Genesis
Ally

Chapter 6

If Scully was uneasy following her telephone conversation with Mulder, she was even more so when the connecting door swung open and he entered the room. His face was flushed with fever, his eyes narrowed against the light.

From his disheveled appearance it was obvious that he was quite un-together and had literally thrown on whatever clothes had come to hand, and, Scully noted worriedly, had not done a very good job of it.

The shirt he had pulled on over his white T-shirt was badly creased and fastened on the wrong buttons, the cuffs undone and hanging over his wrists, and Scully's first instinct on seeing him like this was to turn him around and frog march him back to bed.

Before she could put the thought in to words though, Mulder turned to where Christine Stevens sat, eyeing him warily. He held out his hand, which after a moment's hesitation, she grasped briefly and as she viewed him, Mulder thought he detected a hint of contrition in her face.

"I'm sorry."

Mulder frowned. "For what?"

"Your partner told me you were sick. I didn't believe her, thought she was trying to trap me. Obviously I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Mulder glanced at Scully who shrugged apologetically.

"Don't worry. I probably look a lot worse than I feel," he lied smoothly.

"So, what is it you want to tell us?" Mulder sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, the action necessitated by the tilting of the room, and consciously he avoided his partner's accusing glare.

He could fool a stranger, but there was no way he could fool Scully. He didn't have the energy to even try. He focused his attention on Christine.

She twisted her hands nervously in her lap.

"I don't know where to begin," she admitted. "I mean, it's crazy. I've waited so long to tell it to someone, for someone to believe me...and now...I can't seem to find a place to start."

Scully leaned forward, and laid her hand lightly over Christine's, calming her with a touch.

"Start at the beginning. Take your time, we've got all night to listen to you." Christine's eyes briefly closed, and then nodding slowly, she opened her mouth and began to speak.

"Jim, my husband, and I couldn't have children. We tried for years, had the tests, underwent the treatments, nothing worked for us. It was a yearning that never went away. And then one night, about four years ago, Jim came home from work with some men. He told me that they could arrange for us to take care of a child, a baby, who had no one else, but that it doing so we had to undertake certain conditions regarding her care."

"Conditions?"

Christine nodded. "Yes. They told us that she was special, that she needed specialist care in order to survive, that she needed regular treatment to keep her safe and that we would have no part in that side of her life. Of course we agreed, it was the answer to all our prayers, what we had wished for so long. We didn't ask too many questions, and suddenly we found ourselves with this brand new baby girl."

Christine's eyes softened.

"She was so beautiful, all rosy cheeked, with huge blue eyes and blonde hair. She was perfect, in every sense of the word, and apart from the treatment we were told she had to receive, she was never sick, not once in her life. Over the years she grew in to a bright, funny little girl. On the outside she was totally normal, but sometimes I would catch her looking at me from across the room, and it sounds crazy, but I would swear she would know what I was thinking."

Mulder narrowed his eyes.

"In what way?"

"It's hard to explain, but like, sometimes I would be thinking about my Mother, or about what to cook for dinner, y'know something like that, and Charlotte - we called her Charlie - would start talking to me about the exact same thing, like I had spoken the thoughts aloud to her and it was the most natural thing for her to answer me. I tried to discuss it with Jim, but he just laughed at me, said I was imagining things, that all kids acted like that sometimes, but I began to worry."

"About what?"

"When Charlie was a baby, she had to go away once a week for treatment. I didn't know what the treatments were, and I never asked. She was always returned to us unharmed and happy, so I never gave it much thought either way. But then things began to change. She began to hate going, and it got so that she would scream for hours before they took her and for hours after they brought her back. We would ask her what she was so afraid of, but she would refuse to answer, take herself away and sit in a corner of the room. I began to hate myself for making her go, but what could we do? We'd made an agreement, and besides, we believed that to deny her the treatment would endanger her life."

Christine took a deep breath. "About six months ago, the nightmares started. Once every couple of weeks at first, and then every night, sometimes twice. Charlie would wake up screaming that *The bad men* were hurting her, that they wouldn't stop. We would try to calm her, but she just kept saying that they were going to hurt her Mommy, that they would kill her if Charlie was bad. At first I didn't understand, and then one night when I had calmed her down and put her back to bed, Jim sat with her and asked her why anyone would want to hurt me. He came back downstairs, shaken to the point he looked ill."

Christine raised her eyes from where they were fixed on her hands. All the time she spoke her fingers twisted the hem of her cotton shirt over and over, as though she couldn't bear to remain still.

"It wasn't me that Charlie was so afraid for, but for her real Mother, a Mother we had never told her about. A Mother who she seemed to know everything about and one which she tried to protect through her dreams..." she trailed off as Scully exhaled sharply.

Scully noticed the woman's questioning look, but could not find the words to explain. Instead she rose to her feet and gestured helplessly toward Mulder who had observed the subtle change in his partner's statement.

"I'm sorry. I need a drink of water."

She headed for the bathroom, needing the time suddenly to get her thoughts together, leaning on the sink, staring back at her reflection in the mirror. Listening to Christine talk about her daughter had been hard enough, but this? This was almost more than Scully could bear.

She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out her image, but a faint breeze against the nape of her neck apprised her of her partner's presence behind her. She opened her eyes, but did not turn around, gazing at his reflection instead, knowing that to turn around now would only cause her to break down completely. She couldn't afford to do that. Not now. Not when they were finally gaining the answers they needed.

She forced a smile. "I'm OK. I just needed a minute."

"Are you sure?" He rested a hand lightly against the small of her back. "I know this is hard for you, having to hear this, but Scully, it's not too late to step away. I can handle this for you, there's no need for you to put yourself through this."

She looked in to his fever flushed reflection and smiled slightly.

"No, really, I'll be fine. Like I say, I just need a minute. You go back. I'll join you in a second."

The pressure of Mulder's hand remained.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

He nodded slightly and dropped his hand away, and after staring at her for a beat, turned and left her alone in the bathroom.

Only once he was safely out of sight did Scully realise she had been holding her breath, and she exhaled slowly, feeling the tension which had overtaken her body, inside of her like a tightly coiled spring. She wondered, not for the first time, just how much more she could reasonably be expected to take before the spring gave way.

The temptation to remain where she stood, forehead pressed against the cool glass of the mirror was strong, but after a couple of minutes, she knew that to do this would be impossible. She forced her features into an statement which resembled something akin to normality, and after rinsing her face with cold water, headed back in to the main room.

On returning she found the scene to be much the same as when she had left it. Mulder had obviously halted Christine's narrative until she rejoined them, and had taken the opportunity to make some much needed mugs of the Motel's instant coffee, one of which he passed to Scully. She took it gratefully, smiling in response to his questioning look.

"Thanks, Mulder."

The two words spoke volumes to her partner, and satisfied that for the moment at least, she had regained control of her emotions, he turned his attention back to Christine, asking the question that he had been about to ask before Scully had left the room.

"You spoke of your husband," he queried. "Where is he now?"

He couldn't help but notice how Christine's knuckles whitened as she locked her fingers around the mug he had offered her, and also how for the first time, the woman's eyes filled with tears. Her voice cracked as she answered him.

"Like I said, we were becoming more and more concerned about what was happening to Charlie. Jim seemed to know more about what was being done to her although he never discussed it with me. But he was scared. I knew that much, and he began to talk about us going away, taking Charlie and going where *They* would never find us. He said he had the connections to make sure we would never be found. Part of me wanted to do as he said, but a part of me was afraid for Charlie, that this treatment she was getting, despite what it was doing to her, was necessary, that if we took her away she would die." She shook her head sadly. "We had a terrible argument, him insisting that we had to leave, me refusing. And then he told me."

Christine's statement became far away, her eyes clouded with pain as she remembered.

"He told me that my precious little girl was a part of an experiment, an experiment to create children for a secret Government agenda, an agenda which he himself was a part of. He had known all along that we would care for Charlie, that we had been chosen months before her birth, and that later, when the time was right, she would be taken from us. He also told me that this *treatment* she was receiving was nothing more than a kind of gene therapy to enable her to develop in the way they hoped she would, and that if the treatment ceased, she would eventually become just another normal child."

Christine laughed bitterly.

"I didn't believe him at first, I mean it sounded too crazy to be true, but as he told me more about the Government's hopes for Charlie and for the others like her, everything began to make sense to me. The way she seemed able to read my thoughts, her intelligence - she could read and write by age two - the way she would climb on to my lap when I had a headache, laying her head against mine, and within minutes the pain would be gone. They were all things I hadn't given much thought to at the time, but which now seemed so relevant to what Jim was saying. He also told me that night, that Charlie was special, that she was one of the Project's greatest triumphs. Apparently she was developing in ways they had only dreamed about, far in advance of the others, when so many had failed in the past. I asked him what he meant by *failed*"

She paused then, taking a sip of the coffee she still held in her hands.

"I don't know why really, deep down I knew what his response would be, but I didn't want to believe that he could be capable of such terrible things..."

"What things?" Scully's voice was so low, it was almost a whisper, but the room was heavy with silence, and Christine had no problem in hearing the words. She leveled her gaze at Scully, eyes matter of fact, as though she had cocooned herself to the horror.

"He told me that hundreds of children had been created. That Charlie was just a small part of genetic experiments which had been ongoing for years, decades even. There had been marginal successes apparently, but all too often these children would reach an age where their heightened development would cease. They were considered to be non- viable, not worthy to be allowed to live. The word Jim used was *release*."

A single tear escaped from Christine's eye and tracked it'sway down her pallid cheek.

"What he really meant was termination, that when a child ceased to be of use, they, and everything connected to them, was quietly disposed of. They had certain ways of ensuring the continuing secrecy of the project. Suicides, car accidents, house fires, a burglary gone wrong, anything which could be explained away as *accidental*. No one ever asked any questions, and the project continued, children kept on being created. But something went wrong. I don't know exactly what it was, but like I said, Jim was scared. He came to me that night and said that somehow the project had been exposed, and that he had been ordered to remove the evidence. All of it."

Mulder spoke for the first time.

"And Charlie was a part of that evidence?"

"Yes. Our little girl had been reduced to the level of a lab rat, and even easier to deny. But Jim loved her like she was his own daughter...he couldn't do what they were asking of him."

She looked at Mulder and Scully in turn as she implored them to understand.

"Jim wasn't an evil man. He had gone along with the Project because he had thought he was serving the best interests of his country, but now they were erasing the very children he had helped to create, terminating their lives in the interests of national security, when they could just as easily be allowed to live. Having Charlie had changed him, had made him see these poor kids as something more than a number on a chart, and despite everything he couldn't go along with what they were ordering him to do."

"So what *did* he do?" despite herself, Scully's voice came out accusingly, quite unable to feel any kind of sympathy for a man who had played such a deadly role in all that had happened to her. Christine heard the sharpness behind the question and glanced across at the younger woman in surprise, unsure of how to react to the sudden hostility.

"He...he sent us away. He knew we didn't have much time, so that same night he bundled some of Charlie's things together, and insisted we leave. I resisted him at first, because however much he had kept things from me, he was my husband, Charlie's father and we needed him. He refused to change his mind though, just said that I was to contact no-one about where I was going, he wouldn't even let me tell him. I was to just get in the car and drive, far away to where no one knew us. He promised me that he would find me, and that when it was safe he would join us again, that we would be a family, like it had been in the beginning. So I came here. I had a little money set aside, and I began to pick up my life. I did as Jim had told me to do. I changed my name, and Charlie's so that we couldn't be traced, using the names he suggested, so that when the time came he would be able to find us. But he never came. I waited and waited but he never came."

Her voice was lost as she buried her face in her hands, sobbing in earnest now and a feeling of guilt overwhelmed Scully.

She had no right to feel antagonism toward this woman. She was nothing more than another victim, a pawn to be toyed with as she herself had suffered at the hands of these men, and whatever else she might be guilty of, it was clear that Christine Stevens loved her daughter. That she would die for her.

"How did they find you?" she asked softly. Christine shook her head.

"I don't know. How do they find anyone who doesn't want to be found? I'd begun to think that we might be safe. Charlie had begun to thrive away from the treatments and the tests, and over the months, she began to lose the characteristics that had set her apart from other children her age. She never lost her intelligence, but the intuition she seemed to have lessened with each day, until it just wasn't there at all. She became like a normal child."

Christine smiled suddenly, "I remember one day she wasn't her usual self, she was always such a happy child, but on that day she was cranky and irritable. At first I panicked. I thought she was finally having a reaction to the cessation of the treatments, but then I looked closer and it dawned on me. My four year old daughter was suffering from her very first cold, and hating every minute of it. I began to think then that maybe we were going to be OK." An edge of bitterness crept into her voice. "I should've known better."

Scully glanced at where her discarded wallet containing her I.D. lay on the side table next to her, and a thought suddenly dawned on her.

"You said earlier that the man who took Charlie had a badge just like the one I showed you. What exactly did you mean by that?"

Christine laughed, the sound forced and tight.

"Why did you think I didn't believe you were who you said you were? The men who forced their way in to my home and stole my daughter didn't work for a secret Government Agency, or the N.S.A. or the military. They worked for the FBI just like you do."

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