be 
Dr. Smith from `Lost in Space.'"
     "Oh," Perdita wrote back.
     "It's ok.  Nobody else knew what I was, either," 
he wrote.

     The next morning Scully tapped on his door with 
one knuckle.  "Mulder?" she called out.  No response.  
"Mulder, I've got coffee," she said.  After a moment, 
the door's latch snapped open and he peered out at 
her; unshaven, in rumpled shirtsleeves.  She held out 
a styrofoam cup with steam coming through its closed 
lid. 
     He accepted the cup and wandered back into the 
room, leaving the door open.  She took this as an 
invitation and walked in after him.  He stood facing 
away from her, holding the cup to his lips.  "Are you 
ok?" she asked.
     "I'm great," he said.  
     "I didn't ask for your opinion of yourself, I 
asked . . ." the wicked smile on her face died along 
with the sentence.  Scully found she didn't have the 
heart to tease him, not now.  "To be honest, I was 
worried," she said.  "I heard you crying last night."
     He shrugged.  "So?" he asked.
     "What do you mean, `So?'" she said.  "Do you 
think I'm not supposed to care?  I tried calling your 
room and the line was busy, and you didn't answer the 
door.  For the record, I could have used the spare key 
you gave me to barge in on you, but I didn't."  
     "Thank you," was all he said.
     "Look, you don't have to talk about it," she 
said.  "But would you at least promise me a couple 
things?  First, please take your emotional state into 
account before you make any decisions.  About this 
case, about your personal life, anything.  Second, if 
there's anything at all I can do, let me know.  You 
once told me that I was the only one you trusted.  
Don't shut me out completely."
     He turned around and looked at her, then nodded 
once.  "I'm not trying to be a jerk," he said.
     "So you're telling me that it's a natural talent 
that comes to you effortlessly?" she asked.
     That got a lopsided smile.  "Ah, abuse.  I was 
beginning to wonder how hanging around with you served 
my general need for paranoia and distress."
     "If I was too nice to you, you'd wonder who I was 
working for," Scully told him.
     "True," he said.  He put a hand on her shoulder 
and walked her to the door.  When they reached the 
doorway, he stopped and said, "Thank you for your 
concern."  Then without changing his serious 
expression, he added, "Now get out of my hotel room.  
Shoo."  He waved his free hand at her, as at a 
mosquito. "Vaminos, you evil tongued, red-headed bring 
of bad coffee."
     "Clean up quick--we've got a flight to catch in 
less than an hour," she said.
     "We can get to the airport really fast if I 
drive," he said.
     "We may never get there at all if you drive," she 
said.  He succeeded in expelling her from the room and 
shut the door.

     They were actually waiting at the boarding gate 
when Scully got the call.  It was from a police chief 
in Georgia, who tried to speak to her over hellish 
amounts of static.  Mulder came over and tugged her 
arm as she stood very still, trying to catch the 
chief's words.
     "Come on, they're seating our section," he said.  
She held up a hand to silence him.  
     "Of course, sir, we'll do what we can," Scully 
said into the phone, and then she mouthed at Mulder, 
"Have you got a pen?"  Looking mildly annoyed, he dug 
one out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and 
handed it to her.  Scully wrote the information the 
police chief gave her on the back of her plane ticket 
envelope.
     After she hung up, she said, "There's been 
another one.  A man in Georgia regained consciousness 
after apparently dying of encephalitis, and ate a 
morgue attendant."  Mulder looked a bit pained, as if 
he would have rather not had to think about that.  "It 
gets weirder," she said.
     "It always does," he replied.
     "The suspect, an Ed Vargus, had his spine crushed 
in an auto accident ten years ago and was paralyzed 
from the waist down.  When the hospital security 
officers came to pull him off the attendant, he got up 
and rushed at them, biting one of them several times," 
she said.
     "So what you're saying is that if we get on this 
plane now, we'll regret it.  Maybe not now, maybe not 
tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives?" 
Mulder asked.
     Scully just looked at him for a moment.  "That 
sounded so much more romantic in `Casablanca,'" she 
said.
     "I think human ticks are romantic," he said, as 
she picked up her carry on bag and left the boarding 
line.  He followed her, insisting, "I do."

     Against her better judgement, Scully let Mulder 
drive.  They did get to Georgia very quickly.  
Entering Vargus' hospital room, Scully had a sense of 
deja vu.  The patient was different, but the 
restraints, the hospital room and the diagnosis were 
much the same.  
     Vargus' physician was Dr. Atkins, a tiny, plump 
woman whose smooth bubble hairdo was dyed a startling 
shade of orange-blonde.  Even in low heels, Atkins 
came up to about the level of Scully's nose.  Somehow, 
Scully found this disconcerting, as if she were Alice 
and had grown huge while down the rabbit-hole.  Atkins 
looked even odder after she'd balanced a pair of half-
glasses on the end of her nose, which magnified her 
blue eyes to an enormous size. "Dr. Scully," Atkins 
said, "I have been practicing medicine for nearly 
forty years, and this is the first time anyone has 
ever asked me to run a pregnancy test on a man."  
There was a slight nasal twang to Atkins' voice, 
reminiscent of New England, which seemed particularly 
strange here in the South.  
     Scully did not allow herself to register 
amusement or surprise.  Mulder, however, didn't quite 
seem able to keep a smile off his face, and Scully 
hoped Dr. Atkins wouldn't take offense.  "Dr. Atkins, 
I'm sure Mr. Vargus isn't pregnant," Scully said.  
"What I want to find out is if his blood contains a 
high level of Human Growth Hormone.  A woman in 
Tennessee recently started suffering from these same 
symptoms, and she had a plasma level of 50 nanograms 
HGC per milliliter."
     "Oh, my," said Atkins, blinking at her.  "In that 
case, I should suspect a molar pregnancy."
     "I don't believe they were able to rule that 
out," Scully admitted, "but there were also major 
changes in the structure of the woman's brain.  An MRI 
revealed a layer of undifferentiated neural cells 
around the perimeter of the skull, with a fluid-filled 
cavity in the middle.  Frankly, it resembled the 
closing neural tube of a second-trimester fetus."
     "How extraordinary," said Dr. Atkins.  "Well, I 
can order the tests immediately.  The insurance 
company won't like it, you know.  They hate having to 
pay for MRIs.  In this case, however, they shall have 
to put up or shut up, as the saying goes.  We may be 
looking at scientific history in the making."  She 
proceeded to give orders left and right to her staff, 
sending them scurrying like chickens in the rain.  
     Atkins then invited the agents into her office, 
which was packed from floor to ceiling with medical 
journals, books, plastic models of molecules and the 
occasional Frankenstienian tissue sample floating in a 
jar.  Scully leaned over and whispered to her partner, 
"All she needs is an `I Want to Believe' poster."
     He nodded.  "I think I'll have to send her one," 
he said.  Scully could tell he was about ready to 
adopt Atkins as a kind of eccentric aunt.
     Atkins was speaking to them as she sifted through 
the piles of paper on her desk, apparently oblivious 
to their conversation.  "There are persons whose 
bodies continue to produce fetal hemoglobin all their 
lives, and thus suffer from a type of anemia.  Trace 
amounts of fetal hormones are often found in people 
who have tumors of the gonads or the adrenal glands.  
This--aha!"  She pulled a book from under the general 
heap of her desk and flipped it open to a dog-eared 
page.  She passed it across the desk to Scully, and 
Mulder crowded in so he could look over her shoulder.  
The book was opened to a photo of a squamous, aquatic 
creature with tiny legs that dangled limply in the 
water.  A ruler placed next to it for size comparison 
showed that it was nearly two feet long.
     "That's one hell of a tadpole," Mulder said.  "I 
don't even want to see the size of the frog it turns 
into."
     "It won't," Atkins said.  "This is an axlotl."  
She pronounced the word with great distinctness, as if 
introducing a new term to a first-year med student.  
"This particular breed remains in a larval form all 
its life.  Another breed, however, the Ambystoma, may 
or may not develop fully into a land-dwelling 
creature, depending upon its environment.  There are 
those who say that it was the axlotl that gave rise to 
the myth of the fountain of youth."
     Scully could almost see the little wheels 
spinning in Mulder's head, and she thought she'd 
better rein him in while she still could.  Atkins had 
no idea whom she was encouraging.  "Dr. Atkins," 
Scully said, careful to make sure her tone showed 
respect, "Even an axlotl has to remain in its adult 
form once it's achieved it.  It can't age backward."
     Atkins just looked at her for a moment with her 
weirdly magnified blue eyes.  Her expression seemed 
mildly disapproving.  "Yes, well that is entirely 
beside the point," she said.  "Dr. Scully, this is a 
clue to our genetic memory.  The DNA of all creatures, 
humans included, is full of dormant gene sequences.  
Some of them become active earlier or later in life, 
while others never seem to activate.  These may be 
evolutionary throwbacks to some common ancestor, like 
the bones of our residual tails which connect us, 
genetically, to the lower primates.  
     "In humans, for the most part, the activation of 
dormant genes is random and detrimental.  Such genes 
may cause cancer or blood disorders, or any number of 
other disadvantageous mutations.  The axlotl, by 
contrast, can choose which of its genes to activate or 
suppress in order to enhance its chances of survival.  
Think what we could accomplish if we could learn the 
trick of selective gene expression.  Snippets of DNA 
that are useless to us now could save people's lives.  
No more cancer, no more anemia or paralysis . . ."
     Scully noted that Mulder's eyes had lit up like a 
kid's at Christmas.  "Dr. Atkins, would it be 
possible--in theory--to create a virus that invaded a 
cell and rewrote its genetic code so that certain 
dormant genes were turned on?"
     "You wouldn't need to create one, child.  What 
you've just described is called cervical cancer," Dr. 
Atkins said.
     "I think Agent Mulder wants to know if you could 
activate genes that code for behavior--ones even more 
ancient than those of the `racial memory' we're 
supposed to share with our ice-age ancestors.  He's 
asking if you could genetically turn a person into a 
giant tick," Scully said.  Mulder responded with one 
of those vigorous nods that always made Scully wonder 
that she couldn't hear his brains rattle.
     Dr. Atkins blinked, looking a bit surprised.  
"Man did not descend from the ticks," she pointed out.
     "But humans and ticks descended from some common 
ancestor, right?  What if someone could activate that 
ancestor's genes in humans?  Dr. Scully tells me that 
the disease vector for this kind of encephalitis is 
probably a mosquito or a tick.  My understanding is 
that that means that the virus has to pass through the 
body of a bug to be contagious.  The tick's metabolism 
adds some necessary thing to it.  Could that tick 
contribution be somehow passed onto us?" Mulder asked.
     Atkins leaned across the desk--no mean feat for 
someone of her height--and patted Mulder's hand.  "You 
watch too much television," she said.

     "I still think the tick gene thing makes sense," 
Mulder grumbled as they pulled out of the hospital 
parking lot later.  Much to Scully's relief, he'd 
agreed to let her drive. 
     "Yes, Mulder," was all she said.  She was 
preoccupied, trying to make sense of the test results 
they'd gotten on Ed Vargus.  Just like Sherilynn 
Jones, he had a huge fluid-filled cavity in his brain 
and his HGC level was through the roof.  There was no 
question of molar pregnancy in his case, either.  The 
strangest thing was that she'd seen the x-rays and CT 
scans of Vargus taken after his auto accident, and the 
man's spinal cord had obviously been crushed.  It 
didn't take an M.D. to look at the images and 
recognize shattered bone chunks and the frayed-halo 
image of a torn spinal cord.  But when the linebacker-
like nurses' aide had unfettered Vargus' feet, his 
legs had kicked wildly at anyone who got near him.  
Whatever had destroyed Vargus' mind seemed to have 
miraculously healed his body.
     She'd called the Center for Disease Control in 
Atlanta, hoping they could use Jones' and Vargus' 
histories to pinpoint a location where the disease was 
originating.  It seemed to be a late-summer, eastern 
U.S. phenomenon, which meant it was better contained 
than a lot of diseases, but it still had the potential 
to effect a lot of people.
Mulder talked to her throughout most of the long 
drive, but she was too preoccupied to listen to him.

Mulder's apartment,
Late that night

     Mulder looked at his computer screen through one 
open eye.  The starfield screensaver had kicked on 
again.  He hit the spacebar to turn it off.  In its 
place appeared the image from "Akira" that he 
sometimes used as wallpaper--an animated picture of a 
grim and furious-looking adolescent struggling his way 
from the burning wreck of "New Tokyo," gripping a 
weapon that resembled an oversized radar gun. 
     He'd given Perdita his e-mail address and all of 
his phone numbers--work, home, and cellular, despite 
the vociferous disapproval of Darla and other "Haven" 
chat room regulars, who considered anonymity their 
best defense.  Mulder suspected that his mailbox would 
soon be full of flame messages from angry alien 
abductees.  This was not a pleasant thought, but then, 
he'd said all along that he'd rather be right than 
popular. 
     Langley had once sent him a sound file named 
"Kill_Barney.wav," which alerted him whenever he got 
e-mail.  Because of this, Mulder would know if Perdita 
tried to contact him via computer.  So far, he'd heard 
nothing.
     He got up to go contemplate the contents of his 
refrigerator.  He possessed two long-necked beers, a 
cardboard box with deeply scary old pizza in it, a jar 
of horseradish sauce, and a half-empty 2-liter of 
Pepsi.  Scully had stuck "biohazard" stickers on the 
horseradish and the pizza box the last time she'd come 
over.  She'd been known to stick Surgeon General's 
warnings in his sock drawer, too.  There were 
drawbacks to having a friend with access to medical 
paraphernalia, he thought.  He shut the fridge.
     Just then, his computer started to sing: "I love 
you, you love me--" in a dopey voice that was cut off 
by the sound of suspiciously M-16-like automatic fire.  
This meant Mulder had e-mail.
     He ran to his computer and retrieved the message.  
It read: "Fox, they're sending someone over to meet 
with you.  No one will hurt you--I have their promise.  
You can trust me.  --Perdita."
     Within the minute there was someone banging on 
his door.

Later,
A Room

     For the moment, Mulder was by himself.  Although 
the room he'd been left in was sparsely furnished, it 
somehow conveyed a sense of great opulence.  Queen 
Anne furniture, sinuous and dark, harmonized well with 
the ink brush paintings of Chinese dragons on the 
walls.  Similar dragons in porcelain and bronze stood 
on the mantelpiece of a cold fireplace.  "Spring" from 
Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" was playing softly from an 
unknown source.  A cut-glass decanter full of deep 
ruby liquid rested on a little table, beside two tiny, 
long-stemmed glasses.
     In his sneakers, jeans, and New York Knicks T-
shirt, Mulder felt extremely underdressed.  He did not 
quite dare to sit in one of the room's leather, 
wingbacked chairs.  He thought that he would have felt 
better if he were armed.  
     At last, the room's door opened and woman walked 
in.  She had short, steel-colored hair and wore a 
dove-gray quilted robe cinched around her delicate 
waist.  "Fox?" she asked.  Her voice had a trace of a 
British accent.
     "Mulder, please, ma'am," he corrected.  
     "Of course," she said.  "Mulder."  She walked 
across the room to the table with the decanter.  She 
poured herself a glass of the red liquor and then 
lifted the empty glass toward him in a wordless 
invitation.
     "No, thank you," he said.  He needed to keep his 
head clear, and besides, just because she appeared to 
be drinking that stuff didn't mean she hadn't drugged 
it.  Time and again, Mulder's knowledge of ancient 
myth had steered him right, and that knowledge told 
him that he must never drink or eat anything while on 
the Devil's home turf.  
     The Dragon Lady set the extra glass down and 
wandered over to where he stood.  In her ivory satin 
slippers she stood no taller than Scully did in 
stocking feet, which meant that the top of her head 
came up to about the collar of Mulder's shirt.  
     "Do you read fairy tales, Mr. Mulder?" she asked, 
and then took a tiny sip of her drink.
     "Ma'am?" he asked.
     "You don't need to call me that," she said.  "You 
may call me Mrs. Gaunt, if you like."
     "It's been a while since I last read fairy tales, 
Mrs. Gaunt," he said.
     "What if I told you that I would answer three--
but only three--of your questions, with the most 
honesty and accuracy I could?" Mrs. Gaunt asked.
     "Why would you want to do that?" Mulder asked.
     "Is that question number one?" Mrs. Gaunt asked, 
with a little smile.
     Mulder didn't answer her at once.  He was not 
amused at her smoke-and-mirrors game, but he could not 
discount the idea that she was offering legitimate 
information.  Obviously, she was counting on his not 
wanting to "waste" any of his three questions on 
ascertaining her identity or reliability as a source.  
Finally, he asked, "Do you know of someone who has 
ordered tests to be done on unconsenting human 
subjects--tests involving an artificially re-activated 
fetal gene introduced through a tick bite?" he asked.
     The corner of Mrs. Gaunt's mouth curled up 
slightly.  "Yes," she said.
     "Why are they doing this?" Mulder asked.
     She just looked at him for a moment, with cool, 
hazel-green eyes.  "They wish to improve the human 
race, to protect it," she said.  "We're terribly 
fragile, Fox, more so than even you realize."
     "Meaning what?" he asked.  
     "Careful now, you'll run through your question 
allotment before you know it," she said.
     "Let's call this an expansion on your answer to 
the second question," he said.
     She smiled at him a bit, but the friendly 
expression got nowhere near her eyes.  He discovered 
that he wished he had a shark cage.  "Don't blow this, 
Mulder," he thought.  If he stayed calm and played his 
cards right, he might come out of this with some 
decent information.  If he screwed up, they'd likely 
be pulling what was left of him out of a landfill.  
     "What would you say if I told you that they were 
among us?" Mrs. Gaunt said.
     "I'd say that doesn't surprise me.  I've been 
telling people that for years," Mulder said.
     She nodded.  "But what no one's been saying, 
because no one knows, that we were offered a choice," 
she said.  "Co-operation--corule, according to others-
-or destruction."
     He wanted to ask which option had been picked, 
but again, that would have been his last question.  
Instead, he said, "I don't recall getting a vote in 
that decision."
     That icy half-smile again.  "You were neither 
born nor thought of at the time," she said.  "Just a 
twinkle in . . . well, your father's, eye.  She took a 
little sip of her drink.  "I knew your father, you 
know," she said.
     "Yeah, and `a powerful Jedi was he,'" Mulder 
snapped at her.  He did not want his father brought 
into this.  There were half-remembered, half-guessed 
things in his family's background that even Mulder 
didn't want to see.  Though he was not usually a man 
who would cling to a comforting illusion in the face 
of an ugly truth, he found it was better to focus on 
the certainties of Bill Mulder's life rather than to 
jump at shadows, grieved by every new innuendo.  "To 
be honest, Mrs. Gaunt," he said, "I get so much shit 
information that I have to keep a plunger by my 
telephone.  What kind of guarantee do I have that 
anything you're telling me is true?"
     She responded by placing her small, cool hand on 
his arm and guiding him over to the window that made 
up most of one wall.  Since it was night, there wasn't 
much visible but the reflection of the room's interior 
in the glass.  When he saw their images, Mulder was 
surprised to see how much he towered over Mrs. Gaunt.  
She didn't seem that little when you talked to her, he 
thought.
     "Fox, do you know where we are?" she asked.
     "Sure," he told her.  This was not precisely 
true.  All he really knew was that he was in a 
metropolitan area within an hour and a half's driving 
time of his house.  The car he'd ridden in had tinted 
windows, which meant that at night, stuck in the back 
seat, Mulder had not been able to see any landmarks 
well.  It had not really helped that at one point, 
he'd tried to catch some sleep.  He realized that 
Scully would just kill him if she knew that.  He 
wondered, not for the first time, whether he was an 
idiot.  
     "What city?" Mrs. Gaunt challenged him.
     He mentally estimated local late-night driving 
times, plus an approximate half hour of winding 
through surface streets and/or backtracking to further 
confuse him, and came up with, "Baltimore?"
     "No," said Mrs. Gaunt.
     "Damn," Mulder thought.
     "More to the point, does anyone *else* know where 
you are?" she asked.
     It was beginning to dawn on him what she was 
getting at.  "I suppose Perdita does," he said.
     "And where is she?" Mrs. Gaunt asked.
     He found he had no answer for that. 
     "So you see, Fox--I'm sorry, Mr. Mulder, you 
really are in no position to question the truth or 
falsity of anything I tell you."  
     Neither of them spoke for some time.  Vivaldi's 
"Spring" faded to silence, which itself was broken by 
the richer strains of "Summer."
     Finally, Mrs. Gaunt said, "You have one question 
left."
     "I know," said Mulder.  "I'm just having trouble 
deciding what else I'd like to be lied to about this 
evening," he said.  
     This was not true; he knew exactly what he wanted 
to ask her.  He just didn't know if he was prepared to 
hear the answer, whether truthful or not.
     At last, he gave in and asked,  "Tell me what you 
know about the woman who calls herself Perdita, the 
Lost One."  He could hear the rough edge of emotion in 
his voice.  Judging by Mrs. Gaunt's speculative 
expression--as reflected in the window--she'd heard 
it, too.  Mulder got the feeling this interview was 
not going well for him.
     "I've known `Perdita' for many years," Mrs. Gaunt 
said.  "Since she was a little girl.  She's been like 
a daughter to me."  He turned to look at her and saw 
the corner of her mouth had curled up again.  The 
expression in her eyes had changed somewhat; now it 
was fierce and protective rather than fierce and 
predatory.  "She has many fine qualities, but one 
thing I must tell you is that she was never too 
tightly hinged.  Not as long as I've known her, 
anyway.  She's reached a point in her life where she 
thinks she wants to do some digging, to fill in the 
gaps in her past.  I have warned her that this would 
be a poor idea.  Nothing she can do will change the 
past, and looking at it too closely might tarnish the 
few joys of her present.  Indeed, it might destroy 
them, and her, completely. 
     "She currently has this notion that involving 
herself with you, helping you in what you perceive to 
be your cause, may lighten the dark corners of her 
memory, or perhaps purge old ghosts.  She's been 
launching quite a `save the ticks' campaign lately, by 
the way, and it may prove effective.  After all, no 
one can deny that the outcome of the preliminary tests 
has been far from ideal.
     "However, as people of the world, Mr. Mulder, you 
and I know that the sort of ghosts that haunt Perdita 
cannot be laid to rest so easily.  If anything, once 
they're fed information they become even hungrier, 
their demands more relentless.  
     "In the interest of maintaining peace, I agreed 
to meet with you, to answer such of your questions as 
I felt were pertinent," Mrs. Gaunt said.
     "'In the interest of maintaining peace?'" Mulder 
repeated.  "You're afraid of her, aren't you, Mrs. 
Gaunt?  You took her deep into your organization 
because you figured you could use her and she was too 
weak to be any threat.  Now you're scared she's going 
to blow you wide open from the inside." 
     Mrs. Gaunt's eyes narrowed, and something like 
anger glittered in their pale green depths.  Mulder 
took this as a sign that he was gaining the upper 
hand, and was therefore much more likely to get a 
bullet in the back of his head.  "That statement just 
goes to show how little you know about anything," she 
said.  She pulled a scrap of paper from the pocket of 
her robe and handed it to him.  "Here," she said.  
"She asked me to give this to you, and I shall, 
although what she intended to accomplish by making me 
play nursie-go-between is entirely beyond me.  You may 
as well know that my visit with you has not been 
without risk to myself," she said.
     Mulder accepted the paper and said, "You sound 
like an informant I once had.  He used to complain a 
lot about how dangerous it was to give me information, 
and then he wouldn't actually give me any.  One night 
I found him shot to death in front of my apartment.  I 
guess nobody likes a whiny double-agent."  When he 
opened the folded note, any further sarcastic comments 
died on his lips.
     The paper had been carefully torn from a lined 
notebook, of the sort children used at school.  The 
writing was a woman's though, or perhaps more 
properly, a lady's.  The cursive hand was flowing and 
"thank-you-note" perfect. 
     Perdita had written a line of lyrics from "The 
Only Living Boy in New York:" "'Let your honesty 
shine, shine, shine.'"  Beneath that were the words, 
"Love you, brother."  
     After looking at it for a moment through swimming 
eyes, Mulder folded the note shut and wandered toward 
the far side of the room.  He leaned against a 
bookshelf there and looked out of, or rather at, the 
window.  He was not impressed by what he saw of his 
reflection: a scruffily dressed man with disheveled 
hair, fatigue-swollen eyes and an expression of 
haunted sorrow.  Had he been offered odds on this guy 
going up against the Dragon Lady over there, he'd have 
backed her all the way.
     "Nobody likes a whiny Federal Agent, either," 
Mrs. Gaunt said tartly.
     Mulder didn't answer her.  He pulled his wallet 
out of his back pocket and, after carefully folding 
the note, tucked it inside.  Then he pulled out one of 
his own business cards, the only thing to write on 
that he had.  He patted his pockets down for a pen and 
came up with nothing.  He found he didn't want to have 
to ask for one, but Mrs. Gaunt spared him the 
humiliation by walking up to him and placing a heavy 
metal ballpoint in his hand.
     "Thank you," was all he said.  Using the side of 
the bookshelf as a writing surface, he wrote across 
the card's upper edge: "`Like a bridge over troubled 
water.'"  That was all there was room for above the 
print of his name.  After a moment, he added, "`When 
you need a friend,'" and drew an arrow up to the list 
of his various phone numbers. 
     "Would you give this to her?" he asked, holding 
the card out to Mrs. Gaunt.  Some small, sane portion 
of his mind told him that handing over his contact 
information to a member of the Shadowy Consortium 
Ladies' Auxiliary was an act of truly suicidal 
stupidity, but he didn't listen.
     "Of course," Mrs. Gaunt said, and flashed him a 
chilly smile. 
Mulder didn't answer her.
"I think you'd best go now.  It's quite late," 
she said.  Right on cue, one of her Men in Black 
appeared at the door.

F.B.I. Headquarters,
Next Morning

As soon as Scully got off the elevator, she heard 
a loud, repeated ka-chunking sound.  Her first thought 
was that workmen were down in the basement.  She hoped 
they were replacing that moldering corner of the 
hallway ceiling.  Then she realized the sound was 
coming from her and Mulder's office.  She started to 
get a bad feeling this was going to be one of *those* 
mornings.
When she walked in the office door she discovered 
Mulder in his shirtsleeves, sitting on his desk with 
his back to her and firing an electric staple gun at 
the wall.  "'Morning, Mulder," she said.  "Please, 
God," she thought, don't let this have something to do 
with a series of bizarre staple gun murders . . . "
"Eighteen inches," Mulder said.
Scully suddenly became worried that this 
conversation was going to turn filthy.  "What?" she 
asked.
"With this gun, you can make a staple stick into 
drywall from a distance of eighteen inches," he said.
She set her briefcase down and walked over to his 
desk.  "Mulder, why are you doing that?" she asked.  
His hair looked freshly washed and he'd shaved, but 
something about the exhausted cast of his shoulders, 
the bleary look of his eyes, told her he hadn't slept.  
"When Sherlock Holmes had a bad day, he'd snort 
cocaine and shoot Queen Victoria's initials into the 
wall.  I've got Columbian Jumping Beans, a staple gun, 
and the Attorney General.  Law enforcement just isn't 
what it used to be," he said.
Scully noted that he had shot what looked like 
the initials "J.R." into a magazine photo of the 
planet Venus that was tacked to the wall.  "I guess 
I'm pleased to know I'm not the only woman in your 
life," she said.
"I've seen those tabloid pictures of Janet Reno 
in a bathing suit," Mulder said.  "Let's not even go 
there."
"You know, we have an actual firing range if you 
wanted to get some target practice," she pointed out.
"But they'd want me to sign in.  I'd have to talk 
to people," he replied.
"Whereas here, you only have to talk to me," she 
said.
"Yeah," he agreed, with no apparent awareness 
that he was being insulting.  
"Mulder, what's going on?" Scully asked.
He set the staple gun down on his chair and met 
her eyes for the first time.  His eyes were red-rimmed 
and he looked absolutely miserable.  "Scully," he 
said, "you have no idea how stupid I've been."
At times she played the role of his priest, and 
she had the feeling he was about to ask her for 
absolution.  In hopes of being able to grant that, she 
opened her briefcase and removed a thin, black, three-
ring binder.  She walked back to his desk and hoisted 
herself up on it next to him.  "No, I have no idea," 
she agreed.  "But seeing as I came in this morning to 
find you sitting on your desk, stapling Janet Reno's 
initials into the wall, I'm willing to believe."
That got a rueful smile out of him.  "What would 
you say if I told you that, in the middle of last 
night,  I willfully got into a car with a couple of 
MIB's on the word of a person I met twice over the 
Internet?" he asked.
"I'd say that that sounded pretty stupid, yeah," 
she said.  "But then, you haven't told me why you did 
it."
"I thought maybe . . . that it would help me 
figure out what happened to my sister," he said.  "I 
met with a woman who gave me this.  From Perdita, she 
says."  He pulled a zipper-seal bag with a note in it 
from the mess on his desk and handed it to her.  
Scully read it over with a sinking feeling.  
"Well, if she wanted to get an emotional reaction out 
of you, she couldn't have picked a better way," she 
said.  He just nodded. "This handwriting is 
exceedingly formal.  It could be an attempt at 
disguise," she said. 
"Yeah," he agreed.  "I figured I'd try to collect 
on some favors over in the Identification Division 
this morning, although even if this was written by my 
sister, I doubt anyone could prove it.  We have no 
fingerprint record of her, and the only writing 
samples we've got are from when she was eight.  I 
guess at least I'll have something in case I ever need 
to ID Perdita, though.  Whoever she is."  He smiled 
sadly a moment and said, "My mom does have Samantha's 
little inked feet prints from when she was born.  Now, 
if Perdita had stepped on this, then we might get 
somewhere."
"Do you think that Perdita really is your 
sister?" Scully asked.
He shook his head.  "I don't know," he said.  "In 
fact, I know exactly the same level of nothing that I 
did before Perdita ever contacted me.  I'm just more 
unhappy now.  Come to think of it, that's been the 
story of my life since I got them to assign me to the 
X-Files."  He sighed and said,  "Scully, I suspect 
that I'm an idiot."
She ran her fingertips over his hair.  "But your 
idiocy theory remains unproven," she teased him 
gently.  "In fact, I can cite a lot of evidence to the 
contrary."
"Are you telling me that my apparent stupidity 
has a rational explanation?" he asked.
"You're in a lot of pain, Mulder," she said.  
"Nobody thinks straight when they're suffering as much 
as you are."  He looked away from her.  Apparently her 
words had touched a sore spot.  "I think your problem 
is that you have unrealistic expectations of what a 
reunion with your sister would be like.  Here," she 
said, opening the three-ring binder on her lap.  "You 
gave me this when I returned to work after my 
abduction."  The binder contained about a hundred 
pages downloaded from a self-proclaimed "unexplained 
trauma" FTP site.  She'd found it lying on top of her 
things as she got ready to leave the office one 
evening, and when she'd opened it, she'd found a 
little yellow sticky-note on the first page that read: 
"Thought this might help.  --M."  
The sticky-note was still there, and when Mulder 
saw it he said, "Never read it, huh?"
"I admit that at first I skimmed it and set it 
aside," she said.  "Mostly because I figured I didn't 
have a lot in common with--wait a minute," she 
searched for and found the correct page, "'Europa,' 
who writes, `Why?  Why did they take out my brain?'"
"Ok, so not every sentence is a gem," Mulder 
conceded, glancing over at her and giving her a 
slightly embarrassed grin. 
"But when I read through it again, after they 
diagnosed my cancer as terminal, I realized that some 
parts of it made a lot of sense, and did provide some 
comfort," she said.  "Like this part, near the back."  
She flipped to the section she wanted and began to 
read aloud: "'Myths about unexplained trauma.  #1.  
Anything that cannot be explained is not `real' and 
therefore cannot cause real sorrow or pain. 
"'#2.  You need to understand in order to heal.  
People who have suffered through an explained trauma 
have only one thing you don't, the knowledge of how 
their injury or loss occurred.  If you asked them 
whether this knowledge provided much relief, they 
would tell you `no.' The truth is that nothing but 
time can take away the pain of a serious loss.  Even 
if you came to understand what happened to you, even 
if your body was magically healed or your abducted 
loved one was returned to you, you would still have to 
face the pain of having been injured or bereaved in 
the first place.  Many people extend their suffering 
needlessly, sometimes for years, by trying to 
understand or to undo the harm done to them, rather 
than accepting and dealing with their grief.'" Mulder 
didn't respond as she finished reading.  He sat 
looking away from her, and seemed very still.
"I lost a sister once too," Scully continued.  
She heard a faint tremor in her own voice and fought 
to control it.  "Although the way she died was not 
unexplained, plenty of people lied to me about why 
someone shot her.  Because of that, I think I can 
understand your anger and frustration about the denial 
you keep running into. 
"But even if Melissa were resurrected tomorrow, I 
know I would still feel just as sad and as angry about 
what they did to her, and about the years we could 
have had together, but didn't.  Maybe you wouldn't 
feel like you had to do such . . . dangerous things, 
and on so little grounds for hope, if you realized 
that finding Samantha now wouldn't take the pain away.  
You lost twenty-five years, Mulder.  You found out 
that even your own parents kept things from you about 
what happened.  Nothing's going to--"  Mulder caught 
his breath sharply, and he shifted even farther away 
from her, raising his hands to his face.  She stopped, 
realizing she'd made him start to cry.
She rested her hand on his shoulder and caressed 
his back with one thumb.  She had nothing to offer him 
but her touch and the truth, and she thought that must 
be very cold comfort, indeed.  "I'm sorry," she said.  
"I wish I could tell you something else.  I wish I 
could make it better for you."  After a moment, she 
asked,  "You don't think you have something to atone 
for, do you?  I hope you're not putting yourself in 
danger out of some need to punish yourself for what 
happened to Samantha in the first place."
It took him a while, but Mulder finally regained 
his composure enough to say, "No, um, it's not that.  
It's just--I've had opportunities to find things out, 
to do something about what happened to her, and I've 
screwed it all up."
Scully released a slow breath, too quiet for a 
sigh.  She remembered an incident that had happened 
one night on an iron bridge.  A man known only as the 
Alien Bounty Hunter had held a gun to her head, 
crushing her body against him with a vise-like grip.  
Mulder had risked the life of a woman he believed to 
be his sister in exchange for Scully's own.  He'd 
never intended the bounty hunter to actually take the 
other woman hostage, but that was what happened.  Even 
after the false Samantha's body had been dredged from 
the river and it became obvious that she'd been 
nothing human, Scully knew Mulder was furious at 
himself for what *could* have happened.  
"Remember Cherice Jones?" she said.  "She thought 
that her prayers had somehow resurrected her mother in 
that terrible state.  You told her that it wasn't her 
fault; that no matter how much she wanted her mom 
back, she couldn't have caused her to rise from the 
dead.  
"What if everything involving your sister's 
disappearance wasn't your fault?  What if it wasn't a 
lack of devotion or effort on your part that has kept 
you from finding her, but that it's just not possible 
right now?  Then you wouldn't have to blame yourself 
so much."  She was quiet a moment, but got no 
response.  "There *are* things that are impossible 
even for Fox Mulder, you know," she continued, with an 
affectionate smile.  "You're a smart guy--hell, you're 
a brilliant guy--and you're so single-mindedly 
determined.  If anybody could have found her, you 
could have.  The fact that that hasn't happened might 
mean that it can't be done.  Maybe it's time to-to 
just be sad about it and let it go." 
     The only answer she got was a renewed bout of 
weeping.  Scully bowed her head, feeling like an utter 
witch.  Nothing like reducing your best friend to 
tears first thing in the morning, she thought.  But 
cruel as the truth might be, she respected him too 
much to lie to him.  Finally, she added, "I really 
wish you'd consider going to see somebody.  You're 
sitting on your desk, crying and stapling the Attorney 
General's initials into the wall.  Even you've got to 
admit that's not normal."  He nodded.  
     She moved some papers and his Yeti footprint to 
the chair so she could scoot closer to him.  Then, 
using gentle pressure on his shoulder, she coaxed him 
into turning around.  She put her arms around him and 
pulled him close.  After a moment, he returned the 
embrace.
     "It's ok," she said.  She reached up to stroke 
the hair at the back of his neck.  "Get it out."

F.B.I. Headquarters
Two weeks later

     Scully glanced at the clock and then at her 
partner's vacant desk.  It was nearly nine a.m. and 
she was still in the office alone, which was very 
unusual.  She hoped Mulder hadn't run off to chase 
UFOs again, like that time in Puerto Rico.  Upon 
reflection, that had been an utter disaster for 
everyone concerned.  
     She was quite relieved when he finally came in 
the door, looking much more cheerful than she'd seen 
him recently.  "You're nearly late," she teased him.  
"I was starting to wonder what happened to you."
     He lifted the clock from his desk and showed it 
to her, just as the numbers changed to 9:00.  "Ha!" he 
said.  "Downtown Alexandria to D.C. in seven minutes.  
And they said it couldn't be done."
     "I think they meant it shouldn't be done," she 
said.  "How many little old ladies did you run off the 
road?"
     "Hard to say-maybe two, but I suspect that was 
their exit anyway," he said.
     "You seem to be doing a lot better," she said.
     "Yeah," he said, as he settled himself at his 
desk.  "I took your advice.  I went and saw a shrink.  
A real, flesh-and-blood one, too, not somebody on line 
who might or might not be an alien abductee."
     "Mulder, that's great," she said.  "I'm 
surprised, though.  I thought you thought all other 
psychologists were insane."
     "They are," he said, "But it occurred to me that 
in order to be helpful, they only had to be saner than 
me, which hasn't been too difficult, lately.  Besides, 
I sort of like this guy.  He's not all creepy-touchy-
feely, like the people who want to hold your hand 
while you to pretend an empty chair is your mother."
     "He must be pretty good to have you feeling 
better so quickly," Scully said.
     "He sees a lot of law enforcement people, a lot 
of post-traumatic stress.  His focus is on getting his 
clients up and functional as soon as possible.  
     "Basically, he just sat there and told me that I 
wasn't a nut, that anybody who'd been through the 
things I have would get a little paranoid and 
depressed sometimes.  You'd be surprised at how much 
hearing that can help," he said.  
     "So this guy spent fifty minutes telling you that 
you're right," Scully said.
     "Yeah.  It was great," Mulder said.
     "No wonder you like him," Scully said.  Then she 
added, "I'm just glad you decided to start taking care 
of yourself."
     He smiled at her, a little ruefully.  "Well, I'm 
thirty-six.  I figured it's about time," he said.  
"Thank you, by the way, for being so good to me when I 
was miserable.  Most people I know would have written 
me off as neurotic freak and told me to come back when 
I could act normal."
     "I'm surprised that you consider my telling you 
how awful your life is as being good to you," Scully 
said.
     "You don't lie to me, Scully, even when lying 
would be easier," he said.  "You don't let my . . . 
let's call it my intense personality, frighten or 
intimidate you.  I'm a volatile guy, I admit it, and I 
think that makes a lot of folks uncomfortable.  Well, 
ok, it scares the hell out of some of them.  Hence the 
basement office."
     Her smile was almost shy.  "Volatile people are 
more interesting," she said.  "If I had to share an 
office with Mr. Rogers, my life would be downright 
dull."
     "I guess the one thing you can say for mutant 
flukemen and human ticks is that they're not boring," 
Mulder said.  
     "Speaking of human ticks, I got some information 
from the Center for Disease Control this morning," she 
said.  "The only connection they were able to find 
between Sherilynn Jones and Ed Vargus is that they had 
both been in the vicinity of Cherokee National Forest 
within a month of the time they contracted their 
illnesses.  The number of dead birds and mammals found 
in that area has been no higher than usual, which 
suggests that--if it is a virus that caused the 
encephalitis--its preferred target is humans.  There 
is also a drug manufacturing company, called Benton 
Pharmaceuticals, right in that area.  The White Collar 
Crime Unit has been going through their financial 
records, and there seems to be a large amount of 
government grant money that was used for unexplained 
purposes."
     "They'll offer up Benton as a sacrificial lamb," 
Mulder said.
     "You think the conspiracy goes deeper," Scully 
said.
     He nodded and pointed to Perdita's note, still in 
the zipper seal bag, which he'd tacked up beneath his 
flying saucer poster.  "The woman who gave me that--
the Dragon Lady--she was no representative of some 
pharmaceutical company," he said.  "What are they 
doing to prevent the spread of the disease?"
     "Well, if ticks are spreading it, the problem 
should vanish by winter, but they've closed the 
National Forest to visitors until spring, just in 
case.  They're also sending helicopters over the area 
to spray it with `Die, Tick, Die!'"
     "Crude, but hopefully effective," Mulder said.
     "And I actually have some good news for a 
change," Scully said.
     "They're replacing that moldy part of the ceiling 
in the hallway?" Mulder asked.
     "No, but two days ago Sherilynn Jones began to 
regain lucidity," she said.  "I'm told she recognizes 
her daughters now and is no longer considered a threat 
to the nursing staff.  The big hole in her brain that 
you saw in the CT scan seems to have closed."
     "What happened?" Mulder asked.  
     "As near as anyone can tell, what appeared to be 
encephalitis--the swelling of the brain--was actually 
Jones' brain creating new neural cells.  The pressure 
in her skull built up and placed her in a deep 
comatose state, not unlike that of supposed `zombies' 
or victims of voodoo poisonings," she said.
     "Don't remind me," said Mulder.  
     "Then, her brain just . . . reconstructed itself.  
The virus seems to have taken it apart, molecule by 
molecule, and then turned on the gene required to put 
it back together," Scully said.
     "Put it back together in its original state, or 
some altered state?" Mulder asked.
     "That's the problem," Scully said.  "Nobody 
knows."

Chrysalis Counseling Center
Alexandria, VA
 
     Dr. Borroughs hit the rewind button on his 
Dictaphone again, reviewing his last client's session 
for his file notes.  When he hit "Play" he heard his 
own voice asking, "So when you discovered that the 
alien corpse was missing, how did that make you feel?"
     "Royally pissed off," was Fox Mulder's answer.
     "Mr. Mulder, that's perfectly normal.  Anybody 
would experience great anger if the dead 
extraterrestrial being they went to so much trouble to 
recover--" he hit "Pause" and jotted a few notes on 
the case entry form.
     Just then his door opened.  A well-manicured 
older gentleman entered his office and said, "Dr. 
Borroughs."  
     Borroughs was a bit surprised, generally he dealt 
only with this man's underlings.  He stood and asked, 
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
     As usual, the Well-Manicured Man answered his 
question with another question.  "Mulder has spoken to 
you?"
     "Yes.  It was quite a productive session," 
Borroughs said.
     "How much does he know?" the Well-Manicured Man 
asked.
     Borroughs gave it some thought.  "I'll say about 
half.  He doesn't see the connections yet, which is 
why he doubts his sanity."
     "But he is sane," said the Well-Manicured Man.
     "Oh, yes.  I'd diagnose minor depression, with 
some features of post-traumatic stress and a 
generalized anxiety disorder, but then, he works in 
D.C.  That's perfectly normal there," Borroughs said.
     "You made me a copy of the tape?" the Well-
Manicured Man asked.
     "Of course," said Borroughs, and handed over a 1" 
x 2" tape with "Mulder, F." written on it.  "He did 
mention something," Borroughs said, and then paused, 
wondering if it would be in his best interest not to 
ask questions.
     "About what?" the Well-Manicured Man asked.
     Borroughs swallowed and said, "He said something 
about an on line contact who was trying to get the 
gene expression experiment cancelled.  Have we got 
operatives on Usenet, or have we got a leak?"
     "The situation is under control," the Well-
Manicured Man said.  "It was actually Sheila's 
decision to handle it in this manner--to sacrifice a 
pawn to take a bishop.  Operation Revision 3 was 
likely to be rolled back anyway; it didn't have the 
predictability factor we were looking for.  I'm afraid 
that as the date draws closer, people panic and allow 
their work to get shoddy.  There will be cleaning up 
to do, in many quarters."
     Borroughs repressed a shudder at the thought of 
what that was likely to entail for some poor bastard.  
He could only hope it would be over quick for the guy.
     The Well-Manicured man tucked the little tape in 
an inside pocket of his suit jacket.  "Carry on, Dr. 
Borroughs," he said as he left.  "Keep up the good 
work."
     "Of course, sir," Borroughs said.  He knew that 
he'd better.

******************************************************
Just In Case You Care:
     The word "revenant" means a person or thing that 
comes back again, literally from anywhere, but it is 
often used figuratively to mean from the dead.  (At 
least three of you already know this, since there's 
several stories called "Revenant" in the Gossamer 
Project archives.  My alternate titles for this story 
were "Smoke and Mirrors" and "Through a Glass, 
Darkly," but, of course, both are already taken.  I 
seem to have really bad luck with titles.  My story 
"Poison" shares its title with two other stories and 
"Fear" was taken by *four* stories and a young adult 
X-Files novel.  *grumble*.  Ah, well.  I'm a loser.  
No big surprise there.  ;  )
     I have no idea whether "Perdita" is or is not 
Mulder's sister.  I think she really did name herself 
after the dog from "101 Dalmatians," though, and that 
Mulder just reads too much into things.  "Mrs. Gaunt" 
did not use her real name.  I suspect that she named 
herself after John of Gaunt, the power behind the 
throne of England's Richard II.  She may or may not be 
the "Sheila" that the Well-Manicured Man refers to, 
but her True Name is "The Dragon Lady."  I think she 
might be the Well-Manicured Man's wife.  It is also 
possible that Mrs. Gaunt and Perdita are the same 
person and this was an elaborate scheme to yank 
Mulder.
     One of the tabloid clippings on Mulder's desk: 
"Discovered: Secret Island Facility That Tattoos 
Prisoners to Death!" refers to a story called "The 
Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka.  I always figured that 
Kafka would have made one hell of an X-files writer.
     To my knowledge, there is no such newsgroup as 
alt.recovery.trauma.unexplained, but upon reflection, 
I think there should be.
******************************************************