TITLE: Scatter
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com)
SPOILERS: The Red and the Black.
RATING: R. for adult themes, violence implicit and explicit,
scariness and bad language.
ARCHIVE: Already sent to Gossamer, Xemplary. Otherwise, sure, let me
know where. Please *do* forward to ATXC.
CATEGORY: X (X-File) and A (Angst).
KEYWORDS: Casefile. Conspiracy. Krycek. Otherwise, read on.
DISCLAIMER: Characters and situations entailed herein belong
to 1013 / Chris Carter and no profits are intended therefrom.
SUMMARY: Until recently epilepsy carried the stereotype of
violent antisocial behavior. The brain is really not much bigger
than a cantaloupe, and yet so many of its diseases are still
largely a mystery. In no small part because it's unethical to
cut open living people's heads to find out what's inside.
SPECIAL: Thanks to Lena, for speedbeta and hand-holding.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: at end.
* * * * * * *
For a Particular Maria, who dared me to.
Scatter
by Vehemently
* * * * * * *
Special Agent Dana Scully walked into her shared basement
office with a bud vase of pink roses in her hands and a scowl on
her face. She stopped when she saw her partner, caught in a
moment of lounging in his chair, looking at her with alarm. His
discomfiture made her swallow a grin and she set down the vase
with care on his desk, the only surface in the room low enough
for her to reach comfortably. Fox Mulder untangled his long
limbs from his chair and stood, towering over both her and the
long-stems, and asked,
"Are you disappointed that you didn't get more of them or
should I go shoot the guy for even having the idea?" She
chuckled and blushed and he relaxed, finally settling into a
low chuckle himself. He eyed her with mischief but she antici-
pated him, after five years of partnering, by snatching the
note which nestled amongst the dark green leaves.
"It wasn't the flowers I was frowning about." It was a
little embossed card, on the expensive side. "Oh, look, 'Long
distance from your brother Charlie.' How sweet of him. He felt
terrible that he couldn't be with me... last summer." She
paused, unable to come up with a good segue. "Someone from
Violent Crimes cornered me in the elevator and gave us an
assignment." She looked up to see the expected grimace on
Mulder's face. "He gave it to you, actually. He told me I was
along to make the Bureau look nice and caring."
That earned a smirk. "But don't these people call you - "
he stopped before he took his life in his hands. On another day
she might have set him down, but the way his shoulders were
creeping up around his ears gave her an idea why he was floun-
dering so badly into comedy. Violent Crimes. Again. She would
offer him her sympathy but she knew he wouldn't take it.
"Another one of those high school shootings. The Presi-
dent's putting together a task force, they want it to be the
best. So they unearthed their master profiler and want you up
there as soon as is humanly possible. How do you feel about
Connecticut?"
Mulder snorted. "It's a speed bump between Massachusetts
and New York City." He cast about his desk, seeming to gather
things he might need. Scully was secure in the knowledge that
he would arrive at the crime scene with ten pens, all of which
would be empty. "I always did wonder about the Moodus Noises
though. Surely they can't be just geological phenomena." A few
legal pads seemed to do it for his desk; he stood in the middle
of the room and looked lonely.
"Not Moodus, Meriden. You know it?" He nodded but did not
elaborate. "A fourteen year old girl by name of Michelle
Manzarek opened fire in the high school gym about an hour ago.
Director Freeh spoke to everyone in the section personally and
they're anxious to make it look good." His brows twitched but
she knew he was not thinking on the anomaly of a female spree
killer. "The shuttle's in three quarters of an hour. Can you
make that?"
This got his attention. "I'm the one who gets my windows
rattled every time they go for the southern runway. You have to
go all the way to Georgetown and back, you had better get
going." He did not ask how long it would take; she knew and he
knew that publicity cases required nice suits and close shaves
and a sustained presence.
"Right," she said, firming her voice. She wanted to say
more. "Right." She turned to go, her hands useless at her sides.
"Wait," he said suddenly as she neared the door. "It might
snow, this early in spring. Bring warm clothes." He made a
youthful move across the room and retrieved her flowers,
delivering them to her like he held a baby. "You can't leave
them here," he mumbled. "They'll die in the dark."
"Of course, I wouldn't forget them," she replied, feeling
authorized to leave. She juggled her briefcase and her roses,
overcoat on one arm. A look over her shoulder as she closed the
door revealed her partner, legal pads in one hand, standing
staring blankly in the middle of the room.
* * * * * * *
I wake suddenly and ache all over. I am in sheets in a
bed somewhere and I startle, wondering where I could possibly
be. Then it returns, like a wave of nausea, and I throw off the
covers and put my feet on the carpet. Carpet. Oh the luxury. I
had the sense to pull the drapes last night at least; my mind
is going in this old age. I peek, but peek only; paranoia and
nakedness keep me out of view.
But why am I doing this. This is New York, where everyone
is a stranger and Kitty Genovese was raped while her neighbors
turned up their televisions. Who would blink to see a naked man
standing in a barred motel window? The sun lights the city to a
brighter shade of gunmetal; pedestrians are not breathing smoke
so it is warming this spring at last. I will not be able to
justify my gloves. That will be a problem soon, when April
comes, but right now in the draped dimness it doesn't matter
what I don't wear.
I scratch my left hip with my right hand and curse at the
ragged nails; but how am I to cut them, and who can cut them for
me? Another dance step to figure, here in this country, another
petty thing to think about. And I thought when I left the office
forever that I would be free of petty things and paper clips.
But I am musing when I should be dressing. Well, it is early
yet; we covert types like our night lives. I have time for a
shower; I have washed up in too many public bathrooms lately.
I bet it has good pressure. I boggle at the luxury of free soap,
wrapped and pristine, on the edge of the sink. I busy myself
steaming up the mirror and step in, and dare to hope today will
go well.
* * * * * * *
The drive from La Guardia up into Connecticut might have
been pleasant in the fall. In the second week of March it was
dreary dull, all gray of bark and pavement and sky on the Wilbur
Cross Parkway. Mulder was letting Scully drive, which proved
both the efficacy of bucket seats in rental cars and his dis-
comfort at returning to his old stomping grounds. She maneuvered
her way around an aggressive Ford Explorer and contemplated the
few times she had seen him amongst the Violent Crimes agents.
He was a deeply strange man, she had reconciled herself to that;
still, when placed in a situation of irritable, overworked
hunters and a wild-eyed prey, he got stranger.
She expected him to keep his silence all the way there, but
he let go pulling on his lip as they drove under a stone
overpass and said airily, "You are now passing through the
esteemed town of Greenwich, where the roads are clean and the
rent is impossible." Scully did not like the set to his jaw.
"Do you want to stop off and visit your mother on the way
back?"
His answer was slow to come. "No," he said philosophically.
"She hasn't entirely forgiven me for impugning her marital
virtue."
"Oh, Mulder." It sounded like an admonishment and she
hastened to correct herself: "That was almost a year ago. I
told her you were out of your mind on drugs."
"Thanks." The look he shot her spoke volumes of both
amusement and disturbance. But then, she did not want to talk
about it either. "Besides, she's in Florida with her lady
friends, too fragile for New England winter in her old age. I
hated this town when I lived here; I don't like coming back."
She measured him with her eyes as he watched the winter-
brown grass median fly by. It seemed safe to joke. "Does this
mean you have insight into the mind of our quarry?"
She had judged well; he wore his sarcasm like a cloak.
"Perhaps. I moved here when I was fourteen, after all."
"And?"
"Abject boredom and enormous allowances. Like a John
Cheever novel in chinos."
"That's depressing."
His eyes crinkled and she congratulated herself. "I don't
want this to reflect on my musical tastes, but Trent Reznor
of Nine Inch Nails grew up around here."
"I have no idea who that is."
Now he laughed outright and the car felt warmer. "Well
then," he wheezed, "I'm safe." He laughed himself out and his
eyes wandered back to the median strip. They were all alone on
this highway, which might have seemed rustic if it weren't so
obviously designed for high-speed driving.
Scully decided to break the silence one last time before
she let him return to his brooding. "Thank you for the roses.
They were beautiful. My younger brother calls himself Chuck."
He ducked his head as she had known he would and muttered,
"I was in a pinch. Do you think he'll mind being used for
camouflage?" They both kept their eyes on the road.
"Not at all," she replied, and allowed the quiet of a
cold Connecticut spring to overtake them.
* * * * * * *
Mulder crouched on the gymnasium floor to peruse a white
pompon, drizzled with a paisley pattern of red. Strobes still
flashed behind him and to the right, nearly five hours after
the fact. He doubted the local police had handled something
like this before, and doubted they were really crazy about
hosting a cadre of jaded suits from far away. This town was
nothing like Greenwich, he decided, looking at the red-rimmed
eyes of the town cop who stood, arms akimbo, next to the folded-
up bleachers. Scully was near him, poking a particularly dingy
pair of gym shoes with her pen, her face impassive. She stood,
as if feeling Mulder's eyes on her, and approached her partner.
"There used to be a song on the radio," he mused, his
voice low. "Back during the eighties, right after I came back
to the States. The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun. Remember that
one?"
She just bored her eyes into him without speaking. Soon he
bent his head and got back to work, not even daring a sheepish
smile. Humor today was just not in it. To be honest, not a great
deal was to be gleaned from the crime scene; sixteen people had
screamed and fallen and rushed in panicked circles and left
bloody Converse prints in layers on the waxed floor. The gym
was not large, and hemmed further with folded bleachers, so
that the front row would be sitting right at the basketball
boundary lines. Mulder stood at the three-point line and ima-
gined his jump shot, and turned where he stood, seeing a line
of girls in matching sweaters under and behind the basket. Four
of them now, in the hospital, put there by a fifth. At least
there were none dead, yet.
He felt at odds here, out of his depth, as if the crime
had been perpetrated a thousand years ago and bloated through
generations of rumor. Guns, and teenagers, and guns and teen-
agers together. New Englanders he knew had been so indignant at
the evening news of late, the wool-dyed liberals proclaiming
loudly that it would never happen here. Meriden, Connecticut
was not a hunting city, was too small for gang-banger drive-bys.
A girl, a cheerleader, a fourteen-year-old, history stable and
bourgeois, a girl who had gotten her parents to excuse her
from dissecting frogs last year. Just one of those awful
things, a spike in the statistics, he thought to himself. How
does one apply theoretical models to just one of those things?
Scully was reading his mind and coming back over here to
chide him. But she only stood at his side, facing away from the
basket, and surveyed the wild pattern of blood by the bleachers.
She made a noise in her throat and began rummaging through her
briefcase.
"What do you think?" He kept his voice neutral.
"I don't know," she answered, head tucked into her chest.
Finally she found another latex glove and handed it to him. "I
want you to look at something." He snapped it on, wrinkling his
nose at the talc that billowed around his wrist, and followed
her to the gym shoes she had been inspecting. "Do you see, here,
how the splatter hit the bleachers? It looks like one person
bounced, right here, and staggered away. Officer Cicciola?" The
red-eyed uniform turned to her, short and dark and compact and
not quite sure what to do with his hat.
"Yeah, uh, yes ma'am," he stuttered.
"You said that the four victims were all huddled over
there?" Scully pointed with her pen.
"Yes. About eight yards, by the door. Jeff Dober said he
carried Colleen Tessio over there, to where Christine Ramirez
was shot, trying to get her out of the way. I hear Colleen's
going to be all right. Missed her spine by a few inches. We
don't know about Christine though." His face suggested that
under other circumstances he might be voluble and charming. Now
his tone remained hushed. "It was Kenny Kannell and Miss Cohen,
the gym teacher? They're the ones wrestled Michelle down. She
bit Kenny, I saw the bite on his arm. He's a good kid."
His eyes stuck to his hat as it twirled in his hands. Mulder
spoke up: "Did Miss Tessio, did Colleen fall over here,
or did Jeff pick her right up as she fell?"
"Ah, he didn't let her touch the floor, he said. I know he
rode in the ambulance with her, he was crazy with worry."
"I'm sure you all are," answered Scully, and he sighed.
"If Colleen didn't fall here, and the other three girls were
all standing over by the door too? Then who made this imprint
over here?"
He scrutinized it as if for the first time and his shoul-
ders sagged further. "I don't know. Maybe Michelle herself.
Kenny said she fought like a lion. It really scared him, he was
shaking all over. You know," he said with mournful hope, "He
thought it might be rabies. He was asking the paramedics about
rabies shots."
"We'll want to interview all the witnesses. Are they all at
the hospital?"
"Yes. My lieutenant, Lieutenant Piedro, took one look at
the report from 911, and he just shook his head and called up
the State Police. He knew it was bad right off, so we sat every-
body down in the hospital lobby, got initial statements from
everybody, kept them away from WTNH, they were here before the
blood stopped flowing. I didn't even know the FBI was here till
two hours ago."
Scully nodded and let him lead her toward the door, but
Mulder stood and looked at the Rorschach blot on the wooden
bleachers. It made no pattern that he could see. Officer
Cicciola paused and looked back at Mulder, cold concern in his
eyes.
"The CBS van just came into the lot when you arrived. I
don't want you people telling crazy stories about us on the
national news. We're not like that," he warned.
Mulder grimaced. "Of course not. I grew up around here
too." He joined them and they pushed through the double gym
doors and into the hallway.
"Whereabouts?" The officer perked up a little bit.
"Greenwich." It might have amused Mulder, the way the
policeman's face lost its perkiness, but he did not want to
think about class antagonism right now. They traversed the
eternal row of lockers quietly and braced themselves for the
media gauntlet which lay in wait outside.
* * * * * * *
St. Mary's Hospital was neat and pale and looked rather
like a girls' school from the outside. It was ringed with police
cars like an iridescent necklace, banishing more news vans and
their barking inhabitants to the outer parking lot. It was still
hours before the evening news, but if they had to stay outside
the stand-ups wanted their information before it got dark. It
comforted Mulder, taking cheap shots at news people. They never
believed his form of tragedy after all. And they made a far more
appealing villain than a cheerleader.
He and Scully split up to make their way through the wit-
nesses, who had talked to too many men in the same suits and
drunk too many cups of coffee. By now, he realized, everyone
who was out of surgery just wanted to go home and curl up in
their beds. Scully was speaking to Jeff Dober, who towered over
her, all hockey-player bulk and blond curls, and patting him
on the arm. Kenny Kannell sat, pale and gawky under a brown-
spattered shirt, clasping his mother's hand.
"D'you think it could be rabies?" Kenny's voice was just
changing and Mulder tracked gingerly around the symptoms of
puberty. "I saw a raccoon with rabies once. It was all wigging
out, right, like it had bugs under its skin." He chafed the
taped bandage on his forearm against his thigh like a compul-
sion.
"Do you know Michelle very well, Kenny?"
He glanced at his mother before replying. "We're in the
same grade. We have half our classes together, last year too
at middle school. But she's, you know, popular, she hangs out
with the older girls."
Mulder nodded to more than Kenny's words. "Does she have a
boyfriend?"
"Ah, yeah, Joe Devers." Kenny drew a long breath and wiped
tears from his eyes. "But they broke up last Thursday. A huge
fight, right in the cafeteria. Everybody saw it. I didn't think
she'd go postal though, she could have had any guy she wanted,
even though she's a freshman. Everybody likes her."
"And how did you get involved in the shooting?"
Kenny paled further if that was possible and his Adam's
apple bobbed. Mulder wished that Scully was here and could hold
his hand. "I, ah," Kenny let out a sound of disgust. "Jeff
Dober was beating me up in the hallway when we heard it. She
just started screaming for them to shut up and then she started
shooting. Like five shots, I don't know. I didn't even think
about it, she could have shot me too." Finally he dissolved
into choking sobs which seemed to Mulder more a product of
exhaustion than trauma, and tucked his head into his mother's
shoulder.
Mulder could not come up with anything comforting to say
so he moved on to the next person, a girl whose dark sweater
hid any bloodstains. Her father, enormous and mustachioed,
gave Mulder the hairy eyeball as he crossed the lobby.
* * * * * * *
Despite his marvel of a reputation, Mulder would not be
allowed to interview the suspect. Not until everyone else had
taken a crack at her first. It seemed to Scully that there was
some sort of maniacal one-upsmanship going on, the establishment
of a pecking order in the stance of shoulder and frequency of
watch-checking. The viewing room really was too small.
Lieutenant Piedro showed his dismay at the federal invasion
only with a quiet serenity that Scully rather thought should
frighten the terse, snappish agents who leaned against the glass
wearily. He stood like a Samoan chief, arms like ham hocks
across his wide chest, in the middle of the little room, and
flared his nostrils as he watched his men, not the FBI, grill
a sobbing fourteen-year-old girl who grabbed convulsively at
her mother when she was not accepting tissues. Scully stepped
away from her vantage point to consult Mulder, very conscious
of the sound of her heels in this glorified closet, and threw
a glance at the lieutenant. He sized her up quickly and returned
to his impassive survey of his realm.
"What do you think?" she murmured into Mulder's lapel,
unwilling to catch the attention of the six other men in the
room. Mulder shifted his weight and stuck his hands in his
pockets, turning his head to view Michelle Manzarek from
the corners of his eyes.
He made a noise. "She would be halfway good-looking if she
weren't crying her eyes out. Otherwise I can't tell anything
about her." He stuck out his jaw to chew on his lips, and Scully
understood the dismissal. She knew that politics were just not
in him today, but it bothered her now, in this instance, when
the man next to her was chewing gum in his rolled-up shirt-
sleeves and licking her with his eyes. A cast about the room
showed that indeed Piedro and Mulder were the only ones paying
full attention to the histrionics in the interrogation room;
one was picking his nails, two others had their heads together
and their eyes distrustfully in her direction, and the last,
the Special Agent in Charge, was indeed asleep as he leaned
against the back wall.
An hour like this, and another hour before they could
justify breaking for dinner. She wondered where Officer Cicciola
had gone, if he was cranking papers into tinny typewriters or
still handling his hat in the hospital lobby where they had left
him. Scully would do anything for paperwork at this moment. She
bit down on her back teeth and tapped Piedro on the shoulder,
feeling like the Littlest Billy Goat Gruff.
"Sir," she said, louder than she had intended, "Has she
said anything useful in the whole time you've had her?"
Lieutenant Piedro looked at her and ruminated and finally
replied in his basso-profundo: "No." His eyes left her and
returned to the oblivious girl and Scully felt as if the man
suddenly knew her bra size and preferred brand of condom. She
felt the fatigue in her ankles and was very tired of being the
only person in the room in pantyhose.
A telephone rang suddenly, and each man patted himself down
before the cat-napper put the machine to his ear. "This is SAC
Boyd," he said. As he listened his face got darker and darker.
He refused to return her querying looks until after he had rung
off his phone and sworn for about thirty seconds. "Begging your
pardon, ma'am," he began, and she stopped him with a hand.
"I'm a federal agent, sir, not a nun," she said, and
realized she sounded as snappish as she felt. "I realize we
haven't worked together before, but please don't treat me with
kid gloves." She hated her strident tone, hated the necessity
of the damned situation. The man next to Scully rolled his wad
of gum around in his mouth with a look like he had just found
out about those forms being in triplicate.
"Well, Agent - Agent Scully? Looks like Christine Ramirez
didn't make it." His shoulders fell and Scully felt a certain
distant sympathy for him.
"I'll head over for the autopsy right away," she said,
suddenly all business, but Boyd objected.
"We need you here. You're the only woman on the case. The
detectives aren't getting anywhere, and if this turns out to
have something to do with women's matters..." Boyd trailed
away into an embarrassed silence which Scully refused to
alleviate. Instead she crossed her arms.
Finally she spoke: "Have we interviewed her doctors, her
teachers, anybody else who spent time with her? Do we know
where she got the pistol?" Boyd patted his thinning hair and
shook his head helplessly with a vague gesture at the image
Michelle made as she wept into another tissue. Scully fought
the rising tide of blood in her face, cocked her head and gave
him her good looks and demanded, "Is your whole task force in
this room, taking pointers from the Lieutenant?"
Boyd rubbed a face marked by rueful crinkles at the eyes
and replied, "Yes, we are, most of us. I was considering
holding a meeting, to elucidate the joys of the silent treat-
ment." Piedro let out a huff of air which stirred Scully's hair.
"Your partner seems already to have caught on."
When Mulder did not make his customary annoyed snort Scully
took a breath and planned her next rebuke, realizing how humor-
less she had already made herself out to be. But Mulder, she
realized, was not displaying largesse; he was staring with
horror through the one-way glass of the viewing room. Scully
spun, evoking a startled curse from Boyd, prepared to see
Michelle had somehow got ahold of another gun.
The glass tinted everything a faint shade of rose, but
even so Scully could tell that Michelle had gone pale. Her eyes
bulged, her hair stuck out in all directions, and the cords in
her neck reminded Scully irritatingly of all the reasons women
are taught to hide their emotions in public. But Michelle was
not pausing to deliver a wail; without another motion she fell
limp and slithered to the floor, escaping her mother's grasp as
if she had turned to sand. A brief silent pause was violated by
her choking gasp, and then Michelle writhed and jerked like a
water droplet on a griddle and six of the seven men in the room
were crowding the door to intervene. Scully stood mesmerized as
Michelle's mother emitted a shriek and fled from her gyrating
daughter, the wooden chair scraping a groan on the floor. The
two local detectives backed away aghast, running into their
lieutenant and the agents who had just realized they had no
idea what to do.
It wasn't till they rushed to bat at her waving forearms
that Scully blinked and dashed around Mulder and out into the
hall. When she got into the interrogation room, Boyd and one of
his men were kneeling over Michelle, one holding her arms and
the other grasping her head in his hands. "Don't!" Scully
shouted, knowing they would not listen. She shoved the other
agent in the shoulder so that he had to let go or fall sideways.
"Let go!"
She ended up physically pulling Boyd's hands away and
pushing his body towards the door. She could only assume that
he allowed it, so unnerved by what he was seeing. She glanced
at the mirror but there was no way of telling whether Mulder
was still watching. Michelle swung her shoulders under her and
grunted and finally lay still, panting, in the clearing her
gyrations had made. Scully was panting too, and settled her
shoulder pads before dropping to her knees and fingering
Michelle's pulse.
"How often," she gasped, spitting her hair out of her
mouth, "does she have seizures like this?" An array of faces
focussed on her with surprise and blank ignorance. The mother
crossed herself and cast about on the floor for her purse, her
glasses askew on her face.
"Never," she answered. "She's never been like this before.
What did you do to my daughter?" Mrs. Manzarek's tone flew into
the heights of her register, cracking at last. But Scully was
looking at the girl, her black hair a coarse pillow behind her
head, dark circles under her closed eyes. She looked at the
mirror again and only saw her perturbed reflection.
Boyd cleared his throat and Scully stared hard at him. "We
need to get her to the hospital immediately," she declared,
and men hopped like jackrabbits to obey. Piedro stood like a
stone idol in his interrogation room and Scully spared him only
a glance. She listened to Michelle breathe and watched that
ribcage with its little breasts rise and fall. Mulder was in
the doorway.
Mulder stood in the doorway with a look of extreme
distraction, leaning on the door lintel with what might other-
wise have seemed like indolence. He looked Michelle over, and
turned away, hands in his pockets again. Scully busied herself
arranging Michelle's limbs into some semblance of order and
went over in her head what she would tell the paramedics.
*
As she was thanking Joe Devers and reminding him with her
eyes that none of this was his fault, her phone began to ring
in her coat pocket. Who else could it be. She tucked the little
machine under her chin and felt his dry voice in her ear.
"Hey, it's me. I'm at the hospital." Mulder sounded even more
bland than usual.
"What did you find out?" Scully excused herself from the
Devers home and followed the driveway to her car, parked on the
street. The man of Boyd's who had come with her had had the
temerity to ask why not just park in the driveway.
"A tonic-clonic event. The EEG suggests it's not her first,
either."
"I'm way ahead of you, Mulder. I just got through talking
with the boyfriend, who told me she pulled a stunt on Sunday,
he thought it was to stage a fight. The way he described it
sounded like a classic Grand Mal seizure."
"Two seizures in two days? That sounds pretty severe for
recent onset, doesn't it?" She paused before replying. She knew
he knew about seizures, she had read his little library about
the mysterious powers of the compromised brain, she had helped
him collect that little library, but his tone was suggesting
tentativeness. She let herself into the car.
"Have the doctors run any imaging tests? It could be a
brain tumor or a lesion. Ask the mother if she was in a car
accident recently, fell down the stairs, anything." Boyd's man
ran the starter and almost flooded the engine. Scully looked
away in disgust and heard Mulder echoing her feeling:
"Mrs. Manzarek is praying right now. I made the mistake
of mentioning demonic possession and she's convinced of it.
Michelle's still in MRI but she should be out soon. She's been
sluggish since she woke up, I can't get any answers out of her.
Ah, hold on a second."
Scully idly scanned the neighborhood Joe Devers lived in,
reflecting on its hardworking, nice, hand-painted atmosphere.
Some of the houses were old, displaying clashing roofs and
randomly inserted towers in the Victorian style. A man stood in
an altogether too light jacket at the corner of the block,
looking at his watch, squinting in the dusk. He looked up,
looked around with tension in his posture, and Scully wondered
if her suburban idyll were about to be violated by a drug buy.
The man sitting next to her fumbled with his keys and
looked at her apologetically. Scully decided that she had al-
ready established a bad rep. "I'm sorry; I didn't catch your
name?"
"Rinz, Donald Rinz. I'm up from the New York office." His
smile was watery at best.
She answered with a smile of her own. She hoped it looked
real. "What are my chances of getting to the hotel to check in
before prime time?"
Relief flooded his face like a blush. "We're all at the
Days Inn, but we got shoehorned in with an orthodontists' con-
vention. Boyd may end up sacking half of us out somewhere else."
Scully rolled her eyes at their new common enemy, bureau-
cracy, and straightened like a shot when the tinny voice
returned in her ear. "I'm back. That was the doctor. He's show-
ing me - the images from Michelle's brain."
"And?"
"Well, I... You really have to take a look at them
yourself. It's definitely not a brain tumor, but... I don't
really know what it is."
"Could it explain the epilepsy?"
"Maybe." His reticence was almost as infuriating as his
tentative tone. His voice firmed and she rather thought he was
coming up with a theory on the spot. "Can you get dropped off
at the hospital?"
"Oh, yes. I'd like to check into the hotel first though."
Her car pulled away and Scully watched the man standing at the
corner, waiting for something which never showed. If she did
not know better she would have sworn that his head swiveled as
she went by, tracking her as she left behind the Victorian
houses. "I gather it's going to be touch and go with the rooms;
there's a conference going on."
Mulder made a noise and he almost resembled himself. "How
long will you be?"
"I'll be along in about a half hour. I'll want to check
in on the Ramirez girl's autopsy too. Have you eaten yet?"
"No," came the reply. "I'm not sure I want to."
* * * * * * *
Michelle Manzarek. Her name is Michelle Manzarek and her
social calendar is ruined. I think on what I would do if I came
down with what she has, but it's not a particularly enlightening
train of thought. I don't like hospitals and I don't like
showing myself like this but if it works my job will be that
much closer to done. It only takes a few winks at a candy-
striper and a soulful look before she is sneaking away with the
supplies I need. The boiler room will do for this operation. I
tell her a sad story, about an ex-wife and a brother-in-law with
a grudge and my foolish pride that I can't let them see me so
diminished. She has tears in her eyes when I am done and throws
her hands around my neck in sympathy, agreeing to anything. Her
hands are long and pale, with blue veins tracing maps to her
forearms. She is lovely and she is twenty years younger than me
and if I had the time we would be doing other things behind the
growling machines. But I am not being kept alive to perform
perversions so I gently pull her free and kiss the palm of her
hand and eye her pile of gauze on the floor.
In no time I am a partial mummy and she completes the
illusion with a blue sling. A disguise inside a disguise inside
a disguise. She helps me curl the plastic hand into a more
natural-looking state of relaxation, cooing about true love
and other inanities. We part in the hall, and she gladly takes
the berating she is due from her supervisor as I shoot her a
sweet grin and head down to see Michelle Manzarek.
What a consummate fuckup. It's hard to believe such highly-
paid professionals could bungle so badly, except, I realize
abruptly, that they left me alive of course, more than once.
I am big enough to claim my errors, and still they don't replace
me, but send me into the field. Maybe their ranks are waning,
as space aliens become chic rather than antisocial. Maybe I
should watch where I am going or else I will end up down a hall
which doesn't have a stairwell at the end of it. The stairs are
cool concrete, with metal railings, and I have done violence in
staircases like these. I feint at each landing, listening to my
watch tick and imaginary policemen breathe stealthily ahead of
me. But why would they bother with stealth. They have weapons
and tin badges and all of their bodies. They would crash through
the doors from all directions and scream in my ear to freeze.
I am scaring myself so I decide to take the elevator after
all; I duck through a landing door and into... I am in the baby
wing, a long glass window in front of me, harried men and
identical tribes of relatives pecking at what lies beyond. I
don't want to see. I must be on the right floor; Michelle
Manzarek is fourteen so they would put her in Pediatrics. If
she knew anything at all she would know that from the wallpaper,
and be angry. I try to blend as I wander past a nurses' station,
and make up a story about how sorry I am that I put my sister's
head through the windshield. I did tell her to wear her seat-
belt; all I got was a broken arm and a ruined truck. But nobody
stops me and soon I see animal stencils on the walls and know
I am in the right place.
I would know that too from the reasonable suit on the man
loitering in front of a particular room. I don't know him but
we are not far from New York, where both the Bureau and the PD
have seen my face and been offended at my offenses. The man
looks painfully bored, but is too dignified to sit and read a
magazine or play cards or whatever it is he does on stakeouts.
I used to daydream about my salad days, the skittering whine of
disco music hot like an infection, bodies throwing sweat in the
mostly-dark. I used to sleep and dream powerfully of the sweet
wracking confusion of angel dust. And then I would wake to
distraction and cramps and the cool curve of my partner cocking
his head just so as his mind escaped the waiting on a tangent
of its own.
History. Gone and long gone and no point complaining. I
cast about for something to do so our man at the door will not
notice me; there is a play area just there, still in sight, and
I sit and keep one eye on a bald child of grade school age
assembling legos in his pajamas. Cancer, it must be. I know a
little about cancer. Who could have known to put a guard on
Michelle Manzarek so early. They can't be here; Scully must
still be on medical restriction from haring out down in
Pennsylvania. This case would be right up their alley.
As if answering a call they step out of the room, first
she and then he, and I wonder as I stiffen who is more dan-
gerous. It is a struggle to look natural but the bald child
saves me, holding out a box made of red and blue bricks to me,
his only audience. I lean forward and take it from him, marvel-
ing as if he were my own child, and ask him what it is. But he
won't speak to a stranger; he looks, coy, over his shoulder and
reaches for more legos. He will be a heartbreaker if he grows
up. I can see now that he turns away the semicircles of scars
on his skull, as if the doctors had opened a hatch in his head
and sent in soldiers, sliding down to fight below the surface.
The nurse on duty is looking at me with curiosity but not
unease yet; I offer her my most tremulous smile and she wrinkles
her forehead with some damned generic pity. I hazard a glance
down the hall and they two are conferring with a voluptuous
intimacy of look and whisper. Scully's phone rings and as she
answers it her eyes scan around automatically - and she doesn't
notice me.
Whoever she's talking to has got her all het up. I can
hear her from here.
"No sir, that's just not true. I agree that her epilepsy
may have been diagnosed at the same time as her violent out-
burst, but there is just no proof of comorbidity in the liter-
ature." Mulder is giving her a face like he's the one in a
hospital ward and she cracks him an annoyed look. I had better
stop watching before he gets antsy and looks around carefully.
"It's a stereotype based on the spastic movements you
witnessed, but there is no basis in reality. No... No, sir.
I have evidence you'll want to see about her condition." Ah,
that I would want to know about. But she doesn't say much else
that I can hear before she hangs up. They look at each other in
a way I've never understood and turn as I watch, walking pur-
posefully away towards the elevators, her heels punctuating
their mission. The reasonably suited guard glances around
uneasily and follows - ah, they don't intend for him to guard
her overnight. He must just be a hanger-on. They don't under-
stand what is staring them in the face. Their error is my
opportunity to administer to Michelle.
As I enter the room I can have some sympathy for the
difficulty of their job; she is under a massive assault of
wires and tubes and humming indicators. Her hair is black and
dingy, splayed across her shoulders and as I step close I can
see her eyelids, still and smudged dark. She will not be tell-
ing people what I don't want them to hear. As I remove the
syringe from my jacket I recite the litany of my justifications,
about her motor activity and her devout mother and her deter-
iorating brain tissue like sugar dissolving in black tea. She
is already dead, I say aloud, she has been dead since she went
out looking for a new drug.
The shot is swift and simple and the syringe is back in
my pocket before a minute has passed. Stepping out into the
hall and patting my chest as if seeking a cigarette segues into
my first, simplest and most reliable escape plan. I do need some
air, after all. I need some distance between me and the warm
corpse. A nurse or someone will be looking in soon; everyone
will come running soon. Her heart will stop any second now and
then the alarms will wail. It is time for me to go.
* * * * * * *
It was rather late and Mulder was not asleep. Weights like
the thumbs of God rested on his eye sockets but his thoughts
rolled around and jerked their elbows into each other. He could
put it off, till Friday, till the case was over, till never.
But he had promised himself not to shut her out, and staring
out a hotel room window mulling it over would neither fulfill
nor obviate his promise. He stood in his underwear in the deaf-
ening silence for a long moment before cursing quietly and
draping himself over an uncomfortable easy chair, which creaked
loudly. His partner surprised him when her eyes fluttered open,
her seeking hand finding only the imprint of his body on the bed.
She sighed and moved, her skin softer and her curves somehow
rounder in this moment of unguarded half-sleep.
"What is it?" she croaked, but her sound held affection
rather than annoyance. A glance at her clock told him it was
nearing one a.m.
"Nothing, partner. You should go back to sleep." He watched
her blink, tendrils of that impossibly orange hair in her eyes.
He had been sure she dyed her hair to get such a shade until
the first time he saw her pubic hair.
Scully looked at him hard and raised herself on one elbow.
"It's not nothing or you wouldn't be chewing on it at this hour.
You've been distracted since this case began. If you feel you
have to take yourself off this case..."
He let out a breath and rested his chin in his hand. She
was right; she always was. He would keep his promise though it
meant making her angry. "I have a story to tell you," he began,
in what felt ridiculously like a seductive whisper. He could not
say it at full volume, not even in private. "It in no way has
bearing on the case at hand. But it's something you - deserve
to know." He worked his jaw and tried to put words together in
his head.
Decidedly awake now, Scully made as if to get up and come
to him, as if she knew how hard it was to continue. He stopped
her with his hand and told her: "When I was a young child I had
idiopathic epilepsy. My first seizure was very early, around
age three. My last was when I hit puberty. It's not really very
uncommon; seizures affect something like one in every couple
thousand kids, and it just clears up inexplicably in some cases.
But I - I know that I should have told you a long time ago."
Her mouth closed and she leaned back on both elbows, con-
sidering. "You're right," she said finally. Her voice was
thoughtful so far. "You should have told me last year, when
your seizures returned."
Mulder had not been thinking about that crazy detour. He
shook his head and met her eyes. "That was different," he said
simply. "When I was young it never hurt like that."
"You were afraid the Bureau would find out, take away your
badge."
"I would rather they thought it was an aneurysm than
anything to repeat, yes."
She sighed again, her disappointment clear. Then she sur-
prised him by wrapping her arms around her knees and facing him
with a wistful expression. "Always you strive forward, regard-
less of your own safety." He blinked and knew she was a step
ahead of him again. "You sacrifice yourself up to the question
at hand. Even your own brain, you'll lay it on the altar if you
think answers will be forthcoming." Mulder shifted his shoulders
in the chair and propped his head to look at her. He could not
be sure whether he saw judgement in her eyes.
A brief silence ensued, which Scully broke abruptly by
asking, "How were they different? When you were young?" It was
unexpected and Mulder's eyes left her face to delve into his
own memory. He picked at the hem of his boxer shorts.
"They weren't painful. I didn't see - I don't remember
seeing - anything when they were going on. And I always knew
when one would happen in advance. I had preliminary onset
hallucinations."
Her brows wrinkled their concern. He could not come up
with the words which would not make it sound frightening. "I
heard things, like a rushing of cicadas and crickets in my ears.
Summer sounds, even in January. I knew it was going to happen so
I would try to find someplace private, or at least sit down so
I wouldn't fall." Mulder felt like a freakshow on display. "It
wasn't Grand Mal, like we saw earlier with Michelle. They were
partial complex seizures. I wasn't jerking and rolling like a
fanatic."
Scully did not echo his grin but only looked at him, her
expression unreadable. Finally she smoothed her forehead and
asked, "You never went into convulsions?"
"I don't - I don't think so." It was Mulder's sincere
hope not to come under Scully's microscope, but he realized he
had not planned this little confession adequately. "My mother
said I would just lose muscle flexion and sit down suddenly in
a heap, and stare into space. It gave her the creeps." She gave
him the silence he required, making it easier for him to con-
tinue now that he had begun. "I would wake up, like a ragdoll
on the floor, a minute or two later. I never remembered any-
thing... I was hazy and thick right after, and my mother would
pick me up and carry me to bed, and if it was afternoon I'd
sleep the night through and wake up ravenous." He remembered
something and it was like witnessing it for the first time. "My
father - when I woke up my father would be asleep next to my
bed. He propped himself up with pillows from the couch so he
could see me. I always made him worry."
She did smile then, a slim, sad smile, and Mulder returned
it. They had both had reasons to smile over fathers, and to
lament over them.
"How often did they come?" Her face regained its focus and
Mulder felt closed off again.
"Not often. Every few weeks or so. Maybe once a month."
"Did they give you medication for them?"
"For a while, when I was in second grade. It made me stupid
and I refused to take it. My father didn't mind, he said that I
didn't have to take it. And then eventually they just went
away."
"When?"
Mulder had to think hard to recapture that memory. "I was
eleven. About a week before school started that fall. I was
worried about having one at school. And then I never had one
again after that."
She seemed to have discarded, or at least laid aside, his
past lies of omission. Now she pondered the implications, her
face pale and luminous in the dim light of the room. "None of
this is in your medical records."
"No," he agreed. "I can only assume he went back and
altered them all. It doesn't show up anywhere, not at my grade
school, none of the prescriptions I had... nothing. I was sure
the FBI would know, would bring it up, but nobody's ever men-
tioned it. I kept my mouth shut."
They looked at each other for a long while. Scully mur-
mured, cleared her throat and tried again. "He wanted you to
succeed." In the awkward silence which ensued it occurred to
Mulder that he should respond, but his eyes sought out the
luminous dial of the clock, his mind tumbling with too much
clarity.
He was saved by the terrible jangle of the telephone on
the bedside table. Scully reached out and snatched it out of
its cradle, her voice cracklingly professional. Her features
shifted subtly and she leaned her forehead against the head-
board, radiating dismay. "Yes, I'll wake him," she breathed.
* * * * * * *
It was two in the morning and Agent Scully was back in her
pantyhose. She strode down the hall of St. Mary's Hospital,
knowing that here, as elsewhere, the morgue would be somewhere
in the basement. Out of an open door near the beige reception
area swooped a three-man team, swinging like a barn door to cut
off her advance. A doctor in a white lab coat, bearded and
withdrawn; a gigantic orderly; and a bespectacled man whose long
neck and hooked nose made him look rather like a rooster all
stood shuffling their feet as she put hands to hips. Another
orderly lounged in a doorway down the hall, taking in the scene
with disinterest as he chewed something.
"Hrm. Agent - Doctor - Scully, I presume," began the
rooster. "My name is Dudley Pfirisch, and I'm the assistant to
the chief administrator of the hospital. It really wasn't necess-
ary for you to come out here at this hour -"
Scully looked up at him only briefly before realizing she
was frightening him. "She died with an undiagnosed condition
after a violent breakdown. I'd like to know what is going on.
What was the time of death?"
Pfirisch fingered his clipboard. "That would be..." He
stalled, running a long finger down a list he had clearly
memorized. He saw Scully notice him and stopped abruptly. "Time
of death was nine fifty last evening."
"That's impossible. We left her at about that time."
"Hrm. Yes. Apparently she coded no more than ten minutes
after you and Agent - ah, your partner left the room. Consider-
ing her brain activity..." He gestured to the bearded doctor
behind him, who was chewing so hard on his lower lip that a
tuft of his beard stuck out horizontally. "Doctor Handley can
tell you more about her medical condition."
Handley shuffled his feet and opened his mouth but Scully
cut him off quickly. "But you're here to explain to me why I
wasn't notified until forty-five minutes ago."
Pfirisch paled and Handley, oddly enough, blew out a breath
as if he has dodged a bullet. The administrator replied, "Yes.
Well, there was paperwork to be consulted, and we had of course
to notify her next of kin, and..."
"And are you now satisfied that the hospital is on safe
legal ground?"
Now Pfirisch was a lovely shade of red. "Hrm. Yes."
Handley spoke up. "We had a look at the last several hours
worth of data, and we can't say for sure why she died. I haven't
started the autopsy yet; my colleague was finishing up this
afternoon with the victim from this morning. I was hoping we
could work together." His smile was hopeful and deferential in
a way that bothered Scully but also gave her satisfaction.
"All right," she said, advancing through their phalanx and
heading the way towards the elevators, "You can brief me on
exactly what took four hours to go over while I prep. I'll want
to get a good look at her brain." A glance over her shoulder
revealed that she had shed Pfirisch and the orderly and was now
pursued only by Handley, who dry-washed his hands and wrinkled
his brows.
"Such a terrible thing," he mourned. They passed the indol-
ent orderly, whose eyes seemed to wander far further than was
proper, even at this hour of night. Scully reflected how tired
she was of that particular deadly sin and then tuned back in to
what Handley was saying. "This town will hardly be the same,
even if something is revealed to have caused... the shooting. I
was off shift when it happened, but just as I was coming on
they brought in a high school girl, acute psychiatric, and I'm
sure she's not that last."
In the act of hitting the down button, Scully paused.
"Acute psychiatric?"
Handley brightened and then looked even more mournful. "A
pilot program, we won funding from the state for it. A wing
dedicated for adolescent psychiatric counseling. Acute inpatient
and outpatient counseling - "
"A girl from the high school came in today?"
"Around five o'clock. Look, Dr. Scully, I oughtn't tell you
any more..."
"What was her name." Scully knew that when she got her nose
on the trail she could be as rude and forward as her partner.
She hoped, however, that awareness of that fact was somehow a
mitigation. Handley's flinch suggested it wasn't.
He hunched his shoulders and lowered his voice till Scully
felt ridiculously like a girl passing notes in class. "Her name
was Adler, Chloe Adler. What she saw must have just put her over
the edge. I'm a little surprised not to see more of them here."
Adler, Adler. Scully rolled the word around in her mouth
and found a sour taste. When the elevator door opened with a
bing and a creak, she gestured Handley inside and told him,
"You go on ahead. I'll be right there." And she pulled out her
cell phone.
Mulder answered on the first ring, sounding downright
chipper.
"Mulder, are you dressed?"
His voice went thick with amusement or something else.
"Should I be?"
She took a moment to store his tone for another night and
another mood. "I need you down here at the hospital. We have an
adolescent inpatient, psychiatric, named Adler. The doctor I
spoke to said what she had seen sent her over the edge."
"I don't remember any Adler among the witnesses."
"Me neither. Will you see what you can find out?"
"At two am?"
"Yes. We can have a late-night breakfast when I'm done
with the autopsy. Boyd told me we're all meeting at eight in
the morning to go over this."
"Scully, teenagers are by nature prone to the extreme and
the dramatic. She could just be a close friend of Michelle's,
reacting badly. Adolescent girls end up in psych wards all the
time, long term and short term."
"Is that a no?"
He chuckled, "I'm on my way," but Scully had stopped
listening to him. Her ears rung with the call of a Code Blue,
a code whose meaning does not change from hospital to hospital.
Code Blue in 3 East. Imminent death in 3 East. And as her eyes
scanned the directory on the wall, and she registered vaguely
Mulder's voice full of concern in her ear, a cold feeling
overtook her in a wave up her back and prickling into her
scalp. 3 East was Adolescent Psychiatry.
* * * * * * *
It turns out I was wise to pack a snack on this leg of the
mission. All of the janitors have something and I would have
looked out of place. One of them even has a limp, and I don't
think he's a plant to help me blend in. Maybe this state just
has a soft spot for the walking wounded. The guard is just as
interested in my cream soda and Twizzlers as he was in the bald
guy's salami on rye and I'm through security like this is a
suburban office building.
But this is a suburban office building. In Somerville,
nice and brick and as unassuming as a pharmaceutical company
can hope to look from the outside. Dr. Halvorsen is waiting and
I keep my head down as I wheel my new janitor's rig down the
dazzlingly white halls. I wipe my hand on my coveralls with its
carefully stained name tag. Mike. I know I look like at least
one Mike. It's auspicious, having my oldest brother's name sewn
to my chest.
Where the hell am I, this is a rabbit warren, every hall
the damn same. Surely by now the Dynamic Duo know Michelle is
dead. Now his curiosity is piqued and her sense of justice
offended and my job will be harder. Of course they would be
here, like cats after the whiff of a bacon sandwich already
eaten. If they see me... I can only tell my story once and if
they laugh and toss me into a holding cell then we're all lost.
I need leverage to move these mountains. What am I doing here,
whistling low through my teeth like a jackass, cleaning up other
people's messes. There are things that need doing and nobody
else in the world knows to do them. If I didn't know better I
would think Grand Master is punishing me.
Ah, green section. Trust me never to get really lost.
Amazing the things that can be found in a janitor's pockets,
like key cards and their codes. Seventh door on the left, un-
locked as planned. Cameras in the corners dead and black and
turned to the ceiling, as planned. Doctors are good with details
like these.
He is waiting inside, behind a mass of metal tables with
racks of pipettes and inexplicable plastics. I startle him, and
he looks up from a file with his half-glasses perched on his
nose. What a small man for such a large error. "What do you
want," he asks, irritated, and squints at me, the file flipping
closed and behind his body in a fluid motion like the opening
of a switchknife. He does not know me by sight and I am pleased.
"Doctor Halvorsen," I intone, crossing the busy space
between us on my toes. He stiffens and draws his shoulders
together and I show him my teeth. I might as well act like an
assassin to make up for the humdrum disguise. "I was sent to
make sure the sample is entirely secured."
He blows out a breath fairly shouting his relief that I am
not here to kill him so I come closer and peer at him lugu-
briously. As he withdraws from me he rolls shut a file cabinet
and the wheels start turning inside my head. Not very smart,
after all, telling me to ignore the man behind the curtain. He
clears his throat and offers me the file he was reading. It is
gibberish, lines of spectral analysis and unclear graphs. A
squint is all it requires and he is falling over himself to
explain.
"You see, here? This is efficacy over time. The compound
breaks down in a few days and becomes water and a few other
simple compounds. Harmless and untraceable." He is careful to
keep the file at my chest between us, pointing at what is
upside-down data to him. "If anyone else were to have been
exposed, we would know in another twenty-four hours."
Stupid. I allow myself a grimace for a group of stupid,
giggling girls. I tried drugs, everyone tried drugs, my limping
colleague this evening had the distinct bouquet of marijuana
in his clothes. Fourteen is so vague a memory for me I may
indeed have tried anything laced in a sugar cube. I could abuse
my body without protest, down tequila shots one two three four
five six seven and go home with whoever was buying. I
allow myself a sad thought for the last time I tried it, after
I knew my infiltration in the Bureau had been a failure, and
spent the next ten hours in a hotel room while the world spun
in circles. I am no longer fourteen. I have learned to be
careful and learned to drink cream soda. I have made my mis-
takes, but when I have discarded caution it has been for better
reason than a new high, I hope. I don't want to think about my
lack of caution. I don't want to think about my disasters.
Halvorsen is looking at me anxiously, as if for approval.
He wears all the trappings of authority and I am in greasy
coveralls and he is deferring to me. I didn't have to perform
for him at all; it must mean that someone called him up, noticed
how good his son was getting at baseball, asked wouldn't it be
a shame if he blew his arm this young. I am not subtle but I
hate that kind of blunderbuss threat. It makes little men like
these desperate. More than just my boss is involved, then; Grand
Master is not so obvious unless it suits his purposes. Deeper
and deeper; curioser and curioser.
But I am letting him fidget in silence. "What kind of
symptoms will I be looking at?" I do not use the conditional
tense. I know I will be asked to cause another funeral.
"Well, and I am just using the news reports and some guess-
ing, it would seem that the subject undergoes a personality
change, becomes increasingly erratic, and becomes manic and
violent. Seizures occur soon afterward, and the brain loses
cognitive function rapidly, culminating in coma. I can only
assume that death is soon afterward."
"Yes," I reply. "She died a few hours ago. That's not
public yet."
"I see." His shoulders slump away from me. "This is not a
subtle drug, and we haven't gotten to human trials yet. I don't
know what to tell you."
"Tell me there's no more of it rattling around out there,
Doctor." He looks at me with startlement and then relief clears
his features.
"No. None but the original sample, which is surely degraded
by now. Nothing connects it to us; we didn't even label the
beakers."
I hand him the file and he moves to put it away, content
for now to avoid thinking about this compound and this problem.
Content is right; he has turned his back to me for the first
time. I cannot resist despite the twinges of conscience so I
step in and swiftly thumb the right nerve, easing him awkwardly
to the floor. Nobody is here to hear or notice. The bulge in his
pocket is indeed a set of keys and the one unlabeled key fits
the file cabinet. It opens and rolls out like a dream, neatly
arranged papers beckoning for eyes to read them.
There really is not much time before he wakes so my fing-
ers walk forward, back, through research of decades arranged by
start date. Love that scientific mind. One thick folder catches
my eye, full of dot-matrix printouts and stapled pages. 1964.
That is my birth year. I press my fingers into Mike's name on
my chest for luck and pull the folder, propping it open on the
counter space.
I am rusty on the science of the first couple of pages but
big hexagon drawings say organic chemistry to me. The printouts
are more rewarding, unfolding like an enormous accordion. A
table, dates and codes on the short axis and hundreds of little
number strings on the long. People then, test subjects. I have
seen something like this before. Tested on these dates,
Wechsler, maybe the doctor or institution involved. Below the
first test, a diagnosis code I don't recognize, and after it the
test numbers climb steadily. Maybe it's white cells, maybe it's
histamine levels. Damned organic chemistry. Oh my, here is a
familiar name, the elder Mulder's scrawl in the upper corner.
What his son wouldn't give to see this, or maybe to destroy it.
Maybe this will be the bait I need to suborn his help.
I can't help but think that the Consortium's files are like
the bedroom of a billionaire's lonely kid - projects begun and
left hanging, or changed into other projects, massive dreams
and terrible execution. Oh, here's something interesting. After
years of testing, the bottom row of the table is filled with
XOUT, a code I recognize. Extract and eliminate. I was the cause
of that code being appended to Dana Scully's file, neither my
finest nor my wisest hour. And here another thousand, maybe all
lumberjacks or housewives or retirees in Florida, snatched away
into darkness. My finger traces along the last line and I
think... I have to come back to it and circle it with a finger
to be sure. A gap in the data. No code for this subject, or
rather, I realize, as I look closely, a code entered in pencil
and erased.
This may be useful if I can figure it out, but Halvorsen
is already moaning on the floor at my feet. A quick flip through
the pages tells me little more, until I come to a readout of the
codes, fuzzy and aged: birth dates and XOUT dates. I am disgust-
edly not surprised to find that all of the subjects were adol-
escents on the XOUT date, in late 1973 and early '74. I am
scanning down the list for the one who escaped such a fate when
Halvorsen rolls over. I have to go, and I have to leave this
here.
It goes into the cabinet as neatly as I can fold it and I
plunge the keychain back into Halvorsen's pocket as his eyes
open. I give him my stare and tell him I was never here. I love
that line. It makes me sound so important, able to wrinkle the
fabric of reality.
I am stalking away down the hall before he can even sit up.
I have the rest of the janitorial shift to evaluate my new
information. Who is Wechsler. Why is that name familiar. I am
sure Mulder would know, would have an instant interpretation
for - oh no it can't be. I count on my fingers, rounding back
three times to count that high. It can. And with a freezing
intuitive certainty, I know it is even without any connective
tissue between fact and fact. I have never been given to such
wildly correct guessing. That was his arena.
The four-hour shift goes more swiftly than I expect as I
chew on this new puzzle piece. My beeper vibrates against my
belly, a tickling, itchy sensation. Soon I will be out of this
building and Grand Master wants his report. He may also have
more orders for me, maybe a second girl to kill. I roll my
shoulders, thinking hard about what my superior really thinks
of the FBI. He does like to throw a wrench into the works, for
that I can be both grateful and rueful, but I doubt he will
care to use the weapon I have just gained. He will strike out
on his own, training me to sit at his ankle like a whipped cur.
"Alex," he will say to me, that imperious note ringing in my
ears, "Alex, it is your time to follow, not lead."
Abruptly it hits me and in response my absent forearm
aches. He has always called me Alex. The Treacherous Vixen
called me Alex. Is it possible they think that is my real
name? Could old Coffin Nail have truly been so obsessive as to
obscure my name even from the inner circle of power? It is too
much to hope that he kept it to himself and that he is really
dead. One or the other I suppose, but someone now alive can
connect this thumbprint to that name and the ramifications of
that fact bother me. But I have asked others to sacrifice family
for causes in which I didn't even believe; if my brothers are
taken one by one I know I will have to allow it.
I head for the door and the rest of a busy night. None of
my brothers knows anything so at least I can dream that they
think well of me.
* * * * * * *
"Their brains were absolutely not normal," said Scully in
a tone which radiated both authority and exhaustion, and she
passed around the printouts they had pored over during the sand-
wiches he had brought with him in the middle of the previous
night. Mulder enjoyed watching her hand the pages to Boyd with
steel in her eyes, standing cool in her same wrinkled outfit at
the head of the hasty conference.
It was eight in the morning and Connecticut was not known
for its donuts. Mulder pinched the bridge of his nose and
promised himself to wear his glasses next time he squinted at
tiny blobs of color on a page.
"What," asked Boyd, lounging rudely in his chair, "does
this have to do with the causes for the violent incident?"
Scully took a moment to push her hair back. While Mulder
felt like his temporal lobes were trying to crawl out his eye
sockets, he knew that he at least had snatched a nap while
Scully cut and sawed all night. He knew he was the only one in
the room who could tell and felt strangely proud of her. "There
is no way of knowing, sir. The brain condition could have prec-
ipitated the event, or it could have nothing to do with her
outburst. At this point, all I can say is that Michelle
Manzarek had this condition and acted violently. Chloe Adler
had the very same condition and curled up sobbing under her bed.
And from the autopsy performed on Christine Ramirez, she also
showed signs of this... ailment."
At this people finally began to sit up straight, coffee or
no coffee. Boyd sucked on his teeth and asked, "What kind of
condition are we talking about?"
Scully took her seat, as if unwilling to be the local ex-
pert any more. "The cerebrum was deteriorated severely, and the
cerebellum and medulla were showing signs of following suit.
There was a clear progression from the images taken on Michelle
at seven p.m. to the post-mortem state I found last night.
Christine died with the condition still barely developing, so
it is difficult to say with her. Chloe's symptoms were obscured
by the sedation she was under, but her brain images are clear-
est. She apparently survived longer after onset of symptoms,
and her brain retained almost none of its structural cohesion.
The tissue had the consistency of cooked oatmeal." She rubbed
her eyes and Mulder decided it was time to speak.
"Is there any evidence that it could have been -- done
physically rather than on a cellular basis?"
"Do you mean was this just a really severe concussion? No.
Not only are there no signs of bruising or skull fracture, the
microscope showed individual cells, just throwing off their
cell walls. Like a mass suicide. I looked up rabies for compar-
ison, and while I'm sure a blood test will confirm it, the cell-
ular damage is not consistent with rabies or any other
infection common to this area."
One of Boyd's men, the one who had driven with Scully
yesterday, spoke up with irritation in his voice. "Mrs. Manzarek
said you told her it was, did I hear her right, 'demonic poss-
ession?'"
"No," replied Mulder, and leaned back to hide his grinding
teeth. "I mentioned the fact that there were behavioral simil-
arities. But seizures and brain decay are not symptoms of poss-
ession." He heard the snorts to his left, and a few to his
right. He plowed on, remembering why he had worked so hard to
work alone. "Mrs. Manzarek dearly wants to believe that because
it's something she's seen in the movies, it's something that
makes sense. And the reality of the situation is just too dread-
ful for her - or anyone - to face.
"At first I wanted to suggest that it might be some here-
tofore unheard-of variant on dementia infantilis, or Heller's
Syndrome. That has onset before age ten, but it involves a
clinically significant regression of motor, language and think-
ing skills and a marked change in personality. It's like a
cascade failure in complex systematics: large chunks of normal
childhood development just reverse themselves one by one and go
away. That describes Michelle's state after her admittal to the
hospital. Her speech was disordered, she was uncooperative - "
Scully spoke up: "Her behavior, yes. Her brainscan, no.
Michelle's occipital lobes are markedly destroyed, Mulder, and
Chloe's are worse. That isn't just a developmental syndrome."
"You're right, it wouldn't explain the epilepsy either.
Neither of them has been to any new doctors, have they? Any
prescriptions out of the ordinary?"
"The parents can account for all of them, and they're all
long expired and perfectly normal." Scully sighed and steepled
her fingers in front of her. "Where are you going with this?"
"Oh, I don't know." He played with a pencil and eyed Boyd
from under his lashes. "There are a lot of biochemical companies
around here, aren't there?"
"I don't know," said Boyd, irritated.
"Bristol Myers Squibb, in Wallingford. American Cyanamid,
on the North Haven line, though they're just industrial chem-
icals. Amgen, somewhere down New Canaan way, I think. Isn't
there a Nextel or something in Hartford?"
Boyd asked, "What are you getting at?"
Mulder let himself grimace as he said, "They could be the
unwitting participants in a new drug study, some sort of unknown
gene therapy which had a disastrous side effect." Scully met his
eyes with no small horror, but kept her peace.
Boyd cleared his throat and shifted in his chair as if he
had suddenly developed hemorrhoids. "Hold on a second. Are you
implying that she was some kind of guinea pig?"
Scully looked at the table before answering, "We've come
across it before." Then she firmed and stared Boyd down. "The
Department of Energy has admitted as much, back in the fifties.
Soldiers, black syphilitics, men in prison. Would you like to
talk about the Olson case?"
Boyd flushed red and Mulder made a mental note. "Do you,"
Boyd managed finally, "have any evidence that she was administ-
ered a drug unbeknownst to her?"
Mulder was aware of his own flair for the dramatic, but it
satisfied him immensely to reveal this last little bit of in-
formation: "I spoke to the teacher, Virginia Cohen, and she
said the ninth grade biology class went on a tour of the
FutureCorp Laboratories in Somerville last Friday."
Someone down the table answered nastily, "That's very nice
but it still proves nothing. You're making suppositions and
leaps not supported by the facts."
Scully cleared her throat twice before she could interrupt
the low-level sniping which followed, and finally she stood
again, shoving back her chair and drawing all eyes. "I think
we're getting side tracked from the important issues, here. One,
we have what may potentially be a public health threat, in the
form of a virus, or a parasite, or even," at this she inclined
her head to Mulder, "a toxin. We need to find out what kind of
affliction we're dealing with. And Two, I haven't seen any
reaction to the fact that Chloe Adler was clearly murdered. Her
nose was broken and fibers from a hospital pillow were in her
throat. Why would someone murder a sedated fifteen-year-old?"
Everyone talked at once but nobody was saying anything.
Boyd waved annoyed hands and asked Scully, "What do you
suggest?" Mulder withheld his amusement at how easily they acc-
epted her authority, once her partner had been proven a looney-
tune.
Scully burrowed her brows. "Bring in the CDC; they have a
hospital in Vermont and can better assess whether this condition
is contagious. I would suggest, for starters, neurological tests
on the survivors of the shooting, maybe on the whole school, and
we'll have to get permission from parents for that. We need to
establish the last time Michelle, Christine and Chloe were toge-
ther; one might have contracted it from the others and we might
be able to establish a disease vector. And we need," she said
with emphasis, "to find out who doesn't want us to figure out
what's going on. I want to take another look at Michelle's body
to make sure she wasn't murdered as well."
"All right, people," said Boyd, as if he had a plan. "I
think it's time we call in some expertise. Rinz, I want you to
call up the epidemiology people and see if they'll send a team
up here. Just to be on the safe side." He stood, and the meeting
was over. "And you," he pointed at Mulder's chest, "I guess you
can go home. Not much point in working up a profile now that
she's in that state."
Scully looked at Mulder and they shared the knowledge that
they were hardly ready to leave this party. Mulder reminded
himself to call up Skinner in Washington and nag him to throw
his weight around.
Agents shuffled their way out the door in twos and threes,
looking as if they had no purpose at all. Scully approached him
as he gathered up his coat and looked him up and down before
asking:
"Virginia Cohen? I was there, Mulder, she didn't say any-
thing about a field trip yesterday."
"I called her up at 2 am last night." That made her laugh,
in that you're-crazy way. She closed her briefcase and hefted
it, and he saw her reluctance to face the rest of the day in
her red-edged eyes. "Come on, Scully, you deserve the morning
off. I'll wake you if the blood work and toxicity come in before
this afternoon."
She smiled her gratefulness. Mulder drank in the slump of
her shoulders, the wrinkles in her skirt, the plain ponytail
that held her hair, and manfully kept a smile off his face. He
changed the subject.
"The Olson case? Tell me you didn't make that up."
"Didn't you pay attention in psychopharmacopoeia class? It
was investigated in the Senate in 1975. A Dr. Frank Olson at
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland took a dive out his 10th story
window. The CIA had slipped him an enormous dose of lysergic
acid and he had a bad panic reaction. A classic failure to
obtain informed consent of the test subject, you might say.
November 28, 1953."
"And that," he murmured into her ear as he escorted her
out the conference room door, "is the reason I knock on your
door in the middle of the night, in total violation of Bureau
policies."
* * * * * * *
The toxicology did not come in till 2 pm, by which point
Scully was up and dressing and very glad she had a worry wart
for a partner. He had even brought her coffee and some unrecog-
nizable gooey pastry when he had dropped by, both of which
languished on the bedside table while she buttoned her pantsuit.
She took a long look in the big mirror and decided that she
looked in control and ready to work. And the day was already
half over.
Her phone trilled in her coat and she fumbled to find it.
"Hello?" she answered, feeling her precious mastery slipping
already.
"Did you eat your breakfast?" She could not tell whether
Mulder was being overbearing or sarcastic.
"Not in the ten seconds since you dropped it off," she
replied, and she heard the amusement in him. "What does the
report say?"
"Well, if I could read it, I wouldn't need you as a part-
ner, now would I?" As soon as he finished it, he jumped on his
own sentence with corrections. "Except to keep me from getting
myself killed on occasion. Boyd called in a chemist and a few
other assorted lab-coat-types and they're all going into fits.
You should come down here and talk to them."
Somehow she knew that she would be doing this alone. "Where
will you be?"
"I've got an appointment with a FutureCorp rep, who's just
dying to tell me about the company's community relationship." He
got started on the conspiratorial possibilities and she pulled
on her coat. "I can't tell whether they started the school pro-
gram to get at the kids, or if it just became a convenient
cover. I'm hoping to get a tour and maybe an idea of how they
could have tested the kids without anyone noticing."
Scully took a long look around the parking lot from her
doorway. "Mulder, did you leave me without a car?"
"No," he replied with false sulkiness. This case had him
in great spirits suddenly, and she thought not for the first
time about how he could be so elated about other people's suf-
fering. "There should be a white sedan on the right hand side.
Keys are in your coat pocket. It's a tiny parking lot; you can't
miss it."
She found it after all and wondered when he had gotten
comfortable rifling through her pockets. She decided that the
lateness of the hour was making everything off-kilter today.
After a promise to call him when she had any more information,
she climbed into the general-issue car and got going. It was
strange to drive to the hospital again, this time in daylight.
The telephone cables swooped along next to her and she wove
her way past a mall and an industrial park before turning in to
the hospital lot.
They made her park in the outer lot amongst the last of the
news people, who still had satellite vans in long rows but now
sat listlessly and interviewed each other for ten-second updates
while they waited for official press conferences. As she climbed
out of her bland little car, she scanned her surroundings for
preying cameras, just knowing they would recognize her and swarm
around. Nobody was looking her way. Technicians from a cable
news channel were eating sandwiches in the slot next to her;
someone with the bouffant of on-air talent was swinging her
microphone, and Alex Krycek was walking with a certain casual
grace towards the row of cars behind the big white vans.
Scully froze halfway out of her seat. Alex Krycek, in
jeans and a black leather jacket, was wending his way between
a pickup and a red compact car, glancing askance at the news
vans. She ducked down in her seat as she saw his body turn in a
wary circle. When she dared look again he was climbing into the
red car and starting the engine. She vaguely registered that
the cable men sitting on their bumper were giving her strange
looks as she pawed frantically in her coat for her cell phone.
By the time she had hit her speed-dial Krycek's car was
rolling out of the lot, but at least she was sure he had not
seen her. Mulder's voice was crisp and annoyed in her ear and
she gathered her scattered thoughts. "Mulder, it's me. Where
are you?"
His tone changed immediately. "I'm at FutureCorp, getting
a tour. What did you find out?"
"I haven't gone into the hospital yet." She scribbled the
license plate number on the inside of a Hershey's wrapper and
thanked God her partner was so messy. "Listen, can you dodge
out of there?"
"I don't know," he replied cautiously. "What's going on?"
She was on a cell phone. So was he. "Mulder, I just saw a
certain curve ball. I'm in the parking lot of the hospital. I'd
like to discuss the situation with you in person and decide what
our next step is." He was silent for a long time. She could hear
his breathing and knew he had understood her. Why wasn't he
answering.
"Are you sure?" She made an involuntary noise and it seemed
to shame him. "Of course you're sure."
"I left some evidence in my hotel room. We'll want to
protect it, and make copies of our notes." His heavy sigh ex-
pressed all his fears and expectations for her.
"Yes. I'll meet you at the hotel in half an hour." He
clicked off and left her shaking with adrenaline. As she shut her
car door and started up again, it occurred to her that she would
have to drive out again to the hospital later, some time in the
future, when this new question had been dealt with. She roared
out of her parking space, startling a cameraman, who staggered
out of her way.
* * * * * * *
I've had a weird feeling all day, as if someone had a bead
on me, no matter where I go. Half the afternoon in St. Mary's
medical library, confirming all my suspicions with a little bit
of excitement and a little bit of dismay, barely avoiding the
FBI clones wandering around in confusion. They really should
learn not to gossip. But they're not dangerous; Mulder and
Scully were off chasing down some 'wild theory' and -- and I
don't think anyone but me has ever penetrated the FBI. That's
ridiculous of course so I settle my shoulders in my seat on this
bus and pretend I'm not watching the sharp-eyed teenager with
too many holes in his ears. He and a few ethnic grandmothers
are my only company; the Big Cheeses do not employ grandmothers
as assassins. Not yet, anyway.
The things we do for our little causes. Or don't do. It
eats at me, knowing that someone has sent a second operative to
cover my bases and not knowing who it is. It eats at me because
obviously he doesn't know how to kill a girl without raising all
the wrong eyebrows. Suffocation. A dangerous amateur, or so I
can hope. I can hope he's not being clumsy on purpose so he can
frame me later. At least Michelle took care of the Ramirez girl
for me.
I'm nearing my stop - and cursing once again the small
parking lot which requires I leave my car behind - so I stand
and stretch my neck and try to balance in this rocking orange
interior. The gray sky is getting blacker outside so as I stop
off I glance around and maneuver the plastic hand into its
pocket outside of the circle of a streetlight. I am only three
blocks from the hotel, but pedestrians stand out on this strip
mall so I jog across the street and towards the neon sign of
their hotel. Welcome AAO Members indeed.
Passing cars make wet sounds, but I hadn't noticed it rain-
ing. Rain is the least of my worries, unless Michelle and
Christine and Chloe were the only ones. Time will tell, though
I'd rather nothing told, not mouths nor printouts nor the X-rays
I'm about to steal. MRIs, whatever. I suppose I should be
grateful that I didn't have to kill that girl Chloe, but either
way her brain tells too clear a tale. Why couldn't they have
informed me earlier; I would have gotten rid of her with less
fuss and no evidence. The hotel is a large ugly concrete block,
some severe industrial trend, and the doors to the rooms all
lead off an outside catwalk rather than a hallway. Better for
me, and less chance of being stopped. I don't, after all, look
much like an orthodontist.
Nor an FBI agent any more, for that matter. The neon sign
casts a sickly glow into the stairwell, which is definitely not
lit up to code. I shudder under a wave of that bad feeling
again. Dark corners lurch at me with claws extended as I take
the concrete stairs two at a time, my steps booming up and down
as if I'm being chased. Third floor. I only have to make it to
the third floor and then I'll be able to think straight again.
I am breathing in great gasps so when a shoulder hits my
solar plexus I exhale with a whoosh and tumble, winded, down to
the landing. Something tumbles with me and when I am on my back
begging for a breath I realize it is a body in a tie and trench-
coat, shrouding me from the dim bulb which lights the landing
I am lying on. But then I realize who is in that trenchcoat and
flop like a fish, trying to sit up. Heels clatter above me, and
I am looking up at Agent Scully, her face gone yellow in the
screwy light. There is a line between her brows and an enormous
gun in her hands, or rather, it is pointed, its muzzle a gaping
black hole, enormously at my head.
Finally I can draw breath and I roll over to my side so
they won't see me trying to wish this disaster away. They must
have seen me coming. What are they doing at their hotel when
the rest of the agents are still at work. They exchange some
unintelligible reassurances and then his voice moves higher
behind me. He is standing, then. He will not have been so care-
ful as to draw his gun, not with her already drawn. We all know
she's an excellent shot. Why haven't they started the official
rigmarole - doesn't matter.
It's a slim chance but I take it, rolling over and snatch-
ing her ankle and pulling, one great heave as I try to scramble
away and down the steps. She squeaks, I can't see the gun now,
and then her foot is following the direction of my pull, out-
stripping my unbalanced arm and rushing forward to kick me
square in the jaw.
I really do see stars. And explosions of color like paint
balls against a dark tree trunk. When I fade in again I touch
my skull and realize I must also have bounced off the wall. Not
hard enough to fracture anything, but Jesus.
When she speaks there is something hard in her voice.
"Alex Krycek." She makes it sound like a curse by itself. "Why
didn't you arrest him when you had the chance."
I hope she's not talking to me. But she's not; Mulder
answers after a pause: "I was in a state of shock." I try to
focus my throbbing eyes on these my captors and they both have
their guns on me now. Mulder is fingering my switchknife ginger-
ly with his free hand, so I must have been out longer than I
thought. I keep that knife duct-taped to my lower back. They
have been thorough. Waves of sharp spikes flowing through my
head and the iron taste of blood in my mouth.
So. Unarmed and dizzy in a stairwell, the two people most
likely to wish me dead standing over me with rancor in their
stances. Neither one has yet pulled out the cuffs or invoked
Miranda so I brace myself for the litany of my crimes. How long
in a cell before I am dead, end of me, end of my purpose, end
of all hope I can think of. They are still just standing there,
guns at the ready, eyeing one another.
At last Scully reaches for her cuffs and I lift my wrist
to meet her. She has the metal touching the plastic of the left
hand before she realizes, crouching in front of me, and she
looks at me incredulously and starts feeling up to the elbow. I
can't watch her do that. With my eyes closed I hear her expel a
long breath and mutter:
"Mother of God." She shifts her weight and the cuff ratch-
ets closed and I open my eyes to her white wrist, attached to
mine. There goes any hope of the sympathy card. "What happened
to you?"
Her free hand is tracing the line where plastic takes over
for flesh. It makes me shiver but I keep my mouth shut. A glance
at Mulder reveals a face I have not seen in ages, a face calcul-
ating the impossible, a face falling into some crazy desiring
dread. He gets ahold of himself admirably and returns to invest-
igative mode without looking at me.
"We can't interrogate him here."
She looks at him doubtfully. "This means we're onto some-
thing I guess."
"Yeah, but what?" He gestures at me, as if I am going to
chime in with all the answers. "People like these have sunk to
eavesdropping before, and by now I wouldn't be surprised if they
bought one of Boyd's men. We need someplace safe, away from the
official pipeline."
Something in her sags as she crouches there next to my
undignified sprawl. "You don't think we should notify Boyd at
all."
"Or anyone, Scully. Even if he did roll over on his bosses,
we have no way of guaranteeing he'll stay alive to tell us the
important parts. You remember what happened to that Cardinal
fellow..." I do. He richly deserved it of course. But he was
loyal and stupid like a bulldog so they hanged him -- quick, no
fuss. I'm sure they'll work hard to make it spectacular for me.
"What he told me - the immolations a few weeks ago - we have no
way of knowing -"
"When has he ever spoken truth to either of us?" Scully
breaks in and in her indignance pulls up her left hand and my
right with it. I look like a marionette.
Mulder's shoulders sag and he juts out his jaw. "He has
information we want. If not about those fires, then about this
case. He's not here for the orthodontists' conference. If we
bring him in, he dies and we get nothing. At least this way we
have a chance to find out something."
She shoots me a look of pure disgust that makes me shy
away. But then she is helping me stand and looking at Mulder
with the same wrinkles next to her nose. She is not like before.
She nods her head at her partner and he relaxes and leads the
way down the stairs, leaving Scully and me to walk like a lucky
pair escaping the party, my hand anchored tight to hers. She is
not like before. What have they found out since I went to Russia.
She slows up to hide the cuffs as we cross the parking lot.
Mulder walks ahead, pretending he's alert, his hands clenched at
his sides. We stop at a nondescript white car and he looks at
me over the top of it, all nonchalance, and observes drily:
"Your one-handed comment was literal, wasn't it?"
I can't believe this. "Didn't you notice?" I tug irritably
on my short leash. Scully tugs back, hauling me into the back
seat with her. Mulder climbs in behind the wheel slowly, and
starts the car before he answers.
"I was too busy staring at the barrel of my own gun."
The stale air in the car is thick in my throat as he pulls
out. We could be going anywhere. I don't know what to expect
any more. Scully keeps her eyes on the scenery as she asks:
"Above the elbow. How far?"
I hate her casual tone. I hate her science. I answer as
flippant as I can: "I have about six inches of the arm bone
left, give or take. Lost almost all of the bicep."
She is implacable, or else I am a better actor than I
thought. "What happened?" Mulder glances at me and looks like
he would like a nice warm bath with eels rather than talk about
this. I don't even know I'm going to do it until it's done:
"I got to know a grenade too well. Gangrene set in and that
was that." There. I have lied to save... what? His reputation?
His feelings? Mine? She is still giving me that look when she is
not grilling me; at least I don't have to fear her pity. I can
feel him looking at me in the rearview but I don't meet his
eyes. I watch the road flash by. I should be planning my escape
or my story but I can only sit and sweat and wonder what these
new people will do to me.
* * * * * * *
Alex Krycek's legs were duct-taped to one of the chairs in
Mulder's mother's kitchen. His right hand was cuffed to its
ladder back. His left swung lazily, the metal and plastic too
heavy and unwieldy to be useful in an escape. Except as a blud-
geon, Mulder thought darkly. He was tired and sweaty and too
hot in his long coat. He kept it on; no point in emphasizing
the twenty or so pounds' difference between him and his captive.
But Krycek knew it and seemed to find enjoyment in flexing
his remaining bicep, occasionally jerking the cuff that kept
his right hand out of sight. They both knew he would have marks
by morning; they had played the handcuff game before. Krycek
looked up at him with bitter amusement as he mutilated his own
wrist.
Scully slammed the door hard as she came in and silence
settled while she adjusted the lamp and got comfortable in her
chair across the breakfast table from Krycek. He refused to look
at her, making faces to himself for several moments before
Mulder realized he was self-inventorying his teeth with his
tongue. Suddenly he spit something pale out of the lamp's arc;
it rattled unseen in a dark corner. Krycek raised his head to
smile at his captors, grinning broadly so that they could see
the ragged gap where his upper left canine had been badly
chipped.
Mulder knew it must hurt like the Dickens in the same
moment he noticed that Krycek's mouth was full of blood. But
Scully was asking a question:
"Who are you working for this week, Alex?"
"How are you even sure my name is Alex?" came the reply,
deep in his throat and rasping, delivered through the remnants
of that megawatt smile. It sounded like a come on and Mulder
squinted in annoyance.
"I see." Scully shifted, cocking her head in that way
Mulder knew. "You're right. You could be anyone." Her cold gaze
skewered Krycek, who sat still, closed his eyes, and then opened
them. "What if we just decide to kill you?" Her smirk was malic-
ious in a way that was new and disturbing.
Krycek licked his lips. In the pool of the single light
fixture his features were exaggerated, his jaw thinned, his
cheekbones heightened. His lips were a bright red slash in a
pale face, coated in his own blood. It made Mulder uncomfort-
able, the femininity in Krycek's face.
But the man seated, cuffed and duct-taped did not waffle
or fold. He retreated to a lounging sullenness, an expression
which implied crazily that he was indulging a pair of irrelevant
fanatics, that this kitchen was his home and the two officers of
the law were invaders. Finally he spoke, cool eyes all on
Scully:
"Your bravado is improving. As are your Judo skills, I must
say." He thoughtfully tongued the space in his upper jaw. His
face was swelling and beginning to turn colors. All of his teeth
reflected a pearly pink, a sickly color. "I can't say I am glad
you caught me, but I have been thinking it's about time for a
little discussion between us three. Things going on, behind the
scenes, gossip I'm sure you want to hear."
"Go on." Scully's voice was deeply wary but ached with as
much curiosity as Mulder strove to hide in his own demeanor. He
was glad again that she had taken charge and watched her to see
her next move. He felt Krycek's eyes on him but refused to
engage the man.
The man waited, however, and waited silently, seeming full
of the patience he somehow knew his captors could not afford.
The moment stretched like taffy until Scully snapped her fingers
in front of Krycek's face.
"Make no mistake, your continued comfort depends on your
sharing that vast store of knowledge. Spill now or things become
unpleasant." She backed up her tone with a hard stare, one
Krycek could not stand for more than a moment. He did not speak,
but he did not defy her either. Mulder stood quietly agog at
this Scully before him. She had never threatened a suspect in
her life. She had always looked away when he played his head
games in little rooms with two-way mirrors. And now...
Krycek could not look at the table forever, Mulder thought
crazily. His shoulders drew tight as he thought about the last
time he had gotten answers out of that man. He had never told
Scully. Another thing he had never told her, and yet she felt
authorized to act like this in his presence. It was there, the
knowledge, thick between them all like a haze. He had no doubt
Krycek would use that information as leverage if he knew of its
weight. Mulder wanted to make him sorry. He knew that Scully
just wanted to make him talk. "Mulder, uncuff his hand."
He blinked at the use of his name and had circled behind
Krycek before he wondered what was going on. He threw her a
concerned glance over the top of Krycek's severe haircut, as he
took hold of the raw wrist. Krycek had been wearing a watch
when they caught him, but it was gone now, lost in the struggle
or elsewhere during this unbelievable night. Scully stood up and
leaned on the table casually, maintaining her rare advantage in
height. Mulder did not know what she was planning but he drank
in her authority. He felt the calluses on Krycek's hand as he
removed the cuff. Scully gestured at him and he grasped that
wrist tightly in his fist.
Krycek's whole arm began to vibrate with coiled tension:
the tendons stood out at his elbow and dug into the thumb which
covered his pulse. Scully spoke and her voice was honey and
vinegar: "Hold his hand on the table." It was a job, wrestling
Krycek's arm up and forward; Mulder had to grasp his captive
around the chest and throw his weight against the shoulder. It
seemed as if Krycek already knew what scenario was being re-
hearsed, as if he had played this game also and lost as badly.
He grunted with effort and breathed like a man who has just
climbed a mountain.
When the hand in question finally lay splayed on the white
table, Mulder was breathing in Krycek's ear and holding on for
dear life. Scully had turned away, confident for once in his
willingness to do as he was told. When she turned back to the
tableau in his mother's darkened kitchen she had her gun in her
hand, a block of black that alternately gleamed and ate the
light. She very carefully and judiciously placed the muzzle atop
the ridged back of Alex Krycek's hand.
At this Mulder very nearly lost control of the situation;
the body under him convulsed, the great shoulder muscles clench-
ing madly, and he heard an animal growl of terror close in his
ears. That gun pinned the hand to the table, a white ring around
where the muzzle's circle pressed between the index and middle
tendons. Krycek inhaled a sob. As he shook his head spastically
his face brushed lightly against Mulder's cheek.
Words began to spill. "It -- I have contacts. In the org-
anization. I hear things, you need to know, experiments you
can't know about, come on, please, get it off me!" Krycek's voice
had increased to a roar, its authority marred by the high pitch
of hysteria which had crept in. He blew out his breath hard when
Scully removed the gun from his hand and pointed it at the ceil-
ing. It left a mark, a round circle of white, and the blood
rushed back into pale flesh. Scully gave him a look of satis-
faction as she holstered her weapon, and nodded at him to con-
tinue.
Krycek was only too willing. "You know you have a chip in
your neck," he gasped. "I heard about you getting drawn to the
lighthouse in Pennsylvania. I'm sure you want to take it out
but don't; it's what's keeping you alive." His tension began to
bleed away and Mulder backed off a little. As he moved the wrist
to cuff it again, Krycek swiveled to meet his eyes for the
first time. The dilated pupils practically edged out the natural
hazel color and Mulder felt a streak of gladness that for a
moment at least he did not share even eye color with this man.
It was he who broke the gaze, and continued his downward motion
to reattach Krycek's only arm to the back of the chair.
Scully snorted in disgust. "Your gossip is out of date,
Krycek. I came down with cancer a year ago. I know about chimera
cells, and pharyngeal tumors, and bogus chemotherapy." As she
ticked off her list he sat back in the chair, deflated.
"How did you survive?" he whispered.
Her arms crossed below her breasts and she regarded him
coolly. "Another chip. Stolen from the Pentagon. Are you telling
me you didn't know about it?" The bitter coldness in her voice
surprised Mulder and their eyes met above Krycek's dark head.
Still a prisoner, said the placement of her jaw. Still a victim,
accused the folds of skin which encased her tired eyes.
Krycek's voice was dull and flat. "They don't tell me
everything. I've never been more than a foot soldier."
"The Motherland not welcome you home?" Mulder spoke for the
first time and fittingly it was a taunt. He rather enjoyed
standing behind and above Krycek's head, fancying his voice
like the voice of God. It disturbed him that he enjoyed it.
"I had subcontractors, and I played my own games on the
side, but I never set policy."
Scully quirked an eyebrow. "Did you just admit to being an
agent for a foreign power?"
"I don't know, did I? It's not like you couldn't convict
me of a million crimes on my own home soil." Krycek had regained
some vim, and with it his flippancy.
It made Scully go cold. She carefully shifted her body
before demanding: "Have you committed murder?"
"Yes," came the answer, neutral and bland.
"Were you involved in my sister's shooting?" Mulder could
see the wrinkles next to her nose which presaged the rage she
tried so hard to hide. He had his own questions but he bit his
tongue and watched.
Krycek sighed before answering. "You know I was." Something
drained out of Scully. "I was the lookout. I knew what you
looked like. I fucked up." He hung his head as he said it.
Scully began a surprising gutter curse but Krycek regained eye
contact and cut her off. "I can only say I'm thankful we killed
the wrong woman." At that Scully stopped suddenly, her face a
blank. She smoothed her slacks over her thighs, came to some
sort of decision, and walked quickly out of the room.
Mulder did not quite know how to react but he knew an ad-
vantage when it was handed to him. He stepped around the table
and hissed, "Are you thankful for having killed my father?"
Krycek's eyes had followed Scully out of the room, but now
he returned to face his other questioner, who leaned inappro-
priately close. Considering his recent show of contrition,
Krycek's reply was rather shocking: "Yes."
Mulder's knuckles itched and he stood to knot his fingers
together behind his back. "What did you say."
Krycek answered with a snarl. "I loved every fucking minute
of it. I would do it again if he were right here."
Mulder could not manufacture a reply. He stood and stared
at the contracting pupils of Krycek's eyes and the fresh energy
that suffused that face. He was damned if he would assault this
prisoner again. Carefully controlling his breathing, Mulder
gathered his thoughts and asked as coolly as he could, "Why the
enthusiasm?"
Krycek lowered his head to his left shoulder, a curiously
withdrawn gesture. "Call it jealousy," he muttered.
"What, you wanted his power?"
The look that answered that question doubted how Mulder
had ever made it out of grade school. "He was retired, he had
no power." With a breath Krycek plunged in. "But he'd done
enough. A busy little Boy Scout."
This was getting strange. "Do you know his history in the
organization?"
"Enough," Krycek said.
Mulder sat in Scully's chair and tried to stare down his
adversary. "Tell me."
"You don't want to know."
"Yes I do."
Krycek's eyelids lowered wearily. "No you don't. You want
me to tell you so that you can call me a liar. He was a fucking
animal. I'm glad I killed him." The excitement of his earlier
confession had paled.
"What did he do, that was so bad?" Mulder asked gently.
Krycek only looked disbelievingly.
"What, did he create hybrids, was he engineering plagues,
was he torturing housecats? Tell me, Krycek." Silence. He heard
Scully's heels as she re-entered the kitchen. He leaned back
and narrowed his eyes and struck. "You don't know anything, do
you." Mulder spoke on over Krycek's denial. "You want us to
think you're some secret agent. You'll tell us whatever makes
it all sound romantic. I bet you applied to the CIA and they
turned you down."
"But -" interjected Krycek, eyes rolling anxiously.
"Lack of intelligence. You couldn't lie your way out of a
paper bag. You're just a dangerous little psychopath who got
fired and wants to get back at his employers. You can't even
kill the right people." Mulder could feel Scully bristling
behind him. "My father could have been a gardener, you would be
telling me he was the devil incarnate."
Rage had transformed Krycek's face into a stylized mask,
all white angles and glittering eyes and that red, bloody mouth.
He was breathing hard again, the only noise in the kitchen.
Mulder let his tone slide into insolence. "I bet my father
was completely innocent."
"Innocent!" Krycek bellowed, a vein in his forehead stand-
ing out. "It was his project! It was his baby all along! *He*
ordered a thousand people put to the test. *He* ordered them
destroyed when he was done. He called them merchandise, they
meant nothing to him. To volunteer his own children --"
Everyone stiffened at once and no one spoke.
It was Scully who finally broke the silence. "What did
you say?"
Mulder did not trust himself to speak so he busied himself
stilling his trembling extremities. Krycek was not answering.
Krycek was not answering and Mulder would have an answer if he
had to strangle it out of the man. Scully's hand, firm and
confident on his shoulder, was like a rope to a drowning man.
"Nothing," Krycek muttered.
"Oh no, not nothing," replied Scully, controlled. "We know
what you're talking about." Krycek raised his head in confusion,
first to Mulder, who schooled himself to blankness, and then
to Scully. "We saw the file. We know he chose which of the
children would be taken."
The sulkiness which overcame Krycek's face fairly screamed
that there was more. Scully's hand tightened on Mulder's shoul-
der and he kept his silence too. They were rewarded with a
reluctant answer at last: "An experiment."
They all waited. Mulder felt a drop of sweat work its way
endlessly down the side of his face. Krycek hazarded a glance
and then returned to his scrutiny of the table.
"Intelligence experiments. Inducement of higher IQ through
chemicals, organic compounds. They tried it on children, to grow
a smarter operative."
Mulder let out a breath, steadying.
"It was mostly successful I guess, except for one side
effect. Every last one of them had seizures." Now Mulder's
thighs became jelly and he was wildly glad that he was already
sitting down. Scully's fingers pinched down hard on his shoulder
and abruptly let go.
"They were all supposed to be taken, disposed of, since
they were unreliable. The record I saw showed all of them safely
in custody, except for one." Krycek stared hard into Mulder, who
had lost the wherewithal to look away. His voice was apologetic.
"It didn't even have a name, just a serial number." A blink,
another. "I'm not even sure it's you." Krycek removed his eyes
from Mulder's field of vision.
* * * * * * *
Scully took it upon herself to clean up this disastrous
situation. Mulder had navigated the second floor in a coma,
leading her to as plain a bedroom as she had ever seen. She
could not believe that he had ever lived here. But she would
contemplate the blank walls and standard furniture some other
time; right now she was removing her partner's shoes as he
searched the ceiling with his eyes. She would have left him in
his coat and gone to manage the monster downstairs but he
blinked when she leaned over him and spoke.
"How did you know his weak point? Why the hand?"
She took her time responding, sitting by his side and
smoothing her slacks. "What's the most frightening thing in the
world to a man with one arm? Having no arms." He seemed to have
regained his equilibrium, or maybe he was just withdrawing from
the question at hand. He settled himself on the bed and closed
his eyes.
"That's cold."
"I'm learning a whole new frigid world." She paused, teeth
clenched. She was not going to yell at him after the evening
he'd had. Scully pinched her own thigh, felt the nail dig and
the pain was welcome. "Krycek thinks I would do it. And as long
as he does we've got power over him, maybe the only kind of
power he understands."
She saw his exhausted nod and hoped he understood. She
hoped he would not ask about her brief disappearance; there was
no way she could tell him that she had left her successful
interrogation to jump up and down in silent rage in the next
room, afraid of showing Krycek her weakness. She knew Mulder
could not claim the high ground, that he had sunk to the same
sort of coercion with similar success. What kind of man, she
wondered, responded only to cruelty?
That ended their conversation rather differently than she
had intended and she could not touch him to comfort him. She
glanced his way in the doorway, but his eyes were closed. Scully
thought briefly that it might be the first time he had slept
here in his own home in a long time. She didn't want to think
about that and she let the sound of her heels firm her as she
returned to the kitchen and Alex Krycek, looking hangdog and
exhausted.
When he heard her coming he looked up in alarm; that ex-
pression made Scully hurt in a place right behind her breast-
bone. She tamped her lips together and came to a decision.
"You look like hell," she told him. It was strange, making
conversation with this man. She had not exchanged words with
him in more than a year, and truthful words maybe ever. He tried
to roll his shoulders and was restricted by the handcuff. "Will
you let me look at your arm?"
"No," he answered, and she had never heard a more sorrowful
word. "But I can't stop you."
She lowered her head at that. "I don't suppose you'll prom-
ise not to bite if I try to take a look at that tooth of yours."
"No. I think it's stopped bleeding anyway." Unable to look
for very long at the darkly flowering bruises on his face, she
could not think of what to say to him or why she felt she needed
to say anything at all.
"You need a shower." It was out of her mouth before she
realized he would take it as an offer; they looked at each other
for a startled moment before he nodded assent. "All right,
then." Dana Scully was not inclined to trust prisoners, and
inclined even less to allow this prisoner a centimeter of lee-
way. But she let her fingers slide down Krycek's arm to the
silvery cuff and found that the key was still in the lock.
Krycek had not even touched it.
She freed his legs first, and was rewarded with a stiff
groan and the popping of Achilles tendons like twin fire-
crackers. She looped the loose cuff into its circle and tugged
on it and Krycek stood like a trained circus animal to follow
her. He gave her a cold, speculative look when she marched right
into the bathroom with him, his eyes glittering like chips of
bloodstone. She knew Melissa had had a bloodstone necklace, each
polished bead a deep roiling muddy green with tiny flecks of
red. That knowledge helped her stay hard.
He removed his clothes with the efficiency that a career
soldier can strip a gun, despite the false arm which Scully
rather thought impeded than assisted his mobility. He did not
need her help to get that off either and it shuffled to the
floor in a strangely horrific way. She stood back, her hand on
the butt of her gun, and watched him climb into the shower,
facing her, naked and without shame.
Krycek spent a long time under the hot water. Scully had
the leisure to inspect him through the frosted glass, to watch
how he maneuvered with a skinny stump on one side, to count
the marks of red irritation the prosthesis made on his torso.
She toed his pile of clothes with her shoe, finding jeans with
grease stains on them, a ragged pullover, and a leather jacket
which had suffered long with its owner. Krycek's t-shirt and
underwear were gray, that color whites go when they have been
washed for a year without bleach. Bachelor gray, homeless gray.
Stark and humiliating and so quotidian Scully couldn't associate
it with the Boogeyman currently standing in Mulder's mother's
shower.
The boots were more apropos, square and black with bright
steel zippers down the side. Zippers. Of course. One-handed.
There was something different about him, something hopeless
which he had not displayed before even in captivity. She could
not put her finger on it. Perhaps it had something to do with
the fact that he was showering with obvious abandon, rolling
his neck under the spray, trying to reach the middle of his
back with the soap rather than attempting to escape.
When he was done he stepped out and accepted the towel she
proffered with a strange expression on his face. "Why," he
asked haltingly, "are you being so nice?"
She lowered her eyes and answered, "Bribery works almost
as well as coercion."
"If I had been thinking I would have known you weren't
going to shoot me," he said, as if starting a conversation about
the New York Giants. He took that moment to run the towel
through his short hair, his stump mimicking its whole counter-
part and making useless waving circles away from his body. She
scanned down his frame, noticing the scars which marred the
display of muscle beneath the surface. A bullet, large caliber,
in his abdomen, something she knew to be messy and painful. A
puckered scar by his knee, sealed by the white dots of staple
marks. A series of small haphazard cuts, bad enough to have
needed stitches, along his chest and side, at the level of his
left nipple. She stifled her shocked intake of breath as his
head popped out from under the towel. "You didn't capture a
change of clothes when you captured me, did you?"
Scully took a moment to control herself. "No." He grimaced
and crouched to pick up his clothes.
"Clean underwear might have been nice."
Now that he had defused her psychological power over him
she did not quite know what to do next. Her failure to consider
just driving him to the police station struck her as just ano-
ther symptom of this impossible night. She searched for some-
thing to fill the silence and asked, "What is your name?"
He looked up at her, startled, in the midst of stepping
into his jeans. He lowered his head and pulled on the denim.
"I can't tell you. You'll go searching the databases, looking
for parking tickets or insurance policies, and the wrong people
will start paying attention."
She crossed her arms and regarded him. "As far as we can
piece together at least two governments want to see you in
chains. How much more attention can they pay?"
The pause he took was eternal, so long that she decided he
was ignoring her while he ran his hand over the stubble on his
swollen jaw and watched himself in the mirror. Finally he looked
away and replied in a small voice: "I have a family. Groups
other than governments would use them as leverage."
"I thought you were working for them again."
His sigh held disgust and helplessness. "There are fact-
ions. You can't protect me."
Scully wanted to ask him a million questions, about chips
and lighthouses and experiments and rebellions. She could not
get past her first question. "What is your name. It doesn't
leave this room," she added.
"None of your beeswax." His voice was in the low end of
his register like a growl. He held out his wrist for the hand-
cuff she still held. She let the silence grow and slip into the
corners of the room as she caught and held his eyes. Krycek
cleared his throat and stood at loose ends, fully dressed and
apparently cornered in a bathroom by an agent he could easily
have thrown over his shoulder under different circumstances. It
occurred to Scully to wonder why he had not made a move.
"Ganya," he muttered, and examined the floor. "In private,
at home, my family called me Ganya."
They both let out tense breaths and he sought her eyes for
the first time. "I can't tell you more," he said, plaintive and
frightened. "I won't put them in any more danger."
* * * * * * *
She wrings me dry. I talk for hours, telling her the things
I know, the things I can guess, the things that frighten me so
badly I have not yet dared put them to words. I tell her every-
thing since Kazakhstan, talking in a daze, unable to shut myself
up, and when she puts a glass of water on the table I stare at
it stupidly before taking a drink. I talk all night long.
At three a.m. she interrupts me. "Why should I believe
you?"
The hard question. I ache all up and down my spine and it's
not just from my tumble earlier. "You don't have to believe in
space invaders. I've never actually seen one. This is all guess-
work, and rumor, and deduction, you know, nobody's going to come
on out and say it... But something's going on, I don't think
you can dispute that. Your experience at the lighthouse should
be proof of that. Your... your cancer should be proof of it."
She is as uncomfortable as I am about that subject, pursing her
lips but unable to speak. "There is a cure to this - thing. I
held it in my hands. Mulder's been inoculated, and I'm immune
too. I don't know what it is, so I don't know how to make more.
But I know at least two sets of people who do have it."
"No," she says, and tilts her head thoughtfully. "I meant
why should I believe you will honor your side of any deal? All
you've ever done is use us."
I don't know what to say so I look at the floor. She stands
with a considering look and wanders uselessly to the mantle-
piece. I can tell from here that the photo she is looking at is
of her partner and his sister, looking tanned and happy and
painfully normal. I don't want to talk about abductions, not
with her.
Her mouth is opening, she's taking a breath, and I can't
stand the thought of telling her about my guilt. I am saved by
the thump of Mulder stumbling down the stairs, looking terrible.
He pulls open the glass door that separates the living room off
and surveys the scene, his eyes going immediately to catalogue
me sitting in his mother's chair and drinking from his mother's
glass. Scully and I are both unwilling to speak.
That fury he saves up for me crosses his features. He
strangles out "Where the hell are the handcuffs" like a pack-
a-day smoker, his hands twitching. He rushes over to me and
jerks me into the air with two handfuls of my sweater and the
glass crashes to the floor, rolling and spilling water on what
looks like an expensive Persian rug.
This I know how to deal with. I lean, letting him take my
weight, forcing him to catch me as I fall forward or let me go.
He lets go and paces tensely across the room and back. "I don't
know what kind of game you've got going, Krycek -"
"Listen, Mulder," I say, trying for a reasonable tone. "I
don't go around hoping people will throw me down a flight of
stairs. You caught me fair and square this time." Scully is
watching us both, disappearing into the scenery in that way
she does.
"So you're not pulling your patriotic shtick again?" His
face and his voice hold contempt. I don't bother to answer and
he keeps going, gesturing absently as his trench coat billows
behind him. "You come in here with the perfect story, one that
jives perfectly with my medical history, one with a built-in
ego massage for God's sake, and you expect me to buy it? You're
just volunteering information out of the goodness of your black
little heart, right?"
He stops and tries to tower over me from across the room.
I don't know whether to even try convincing him any more. It's
three in the morning and I rub my eyes. "I only know what I
read. I pieced together meaning from some raw data. I could even
be wrong."
"So why are you telling me? Playing some stupid psychol-
ogical game?"
I'm so tired of him. "I was trying to show you just how
dirty these people are. To give you a real idea what you're up
against. If you want to be naive, that's your problem." I make
as if to walk away, then remember who has all of my firepower.
"You go ahead and go back to Washington. Go chase down psychics
and mutants and strange occurrences of nature, if you don't
have the stomach for it. I'll be doing the real work."
I just can't shut up. He gets in my face and I don't back
down; we stare right into each other's eyes and I can see my
reflection in two tiny black mirrors.
"I should just kill you right now." His breath hot on my
face.
"Go ahead. Do it. Prove to me you've got the balls for it.
You've had the opportunity before and you've always chickened
out." Heat suffuses my face and clamps hard around my throat.
His eyebrows wrinkle with confusion and the rage begins to drain
out of him. "In Hong Kong I begged you to do it. At Tunguska you
knocked me out with your fists when you could have used the
knife in your hand." I surprise myself saying so much and look
away.
Scully is staring at me in dismay. No. She is staring at
both of us in dismay. Mulder turns to her and the shrug of his
shoulders might be an apology to her. He stays away from me,
though.
"Well," comes her voice from the corner, warm and reason-
able as has no right to be in this room, "either way, we have
got to cover our bases. I didn't call Boyd last night." Her body
is lithe and graceful as she retrieves the glass from under the
sofa. Mulder's eyes return to her, as always, and something
passes between them that I can't interpret.
Some decision having been reached, Mulder sits heavily on
the couch and regards me balefully. "I'll keep an eye on our
friend, here," he volunteers with false cheer. He touches his
holster on his hip, as if I didn't already know about that one,
and the one at his ankle, and mine stuffed somewhere down his
pants. And my switchknife. I'll want that back, if he lets me
live. "You go ahead and get some sleep. You can check in with
Boyd in the morning."
"And you?" I know her face is deadly serious but I can't
help thinking there is some joke going on.
"He told me to go home." I am excluded from their look.
"I'm just following orders." She spares me a hard glance as she
heads out the glass door and toward the staircase and her heels
mark her progress up the stairs.
* * * * * * *
Sipping coffee with Krycek was not his idea of a leisurely
breakfast. Mulder felt the acridity in the back of his throat
and looked around at the varied group in the restaurant. Krycek
dunked his teabag again and again, demonstrating at the same
time both the clumsiness of his false arm and his own finesse
at working around it. Mulder wanted Scully to be here; he wanted
someone who could laugh in Krycek's face and call up the local
police. But she had a toxicology report to go read and an SAC
to check in with. And she had insisted coolly, without a glance
at their captive, that there might be something to his story.
Krycek had slept, finally, near dawn. Mulder had cuffed
him to his mother's antique desk and hoped she would never find
out. Flipping on the TV, he had surfed irritably, the tele-
vision's light reflecting pale on Krycek's slack features, and
tried to marshal his thoughts. He had been unable to settle on
any one program. A few minutes on the soft-core the premium
channels show late at night had ended abruptly with a glance at
Krycek, who had displayed all signs of being asleep. Suddenly,
after two hours of absolute stillness, Krycek had awoken with a
myoclonic jerk, his body shifting in pronounced anxiety, deep
purple shadows under his eyes. Mulder had been manufacturing a
flip comment about bad dreams when he too had heard Scully's
heels on the stairs.
Despite the minimal sleep, she had looked reasonably
groomed, her pantsuit unwrinkled, unlike his own clothes. And
she had been adamant that Krycek be held out of the justice
system for just a little while longer. Now, in warm daylight in
a Friendly's in Wallingford, Mulder picked at his toast and
wondered irritably what could have changed her mind. His captive
looked wan and small on his side of the booth, stubble and a
bruise covering only some of his pallor. It was nine in the
morning. They had wasted too much time here and Mulder did not
know where to go next.
He was fishing in his pocket for his wallet when his phone
rang, startling Krycek badly enough for him to scald himself
with his tea. "Mulder," he answered it, wondering why she would
call so soon.
"I'm being followed," Scully began without preamble. "I
picked up a man in a blue sedan on the Wilbur Cross Parkway and
he's now parked in the lot at St. Mary's. I'm inside but I don't
know what he looks like. He's got to be after the same data
Krycek was trying to steal."
The would-be thief was pouring an amazing amount of sugar
in his tea, a wary eye on Mulder. "Are you with someone?" A few
of the bad situations ran through his head like movies. He rem-
embered the bruises she'd taken during her last days of cancer,
inflicted when she had pursued a follower too diligently. "Now
is not the time to be taking risks."
"I'm fine," she replied, without irony. "I've got a few
CDC people around me and we're also making copies of everything
we can get our hands on. But this changes things, doesn't it."
"Yes." He glanced again at Krycek, who was now staring
outright at Mulder. "If you notice anyone suspicious, don't
hesitate to take him down. In the meantime -"
Krycek snatched the phone out of Mulder's hand adroitly
and put it to his own ear. Mulder suppressed a tide of rage and
forbore from grabbing Krycek in such a public place. "Has he
made any moves?" The man spoke with clear anxiety, his eyes
darting as some plan worked in his head. "I know exactly who it
is. I mean, I know his type and his function. If he's come this
far out in the open that means we're all in danger." Their eyes
met and Mulder refused to wonder what that concern in Krycek's
face meant. "We got my car. There's no way I can tell you this
over the phone."
Finally Mulder reached out and took back his telephone,
rather more roughly than was necessary, as Krycek handed it over
without protest. "It's me again," he supplied, and he heard
Scully let out a breath before she said anything.
"Where should we meet?"
"The mall is only a few blocks from the hospital. We can
meet there, in the food court." He was already fiddling with his
wallet, throwing a few bills on the table. Krycek downed his tea
at a gulp.
"Right," she said firmly. "I'll be there."
*
She was there, small and business-like amongst the sparse
morning shoppers, another in a long line of Styrofoam coffee
cups at her elbow. Mulder stretched the kink out of his back
and mentally cursed Krycek's compact car while the latter told
about FutureCorp.
"It wasn't on purpose, that much I know. I spoke to the
head of development and he was terrified of word getting out. I
don't even know what the compound is, and I'm sure those kids
didn't. They could have been sniffing Drano for all they knew.
And it killed them." He drummed his fingers on the metal table,
then looked at his hand guiltily.
"So you're telling me," offered Scully, with no small
amount of skepticism in her tone, "that a group of girls stole
a secret formula while on a class trip and just walked out of
the building with it under their coats?"
Krycek's face was remarkably serene, considering. "They may
have inhaled it on the premises. I don't know how they did it;
I just got called in to clean up the mess."
"Did you kill Chloe Adler?" Scully demanded.
Krycek tensed and then relaxed. "No," he answered with
relief.
"Why you?" asked Mulder suddenly, and both of his compan-
ions looked at him in confusion. "What does FutureCorp have to
do with the people you work for? Why so much effort for this
compound?"
Krycek's face was hard and sure. "Go do your homework.
You'll find out that FutureCorp is owned in whole or in part,
through a hundred dummy companies, by the Culmination Group,
Inc. out of New York City. Keep that name in mind. See if you
can't track it by its tax records, its holdings. I'm sure it's
privately owned, but maybe you can twist a few arms in the IRS."
He swallowed, and took a long look around before continuing.
"As for the compound, I'm not sure. They tell me what, not why.
I know it breaks down quickly and becomes untraceable. From
what I can guess it's some new kind of nerve agent, probably
chemical warfare."
"Well." Scully tucked her chin into her chest, her classic
posture for calculating the unlikely. "That begins to explain
the blood work," she began reluctantly. "The CDC doctor took one
look at the cell samples I took and went to call the Environ-
mental Protection Agency. He was sure it was toxic waste."
None of them spoke for a while, and Mulder puzzled over
the idea of a Connecticut laboratory making chemical weapons.
The U.S. government had proscribed their manufacture for a long
time, and now a private company had taken up the practice.
Scully was playing with her coffee cup and giving Krycek a long
appraising look, one Mulder knew from experience was hard
to endure.
"Those marks on your chest," she said suddenly. "Defensive
wounds."
Krycek just looked off into the distance.
"You were awake. You were fighting it. It wasn't gangrene
or a grenade, was it?" Her voice was terrible and gentle and
full of gravity. Mulder did not quite know who had suddenly
knocked the wind out of him. Krycek pursed his lips sourly and
did not reply.
"No arm, no test," rasped Mulder, regaining his breath
shakily. Scully's eyes like saucers sought his own.
"Sucks to be a victim," replied Krycek, with a savage smile
that twisted like a knife in the wound. His eyes were pure ven-
omous green. Mulder felt a reflexive horror which ran electric-
ity through all of his ten fingers. That, and a strange cold
sorrow: all those people with empty sleeves. Another in the
ranks.
"I guess you blame me for that," he offered.
"Of course I fucking blame you for it, I had a plan and
you shot it all to hell." Krycek's body was tense, but his tone
lacked anger. He pushed his chair away from the table, but
seemed to have nowhere to go. His face collapsed into a bitter
frown.
"What plan?" asked Mulder solemnly. He recalled the visit
to Tunguska being of his own motivation, but the possibility of
his having been manipulated was rearing its head more often than
he liked. Krycek blinked at him, perhaps considering a reply,
but before he could open his mouth a phone rang. Mulder was
beginning to hate that noise.
It was Scully's, and she answered it warily. "Sir," she
said sharply, unconsciously straightening where she sat. She
listened, and both men watched her, her short replies giving no
sense of what she was talking about. Finally she rang off and
her shoulders fell as she did. Mulder remembered again how much
less sleep she had had than he. "That was Boyd. Another dead
kid. This one looks like a suicide."
She stood to go, stuffing her telephone back into her coat
pocket. Krycek gave her a cool glance. "You'll be autopsying
all day, then. You'll be safe in public."
She grimaced and nodded, resting her gaze on Mulder. "It
was Kenny Kannell," she said, and he felt a cold snake wrap
itself around his spine. Their exchanged looks traded awareness
but conferred no warmth. "I'll call you when I'm finished."
* * * * * * *
The sun had set when Scully pulled away from the hospital,
the sad colors of the gloaming mirroring her mood. She had
pulled onto 91 before she realized that she had no idea where
Mulder had holed up with Krycek to wait out the afternoon. With
a quick thank-you to Qualcomm for making glow-in-the-dark
keypads, she speed-dialed and maneuvered her way into the heavy
evening traffic. It rang three times before Mulder answered.
"Mulder, it's me." He greeted her, shouting over some
noise which sounded like bowling pins, and shuffled for a long
moment till he found a quiet spot.
"What did you find?"
"Kenny Kannell did not commit suicide. He was fed poison."
His long silence sounded as awful as she felt so she filled it
with detail. "His stomach was full of it, but I found a mark on
his hard and soft palates: someone shoved a spoon into his
mouth. He had developing bruises on his wrists, so he was held
down. Mulder, it was rat poison."
An angry horn distracted her, as the traffic got heavier
and slower. She cradled the phone on her shoulder and waited for
Mulder to say something. "He had a bite on his arm," he supplied
finally. "Michelle bit him. He was afraid of getting rabies."
She tried and failed to keep a noise of disgust from esc-
aping. "I opened his skull. His brain was perfectly normal. The
CDC pathologist agreed; Kenny was not exposed to the toxic agent."
"Hold on, Krycek wants to talk." Mulder's voice was muf-
fled, and then a rustling in her ears as the phone changed
hands. She wondered, as she looked in her rearview mirror, how
they had managed not to kill each other already.
"He was clean," came Krycek's voice, deeper and sharper
than Mulder's.
"Yes."
"I would never have killed him," said Krycek simply. "I had
orders to wait until onset of symptoms." His matter-of-fact tone
disturbed her immensely, and then she paid attention to his
words.
"Did you kill Michelle Manzarek?" She regretted her shrill
tone, but it got results.
"She was already dead. Her heart just didn't know it yet."
Mulder's voice was a buzz in the background and she para-
phrased what he must be asking: "But you didn't kill any of the
others?"
Krycek paused, then answered with poorly concealed tension.
"Someone else has been sent to make sure my job gets done. He
is not so choosy about his methods."
Scully felt as if she were falling. "There are factions,
you said."
"Yes. He'll kill me next if he can. And that means he might
kill you too." Another pause, and Krycek seemed to gulp before
he spoke again. "My boss is in the camp that would very much
like to see you two alive. The members are choosing up sides,
right now, and I can't guarantee anything to you beyond all of
my efforts."
She held her breath. The clarity in his tone was shocking,
and if coupled with honesty, a powerful weapon. Scully glanced
at her rearview again and all thoughts of alliances flew out of
her head. "Krycek, I'm being followed again. Please put Mulder
back on the line."
* * * * * * *
Krycek could not be kept in cuffs in public, so he had
wandered all afternoon on a combination of the honor system and
Mulder's own paranoia. Mostly he had sat idle, seeming not even
to view his surroundings, but Mulder began to realize how good
his eyes really were as he reconnoitered the street in front of
Mickey's Quickie Mart. He considered himself careful, but Krycek
eyed the back seats of parked cars, looked in the dumpster, and
tapped thoughtfully on each of the orange construction barrels
which sealed off the far edge of the back parking lot before he
turned to Mulder and shrugged. They were essentially alone.
There were few cars passing by, but enough that he did not fear
Scully would be run off the road before she arrived.
They had spent too long together, constantly checking each
other for signs of weakness, and as he returned to the darkened
back lot from the street Mulder at last felt his sense of
Schadenfreunde kicking in. As Krycek approached him across the
parking lot, he blew out a tense, bored breath and commented,
"I had a dream once, where my arms got cut off, first one and
then the other." Krycek stopped in his tracks with that unread-
able face of his. "Most terrifying nightmare I ever had."
Ten or twelve yards separated them across the parking lot,
but when Krycek made a noise deep in his throat Mulder felt a
little bit cornered. A cold stare mirrored the tone of his
voice: "They've probably been shaping every moment of your life.
Every decision, every milestone. You have to wonder, is any of
it yours?"
"What the hell are you talking about."
"Have they tried to recruit you yet?" Krycek's eyes had
gone keen and acquisitive.
Mulder opened his mouth, and then wondered why he would
ever admit such a thing to Krycek. "They hired you, they'll hire
anyone," he drawled, adopting a languid pose. Krycek flexed his
shoulders as he took a step forward and Mulder found himself
happy with the animosity.
At that moment Scully pulled into the lot, her headlights
raking across first Krycek and then Mulder. "Someday I'll
bother to tell you," growled Krycek over the noise of her
engine, "why I followed you under that wire into Tunguska."
Mulder blinked and stepped forward to pursue it, but Krycek
was already pulling open Scully's car door, greeting her with a
note in his voice which might have been relief. "You shook him?"
She didn't reply, but got out of the little car, surveying
the parking lot and the stances of the two men before her.
Mulder knew surely that she had missed nothing.
"I think so," she answered finally, and gave Mulder a long
look. He read concern in her cool blue eyes, and curiosity, and
that dreadful tightening which signalled her hatred for playing
the defensive. Krycek relaxed visibly and leaned against the
hood of the car, looking for all the world like a construction
worker or overgrown student, hanging out after a long day.
Scully and Mulder stood before him, both in business garb
and frankly out of place; Mulder felt the awkwardness in his
stance and glanced around. Mickey's Quickie Mart was luckily
having a slow night. "The man who followed me," began Scully,
considering. "He also works for this Culmination Group?"
Krycek shifted and tucked his chin into his left shoulder.
"I have to assume so. There are people who -- aren't crazy about
my return to the organization."
Mulder broke in: "Why did you go back?"
"Long story," answered Krycek, exhibiting signs it ex-
hausted him just to think about it.
Scully pursed her lips. "Along what lines are these fact-
ions split?"
It was a long silence from Krycek, one that made Mulder
antsy. "There are those," he managed finally, "who think that
rolling over and playing dead is the only way to play. And then
there's the side which would rather go down fighting."
"You make it sound like a war," commented Scully.
Krycek snapped back: "It is one."
"So you want us to join up?" Scully looked at him askance
for his heavy sarcasm but Mulder was in the grip of his con-
tempt. Leaning against the hood of the car, the would-be
revolutionary scratched his head and looked at the gravel at
his feet.
"That's the general idea."
"And if we arrest you?" Mulder leaned in, leering. Krycek
just sighed irritably.
"I'll be dead in a day. And you'll have no one on the
inside."
"You want us to let you go."
"You need information," he argued, his chin pointing
forward in his vehemence. "I need a public voice, a threat they
know about so they don't see my knife till it's in their backs."
"Oh, so we're the sacrifice?"
"Would you rather walk into a trap knowing it's a trap and
knowing why, or would you rather just trip the wire and die
thinking you stumbled over your shoelaces?"
Mulder did not know how to respond. Scully took a breath,
paused, and said, "That's not much of a choice."
"No, it's not."
A long silence built then, as Krycek stared out into the
distance. It occurred to Mulder that this tableau recorded the
way he imagined Scully had learned of her cancer: unclear evi-
dence, enormous odds, stark possibilities and a mournful bearer
of bad tidings. It made him uncomfortable to compare the two
scenarios, realizing that already he had cast Krycek as the con-
cerned specialist. This particular specialist, clad in leather
and aloofness, seemed to be sniffing the chill March air like
a coyote.
The preternatural awareness of Alex Krycek was troubling;
and so it was not entirely a surprise when a low crack resounded
in the air, accompanied by the scuffling sounds of Krycek
throwing himself to the ground without a word. Mulder hit the
ground soon afterwards, his head swiveling as he tried to
ascertain the source of the shot, and Scully said clearly into
his ear: "Construction site, on our left." They scrambled tog-
ether behind the protection of the car, and realized that Krycek
had gone over the hood and beat them to it. Panting, the three
of them lay still, listening with all their might.
"A rifle," gasped Krycek. "It's likely not his only weapon,
but it improves my chances if I can get up close." An abortive
motion towards his ribs was clearly his reaching for a gun no
longer in his waistband.
Scully's wide, alert eyes made her whole face go to sharp
edges. Her weapon in her right hand, she reached out to Krycek
with her left, and exclaimed abruptly: "Are you hit?" Her middle
finger poked through a hole low in the side of his jacket, be-
fore she went searching down his ribcage for blood.
Krycek wriggled away from her touch. "No, he missed me,"
he muttered reluctantly. He got to his knees as if trying to
avoid her gaze and sprinted towards the Quickie Mart. Another
shot rang out, unmistakable in the quiet, and Mulder knew that
someone would hear and call the police. Mulder threw himself
after Krycek, gun drawn but with no idea where to aim. He found
himself shoulder to shoulder with the man, against the concrete
side wall of the building, and Scully barreled into him.
Together they stalked towards the construction site, hudd-
ling in the lee of the scenery. No more bullets flew, and a
pregnant silence hung over them as they panted in the dark.
Krycek's hand spasmed as he leaned against the wall of the
building being worked on, and Scully snatched Mulder by the
lapel.
"Give him his gun, Mulder," she said, all seriousness. He
looked at her incredulously and she didn't blink. "If he dies,
we get nothing."
It did not take him long to assess his feelings on Krycek
and firearms. "No," he replied. "He stays with me, Scully. I'm
not giving him a gun." Krycek, eyes cool through this exchange,
gave a disgusted snort and spun into the doorway.
Mulder followed, splitting up from Scully, feeling the slow
burn of frustration as Krycek took the lead over and over. For-
ward through the disarray of a refurbishing job in progress,
Mulder feinted behind column after column of structural support.
Up a flight of wooden stairs, which screamed under their feet.
Krycek took them two at a time, and Mulder followed more care-
fully, which was why he managed to step on the board which was
dangerously loose. He pinwheeled his arms and fell ungraciously
forward, banging his chin on the dirty floor. The gun flew from
his hand and skittered into the dark.
"Jesus, Mulder," said Krycek, crouching at his side.
Mulder looked up at him in time to see him stiffen suddenly and
make that autonomic motion again towards an absent gun. Follow-
ing Krycek's line of vision, Mulder saw a man, rather nonde-
script in black, pausing between two columns about ten yards
away, a rifle in his hands.
There was a long moment in which Mulder fancied that all
three of them checked their internal reality-meters to make sure
this wasn't a dream. The man stood still, his hand on the
rifle's stock, his eyes slipping between the two men before him.
Then Krycek stalked, feline, in a wide circle so that the man
had to turn his head to keep him in sight. Mulder recognized the
tactic as intended to draw fire, and took the opportunity to
scramble to his feet. His weapon was nowhere in sight, and as
this stranger's eyes flicked back to him he dared not make a
move for his ankle holster, not yet.
Time stretched out immeasurably, leaving Mulder only to
hope that this High Noon would end before Scully came charging
up, making another target. He was strangely gratified to see the
small man in black clothing shift his rifle with a sudden expert
movement and point it at Mulder himself. Mulder paused with his
hand on his pant leg and straightened, making no trouble. Krycek
had disappeared from his line of vision. The air was thick and
dusty and Mulder strove not to cough, even as he wished his
opponent would come down with wracking allergies.
The stillness broke in a rush of air as a rebar swung at
an acute angle and connected with the assassin's shoulder. The
meaty noise of the impact was sickening, but Mulder thrust the
sensation aside and fled for cover, finally freeing his weapon
from his ankle. The stranger cried out, again, as two more moist
blows fell unseen. When he chanced a look, Mulder saw Krycek in
profile between the two support columns, his one arm upraised
in a powerful stance reminiscent of Classical statue. The
comparison stopped with a startling suddenness when he swung
that arm downward with all the force of his torso, the rebar
he held striking the man on the floor at hand and temple.
Blood flew and a weak cry followed. Krycek made no noise
as he swung, teeth clenched, and the rebar whistled and thudded
over the little wails that came from the stranger. He might have
been pounding nails for the railroad or whipping an animal;
either way his arm snapped the long dark bar with a swooping
grace. Mulder knew he heard the crunch of bone and found himself
standing, his weapon hanging useless at his side, as the little
man fell silent under Krycek's ministrations. Six, eight more
well-placed blows, and Krycek decided that he was done.
It was clear that the man was dead. Krycek straightened,
his shoulders heaving as he caught his breath, and he looked up.
Mulder stared back. His cheeks flushed, his eyes hooded, Krycek
owned the space between them and filled it with a frightening
electricity. Neither of them spoke and the blood from the
corpse pooled at Krycek's feet. Mulder stood unmoving with
every muscle in his body gone loose.
Krycek still had the rebar, gripped comfortably in his
hand. As Mulder surveyed the face to avoid those unnerving eyes,
he saw blood in a fine mist down the side of Krycek's face and
the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Krycek took a step towards
him, and he couldn't move, as if this were some primordial
ritual, and he knew with a tingling certainty that if Krycek
were to come after him next, if he were to take two more steps
and swing the rebar in one of those balletic arcs, that he,
Mulder, would be unable to back away, indeed, that he would
stand still in obeyance to some unknown primitive code and
allow Krycek to strike him.
Silence, and the sound of Krycek's raw panting. Another
step, and the man was within range, but the rebar sagged in his
hand unused. He was standing too close and Mulder felt the
oppressive heat Krycek threw off like a rock recently removed
from the desert. Krycek was too close, inclining his head as if
to whisper, his eyes enormous and pregnant with some hard
knowledge. Mulder could not breathe and he could not step away.
"If this doesn't prove," breathed Krycek in a tone app-
roaching reverence, "that I'm with you, then nothing will."
Mulder heard his name called out, in that tone he knew so
well, echoing through the cavernous, hollowed-out building.
Scully's heels announced her as she ran towards him from out
of the darkness.
* * * * * * *
Scully takes a long look at the body but she doesn't bother
to take its pulse. She takes a second and then she has a handle
on the situation, lowering her arms so her weapon points away
from me. I drop the rebar and it makes that resounding noise like
a bell, startling Mulder out of his weird daze. He looks at me,
and then looks at the body, and I think for a second that he's
going to throw up.
He is the first to holster his weapon, at his ankle. Then
he goes crouching around in the corners, and I remember that he
dropped his other one when he fell. I notice he never pulled
mine, which should still be at his back, and wonder what that
means. Scully watches me carefully before she puts away her
weapon and stands in front of the body where I've left it.
Nobody's said anything and I'm going crazy.
"You two can't be associated with this," I tell them, but
they give me blank faces, not ready yet to think about their
cover stories. For a bitter moment I reconsider this alliance,
the terrible things I will ask of them, and then I realize I
haven't got a choice. "Hey," I say sharply, and they finally both
look at me. "We have to think, and you have to get out of here."
Mulder is regaining his armor so he sneers at me. "Are we
just going to let you go?"
"No," I reply with as much patience as I can muster. Scully
is looking at him strangely; there's a chance she'll understand
what's going on. "You're just going to leave, and I'm going to
take care of this situation. You don't need to be associated
with this, not directly. I'll make sure it sends a message to
the right people."
Scully is considering me, squinting up with her hands on
her hips. My heart is still pounding in my ears. "You're propos-
ing that we leave a crime scene and lie about it."
"Yes," I tell her, "and that's the least of what will be
required of you. We're not at a quilting bee, Agent Scully.
That man would have killed me, and failing that, took a bead on
your partner." Mulder straightens, but doesn't interrupt. He
looks at her and I don't know whether they're arguing silently
or agreeing.
Scully's chest rises and falls exaggeratedly, and she
crosses the floor to stand next to Mulder. "This partnership,"
she begins, and her mouth twists on the word. "How do we know
you won't disappear after tonight?"
"I may have to disappear, for a while," I reply, on
tenterhooks. "Clearly there are people who aren't crazy about
my breathing habit."
Both of them have their eyes narrowed at me. "I don't -"
she begins, but I cut her off, and even I can tell I'm desperate.
"Name a place. Be there the first of every month, a set
time. I'll show up when it's safe - when I can."
She looks me up and down like I'm the biggest bug she's
ever seen. "Steps of the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria. One
a.m. Don't make me wait for you."
She could chip diamonds with that face and I won't make
her wait any longer than I have to. I can breathe again. "All
right." I roll my shoulders, but they are still standing there.
"I'll be there. Now go, before someone calls the police."
Scully nods her head and looks at the floor, and I have so
much sympathy for her mangled principles. But Mulder approaches
me with what he thinks must be stealth, his hands inside his
trench coat. I don't want to fight with him.
He stands in front of me with that repulsed look for a
long moment and I can only look back at him blankly. Then with
a flourish he brings his hands from around his back, clutching
my gun and my knife. I don't know how to react and he shoves
them at me with impatience. I collect the knife, pushing it
into my pocket, and my hand closes over his, my gun, still hot
from his body, between us. I am wrapping my fingers around the
grip when I feel him moving, see with my peripheral vision as
he leans towards me conspiratorially.
He kisses me on the cheek. It's shocking, like a slap in
the face. His lips are soft against my skin and then he with-
draws and looks at me keenly. "Turnabout is fair play," he
mutters with canny malice, and he swoops away in a swirl of
trench coat. I can only look on as he comes to his partner and
begins to lead her away. Either he is an uncommon manipulator
or he - I'm not thinking that.
Scully's eyebrows have climbed to her hairline but she
just meets my eyes levelly before turning away under Mulder's
arm. They disappear into the gloom and leave me, holding my gun
loosely, standing next to a dead body. Somehow I wonder if that
doesn't characterize our relationship.
But I have work to do. More evidence to clean up. A report
for Grand Master. And a message to send, its contents cooling
at my feet.
* * * * * * *
That tang in the back of his throat could have just been
the awful smoke of the chemicals burning. Mulder kept reminding
himself of that as he stood, useless, behind miles and miles of
plastic yellow police tape. Considering the strange billows of
pale, colored fire that still wrestled with the firefighters,
he decided that the man whose death he had so recently witnessed
was a very thorough man.
Scully wandered back towards him from her consultation
with the paramedics. "What did you call it," he asked her
blandly, "not an exercise in subtlety?" Her eyeballs rolled
under closed eyelids before she answered him.
"It looks like everyone is accounted for except for one
janitor and the head of research, a Dr. Brian Halvorsen. By
everything we can gather they were both in the wing when it went
up."
"This wing, it was the experimental wing, right?"
Scully gave a little sigh. "Yes. The one the Meriden kids
toured on Friday." He looked closely at her and she jutted her
chin back at him truculently. He conceded the staring match and
she leaned close to say in a low voice: "There isn't enough time
for this to have been Krycek, if he was truly working alone."
A shrug was all he could muster in response. She turned
away, surveying the tangle of hoses and people and haphazardly
parked cars, noting with a frown the arrival of the news vans
already, her face lit strangely by the fire. He recalled her
dismayed frown as they got off route 91, her hand on the dash-
board, as if she could push the car along faster, their mutual
knowledge that the raging fire they had seen from the highway
would be none but this building. Mulder couldn't help the shudder
which ran over him, thinking of the dead man and the dull sheen on
Krycek's sweaty face.
"It was a mistake," Scully began slowly, "letting him go.
Wasn't it?" Her shoulders slumped as if shouldering all of the
responsibility. His hand moved of its own volition to touch her
hair and he stopped it in midair.
"I don't know," he answered, and she nodded absently.
Abruptly Scully made a little choking noise and he turned
to see SAC Boyd wandering, perplexed, through the support per-
sonnel. Recognition marked his face with wrinkles and he patted
down his hair as he approached them.
"Dr. Scully, is this what you called me out here for?" Boyd
used his height to try to intimidate her, then stopped when he
realized he was failing.
"This is FutureCorp Laboratories, sir," she said crisply.
"Currently the official story is a vague accident. It looks like
a total loss for the company, total destruction of anything in
this wing of the building, if not the whole structure." She
didn't need to look at Mulder to draw out the conspiratorial
possibilities, so Mulder stood quietly and watched. "If the
contamination source really was this building, then any evidence
of it is conveniently lost," she prompted.
But Boyd just shook his head in disbelief. "Agent Mulder."
He gave a displeased little smile. "I'm sure you hung around
these past few days expecting this sort of thing?"
"No," replied Mulder. "I, ah, was just visiting my mother's
place." Scully gave him one of her laser looks and then turned
away quickly. Another secret, another breathless silence be-
tween them. He tasted that foul flavor in his throat again.
* * * * * * *
Dana Scully awoke to the noise of shuffling papers. Her
disorientation cleared as she remembered who had a key to her
apartment and who would be crazy enough to be doing paperwork
at this hour. She could hear him in her living room, the scritch
of his pen and his slow breathing, trying to make sense of what
he could guess and what he could not say in the official report
- the autopsies, the murders, the fire which had obscured
everything. He was in her apartment *and* he was doing paperwork
- a bad sign.
She knew that Mulder had his strange habits, brought on,
she suspected, by his only intermittent contact with the human
race. But this was all wrong, his coming here and spreading
his papers out on her coffee table, giving himself a bad back
by sitting on the floor. Scully stretched a little, but made no
move to get up, only listened to his little sounds from the nest
of her warm bed.
His presence was oppressive, even a room away. She pondered
not for the first time that if they were to get more serious -
if he were to come knocking every night - that she would grow
sick of him. She considered the flowers which still bloomed in
her kitchen. Roses. At least they weren't red. Her mind squirmed
away from the suggestions of his neediness.
The events of the past week had given her a certain tense
awareness of her every move, the likelihood of her being sur-
veilled making her twitch at moments of privacy. Alex Krycek.
Unbelievable. That was the trouble, wasn't it? They could not
be sure he was lying. Scully turned over the possible impli-
cations of his little speech once more in her mind. An experi-
ment, she wondered. That a father could think of his son as an
experiment. It seemed to confirm a coolness which she had always
suspected in Mulder's awkward family relationships.
A worse thought occurred to her, and when it did she knew
it had occurred to Mulder already. If a choice was made, it was
more than daughter or son. It became, in this new vision, the
altered consciousness of an experimental child or his normal
sister. Sexism could explain it, but a cold, chiding voice
pointed to the obvious. Allowing the son to be taken would have
been obeying orders. By trading in his daughter, the old man
had set his son irrevocably on a path of doubt and question
and refusal to obey. A dagger, she realized, pointed at the
heart of this organization, of this Culmination Group.
If it were true, it meant that everything Mulder had done,
every choice he had made, became suspect. That sharp, mocking,
gentle ego of Fox Mulder was no longer inviolate, or rather,
its violations were coming to the fore. If it were true, it
suggested that her privately held opinion of the father as a
villain was no longer quite so pure; the sister's disappearance
no longer such a simple tragedy. The seeming duality of the old
man's loyalty was something she did not care to think about.
That dark likelihood, based on a tantalizingly possible story by
a man whose sense of truth was sorely lacking: the mere inkling
of it was enough for Mulder to be in her apartment, at some
ridiculous hour, drinking her orange juice, because he could not
stand to be alone.
Scully felt a powerful impulse to get up, to wander,
sleep-tousled, into her living room and ask him to come to bed.
He might look at her in his offhand way, and come down with a
sly smile, and ask whatever did she mean as he stood and took
off his glasses. He might, on the other hand, turn towards her
as a blind man does, his face a careful void, and tell her he
really needed to get this work done. She knew which response
would rule him tonight. With a certain pricking dismay, Dana
Scully rolled over and sought sleep. Sucks to be a victim, she
thought, Krycek's childish language ringing strange through her
head. She closed her eyes, irked that he should have the last
word even now.
* * * * * * *
END
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to the cheering section which
has emboldened me sufficiently to publish this little story. They
provided the momentum, but should in no way be blamed for my
inexplicable British spellings and nonstandard grammar.
They include: Nascent, Meredith, JiM, Rye, Perelandra, Luperkal,
Lena and others.
There is a Meriden, Connecticut, an American Cyanamid, and
such a thing as the Moodus Noises. I am, however, making up names
and places at will and have discarded any sense of local geograph-
ical integrity. Events and facts not explicitly mentioned in
canon I have made up at will.