"The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" by Anita Kelsey, from Dark City soundtrack

It is an unlikely place to meet her informant: a casual, funky coffee shop downtown, populated mainly by college kids and unemployed artists. A teenaged girl, her hair dyed black, lisping from a newly pierced tongue, takes the stage, her voice, surprisingly soft, carried by the microphone over the noise of the coffee grinder.

Scully turns the note over in her hand, another request for a clandestine meeting, another bit of useless information dangled in front of her. This is Mulder's job, a nagging voice in her head reminds her, but her job has ceased to exist. There are no bodies, no traces of pathogens, no theories to debunk through science. The case - if it can be called a case, it is far too personal to be sanctified by the FBI - is defined only through what it lacks, composed of absences, of impossibilities.

Waiting, she decides that this is a better meeting place than the seclusion of the Memorial. Out in the open, no one is listening. This time, her mysterious friend has no means of slipping away.

She orders another cup of coffee, listening to the thin strains of the girl's guitar. Scully closes her eyes for a moment, imagining a deeper, richer sound, filling in an orchestra behind the quiet, slightly off-key voice. As she does so, the informant slips into the chair across from her, the rustle of a trench coat only a negligible distraction.

Scully opens her eyes.

"Good evening, Agent Scully."

It is a while before Scully finds her voice. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

Teena Mulder waves away the waitress who has come to ask if she would like anything. Coffee is irrelevant - there are more important matters to be discussed.

"The man you met the other night is dead. His body was found the morning after he contacted you."

Somehow Scully cannot find it in her to be shocked, or moved. Not anymore. All she can manage is, "I hope you're not going to tell me that you're his replacement."

Teena ignores the sarcasm. "He couldn't have told you anything of importance. He only understood part of the picture."

"And you?"

The older woman leans forward, and her voice drops to a low whisper. "Once, when everything pointed to the opposite conclusion, when I feared the worst, you told me that Fox was still alive. Now I've come to you, to offer you the same hope."

"What do you know?" She should have asked where he was. Or, perhaps, more importantly, how she knew.

"Only that...they're alive, both of them, and safe for the time being. Someone...told me that."

"Someone you trust?"

Teena laughs. It is a bitter, hollow sound, echoing in the sudden silence as the noise of the coffee grinder stops.

"Someone who knows he can't lie to me."

Scully says nothing for a moment, watching the painful twist of her companion's features. She senses an odd kinship with Teena Mulder, a woman well versed in the art of deception, an expert in the careful construction of emotional walls. It is a different sort of intrigue that the two of them practice.

"Someone," Scully says, "killed the man who came to me with information. And someone killed a young woman with a bullet intended for Mulder."

Whatever concern Teena feels for her son, for her daughter, is buried deep beneath a sheet of ice. "It wasn't them. It wasn't him."

And Scully mentally completes the implication. If the Consortium did not make the attempt on Mulder's life, then someone else did.

"Things are falling apart," Teena says.

"The bullet wasn't meant for Mulder, was it?" The realization occurs to her almost instantaneously, and she wonders why she didn't see it before.

"Miss Scully, I am just an old woman who has seen too many tragedies. I didn't come here to give you answers." She stands, frail hands grasping the table for support.

"Mrs. Mulder..." Scully begins, and she does not know how to finish.

"But I can tell you this much," Teena says, "the missing ones, the ones who were taken...they are coming back. They are all coming back."

The sound of chimes as she slips out the door of the cafe is barely audible as the music starts up again.

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