Terra Nueva Trailer Park Goodland, Florida February 27, 1999

Try as he might, Dales couldn't pretend any longer that he
wasn't waiting by the phone for Agent Mulder's call. Three
days already since they'd talked. Three days and the endless
waiting was killing him but he knew if he called he'd only get
Mulder's answering machine. The man himself was in California
on another case. Something about a garbage monster. He'd
assured Dales that he and his partner would try to get up to
L.A. to look into the fire.

Jesus, another fire, after all this time.

Dales wondered if he'd told young Mulder enough to intrigue
him so that he'd look in on Dorothy. He should have said more
than just reminding him that she was the person who'd named
the X-Files. Something more... tempting. At least he could
have said that she'd spent the year and a half after the Skur
case working with him on pursuing some of the strange things
in the files. The local ones, at least. But then he would have
had to explain to Mulder why they'd lost touch, and he just
couldn't reveal that much of his long-protected heart to the
younger man.

What would he have said if he'd had the courage, how would he
have explained Dorothy? Even now he remembered the way her
eyes glowed when she found something exciting in the files,
how much he'd loved to bring her curiosities and lay them at
her feet in return. All that sharp intelligence and dazzling
enthusiasm in one petite package. How she had loved those
ghosts and monsters and space aliens. It was a lark to her
back then, a strange and wondrous journey through the files.
And so it might have remained if she hadn't met Dales.

Damn it.

He struggled out of his chair, leaning heavily on his cane to
pull himself up. Damn hip. At the sink, he rinsed out a glass
and filled it halfway with water. He took a sip and looked out
the window. The dark night revealed nothing but his reflection
in the glass, bathed in the eerie light from the next-door
trailer's television, flickering blue flames that darted
through the visual echo of his reddened face and lumpy body.
With a grunt, he returned to his chair.

Skur.

A gulp of water failed to stave off the horrific memory of
tentacles reaching for his throat, tentacles that had writhed
across Skur's tongue, preparing to lunge from behind his
teeth. Another gulp. Jesus.

But it wasn't all as bad as Skur. Dales had never been
enamoured of ghost tales, but once the X-Files came into his
life he'd become a reluctant believer who couldn't deny what
he had seen. There'd been an apparition of an Iroquois king in
Alexandria, a door-to-door salesman whose hypnotic powers
increased his sales, a woman who could predict the sex of
unborn children by talking to them, or so she said. It was fun
while it lasted, he and Dorothy stealing time away from their
"real" jobs, working after hours, she and her phenomenal
memory in the office, he out in the field.

Fun. Is that where he went wrong? Trying to keep it light, all
the time knowing there were dark threats hidden in those
files, threats not just to them personally, but to the whole
sorry world? The familiar mantra trudged through his brain
like a convict plodding a worn dirt path in the prison yard.
He should have told her the rest. He should have told her
there was nothing supernatural about the way Skur got the way
he did. He should have told her how he had searched and
searched for Skur, the man -- the creature? -- who'd killed
his partner and who'd almost killed him. How he'd searched for
that sad tool of men who thought nothing of allowing Nazi
doctors to continue their experiments here in the States,
implanting other species into innocent people like so many
worthless lab rats.

Xenotransplantation. Even now, the word shriveled his
testicles.

Ice clinked against Dales' teeth as he tipped the last of the
bourbon into his mouth. Hoover himself had been no better in
the end. It was hard to imagine now how inviolable Hoover was
in those days, he for whom the Bureau headquarters building
was later named. Worshipped by the public, feared by the men
who should have been able to stop him. Should have, could
have, might have, but for the incriminating evidence that
Hoover hoarded like a bloated, white spider, every instance of
adultery, gambling, every homosexual liaison caught and
preserved in his web.

All of it done under the cover of protecting the country from
Russia and a nuclear holocaust. Back when people built bomb
shelters in their back yards and learned to "duck and cover,"
as though that would help when a hydrogen bomb exploded half a
mile over their heads. The Rosenbergs executed for treason,
British diplomats defecting to the U.S.S.R., Commie spies in
the State Department. Those events, both real and fabricated,
were the perfect excuses for the witch hunts by Senator
McCarthy, the spying and wire-tapping by Hoover, the
prosecutions by Cohn.

And what about the men who controlled them, who directed their
lies? Those were the men who haunted Dales still, the great
black mark on his wasted life, his complete failure to uncover
what they were really doing and to expose their heinous
crimes. Over the years, Dales had re-played in his mind that
first meeting with Cohn, Mr.
Chief-Counsel-at-the-McCarthy-Hearings Cohn, many times. Now
he knew the real meaning behind Cohn's words, the doublespeak
used to cover up the plans he and his cronies were hatching.
He should have known it was all wrong from the beginning. That
he'd never had a chance against a man who had lied to his face
when he told him, ' We are fighting a powerful enemy in a war
of ideology. In any war there are secrets -- truths that must
be kept from the public in order to serve the greater good.'

What a fucking joke, the greater good. Cohn's real message had
come at the end of their conversation. 'You're not supposed to
understand. You're supposed to follow orders.' That was Dales'
biggest mistake. He had thought he could get away with not
following orders, thought he would never have to pay. He
looked around the dingy trailer. He paid for that every damned
day of his life. And he had nothing, nothing to show for any
of it.

Well, not quite. She was safe, and that was something. Happy,
he hoped, far, far away from him and the black cloud he
traveled under. Gone before he could steal away her innocence
with stories about government conspiracy and experiments
performed on unwilling victims.

He tried to will the phone into ringing but it just sat there,
black and silent. At this point, he wasn't sure whose voice he
wanted to hear, Mulder's or.... He shook his head, knocked
back some more bourbon. So many fantasies he'd had over the
years, imagining what her shiny new life must be like. Maybe
she'd forgotten him and Agent Mulder didn't know how to tell
him that. Part of him rejoiced at the thought and the other
half wanted to punch someone, kick something, run screaming
into the night. His hand tightened around his glass, and he
sighed as he pressed it against his lower lip.

If he were a younger man...

If he were a younger man, what? He'd hop on a plane and find
out for himself? Hell, if he were going to play do-over, he'd
be an agent now and she'd be his partner, his real partner,
not a file clerk trapped in a 1950s vision of what it meant to
be a woman.

A vision of Mulder's partner flashed through his mind, the
redheaded little virago that had blown through here last fall
with a force of personality stronger than the hurricane that
brought her. He'd left the Bureau long before women were
allowed to be agents. Dales wasn't fool enough to believe that
men and women couldn't work together, but law enforcement
required so much more than the average job. Were women really
capable of using force, of the gut-churning things that had to
be done? Scully seemed like one who was. Mulder had his hands
full with that one. Maybe women had changed. Or maybe women
were always that tough, and he'd just been too stupid to see
it and use it to his advantage.

A slammed door interrupted his musings, and he heard his
neighbor get into her car. Finding the glass still held to his
lips, he took a sip, then rested it on his stomach and eyed
the tawny liquid. He was familiar enough with self-pitying
guilt to know that it was the drink talking. It just wasn't
that simple, he informed the melting ice. He'd tried to tell
Dorothy. She hadn't wanted to believe. Maybe he could have
pushed harder, but how could he have done that to her? He
didn't have it in him to bully an innocent civilian into
believing that everything she thought she knew was a lie.

But oh, how she'd loved looking for real-life B-movie
monsters. She'd gotten a kick out of the secrecy, he'd always
suspected, just the two of them exploring the unknown and the
forbidden, learning things that no one else knew. He had liked
that, too.

* * *

FBI Headquarters October, 1952

"Sorry I'm late, Dorothy," Arthur Dales called as he rushed
into the Bureau bullpen, empty at this time of the evening
except for one young woman. He shrugged off his coat and
draped it haphazardly over the back of a wooden chair, but
took more care with his fedora, setting it on the long work
table after checking to make sure the brim was still creased
just right. He pulled out a chair, which squeaked as he
dropped into it. Across the cluttered expanse, Dorothy looked
up from where she was rapidly jotting notes in the margin of
an official looking document.

"Arthur, there you are, hello. I was reading the file about
the lights over DC this summer when I remembered a file on
lights hovering over Bakersfield from 1950," she replied, her
whole face radiating excitement. "In both cases, witnesses
reported the lights shooting straight up, then moving off at a
ninety degree angle. You know there’s no known aircraft that
can do that. I really think it's worth looking into."

He laughed. "Dorothy, you sound like my brother out in
Roswell."

Her enthusiasm quickly diverted for a moment to a different
mystery. "You have a brother?"

"Yeah, is that so strange?" What did she think, that he just
crawled ashore, like the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms?

"Not at all, you've just never mentioned having family of any
kind. So does he believe in aliens?"

He patted his chest looking for his pack of Lucky Strikes.
"Not only believes -- he thinks they're here to play
baseball."

"Baseball." She put her pencil down and sat up a little
straighter. He'd have to remember this technique for
redirecting her attention. It struck him that in the three
months they'd been working together they'd both actively
avoided talking about personal matters.

Distracted by the search for his cigarettes, he spoke before
thinking. "Yeah, Arthur was guarding a player in the Negro
League in '47 and--"

"Arthur?" she interrupted. "His name is Arthur?"

He braced himself, suppressing any hint of a smile that would
encourage her. "We're all named Arthur, even my sister. It's a
long story, don’t ask."

Pursed lips tried valiantly to disguise a grin, and it might
have worked but for the smart-ass sparkle in her eyes. Though
all she said was, "That explains a lot."

"Gee, thanks. You’re swell."

She laughed, a delightful sound in the deserted bullpen.
"Besides, everyone knows the aliens aren't here to play
baseball. They're here to brainwash people into thinking that
saddle shoes are attractive." She brushed a hand across the
document she'd been working on, then gave it an impatient
little shove across the table toward him. "But anyway, Arthur,
I really do think we should look into the lights. We have
corroborating evidence now. That's the right term, isn't it?"

He finally found his cigarettes, lit one and flipped the
extinguished match into the ashtray by his elbow. So much for
distracting her. Privately, he thought that the scientists
were right, that heat inversion layers were fooling people
who'd seen too many space alien movies into thinking lights in
the sky meant visitors from another planet, but it wasn't
worth fighting about. He always chose the cases, and
thankfully there were always enough to keep them busy and away
from lights in the sky.

"Let's table that for now, Dorothy. Did you find anything on
mutant gastropods?"

"Oh, yes, yes." She dropped the sighting report and began
ransacking the pile of folders next to her. "Although leeches
technically aren't gastropods."

Bingo. A weird case -- a down to earth one -- would always
distract her. Worked better than the family discussion, that
was for damn sure.

"Not gastropods," he echoed.

"No, they're a kind of worm, once used by doctors to keep
blood from coagulating. They don't attack in the usual sense,
either, not like a wild animal would. But I did find some
precedents for unusual gastropod behavior."

He swallowed a laugh at the utterly serious look that
accompanied this report, and gave thanks that the bullpen was
deserted. "Well, let's hear them. Suburban housewives just
don't traipse into the woods and get attacked by bears. Apart
from the fact that there haven't been bears near the District
for decades, those weren't claw marks on her neck. And I don't
think she was hallucinating colossal gastropo-- sorry,
colossal worms," he said, emphasizing the last word with a
smile. He moved his chair closer to the table. "So what did
you find in your search -- any evidence of giant bloodsucking
leeches?"

"No, but there was a report during the war of a giant slug
living in a sewer in Baltimore. Slugs are gastropods, I might
add." The look she gave him let him know she was well aware
that her predictable precision just as predictably amused him.
"Unfortunately, it was only a long-distance sighting, not an
attack or actual encounter. Then three years ago, a woman in
Bethesda reported that foot-high snails were menacing her dog.
They disappeared before the investigating officer arrived on
the scene. He made some notes in his report about the number
of empty bottles of Wild Turkey he found in her trash and left
it at that."

"Can slugs move that fast?"

"Who knows? The geographical proximity of the cases is
interesting, though. I was thinking...could this be related to
the water fluoridation project?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, it's only been about five or six years since local
governments started putting fluoride in the water. We don’t
really know much about its long-term impact."

"Anything's possible, I suppose."

"Yes," she sighed happily, "it is. But leeches.... That's so
boring, Arthur. From the marks on her neck, I was really
hoping we might have stumbled on evidence for a vampire at
last. Did you get the sample from the drain pipe?"

Dales pulled a small glass vial out of his pocket. "Yeah, but
I don't know what good it'll do us. I can't send it to the lab
without a valid case I.D. and somehow I don't see getting
supervisor approval for this one."

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." She reached her
hand across the table and he dropped the vial into it.

"How?" With a grin, he let his eyes drift from her pretty face
down to her soft blue sweater and back, lingering maybe a bit
longer than the joke required. "Or do I want to know?"

"Why, whatever do you mean?" She opened her eyes wide, then
dropped the innocent act for her usual brisk demeanor. "I type
up requests all the time, smart guy. Then I deliver the
results back. All I have to do is request our analysis along
with another case and pull the results out of the file when it
comes back."

"Dorothy, you're a genius."

She smiled. "And don't you forget it."

* * *

Los Angeles County Coroner's Office 1104 N. Mission Rd. Boyle
Heights February 27, 1999 1:43 pm

Even before she stepped into the autopsy bay, the acrid,
familiar reek of formalin stung her nostrils. The source was a
harried technician, barreling through the bay doors, his loose
cotton gown catching briefly on the ring on Scully's hand. He
brushed past with a mumbled apology and continued down the
hallway.

"Agent Scully?"

She stopped short as the battered swinging doors flew open
once again, this time disgorging a tall man garbed like the
technician, with the addition of a long white coat that gave
him an air of authority. He also radiated a palpable aura of
irritation as he pulled off latex gloves.

She moved forward to shake the man's large hand. "It's Dr.
Scully, actually."

"They told me the FBI was here." He added a clipped, "Sorry,"
as they both brushed at their hands, wiping away glove powder.
"I'm Dr. Kumar."

"I am a special agent, but also a medical doctor. I trained in
forensic pathology." She heard the strident tone in her voice,
but did nothing to modulate it. Sometimes her credentials were
all that kept her head above water in the strange situations
in which she often found herself with Mulder. Since they had
absolutely no authority to investigate this case, she decided
she'd better lay out every diploma she had to her name.

Kumar glanced down at her. "Interesting combination. We were
wondering when the rest of the alphabet would show up."

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"You're here about the Jane Does, aren't you? The garment
district fire? So is everyone else. Besides the L.A.P.D.,
we've got the L.A.F.D., O.S.H.A., I.N.S., A.T.F., F.E.M.A.,
even the A.F.L.-C.I.O. tried to bluff their way in here. What
happened to you lot? Miss the memo?"

She drew herself up. "I'm here now," she said, deflecting the
question. "So why don't we get started?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Dr. Scully, but you're a bit late. Lots of
political push on this one, needless to say. The autopsies are
done, not that there was much left to examine. We got the
crispiest sort of crispy critters from that warehouse."

"Still," she insisted, "I'd like to see what you have. If you
can pull the photos, I can go over those myself. You won't
even know I'm here."

"Of course I won't. Until the story in tomorrow's Times,
quoting an unnamed FBI source with a new angle on the
investigation that the coroner's office somehow missed. And I
get an e-mail from my boss who got a call from the mayor who
got a memo from the chief of police, wanting to know what the
bloody hell is going on."

"How about a story in which the L.A. County Coroner's Office
discovers evidence which will assist in an important, ongoing
federal investigation?"

"Ongoing?" He gave her an incredulous look. "I don't remember
hearing about that, and I most certainly didn't see anything
in the literature about burn cases like this. In point of
fact, I'm writing up the preliminary data now." He paused as
if to measure the effect his words had on her. She kept her
face expressionless, watching carefully as his self-assurance
gave way to inevitable curiosity. "You've seen this before?"

"It's classified." She braced herself for the staring contest
that ensued. In the end, she managed to stare him down, no
easy task since he topped six feet, and was using every inch
to try to intimidate her. But she had plenty of practice with
men of that height.

After a few seconds, his stance relaxed, and he leaned back
against one of the swinging doors, opening it slightly. "Very
well, Agent Dr. Scully. I'll get you the photos. You may
examine them with Dr. Browning." He turned away from her and
walked through the door, which swung back and smacked against
her outstretched palm. She pushed through after him, relieved
that the bluff had worked better than she'd hoped. Perhaps her
skill at dissembling and double talk had improved over the
years.

"Agent Scully, Frank Browning," Kumar said, bringing forward
an older man. His long white coat gave him none of Kumar's
authority, perhaps because of the numerous rusty stains across
the buttoned front, or perhaps because the coat was topped by
a kindly, curious face.

"Ah, the Feds have finally arrived." Dr. Browning reached out
to shake her hand, following the gesture with the familiar
'Sorry,' and powder-wiping ritual. "What can we do for you,
Agent Scully?"

"I'm going to have you review the Jane Doe fire photos with
Agent Scully, Frank," interrupted Kumar. "I'll be back
shortly."

"So, what's your interest in this case, Agent Scully?" Dr.
Browning took her elbow and gently guided her to a quiet
corner of the room, away from the bustle. The bay doors had
started swinging to and fro, admitting a series of gurneys,
with their black-bagged occupants trundled through by an
assortment of EMT and lab personnel. "And where's the rest of
your team? It's unusual to see an FBI agent going solo. To
tell the truth, I've only seen that once before, and that was
a burn case too. Also a weird one."

"My partner is investigating a different lead." Then, to fend
off more questions as to her motives for being there, she
asked, "What case was that?"

"It was a while ago," the older man said, "around the time of
the big Malibu fires. What was that, '94? Yes, Fall of '94. We
had a lot of bad fires that year. Were you here then?"

Scully felt her mouth go dry. "No, I was... I don't work out
of the Los Angeles office, I'm from D.C."

"So was this guy!" said the coroner. "Maybe you know him.
Tall, long face, big nose. Had some wild ideas about the folks
we were investigating. Thought they were vampires."

"That's... interesting." Scully’s mind raced. Interesting
indeed, that this was the first she'd heard about a vampire
case that had caught the interest of the FBI. And not from the
usual source.

"The cops had one guy in custody who actually burned to death
when the sunlight hit him. We never did figure out why. Didn't
seem to faze the Fed at all. Scared the hell out of me, I'll
tell you."

"This agent...." She paused, trying to decide if she really
wanted to know. "Do you remember his name? Or... any more
about him?"

"Hmm. Morris. No, that's not right. M-Murdock? I'm sorry, I'm
not very good with names. I'll never forget his face, though.
He had the saddest eyes I've ever seen."

She closed her eyes briefly until she heard Dr. Browning say,
with some concern, "Agent Scully? Are you okay?"

"It's the smell," she lied smoothly, opening her eyes.

"We can use one of the offices to look at the photos," Dr.
Browning assured her. "I don't have a permanent office here
anymore, since I'm semi-retired. I just come in part time when
there's an extra workload because of some screaming headline
case. There's just one problem with this town," he added,
dropping his voice to a whisper as Kumar came striding toward
them. "There's a never-ending supply of screaming headline
cases."

"Here are the photos." Kumar gestured to the two assistants
behind him, each staggering under the weight of several large
binders. He continued through the swinging doors with the
natural gait of a leader, not looking back to see if his
motley assortment of followers was keeping pace. "Agent Scully
is a doctor, did she tell you, Frank?"

Dr. Browning shook his head in surprise, giving Scully a
questioning look as they entered an unoccupied office.

"A forensic specialist, so she tells me," Kumar continued,
gesturing to the technicians to set their burdens on the empty
desk. "You could even say she's an expert, since it seems,
unlike the rest of us, she's seen cases like this before. So
as bad as we thought this was, none of it should come as a
shock to her."

At that moment, one of the technicians, juggling the last
heavy binder in one arm while laying the others on the desk,
lost her grip. The binder tumbled to the floor and fell open.
Several large glossy photos escaped their plastic sleeve and
slid across the floor, landing under the toe of Scully's black
suede pump. She stared in horror at the sight before her,
presented from a multitude of gory angles.

"Oh my God," she gasped.

* * *
End Chapter 2
* * *
Chapter 3