Genesis
Ally

Chapter 7

"Do you believe her?" asked Scully queitly.

Mulder shrugged and directed his gaze to the connecting door which led through in to Scully's room which remained just slightly ajar.

They had left Christine alone, needing to discuss all they had heard away from her piercing gaze although it hadn't been easy to persuade her to allow them to leave. So they had compromised and agreed to leave the door connecting the two rooms open.

In particular, Mulder had wanted to speak to Scully alone, to get her impressions of the story they had just been told, a need partly necessitated by the fact that he wasn't firing on all cylinders at present, but also governed by the look he saw displayed clearly across her face.

It was a look he had seen all too often during their time together, and one which suggested that she wasn't buying what she had heard.

"Don't you?" he queried quietly.

Scully shrugged uncertainly, gesticulating helplessly as she tried to put her doubts in to words, knowing that she had nothing more concrete to go on than a vague feeling of unease - a hunch for want of a better word - that not everything was as it seemed. It was something she had accused Mulder of doing a hundred times in the past, and something she had never given much credence to.

"Scully?"

"I don't know, Mulder. It just doesn't track somehow."

"What doesn't track?"

Scully sat down.

"Why wait until now to get help?" She didn't wait for Mulder to respond. "I mean, if what she says is true, she's been on the run for the better part of a year, and yet she carried on her life as if nothing had happened, knowing that she was being hunted like an animal and doing nothing about it. Does that make sense to you?"

"She was scared." Mulder pointed out reasonably.

"OK. I'll buy that. But surely if she were *that* scared she would have at least attempted to seek some kind of help."

Mulder held out a hand to her. "From whom? You saw what happened when she tried to go through proper channels. She was declared insane and they threw away the key."

He stopped mid sentence as Scully hauled herself to her feet and began pacing the room. It made him dizzy just watching her, but at the same time he could feel the energy practically sparking from her, and it was always best to allow her to focus when she got like this, knowing that she was at her best.

"You're missing my point, Mulder. I don't mean she should've cried for help *after* the event. What I'm saying is, why wait until she lost the only tangible proof she did have? Charlie was her proof, and yet she did nothing. She could have told her story to any number of people at a time when it could have been proven, but she chose not to, even when it was obvious that her husband wasn't coming back."

She paused and turned to her partner. "It just seems too...I don't know...convenient somehow."

She shrugged.

"Do you think I'm looking for something that isn't there?"

Mulder considered her question carefully before answering. He had always put a great deal of faith in his partner's ability to separate the truth from the deceit and admired her analytical approach to a problem, an approach which complimented his more unorthodox methods perfectly.

But tonight, here, he wasn't sure how much of her doubt was based on good, solid intuition, and how much was due to the emotional connection the child's disappearance had to her.

"I think," he offered carefully, "That you're very close to this case, and that that closeness might be clouding your judgement slightly, making you overly paranoid."

Scully raised her eyebrow. "Paranoid?"

"Okay, not paranoid exactly, but threatened, certainly."

"By what exactly?" Scully's voice rose defensively, and Mulder held up his hand to silence her.

"I just mean that it's difficult for you to have to hear what this woman, the mother of this child, has to say. It's natural that you would look for a reason to discount her as anything other than the enemy, and that's happening because of the emotional connection you feel towards this child. You and I both know that it's happened before, and hell, Scully, it's not exactly hard to understand, especially after what you went through with Emily."

Scully crossed her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes at her partner, a sure sign that she didn't like what she was hearing.

"Is that what you really think of me, Mulder? That I would place my own personal feelings above my professional ability to do my job? Because if it is, then you're wrong. I just think that there's more to this than meets the eye, but as usual, you're so willing to believe that you're not looking for reasons to question the facts. Believe me, Mulder, I want to believe her too, but it all just seems a little bit too convenient for it to be real. I can't rationalise why it feels so wrong, it just does."

Mulder opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by the sudden high pitched trilling of his cellular phone, a sound which cut through his pounding head like a hammer. He snatched up the phone and pressed the talk button, more to silence it than anything else.

"Mulder?"

The voice at the other end was instantly recognisable, and sounded, Mulder noted, extremely pissed off.

"Mulder, it's John. Where the hell are you?"

Mulder coughed guiltily before answering.

In all the confusion, he hadn't given his old FBI buddy a second thought, and with it came the knowledge that he had made a tremendous error of protocol in keeping the senior Agent out of the loop.

"Um, Scully and I switched motels..."

"So I gathered. I've been trying to reach you all day." Wickham's tone was hard and uncompromising, a far cry from the welcoming tones he had used earlier.

Mulder knew what was coming next, and instinctively he glanced at Scully who frowned questioningly at him.

"I've got the Attorney general breathing down my neck, asking me questions that I can't answer."

"Questions?"

"Yeah. Like why the two Agents I brought down from D.C. to assist on this case took it upon themselves to illegally remove a key suspect in a Federal crime from the care of the state."

Mulder snorted.

"Care of the State? That place was a disgrace and you know it. Anyway, what are you talking about "suspect in a Federal crime"? Since when?"

"Since a witness came forward with crucial information regarding the afternoon the child was taken. It seems Mrs. Stevens wasn't quite the devoted mother she made herself out to be, and I now have evidence which sites a history of abuse dating back to 1997."

"I refuse to believe that," Mulder argued. "I've seen this woman, spoken to her; Agent Scully has spoken to her. She's guilty of nothing more than trying to protect her daughter, and whoever is making these allegations against her is doing it as another way to ensure her story never gets out."

"Look, Mulder. I don't care what you believe right now. What I'm telling you is that I can't protect you for much longer. I've got my butt in a sling for you already, but I'm not prepared to put myself on the line for you, for Scully and especially not for some woman who's living in some crazy fantasy as a way to live with what she's done. I want her back here. Right now. Tonight. Do you hear me?"

Mulder rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes.

"I can't," he said softly. "I'm sorry, John, but you don't understand what's at stake here."

"Then explain it to me, Fox, explain it to me so I can explain it to *them*."

Mulder didn't immediately respond, and Wickham's voice rose exasperatedly.

"Look, Buddy, I want to help you. Hell, I was the one who brought you on the case. But, Jesus Man, you have to give me something to work with here. Tell me where you are at least so we can talk about it, figure out what to do, because if what you say is right, then you're gonna need all the help you can get."

"OK." Mulder waved his hand vaguely in the air, and did his best to avoid his partner's eye, knowing that she wouldn't approve of him involving another party in this, and remembering her unspoken warning from earlier in the day, attempted to compromise.

"But not here. I'll come over to you, because believe me, I've dealt with these people before and it's in your best interests that you don't know where to find us right now. Is there somewhere we can meet?" Mulder grabbed a pen from the table, and on the back of a discarded drinks coaster, scrawled down the address that his old friend offered him.

"OK. I got that. I'll be there in an hour." He glanced at Scully. "No. I'll be alone. . . all right, I'll see you in a while."

He pressed the "end" button and threw the phone on to the bed, finally meeting Scully's eye.

"Did you get all that?"

"Most of it. I gather he's not too pleased."

"Yeah well, that's understating the point. I think understandably pissed sums it up pretty well. I need to explain some things to him before this whole thing gets out of hand."

"Do you trust him?" Scully asked.

Mulder sighed, "Do I have any reason not to?"

"Mulder, you heard what Mrs. Stevens said. What if there's a connection to the FBI? What if the badge she saw was genuine? Look, I know that you and John go back a long way, but supposing we're being played. It's happened before."

Mulder laughed.

"And you really think that this is all some elaborate ruse to get us down here? That's a bit of a leap don't you think? And what purpose would it serve?"

Scully fought to keep her voice level.

"I don't know. I just have a bad feeling about you going down there."

Mulder put a hand on her shoulder.

"I have to go, Scully. Because if I don't the consequences of what we're doing will rain down hard on us, you know that, and quite apart from that, I owe him enough not to let him take a fall because of me, because of us."

Scully fixed her china blue eyes on him.

"Then let me go with you."

"No. I need you here with Mrs. Stevens."

Mulder reached for his jacket and painfully eased his aching arms through the sleeves, wincing as he did so.

Scully shook her head, as she watched him. "Look at yourself, Mulder. You shouldn't be going anywhere. Quite apart from the fact that you look half dead, it's not safe for you to be driving feeling the way you are."

Mulder picked up his phone and attempted a grin which didn't quite come off. "I'll call a cab." Then, seeing the statement on his partner's face he sobered slightly.

"Look. I'll call you the minute I get there, and the minute I get back. I'll be fine, Scully, really. Get some sleep, OK? You look like you could use it, and tomorrow we'll figure out what we're going to do. I promise. But right now I have to do this."

Scully shrugged, knowing that he would go his own way no matter what argument she brokered, but at the same time unable to let go of the inexplicable feeling of dread which gripped her, twisting her insides like a vice as she looked at him. She couldn't find the right words to express what she wanted to say, and so settled on the next best thing.

"Here. You might need these later."

She reached in to her pocket and threw him a bottle of Tylenol. Mulder grinned again as he palmed them effortlessly.

"I'll see you later, Okay?"

She didn't answer him immediately, but as Mulder reached the outside door, her voice turned him around again, and for just a second, he saw a mirror image of his own emotions flitter across her face, reflecting in her eyes, telling him without words, everything he needed to know.

"Mulder, wait . . .drive carefully, and call me, alright?"

Mulder waved his phone at her, and smiled reassuringly.

"I promise."

Scully stood, for a long while after the door had swung shut and she had heard Mulder's car pull out of the forecourt, staring at the space he had just occupied. Eventually she pulled herself together, and returned to her own room, checking briefly on Christine Stevens who was once again deeply asleep on the bed. Scully sighed, and covered the sleeping woman with a blanket, knowing that she herself would not sleep until Mulder was safely back. Wearily, she lowered herself in to a chair, suspecting already that it was going to be another long night.

***********

Many miles away, in a motel room very similar in design to the one Mulder had just left, someone else was settling himself in for a long night.

The voice recording equipment which surrounded him spooled satisfyingly, recording the almost imperceptible sounds of a car's engine, and the changing of gears as it was driven to it's destination. To the left of the man sat a small color monitor, which to an untrained eye displayed nothing more than a series of grids which pulsated with every beat, but which to him gave him all the information he would need to execute his plan.

A smile crossed his face, as he watched and listened as Mulder drove towards San Diego, chuckling at the irony as he had plainly recognised the concern which Scully had shown toward her partner, not realising that she would have been better served by turning her concern on herself.

The man picked up the motel room phone, and punched out a number from memory. The line rang for only an instant before it was picked up. There was no welcome greeting on the other end - there didn't need to be. Similarly, he wasted no time on niceties.

"Mulder's on the move. He's left Scully at the motel. I'm ready to proceed when you say the word."

A slow smile spread across the man's face as he listened to his orders.

"Yes, sir. I understand." He replaced the phone in it's cradle and stretched luxuriously, savouring the feeling that finally, Mulder was going to get exactly what was coming to him, and no one, not even Mulder himself, would be able to connect it to him.

He shoved the semi-automatic pistol in to his belt holster and realised that suddenly, the night didn't seem so long after all.

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