From: NathanALD@aol.com
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 21:06:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: New X-Files story: The Soul Stealer (1/6)

Title: The Soul Stealer
Author: Nathan Alderman
Rating: PG
Classification: C
Spoilers: Zero Sum, Never Again
Keywords: X-Files/Due South crossover. 
Summary: When a federal witness is mysteriously murdered while in Ray and
Fraser's custody, Mulder and Scully head to Chicago to investigate. 


Part 4 of 6.

27TH DISTRICT HOUSE
3:06 PM

	The beat-up wooden table was covered with coffee-stained yellow sheets of legal pad, evidence 
folders, chewed-on pencils, computer disks, empty donut boxes and crime scene photos. After nearly three 
hours, every facet of the case had been argued, reasoned, wrestled, plotted, puzzled and sorted out to the 
best of the four participants' abilities. 

	"I just want to know one thing," Vecchio asked of Agent Mulder, rising from his chair and pacing 
around the tiny conference room. "How the hell do you expect me to explain this to my boss?"


 	Lieutenant Welsh leaned back in his desk chair until it groaned in protest and let out a long, 
thoughtful rhinoceros sigh. There was on his face an expression of mild amusement, struggling to conceal 
itself as he looked back across the desk at the two men before him. "Does the wolf come into this 
anywhere?" he asked them

	"Only in a peripheral capacity, Leftenant," the constable replied. 

	"Well. That's very good to know."  Welsh leaned forward and glared. "Vecchio, this is the most 
cockamamie science fiction story I've ever heard. If the Feds can get a warrant, fine, have a ball,  but no 
judge I know is going to believe this. I want hard evidence, Vecchio. If there is a soul-sucking Inuit, I want 
to see him here, in my office. In handcuffs. Or else I'll have a story of my own to tell you. One about a 
promising cop who screwed up protecting a witness and was busted down to directing traffic for the rest of 
his natural life. Do I make myself clear?"

	"Crystal, sir." Vecchio swallowed hard. Welsh took silent joy in seeing him squirm.

	"Good. Then get out of my office."  They left, the unflappable Fraser nodding crisply to him as the 
door closed. From outside his office, Welsh could make out the Mountie's chipper tones: "Well, I don't 
think that went all that badly." Something like a disgusted grunt from Vecchio followed.

	Welsh shook his head. Soul-sucking Inuits, indeed.


FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C. 
4:10 PM LOCAL TIME

	"What is it you need from me?" Assistant Director Walter Skinner asked. He'd been nearly finished 
with the day's paperwork when the phone rang.

	"We'd like a warrant to enter the research facility," Agent Scully replied, on the other end of the 
line. "I've sent you an encrypted e-mail with all the relevant details." Though her explanation of the situation 
had been over for several minutes, that skeptical hesistance he recognized any time she had to advance one 
of her partner's theories had yet to ebb from her voice.

	Skinner thought carefully for a few seconds. Top-secret genetic engineering, a homicidal shaman 
with quasi-mystical powers, soul removal... it seemed to him a wildly improbable story. He'd have to be out 
of his mind to believe any of it. Which, coming from Mulder and Scully, meant that there was probably some 
truth to it. And at least Agent  Mulder hadn't gone and disappeared on them again. 

	"I'll have a copy of the warrant faxed to you in three hours," he sighed, trying to think of how he 
should phrase this all to the judge.

	"Thank you, sir," Scully said, and hung up.

	"Just another day in the FBI," Skinner muttered to himself as he replaced the handset and went 
back to his paperwork. He wondered what he should have for dinner.


THE WATERGATE HOTEL
WASHINGTON D.C.
5:37 PM LOCAL TIME

	While he listened to the phone ring, he snuffed out the stub of his old Morley in the ashtray and lit a 
fresh one. He sucked the smoke greedily into his lungs, held it for one long, satisfying moment, then let it 
drift lazily out from between his tight, pinched lips. The first two chapters of his final draft were neatly 
stacked on the desk beside him, liberally marked in blue editing pencil.

	Finally, the person on the other end picked up the phone. "Patterson here," the small tinny voice 
said into his ear.

	"Roger," he said to the voice. He was trying to sound jovial, but he'd been too long out of practice. 
"How are you. I heard about Dr. Crendall's death. I'm calling to see how that's affected your progress."

	"If you think this has made us slip, you're sadly mistaken. Losing William has... unnerved the staff 
somewhat, considering the manner in which he died and the attention it's garnered from the police and the 
FBI, but I'm happy to report that we continue to make progress. The second design is nearly perfected, and 
we're preparing to implement the third." 

	"And you've managed to eliminate the first design's... shortcomings?," he asked the voice on the 
other end of the phone. "The ones the doctors at Chicago Hope were able to exploit?" He tapped his fingers 
thoughtfully on the large manila envelope sitting on the corner of his desk.

	"Absolutely," came Patterson's reply. "We predict less than one percent survivability with the 
second design. The material your organization has provided to this end is quite remarkable. Very deadly."

	"I should hope so. What about your other project?"

	"The other project? Oh yes. Very good news on that. Using what we learned from the first and 
second designs, we've been able to complete the other project ahead of schedule. We need to run some 
tests, determine its effectiveness, and then it should be able to ship in, oh, maybe a week."

	"Glad to hear it, Roger," he said, taking another puff on the Morley. "Just wanted to let you know I 
have complete confidence in you. Keep up the good work."

	"That's what I'm paid for," he heard Patterson reply. He hung up and slid the manila envelope in 
front of him with the tips of his fingers. There was a single sheet of white paper inside, which he took out 
and read once more.

	Across the top it was labeled U.S. Department of Justice-- Confidential.  It was an intercepted fax 
copy of a federal search warrant issued at the request of the FBI. The names of two all-too-familiar agents 
were listed on the form, as was Genomics, Inc.-- as the party to be searched.

	It was truly a shame, he thought, shaking his head slightly. A lot of money on both sides had been 
invested in Genomics. But when a mess like this was made, it had to be cleaned up. He picked up the phone 
again and dialed.

	"It's me," he said at length. "I need you to do some housecleaning." He took the burnt-down 
cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it resolutely in the tray.


THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO
5:51 PM

	Around sunset, a white van bearing the logo of the local utility company drove slowly around the 
far end of the block and pulled up adjacent to the chain-link fence surrounding the Genomics parking lot. Its 
engine cut off and, several seconds later, the back doors opened. A not-too-tall man in a blue jumpsuit and 
yellow hard hat stepped out of the back, a leather tool belt slung around his waist. He was pale and 
somewhat gaunt, brown hairline receding beneath his helmet. His eyes were as clear and focused as a rifle 
scope. He'd been sent to fix things.

	The fixer found the nearest telephone pole. Planting his spiked shoes into the wood of the pole and 
wrapping his leather belt around it, he began to shimmy to the top. There was a large cubic transformer unit 
at the top of the pole. The fixer noted the thick black wires running from the transformer into the outer wall 
of the Genomics building. Cautiously, he unlatched the access panel and swung it upward to reveal the 
humming white cones of ceramic-coated wire.

	He reached into one of his jumpsuit pockets and, scanning the block in both directions to make sure 
no one was watching, slipped out what looked like half a golf-ball's-worth of grayish putty. A small digital 
device had been pressed into the putty, with tiny wires running from a minuscule green circuit board into the 
doughy mass. This the fixer stuck onto the inside of the access lid, making sure it would not slip off. He then  
closed the lid securely and shuffled back down the pole. He closed the rear doors of his truck and, moments 
later, started the engine and drove away.

	From the deepening shadows of a nearby alley, Harold Carries Clouds watched the van's departure 
with great interest.

	The van drove two more blocks, pulled into an empty, trash-strewn lot, and parked. In the back of 
the van, the fixer stripped off his jumpsuit to reveal a tidy black suit and tie underneath. He reached under 
one of the toolbenches bolted to the inner walls of the van and dragged forth a large black duffel bag in 
which many objects clanked together mysteriously. =46rom beneath the other toolbench, he produced a slim 
steel-encased briefcase, which he opened almost reverently. Inside, gently cushioned in porous black foam, 
was a silver 9mm handgun, an assortment of clips, and a silencer attachment. 

	The fixer filled his pockets with all but one of the clips. He then picked up the 9mm and checked 
the safety. He screwed on the silencer, feeling it click snugly into the grooves of the barrel. Then he lifted the 
last clip, slid it into the butt, turned the safety off and cocked the gun. He heard a round click into the 
chamber.

	Now all he had to do was wait.

6:51 PM

	The four of them and the wolf walked  through the deepening winter twilight, plumes of breath 
trailing from their lips like unanswered questions.

	Ray felt the weight of the 9mm in his coat pocket as it gently thudded against his rib cage. The 
butterflies that visited his stomach every time he got ready to do a raid like this were back in full force. Some 
part of his mind was hoping that no one would take the tires off the Riv back where they'd parked it, but in 
this neighborhood that was no sure thing. Mulder had insisted they leave the car so it wouldn't be 
recognized; let's see him cough up for vintage chrome hubcaps when they go missing, Ray thought sourly. It 
helped take his mind off the anxiety.

	Scully was not used to the cold. She turned her head to study the blank windows of the empty 
buildings they passed, and saw the CONDEMNED signs half-falling off rotten wooden doors. This practice 
of just walking up was something new. She wondered if they could just go up to the front door and say, 
hello, FBI, we're here for the killer virus specimens. And oh yes, keep your heads down, there's a homicidal 
Inuit dropping by any time now. There were times after three and a half years of working with Mulder that 
she wished for simple, ordinary cases involving armed robbery or drug trafficking. 

	Mulder thought mostly of dead and dying children north of the Arctic Circle. In his mind's eye they 
all had Samantha's face. In the back of his brain, near the reptile part he guessed, something reminded him 
that his latest issue of Celebrity Skin  ought to be waiting in the mailbox when he got back to Virginia. It 
was the college issue.

	Fraser was the only one unarmed, out of uniform save for the hat, feeling the wind sting his cheeks. 
He carried a large duffel bag slung over one shoulder. He wouldn't have wanted a gun even if he'd been 
legally allowed to carry one. Not with Harold about. He thought of the Halloween when he was twelve and 
he and Harold had hidden in the woodshed wearing homemade monster masks and waited to scare his 
unsuspecting grandmother when she went out to get fuel for the fire. They hadn't reckoned on her carrying 
an axe when she did. In retrospect, Fraser thought, it was rather a good thing she recognized them before 
she could take a swing.

	 Dief trotted along, tongue hanging out gamely, and thought of small furry running things and 
chocolate bars, the good ones with the little crunchy things in them.

	They paused at the mouth of the alley across the street from the Genomics building. All along the 
street, lights were coming on within dilapidated windows. Mulder reached into his coat and produced four 
small radio headsets, which he gave to the others. 

	"All right," Ray said quietly, slipping the headset over his head, "let's go over the plan again." 
Mulder produced a small, well-folded set of blueprints to the building. 

	"You and Constable Fraser take the back entrance here, in the parking lot," he said. "Get to the 
offices here, on the third floor, round up as many researchers as you can, and keep an eye out for Carries 
Clouds. We don't know who he's going to target next. Scully and I are going to the basement to try to find 
evidence of the virus."

	Mulder put the blueprint away, and motioned to Constable Fraser. The two stepped aside for a 
moment. "Constable," Mulder told him quietly, "I know this man is your friend, but if he shows up I need to 
know that you're not going to hesitate. Whatever his motives are, the fact is that he's killed six people and 
he most likely intends to kill more if we let him."

	Fraser nodded. His face was devoid of any emotion save for an intensity as cold and cutting as 
Arctic wind. "Understood," he replied.

	Ray moved closer to Scully. He caught her eye. 

	"So..." he began.

	"Yes?" she replied.

	"Did they, um-- did they stick you full of big needles?" Ray asked. "I hear they do that." 

	"What?" She looked at him strangely. 

	As usual, it took about two additional microseconds for Ray's brain to process the colossal 
stupidity of the remark his mouth had just made. Please, God, he prayed silently, anything to change the 
subject.

	The top of the telephone pole across the street exploded with a loud snarling clap. Diefenbaker 
yelped at the loud noise. The lighted windows on the street blinked out instantly.

	Ray directed a wordless thank-you heavenward.

	 Mulder's head snapped around and saw the flames licking at the remains of the electrical 
transformer box. "Looks like someone's started the party early," he said, switching on his radio headset.

	Without another word, they drew their guns and ran for the Genomics building.


	Fraser cleared the fence around the parking lot easily, landing crisply in the snow. He turned to see 
Ray clambering over somewhat shakily. Dief wriggled through a small gap in the bottom of the otherwise 
well-maintained fence.

	"You'd think they could at least have opened the gate for us," Ray grumbled, thudding most 
ungracefully to the ground.

	"Well, yes, Ray, but that would imply they knew we were coming."

	"Point taken."

	They sprinted to the side door Fraser had first seen upon finding Crendall's body the previous 
night. Flattening his back to the wall, Fraser reached out and tested the door handle; Ray took up a position 
on the other side of the door, pistol at the ready. The handle didn't budge. 

	"Great," sighed Ray, stepping into position and aiming his gun at the handle. "Stand back, I got a 
skeleton key."

	"I wouldn't advise that, Ray. From the texture and--" Fraser put his ear to the door and rapped 
briefly with his knuckles-- "resonance of this door, I'd say it has a titanium coating, about, oh, half an inch 
thick. Such protection would render it virtually bulletproof."

	Ray snorted in exasperation. "That's all well and good, Mr. Wizard, but can we go inside and arrest 
people or not?"

	"Oh. Certainly, Ray." Fraser unslung the duffel bag from his shoulder. From inside, he began 
removing a large metallic clawlike device and a lengthy spool of thin, high-tensile line. 

	"Is that a grappling hook, Fraser? You brought a grappling hook?"

	"Well, of course, Ray. My father once told me never to undertake anything important without a 
compass, a grappling hook, and a clean change of underwear."

	"And the clean change of underwear..." Ray began. 	

	"Oh, that's in the bag as well, Ray," Fraser replied obliviously, testing the heft of the grappling 
hook and gauging the distance to the roof of the building. He swung the hook around rapidly and let it fly up 
the windowless wall. It arced gracefully over the snow-covered edge of the roof and landed with a barely 
audible thump. Fraser gave the rope a few sharp tugs to make sure it was secure, then turned to Ray.

	"After you, Ray."

	"Me? Hey, how come I have to go first?"

	"Well, you're the one with the gun, Ray." Ray thought about this for a second.
	"Point taken."

	Ray tucked his pistol back into his coat and began climbing laboriously. Meanwhile, Fraser quickly 
fashioned a sling and looped it about Diefenbaker's four legs. The wolf whined nervously. 

	"Now, don't give me any of that," Fraser told the wolf sternly. "You were the one who begged to 
come along in the first place."

	The sling snugly fitted into place, Fraser began his ascent. As he climbed briskly up the rope, he 
looked up to see Ray nearing the rooftop. "How's it going, Ray?" he called up .

	"I thought I was done with this when I graduated sixth grade gym class," Ray groused, and heaved 
himself over the top of the roof. He quickly rolled, drew his gun, and came up into a kneeling position. The 
rooftop was empty. There was a lone open skylight in the center of the roof.

	Fraser reached the top a minute later. He rested for a moment, then began hauling in the rope. 
Diefenbaker was lifted off the ground, yelping slightly, and slowly pulled up the building. The wolf gave a 
short, unhappy whimper.

	"Now what are you complaining about?" Fraser asked as he continued to pull. "You get to go up 
the easy way."

	Dief gave a brief bark.

	"Well, the whole process would be much faster if a certain wolf-- who shall remain nameless-- ate 
fewer fattening foods," Fraser replied, grunting with exertion.

	The wolf hung his head in embarrassment.

	Ray was kneeling at the edge of the open skylight, trying to make out details in the darkness below, 
when Diefenbaker and a mildly winded Fraser finally joined him. 

	"Something tells me a bunch of Ph.Ds aren't going to leave their skylight open in the middle of the 
coldest month of the year," Ray whispered. "I think your pal got here before us. See, anything, Fraser?"The 
Mountie squinted into the gloom.

	"I'm afraid not, Ray. Still, there's only one way to be sure." With that, Fraser knelt down and 
dropped through the skylight. Dief hopped in after him.

	"Fraser! Are you nuts?" Ray hissed, hearing his friend's boots thud on something solid below. 

	"All clear, Ray," came the voice from below.

	"There could have been people with guns down there!" Ray called down to him.

	"Well, yes, Ray, but that's a purely academic question now. Besides, Diefenbaker would have 
smelled them."

	Ray sighed, and plunged into the building. He landed in a crouch on something hard and wooden-- 
a desk, he guessed, from the container of pencils he'd just sent clattering to the floor. He could barely make 
out Fraser a few feet in front of him, staring off into the darkness, Diefenbaker by his side. The wolf whined 
softly. Ray climbed down off the desk and withdrew a pocket flashlight from his coat. 

	"Let's see where we are," he said, his thumb poised on the "on" switch.

	"Uh, Ray," Fraser began, "I don't think you want to--" Ray flipped the switch, and a strong 
flashlight beam cut through the dark, illuminating the figure at Fraser's feet. 

	It was a woman, late thirties, wearing a white lab coat and a Genomics identification tag. Her eyes 
bulged in horror. There was a charred burn mark on her chest in the shape of a hand. Ray jumped a little, 
unintentionally, and the flashlight beam hit another figure several meters away, slumped over a desk, with 
the same terrified eyes and the same burn mark, black and clearly visible in the yellow light. Ray slowly 
swung the flash around the room. From where he stood he could make out at least ten bodies, crumpled 
over, under or around the grid of desks in the large open office. Ray swallowed hard, feeling his lunch churn 
and jostle in his stomach.

	"Your friend's a fast worker," he told Fraser, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice. Fraser 
took the dead woman's coat and respectfully draped it over her body. Dief turned in circles, making tiny 
agitated noises.

	Ray tapped the microphone button on one side of his headset with a trembling finger. "Pomeranian, 
this is Caribou. Come in. We've got--"


	"-- at least ten bodies up here, maybe more," came the voice in the agents' ears.

	Mulder swore softly. "Carries Clouds?" he said into the microphone.

	"No, a completely different killer who just happens to leave burned handprints on his victims' 
chests," he heard Vecchio reply, in a voice that was half irritation and half fear.

	"Are any of them Patterson?" Scully asked. The agents waited in silence for several seconds, poised 
in the dim blue light that filtered through the glass front doors and into the Genomics lobby. Plastic plants 
wilt=
ed in their dirt-filled pots next to austere, tastefully upholstered chairs that would have been at home in a 
dentist's office. Low tables were scattered with the latest scientific journals; one or two had pictures of 
Patterson and other Genomics researchers on the cover.

	At last they heard the Mountie's voice."No, I don't believe so. If I recall the blueprints correctly, 
his office was on the second floor."

	"All right," Mulder told them, "we need you to do a floor-by-floor sweep of the building. Work 
your way down, try to find Patterson or anyone else Carries Clouds hasn't gotten to yet. I'm willing to bet 
your Inuit friend is still in the building."

	"Will do. Caribou out," he heard Fraser reply, and then the headset clicked to silence.

	Mulder turned to his partner as she studied the blueprints with a small pen flashlight. "Which way 
to the basement?" he asked.

	"There's a stairwell down... that corridor," she told him, pointing off to a corridor to their right that 
was garishly lit in red emergency lights. They set off in that direction, scanning the shadows with their 
flashlights. 

	The hallway was long, empty and eerily silent. Scully gripped the butt of her pistol with sweat-
slicked palms. She grew intensely aware of little sounds: the scuff of her pumps against the thin, rigid 
carpeting, the faint shuff shuff  of the air conditioning system, the buzzing of the emergency lights. As she 
passed a door labeled SUPPLY CLOSET, she heard a soft shifting from within. Her head snapped around in 
the direction of the sound and she motioned wordlessly to Mulder. He nodded and covered the door with his 
pistol. 

	Slowly, cautiously, Scully turned the handle--

	And jumped back as something large and heavy came spilling out of the closet amidst a clattering 
pile of mops, brooms and cleaning supplies. It was a body-- a gray-shirted security guard, male, late forties. 
When she rolled him over, there was a neat red-rimmed hole several millimeters in diameter between his 
eyes. 

	"He's been shot," Scully told Mulder as she knelt beside the body. "Looks like one bullet, at close 
range, with a small-caliber weapon."  She examined his gun belt. "Look, his holster hasn't even been 
unbuttoned. Whatever happened to him, he wasn't expecting it."

	"A bullet between the eyes-- not exactly Carries Clouds's M.O.," Mulder replied quietly. He looked 
up toward the stairwell door, noticing the thin sliver of light that peeked through the crack where the door 
had been propped open. "Someone else is here."


	In contrast to the gloom of the rest of the building, the fixer found the basement lab to be harshly, 
eerily bright. He had known when he blew up the power line that the lab had its own power source-- an 
organization storing deadly viruses would be downright stupid not to have backups in the right places. He 
picked his way through the maze of lab tables, computer banks, and humming gene sequencers toward a 
hermetically sealed, glass-walled enclosure on the other side of the spacious rectangular room. 

	He paused at the entrance and, with a gloved finger, keyed in a sequence of six numbers on a 
keypad mounted into the doorframe. The outer door swung open, and he stepped inside just before it closed 
again. He was inside an airlock of sorts; through the glass of the inner door in front of him, he could see a 
metal-walled room with a large safe, about six feet square, on the wall directly opposite from where he 
stood.

	"You are now entering  the primary storage unit," a calm, pristine computer voice told him. "Please 
don a containment suit now." He glanced at the rows of blue-hooded suits hanging on racks to his left and 
right, but made no move to put one on. "Preparing for air filtration. Please stand by." Fans overhead whirred 
to life, filtering and purifying the air in the tiny chamber. They ran for perhaps thirty seconds before dying 
down. "Air filtration complete. Please enter your six-digit access code."

	He moved to a similar keypad set into the wall next to the inner door and punched in the second 
code he'd been given. The door hissed open, and he stepped into the vault. The room had the faint, 
pervasive chill of a meat locker. He moved to the safe and, withdrawing a magnetic access card from inside 
his coat, swiped it through a slot on the door of the safe. It opened with a loud PSSHH, and thick mist from 
the internal coolant spilled out from the edges of the door before he could even pull it completely open.

	Inside, rows of test tubes-- built from shatterproof plastic, he knew, and tightly sealed with metal 
caps-- lined up like soldiers, suspended in a steel mesh. As he slid the mesh on its rails out into the light of 
the vault, he could make out the labels on each of the tubes: INFLUENZA DESIGN #1, #2... there were, in 
all, five tubes each of the first three designs and two more tubes labeled INFLUENZA DESIGN #4. 

	He ignored them.

	 The fixer reached into the very back of the mesh and carefully drew forth one small tube. He 
studied the label carefully. It read SMALLPOX DESIGN #1.

	From within his coat he produced a metallic cylinder labeled with the familiar biohazard symbol.  
He twisted the cap on one end until it popped off. From within the tube three triangularly arranged prongs, 
surrounded by black shock-absorbent foam, emerged. He carefully placed the smallpox vial so it fit securely 
in the middle of the prongs, then gently pushed the vial back into the cylinder until he heard it click into 
place. He then screwed the cap back on, hearing it seal shut with a hiss. The cylinder disappeared into his 
coat.

	He then stooped to unzip the black duffel bag at his side. Reaching inside, he picked out two of the 
many silver baseball-sized spheres that filled the bag. He placed them in the open safe, thumbed a button on 
each to arm them, picked up the clanking bag, and left the room.

	Emerging from the airlock, he heard voices echoing faintly from the stairwell where he'd entered. 
Someone was coming.


	The conference room was on the second floor of the Genomics building, an elongated rectangle set 
squarely in the center of the floor plan. The walls, papered with a pleasant turquoise design, were hung with 
large whiteboards and generic motivational posters in metal frames. An RGB projector uncoiled from the 
ceiling, aimed at a retractable screen on the far wall. The room was dominated by a hardwood table, richly 
brown and gleaming faintly in the beam of Ray's flashlight. There was an expensive high-backed upholstered 
chair at the narrow head of the table near the entrance, and ten identical chairs stretching back along either 
side. 

	The chair nearest the exit was vacant, as was one that had been pushed into the far corner of the 
room. Nineteen of the other twenty chairs held bodies.

	"If this guy was your best friend," Ray said quietly to Fraser, unable to take his eyes off the rows of 
the dead, "I sure as hell don't want to meet your worst enemy. Looks like he took out--" Ray did a quick 
count-- "nineteen people before they even knew what hit them."

	"I'm well aware of that, Ray," Fraser responded in a voice just louder than a whisper. He had 
removed his hat out of respect for the dead; his fingers clenched the brim tightly.

	"If I remember what the Feds told us, the ten upstairs and these poor guys are all of them."

	"Not quite, Ray," Fraser replied, laying a hand on the empty chair and spinning it around. "Dr. 
Patterson is still missing."

	"Then I guess we better find him before Harold does," Ray replied. "Harold. What kind of a name 
for a serial killer is Harold?" 

	"If I recall correctly, it was his grandfather's English name," Fraser said.
	
	"Oh." Ray closed the door to the conference room. "So where do we find Patterson?"

	"From the glimpse I got at the blueprints," Fraser mused, closing his eyes in concentration, "his 
office was... this way." Fraser turned right and began walking purposefully. Ray followed, with Diefenbaker 
bringing up the rear. They rounded the conference room and headed for the northern side of the building. 
Fraser stopped in front of a door bearing the nameplate ROGER PATTERSON. 

	Dief began to whine. Seeing this, Fraser paused and shot a glance at Ray, who drew his gun. Ray 
tested the doorknob-- locked. Backing up a little, he turned his shoulder toward the door and charged. It 
flew inward with a loud crack, and Ray found himself inside a spacious office with a carved wooden desk, an 
excellent view of the skyline-- and no Patterson. 

	"Great," sighed Ray, taking a few more steps into the room with Fraser at his heels. "Now what?" 

	"Well, Ray, we could always=D0" Fraser began, when an arm reached around from the other side 
of the open door and shoved the muzzle of a .45 automatic into his temple.

	"We can always take hostages," came the calm and measured voice of Roger Patterson, stepping 
out from his hiding place behind the door. He cocked the pistol.

	Ray whirled and leveled the gun at Patterson. "Hey! Let him go now, germ boy, and I might just 
wound you."

	"Oh, yes, that's a wonderful idea," Patterson responded acridly. He wore a dress shirt, black slacks 
and a long white lab coat. His tie was disheveled and sweat gleamed on the rims of his glasses. "I'll just 
lower my gun like a good little boy and give up my only bargaining chip. Do you actually use any of that wet 
gray mass between your ears, Detective?"

	"Hey, I used to beat up on guys like you in grade school," Ray shot back. "You sure this guy's a 
Canadian, Benny? He doesn't seem polite enough." 

	"I believe that's what was on his records, Ray," Fraser responded, remarkably cool considering his 
situation. "Although if I remember correctly, he spent his formative years here in the United States, which 
could explain a lot."

	"I realize I'm inexperienced in this entire hostage-taking business," Patterson said irritably, jamming 
the gun harder into Fraser's temple, "but as far as I know, there's not a lot of talking that goes on." 
Diefenbaker snarled, and Patterson turned to place Fraser between himself and the wolf. "Call off your 
animal, now, or he'll get the next bullet after yours."

	"Where'd you get the gun, Patterson?" Ray asked. "I didn't figure you for the NRA type."

	"I'm not stupid, Detective. I knew when I accepted their job offer that they would come for me one 
day, when I had outlived my usefulness to them. I know too much. But I planned ahead. Hence the firearm 
that I'm going to use to make a very large hole in your friend's head if you don't put that gun down-- now."

	"You're bluffing," Ray said between clenched teeth, drawing a bead on the center of Patterson's 
forehead. 

	"Oh really, Detective? I go to work every day and I play with viruses that can kill a normal, healthy 
man in eight hours. Germs that dissolve some of your internal organs and cause others to burst with fluid. 
I've stared down the Ebola virus and made it blink first. I face death for a living."

	"I never knew you needed a pocket protector for that," Ray snapped.

	"Do you think I'm kidding?" Patterson asked levelly. "I'll count to three. One. Two."

	"Okay!" said Ray, kneeling down carefully to lay his gun on the floor. He did not take his eyes off 
Patterson.  "You win. Now let him go." 

	"Not just yet. I need you two to catch bullets for me. I know the others are dead, but they aren't 
going to get me."

	"Who, Carries Clouds?" Ray asked.

	"Who?" Patterson asked, genuinely confused. 

	"If I may say something," Fraser spoke up, "whoever you feel is after you, Dr. Patterson, we can 
offer you protection."

	"Long enough to throw me in jail, I'd imagine," Patterson replied dryly.

	"Well, yes, that goes without saying, but I guarantee you'll get a fair trial," Fraser told him. 
Patterson laughed hollowly.

	"You really don't know who you're dealing with here, do you?" the scientist said. "Assuming I was 
stupid enough to surrender to you, and assuming we did make it out of the building alive, they'd find a way 
to get to me long before I ever made it to trial."

	"Who is this "they' you keep mentioning?" Ray asked. "The CIA or something?"

	"You're thinking too small, Detective," Patterson sighed, as if he was explaining this to a young 
child for the third or fourth time. "Which, in your case, doesn't really surprise me. The men who hired me 
are to the CIA what Gary Kasparov is to a chess piece."

	"You mean the men who hired you to create multiple strains of deadlier influenza viruses?" Fraser 
asked calmly. "The men for whom you tested those viruses on innocent children?" Patterson's face grew 
even colder.

	"I'm not sure how you discovered that, although I can guess," Patterson said. "William always was 
too much of an egotist to let himself go uncredited for his achievements. You know, Constable-- yes, I 
recognize you from the unpleasantness in the parking lot last night-- I might have let you both go before. 
But now, it appears you know just a little bit more than is healthy for you, and thus your usefulness to me is 
of a very temporary nature."

	"If you plan to escape from the building with Detective Vecchio and myself as your hostages," 
Fraser told him, "I feel obligated to advise you of one major obstacle to your strategy."

	"And that is?" Patterson asked.

	"Your shoelaces have been tied together," Fraser said.

	Patterson glanced down for a half-second. Unfortunately for him, a half-second was all Fraser 
needed to duck, grab the scientist's wrist and twist it back sharply, causing Patterson to cry out in pain. His 
fingers opened reflexively and the gun-- unnoticed by the other two men-- dropped into an inner pocket of 
his lab coat.

	Patterson squirmed free of Fraser's grip and turned to face the Mountie. This was his second 
mistake. Fraser punched him solidly in the jaw, and the scientist sagged and crumpled to the floor, 
unconscious.

	Ray scooped up his own gun and knelt down beside the sprawled scientist. 
As he snapped a pair of handcuffs around Patterson's wrists, he happened to glance at the man's feet.

	 "Hey, Benny, his shoelaces."

	"What about his shoelaces, Ray?"

	"Well, they're not tied together."

	"I know that, Ray."

	"But you told him they were."

	"Yes, I did."

	"So you told him they were... but they really weren't. You lied to him, Fraser."

	"Technically-- yes."

	"You never lie, Fraser. How could you..."

	"Well, you have to consider that Dr. Patterson is a Canadian citizen, and as such he falls under the 
bylaws of the Mulroney Rules."

	"The Mulroney Rules?"

	"Yes, the unwritten rules of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. According to section 15-B, 
paragraph 27 of the Mulroney Rules, it is permissible to tell a man his shoes are tied together if he's holding 
a gun to your head."

	"I've never heard of the Mulroney Rules."

	"Yes, well, they're actually quite secret, Ray. I really shouldn't be telling you-- you don't even 
know the secret moose call."

	"Secret moose call?" Ray's eyebrows furrowed in bewilderment.

	"Absolutely," the Mountie replied. 

	Something fell over with a loud THUD out in the hallway.

	"You hear that, Benny?" Ray whispered, turning his head and his gun in the direction of the sound. 
The Mountie nodded. Diefenbaker, ears flattened forward, bounded into the hallway. Ray charged after him, 
rolling out the door and coming up in a firing crouch. "Freeze!" Ray yelled.

	"Ray? It's a potted plant," Fraser said, calmly walking into the hallway. In the gloom Ray could 
now make out that his gun was indeed aimed at a large potted plant which had fallen over, spewing black 
dirt across the pristine off-white carpet. Dief was sniffing at the dirt as if it was made of ground chocolate.

	"I knew that," Ray said, lowering his gun. He and Fraser stepped toward the plant. Fraser knelt 
down next to it.  "Please tell me you're not gonna taste any of that," Ray said.

	"Of course not, Ray-- that would be silly. I was just noticing that the base of this pot seems rather 
heavy and stable, and the plant itself doesn't seem to lean in any one direction."

	"Yeah? So?"

	"Well, based on these observations, I'd say it's highly unlikely that this plant could just fall over all 
by itself. Unless of course it were a diversion of some sort..."

	The thought hit them both in the same instant. Fraser and Ray rushed back into Patterson's office 
and stopped cold.

	A long-haired man in a black leather jacket was sitting on Patterson's desk, his booted feet kicking 
gently against the side of it. The fingers of his right hand were drumming idly on Patterson's Rolodex. With 
his left hand, he was holding a still-unconscious Patterson by the throat. Patterson's feet dangled in the air, a 
foot off the floor.

	"Hello there, Ben," the man said cheerily. Fraser swallowed hard.

	"Hello, Harold," he replied.


Part 5 of 6.


TEN MINUTES EARLIER

	"Mulder, what are you talking about?" Scully asked.  "This is a numerical keypad lock. How could 
you possibly have a--"

	Mulder stood back and fired once into the keypad set into the wall next to the basement door. It 
crackled and squealed fiercely, emitting sparks, and then the door unlocked with a whoosh of escaping air 
and slid open a few centimeters.

	"... skeleton key," Scully finished quietly, staring at the smoking keypad with wide incredulous 
eyes. 

	Mulder grabbed the edge of the door and, grunting slightly from the effort, shoved it the rest of the 
way open. "After you," he said.

	Scully thumbed off her flashlight as they stepped into the light of the lab. The fluorescent tubes 
overhead hummed gently, and their hard flat glare fell upon row after row of lab tables, computer 
workstations, and busy gene sequencer machines. In the back of the room, to her left Scully could make out 
a glass-walled area which she guessed was the cold storage facility. On the right rear wall of the lab an EXIT 
sign glowed faintly red above double doors like the one they had just passed through. She guessed they led 
to an emergency exit.

	As far as she could tell, the room was empty.

	"You're the doctor, Scully," Mulder told her. "Where do we begin?" 

	"One of these workstations may have information about what Patterson and his team have been 
working on," Scully began, running a hand through her hair contemplatively. "That looks like the storage 
unit back there," she said, pointing toward the glass-walled vault. "We're going to have to figure out how to 
get inside, and once inside, how to safely retrieve any samples it might contain."

	"Sounds easy enough," Mulder said dryly. "Maybe there's a--"

	At that moment, the floor trembled and a blinding ball of fire blossomed within the storage area. 
The ignition caused the air pressure within the sealed vault to drop rapidly; large cracks formed on the panes 
of glass, and grew.

	"Scully! Get down!" Mulder yelled, as the two ducked behind the nearest lab table. An instant later, 
the glass walls of the vault imploded with a deafening crash, and tongues of fire erupted from within, 
spewing flaming debris across the lab. Several of the fluorescent tubes nearest the vault shattered in a 
shower of white sparks. Fire suppression systems in the ceiling activated, shooting plumes of vapor into the 
roaring blaze, but they met with limited success.

	"I suppose that takes care of one of our problems," Mulder said, as soon as the ringing in his ears 
had diminished. The two rose cautiously, guns drawn, and studied the flaming wreckage. The fierce heat 
made them squint. "I'm guessing that was some kind of firebomb," Mulder added, "hot enough to kill any of 
the remaining virus samples and erase any other evidence we might find."

	"Maybe not, Mulder," Scully said, moving down the row of tables to a workstation that dangled by 
its power cables from the top of the lab bench. In the blast it had been knocked off the tabletop, but 
somehow its cables had held together, its monitor casing hadn't cracked, and the whirring of the disk drive 
was still audible. Rather than try to lift it back on top of the lab bench, Scully knelt down and managed to 
straighten the computer somewhat. She laid its keyboard flat on the tiled floor and began typing. A desktop 
blinked to life on the monitor.

	"It's possible that Patterson and his team may have stored information about the genetic or 
molecular makeup of their virus designs on one of these computers," Scully said, as Mulder's eyes scanned 
the lab warily. Scully fished a disk out of her pockets and slid it in the computer's drive slot. "If I can 
transfer any of those files to disk, we may still have enough evidence to prove that Patterson and his men 
were conclusively involved in the manufacture of these viruses." 

	"Assuming there's anyone still alive to prosecute," Mulder muttered, mostly to himself. He was still 
wondering this when he heard a soft vip  and something whizzed past his ear and embedded itself with a 
thud in the wall behind him. His head snapped around to see a neat bullet hole in the plaster. He had his gun 
up and aimed as another bullet shattered a beaker on a table a foot away. On the far side of the room, 
between one of the rows of lab tables in front of the smoldering vault, he saw a short, nondescript man in a 
black trenchcoat and simple dark business suit. The man held a pistol expertly in one hand and leveled it at 
Mulder. What unnerved Mulder most was the placid, immutable calm on the man's face.	

	Mulder ducked. Another bullet burrowed into the back of the table behind him. "Scully? You might 
want to hurry now."

	Crouched behind the cover of the lab table, Scully did not take her eyes off the screen. "I managed 
to decrypt one of the directories on the network server," she said quickly. "The computer network appears 
to be running off the auxiliary power grid as well. Looks like the directory has memos, sequencing data, 3D 
models-- everything we need. If you can hold him off long enough for me to make a copy..." She hit a 
sequence of keys on the keyboard and a dialog box appeared. The letters TRANSFERRING TO DISK 
stood out in red above a scrolling progress bar that began creeping only too slowly to the right. 

	Scully tapped a finger to the microphone button on her headset. "Vecchio! Fraser! Someone else is 
down here! We have shots fired! Repeat, someone else is here!" She was answered with a crackle of static-- 
the thick walls of the lab, or the distance between her headset and theirs, might be interfering. As far as she 
knew, they were completely cut off.

	Mulder stuck his head up, sighted their assailant and fired twice, forcing the assassin to drop from 
view momentarily. The dark-suited man resurfaced a few feet away from his original position, aiming at 
Mulder.

	Scully rose from behind the lab bench with her pistol drawn, blazing three shots that chipped and 
tore at the table inches  from the man in black. She then dropped back to monitor the progress of the file. It 
was a little more than an fourth complete.

	When the fixer rose again, he had the pistol flaming in one hand, forcing Mulder to keep his head 
down, and in the other Mulder caught a glimpse of a silver sphere. From his vantage point behind the table, 
he saw the sphere come arcing through the air, bearing down on top of Scully and him. Without thinking, he 
wrapped a hand around one leg of the nearest lab stool and swung the stool upward like a baseball bat. Stool 
and sphere connected, and the silver globe clattered and bounced across the top of the bench in front of the 
one Mulder hid behind, then dropped over the far edge. 

	There was a loud whump and all of a sudden, the aisle two rows ahead of them was a roaring 
inferno. Mulder stuck his head up, feeling the intensity of the heat on his face, and through the flames saw 
their attacker reaching into a large dark duffel bag. He's got more of them, Mulder thought in horror. 

	Scully tried to block out the flames and concentrate on the monitor. The file was almost at 50%.

	Mulder rose just as the man in black withdrew his hand from within the bag, another gleaming 
firebomb clenched in his fist. Mulder aimed his pistol-- not at the assassin, but at his bag of tricks. The fixer 
looked first at Mulder's gun, then traced its line of fire back to his bag, all in a matter of instants. His eyes 
widened slightly. He moved to hurl the bag away from himself.

	Mulder fired.

	
	Fraser did not take his eyes off Harold, not even when his radio headset crackled to life. Through a 
shower of static he heard frantic snatches of Agent Scully's voice. 

	"Vecchio! Fras... one else is down here!... shots fired! Repeat, someone else..." The rest was 
hissing white noise, and a crackling roar that sounded like fire. Fraser heard Ray suck in an anxious breath 
between clenched teeth.

	"Go, Ray," Fraser told him quietly. "They need your help."

	"But Fraser..." He could hear the conflict in Ray's voice. Harold watched all this with something 
very much like amusement.

	"I'll be all right, Ray," Fraser repeated. "Go." After a few tense moments, he heard Ray's footsteps 
slowly back out into the corridor, and then take off running. Four paws scampered out after him.

	"Nice wolf," said Harold amiably. "Where'd you find him?"

	"In a hole in the ground," Fraser answered. "Let him go, Harold."

	"Who? This guy?" Harold turned and looked at Patterson, still dangling in midair in Harold's grip, 
almost as if the Inuit hadn't noticed him before. "Nope. I'm afraid I can't do that. So anyway, how've you 
been, Ben?"

	"Just fine, thank you," Fraser replied uneasily.

	"That's good, that's good. Glad to hear it. Hey, I see you took up the family business," Harold 
said, indicating Fraser's hat with his free hand.

	"Yes," Fraser answered, his insides swirling with a strange mixture of awkwardness, anger, 
nostalgia and fear. "And I see that you seem to have killed at least twenty-nine people in the last half hour, 
not to mention six others in the last four months, which, if I'm not mistaken, automatically puts you well 
within the ranks of the top ten international serial killers of all time."

	Harold nodded. "Looks that way," he said matter-of-factly. 

	"What happened to you?" Fraser asked. For the first time since he'd entered the room, Fraser saw 
Harold's eyes cloud with something like sadness.

	"The Sight happened," Harold said quietly. Then his eyes snapped up to Fraser again. "But you're 
looking at this all wrong. You think I paid a visit to these pieces of slime to get my jollies? Wrong. I just 
work a trade-- their lives for the lives of the children they used as guinea pigs and left to die."

	"What gives you that right?" Fraser asked. Harold chuckled softly.

	"And here I thought we could have a friendly get-together without letting our jobs come into the 
conversation," he said, shaking his head so that his long black ponytail whipped gently from side to side. 
"Do you think I'm indiscriminate about this?" he asked. "Hey, which reminds me-- sorry about that whole 
Vincenzo mess. Had I known it would get you and your buddy in trouble with the boss, I would've been 
hands-off. No pun intended. Anyway, mea culpa." Harold grinned sheepishly before continuing.

	"But as I was saying, do you think I just picked anyone in the building who happened to stroll by 
and said "Well, you must be guilty by association?' Come on, Ben, give me a little credit. Most of the staff-- 
the receptionists, the paper-pushers, the janitors-- were let off early today so the researchers could have their 
little progress meeting. Patterson--" and here he gave the groggy scientist a shake-- "and his thirty trained 
monkeys, including Bill, who I believe you met in the parking lot last night, were up to their necks in this 
project. All thirty of them were having a pow-pow this evening so they could pat themselves on the back for 
how well they were killing children. I knew that. I waited for that." 

	"What about their families, Harold?" Fraser asked. "Surely some of the people in that conference 
room, or up on the third floor, had parents, brothers, sisters, children."

	"You want to talk about families, Ben?" Harold asked, anger flaring briefly in his black eyes. "Let's 
talk about the parents of the kids in Tuktoyaktuk who came to me when their kids were lying in a hospital, 
burning with fever, and no one could do a damn thing about it. They were scared out of their wits to even 
look at me, but they came anyway. If you had seen their faces..."

	"I would have been just as angry as you are," Fraser said. "But I wouldn't have done what you 
have. What gives you the right to take these people's lives?"

	"The Sight, Ben. That's what gives me the right." Harold said. He sounded almost weary.

	"What does that mean?" Fraser asked him.

	"You remember that conk on the noggin I got when we were fourteen?" Harold began, grinning 
ruefully. "You saved my life that day, and I never thanked you for it." He looked down at the floor. 
"Sometimes I wish you hadn't bothered. After that day I started... hearing things. Seeing things. You ever 
held a conversation with a dead man, Ben?"

	"More often than I'd care to," Fraser sighed.

	Harold just laughed. "For a moment there I thought you'd lost your sense of humor," he told 
Fraser. "After I was in the coma, my parents took me to the tribal elders. They explained to me that I'd been 
given a gift. I'd been given the Sight." He looked away, and there was bitterness in his voice when he said, 
"Some gift. You remember what I said I wanted to do when I grew up, Ben?"

	"Join the Ice Capades?"

	"Oh, geez, that was in sixth form. I was hoping you'd forgotten about that. Besides, I've since 
learned I can't skate. I mean what I wanted to be when we were in secondary school."

	"You always said you wanted to be a doctor."

	"That's right. I didn't ask for this. But I got it, and now I get to use it in whatever way I see fit. So 
I use it to take care of sick kids."

	"The Hippocratic Oath says "First, do no harm,'" Fraser told him evenly.

	"I never took that oath," Harold replied, his voice quiet.

	Still held in the air, Patterson groaned and began to stir. His cuffed hands swayed feebly. 

	"You mentioned something about respect for human life?" Harold asked Fraser. "Let's see what 
our friend here has to say about that." 

	Patterson's eyes flickered open.
	

	In the instant after he pulled the trigger, Mulder could swear he heard the gentle pff as his bullet 
tore through the fixer duffel bag.

	The fireball was searing, blinding, knocking Mulder to the floor. Scully reflexively turned her eyes 
away from the blast, but she felt the blistering heat from across the room.  When Mulder looked up again, 
the back half of the room was a solid wall of fire. Ventilation systems had kicked in, sucking out most of the 
smoke and poisonous gasses, but the fire suppressant systems were severely overtaxed, and their feeble jets 
of foam were doing little more than preventing the inferno's spread.

	Scully stuck her head up and surveyed the damage. She turned to Mulder: "I take it this means I 
don't have to hurry anymore?"

	Mulder slumped against the lab bench, exhausted from the tension. "Nope," he said. Suddenly his 
head jerked up and swiveled in the direction of the door through which they'd entered. He heard footsteps 
coming down the stairs. 

	Scully, still kneeling, turned away from the computer and leveled her pistol in the direction of the 
noise. Mulder flattened himself against the lab table behind him. He brought his gun up and listened 
carefully. The footsteps proceeded down the stairs, entered the lab, and stopped dead. There was a pause 
that seemed to go on for an eternity.

	Then an-all-too familiar voice bellowed, "What the hell happened here?" Ray Vecchio stood in the 
doorway, staring at the wrecked lab and the roiling wall of fire at the far end of the room. Scully sighed with 
relief and lowered her gun; Mulder wiped sweat from his forehead.

	"We're okay," Mulder said, standing up slowly. 

	"Whoa," Vecchio marveled. "And here I thought the Feds reserved this level of firepower for gun-
toting separatists in log cabins." 

	Mulder let that one pass. "Where's Constable Fraser?" he asked.

	"We've got him," Vecchio replied.

	"Who?" Scully asked. "Patterson or Carries Clouds?"

	"Both of "em," said Vecchio. 

	"You have them in custody?" Mulder said.

	"Well... not exactly. Fraser has them cornered."

	"You left Fraser alone with Carries Clouds?" Mulder asked, alarm rising in his voice.

	"I didn't really have a choice," Vecchio shot back. "I got your distress call, and I wasn't exactly in 
a position to drag all three of them down here with me. Look, Benny can handle this. Carries Clouds used to 
be his pal, remember."

	"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," Mulder said grimly. Without another word, he turned and 
raced out of the lab and up the stairs.

	"What's his problem?" Ray wondered, staring after the departed agent. Scully bit her lip, trying to 
find a tactful way to put it.

	"Agent Mulder... has a little problem with trusting people," she said at last. She shot a glance back 
at the computer screen. The progress bar was about three-fourths complete. "You're sure Constable Fraser 
has the situation under control?"

	"Considering the situation?" Vecchio asked. "Um... yeah, sure he does." Somehow his response did 
little to calm Scully's anxiety.

	"As soon as I finish copying this disk we can go help your friend,"  Scully explained. She nervously 
eyed the fire suppressant foam jets-- was it her imagination, or were they growing weaker? The heat was 
already brutal.

	"Where's the wolf?" she asked Vecchio, squatting down to examine the disk's progress on the 
computer monitor.

	"Aw, I lost him a ways back by the candy machines," the detective said. "I'm sure we can pick him 
up on the way back."

	The progress bar filled up, and the words TRANSFER COMPLETE flashed on the screen. Scully 
popped the disk out of the drive and was about to stick it her pocket when she noticed the foam jets had 
stopped. Sparks were bursting from the ceiling, and the fire was beginning to spread ravenously. She heard 
ominous groaning sounds from above her, as if the girders that held the ceiling up were warping.

	"Let's get out of here," she said, heading for the door. 

	"My thoughts exactly," Vecchio added.

	Three rows of lab benches away, a black-gloved hand holding a silencer pistol surfaced from behind 
a countertop and took careful aim.

	Scully was about halfway down the aisle between the lab benches when she heard it again-- the 
tiny, distinctive vip.  There was a cry of pain, and she spun around to see Vecchio crash to the floor, 
clutching his shoulder. A red stain appeared on his coat and began to spread. 

	Her gun was up in a flash and her eyes whipped around the room rapidly. The lab was empty. 
Where did that shot come from?  she thought. She quickly knelt down and examined the wound. Ray was 
cursing profusely.

	"Son of a..." she heard him mutter. "He shot me in the same shoulder... the same shoulder!" She 
holstered her pistol, stuck the evidence disk in an inner pocket of her coat, and began digging through her 
pockets.

	"You were shot before?" she asked him, trying to take his mind off the injury. She took out a 
handkerchief and pressed it to the wound bit both hands.

	"Yeah," Ray responded, grimacing, "I didn't tell you? Oww! Geez, you'd think these people would 
have the decency to shoot me someplace where I haven't already been wounded." 

	She was about to smile at this when she saw Ray's eyes fill with alarm. She snapped her head 
around to her right and gasped involuntarily. The dark-suited man, covered with soot but very much alive, 
was advancing calmly down the far end of the aisle toward the both of them. His eyes were cold and 
emotionless.

	He emptied one clip out of the butt of his pistol and prepared to snap in another one. 


	Harold yawned loudly, politely covering his mouth with his free hand. He looked up at Patterson, 
who was struggling for breath a little, but otherwise quite composed. "Hi," he said to Patterson. "I don't 
believe we've met. I'm Harold, and you're the putrid lab weasel who infects little kids with killer flu for a 
living."

	Fraser felt helpless. He was fairly certain Harold wouldn't harm him, but he didn't think that 
assurance extended to Patterson. Nothing he could say seemed to get through to the man who used to be his 
friend. Harold turned and regarded him with a mock-stern expression.

	"I wouldn't try it, Ben," he said, almost as if he knew what Fraser was thinking. "This isn't fourth 
grade, and I've learned how to block punches since then. I can leave this guy a smoking husk-- now isn't 
that a pleasant image for you, Rog?-- before you could lay a hand on me. And I know that's the last thing 
you want."

	"I suppose," said Patterson, wheezing a little but losing none of his haughtiness, "that you expect 
me to grovel now. Plead with you. Beg for mercy."

	"Nope," Harold replied. "I know all about you, Rog. You're a cool cucumber. I don't expect you 
to beg. I expect you to sweat it out a little bit."

	"Let him go, Harold," Fraser said. "If you kill this man in cold blood, you're in effect stating that 
his life is less important than your own objectives. And that makes you no better than he is."

	"Wrong, Ben," Harold replied, no trace of doubt or hesitation on his face. "What I do, I do for a 
righteous purpose."

	"And I'm sure some of the people whose lives you've taken believed the same thing about what 
they did to those children," Fraser replied. "In his own rather distorted fashion, the man you killed last night-
- Dr. Crendall-- thought he was doing his part to help mankind. Can you honestly say you're any different?" 

	While they argued, Patterson became aware of the weight pulling at the inner pocket of his lab 
coat. He very slowly tilted his eyes down. In the pocket, just a few inches from his dangling hands, he caught 
a glimpse of metal. His gun. 

	"There are antibiotics that can stop the virus, Harold," Fraser told the Inuit. "They arrived in 
Tuktoyaktuk this morning. The children will recover. You don't need to take this man's life to save them."

	"No," Harold replied, "but I think their parents will sleep better knowing he's dead. I know I will."

	"FBI! Harold Carries Clouds, you're under arrest," came a voice from behind Fraser. He turned to 
see Mulder framed in the doorway, eyes narrowed in anger, his pistol aimed at Harold. "Put Dr. Patterson 
down. Now." Mulder cocked the gun. "I'm not going to ask again."


Final part of 6.


Ray couldn't believe it. The creep in the black trenchcoat was just about to load a fresh magazine into his 
gun, and Scully was charging at him! She had guts. 

	Of course, she was probably going to get killed, too.

	The searing pain in his shoulder momentarily forgotten, Ray watched as Scully slammed into the 
fixer with her shoulder, knocking him off balance. She brought her knee up into his solar plexus and he 
doubled over. The man in black landed a punch on her jaw  and she moved back a little, but she managed to 
grab his gun hand. Frantically, she banged his wrist against the hard black edge of the lab bench, again and 
again until his fingers opened involuntarily and the gun skittered away across the top of the bench. Ray heard 
it skitter along the surface of the lab bench and drop off the edge.

	His own gun had flown out of his hand when the bullet hit him; he looked around but couldn't see 
it anywhere.  Ray tried to push himself up to a standing position, but pain flooded through his shoulder and 
he slumped down again. His vision filled with red, and he had to fight not to pass out. He tried again, 
bracing himself with his legs and using his good arm to cling to the top of the lab table. Slowly, painfully, he 
began to rise.

	The dark-suited man kicked her viciously in the ribs, and Scully staggered backwards. She could 
feel a thin trickle of blood running down from her swelling lip. He swung a punch, but she blocked it with 
one forearm and drove the other hard into his windpipe. While he gasped, she spun and nailed him on the 
jaw with the point of her toe, and his head snapped back in a way Scully found somehow satisfying. She 
risked a quick look over her right shoulder at the far side of the room; the fire was spreading fast, and 
coming their way.

	Too fast for Scully to block, the man in black landed a punch on her ribs and she cried out in pain. 
He brought his fist down on the base of her neck and her knees buckled. He landed a roundhouse to her jaw 
and she sprawled to the floor, sliding a short distance on the dusty black-and-white tiles. The momentum of 
her fall caused both her pistol and the disk to spill out of her pockets and go twirling and skidding across the 
floor. They came to rest just inches away from her outstretched fingers.

	Ignoring the agony in her ribs, Scully strained her arm outward, reaching for the gun. A black dress 
shoe stomped on her forearm and she yelled. Her assailant kept his foot on her arm and slowly, deliberately 
reached down and picked up the disk. She watched helplessly as he toyed with it, turning it in his fingers. 
Then he snapped in half and tossed it in the direction of the fire. Her head slumped in defeat.

	The fixer reached down again and picked up her gun. He checked the safety, cocked it, and leveled 
it between Scully's eyes. Grim satisfaction was written on his bruised, bloodied face. Scully stared down the 
barrel, and for a moment,  the world became absolutely silent.

	Suddenly, the man in black lurched forward, stumbling over Scully, and staggered. Ray Vecchio 
was on his back, shouting curses in Italian and pounding on the man in black with his uninjured arm for all 
he was worth.

	Ray's shoulder hurt like hell and he didn't care at all. He just kept squeezing his arm tighter around 
the fixer's windpipe. The man in black jerked suddenly, throwing Ray off his shoulders, and came up with 
Scully's gun	in both hands. Ray grabbed the gun with his good hand and forced it up and away from 
himself. The two of them struggled, one hand against two, both men's foreheads trickling with sweat as the 
all-engulfing wall of fire approached. Inexorably, the dark-suited man forced the muzzle of the gun down 
toward Ray's head.

	A snarling white blur seemed to come out of nowhere, leaping between Ray and his adversary, and 
the man in black shrieked in pain. Diefenbaker had arrived. Dief sunk his teeth deeply into the man in black's 
wrist, and from the looks of it the wolf had no intention of letting go anytime soon. The fixer roared again, 
flailing his arm wildly. He succeeded in tossing Dief off, but in the process the pistol slipped from his fingers 
and skidded down the length of the lab table behind them. 

	Ray took advantage of the wolf's distraction and punched the man in black in the face with all he 
had. Ray's opponent reeled, but he didn't fall. The fixer brought his hand up, silver flashed out of his sleeve, 
and all of a sudden there was a wicked-looking knife in his hand--

	"Freeze!" Scully yelled. Both men's heads turned down the aisle to where she stood, her pistol 
raised. She aimed at the man in black and her hands did not shake. Fury blazed in her eyes; her lip was 
swollen and bleeding, her cheek was cut, her red hair was matted and disheveled, and she had the beginnings 
of a beaut of a shiner.

	She's gorgeous, Ray thought.

	"Drop the knife!" Scully shouted to the man in black. "Drop it! Keep your hands where I can see 
them!"  Before she could react, the man in black let the knife clatter to the floor, pushed past Ray and leapt 
up onto the lab bench. He sprinted from bench to bench, faster than Scully could track him, heading for the 
wall of fire.

	He dove straight into a gap in the wall of flames. 

	"Geez," Scully heard Ray said quietly. She saw  the man in black when the swirling flame parted for 
a moment; he was racing for the back of the room, where she'd seen the  emergency exit earlier. Then the 
flames closed again, and she saw only flickering orange fire and thick smoke.

	An eerie wail of rending metal echoed through the room. The fire had melted the girders holding up 
the ceiling.  The back half of the ceiling shuddered, dropped a few feet, stopped precariously, and then 
collapsed into the flames in a shower of bricks, steel and acoustic ceiling tiles. The flames roared hungrily 
and continued their advance.  Between the fire and the collapse of the ceiling, Scully didn't see how anything 
could have survived. 

	Ray slumped back against the lab table, once again becoming aware of the=
 throbbing pain in his shoulder. Dief circled around his legs, looking up and whimpering occasionally in 
concern.

	"What are you looking at?" he asked the wolf. "You know, you sure took your sweet time getting 
here."

	Dief whimpered guiltily.

	All at once Scully's legs wobbled with exhaustion, but an equally shaky Ray was there to catch her. 
"I don't feel like being barbecued? You?" he asked with a battered smile. She shook her head wearily. He 
slung one of her arms over his shoulder and, each helping the other to stand, the two of them headed for the 
stairs. 

	"I feel awful," she said philosophically, touching a finger gingerly to her bleeding lip.

	"Yeah," he grinned, "but you should see the other guy." She looked at him and smiled, even though 
it hurt to do so. With Diefenbaker leading the way, they walked up the stairs together.


	"Constable Fraser, get away from him now," Mulder ordered, keeping the gun trained on Harold.

	"I'm sorry, Agent Mulder, but I'm not going to do that," Fraser replied quietly.

	"Attaboy, Ben!" Harold said cheerily. "Way to stick up to authority."

	"Shut up!" Mulder snapped at him. He looked at Patterson, held up in the Inuit's grip. "Don't kill 
him, Carries Clouds."

	"And why not?" Harold asked. He seemed to notice Mulder's neckwear, which was adorned with 
little flying pigs. "Oh, hey, nice tie."

	The remark caught Mulder off guard for a second, but he recovered quickly. "If you kill him, that's 
it. You have your revenge and nothing else gets accomplished. If he lives, we can use him to bring down the 
men he works for."

	Patterson was slowly, imperceptibly moving his hands over toward the pocket inside his lab coat. "I 
don't suppose I get a choice in all this," he remarked. 	

	"No," the other three men replied simultaneously.

	"Let us bring him to justice," Mulder said.

	"I'm bringing him to a higher justice than you ever could," Harold replied, conviction strong in his 
voice.

	"Patterson's employers will stop and nothing to disguise the truth," Mulder told the Inuit, his anger 
rising. "They've murdered hundreds of people. They've deceived and manipulated an entire country for 
decades. These men killed my father. They took my sister. And there's no way I can get either of them 
back." 
	He fixed Harold with a burning glare. "So I want to see them rot in Hell as much as you do. But if 
you kill Patterson, then we lose one of the only conclusive piece of evidence of what he did. There will be no 
proof to connect the infection of those children with what took place in this building. It'll be as if the whole 
thing never happened. And that's just what the people who ran this experiment would want."

	"And what if lab weasel here is right?" Harold shot back, shaking Patterson slightly. "What if his 
employers get to him before you can make him cough up any information? Where does that leave you?"

	"The way I see it, I don't have a choice," Mulder told him. "And neither do you." He raised the 
gun. "Put him down." His finger tightened on the trigger.

	Fraser stepped into the line of fire.

	"Constable Fraser, get out of the way," Mulder said, his voice cold and even. Fraser turned his head 
and met Mulder's eyes with an equally determined stare. Then he turned back to Harold.

	"Do you remember Francis Hale?" Fraser asked. His hands were in the air in a gesture of sincerity, 
and he began taking small, slow steps toward the desk where Harold sat. "The school bully back in the sixth 
form?" Harold nodded.

	"Do you remember how he was the terror of the schoolyard?" Fraser continued. "How he would 
steal the weaker children's lunches, tear up their books, beat them up for looking at him the wrong way?"

	"Yeah. Heard anything about him lately?" Harold asked.

	"I believe he sells insurance in Saskatoon," Fraser remarked. "But that's not why I brought it up. 
Do you recall that day we refused to surrender our lunch bags? How he chased us into the woods after 
school? I still remember hearing him behind us, shouting curses and threatening all sorts of pain upon us. I 
had never been so terrified in my life." Fraser took another step closer.

	Patterson's fingertips touched the hem of his coat pocket, and brushed over something metallic and 
hard.

	"Then all of a sudden," Fraser went on, "he wasn't behind us any more. We stopped reluctantly, 
fearing some sort of trick. We retraced our steps. And there he was, lying on the forest floor. He had tripped 
over a fallen log and broken his leg. He was crying, very quietly, from the pain, but still cursing us.

	"I saw him there, helpless, and despite all that my grandmother and my father had taught me, my 
first impulse was to attack him. To punish him for all he'd done while he was incapacitated, while he 
couldn't fight back. I picked up a stick. 

	"And then you stopped me. Do you remember what you said, Harold?" Though the Inuit's grip 
around Patterson's neck did not loosen, Fraser thought he could see Harold's face slowly begin to lose some 
of its hardness, its determination. Fraser took another step closer. 

	"You told me," Fraser continued, "to show him pity. You said that he deserved mercy, even as he 
cursed at us and spat on us. And I knew that you were right."

	"I remember," said Harold softly. His face broke into a grin. "We got a doctor and had him patched 
up. No sooner did he get better than he was after us again. So you got some more pugilism lessons from 
your grandmother and cleaned his clock."

	"Well, yes, and my knuckles were sore for a month, and you went around calling me "Rocky,' but 
that's beside the point," Fraser said. He reached out a hand and placed it on Harold's left arm, the one that 
held Patterson aloft. "The point is that I believe you're still the same person now that you were that day. 
That no matter what has happened to you, no matter what course your life has taken, deep down inside 
you're still the kind of person who believes in mercy-- in forgiveness. And I'm not going to let you ignore 
that." 

	Fraser met his friend's eyes. "Let him go, Harold."

	Patterson's fingers closed around the butt of the gun.

	Mulder held his breath.

	Harold spoke. "Ben, I..."

	Patterson brought the gun out of his pocket up under Fraser's arm. Harold looked down and saw 
the muzzle of the gun rising. With his free hand, he shoved Fraser with surprising strength, knocking the 
Mountie to the floor.

	Mulder saw the gun. "No!" he yelled, shifting his aim to Patterson.

	Patterson fired three times into Harold's chest. Fraser heard the gun roar in perfect clarity, followed 
by the wet thud of each of the bullets as they went in. Harold jerked, stumbled forward off the desk, 
wobbled unsteadily but stayed on his feet. Patterson moved to fire again, but Harold was faster. His free 
hand whipped around and planted itself on Patterson's chest, right over his heart. Fraser saw Harold close 
his eyes tightly.

	A delicate nimbus of blue fire erupted where Harold's hand met Patterson's chest. The scientist 
screamed, so loudly and horribly that it seemed his lungs might explode from his open mouth. Patterson's 
body jerked and spasmed, and in a matter of seconds, he fell silent. Harold released what remained of the 
scientist; the corpse dropped, the fresh burn mark steaming on its chest.

	Harold wavered at the kness, then collapsed on the floor next to Fraser, his t-shirt blotched with 
growing red stains. Fraser surveyed the gunshot wounds and turned to Mulder, who still stood in the 
doorway, his pistol now lowered. A weary, desolate sort of grief was etched in the agent's face. "Call an 
ambulance!" Fraser shouted to him. 

	"No," Harold said weakly. "Too late..." He smiled at his friend, blood trickling from the corners of 
his mouth, and laid a feeble hand upon Fraser's shoulder. "Remember... remember how... after the coma... I 
said I saw...?" 

	"You said you saw your own death," Fraser answered quietly. Fraser's vision blurred; something 
hot and wet and stinging filled his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.	

	"I never... never talked to you after that," Harold rasped. "I'm sorry... I just couldn't... couldn't tell 
you... I saw this. I saw all this... Patterson... the gun. All of it. And I knew... I couldn't tell you...because I 
knew... you'd never forgive yourself." Harold coughed, and red droplets spattered the collar of his t-shirt. 
"Ben... I'm sorry. Tell them all... I'm sorry." His eyes closed, and his head fell backwards. His chest rose 
once, then fell, and then was still.

	Tongues of fire sprouted from the corners of the room, spreading across the ceiling and along the 
walls. Fraser didn't see it. He clasped the hand that rested on his shoulder and studied the look of perfect 
tranquility that had descended like snow upon his friend's face. 

	Mulder came and knelt by the two of them, even as the fire devoured the wallpaper and licked at 
the desk. He put his fingers to the Inuit's neck. No pulse. "Come on, Constable," he said gently. "We have 
to go." 

	At last Fraser nodded. He rose, slung Harold's body over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, and left 
the room behind Mulder. Neither of them looked at Patterson's body as they passed through the doorway.

	The fire followed behind them at a respectful distance as they ran out of the building. It consumed 
everything, cleansing, purifying. Forgiving.


EXCERPT FROM THE FIELD REPORT 
OF AGENT DANA SCULLY

	Unfortunately, with the destruction of the computer disk that contained evidence of Genomics' 
viral engineering, their connection to the infection of the children in Tuktoyaktuk has been all but erased. 

	The Genomics complex burned completely to the ground by 3:27 AM this morning; the basement 
lab was buried beyond recovery when the metal beams supporting its ceiling collapsed. Though arson 
investigators have found traces of thermite in the rubble of the basement, which may point to the type of 
incendiary device used, the level of charring on what little remains of the upper floors indicates a level of 
heat beyond that produced by any known chemical accelerant. Evidence of organic matter consistent with 
human remains has been found in the ruins, but none of the thirty bodies reported by Constable Fraser and 
Detective Vecchio has been recovered intact. The families of the dead have been told a fire caused by a 
surge from an overloaded transformer on a nearby power line started around sundown last night. They were 
informed that the research staff of Genomics, most likely overcome by toxic fumes, perished in the blaze. 
Agent Mulder wishes it to be noted that he participated in this fabrication under protest, but the other parties 
involved, including myself, thought it best to spare the families from the knowledge.Sometimes the truth is 
too much.

	The cause of the second fire, which according to eyewitness reports started on the second floor, is 
still unknown. It is possible that the strain placed on the fire suppressant systems in the basement caused the 
auxiliary electrical circuits to overload, but little evidence exists to support that theory at this time. 

	The documents recovered from the apartment of the late William Crendall, implicating him in the 
infection of the Tuktoyaktuk children, seem to have disappeared from the evidence room of the 27th District 
House the same day the building received its annual fumigation. An investigation into the theft of the 
documents is ongoing.

	The man who attacked Agent Mulder, Detective Vecchio and myself in the basement lab-- and 
who, presumably, started the fire in the virus storage area-- remains unidentified.A computer-generated 
sketch of the suspect is being tested against every photograph in the FBI database, but so far no positive 
matches have been found. The suspect is presumed to have died when the roof of the basement lab 
collapsed, though investigators have as of yet found no matching remains during excavation.

	Reports from Tuktoyaktuk indicate that the antibiotics shipped from Chicago seem to have worked 
spectacularly well. Early observations indicated that the antibiotics were making slow but effective progress 
in battling the virus. However, like six of the previous victims, the remaining thirty infected children all made 
inexplicably rapid recoveries within a twelve-hour period beginning late last night. All are now listed in 
stable condition, and doctors can find no trace of the virus in their bodies, nor any concrete cause for their 
recovery. 

	Following my examination of Harold Carries Clouds at the scene, I pronounced him dead of 
multiple gunshot wounds at 10:02 PM last night. According to city officials, his body was transported to the 
Cook County coroner's office approximately two hours later. Around 3 this morning, a security guard found 
the morgue door open and Harold's body, which was supposed to be awaiting autopsy, missing.  A review 
of the security tapes reveals an inexplicable six-minute camera blackout beginning at 2:17 AM. None of the 
coroner's office employees on duty at the time can recall seeing or hearing anything suspicious.

	Like many other aspects of this case, the location of Harold's body and the motives behind its theft 
remain a mystery.

--SEND--


27TH DISTRICT HOUSE
JANUARY 10, 8:27 PM
	
	The report sent, Scully folded the screen of her Powerbook down until it clicked shut. She 
absentmindedly rubbed her bruised forearm, shaking her head slightly to try to clear out some lingering 
fatigue. Her blackened eye still throbbed somewhat, but the swelling was already beginning to go down. Her 
bruised ribs protested a little as she rose to slide the computer into its carrying case. Wasn't I on the winning 
side of the fight? she thought, glancing around the tiny office where she'd been given some time to file her 
field report. She couldn't help but feel a sense of incompleteness. So much had been left unanswered about 
this case-- not that unresolved questions were a novelty in her line of work. 

	"Hey, you better get your partner away from my car," came a voice from the doorway. "He's 
getting fingerprints all over it."  Ray Vecchio stood there, his arm in a sling, grinning in a way Scully found 
equally goofy, obnoxious and charming. 

	"How's your shoulder?" she asked, slinging the carrying case carefully over one shoulder to favor 
her tender ribs. 

	"Well, the docs say it's a clean wound," Vecchio answered. "Three, four weeks and I'll be good as 
new." He looked down at the sling irritably. "Seems like I just got rid of one of these things a couple months 
ago, too. How you feeling?"

	"I've felt worse," Scully replied with a weary smile.  He accompanied her as they walked through 
the bullpen towards the front door of the district house.

	"So, when does your flight leave?" Ray asked. Scully checked her watch.

	"In about two hours," she replied. "With the snow and the traffic, we'll be lucky to make it to 
O'Hare on time... Are you finished with any of the Carries Clouds paperwork yet?"

	"Paperwork? Don't I wish," Ray replied. "At least I'm out of hot water with the lieutenant, now 
that Fraser and your partner are willing to testify that our friend Harold confessed to the Vincenzo murder."

	"So what are you going to do about the Capellis now?"

	"I dunno. Vincenzo was our only real lead. I guess we'll have to wait until another one comes 
along. Figures. Hundreds of thousands of crooks in this city, and that stupid Inuit has to off the one that 
could've helped us the most."

	They reached the doorway. Through the glass she could see snowflakes swirling in the streetlamps. 
Down on the sidewalk, Mulder was gazing forlornly at the green Riviera much like a small child at a toy 
store window. 

	"Hey," Ray began somewhat embarrassedly, his hands stuck in his coat pockets, "I'm, uh, I'm sorry 
about that "big needles" question. Your partner there-- hey! I told him to keep his hands off the hood! And I 
just got it waxed, too... Anyway, he told me about everything you went through." Ray looked at the floor. "I 
guess that was a pretty dumb thing for me to ask."

	"Don't worry," she told him good-naturedly, "I've gotten questions that are much more stupid than 
that." She was thinking in particular of the 500-question alien abductee survey that had arrived in the mail 
from Frohike a few weeks after she'd gotten out of the hospital. Question 398 stuck in her mind: "How 
would you rate the overall creepiness of the appearance of your abductors?"

	Ray's face brightened a little. From one of his coat pockets he produced a small card, which he 
handed to Scully. There was a phone number written on it in blue ink. "Well, if, uh, if you're ever in town on 
a case or something, and you need a hand..."

	She smiled at him, feeling oddly flattered. She held the card for a few seconds, tapping her finger 
against one edge of it, not quite knowing what to with it. "Thanks," she said at last, sticking the card into 
her own pocket. "I appreciate it." 

	Vecchio opened the door and held it for her. She adjusted the shoulder strap on her computer case, 
and pulled her coat a little tighter around her. 

	Why the hell are you holding the door for her?  the little nagging voice in the back of Ray's head 
asked him. You never hold the door for anyone. That's the Mountie's job.  He told it to shut up.

	"Goodbye, Detective Vecchio," Scully said.

	"Goodbye, Agent Scully," he replied. 

	And with that, Dana Scully stepped out of the district house door, and out of Ray Vecchio's life.

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 3798
EN ROUTE TO DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
11:37 PM

	Mulder leaned his forehead against the cool plastic of the window, watching the beacon on the tip 
of the wing flash brilliant white. Outside, silver clouds rolled lazily by in the light of the moon. 
	
	In the seat beside him, Scully worked on the final report Skinner had asked for before they left 
Chicago. Her mind wandered a little, and when she looked at the screen again she saw she'd typed the word 
"ray" when she mean to type "report." She frowned and corrected the error.

	"What's the matter, Mulder?" she asked, looking up from the screen. "Upset that we missed the 
Bulls game?"

	"Just thinking, Scully," he muttered. "Did you read the report from the coroner's office?"
	
	"Not entirely," she replied, reaching down to dig through her bag. "I've got it in here somewhere, 
but I only had time to flip through it..."

	"According to the report," Mulder recalled, closing his eyes, "both the freezer where Carries 
Clouds' body was being kept and the door to the morgue showed evidence of being forced open."
	
	"That's not surprising, Mulder." 
	
	"Forced open from the inside."

	Scully digested this for a while. "You're not saying that--"

	"I don't know, Scully." The two of them were silent.

	"We almost had them," Mulder said at last, more to himself than to Scully. "So many times we get 
close-- they let us get close-- and then they slip through our fingers again. We keep letting them win." He 
closed his eyes again. Scully put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

	"The only way we'll let them win is if we give up, Mulder," she said. "They can't run from us 
forever."

	Mulder ran his hands through his hair. "I want to believe that, Scully. I want to believe that..."


THE REFLECTING POOL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JANUARY 11  2:23 P.M. LOCAL TIME

	Mulder stood at the edge of the pool, about halfway between the Lincoln and Washington 
monuments. As he waited, he turned over in his fingers the small card he'd found planted in his coat pocket 
back at the district house in Chicago. In flowing, flowery handwriting, it listed a Chicago phone number and 
the words, "If you're ever in town, call me." It was signed, "Francesca." Mulder grinned in spite of himself. 
Maybe he would.

	"Agent Mulder," came the crisp, chilly voice behind him. "You wished to see me about 
something?" Replacing the card in his pocket, he turned to see the piercing eyes and smooth, perfect 
features of Marita Covarrubias.  She began to walk quickly along the edge of the reflecting pool, and Mulder 
followed.

	"That's right-- 43 children in Tuktoyaktuk, Canada, seven of whom are now dead."

	"Approximately seven and half weeks ago," Covarrubias began, keeping her eyes straight ahead as 
she walked, "a confidential memo from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was sent to someone in 
the higher echelons of the Canadian Ministry of Health. Two lower employees, sworn to secrecy, were 
ordered to fabricate documents authorizing a immunization team to travel from Chicago, Illinois to 
Tuktoyaktuk to administer vaccinations for Cotswold's disease. Those two employees are now dead; one 
appeared to have shot himself in the head about a month ago, and the other was involved in a fatal hit-and-
run accident in Vancouver a week later.

	"Seven weeks ago a U.S. military transport jet took off from Chicago Midway Airport bound for 
Northern Canada. If you were for some reason able to obtain a copy of the passenger and cargo manifests-- 
which have subsequently vanished, along with the flight plans the pilot filed with the tower-- you would see 
that it listed six fictional Canadian citizens and several crates full of medical supplies."

	"The scientists from Genomics and their virus samples," Mulder said. Covarrubias did not answer 
him, but continued to speak.

	"The vaccinations took place with the unwitting cooperation of the RCMP, who received official 
orders from the Ministry of Health to assist the emergency inoculation team sent to Tuktoyaktuk. 45 
children were vaccinated the morning of November 21; the vaccination team was gone by the afternoon. Of 
that group, 43 manifested flu-like symptoms beginning the last week of November. Seven died, 36 have 
since made a miraculous recovery, and the two who never experienced symptoms have no trace of the virus 
in their bodies. Doctors suspect a natural immunity. Is there anything else you need to know?"

	Mulder almost wished he had a scorecard to keep track of all this. "Where does this all connect to 
the actions of our government?" he asked. "Genomics was jointly funded by the CIA and the SIS. There has 
to be a link somewhere."

	Covarrubias still did not look at Mulder. "As far as you're concerned, Agent Mulder, there is no 
link. Not a provable one, at any rate."

	Mulder was silent for several seconds. "And that's all you can tell me," he said at last. 

	"Agent Mulder, may I remind you that I'm telling you as much as I have of my own free will," she 
said with glacial calm. "Don't for one second delude yourself into thinking I have any sort of obligation to 
you. I believe this conversation is over now." She quickened her pace and Mulder, getting the hint, stopped 
and watched her go.

	"Thank you kindly," he called to her as she walked away. She stopped at that, swiveled her head 
toward him, and fixed Mulder with a puzzled expression.

	"I beg your pardon?" she said.

	"Oh, just something I picked up while up north," Mulder replied, his face deceptively blank. He 
turned and headed back toward the Lincoln Memorial. This time it was Covarrubias's turn to watch him 
walk away.


WASHINGTON, D.C.
7:29 PM LOCAL TIME

	He tapped out the ash from his Morley, took another long drag on it, and looked across his desk at 
the fixer. The man he'd sent to take care of things at Genomics looked like something the cat dragged in: a 
black eye, a bandaged nose, and a swath of gauze and medical tape wrapped around one wrist. Still, the 
fixer's medical condition was not so important to him at this time as one other crucial matter.

	"Do you have it?" he asked the fixer casually. The other man grunted and handed him a metallic 
cylinder with a biohazard symbol stenciled on the side. He took it gingerly, feeling the weight of it in his 
hand, and then handed it back to the fixer. 

	"And you're sure you retrieved the correct sample?" he asked. The other man nodded. "Good," he 
said, taking another puff and letting the smoke curl out from between his lips. "Deliver it personally. That 
will be all." The other man moved wordlessly toward the door.

	"One last thing," he added before the other man left, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray on his 
desk. He picked up a manila file folder from his desktop and leafed through it. "It says here in your report 
that the injuries you sustained included--" he paused momentarily to study one page-- " "... bruised 
windpipe, first-degree burns, wolf bite.'" He shut the folder and looked up. "Do you mean to tell me you 
were bitten by a wolf?"

	The man at the door nodded.

	"A wolf. In the middle of the South Side of Chicago."

	The man at the door nodded again.

	"I... see," he said at length to the fixer. "Very well. You may go." His office door opened, then 
closed. He was left, as always, alone with his thoughts.

	The Cigarette-Smoking Man lit a fresh Morley and permitted himself that rarest of luxuries: a 
moment of confusion. "Funny," he said to himself, shrugging. "I never heard anything about a wolf."



CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
9:23 PM

	"You know, I had a-- a rather strange dream last night, Dad," Fraser began.

	"Dreams," his father said from the back seat. "I remember those. I miss them."

	"I'm not really sure why I'm telling you this."

	"I'm confidential, for one thing. Dead men don't tell tales, son."

	"Good point."

	The Riv idled alongside the sidewalk outside Louie's Pizza. The heat was on inside, not entirely 
successful in keeping out the winter chill. The rear windows were fogged up. Diefenbaker, sitting beside the 
elder Fraser in the back seat, pressed his nose to the window and stared out at the NO PARKING sign on 
the sidewalk next to the car.

	"I was in the morgue where Agent Scully and I examined the unfortunate Mr. Vincenzo," Fraser 
began, idly fiddling with the window knob on the passenger-side door. "I was wearing a surgical mask and 
cap made out of cabbage leaves."

	"Cabbage leaves. Now there's a bad sign, son."
	
	"Let me finish, please. There was a body on the table-- it had a sheet over it, and I went over and 
lifted up the sheet, and it was Harold.

	"And then his eyes opened, and he sat up and grinned at me, just like always, like it was some sort 
of practical joke, and he said... I believe he said, "We've got to stop meeting like this." And then he hopped 
off the table and walked out the door."

	"Hmmm. Anything else, son?"

	"Well, from there the dream sort of shifted into a retelling of that incident from my childhood-- you 
know, with the gold mine, the boomerang and the tank of gasoline."

	"Ah yes, I remember it well."

	Fraser turned a little in his seat to look back at his father. Fraser Sr. wore his warmest parka, 
mukluks and fur-lined hat. "Harold was my best friend, Dad," Fraser told him. "And when I saw him again, 
after so many years-- it was like nothing had changed, and everything had changed."

	"I only met him a few times, son, but he seemed like a good boy. A bit of a showoff at times, but a 
good boy. Reminded me of Buck Frobisher now and then."

	"I couldn't save him, Dad."

	"Save him from death, you mean? No, son. You can't save anyone from that, in the end. Besides, I 
have no complaints. Now, did you save him from himself? Maybe." Fraser's father looked him in the eye. 
"Vengeance is a terrible thing, son. We both know that. It's a hard thing to let go of-- sometimes you need 
some help to do so. I think you gave him that help."

	The driver's side door opened, and Fraser suddenly found a steaming cardboard box thrust into his 
hands. The interior of the car filled with the savory aroma of Chicago-style pizza. Dief licked his chops.

	"Here, hold this, wouldja Benny?" Ray asked, climbing in behind the wheel. "One large pie with the 
works, compliments of the house. Louie's eternally grateful to us since all those cops came out to clean up 
after Vincenzo and kept coming back from the pizza." 

	"It smells delicious, Ray," Fraser said. A ghostly hand reached  for the pizza box from the back seat 
and Fraser slapped it away. He heard his father sigh.

	"There are times," Fraser Sr. told Dief, "that I truly miss being alive." The wolf just grinned at him, 
knowing there was at least one slice in the box with the name "Diefenbaker" on  it.

	The Riv pulled away from the curb and began slushing through the snow-covered streets. "Well, I 
guess by now, Agent Scully and her partner are back in Washington," Ray said. He let out a titanic sigh. 
"She was great, wasn't she?"

	"I suppose so, Ray," Fraser answered, somewhat hesitantly. "You know, for someone who 
expresses such dislike of officers of the federal government, you certainly seem to be... well, enamored of 
several of them."

	"Hey!" Ray shot him a look. "Two of them. Just two of them. That's just coincidence."

	"What about the State's Attorney, Ray?"

	"Louise doesn't count."

	"Why not?"

	"She just doesn't, okay?" Ray shot back, growing annoyed.

	"If you insist, Ray," Fraser said. He was not entirely successful in stifling a smile. They drove in 
silence for a while.

	"The Lieutenant has Huey working on the disappearance of your friend's body," Ray said at last. 
"I, uh, I checked with him before I left work... no leads yet. I'm sorry."

	"That's all right, Ray," Fraser said quietly. "I just wish I'd had more of an opportunity to say 
goodbye to him."

	"Hey, you never know, Benny," Ray replied, trying to sound as cheerful as he could. "You just 
never know." Fraser stared out the window and said nothing.

	The Riv passed an alley, and for just a second, in the glare of a streetlight, Fraser thought he saw 
someone back in the shadows. Someone with long dark hair and a black leather jacket. Someone grinning at 
him like a Cheshire cat. Fraser started a little, tried to look closer, but the Riv had moved on. 

	"Anyway," Ray was saying, "something will turn up. We'll get a lead on whoever took the body. 
You'll see." Fraser nodded slowly. Could it have been-- no. Of course not. That was just silly.

	"You may be right," he told his friend. "After all, the truth is out there, Ray."

	Ray looked at him oddly. "Oh no, don't you start with that too. I got enough of that from Agent 
Mulder."
	
	"Start with what, Ray?"

	"Don't give me that."

	"I wasn't aware I'd given you anything."

	"Right now you're giving me a headache."
	
	"I'm sorry, Ray."

	"Yeah, yeah, just gimme a slice of pizza."

	They drove onward into the winter night.